Carlo Macchiavello
Director (with strong tech knowledge)
I start to love Cinema very early, with Universal classic monster movie seen at 5 years on national tv at 14.30 of afternoon, but when i saw Ghostbusters at theater i ended the movie with an idea : i want to do movies like that :-D
grading cannot change framing, focal lenght, lighting reflections, direction of light, and so much things...
Grading help and develop only that just are in raw file, cannot build somethign from scratch.
I think there are some different wrong things.
When you start a project with cc2015 DON't do a sequence, drag simply a clip in right space of sequence, premiere build a best sequence settings for your clips (for first clip, if you have different size, fps clips you just start in wrong way).
When you work the correct sequence settings allow you to work faster, better, and with less cpu request, be cause cc2015 is builded around mercury engine to optimize and move to gpu most of decoding work.
when you export you must choose the same aspect ratio (height/widht ratio and pixel aspect ratio) and you must have a clean without black bar picture.
If you export in hd/fhd/Uhd format where pixel are square if you have black bar mean you have setup original sequence in wrong way. If you export on dvd there is a problem of 16:9 squeeze pixel that cause to you a tiny black bar left right.
Like told from Prosper Kunyetu, you can correct in export, but only if you export in some format without square pixel. Where you have square pixel you must check your original sequence be cause there are some mistake.
if you start in wrong way and you want to correct it, is simple, select all clips of your edit in a sequence with "select all", copy, close sequence, create a new sequence like i told before, delete clip, paste all edit here. Now you have new sequence exactly of your editing.
mee too i suggest fixed color light and add gel to color light, if you not go on very expansive led panel, dimmable color panel are too much incontrollable to use seriously, by a fixed 5500, add 30$ of gels and you are happy.
bicolor led mean 600 = 300 led cold and 300 led warm, when you change color you change proportion between warm and cold, that mean when you change intensity you change color, and if you have a fixed color you can correct with a gel, a variable color cannot be corrected.
that question need long answer, i try to do a short answer :-D
my suggest is start with stories of other filmaker, not with yours... from that you told, you not have experience, not have friends that work in this environment.
if you not too much money, but also if you have, is better to start from lower, to learn more. Search in your city other filmaker, ask to collaborate with them, during helping your can learn a lot, good and bad way to do things, you collect experience, and ... later when you produce your stories you have more experience and you can ask to them to help you. Also if you have many friends if you not have skilled friends, all production will be slow and with newbie taste, if your friends are skilled people, or they know what they do help more and more than other.
movie are team working, the sums of skill and energy of people, without a bit of consciouness about what you are going to do, you risk to spent money, spent energy and emotion (money gone and come, energy is a bit difficult to collect) in wrong direction.
try to be on set of a short money to help, and see what happened, then you can find answer that you need.
i know people that without strong screenplay cannot do anything, i know people (like me) that from screenplay preview also all angle of shooting, other prefer to find on location, i know people that are often drived from actors (good if you are not skilled director, less good if you know what you want).
to have an answer you need to challenge yourself on realsituation and ask to you, i'm able to do that? you need to answer : i'm god to do it, only yes i can do it.
when you are sure, you can do you stories easely and cost of money are drived to you, not from stories...
check on youtube this
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+rodriguez+film+school
you can found a lots of suggest from a legend on shooting low budget, especially to choose right way to shoot and tell a story.
4k mean :
1) more space to reframing also to stabilize only or rotate picture to have correct horizont
2) better hight freq dectails that allow you to delivery crisp and smooth picture without moires or other artefacts
3) quality for future distribution in 4k
4) enable to have on interview and many other "news" situation ability to zoom and cut from pp to another with single shot
5) better quality to mask or tracking, and also if no one want to do it, you ever found something to adjust and this mean you have more room to work
6) 4k mean no aliasing or other problem during rotation of shot to add more motion or compensate error
7) you can extract frame at 9 mpixel to print or use for xx reason, i shoot most of my time in raw, that mean i have a photocamera that shot only 9mpixel photo, but 30 raw picture per seconds for 24 minutes continuosly, when you can found something of in photo environment?
8) print to film for theater is different very different from 4k to 2k master, too long to explain, but from a 4k you can deliver a very full 2k 4:4:4 sampled channel that you cannot do from most of 2k sensor (bayer matrix reason) (i talk about 4k 10-12 bit, not 8bit 4k)
9) denoising from 4k is simplier, and better, and keep more dectail
10) green screen and and other have more dectail and info to key correctly color
Cons :
1) use more space... ehm don't you remember how many space use dv-dvcam for their poor quality against a simple HD?
And more... if you a bit of money to buy or rent a camera to shoot in 4k you have money for hard drive to stock and manage it. I edit 4k prores of my bmp4k from my simple 2012 notebook hp with 4gb of ram 2 a 256 gb ssd for Os, a second internal disk and usb3.0 and esata external disk... or with my desktop assembled at end 2012
2) take more time to render? it's probably a time to update your edit machine, if you work correctly with DI (prores, cineform, dnxHr) you render is since double time of old HD, not need more, or you have bad configuration.
3) you hate 4k, be cause that mean better focus attention, better light, better makeup on people, better attention to background, better lens that show my lens are crap and more...
Ok it's a your problem, come back to minidv and then upsample to hd and you are happy [obviously this is a joke reason :-PPP]
4k need more attention and more quality in all part of chain, be cause show all defects, but also all quality. please see a real 4k shot in a good projection and you understand why 4k is better, in 4k tv that blast all contrast, color, high low freq dectail probably you see less difference, but is not 4k, is a bad tv with bad "enhancement" that degrade picture
grab it, if not let me know where i can do.
it' a very good price if are not present dust or mildew.