Balanced: A Life Without Training Wheels
August 20th, 2011
So, a few days ago, Jack and Lily came to me and told me that they wanted to learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. I quickly realized that the only thing harder than learning to ride a bike without training wheels, is teaching someone to ride a bike without training wheels. Turns out though, kids are pretty smart and can mostly figure this stuff out on their own. The next day, they were riding around like pros without any of my help (they did have some kind help from grandpa, however). Eager to document these things, I threw together a short film of their new-found skills. While it was filmed here in the cold northwest, I wanted it to feel as if we were back in SoCal filming an O.P. commercial.
i knew the blood was going to be from jackson. i’ll see you soon!!!!
Cool vid. I liked the soundtrack-it gave it a Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary effect. I’m not sure about the periodic fogging effect though. You could also have used that snappy Benny Hill theme music and some reverse (backwards) shots for comedic effect. Tell Jack no more Ugg boots or drama–haha!
The “fogging” was light leaks like old film cameras made when lose or faulty seals would let light like onto the film. In fact, I like the Dogtown and Z-Boys comparison. Go back and watch that and you’ll see those light leaks all over the place. Though of course, that was because that was all real film footage.
Wait a minute! You have HD quality finally and you want it to look like old film??? Too funny.
You’re mistaking size for quality. HD is a reference of size. It’s quantitative more than qualitative. You can get Blu-Ray (HD) versions of lots of old films. Unless they’ve been “re-mastered” or something, the quality is the same, but the size is bigger.
Excuse me, but HD refers to the lines of resolution as I understand it (1980 vs. the old 720 TVs (or much less than that years ago). If you “film” in HD, it will be many times qualitatively better than if you used old film standards, not just bigger. Agree??? I thought size was a function of Letterbox standard vs. older, more square sizing.
Yes, HD refers to the lines of resolution (old televisions are actually 480 which is quite a bit less res than 720p). I definitely do not agree that “filming” in HD is at all qualitatively better than actual film standards (there really aren’t any “old” film standards as the medium itself hasn’t changed that much, just our techniques which we use to record and edit film). To a degree we’re talking apples and oranges in trying to compare film and digital. Film doesn’t have a resolution per se. Just like in regular old-school film cameras, film comes in different grains or ISO. This determines the graininess of the film. This would be the closest comparison to the resolution of digital film, but not really. And 1080p is definitely not even CLOSE to the quality that you get from film. When you start talking about super high resolution digital, you start looking at the 4k range which is MUCH higher res than 1080p. The still-in-beta Red Epic shoots up to 5k (though it costs $60k, which is actually relatively inexpensive for what it does). Only at that point can you start really arguing that digital is qualitatively better than film. This is why most big budget Hollywood films are still shot on film. It’s incredibly more expensive and difficult to work with, yet it has a look that most digital (especially at 1080p) just can’t touch. Either way, that doesn’t really have to do with what I was trying to do. I was trying to emulate the look of film (warmth, light leaks, etc..) If I really wanted “lower quality” I would have re-sampled the video down to 480i or lower instead of keeping it 1080p. Try watching an old Hitchcock movie in standard def than compare that to a Blu-Ray version. The Blu-Ray will look much better because they were able to display the movie at a higher resolution = more pixels. The “quality” of the movie hasn’t changed, just the size or resolution. Film can upscale quite well like that which has to do with the fact that it never really had a “resolution” to begin with. Try taking something that was recorded at standard def and upscale it to 1080p and it will look like absolute crap. Digital just doesn’t upscale gracefully. Letterbox actually is the old standard that fit older TV’s. Widescreen is the newer standard. And letterbox vs. widescreen isn’t considered a difference in size. It’s a difference in aspect ratio. That’s enough nerding for the evening.
I’m wasted from that response, so I’ll concede to the nerd.
lol loved it–total OP moment.