Website Update
It´s been a while since i update my website:I´ve been quite busy working on some of my freelance projects:I´ve done Color Grading for several features films for cinema release:Die Farbe des Chamaeleons by Jürgen KlaubetzEndphase by Hans HochstögerRazzennest and Glossary of broken dreams by Johannes GrenzfurthnerOrdinary Creatures by Thomas MarschallI´ve been doing Projection Design forSchlosslichtspiele Karlsruhe with Detlev Heusinger, Judith Selenko and Felix KnocheAn animated Stage Design Video for the Opera Hänsel & Gretel at...
read moreWorkshop for the Korean Film Archive, Seoul
I was comissioned to hold a digital restoration workshop for Diamant Film Restoration software for the Korean Film Archive, Seoul. It was a great chance to experience east asian culture and also see some different restoration practices. The Kofa recently moved into a new building, where the founded a film lab and digital facility which is pretty much state of the art as i would say. Its located a bit outside of Seoul in Paju, sourrounded by some pretty scenic Lakes. Some impressions: [Show as...
read moreback to university again
After working for several years and being a freelancer for around seven years i decided to get myself some further education. I´m almost completely self taught, that’s why I thought it would be challenging to be in another environment, besides working on projects. So I joined a postgraduate program called digital Art and Compositing at the Vienna Film Academy. A two-year program, where you need to apply and only 4 Students are selected. It´s been several months now and I really enjoy the small and collaborative environment and a free space...
read moreHigh quality historic film scans
High quality historic film scans: Over the last eight years I was working on a variety of historic film restoration projects. These clips are taken from various film leaders.Everything is historic film material, ranging from 1910 up to the 70ies, but mostly between 1920 to 1950. All the material was obtained directly from professional film scanners (mostly Arriscan) from 2k or 4k 10 bit dpx files. The material will be delivered either in h264, Prores 422, mostly in 2k in a few cases in HD. Prores 4444 is also available, but due to the...
read moreanalogue film in a digital age – an archival perspective
It was right at the „golden age“ of digital intermediate, when we started our digital film restoration cooperation between the Austrian Film Museum, The Austrian Film Archive and the Austrian Film Gallery. Digital intermediate (DI) is called the process where Films get shot on analogue film, then they are scanned and processed digitally (editing, visual fx if any and color graded). At that time the output was mainly done on analogue film as well as this was the standard means of distribution. Starting with “O brother where art...
read more3d camera tracking course material
I was asked to hold a course about 3d camera tracking at the SAE Institute Vienna: The practical course was focused on Pftrack by The Pixelfarm Now i´m offering some of the course material for free download: -a quickstart guide for pftrack, just the basics, that will get you on track quickly -a general overview on various topics concerning 3d tracking, more general, not software specific (unfortunately both are only available in german, sorry about that 🙁 ) click on the links below for downloading quickstart for pftrack general...
read moreleap of faith – the general specialists tale
One of the beauties of working with film is that already in it´s early stages it developed into a collaborative art form. Producing a film consists of a series of specialized tasks, where it makes sense to split the work into different departments, the classical ones being director, lighting, director of photography, camera assistants, production, editing, work done in the film lab etc. Furthermore we can see a lot of specializing, especially on the digital side of film making. We have modelers, animators, lighting and texture artists,...
read moreHDRI cg lighting
As part of my test with the Canon 5d camera i also tried to develop a workflow for Image based lighting, using HDR images from a mirrored chrome ball to obtain photorealistic 3d lighting that match the live conditions. Using that you can insert any 3d object with proper modeling and materials into the scene and they will fit in quite photorealisticly. Chrome balls are your friend: After some research people tend to use chromed balls from garden supplies shops quite a lot. I first got one that did not have a perfect surface, but luckily ma...
read moreMasters of VFX: Douglas Trumbull
Recently I was re-watching some Classics like Encounters of a third Kind and the Alien quadrilogy and I was amazed how well the VFX was holding up even to today’s standards, so I decided to do some research about who was responsible for those titles and about there whereabouts and what can be found on the web today about those masters of analogue VFX. So i´m gonna do a small series on some of these Masters of Visual Effects on my Blog. One of those pioneers was definitely Douglas Trumbull, who was involved in Films like 2001: A Space...
read moreMatchmoving
Matchmoving is a term term loosely used for recreating a virtual camera that reproduces the movements and characteristics of a real camera in order to be used in a 3d software package or compositing software. The goal is to combine the originally shot material with computer generated images in a flawless manner, so that it appears to be all shot within one take. There are several things that have to be considered in order to ensure to get satisfactory results: -camera data -measurements -lens distortion -tracking points -rolling...
read moreback to the roots
Short time ago I got a message from some Multimedia-Art Master Students from Salzburg. They were searching for a DIT/Data Wrangler for their Project “Back tot he Roots“, a Sci fi short shot with the Arri Alexa with some quite ambitious Vfx shots. Fur further Infos you can get the details from their website at www.the-roots.at/blog/?lang=en_us. Not having been on a set for a while and taking the chance of being somewhere else with new people, working on a project i jumped in and helped out for a couple of days. First of all working with the...
read moreFIAF Summerschool Bologna
Archive workshop at FIAF Summer School Bologna: From the 16th of may until the 16th of july i was taking part in the FIAF Film Restoration Summerschool in Bologna. The program is very well known and one of the few options for further education in digital film restoration and digital intermediate. it consists of six weeks distance learning, the film festival „Il Cinema Ritrovato“ for restored films and two weeks at „Immagine Roitrovata“ a film lab specialising in digital intermediate, and restoration, spending 8 hours a day on their...
read moreNewton: Sendung digitale Filmrestaurierung
TV report from the national Austrian Televosion in the show “Newton” about our digital film restoration project, with me being interviewed.
read moreIBC und color grading Workstation:
Unfortunately this post is only available in German Ich war mit einem Kollegen auf der IBC, der größten europäischen Messe für Video / Film / Postproduktion. Der Grund für unseren Besuch war ein für uns geeignetes und leistbares Color Grading System zu finden. Zur Auswahl standen für uns: – Autodesk Smoke und Lustre – Avid DS – DaVinci Resolve – Assimilate Scratch – Apple Color Wichtige Kriterien waren für uns Echtzeit 2k Playback, 10 bit support, 3d Lut support und die Möglichkeit ein Panel benutzen zu...
read moreProject Photofly – now Autodesk 123D Catch
It´s been buzzing around the net quite some time and finally i was curious and gave Photofly from Autodesk a shot. It´s still in development, but version 2.1 can be tested for free. It basically uses a series of images taken by a still camera from various angles of an object and calculates a 3d Model with mapping. It seems like they still try to get a final product out of the technology, because at the moment the program only consists of an uploading/downloading mechanism and a viewer, where you can check the result with very little...
read moreLes Equilibristes Godayou
A while ago we finished the digital restoration project „Les Equilibristes Godayou“. The project was done by Raoul Schmidt, Matteo Lepore and myself for the Austrian filmmuseum ( www.filmmuseum.at ). It has been made from 1911, a french Pathé production, showing two members of a japanese circus doing their performances. Remarkably it´s a stencil colored film, where black and white material has been colored with special Pathé colors. The material was i relativly bad condition: water damage, scratches, dust were quite visible, singular...
read moreVirtual set recreation
For the one of the latest projects I had to recreate a virtual camera move, where the camera moves towards a real cardboard box and when it´s opened i had to recreate a room where a person (shot against greenscreen ) is preparing to paint the walls. The only things i hat where some photo references of the room, the greenscreen with the person and the shot with the camera moving towards the box, when it´s opened. The camera had to be 3d tracked, the most difficult task was to recreate the room itself as well as the proper lighting: This is a...
read moreVienna Moods, color graded version
As described in my other blogpost, i did some testing with the Canon Eos Mark II. This short clip is the result of this shooting, edited and color graded. As mentioned i did not use any tripod or stabilizers. The goal of this experiment, besides doing some testing to convey a certain mood that can be captured just by walking through the city of Vienna. Here´s an example about using the exposure latitude, that can be captured by the camera, brought back color grading: I was quite surprised how much detail was still in the image: rollover...
read moreShooting Canon DSLR for Visual Fx:
As canon DSLR got overall popular the last couple of years, i took the time to take the Canon 5d for a spin for two days, in order to analyze it´s possibility for creating visual fx with this setup for further projects. I´m not a professional camera man myself, but i have some background in still photography from university and from courses i took, so i mainly focus on the performance of the camera for usage in visual fx and color grading. Camera handling: First of all, it´s a still camera and although it offers a lot of possibility for...
read moreShooting for Color Grading with Canon Dslr
There are several things, that come into play when shooting with Canon Dslrs concerning Color Grading: dynamic range: Dynamic range can considered to be the ratio between the darkest and brightest Values that can be reproduced by the camera. The human eye can be considered one of the most fleble means for reproducing a great range of dynamic range, due to it´s flexibility. Traditional film has long be thought of the best medium to reproduce great dynamic range, but electronic cameras have caught up quite a lot in this aspect. I would...
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