Posts Tagged ‘photoshop’

Lessons on Lighting for HDR Photography

Posted: 6th January 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Digital Production, Photography
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On the discoveries of how to light for HDR photography, and how the standard choices for film and theater create a lot of work for the post-production workflow.

As Syndicate moves towards its conclusion next week, I hope you’re enjoying not only the story but the soft beauty of the photography we present here. Photography is kind of our thing, our schtick if you will, but you’d be surprised how much we’re still discovering about how to do it well. Most of our team comes from theater and film backgrounds, where the rules and results of stage picture, presentation, and lighting are completely different. Theater light focuses on hitting the actors where they are and toning down everything else, counting on the audience’s eyes to adjust according to the changing overall light levels; film light focuses on contrast and multiple sources, each of varying brightness to make the actors “pop” on camera.

When lighting for HDR, the biggest factors are not how bright or dark the scene is overall (gamma), but how wide of a range there is between the brightest part (white point) and darkest part (black point), how many different measurements of brightness are between them (levels), how these levels are distributed (luminosity), and how smoothly or dramatically the levels transition between one another (contrast). Earlier I lamented shooting in and near direct sunlight for exactly this reason, but for shoots like Syndicate we’re in the opposite situation and it’s simply stunning.
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Adobe Workflow – 2011 Edition

Posted: 11th November 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Digital Production
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On the workflow and post-production processes that turn a few hundred photos into a photographic novel page.

A lot of people ask me, especially after seeing a Night Zero shoot firsthand, about how I manage to keep all the work organized and turn it into pages. On our bigger days, we’ll have two or even three cameras running simultaneously and shoot out of order all day long. After an eight-hour workday, we’ll walk away with over 1,600 photographs that will need to become a dozen or so pages of graphic novel. I’m frequently asked, especially by people interested in photography and digital design, just how the workflow is handled. Today, I’ll explain.

Warning: this is a very technical post about photography and Adobe Photoshop. I do my best to keep my explanations accessible and my lingo neutral, but the content itself may not appeal to all readers.

Immediately after a photoshoot wraps, the memory cards are dumped to a portable hard drive with card slots: with the touch of a button, the entire card is backed up to the disk. Eli takes the hard drive with him to copy to his computer, while I take the memory cards and copy them to my computer. For every year of Night Zero I’ve set up a 1TB RAID-1 array: two identical hard drives always in sync, so that if one hard drive explodes, all the data is still intact. At the end of the day, the photos exist in five separate locations: the memory cards, the portable drive, Eli’s computer, and twice on my computer. Redundancy is key, and thankfully we’ve never lost photos to technical malfunction.

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Fight, Baby, Fight

Posted: 3rd September 2010 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Devon", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, On Location
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On piecing together the zombie fight for the “Devon” vignette

This second act of the “Devon” vignette, wherein our hero dost make most violent an altercation with a member of the infected team, was produced in the “quick and dirty” style of a Night Zero production, with a skeleton crew and a short day to produce a short segment. The quality and length of the finished product speaks volumes to how far Night Zero has come since its early days, when it would have taken a full day’s work and thrice the crew to produce something of still lesser quality. Here are a few disconnected thoughts on the piece: Read the rest of this entry »

Laying It Out There

Posted: 9th July 2010 by Jen Kaiser
Categories: Concepts & Development, Guest Posts
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Jen Kaiser on how she met and joined the Night Zero team as post-production designer

I love comics and was eager to attend this year’s Emerald City Comicon to meet the legendary Stan Lee. Armed with a bag of comic books, and dressed as American McGee’s Alice, I ran from booth to booth getting books signed and commissions drawn by my favorite artists. The booth for Night Zero stood out among the many vendors present at the show, and I stopped by for a closer look.

Night Zero’s friendly cast and crew often attend local events (like the recent Red, White and Dead Zombie Walk in Seattle) and part of their booth is outfitted to take HDR photos with a backdrop right out of the comic (gun props and all).
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Process Stories

Posted: 6th November 2009 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Digital Production, Photography
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On using Photoshop to create a photographic novel, the evolution of our post-production methods, and the power of non-destructive workflows

The two-year development that has created Night Zero was a process of experimentation, not only in the world of cameras and actors but equally so in the world of digital imagery and photo manipulation. The production side gets more credit all around, because its growth and refinement is more immediately recognizable– just compare the lighting, framing, or backgrounds of the pilot or episode one with what we’ve done in episode three or the Sisters vignette. Throughout the process, post-production has always pushed along in the background, diligently taking its work in and turning the graphic novel out without much fanfare.

In truth, post-production is the most variable part of the entire photocomic process, with a day’s work ranging from an hour or two of rendering and page layouts to a ten- or twelve-hour marathon session of layering, color adjustments, masking, and compositing, all to get the looks just right. Many of the advancements we’ve made in the on-set production over the last two years have been partially driven by what happens in post-production, as we learn what (seemingly) minor changes on-camera can make huge differences in the time required and quality returned in post.
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The Shot Card

Posted: 24th July 2009 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Digital Production, On Location, Photography
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On the invention of the “shot card” production system, which revolutionized the efficiency and quality of Night Zero’s work

The broad range of film, theater, and production experience that the Night Zero team brings to the table is invaluable to the photocomic’s success, but nothing else like Night Zero exists and therefore we’re still constantly challenged with developing the procedures and techniques to best produce a quality product.

The center of a Night Zero photo shoot is the production schedule, carefully and brilliantly executed by Kelly Ota. Like most films, we do not shoot based on chronology, but based on lights. The schedule is broken down into “SEQUENCES”, which are the various unique lighting setups that encompass the day’s work. The number of sequences depends on the complexity and length of the scene– for a full-day shoot like Sisters, we tend to have between ten and fifteen setups (with the occasional sub-setup for minor changes). Within each sequence is a “SHOT LIST”, which covers all of the shots using that light setup, sorted by which actors appear in them. In this manner we progress through the day, moving the lights as few times as possible and getting the best use of everybody’s time.
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