From any Canon video dSLR or digicam h.264 format to AVID’s Media Composer 4 (MC4), using the Avid DNxHD intermediate format: step by step tutorial (PC & Mac). For 1080/30p timeline support on MC4 you will additional need the Symphony Nitris DX hardware though.

Having nothing more to do tonight I browsed the archives of the HV20.com forum to search for good HV footage (and I already check out properly tagged videos on Youtube and Vimeo daily). Found some interesting stuff. Two full-length HV movies for one. “Hollow” is a drama, and “Envelop” is a horror movie (login to the site to be able to view the screen-caps). Both movies are in post-production right now.

Secondly, I found this beautiful music video shot with an HV20 (w/ 35mm adapter). I believe VH1 and MTVU was going to show it, not sure if it actually reached the TV sets. It did reach their web sites though. The song is currently offered for free for promotional reasons. Get it here.

And one more music video, with the same director and band. I believe this was also shot with his HV20, but I will have to confirm with the director. UPDATE: Confirmed, it’s also with the HV20 and a Letus Mini adapter. Here’s a picture of the director’s rig, and a yet another music video by the same director and band, with the HV20.

It’s been over 2.5 years since the release of the HV20. During that time it became the most game-changing camcorder to ever hit the market: it was the first consumer camera with 24p support, and with its improved lens/sensor, it inspired thousands of amateur filmmakers who were previously limited by the hardware to do what they always wanted to do. Some amazing videos were shot with the HV series, short films, and about 400 official music videos too — an amazing feat for any camera, let alone a consumer one.

However, in the quickly-moving technology of today, the HV series is now fading away: it’s bowing to AVCHD cams, and to the Canon 5D and 7D dSLRs. Once upon a time there were as many as 30-40 HV videos uploaded on Vimeo daily, now we are lucky if we get 5-6. Obviously, as with everything, its time is passing. It’s fully functional of course for those who want to still use it, and it still outperforms some non-Canon AVCHD camcorders! But most artists from the “old gang” on Vimeo have moved on, and I have done so too with my recent purchase of the 5D Mark II.

In light of this, and by trying to close this chapter, I decided to put together a best-of. These are my top-5 favorite HV videos for each category:

Short Movies
1. A Thousand Words *
2. White Red Panic
3. Manifest Destiny *
4. The Ring *
5. Semblance

Runner up: The Unfortunate

Music Videos
1. Malbec – Story Of A Broken Heart
2. Twinn – Don’t Cry *
3. Arman Bohn – Combat
4. Pitchblend – Celsius *
5. Malbec – The Answering Machine

Runner up: Motiva – Repülj Madár *

General Art
1. Rainy Day
2. Birth.Life.Death. * (NSFW)
3. Ape *
4. Mirror, Mirror
5. Seeing Red
6. Reflections of Home
7. Luna 2 *
8. Unspoken
9. GAY = SIN
10. Wii Boxing *

Special mention: The Condition:Human sci-fi web series.

* The asterisk denotes the usage of a 35mm adapter.

More of carefully selected best-of-the-best HV videos can be found on the HV group.

Red Giant Software released yesterday a Vegas version of their brand new product, Magic Bullet Mojo. Mojo is a simpler version of Magic Bullet that only has one goal: to make your footage look like the Hollywood movies of the last few years: teal-looking, but by preserving the skin color (which can be a tricky thing to achieve without this plugin). I tried the demo, and it indeed does what it promises. The algorithm they use to auto-figure-out where the human face is in the frame, and preserve that color, works great. You can use the plugin’s UI to bleach or warm your video, punch it, change the color tint from green to teal to blue, select the way the algorithm finds the face in the frame, and finally, how much you want these settings blended with the original, ungraded look.

Talent is Dave Tsui, from the Bay Area band HIJK

The only problem I encountered is that the “mojo” slider punches up contrast and/or gamma (even with “bleach”/”punch” all the way down). I would prefer to contrast/gamma my video separately if required, with the use of another plugin, and only use Mojo for its teal/skin abilities. Finally, on Vegas, we are used to double-click the UI’s slider buttons to get them to jump back to their default values, but this doesn’t happen with the Mojo UI.

Update: One more example. Except the unwanted dark gamma change that I can’t get rid of with Mojo, the rest of the tint is as it’s supposed to be. I know that to some of you it looks weird and that the original picture looks more natural, but the point of Hollywood movies — that Mojo emulates — is to not be natural.

Disclaimer: The following is meant as an analysis of the situation based on my experience as a tech journalist for some 8 years, and on my own personal opinion. It’s not meant to disrespect RED, or its founders. In fact, as a true tech geek, I am a fan of the whole RED project!

UPDATE 2: And now I am BANNED from the REDUser forum, for discussing my points VERY CALMLY with others. I was name called, but I never name called back. I simply explained my points, civilized, as you can read there.

UPDATE 3: Re-instated at the forum. Thanks everyone who spoke up about it.

RED just published an update on their vaporware line. You can read about it here & here.

Basically, these are hyperbole vaporware products, made by hype machines rather than engineers. Oh, I don’t dispute the fact that maybe 1-2 of these products announced last year and today will see the market at some point, but I do dispute the fact that they will be able to create all that stuff they are promising, and at the prices that they are promising. Already, now it’s becoming obvious that getting a usable Scarlet model is a $10k affair, and not a $3.5k as they had you to believe last year.

All this made me remember of my mother who used to tell me about an old man in her mountain village (I believe he’s long dead now) who had this moto: “promising is gaining, giving is losing”.

Basically, RED is a dream. Not your dream. But Jim Jannard’s dream. The guy’s a billionaire, and so he put together the RED company on the side. It’s obviously his “hobby” (it certainly feels that way). If the company goes nowhere eventually, oh well, at least he had fun doing it. But I keep thinking that all the millions he had poured into this, he could have either:
1. Simply make small modifications on the original RED while continuing R&D on new technologies without promising the most crazy things to his customers. Instead, follow a more traditional path regarding R&D and production.
2. If he just wanted to pour money down a hole, he should have given the money to people who need it instead, e.g. via Unicef.

Not all is bad from the whole story though. RED *has* contributed in the move from film to digital in Hollywood. I give them credit for that, and I thank them for that. But unfortunately, 99% of the time, it’s never that “first” company with the vision that ends up taking over that market. Instead, it’s the second or the third company in that sector who will learn from RED’s mistakes and dominate.

What I am saying here is that RED is going to die. There’s no way Jannard and his zillions can sustain this crazy business model they have. Just like the Xerox Alto was the first graphical personal computer of its kind but never went anywhere, RED will be seen the same way in 10-20 years from now. We would see RED with this romantic eye, but there won’t be any RED left at that point.

Who’s going to steal their thunder? In my opinion, it’s Canon. To create such complex technology, and especially at competitive prices, it requires an already established company with vast experience of both the technology and the market. Canon has the ability to simply evolutionize (rather than revolutionize) their existing technologies and catch up with RED — and even become better than them. Evidently from their recent VdSRLs and the rumored large-sensor prosumer cameras coming next Spring, I personally see Canon taking over Hollywood with as of yet un-announced offerings sooner than later.

But RED? It is Jim’s dream, and we were all in it. But I just woke up. I just hope Jim does too. Jim, save your money. That’s all I can say to you. Because I am a fan!

Update 1: A lot of people have a problem with the word “hobby”. Let me be clear about this. I believe that Jim does have a genuine interest about what he’s doing! He’s not an amateur. When someone has a serious hobby doesn’t mean that it’s just something he/she does on weekends.

But what it also means, in my book, is that he/she could be starting the business based on the interest about the technology in itself, and from pure curiosity, and for the cool factor, and not to create an actual profitable business. To me, a lot of things RED feel like “if it becomes profitable, even better — if not, well, we had fun researching and playing engineers”. While this is all fine if you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t strike me very nice if I was to be a customer.

I simply — for the life of me — can not take seriously RED when they spread themselves too thin over so many products. I just don’t see these as actual final products, I see them as beta stuff that someone put together in an R&D lab. Proof that the RED One had so many firmware upgrades so far. A “product” with the traditional sense, in that price, should have been bullet proof from Day 1. And I just don’t see this happening with the new line of cameras — if they ever come out.

In other words: In my own opinion, RED doesn’t know how to release PRODUCTS. There’s a difference between breaking new technological ground, and actually putting that new technology in an actual product. A product that is meant to be a product, and not a lab unit.

Two months ago I wrote an article explaining how to achieve the “film look”. In the article I mentioned shallow depth of field as the last of the requirements. I know a lot of people are buying these 35mm adapters (and stupidly I did so too in the beginning) trying to fool their way through into filmmaking. This is no different than owning just a cheap VW beetle car, and painting it like the ultimate racing car. Who are you trying to fool here?

There are other aspects that should take priority when you are shooting a movie, and it seems that this team from Spain have their heads screwed on the right way. Here’s their trailer for a short movie they shot with a stock Canon HV30 camera, without any 35mm adapters. It looks fabulous. How they did it? Read the link above.

There is undoubtedly a lot of pain around trying to edit h.264: there’s a lot of slowness, and often crashiness across the board of video editors. The way most people are going around the problem is either by using proxy files, or Cineform or other respectable intermediate formats (e.g. ProRES, Avid DNxHD).

Apple thinks that it can outsmart us all.

They recently released their new spec for an iFrame based h.264 format that’s locked to 540p. The reason for doing that was just so iMovie can deal with these impossible-to-edit h.264 formats without re-encoding into AIC (another bullshit format they invented back in the day). So far, two Sanyo cameras support the iFrame format.

The problem with the i-Frame idea is that it’s locked to 540p. There you are, buying a $400 1080p digirecorder, and Apple suggests you record in 540p, which is 1/4th of the camera’s native 1080p resolution! In other words, you just threw away in the garbage $300 just so Apple can say that its iMovie is fast to edit. Well, here’s a finger to you Apple.

What Apple should have done was simply to implement a proxy system. Not like their demanding proxy ProRES system like they have on FCP, but a simpler one. One that employs mpeg2 at either 640×360 or 854×480 at ~2 mbps. Mpeg2 is a piece of cake to decode, especially at 2 mbps low-res, they would be very small files considering the size of the originals, and as importantly, it’s really fast to encode. Encoding a 1080p h.264 stream to VGA mpeg2 will be ready in a flash on a modern machine!

And of course, the proxy system should be transparent to the iMovie user. Although, the user should have the preference available to decide if he/she wants the proxies in the first place, and switch between the two modes easily (in case he/she wants to color grade at the end of the editing process). And by default, the exporting will always be done using the high res native versions of the files.

In my opinion, this would be a very acceptable solution. Very little “waiting” for the user while encoding the proxies, very easy editing (much easier than the current iFrame format), flexibility, and exporting using the native files. Instead, what we get is one more of these Apple “innovations” that never actually solve the problem, but create new ones. While Apple has realized miracles in their iPod and iPhone divisions, the iMovie part of things always seemed like a disaster to me. It’s like they are putting their lower grade engineers to work on these projects.

Another way to battle the problem is to take their head out of their ass and implement full GPU acceleration (via Purevideo2 and similar technologies) for h.264 decoding. If a team of 3 freelance programmers are able to create CoreAVC, the fastest h.264 decoder in the world (5% CPU utilization on a 1080/30p video), then Apple (and Sony, and Adobe) should be able to do that too. Crippling people’s HD experience is never an option though.

Death to the iFrame.

Traditionally, shooting a movie or a music video that had to exhibit the magical “Hollywood look” meant that the filmmakers had to rent expensive, professional cameras. Buying such a camera is still today prohibiting because of the high price tag.

Interestingly, the prosumer market of $2,000-$10,000 camcorders never fulfilled the particular job adequately since they have very small sensors and not interchangeable lenses. When adding third party accessories to make them behave more like their professional siblings (e.g. 35mm adapters, lenses), the prices end up getting higher, and there’s usually a quality hit too.

Suddenly, when no one was really expecting the development, dSLRs started carrying video capabilities, with the Canon 5D and Panasonic GH1 becoming the first “serious” such cameras. For a package that costs less than $3000 we could now enjoy full manual control, shallow depth of fied, and a high-bitrate codec at full 1080p.

Shooting something more than basic video with these cameras results in very beautiful footage that easily attracts the attention of indie filmmakers and enthusiasts with their relatively low prices. For example, the enthusiasts who fell in love with the very popular Canon HV20/30/40 series (the first consumer HD cameras to shoot in 24p), and the indie pros who were battling with inadequate prosumer camcorders for years, now they have new toys that could produce pleasing images at a low cost.

This undoubtedly puts a lot of market pressure to both high-end consumer camcorders and most prosumer models. Personally, I already know a lot of filmmakers, and filmmaker-wannabes, who are getting ready to sell their current camcorder so they can get a Canon 7D, for example. This is something that will have to naturally push the engineering and camcorder product teams at Canon, Sony and Panasonic to offer decent products in the future, decent-enough to compete with the new wave of VdSLRs: bigger sensors, lenses, maybe even 4:4:4 RAW codecs.

Of course, traditionally-built camcorders will continue to sell for corporate and wedding usage, but it’s clear right now that when it comes to filmmakers and artists, they require something more advanced than yet another 1/3″ camcorder.

I do expect that the next big batch of new models by Canon will feature the cameras that filmmakers always wanted, and we probably have to thank — in part — the video dSLR market for it.

Hurrah for competition!

Sony released recently their Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD, one of the most affordable HD video editor out there, selling for a mere $40. The application is based on the Vegas Platinum/Pro engine and has most of the Vegas Platinum 9 features, except the following:

- No 24p exporting support
- No Sony AVC export tweaking (a wealth of pre-cooked templates available, WMV export still tweakable)
- No 5.1 audio support (down-mixes to stereo)
- No primary Color Corrector plugin (Curves, and all other Vegas plugins still available)

The Sony Vegas Platinum version has all the features above, making it the most powerful consumer video editor in the market, is selling at $80. However, for those who don’t need all these features, or don’t have the money for it, the Movie Studio HD is a perfect video editor to start with.

Adobe also announced recently their Adobe Premiere Elements 8 video editing software for Window. This major release offers a new Organizer to manage all media in one convenient location.

In addition, SmartFix automatically fixes shaky footage, color and lighting problems; Smart Trim identifies and helps users get rid of the least interesting, lowest quality footage; and SmartMix seamlessly balances audio elements to give videos good sound throughout. Also, with new motion-tracking capabilities, users can add graphics, text and effects that automatically follow a subject within a scene.

Previous versions were also tweakable to support 24p, so it’s possible that the same hack might still be compatible in the new version. Premiere Elements 8 will cost $100 when it releases in November.

One of the most useful PC video tools available today is Cineform’s NeoSCENE utility. It acts both as a converter to an easier-to-edit-than-h.264 format, and it can remove pulldown off of PF24 (24p-wannabe) streams. Here’s the break down, helping you decide if you must invest on the tool or not. VideoGuys have a sale on the item, saving you $30 (this is not an endorsed link btw, just a heads up).

Click for a larger version.

Part of color grading is re-lighting a scene. Unfortunately, Sony Vegas doesn’t have a 3D lighting system like After Effects has, but it’s still possible to hack together some basic re-lighting using Bump Map plugin’s “spotlight” template.

For some weird reason, stacking 3 Bump Map plugins in their own tracks (to emulate a 3-point lighting) is very sensitive to 8-bit processing, and they end up canceling each other out. However, it works lovely, and as it should, when using 32bit processing in Linear mode (mode is available only on Vegas Pro).

Here’s an example of how important grading, lighting, and 32bit processing is.

Original file:

Picture by Melissa Ann Barrett, licensed under the Creative Commons “Attribution/Share-Alike” 2.0 license.

The best I could do with Vegas Platinum’s 8-bit processing while trying to re-light the scene. Project file here (load the .vf file, using the picture here).

Grading and re-lighting with Vegas Pro’s 32-bit linear processing. The result is much more pleasing. Project file here (load the .veg file, using the picture here).

I hope that Vegas will eventually introduce proper lighting functionality, so this way the need for 32bit is minimized. Nevertheless, this article should show you the need for re-lighting while color-grading. Turn on/off the bump map plugins on the project file linked above to see how much re-lighting helps.

Quite a few Sony Vegas users read this blog, but I might have to move to CS4 or FCS soon. While Vegas is possibly the best *editor* in terms of usability, it doesn’t satisfy me regarding color grading — which is the main thing I do.

Even when using the 32bit mode to grade, I get blotches and ugly artifacts. Using a mask without having too much halo is impossible too. Using motion tracking is not supported. Basic color plugins like a vector-based rainbw-color plugin (like the super-buggy third party Aav6cc) are missing. And if that’s not enough, Red Giant Software has stopped maintaining Magic Bullet for Vegas, does not develop any new products for Vegas, and BorisFX also left the Vegas camp too a few months ago. In other words, Vegas becomes much-unsupported by third party plugins, and itself doesn’t have all the features (or the usability in the current tools) a colorist needs. In my view, Vegas is irrelevant right now, even if it has thousands of users and it gets a lot of new ones every day (who buy it because it’s the best *frame editor* for the price). The problem is with actual support (like on things I wrote here), advanced features, and the nonexistent third party plugin support.

Check this amazing grading done in AE by Charles-Etienne Pascal, where he didn’t use any third party plugins at all (special thanks to Charles-Etienne for letting me use the grabs). The outcome is milky. Doing a similar 32bit grading on Vegas resulted in visible artifacts (when viewed in 1:1). For some reason, Vegas’ own color plugins don’t take a lot of pushing before they show artifacts.

For those interested on how it was done, it involved 3 video tracks, one with a mask around the eyes to lower the gamma in them and make them visible, a track with a mask around the head to change the face color using Color Corrector, change the lighting on the face using bump map’s spotlight option, and some unsharpen mask, and a third track that changes the gamma/colors on the background to make it darker.

The easiest way to come somewhat close to that look without having to use all these tracks and masking, is by using the “punchy” Magic Bullet Looks template modified, and unsharpen mask.

Nevertheless, Adobe’s CS4 might be in my near future.

Canon chose a pretty bad format for their consumer digicam and video dSLR products: h.264 in the MOV container, without B-Frames. This creates a kind of format that is very difficult to edit in real time. As I type this, even the fastest desktop PC on Earth can’t decode in real time that footage under Sony Vegas, or even Premiere. As of now, here are your editing options with such footage:

1. Edit as is
It is possible to edit these files as is, by dropping them in the timeline, but you should expect anything between 0.3 and 5 fps. Which means that it’s unbearably slow to do educated guesses on how to cut your project. Additionally, Vegas has very poor support for Quicktime, so after you add a few of these files in the timeline, you should expect crashes.

2. Proxy Files
Proxy files allow you to use small-sized, low-quality copies of the original files that edit faster — and just before you export, you switch to the original files, to export at full quality. Here are tutorials for Vegas Platinum, Pro, and Premiere. The problem with this method is that, at least with Vegas, there’s still a big risk of crashing during exporting (because it would use the original MOV files). Also, exporting is very slow, because the decoding is slow (before it even starts encoding).

3. Cineform
This is the best solution for the problem. You buy Cineform NeoSCENE (or NeoHD), and you drop the files in its utility to transcode them. Cineform is pretty fast decoding h.264, and transcoding the 4:2:0 files to a 4:2:2 format, that’s visually lossless, and easy to edit. The only downsides are that the created filesizes will be double over the original and the gamma will slightly change, but these are a small price to pay for having a stable, and fast format to edit with.

Q&A

Q. Why not use Divide.Frame’s accelerated decoder?
A. Because it’s unstable, and it doesn’t work with all versions of Vegas or Premiere.

Q. What format should I use for proxies?
A. I would suggest you use 640×360 mpeg2 at 1.5 mbps. It’s the easiest format to edit, by far. The Premiere tutorial linked above can be modified to create such proxies rather than its suggested h.264 proxies.

Q. Why not use mpeg2, or XDCam or other high bitrate format instead of Cineform?
A. Because they are not lossless.

Q. Why not use another lossless codec then, like the freeware Huffyuv, Lagarith, Avid DNxHD?
A. Because they are almost as slow to edit as the original files.

Q. How about Matrox’s mpeg2 I-Frame 100 mbps codec?
A. This is a good codec and it works well with Premiere. But it doesn’t work as well with Vegas. More here.

Q. Which format would have been best to be used by Canon?
A. AVCHD for their consumer digicams, and AVC-Intra for their video dSLRs.

Q. How are the Mac users dealing with the problem?
A. The footage has to be transcoded too, to the intermediate ProRES/AIC codecs before it is able to be edited. There is also Cineform NeoSCENE for the Mac too.

I watched the “Fast & Furious” movie tonight, and it was beautifully graded for the most part (its grading was similar to Transformers 2 with saturated red/yellows and teal everything else). However, there was one scene I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t really gave it much thought while watching it, but when I watched the gag reel and they had the same scene, ungraded, then it really popped up in my mind how much natural and nice the ungraded shot was compared to the final one. What do you think?

And this is how I would grade it:

Update: Interesting. The colorist of this movie is the one who did Terminator Salvation among others.

Many users buy an HD 24p camera these days trying to reproduce the “film look” (aka the “movie look”). They think that if they shoot some random stuff in 24p, and do some color grading, and maybe add a bit of grain, their video will look like a movie.

Fat chance. Wake up and smell the coffee.

There are a number of factors that make a video look like a movie. In my experience and personal opinion, here they are, in order:

1. Framing

If your shots are just some random shots of random stuff, you will never achieve the film look. You need to think hard as to how to frame your subject, what’s in its background, what’s in the surroundings, the rule of thirds. Also you need to expose properly, use the right shutter or aperture values for each scene etc. If you dissect video to its primordial state, it’s just a number of pictures in succession. Therefore, you must operate like a photographer would.

2. Audio

IF your video has speech, then you must capture it right. Capture little ambient noise, clear voices, and use a good music score to complement the rest of the scenes. If your video does not feature people talking, then the music used must fit each scene. You might even have to sync each scene with the track’s beats.

3. Cutting

Do quick cuts when you edit your movie. Don’t waste your time in shots that are useless and don’t progress the story. For example, just an hour ago I watched an HV20 short film where the editor spent 20 whole seconds showing the actor getting out of a car (different shots with the actor moving one hand, then one foot, opening the door, getting one foot out etc). Get to the point, don’t elaborate on useless shots. If you don’t have enough shots to make a meaningful short film then it’s your fault for not storyboarding before you shoot.

4. Lighting

Without good lighting, you are screwed. Audio and lighting are so underrated among videographers. Your light composition must be part of the emotions you want to convey to your viewers. It’s an extra character. Invest in two 500 Watt lights ($100), and a reflector ($100). And if you shoot outdoors, make sure you have the sun on your back! The best times to shoot outdoors and use the available light is either in sunrise or before sundown (”golden light”).

5. Camera Motion

Modern movies have constant movement in most of their scenes. Either with a dolly or a steadycam. Few shots are completely stationary shot from a tripod (usually TV series do that rather than Hollywood movies). The cheapest solutions here are a Glidetrack, or other cheap steadycam solutions. Overall, consider that you will have to pay at least $300 for them. For longer dolly shots, consider this DIY dolly tutorial.

6. 24p

It helps shooting in that frame rate, but in my opinion you can get away with 30p too if you must. As long as you shoot in a 1/60th shutter speed, your motion can get pretty close to movies’ 1/48th. And even if it might not look exactly right, the rest of the video’s quality or story can make up for the lack of real 24p. Basically, what I am saying here is not that 24p is not important, but that it is just 6th in my list. Not 1st.

7. Grading

Colors set the mood of the movie, so grading is important. Just don’t overdo it with contrast and saturation. Film is traditionally low saturation and low contrast, so lay off the god damn saturation/contrast controls! So, modify your camera’s settings to shoot as “flat” an image as possible, so you can easily color grade it in post. I have set all my cameras’ color controls in the lower values possible (contrast/saturation/sharpness/skin_tone), and that goes for my still cameras too.

8. Shallow DoF

Most people think that if they get an adapter/camera with shallow DoF, they would achieve the film look easily. WRONG. It helps, but shallow DoF is not really a necessity. There are many classic films that had deep focus, like “Citizen Cane” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, and most recently, “Crank 2: High Voltage”. The quality of your photography, and the immersion of the viewer to your film are more important than blurry backgrounds. 35mm adapters are overrated, and most of such videos I have watched were over-the-top blurry. Besides, if shooting outdoors, you can always get a bit of blur by backing out and zooming in with your camcorder towards your subject, at around 75% of its log zooming scale. You will get just enough background blur to give the illusion to the viewer that this was not shot on video, and at the same time you direct the viewer’s attention to the actual subject. In other words, you don’t always need shallow DoF, and when you really do, you can get just enough of it with a consumer HD camcorder too if you know how to shoot & frame properly. Most of my HV20 videos have enough background blur for example, more than I would care for. Heck, I achieved as much shallow DoF as I needed even with my point and shoot HD digicam.

And of course, there’s the story itself, which is the most important element in a short movie. The reason I didn’t include it in the list above though is because not all videographers shoot short movies. Some just shoot abstract art, or nature and travel pieces, so it’s not always a part of the film *look* quest.

Finally, here are some nice tutorials about some of the points above.