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shooting dialog scenes with loud silent cameras


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50 is better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick - to use an Aussie expression.

If Arriflex sold 50 SR's, they would have shelved the project, discontinued the camera and blamed the people in their company for it not being a success. If you make 50 of something by hand in your garage and sell them all, you're most likely going to consider that a success no matter what. So what Logmar did was right in the middle... for a camera manufacturer they were a failure. For a hand-made, one-off product, I guess you could consider them successful. I consider it a failure because I assume their eventual goal was to propitiate the format of Super 8 AND eventually make money off the huge investment required to make them, non of which happened with only 50 examples ever made. Plus, in the world of engineering and design, ANY hand-made product is a prototype. Only in mass production does your product loose that status. This is because in manufacturing, you will fine tune the design to the point of it being easier to make, less costly to make and be able to sell them for less money in the long run. Lets face it, had the Logmar been a $999 retail price camera, it would have put Pro 8's refurbishing program out of business AND they would have sold MANY more units.

 

My point and only reason I responded is because I consider it a complete utter failure, where Kodak's $499 entry Super 8 camera is an entirely different market.

 

Secondly the Kodak camera is a completely new design. This is from the horses mouth. I've spoken directly to the "bloke in the garage" about this. It's a completely new design. The main difference is that it doesn't employ a separate gate. Most of the way in which the Logmar differs from a conventional Super8 camera, is around the custom gate and it's pin registration.

Yes, it's the next generation Logmar. It has many of the same features, but they made it for mass production, they removed the prototype design look and feel, making it A LOT cheaper to manufacture. Again, pricing is $499 - $999 depending on the features. That's a HUGE price difference to the Logmar.

 

Tyler's criticism of the Logmar is completely stupid. He says "when someone shoots a theatrically run feature on one, I'll perk my ears up." But for the Kodak camera, he has no such requirement.

Right, because the Kodak camera falls into an acceptable price range and it's not some hand-made prototype, it's mass produced. The Kodak is like buying a Blackmagic Pocket Camera. It low-cost, entry level capturing to the lowest acceptable quality resolution. The Logmar does virtually the same thing as the Kodak, minus some bells and whistles, captures to the lowest resolution film format, yet its 5 times more money. The assumption there is that anyone buying a Logmar, must need it's features for some crazy big project like a feature film, where the camera would stand out amongst it's peers. Otherwise, why would ANYONE by one?

 

"When they go out and shoot super 8", he says "the look of the camera, the feel of the camera, how the camera is used, these are more critical then the final output."

Yes, in regards to the vast majority of people who shoot super 8, this is the case. I mean, I do live in Hollywood, the home of the filmmaking "hipsters". I know many of them personally and they dress up in fancy retro clothing, go out around los angeles and make their little super 8 movies. They choose their cameras on ebay, based on the looks, which one is more retro then the other. How do I know this? Because I have a bunch of super 8 cameras and when I lend people cameras, they always pick the same one. It's the most "retro" looking of the bunch. These guys don't care if it's out of focus, if it's got gate weave, if the colors aren't perfect or it's grainy. The reason they shoot super 8, is to get that look in the first place. As you well know, I've been working on a feature film that we're shooting an entire section in super 8 to match older material shot in the 80's. We just did our first big shoot and it looks great, but he choose the worst of my cameras because he wanted to look cool on location with it. I keep saying, I'll buy a better camera and the results we keep getting back are exactly what he wants, so we're not changing anything.

 

Honestly, I just dislike the logmar because they tried to mix old with new and it just doesn't work, nobody wants that. Yes carl, I've gone to Pro 8 and worked with the camera. I went to the open house few years ago when it first came out and spent quite a bit of time with it. I was tremendously unimpressed and dismayed. They had the opportunity to make something wonderful and in my opinion, they blew it. Now they want to make 16mm and 35mm cameras? Give me a break. When I can go out and buy an Aaton LTR or XTR for a few grand, why would anything they offer the public be any better? Heck, I just sold my beautiful Moviecam 35mm camera for 3 grand! Do you think Logmar's camera will be anywhere near that price OR produce less than 20db when running, which is kinda what's required for shooting sound these days. Good luck with that!

 

See, I care about film too much Carl. I want it to be LOW COST, not high cost. The only way to solve that problem is to get more people shooting. If you charge them tens of thousands for cameras, they simply won't shoot. If you charge them a few hundred dollars, they may bite and that's why USED cameras AND the Kodak camera, are steps in the right direction and why the Logmar is a complete, total, utter failure in the grand scheme of things.

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However you won't see any of this on youtube or vimeo etc. because the neg will be taken through an optical blowup to 16mm, and screened in that way.

Sounds great! BTW: yep: gotta get your film loading procedure down on any film camera or it's bad loop and/or jamming!

So you will have it blown up to a 16mm print to be projected? That limits you to the standard 1.37:1 ratio unless you mask off a little top and bottom in the 16mm frame. Nice to know that there are still labs doing optical step printing! Been around back in the day when we still used 16mm projectors back in middle and high school. I always insisted on being the projectionist (had already Super 8mm at home). Ah the good old Siemens 2000 and Bell & Howell TQ series.... How are you going about sound for the 16mm print? Optical is mono and limited in quality. Magnetic track glued onto the film print is unreliable and wears out (if it is available at all still....). I guess the best is still going with a separate, mechanically sync'd 16mm fully coated magnetic soundtrack on a specialized projector - that's the way they aired 16mm (and 35mm, but with a matching 17,5 mm full coat sound track with the exact same sprocket holes) back in the day (1970s until early '80s in my native Germany).

 

Just letting you know that I have actually used and/or seen live all this stuff back in the day. Please let me know. I'm interested in just about everything "film". Love it!

 

Christian

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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Sounds great! BTW: yep: gotta get your film loading procedure down on any film camera or it's bad loop and/or jamming!

So you will have it blown up to a 16mm print to be projected? That limits you to the standard 1.37:1 ratio unless you mask off a little top and bottom in the 16mm frame. Nice to know that there are still labs doing optical step printing! Been around back in the day when we still used 16mm projectors back in middle and high school. I always insisted on being the projectionist (had already Super 8mm at home). Ah the good old Siemens 2000 and Bell & Howell TQ series.... How are you going about sound for the 16mm print? Optical is mono and limited in quality. Magnetic track glued onto the film print is unreliable and wears out (if it is available at all still....). I guess the best is still going with a separate, mechanically sync'd 16mm fully coated magnetic soundtrack on a specialized projector - that's the way they aired 16mm (and 35mm, but with a matching 17,5 mm full coat sound track with the exact same sprocket holes) back in the day (1970s until early '80s in my native Germany).

 

Just letting you know that I have actually used and/or seen live all this stuff back in the day. Please let me know. I'm interested in just about everything "film". Love it!

 

Christian

 

Yeah I'm right into it. The optical printer is one I've built myself from various components, including 3D printed parts. It's fully programmable using software I've written myself, with programmable motion control over the lens and camera.

 

The sound track I did for my last work (on 16mm) was done using double system sound in which the soundtrack plays on a separate sound system while the film runs through a projector. A digital sync system maintains sync between sound and film. This simply allows for a more complex sound track than that provided by an optical sound track, and it can be any number of tracks, but I just did it as a stereo track for the last film. However a friend has a large number of huge speakers that don't see much action these days - so we're thinking of making a film where we have a large number of speakers for the screening - and therefore a more complex sound track to be prepared for such. That would be awesome.

 

Regarding aspect ...

 

If the blow up makes the width of the source fit the width of the target, the result on 16mm will have black bars top and bottom.

But if one blows it up where the height of the source fits the height of the target, there won't be any black bars - one just loses the sides of the source.

 

Will probably just use 4:3, no black bars.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Will probably just use 4:3, no black bars.

 

 

Yep: since the Logmar is very stable you can have a very tight fit and don't lose any height to speak of (unless your gate isn't 100% clean), then you only lose a little on the sides and make the best use of both formats.

 

I thought about it loooong ago. I would print some kind of frame code into the print (can use the sound track) and have the sound coming from a hard drive. Just hook up a computer with a professional DAW (Cubase/Nuendo, Sonar, Digital Performer, Logic) and let the external interface do all the syncing. The sound editing should be done in the DAW (then mixed down to desired format: stereo, 5.1 etc). just using a small quicktime or Avi ect. file as long as the frame rate matches up (the way I work for tv commercials). And you're good to go: vintage 16mm projector with the optical sound system reading your code, sending it to a custom interface that communicates with a laptop computer (10+ year old ones will do just fine), then fire wire cable connection and D/A converters and you will have top notch killer sound way better than CD quality. This should work (just need to figure out how to print the correct frame code onto the optical sound track (to avoid modification on the 16mm projector). There are old 16mm cameras that record sound - so this should be do-able, just a matter of figuring it out. Here is an example of a 16mm camera recording optical sound (can be before or after printing the image):

 

The Auricon for example: instead of soundwaves, you can generate any kind of signal with a virtual synthesizer inside one of the DAWs - like clicks or beeps or shapes generated by oscillators - anything that triggers and contains information.

 

I already did that kind of stuff for visual cues (Hammond organ Leslie speed change to the pre-recorded dry signal etc. - yep: I also do a lot of DYI stuff on a pro level in my field):

 

 

Thought about all this loooong ago.

 

 

Just my thoughts and ideas thrown in,

Christian

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Hi Tyler,

 

I'm sure Logmar wished they could sell more cameras than they did, and as such one could call the result somewhat unsatisfactory. However, it's not like the old days where you have to sell a lot of cameras to make back your investment. I don't really know what Logmar's investment was, or if they made enough to make it all worthwhile, but they said early on they needed a certain minimum order to go through with the cameras and they got their orders. And they went ahead with it. So I don't see what the problem is. You say "nobody wanted the camera" but if nobody wanted it, they would not have gone ahead with it. It's as simple as that.

 

And in the grand scheme of things it need not matter. The camera can easily be regarded as an experiment, which tested out the idea of making a camera, and selling it. And out of such an experiment it can (and did in fact) position them for better business opportunities. In the same way that young filmmakers might make a film off their own bat, or young actors might do some gigs for free on a couple of short films, so that they can use such work as a demo or show reel. It's an investment, which need not pay off in the short term, but might pay off in the long term. Or not as the case may be. It's a gamble. But that's just the way these things are.

 

And as for a camera targeting a retro/hipster crowd - well I don't have any problem with anyone doing that at all. Why should I ? It's of no interest to me. But I don't see why anyone should have any problem with a camera that targets the market to which I belong. Why should anyone care at all? I have has much right to desire a custom gate registration pin Super8 camera as a retro/hipster has to desire a camera in which the end result is (according to you) unimportant.

 

This whole debate is just completely silly. The camera is what it is. One could just as equally argue the Logmar isn't a cup of coffee, and hold it to account on that basis. That's the ridiculousness at which your argument is effectively operating: that the camera isn't a chicken roll. That's not the camera's problem. That's your problem. Live with it.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Yep: since the Logmar is very stable you can have a very tight fit and don't lose any height to speak of (unless your gate isn't 100% clean), then you only lose a little on the sides and make the best use of both formats.

 

I thought about it loooong ago. I would print some kind of frame code into the print (can use the sound track) and have the sound coming from a hard drive. Just hook up a computer with a professional DAW (Cubase/Nuendo, Sonar, Digital Performer, Logic) and let the external interface do all the syncing. The sound editing should be done in the DAW (then mixed down to desired format: stereo, 5.1 etc). just using a small quicktime or Avi ect. file as long as the frame rate matches up (the way I work for tv commercials). And you're good to go: vintage 16mm projector with the optical sound system reading your code, sending it to a custom interface that communicates with a laptop computer (10+ year old ones will do just fine), then fire wire cable connection and D/A converters and you will have top notch killer sound way better than CD quality. This should work (just need to figure out how to print the correct frame code onto the optical sound track (to avoid modification on the 16mm projector). There are old 16mm cameras that record sound - so this should be do-able, just a matter of figuring it out. Here is an example of a 16mm camera recording optical sound (can be before or after printing the image):

 

The Auricon for example: instead of soundwaves, you can generate any kind of signal with a virtual synthesizer inside one of the DAWs - like clicks or beeps or shapes generated by oscillators - anything that triggers and contains information.

 

I already did that kind of stuff for visual cues (Hammond organ Leslie speed change to the pre-recorded dry signal etc. - yep: I also do a lot of DYI stuff on a pro level in my field):

 

 

Thought about all this loooong ago.

 

 

Just my thoughts and ideas thrown in,

Christian

 

Yes, printing timecode on the sound track is a good idea. I was going to try that last year, but didn't get around to it. A lot of good ideas such as these get discussed but end up being shelved - not because there is anything wrong with the ideas - but becasue there's a kind of barrier that exists between an idea and it's implementation - requiring a kind of spark to occur - that will jump start one out of the world of ideas into the world of actually doing it.

 

:)

 

C

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DTS, Digital Theater Systems, already solved all the problems with syncing film to digital. It's a simple timecode pulse recorded onto an optical audio track. In my eyes, this is really the best solution because ANY 16m projector with an optical reader could output the data into a decoder box. It's that decoder box, which would take analog and turn it into digital, which is the only real piece of hardware required. My thought is to make the box two way, so it can take timecode in and spit out analog, then visa versa for projection. This way if you can score an optical soundtrack recorder, all you've gotta do is plug it in and let it run. You could take the un-processed blow up, throw it into the recorder and stripe it with timecode. Of course, there would have to be some sort of sync mark on the film, maybe a punch or something because you'd be exposing that little bit of film when loading the optical soundtrack camera. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be within a few frames. Then in the playback software on your computer with the digital soundtrack, you can adjust offset based on the film's countdown and 2 pop. If you do the math right, it should work. Even if you don't, you can adjust the offset in the computer to any number you want, within the rage of timecode printed onto the film. Then you can offset the soundtrack digitally to match the film, save it and you're all done forever.

 

In terms of aspect ratio, that's super easy.. Anamorphic lenses. I see projection lens adaptors on ebay all the time. It's then down to the optical printer and theoretically, you could use the same adaptor for optical camera and projector, why not? Sure, you'd have to design your optical lineup using lenses that were similar sizes, but it would work. This way you can get almost any aspect ratio you want out of straight 1.37:1 16mm. Obviously, you need the soundtrack area or you could turn it into super 16. I've personally found converting projectors to super 16 to be something of a chore. Plus, now you've gotta develop your own optical path for the timecode and the film would be incompatible with any other projector.

 

I'm personally not a fan of 16mm blow up's. I think 16 makes a wonderful acquisition format, but once you get into projection, it's tricky because the prints are so fragile. It's not like the polyester 35mm theatrical prints, they're so robust, you've gotta put in quite a bit of effort to scratch/tear them. If I were making a feature, I'd be blowing up to 35mm because then you've got something you can take anywhere you want to project and it will survive forever. Obviously for something shot on super 8, this isn't worth while. But for stuff acquired on Super 16, you've got a lot more real estate on 35mm and it still looks really good, especially with low-grain stocks.

 

If you wish to watch a few films done this way, grab "Hurt Locker". It was a complete photochemical finish and the BluRay is made from the 35mm print. It looks pretty darn good, worth watching for any fan of narrow gauge. Remember it's long in the tooth now as well, our modern stocks are far better then they were back then.

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Well. just sharing my thoughts and things I read.

 

The idea do print identifying timecode with each frame is that when the film print breaks and has to be spliced, the sound will jump back to sync, omitting the missing frames. (like any print with optical sound would do).

 

Another things to consider (which of course you know): The motor of the projector must be very stable and at accurate speed, otherwise the sound will have audible speed issues (= incorrect pitch, wow and flutter).

Perhaps it is possible to record actual SMPTE timecode onto the optical soundtrack with a sound camera. The necessary band width needs to be known since 16mm optical sound (at best) only goes up to around 7000 Hz with a steep roll off after that. But there are ways to work around that (change the pitch digitally to fit into the frequency range). You certainly still know that SMPTE purr sound from video tape.

 

Just throwing around ideas.

 

Chistian

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Actually, projector speed isn't that much of a problem because it will only be off by a small margin and the computer can change pace to compensate. It just needs to be constantly reading the timecode and adjusting.

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DTS, Digital Theater Systems, already solved all the problems with syncing film to digital.

 

[EDIT]

 

If you wish to watch a few films done this way, grab "Hurt Locker". It was a complete photochemical finish and the BluRay is made from the 35mm print. It looks pretty darn good, worth watching for any fan of narrow gauge. Remember it's long in the tooth now as well, our modern stocks are far better then they were back then.

Thought about DTS. I remember de Dolby codes between 35mm sprocket holes. in addition to a modern optical sound track (to make the print compatible with older projection systems. Didn't know it would fit into the narrow bandwidth of 16mm optical sound.

 

re: "The Hurt Locker" (love that movie!). What about "Black Swan" and "The Wrestler" all made around the same time and filmed on Super 16mm? Of course now there is "Carol" and it seems like the Super 16mm camera original was scanned digitally and from then on it was image processing for either D-cinema or 35mm prints.

 

I'd also love to know how "This Is Spinal Tap" (hysterical! - Love it!) was done back in the day - since it also was shot on Super 16mm, still in an all photo chemical process up to 35mm prints.

 

Christian

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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Well. just sharing my thoughts and things I read.

 

The idea do print identifying timecode with each frame is that when the film print breaks and has to be spliced, the sound will jump back to sync, omitting the missing frames. (like any print with optical sound would do).

 

Another things to consider (which of course you know): The motor of the projector must be very stable and at accurate speed, otherwise the sound will have audible speed issues (= incorrect pitch, wow and flutter).

Perhaps it is possible to record actual SMPTE timecode onto the optical soundtrack with a sound camera. The necessary band width needs to be known since 16mm optical sound (at best) only goes up to around 7000 Hz with a steep roll off after that. But there are ways to work around that (change the pitch digitally to fit into the frequency range). You certainly still know that SMPTE purr sound from video tape.

 

Just throwing around ideas.

 

Chistian

 

Yes, the timecode on optical track is a very robust and portable idea.

 

In the alternative that I ended up building, screenings required that a custom projector be used. The downside of this was having to have this projector accompany the film on it's tour. For the custom projector I attached an encoder to the drive shaft of the projector which would feed frame count to the computer. The film had leader with handwritten numbers across about 30 frames. I'd lace up the projector and have it stopped somewhere in the middle of this leader. Whichever frame happened to be in the gate, I'd enter this number into the computer, at which point the system was primed. All that was then required was to start the projector, and off it would go.

 

The software I wrote varied the rate at which the sound played according to the rate at which the projector played. If the projector ran slow, then the sound would run slow. If it ran fast, so too would the sound. Indeed, if the projector ran in reverse, so did the sound. I didn't use any pitch correction but that was certainly considered. However tests demonstrated that it didn't really need it. Or at least I couldn't pick any problem, but perhaps some good ears in the audience might have been able to pick a slight difference in pitch to what the sound should have otherwise been.

 

 

With timecode printed on the film's optical sound track, it means one doesn't have to take a particular projector to a given venue - just the custom audio-to-computer cable - where one can just use projectors and audio systems already available at the venue.

 

Coinicidentally I'm working on an Auricon next week, where I'll be fitting a rate encoder to it. Like a projector, the auricon doesn't run exactly at the rate it otherwise should, so we're using the rate encoder to vary the sound recording to match whatever the auricon rate happens to be during the recording. Will eventually (I hope) test a timecode encoder/decoder for it as well. For future projects that might use this method.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Thought about DTS. I remember de Dolby codes between 35mm sprocket holes. in addition to a modern optical sound track (to make the print compatible with older projection systems. Didn't know it would fit into the narrow bandwidth of 16mm optical sound.

There are four systems on 35mm film.

 

Dolby digital = little varying dots between each sprocket hole

SDDS Sony Dynamic Digital Sound= Little varying dots on the edges of the film

DTS Digital Theater Systems = optical timecode track offset from the analog track

Optical Stereo = Usually encoded with Dolby A or SR noise reduction

 

None of these systems are compatible with one another, they all require different readers. Most older projectors put the readers above the projector, though more modern projectors put it in the optical audio housing, which has two readers on modern projectors, one for DTS and one for analog stereo. So there would be THREE individual readers the film needs to go through= DD, DTS, Analog. SDDS came and went very fast, it was a more advanced 24bit system, but Sony licensing was expensive and even though it was a superior system to Dolby Digital, there were problems with dirty prints and edge damage, which caused the format to be phased out. Even though DTS was only 6 channel initially, it faired well because unlike Dolby Digital and SDDS which were both digital on film, DTS had no audio on film. Where splices effected digital on film, they didn't effect the analog timecode. DTS read so far in advance, it was prepared for pretty much anything, so you could splice the living crap out of a film and not skip a beat. This is why MOST theaters stuck with DTS.

 

Before discrete soundtracks on 35mm, 70mm was the only format with enough real estate for the 6 channels of audio. This is why you see films shot and/or projected in 70mm in stereo or surround sound from as far back as the early 50's. Originally, every studio had their own format, some used 4 channels in front and one in the rear. Others divided it up like we have today, three in the front, one in the rear and one low frequency effects. It wasn't until more recently they made stereo rear channels. Even though there was magnetic sound available for 35mm, very few films were projected that way. For a small period, there were even VistaVision projectors with mag strips at some theaters as well, but it was yet another failed format. It was the mighty powerhouse of Fox that pushed through 70mm and since they owned more theaters, the format became synonymous with a "special" experience and at the time, there was nothing else like it.

 

For all the grander of 70mm, with it's surround sound and cleaner image, 35mm was left on the back burner. Even when Dolby A and SR were common place at the big theaters, the smaller houses still only had mono sound. It wasn't until the advent of Dolby Digital that theaters started pushing for better sound. So in the 90's there was a huge push and by the late 90's, 70mm was dead and 35mm had reached it's precious technology wise. I remember wanting to see Schindler's List really badly because it was officially the first movie to be distributed in digital audio... ohh and the thought of seeing a film shot in B&W reversal was amazing. Unfortunately, my parents didn't let me and I was a wee bit too young to see it on my own. So we waited until the summer of 1993 to see the second film released with digital audio; Jurassic Park. Funny how both were Spielberg films. I'm certain there were other smaller films released in between, but those were the most exciting.

 

Now, 70mm is all digital. It works with a very similar format to DTS, timecode on film and disks for playback.

 

re: "The Hurt Locker" (love that movie!). What about "Black Swan" and "The Wrestler" all made around the same time and filmed on Super 16mm? Of course now there is "Carol" and it seems like the Super 16mm camera original was scanned digitally and from then on it was image processing for either D-cinema or 35mm prints.

I'm pretty sure Hurt Locker is the only one that you can see the 35mm print on BluRay. The other one's, the BluRay's are made from the DI. I heard there was a photochemically made print of Carol running around, but the BluRay is absolutely the DI. There is another 16mm film being made right now by some european filmmaker, who is doing a festival run on 35mm with a blow up and the normal theatrical and video release is supposedly 4k DI. I read the article on Facebook, not sure of it's authenticity.

 

I'd also love to know how "This Is Spinal Tap" (hysterical! - Love it!) was done back in the day - since it also was shot on Super 16mm, still in an all photo chemical process up to 35mm prints.

The problem with blow-up's is that you always loose crispness through the added lensing. The digital process doesn't do that, in fact 16 scanned back to 35mm will always be crisper. Yet there is always data loss going from film to digital and back to film again. So it's a catch 22... which is why 4 perf 35mm was used for so many decades. It's an identical format to theatrical prints. You will notice, S16mm acquisition for theatrical, has expanded since the advent of DI processing.

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I'm pretty sure Hurt Locker is the only one that you can see the 35mm print on BluRay. The other one's, the BluRay's are made from the DI. I heard there was a photochemically made print of Carol running around, but the BluRay is absolutely the DI. There is another 16mm film being made right now by some european filmmaker, who is doing a festival run on 35mm with a blow up and the normal theatrical and video release is supposedly 4k DI. I read the article on Facebook, not sure of it's authenticity.

 

 

 

Thanks for all the information. Yep, I remember reading tons of articles with photos (blow ups) of frames of the the 35mm prints - in professional audio engineering magazines such as EQ and Sound Engineering (etc.). It is part of my line of work to be at least informed of what's new at any given time. I watched quite a few commercials in movie theaters where I composed the music (and often did the sound design).

 

Here in Europe it was crazy during the mid/late '90s: make a TV commercial and you need to do it at 25 fps (European PAL standard) - of course the cinema/theatrial version (always running longer - often 60 seconds). is made and approved by the client together with the tv spots (standard is 30 sec or seldom 45 sec, but to cut costs after a week, only the 20 sec versions and shorter so-called "reminders" will be aired (where I was located at least) . Now played back on 35mm (often bad transfers from standard tv video - mostly Betacam and digital Betacam formats as the master(s)). Your audio is almost half a note (or correc tly: half a step which is one fret off on a guitar and one adjacent key on a piano!) lower in pitch (same with all movies done on 24 fps - they would run on 25 fps on TV, any video tape. laser disc and DVD - BluRay has more sophisticated data formats that allow for different frame rates). Again: You are almost half a step too high in pitch - together with the slightly altered timbres (formant = resonance frequency patterns changes together with pitch) of anything including actors' voices and tempo). Still a lot of movie clips on YouTube at 25 fps which should be 24 fps (If I have to use this as a reference: fortunately I have the software to bring it back to how it should be (not without any data loss, but more than good enough for reference.)

 

Anyway: original music for commercials is basically dead here in Europe (cheap library music patched together and pop songs are usually the way to go - no more sung jingles as back in the day - completely out of fashion since long ago). If I get the occasional job, they'll send me a poor quality (= small CPU footprint) reference video to sync the audio to. The final product is done elsewhere (mostly in Final Cut Pro).

 

Well I have a question: how are DI's (digital intermediates) used for BluRay releases? Should be basically just a data format such as ProRes or a variation of Mpeg-4 AVC (H.264)? Please let me know because of my upcoming scans - for Super 16mm camera tests and later for more serious projects such as behind the scenes footage of our funk/R&B band with 5 piece horn section - always a great subject for motion picture film. No need for sync sound (until I give it a shot at music videos with a decent camera) - just play through any tune from an album or live gig, with some wild recorded location audio - and you'll be fine :-D

 

No worries: I will not do any kind of self promotion here (no links to any of my S 16 footage unless it's 100% non commercial). I know forum rules and I will of course comply :-)

 

Thanks,

Christian

 

Thanks for all the great insight,

 

Christian

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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Well I have a question: how are DI's (digital intermediates) used for BluRay releases?

They stopped scanning intermediates years ago. So the DCP becomes the master and what is used to make the highly compressed MPEG files on DVD/BluRay. Back in the day, one of the intermediates became the "negative" and that was scanned for video release. When they say "remastered from the original negative" it's usually from an intermediate of some kind, not the actual camera negative.

 

No pro res or mpeg, just RGB color space DPX or JPEG2000 used for mastering. Pro Res may take over someday, but it's one more conversion process that's unnecessary since it's not what they use for coloring or distribution.

 

Now the audio does get remixed and in a lot of cases, the picture gets cleaned up as well. Most features go through quite a bit of work after theatrical before video release. So this is part of the reason why they stopped scanning intermediates because the prints in the theaters, don't represent the "final" film in a lot of cases.

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Thanks again for the information.

 

Of course I have seen a lot of very recent BluRay releases where the master was clearly analog film generations away from the camera original (slight weave and float, a little too much grain overall and of course white and dark - neg and pos - dust speckles).

Still modern scanning and data compression yield very pleasing results compared to the utter crap found on many a DVD release.

 

Sure: the original camera negs are to be touched only on very rare occasions ("from scratch" restoring projects - I think the results on such classics as the James Bond movies and, say "Jaws" are fantastic - even more so knowing that 35mm archival low fade prints were struck - should outlive us all if stored properly). Not so sure (BTW) about many a Disney animated classic. The artifacts of the animation cells (shadows), slight color inconsistencies, dust, etc. and film grain gave it character and a certain look. Some of the new - completely digitally cleaned up (basically re-built from scratch) - re-issues look like digital video to my eyes: drained of all life.

The decade old discussion (of film buffs): not sure about younger generations, they will grow up to an ultra clean look and dismiss film. Glad seeing restoring projects of very old films revealing the image as it was intended, opening it up for a new generation (so they don't just fake to love, say, Kurosawa - because it's trendy, but they actually enjoy the master's work and discover how he influenced modern (post 1950s) Hollywood, Leone and as a consequence Tarantino - big time!).

 

Discovered some YouTube footage of young folks (film students, aspiring television camera operators, etc. ) discovering 16mm film and its "steep learning curve" and "unforgivingness" . Yep: two variables are already out of the exposure triangle equation: ISO (= film stock - chose wisely before loading if you can), shutter speed (unless the shutter blade angle is variable this is a fixed value) - so you need to get exposure right just with aperture and lighting. For me (since I lived through all that) it's completely normal. No big deal. At least it's great seeing young folks finally discovering that point and shoot digital devices which do it all for you are not the best solution for ace results - and actually give "all manual" and even real film a hands-on try.

 

Will look into the various data compression file standards a little closer. Thanks for the information,

 

Christian

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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Of course I have seen a lot of very recent BluRay releases where the master was clearly analog film generations away from the camera original (slight weave and float, a little too much grain overall and of course white and dark - neg and pos - dust speckles).

Sure, anything without a digital intermediate. Since most people didn't use DI until in the last 10 year or so, we're talking quite a while since intermediates were the "final".

 

Still modern scanning and data compression yield very pleasing results compared to the utter crap found on many a DVD release.

You'd be surprised, most BluRay releases are made from identical masters used to make the DVD's, only with color correction. Heck, even the 97' Star War re-issue DVD is identical to the BluRay, same source! It's just so expensive to re-capture a feature film from the original negative, it's really not cost effective for distributors. This is why UHD BluRay is kinda of a dead format before it was even released. There is so little UHD content out there and 4k scans are very expensive to do, when you add re-correcting the ENTIRE FILM.

 

Sure: the original camera negs are to be touched only on very rare occasions ("from scratch" restoring projects - I think the results on such classics as the James Bond movies and, say "Jaws" are fantastic - even more so knowing that 35mm archival low fade prints were struck - should outlive us all if stored properly).

Yep, but when you make something digital and make it analog again, you are loosing what makes it special in some ways. What was done with films like Vertigo, prior to the digital age, is quite impressive. I vastly prefer it's restoration over Jaws, which has a very unusual digital-like motion blur, that didn't exist in the film prints or prior DVD release. Not a big deal, just depressing.

 

Discovered some YouTube footage of young folks (film students, aspiring television camera operators, etc. ) discovering 16mm film and its "steep learning curve" and "unforgivingness" . Yep: two variables are already out of the exposure triangle equation: ISO (= film stock - chose wisely before loading if you can), shutter speed (unless the shutter blade angle is variable this is a fixed value) - so you need to get exposure right just with aperture and lighting. For me (since I lived through all that) it's completely normal. No big deal. At least it's great seeing young folks finally discovering that point and shoot digital devices which do it all for you are not the best solution for ace results - and actually give "all manual" and even real film a hands-on try.

Ya know, I have a film school and my job is to teach youth how to use film cameras. The first shoot we did in 2016 was with a bunch of high school kids who had never touched a film camera before. They had very basic experience using digital equipment as well. I trained them on what to do and I sat back and watched. When they started to make mistakes, I'd gently correct them. The net result is an amazing piece of film done by 15 year old's, shot on Super 16 with no digital backups. When it's done, I will post a copy on the forums. All of that to say, it's really not difficult at all. Film is very easy to work with if you're told the limitations up front. I find it very forgiving compared to digital, where a slight over expose has nothing in the highlights and a slight under expose gives you grain/digital noise. I find myself fighting to make digital look acceptable, where film? With our modern digital scanning and color correcting tools, things can be pretty messed up and I'll get a decent image out of it. The problem is, students don't go out and experiment anymore, they just don't bother, so they never really learn

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Yep, but when you make something digital and make it analog again, you are loosing what makes it special in some ways. What was done with films like Vertigo, prior to the digital age, is quite impressive. I vastly prefer it's restoration over Jaws, which has a very unusual digital-like motion blur, that didn't exist in the film prints or prior DVD release. Not a big deal, just depressing.

 

 

Ya know, I have a film school and my job is to teach youth how to use film cameras. The first shoot we did in 2016 was with a bunch of high school kids who had never touched a film camera before. They had very basic experience using digital equipment as well. I trained them on what to do and I sat back and watched. When they started to make mistakes, I'd gently correct them. The net result is an amazing piece of film done by 15 year old's, shot on Super 16 with no digital backups. When it's done, I will post a copy on the forums. All of that to say, it's really not difficult at all. Film is very easy to work with if you're told the limitations up front. I find it very forgiving compared to digital, where a slight over expose has nothing in the highlights and a slight under expose gives you grain/digital noise. I find myself fighting to make digital look acceptable, where film? With our modern digital scanning and color correcting tools, things can be pretty messed up and I'll get a decent image out of it. The problem is, students don't go out and experiment anymore, they just don't bother, so they never really learn

 

Great! Yep: as myself and many colleagues of mine (musicians/producers) say (roughly early '40s and older): it's hard with the younger generations: they have it all made easy for them (or so they think), giving them a false sense of control. They don't know what true achievement is. Music is my gig, but I'm close to film (and both art forms greatly overlap in many ways): so there is a lot of software out there where you can get maximum results with minimum effort. At the same time the worldwide standards of mainstream music are being lowered and lowered - started long a go. The real great bands and musicians/composers are to be found in small niche markets or unexpectedly on YouTube and the likes. I applaud anyone taking risks, trying to show the world that there is more out there than depressing trendy pop music, film music that all sounds the same, and rock music that sounds like a brick wall. Classical musicians call stuff from the very early 20th century "modern". Conclusion: cinema is dying and music is already dead (I am not a pessimist - I am basically just quoting people and agree).

 

Didn't know about the digital motion smear in "Jaws". I don't buy BluRays anymore. A huge DVD collection that turned into worthless garbage (just like the audio CD collection before that) taught me a lesson for the rest of my life.

 

This digital motion smear artifact is a pet peeve of mine. I hate that with a passion. When I saw - for example - the action scenes in Michael Mann's (a director I truly, greatly admire I should say!) otherwise great "Collateral" - I was thrown off for good. Looked like a television cop show video to me. I read all about the difficulties shooting on digital video at the time (hard drive space, long cables etc.) All that hassle on untested equipment to capture L.A. at night (because film doesn't have the latitude)??? Well Stanley Kubrick shot "Barry Lyndon" just with candle light on film (special lenses, sure) and his last movie "Eyes Wide Shut" also was exclusively available light. I am positive there are cameras and 35mm film that would have cought L.A. by night with enough shadow detail without looking like a "tv cop show". But that's just me - I don't know the full tech specs and the true motivations behind the decisions. Just one final word regarding "Collateral": it was not even trying to hide that it was digital video. Result: I never thought a story was being told that might eventually unfold. It looked as if it was "happening now" and I was just watching something without a story. If it was film, I knew everything is part of a grander picture. That's the power of film!

 

Yep: the great Hitchcock classics such as "Vertigo" (Vista Vision - 35mm horizontal: *huge smile on my face* - perfect for 70mm release prints - which were shown short after the restoration - I remember an article by Roger Ebert) were restored analogically before it was too late. I'm glad they did it. I have the "restoring making of" featurettes in my humble old DVD collection of Hitchcocks greatest movies. "Psycho" is by far the worst. Some frame rate conversion artifacts and a very soft, milky image. I saw parts of the restored BluRay on YouTube: even with the heavy data compression it looked fantastic. I never saw that movie in this quality: flawless, pin sharp, nice contrast and yet no crushed blacks, blown out highlights and no cranked HDR (high dynamic range) look which even photographers start to dislike step by step.

 

I highly appreciate your patience with the kids! Film takes care and effort, but it isn't all that hard. The arts are about achievement (not necessarily recognition - as we all know by well known poor Oscar decisions by the Academy throughout the decades, and that's just one example). An true achievement needs to be earned - by effort. The age old "now you can have it all in one single package at your fingertips" sales pitch/ad slogan is nothing but B.S. - If everyone can do it, I'm not interested.

 

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and valuable knowledge - and for reading my ramblings (trying to contribute as much as I can).

 

Christian

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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Great! Yep: as myself and many colleagues of mine (musicians/producers) say (roughly early '40s and older): it's hard with the younger generations: they have it all made easy for them (or so they think), giving them a false sense of control. They don't know what true achievement is.

Yea and it's not just them! It's the big filmmakers as well, with the crazy use of green screen in our modern movies and TV shows. Filmmakers today from all generations, have given up taking any risks. It's a business and today's cinema-bound movies are pretty poor, predictable and made for the masses. They'd rather shoot a bunch of green screen and make the content in post production, where they can manipulate everything, then even bother going to location, building sets and making it look realistic. In the long run, it actually costs them MORE money to work this way, as digital artists are very expensive and you need quite a bit of them. So in the end, all of our fancy digital technology has just made things MORE costly.

 

Music is my gig, but I'm close to film (and both art forms greatly overlap in many ways): so there is a lot of software out there where you can get maximum results with minimum effort. At the same time the worldwide standards of mainstream music are being lowered and lowered - started long a go.

The music business is totally and officially dead. The fanboys will listen to anything artists produce and they don't care anymore about quality either. They hire and fire producers like they're going out of style and most of them have no idea how to write decent music. Sure, there are niche markets and bands who haven't given up, but all of the groups I loved in my youth are all "synthesized" today, which is really too bad. I haven't went to the store or iTunes to buy a "new" album in at least 8 years. To me, that's a travesty because there are so many excellent musicians producing excellent work, but they're unrecognized for one reason or another.

 

I applaud anyone taking risks, trying to show the world that there is more out there than depressing trendy pop music, film music that all sounds the same, and rock music that sounds like a brick wall. Classical musicians call stuff from the very early 20th century "modern". Conclusion: cinema is dying and music is already dead (I am not a pessimist - I am basically just quoting people and agree).

I applaud risk taking as well, being so talented that you're "against the grain" product actually works.

 

Ohh music has been dead since the Beatles. LOL :)

 

I think Cinema has been dead since Stanley Kubrick died in 1999. I know that sounds stupid and far fetched, but in a lot of ways, since then we've been so focused on technology, all we do now is make whiz-bang. If you don't make whiz-bang, your product is worthless. It doesn't matter which delivery sector you're in; people want to see fancy transitions, explosions, accidents, anything to get a "rise" out of them, even on youtube. I have a phenomenal web series which tells stories about people who ride dirt bikes. They're well shot, well edited, tell an actual story and ya know what, nobody cares. When I make a video about crashes, I get hundreds of thousands of hits. Nobody wants to learn, they just want to shut their brains off. Honestly, at the rate we're going, I think the modern media is killing our society very quickly. Nobody has to think anymore, they're just force fed poop all day long and all of it's garbage, only put there to sell advertising. This is why I consider Cinema completely and utterly dead. Sure, every year a few filmmakers make a great product that gets picked up and distributed, but everything else is garbage and it's the same with music.

 

Didn't know about the digital motion smear in "Jaws". I don't buy BluRays anymore. A huge DVD collection that turned into worthless garbage (just like the audio CD collection before that) taught me a lesson for the rest of my life.

Yea, this is a very common issue with the de-grain plugin. It smears the image, making it look very digital. The 4k screening I saw was very disappointing, it looked like a modern movie, no flicker, no crispness, it was soft, smeared and blah. All of that beautiful grain was gone and it really blows.

 

This digital motion smear artifact is a pet peeve of mine. I hate that with a passion. When I saw - for example - the action scenes in Michael Mann's (a director I truly, greatly admire I should say!) otherwise great "Collateral" - I was thrown off for good. Looked like a television cop show video to me. I read all about the difficulties shooting on digital video at the time (hard drive space, long cables etc.) All that hassle on untested equipment to capture L.A. at night (because film doesn't have the latitude)???

I've been done with digital cinema for quite sometime. The Alexa looks good, but the other cameras stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone tries to push digital into areas they assume film can't go and sure it's not grainy, but the motion blur and highlight clipping in those night shots, make it look like bad daytime television. Plus, digital projectors in a lot of cases, look like crap. They're uncalibrated, low contrast, have huge aliasing issues due to the lack of pixel depth and are in a lot of ways, lower quality today, then they were 10 years ago. Frankly, the whole reason I went to the cinema was to see something I couldn't make and learn from it. Today however, I have a decent looking digital camera that shoots RAW and all the tools to make it look good, plus a home theater with DLP projector. So all the technology they use on film sets, is the same technology available to the general public. So... what's the "fun" in that? Cinema use to be like the theatre, a place presenting a product that you the audience, could not make. A place that delivers a "special" experience that the audience can't recreate when they go home. Digital technology has allowed everyone to do anything, which democratizes the art form to a level never seen before. In doing so, it's basically imploding on itself. There is too much content and too little money, so much of it isn't seen. Plus, unlike recording an album, the cost of making a decent feature length film is astronomically higher no matter what you do. So you can't exactly give it away for free, like so many artists do.

 

Well Stanley Kubrick shot "Barry Lyndon" just with candle light on film (special lenses, sure) and his last movie "Eyes Wide Shut" also was exclusively available light.

That takes a real artist...

 

Yep: the great Hitchcock classics such as "Vertigo" (Vista Vision - 35mm horizontal: *huge smile on my face* - perfect for 70mm release prints - which were shown short after the restoration - I remember an article by Roger Ebert) were restored analogically before it was too late. I'm glad they did it. I have the "restoring making of" featurettes in my humble old DVD collection of Hitchcocks greatest movies. "Psycho" is by far the worst. Some frame rate conversion artifacts and a very soft, milky image. I saw parts of the restored BluRay on YouTube: even with the heavy data compression it looked fantastic. I never saw that movie in this quality: flawless, pin sharp, nice contrast and yet no crushed blacks, blown out highlights and no cranked HDR (high dynamic range) look which even photographers start to dislike step by step.

What kills me is that I recently saw a print of a classic Warner Brothers film 'The Naked Spur' shot in the 50's, mostly exteriors in the mountains. I had forgotten how good these films look "unrestored", in their original formatting on the big screen, on 35mm. No highlight clipping, no motion blur, beautiful grain structure, just a fabulous experience. Sure, the print wasn't perfect, but it was damn good for sitting in the vault. Same year, I saw a print of Sam Fullers 'Pickup on South Street' and it too was quite amazing, though it had been restored. I knew right away it was restored by watching the print. The crisp sliver flicker was missing! I went to the projection room and asked the projectionist what he thought and analyzing the head of the print, we found it was made from a 4k DCP. So here we go again, now even the film prints are digital, what's the point?

 

I highly appreciate your patience with the kids! Film takes care and effort, but it isn't all that hard. The arts are about achievement (not necessarily recognition - as we all know by well known poor Oscar decisions by the Academy throughout the decades, and that's just one example). An true achievement needs to be earned - by effort. The age old "now you can have it all in one single package at your fingertips" sales pitch/ad slogan is nothing but B.S. - If everyone can do it, I'm not interested.

Yep totally agree.

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The problem with blow-up's is that you always loose crispness through the added lensing. The digital process doesn't do that, in fact 16 scanned back to 35mm will always be crisper. Yet there is always data loss going from film to digital and back to film again. So it's a catch 22... which is why 4 perf 35mm was used for so many decades. It's an identical format to theatrical prints. You will notice, S16mm acquisition for theatrical, has expanded since the advent of DI processing.

 

A blow up from 16 to 35 involves a lens.

A digital scan of 16 involves a lens.

 

So if the blowup loses crispness, it is not due to any additional lensing used with respect to digital.

 

The reason for various differences are not so much due to the generic ideas involved (such as the use of lenses) but the particular implementation - what kind of lens, what kind of film stock, what kind of digital processing, etc.

 

And various assumptions don't always prove correct even if they otherwise stand to reason (or seem to).

 

For example, one could say there are losses when going from film to digital, and conclude from such that surely it stands to reason that going direct to digital (as in making/using a digital camera) should give a better result, since one has removed a generation. The reason this isn't necessarily so requires some understanding of the physical differences between film and digital systems, how they interact with each other, and how perception works through all of this.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Not so sure (BTW) about many a Disney animated classic. The artifacts of the animation cells (shadows), slight color inconsistencies, dust, etc. and film grain gave it character and a certain look. Some of the new - completely digitally cleaned up (basically re-built from scratch) - re-issues look like digital video to my eyes: drained of all life.

Yeah, I really wish there could be a choice to see those animated movies in their original form, even if they degraded a bit (or a lot). I don't mind if there exists a digitally cleaned up version as long as we have a good digital copy of an untouched film. As you said, all these inconsistencies give life to the picture, which is especially important in segments where there is otherwise no movement (no changes between character poses) - slight movement of the film, grain, scratches, etc. all prevent those scenes to look too static. Also, the film medium is much better at blending together various styles (cels painted with solid color and backgrounds done in watercolors for examples), because of it'grain and also because it softens everything a bit. With digital, everything stands out on it's own. Then there is of course the feeling that you are watching an product of craftsmen, of people who bleed their heart and soul into it. When you see the copy of untouched print, it's a better reflection of all the hardwork that went into it, IMO, there is a sense of history.

 

I am very interested in animation and there is so much temptation to just do stuff on a computer, as opposed to buying all the equipment necessary to do it traditionally (which nobody is doing anymore. Currently "traditional" stands for non-3D, but it's all done on a computer. At worst it's some rigged flash abomination and at best it's actually drawn, but still inked and colored digitally). I really understand why people are doing it this way, because it's so much faster, but when I see some old stuff (I just watched American Pop from Ralph Bakshi yesterday, which is mostly rotoscoped, but visually incredibly hypnotizing, a beautiful movie (and it hasn't been digitally cleaned up)) ) there is just no doubt in my mind which method is superior. There is no contest. The only argument one can then make is that of convenience, and that is really a bad argument if you are into this because of passion.

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I'm not a great fan of rotoscoping. And as a kid I really couldn't quite get into Bakshi's use of such. I much prefer it when an animator is making up the result, rather than just tracing photography. That said, it's still seems to look better than a machine doing the same. But how much better?

 

Or perhaps machines are more appropriate systems for this sort of thing:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/08/31/this-algorithm-can-create-a-new-van-gogh-or-picasso-in-just-an-hour/

 

Or perhaps not:

http://join.lovingvincent.com/

 

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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So if the blowup loses crispness, it is not due to any additional lensing used with respect to digital.

I should have phrased it differently, but lensing is a problem due to as you pointed out; the implementation is different.

 

For example, one could say there are losses when going from film to digital, and conclude from such that surely it stands to reason that going direct to digital (as in making/using a digital camera) should give a better result, since one has removed a generation. The reason this isn't necessarily so requires some understanding of the physical differences between film and digital systems, how they interact with each other, and how perception works through all of this.

Well, there is far more control in a lab when it comes to analog to digital conversion and the processing of the image into it's RGB components, then in a camera, especially with modern single CMOS imagers.

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I'm not a great fan of rotoscoping. And as a kid I really couldn't quite get into Bakshi's use of such. I much prefer it when an animator is making up the result, rather than just tracing photography. That said, it's still seems to look better than a machine doing the same. But how much better?

I am not a huge fan of rotoscoping either, especially as an alternative to actual animating. But if you don't view it as such, it can be a very visually interesting representation of the material that was shot. Besides just being a potential stylistic choice, there is some deeper difference in experience between a normal/rotoscoped movie. Some subtleties get exagerrated and some are lost in the process of tracing, and of course a skilled animator won't just trace the image, there will always be some intentional reinterpretation and exagerration. Whether an algorithem could do that is honestly not relevant to me, because even if it could do it, I would much prefer an actual human being making the decisions and doing the tracing.

 

 

Or perhaps not:

http://join.lovingvincent.com/

 

Wow, this is fascinating.

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Well, there is far more control in a lab when it comes to analog to digital conversion and the processing of the image into it's RGB components, then in a camera, especially with modern single CMOS imagers.

 

That and the fact that film encodes the source image (encoded in light) in a fundamentally different way from how a digital sensor does. Film encodes information which digital misses, (and vice versa). One's preference for one or the other will be a function of which information one prefers.

 

But far more interestingly, film codes it's information in a way that makes it available for subsequent transfer to digital. A subsequent digital transfer would otherwise fail to pick up that information. It is this ability which makes film desirable as an acquisition technology - be it for photochemical post/delivery or digital post/delivery. Film is able to refactor an original image in a way that a direct-to-digital system can't. It becomes particularly obvious when doing grading.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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