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Claudio Miranda


Adam Frisch FSF

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huge post on this job

I remember reading that the movie relies heavily on virtual sets (i.e. shot on greenscreen for like 80% of the time). Is that the case? On the other hand You were talking about shooting in low-light conditions, which, I suppose, is not the way to shoot for greenscreen. Could You clear this up please? What does "huge post" refer to?

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I remember reading that the movie relies heavily on virtual sets (i.e. shot on greenscreen for like 80% of the time). Is that the case? On the other hand You were talking about shooting in low-light conditions, which, I suppose, is not the way to shoot for greenscreen. Could You clear this up please? What does "huge post" refer to?

Blue screens have only made up about 5% of the movie. Set extentions another 15%. Fall off on lenses is more apparent on the 35mm lenses and not the 2/3 chip. I do not worry as much about aperature for the Viper on Digi Primes. That is not the big deal. The big deal is something that i can not discuss currently.

 

On how many people. Without counting the crew list or call sheets approx 100 on light and 200 on heavy days on set only. Does not include post, editing and accountants. Is this important?

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Blue screens have only made up about 5% of the movie. Set extentions another 15%.

Many thanks, i'm glad to hear that. I'd also like to ask about how much input do you have (as far as visuals are concerned) when working with someone with a distinct visual style like David Fincher? When discussing the script, is he open to dp's ideas? For instance, do you have a lot to say in regards to camera placement or movement? Hope the question isn't stupid, Fincher is known to be a very technical director, just wanted to know if you're comfortable with that.

Also, how long was the prep, considering Fincher was/is working on Zodiac simultainously?

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I thought I'd post this article/interview from SHOOT magazine with David Fincher in this thread since it addresses some of the questions addressed here to his DP Claudio Miranda about the workflow on the film, Benjamin Button.

 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Claudio for taking the time out of his very busy schedule to answer our questions about the film.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

SHOOT Magazine - 12/15/06

 

 

SHOOT

LOS ANGELES, December 15, 2006

by Carolyn Giardina

 

When director/DP David Fincher was awarded the Directors Guild of America Award as best commercial director of 2003, two of his entered spots?Nike's "Gamebreakers" and Xelibri phones' "Beauty For Sale"?were created through an inventive workflow that he pioneered using Thomson's Grass Valley Viper Filmstream digital cinematography camera and S.two portable hard drives for recording. This early experimentation laid the groundwork for still developing tapeless workflows for commercials as well as features.

While much has advanced since "Gamebreakers" and "Beauty For Sale" were produced, the helmer?who is represented for commercials via bicoastal Anonymous Content?is quick to emphasize that this period of rapid digital change is still in its nascent stages. "We are not even crawling yet in terms of digital imagery," he related. "It's not even crawling, maybe it is a baby that's rolling over."

 

At press time, the director was wrapping up Zodiac, which is scheduled for a March '07 release through distributors Paramount and Warner Bros.; the feature was lensed last summer in Los Angeles and San Francisco and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Edwards. And, the busy helmer recently started production on his next feature, titled The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt.

 

For Zodiac, Fincher sought to create a unique look to tell the story, which follows investigators and reporters on a search for the Zodiac serial killer in San Francisco. The workflow, "born from doing commercials," again centered on the Viper Filmstream camera and S.two portable drives.

 

"Hopefully Viper doesn't look like film and doesn't look like video," Fincher explained. "It has its own patina. It's appropriate for what I want to do with the movie.... It's about the cinematography. It has a beauty to it anchored in being a realistic image and appropriate to the story; I didn't want to make a beautiful movie, it wasn't that kind of a film."

 

Angus Wall of Los Angeles-based Rock, Papers, Scissors edited Zodiac, while incorporating a tapeless post workflow that was assembled for the production. The overall goal, Fincher explained, was to figure out how to produce the highest quality work, make the images accessible to the team, easily incorporate media and give Warner Bros. an archiving medium.

 

"Angus fell in love with Final Cut Pro, and we felt it was forward thinking," Fincher recalled. "It's off the shelf and it was inexpensive, and people could work remotely from home on a laptop. That was extremely important to decentralize the workflow space. That was one of the things that was really attractive."

 

From the portable S.two disk recorders, the team was able to produce the needed formats. For instance the images were converted to DVCPRO HD from which QuickTime files were produced and loaded via Firewire for use in editorial. Also, images were backed up and archived uncompressed on data tapes.

 

"So we had dueling masters and were able to work flexibly, inexpensively." Fincher said. "We could share the media and take it home. So we made it fast, cheap and in control."

 

The production also used an asset management system called Pix, which enabled the team to upload dailies for access on the Web. "But more important, when we turned over reels we could make changes in the offline and send a QuickTime over Pix and [get it to additional facilities] for sound and music [with change notes].

 

Fincher estimated that with this tapeless workflow, he also saved roughly one-and-a-half hours a day by not having to go to dailies. This, he suggested, probably resulted in a couple million dollars in savings on the production.

 

Zodiac went through a Digital Intermediate (DI) process at Burbank-based Technicolor Digital Intermediates, working with veteran colorist Stephen Nakamura. DI is another technique that Fincher examined early on, with Panic Room being among the initial examples of how the process could be used to realize a creative vision. "One thing that was interesting [during the DI] was the Viper footage timed really easily," Fincher observed. "It seemed the way we were able to make things match was much more flexible than in film. I much prefer it to timing 2k scanned film."

 

All of the techniques and processes used to make Zodiac were put into practice for one key reason: To improve the filmmaking process. "It was never my intention to do digital for the sake of being digital," he related. "It was how can I get input from people that I trust as quickly as possible, so we have time to mull it [creative ideas] over.

 

"It was sketching; we could sketch digital before we commit. It's not one thing, it's not the server, its not the Final Cut Pro; it's not the S.two.... it's all of it together, which made it more flexible."

 

As Fincher moves between features and commercials, he is again modifying his techniques for Benjamin Button. Fincher continued to examine new digital cinematography tools before committing to the film. He explained that he did not wish to use tape and tested some digital cinematography cameras. In the end, he said, "I like the feel of the 3 CCD chip set; I like the look of the shadows. We went with Viper again. We felt that it was the most tried and true."

 

Benjamin Button features Brad Pitt as a man aging in reverse. When asked how these effects would be realized, Fincher explained, "We are doing it through a digital means, where his physiognomy has changed. It's looking like [the face of a man] of 85 on the body of a five year old. So we are using head replacement. We are doing performance capture of the face and using data capture of the head because we remove it."

 

This past summer at Siggraph, it was rumored that Fincher was set to use the newly announced Mova Contour reality-capture system on Benjamin Button, working with Venice-based Digital Domain, a frequent collaborator with the director on pioneering workflows and visual effects. The developing Mova system uses an FDA-approved phosphorescent makeup mixed with a base and sponged onto the actor to capture highly precise data.

 

Were these rumors accurate? "It's not confirmed," Fincher reported. "We tried it on a commercial project and it wasn't as successful as we'd need it to be for a big screen. "We still have seven months to figure it out. There are many ways to skin this cat."

 

So what is Fincher's wish list for new tools? He responded that for cameras, "I'd like to see a 35mm sensor; see 12- or 16- bit chips sets to be wide enough to fit a 35mm aperture so the lenses could be used for digital acquisition as well as cinema, then to have the resolution of that be 3k?I don't know that you need 4k, maybe 3k would be fine?And then to be able to have small recorders and [the ability] to master to cheap storage. That's my wish list." He encourages more development. "I think the present crop of cameras available to use is not what we should be settling for," he said. "We need to keep pushing the manufacturers."

 

While Fincher has tested and deployed many developing filmmaking tools, he is careful not to be a promoter for any specific technology or manufacturers. "I'm a general technology advocate," he explained. "We have to constantly push our emerging media to help us to tell stories more cost effectively and more flexibly. It's working for me and a lot of people. My hope is ultimately we'll be able to make more movies because the cost of movies will come down."

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"We have to constantly push our emerging media to help us to tell stories more cost effectively and more flexibly. It's working for me and a lot of people. My hope is ultimately we'll be able to make more movies because the cost of movies will come down."

 

Considering he likes to shoot over 100-day schedules and sometimes 80 takes per shot, I suspect if the cameras & recorders were FREE his movies would still cost a lot to make, no offence to Claudio...

 

Digital camera technology will not bring down the costs of these major Hollywood studio movies, let alone medium-budget films. 8 out of the last 13 features I've shot have been in HD and there was not a significant difference in budget, sometimes the HD feature was even bigger-budgeted than the 35mm feature. Only the ones that never had to go out to film saw some savings, but that's maybe $50,000 saved in not doing a film-out, which is not significant on a film that costs a couple of million dollars.

 

We all know that the majority of a budget goes to above-the-line talent on a studio movie. Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts is not going to charge less if the camera is digital.

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Considering he likes to shoot over 100-day schedules and sometimes 80 takes per shot, I suspect if the cameras & recorders were FREE his movies would still cost a lot to make, no offence to Claudio...

 

Digital camera technology will not bring down the costs of these major Hollywood studio movies, let alone medium-budget films. 8 out of the last 13 features I've shot have been in HD and there was not a significant difference in budget, sometimes the HD feature was even bigger-budgeted than the 35mm feature. Only the ones that never had to go out to film saw some savings, but that's maybe $50,000 saved in not doing a film-out, which is not significant on a film that costs a couple of million dollars.

 

We all know that the majority of a budget goes to above-the-line talent on a studio movie. Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts is not going to charge less if the camera is digital.

You are very correct Mr Mullen. Fincher's shoot is not cheap and no offense is taken. He is also very budget aware and will maximize the funds to the best of its ability. The producers of Zodiac and David believe that the Viper has saved them a considerable amount of money. I believe they said that it was 3-5 days total and if each day is $300K... well you see thier point. This time is reloading, lab problems, focus issues missed by operators. Unfortunately, we have made some updates to S2 and we are paying for it with a considerable amount of crashes. These will be rectified, but the saving on Benjamin will not be as apparent.. currently. David likes the medium and it is his choice to shoot on Viper and I do see its advantages.

 

On my collaboration with David: David has been open to suggestions whether it is camera angles or lighting choices. He does not want a "yes" man, he wants someone to offer something to the table. There is this job on my site that is called The Angel on Chilside Road. This was for a Sony Dreams project and you had to use the Sony 900. David saw this and loved it. He used it as an example. Originally, I never knew he knew about my site. He brought me in for a meeting and that is when I started shooting Viper for David on commercials. Today, I wanted to use Chilside as a reference for a lighting set up and David agreed.

 

I have put together two books for this project. One is location angles and the other is stills reference. Also everyday after work I time the shooting images for references off of the Viper. David looks at the timed stills daily. When this is over I will post on my site what is allowed and will be open to go into more details.

 

David Mullen,

I do want to commend you on all your helpful posts in this forum. I have read some of your posts and have noted them to be very helpful to the individuals needing assistance.

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There is this job on my site that is called The Angel on Chilside Road. This was for a Sony Dreams project and you had to use the Sony 900. David saw this and loved it.

 

the photography of it was outstanding, i kept watching it studying the beautiful soft light on the little boy and when you said it was shot digital i was even more impressed. i loved the way the camera tracks back and fort in the room when he wakes up, and that shot when he is hiding from his mum, the colors were very particular. your website has lots of inspirational info, so thanks a lot for sharing.

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There is this job on my site that is called The Angel on Chilside Road. This was for a Sony Dreams project and you had to use the Sony 900. David saw this and loved it.

 

the photography of it was outstanding, i kept watching it studying the beautiful soft light on the little boy and when you said it was shot digital i was even more impressed. i loved the way the camera tracks back and fort in the room when he wakes up, and that shot when he is hiding from his mum, the colors were very particular. your website has lots of inspirational info, so thanks a lot for sharing.

Although I have the latest version of quick-time I could not open The ANGEL ON CHILSIDE ROAD.

All the other Images on the website show ?! Slow connectyion speed ? What version where you running ?

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Although I have the latest version of quick-time I could not open The ANGEL ON CHILSIDE ROAD.

All the other Images on the website show ?! Slow connectyion speed ? What version where you running ?

 

Try http://www.claudiomiranda.com/angel.html ... it will take about 3-6 minutes with a high speed line with the present network traffic.

 

Lance

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Hi,

 

> Unfortunately, we have made some updates to S2 and we are paying for it with a considerable amount of

> crashes

 

I'm afraid that's entirely normal.

 

Phil

On Zodiac, it was not normal. We are running new video cards that open offer more and (unfortunately) crash more. Feeling a little beta. I have shot a lot with this system and this is not normal.

 

Phil I think you are a DIT. I am curious what have you shot with and what are your experiences? What shows have you had these bad experiences? Also not all hard drives recorders are the same. The data captured is the same, but how I view playback is another story and this is critical for me. Also there are many other differences and if you are a DIT I am sure you know this. We tested Codex, S2 and were originally on the Directors friend. We found that the S2 works best for our purpose.

 

Let me know the basis of your opinions and experiences.

 

 

 

 

Try http://www.claudiomiranda.com/angel.html ... it will take about 3-6 minutes with a high speed line with the present network traffic.

 

Lance

Please look at this version. The other is old

 

http://www.claudiomiranda.com/angel264.html

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On Zodiac, it was not normal. We are running new video cards that open offer more and (unfortunately) crash more. Feeling a little beta. I have shot a lot with this system and this is not normal. <snip> We tested Codex, S2 and were originally on the Directors friend. We found that the S2 works best for our purpose. <snip>

 

I hate to burden you with questions during your shoot, but I was wondering if you had problems with the Codex Digital during your evaluation? I was looking at two for our project because of its bandwidth as I don't believe the S2 will work for us. Otherwise, if the Codex has some shortcomings I'll build a capture station from scratch, but I'd like to go with something off-the-shelf.

 

TNX

Lance

Edited by Lance Flores
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I hate to burden you with questions during your shoot, but I was wondering if you had problems with the Codex Digital during your evaluation? I was looking at two for our project because of its bandwidth as I don't believe the S2 will work for us. Otherwise, if the Codex has some shortcomings I'll build a capture station from scratch, but I'd like to go with something off-the-shelf.

 

TNX

Lance

 

I suspect it's time for us to poke our heads above the parapet around here.... I'm not aware of any Codex problems experienced during the Benjamin Button testing, though Claudio will correct me if I'm wrong. This was the first extended workout the system had experienced - we're the new one - and we were very pleased with how it went. We had one glitch when we were given bad power and no line-conditioner, but the RAID worked fine and nothing went missing.

 

As far as we've ever heard - and as Claudio alludes to further up the thread - when the last-minute decision was made to revert to the Viper it was simply a matter of it being most straightforward to go with the setup they'd used before in the very short time available.

 

We're very happy to record any of the 2K or 4K cameras mentioned, by the way: Viper, Genesis, Arri (we're going to offer data-mode capture for that one, too), Dalsa, Vision Research, and anything existing or upcoming that we've ever heard of. We do two 2K at once (and soon four in 4:2:2), and up to 60fps where the camera can handle it.

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I suspect it's time for us to poke our heads above the parapet around here.... I'm not aware of any Codex problems experienced during the Benjamin Button testing, though Claudio will correct me if I'm wrong.

<snip>

We're very happy to record any of the 2K or 4K cameras mentioned, by the way: Viper, Genesis, Arri (we're going to offer data-mode capture for that one, too), Dalsa, Vision Research, and anything existing or upcoming that we've ever heard of. We do two 2K at once (and soon four in 4:2:2), and up to 60fps where the camera can handle it.

 

Thanks for the response Paul. Called the L.A. number where Colin Ritchie was in a meeting. Didn't know how to get hold of you.

 

Lance

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Hi,

 

My problem with the S2 recorders are twofold.

 

First off, there are some design decisions that were made on them, based on discussions I've had with people from the company, which are at best highly questionable and at worse bordering on the insane. I've posted about this before, but among the principal problems is the use of a potentially disastrous single-point-of-failure hard disk system (which would be laughed out of the room by any group of competent computer technicians) and the extremely convoluted cygwin-over-ssh control system, which is extremely prone to failure. From my experience about 75% of your crashes will be crashes in the control system software which is a completely unnecessary SPF. These reservations are based on my knowledge of how the system is engineered technically, having used them and examined them in use.

 

The real issue here is that if these systems were offered to a computer-savvy industry they would be rejected out of hand - the design of them is just too ludicrously convoluted. The only reason S2 is being used is that it's being used by film people who don't, and no disrespect to them, have any idea how a real embedded system is supposed to be. That's fine, they're camera assistants, not Linux technicians, but I can say only this - if the producers of this film knew they were recording all their data to RAID-0, and understood what that meant in the context of the alternatives, they'd be rightfully horrified.

 

I have used it on a feature. I would tell you about my on-set experience with it, but I'm not allowed to, so suffice to say - in use, it failed in exactly the ways I thought it would fail based on the built in problems - specifically, failure of the control laptop, failure of the backup system and subsequent logjamming of mags and tapes, and repeated failure of the windows/cygwin/ssh/linux control system.

 

It's heart's in the right place, but it's just a completely insane design.

 

Phil

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On Zodiac, it was not normal. We are running new video cards that open offer more and (unfortunately) crash more. Feeling a little beta. I have shot a lot with this system and this is not normal.

 

Phil I think you are a DIT. I am curious what have you shot with and what are your experiences? What shows have you had these bad experiences? Also not all hard drives recorders are the same. The data captured is the same, but how I view playback is another story and this is critical for me. Also there are many other differences and if you are a DIT I am sure you know this. We tested Codex, S2 and were originally on the Directors friend. We found that the S2 works best for our purpose.

 

Let me know the basis of your opinions and experiences.

Please look at this version. The other is old

 

http://www.claudiomiranda.com/angel264.html

 

Thanks, the new version came right up.

A beautiful movie for Christmas.

Loved the bedroom tracking.

A clip or the whole film ?

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There is this job on my site that is called The Angel on Chilside Road. This was for a Sony Dreams project and you had to use the Sony 900. David saw this and loved it. He used it as an example. Originally, I never knew he knew about my site. He brought me in for a meeting and that is when I started shooting Viper for David on commercials. Today, I wanted to use Chilside as a reference for a lighting set up and David agreed.

 

Mr. Miranda,

 

First I want to say this film looks great it proves to me ones more that today when you do have fairly good digital cameras, what makes the difference is first and for most the

Cinematographer of the picture, so again very beautiful!

 

The second question I wanted to ask is in what lenses did you shoot? 35mm or HD.

 

Thanks allot,

And like David said keep on posting we need your input here. especially people like me that are not close to the big money/production of America can learn lots of things from professionals like you (and David and others), just for comparison in Israel a big budget film is 1 million dollars and a very big budget film is 2 million so the possibility to learn and experiment are limited?

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Mr. Miranda,

 

First I want to say this film looks great it proves to me ones more that today when you do have fairly good digital cameras, what makes the difference is first and for most the

Cinematographer of the picture, so again very beautiful!

 

The second question I wanted to ask is in what lenses did you shoot? 35mm or HD.

 

Thanks allot,

And like David said keep on posting we need your input here. especially people like me that are not close to the big money/production of America can learn lots of things from professionals like you (and David and others), just for comparison in Israel a big budget film is 1 million dollars and a very big budget film is 2 million so the possibility to learn and experiment are limited?

 

The good thing about shooting digital is that you CAN learn and experiment.

Hey, you could even shoot a period film in color then change it to Sepia or Black and White later if you wanted.

There are a million variations you can use for the color correction of the film. ( maybe too many )

If you where sepia toning a print you would not have as many options.

I've sen many Israeli films that where quite engaging. The new Argentinian/French/Israeli film : Family Law

was very heart-warming. With real people and fine performances. You can't say that about a lot of American films. You could do a million takes in an American film and not be able to fix the fact that the guy acting with a big name just can't cut it on a personal level.

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I suspect it's time for us to poke our heads above the parapet around here.... I'm not aware of any Codex problems experienced during the Benjamin Button testing, though Claudio will correct me if I'm wrong. This was the first extended workout the system had experienced - we're the new one - and we were very pleased with how it went. We had one glitch when we were given bad power and no line-conditioner, but the RAID worked fine and nothing went missing.

 

As far as we've ever heard - and as Claudio alludes to further up the thread - when the last-minute decision was made to revert to the Viper it was simply a matter of it being most straightforward to go with the setup they'd used before in the very short time available.

 

We're very happy to record any of the 2K or 4K cameras mentioned, by the way: Viper, Genesis, Arri (we're going to offer data-mode capture for that one, too), Dalsa, Vision Research, and anything existing or upcoming that we've ever heard of. We do two 2K at once (and soon four in 4:2:2), and up to 60fps where the camera can handle it.

Codex was fine. We wanted to view 4:2:2 off of our 4:4:4 signal and that was not posible at the time. Codex was working on an upgrade but was not available at the time of our shoot. And you are right, we did need more time.

 

Lenses on the Chilside were Zeiss Digi Primes. HD lenses on the Sony 900.

 

As far as the S2 and hard drives. On the whole shoot of Zodiac not one frame lost. So maybe the system is insane, but I worked on that show. I am not a computer guy, so maybe we were lucky.

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The good thing about shooting digital is that you CAN learn and experiment.

Hey, you could even shoot a period film in color then change it to Sepia or Black and White later if you wanted.

There are a million variations you can use for the color correction of the film. ( maybe too many )

If you where sepia toning a print you would not have as many options.

I've sen many Israeli films that where quite engaging. The new Argentinian/French/Israeli film : Family Law

was very heart-warming. With real people and fine performances. You can't say that about a lot of American films. You could do a million takes in an American film and not be able to fix the fact that the guy acting with a big name just can't cut it on a personal level.

HI angeliki,

thanks for your post,

I think that From one perspective what you say about digital film making (that you can learn end experiment)is very true but for me its allot more expensive to shoot with an f-900+digi primes(I need to order lenses from abroad)than shoot on super-16, even 35mm can be cheaper some time because I can use older camera and lenses.

Also what you said about changing colors can be done easily in modern telecine suit or a DI (if you want to do a print from digital you need to go for scannig).

The truth is that in the lower budget it's sometimes cheaper to shoot film to get good result and to carefully think how you can achieve a "look" with the tools you have.

As regards for Israeli industry I was mainly talking about the technical opportunity's that you don't have in Israel and not on the artistic ones. Actually I think you have many artistic ones(in israel), I think it is because the complexity of the environment we live in. I guess many people would prefer complex story with real people over technical excellence?but for me I like that we have both, I think cinema didn't exist without Hollywood nor without films from all around the world.

But if we go back for a minute to Fincher film, I think that he is now developing another toll to film making that only in Hollywood budget reality ones can experiment with. I am sure that the result in the end will be that the poor film makers can enjoy and learn from.

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The good thing about shooting digital is that you CAN learn and experiment.

Hey, you could even shoot a period film in color then change it to Sepia or Black and White later if you wanted.

There are a million variations you can use for the color correction of the film. ( maybe too many )

If you where sepia toning a print you would not have as many options.

 

None of those things have anything to do with digital production. They are techniques of digital post production, and as such, they are not dependent in any way on shooting with digital cameras. You can shoot film and do exactly the same things. In fact, if it's flexibility in color correction that one is after, it's not unfair to say that you have a considerably deeper color pallette to choose from with film origination than with digital origination.

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I have put together two books for this project. One is location angles and the other is stills reference. Also everyday after work I time the shooting images for references off of the Viper. David looks at the timed stills daily. When this is over I will post on my site what is allowed and will be open to go into more details.

 

Looking forward to seeing this. You mean you will post when filming is over ?

Please send us the link.

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