Genesis to be trialled for Superman

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

I've just heard that Panavision are sending a Genesis over to Sydney for tests on the upcoming "Superman" movie, to be shot at Fox studios and in the Australian countryside.

 

Nothing definite, but apparantly Warner Bros have agreed to give it a try at least. After the massive buildup PV gave the CineAltas five years ago, and the subsequent embarrassment over its rejection by mainstream film makers, I'm not surprised they're being so circumspect!

 

Last I heard, the production was going to use Arricams!

Edited January 28, 2005 by Jim Murdoch

[Greg Gross]

Rumor is that Al Mayer and Sony kept camera a secret for four years

behind closed doors, in Al Mayer's office. Just imagine 13.5 lbs alone

and only 24.83 lbs with vtr on board. This is one of the few times in my

life that I wish I was as rich as Howard Hughes was. I'd get on my knees

and beg Al Mayer Jr. to sell me one. Keep in mind the sensor will accept

all of Panavision's current lenses. This includes all Primo primes and zooms

to standard support gear. In house they had a code name for the Genesis

to keep it secret- "NGC". Supposedly it has some of the same characteristics

as the Panaflex and Millenium XL. Sensor is 12.4 mega pixels with RGB 10-

bit log color output, speeds up to 50fps. The system has its own dockable Sony

SRW-1 VTR that records HDCAM-SR up to 50 minutes. The vtr fits to the top or

rear of the camera,simulating look of and feel of Panaflex. Designed that way

so it could be used on tight sets. Camera can be adapted to be low and long or

short and high. It has a memory stick for stills(the directors are going to love

this)quick still images can be pulled on the set. Dual link 4:4:4 HDSDI outputs

and a single 4:2:2 HDSDI monitor output. They are supposed to be working on

an optical viewfinder for it,presently its an electronic one. Rumor is that Al Mayer

designed camera on his desk top from ground up. No hand drawn designs of the

camera are supposed to exist. Mr. Mayer designed it with Softimage XSI. Just

imagine if "Open Water" would have been shot with this camera. With some work

on the script and lighting,seasoned cinematographer,it might have made it to

the Golden Globes like "Sideways" did. I love Panavision cameras, fell in love

with them the first time I ever saw one. I'm going to contact Panavision and see if

I can visit their facility sometime. Request to see Genesis being used there by

the experts. Don't know if its possible but the only way to get things is to go af-

ter them. Imagine right now being Rafael Adame,Nolan Murdock,Bob Harvey,Al

Mayer Jr.,James Pearman. They may be on the verge of starting the changeover

for the industry. Panavision/Sony, wow!!! Best of all no monster boxes attached

to the camera.

Greg Gross

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I'm glad you're so excited. I hope this will be what we all have been waiting for, but unfortunately I'll stay slightly reserved until I've seen something. The death of film and the murder weapon who killed it has been somewhat exaggerated over the years - that's what Coppola said in the late 70's with his SLEK (So Long Eastman Kodak) system. And what Sony said with HDCAM. Here we are 30 years later still running film in the cameras.

 

I do sincerely hope this is the film killer everybody hopes for, 'cause God knows film has shown some remarkable staying power and can hardly be taken much further.

Edited January 28, 2005 by AdamFrisch

[Kevin Zanit]

I remember when they had guards standing in front of one of the stages when the camera was being tested. It was quite funny actually.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[Tenolian Bell]

Newton Thomas Seigel is the DP on Superman. I imagine he will certainly put the Genesis through its paces. He's also a big advocate of Digital Intermediate but has never had a film go all the way through 4K, which I'm sure he's chomping at the bit to do. And Superman should be his opportunity.

 

I doubt Seigel will give full endorsement of the Genesis for this project. I'm sure Panavision doesn't expect him to, but wants constructive feedback.

 

"I do sincerely hope this is the film killer everybody hopes for, 'cause God knows film has shown some remarkable staying power and can hardly be taken much further."

 

Well actually the chemical process Kodak has used to create the Vision 2 stock has not been used to its fullest potential yet. The one place that can use great improvement is presentation. At this point we are still only viewing a fraction of the information recorded on a negative frame.

 

?We are going to be in a hybrid medium for some time but the information that?s on a negative is extraordinary, and you are not going to achieve that for some time digitally. People will rush to use digital cameras not for the right reasons.?

 

Allen Daviau after testing the Genesis.

[Chance Shirley]

> that's what Coppola said in the late 70's with his SLEK (So Long Eastman Kodak) system.

 

I'm not familiar with "SLEK." Anywhere I could read more about it?

 

Thanks...

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

Newton Thomas Seigel is the DP on Superman.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Totally off-topic, but isn't it weird how the many of the people involved with "Superman" either had the similar names or had careers that ended in tragedy. George Reeves starred in the 50's TV series and committed suicide, Christopher Reeve starred in the 70s and 80s movies and died tragically, Margot Kidder who starred as Lois Lane eventually spent time in a mental asylum.

 

Now Newton Thomas Siegel: Jerry Seigel was one of the two guys who created the original Superman character back in the 1930s and fought for many years to get any recognition for it!

 

 

I imagine he will certainly put the Genesis through its paces. He's also a big advocate of Digital Intermediate but has never had a film go all the way through 4K, which I'm sure he's chomping at the bit to do. And Superman should be his opportunity.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Digital Intermediate is a well-proven technology with some enormous advantages. The only real disadvantage at the moment is cost, and that's steadily falling.

 

Apart from simplifying post production special effects, perhaps its biggest advantage is that if the input is, for example, a 4K scan from 35mm film, the final negative from the Arrilaser or whatever will be for all practical purposes, an identical "4k" image.

 

It's not generally realized though, that a "4K" scan can only capture a maximum of 2,000 vertical lines across the negative, (or 1,000 black/white "line pairs"). With fine-grain film and good lenses this can easily be bettered, which is why there is a case for 6, 8 and even 16K scanning. This is also why Kodak are working to improve release stock resolution.

 

The problem I've always had with the current crop of so-called "Digital Cinematography" cameras is that the maximum "true" horizontal resolution they can theoretically image is something under 500 line pairs. I have reason to believe that the Genesis won't even be able to match that modest figure. Panavison steadfastly refuse to tell anybody what the actual resolution is!

 

From where I sit, putting an electronic camera at the start of a Digital Intermediate chain is a bit like setting up a state-of-the-art all-digital music recording studio and then using $5 microphones from a dime store!

 

Originating on film is still the best way to get images into the system; after all Betacam has been around for over 20 years, and has much the same flexibility of use as a film camera and costs far less than film, but people still used 35mm film, and that was just for plain old 525-line NTSC!

 

?We are going to be in a hybrid medium for some time but the information that?s on a negative is extraordinary, and you are not going to achieve that for some time digitally. People will rush to use digital cameras not for the right reasons.?

 

Allen Daviau after testing the Genesis.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've been involved in some sometimes quited heated discussion over my (unlike most of the participants, technically well-informed) doubts over the Genesis's ability to perform as advertised and people were forever exhorting me to "have a look at Daviau's tests."

I've never been in a geographical position to actually do that, but when I read the man's own comments on the subject, he didn't sound all that excited about it. Like everybody else in this situation, be basically rattled off a list of caveats about what the Genesis won't do, which is basically most other people's list of "Why I still use film"!

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> From where I sit, putting an electronic camera at the start of a Digital Intermediate

> chain is a bit like setting up a state-of-the-art all-digital music recording studio and

> then using $5 microphones from a dime store!

 

Sorry? It makes complete sense. The two media cause each other problems - current film technology makes digital images look incredibly noisy, and current digital technology makes film look soft. Getting into a situation when we can keep it in one domain all the way through is clearly and obviously the way to go.

 

Phil

[Matthew Parnell]

I think the genesis has to be given a fair chance. lets face it, HD will eventually become the standard shooting format, though its a fair few years down the track.

 

supposedly from what ive heard the genesis got 35mm image sensors to achieve the focal depth you get from 35mm film, thats solves one of the complaints of HD.

[Guest Kai.w]

It's not generally realized though, that a "4K" scan can only capture a maximum of 2,000 vertical lines across the negative, (or 1,000 black/white "line pairs"). With fine-grain film and good lenses this can easily be bettered, which is why  there is a case for 6, 8 and even 16K scanning. This is also why Kodak are working to improve release stock resolution.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sorry, but I have yet to see a filmscan that makes real use of 4k resolution. Most of the stuff I saw was a little soft at that res. I guess you have to oversample abit cause the scanning process itself is not perfect and "introduces" some softness. So maybe 6k gives a little more, but 16k?

As some HD critical poster said: "I believe it when I see it" ;-)

If however you look at a decent HD image shot with a good lense you really see it gets the best out of the 1080 lines. And if you stay digital right up to the projection it's not bad.

So as someone else said here, it sort of makes sense to stay digital when you shot like that If you come from film it might make sense to scan at 6k (due to the problems of the process) but whether 35mm effectively "has" that resolution up to 16k...? I doubt it.

 

-k

[Tenolian Bell]

I think Spiderman 2 was a good example of higher resolution scans. Certain places where the skin tones were not perfect, but far better than 2K. In the print I saw nothing was soft at all.

 

Kodak had a presentation way back in 2000 where they said for an optimal DI 35mm film needs to be scanned at 6K resolution, even if you are only going to edit and print from 2K. I remember HD vendors and suppliers tried to argue against that. But now it seems to be more understood. At this point its just not practicle to deal with a 6K scan.

[Guest Kai.w]

I think Spiderman 2 was a good example of higher resolution scans. Certain places where the skin tones were not perfect, but far better than 2K.  In the print I saw nothing was soft at all. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Haven't seen Spiderman 2 in the theatre (which res did they use?). But I saw 3k projects (probably scanned at 4k) which did'nt look soft either. Plus I can't see what skintones have to do with pixelresolution.

 

Anyway, my point was that a film image scanned at a certain res does not seem to have the same sharpness to it than a digitally aquired image at the same res. That's at least my feeling...

So if only we knew what the Genesis has.... ;-)

 

 

-k

 

btw.: I guess its quite normal that Kodak is very optimistic about the quality of their products ;-)

[Max Jacoby]

Digital Intermediate is a well-proven technology with some enormous advantages. The only real disadvantage at the moment is cost, and that's steadily falling.

 

I would like to point out that there are people who don't share that opinion. Newton Thomas Siegel by the way was responsible for some pretty overdone DIs in recent years. Chief among them 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'. Even on television it looked all screwed up.

[Guest Kai.w]

I would like to point out that there are people who don't share that opinion. Newton Thomas Siegel by the way was responsible for some pretty overdone DIs in recent years. Chief among them 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'. Even on television it looked all screwed up.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What opinion do you not share?...that DI has enormous advantages or that the only problem should be the cost...?

I guess the first point is sort of undeniable. One could add a few things to the second part but most of that could be solved for even higher costs. ;-)

 

All in all I think it is a bit weird that people here go on and on about slightly weaker blacks, etc and seem to ignore that DI offers tremendous advantages in terms of control over the traditional process, thus giving you alot more freedom of artistic expression...

 

-k

[Tenolian Bell]

Plus I can't see what skintones have to do with pixel resolution.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Have you seen a DV blow up to 35mm print? There you will see clear example of pixel resolution playing a part in skin tone reproduction.

[Guest Kai.w]

Have you seen a DV blow up to 35mm print?  There you will see clear example of pixel resolution playing a part in skin tone reproduction.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmm.... I've seen quite a few dv blow ups and the compression artifacts were so strong that I could hardly makeout any influence of the pixel resolution on the skin tones ;-)

Again, why would pixel resolution have an impact on skin tones... unless we speak of such a low resolution that no gradient can properly be reproduced?

 

-k

[Michel Hafner]

It's not generally realized though, that a "4K" scan can only capture a maximum of 2,000 vertical lines across the negative, (or 1,000 black/white "line pairs"). With fine-grain film and good lenses this can easily be bettered, which is why  there is a case for 6, 8 and even 16K scanning. This is also why Kodak are working to improve release stock resolution.

 

It's useful to distinguish between 4K as a format and the (down)sampling process used to create the 4K data. A direct 4K scan will not give full 4K resolution because of the necessary anti aliasing filter that is used, but 2000 vertical lines (e.g. 2K resolution) is certainly a poor 4K scan. It should be above 3000 lines. When scanning at > 4K and downsampling to 4K full res 4K should be no problem to achieve. And you don't need 16K at all. 8K should be more than adequate.

[Max Jacoby]

All in all I think it is a bit weird that people here go on and on about slightly weaker blacks, etc and seem to ignore that DI offers tremendous advantages in terms of control over the traditional process, thus giving you alot more freedom of artistic expression...

 

I never said that a DI didn't have a lot of advantages as well. But quite frankly mate, if one wants to use any tool properly one needs to be aware of both its advantages and dissadvantages. You conveniently ignore or diminish these disadvantages. If you are offended by my opinion on DIs then you better not read John Mathieson's comments on DIs in the January edition of AC. His are not kind words at all but he does have a point.

[Matthew Parnell]

Im a big fan of DI colour grading, it anihalates the old timing methods, though i do agree DI stuff can be too overdone, DI, and complete HD i believe are undoubtably where the future of filmmaking lies, and i think we just have to live with them being only ok for a while. I remember reading an article with Hitchcock ages ago, and he had to deal with the same teething problems when colour was introduced. But he learnt to deal with the problems, and these problems lead him to develop a different side of his filmmaking, and slowly as the technology just got better and better those techniques he had developed realy started to shine. Had he just had the good technology straight away he wouldn't have developed those techniques.

[Michel Hafner]

I never said that a DI didn't have a lot of advantages as well. But quite frankly mate, if one wants to use any tool properly one needs to be aware of both its advantages and dissadvantages. You conveniently ignore or diminish these disadvantages. If you are offended by my opinion on DIs then you better not read John Mathieson's comments on DIs in the January edition of AC. His are not kind words at all but he does have a point.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

He refers to trailers. Are trailers nearly as good looking as the finished product? And the remark about blinking to get things into focus. Well, DI is not fuzzy because it's DI. It's fuzzy because it was made fuzzy. If he likes it sharp he can get it sharp.

Speaking of trailers. The trailer of "A Very Long Engagement" scared me off for good. Nasty DNR look.

Has anyone seen the film and can confirm it has the DNR look all over?

[Guest Kai.w]

I never said that a DI didn't have a lot of advantages as well. But quite frankly mate, if one wants to use any tool properly one needs to be aware of both its advantages and dissadvantages. You conveniently ignore or diminish these disadvantages. If you are offended by my opinion on DIs then you better not read John Mathieson's comments on DIs in the January edition of AC. His are not kind words at all but he does have a point.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lets put it like this, I think DI itself has no real mayor problems. Its budget problems. If you can afford it, you can scan at whatever pixel / color res suits your needs. The important DI systems can handle this at the cost of performace but you could work on lets say HD proxies which give a very good idea of the result.

 

-k

[Max Jacoby]

He refers to trailers. Are trailers nearly as good looking as the finished product?

 

I have seen plenty of films that have the same problems he refers too. But in general I find trailers to be worse loking than the movie itself. The trailer for 'The Merchant of Venice' looks horribly grainy, but in the film itself it looks fine.

Edited February 1, 2005 by audiris

[Keith Mottram]

alot of the trailers are d5 blow ups and some are even sd (sometimes with hi res titles) blow ups, trailers can therefor never be used to judge a films look.

 

keith

[John Sprung]

Apart from simplifying post production special effects, perhaps its biggest advantage is that if the input is, for example, a 4K scan from 35mm film, the final negative from the Arrilaser or whatever will be for all practical purposes, an identical "4k" image.

 

Panavison steadfastly refuse to tell anybody what the actual resolution is!

 

Betacam has been around for over 20 years, and has much the same flexibility  of use as a film camera and costs far less than film, but people still used 35mm film, and that was just for plain old 525-line NTSC!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To me the big advantage of DI is that you now have all the powerful tools of electronic color correction available, not just the three printer lights and the options of bleach bypass or flashing.

 

John Galt of Panavision gave us some details at HPA. The Genesis sensor is 5760 x 2160 photosites, and the sites are simple rectangles 4.10 x 6.15 microns. My speculation about fancy intertwined sites was wrong. They're grouped three by two like this:

 

RGB

RGB

 

So, the groups are square, and there are 1920 x 1080 of them.

 

I'm surprised that nobody sees a difference between horizontal and vertical resolution with this setup. I certainly didn't. Vertically, they only have to make the 2160 Nyquist limit optically, then they can filter digitally to the 1080 limit, which lets them pretty much max out the top octave vertically. But horizontally the colors are severely undersampled, and they only have 1920 complete datasets across. I'll look for a resolution discrepancy if I see the tests again. It'll be interesting to try pulling a green screen matte.

 

But the most important thing in this business is what the pictures look like on the screen. If the pictures look great, nobody gives a s--t what the numbers say.

 

Clearly, 2/3" will soon be dead and gone for most single camera work. It'll linger a while in low budget features. It has a long future in TV news, documentaries, and sitcoms. It'll be big chips vs. film for single camera shows that can afford a caterer.

 

Over 20 years ago, there were TV shows that shot to 1"C tape for NTSC. About that time they shifted to film for two reasons: First, by shooting film at 24 fps, they could make better PAL/SECAM conversions. Technical quality was essential to making foreign sales. Second, nobody knew how fast the HD transition would be, so they figured that the small extra expense of film was cheap insurance for the then-unknowable future that we're living in now.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

It surprises me to hear people talk about PAL conversion as a reason for shooting film, when most of the US produced material we see here is a conversion of the NTSC video, and looks rotten.

 

Phil