Phil Connolly

The g95 looks nice but its on 8 bit 4:2:0 internal and 8-bit 4:2:2 - log profiles are not great when you limited to 8-bits. You risk pushing into banding. Thats why the Black Bagics are so impressive... but your right it would be a stretch to get a full shooting package under 2K. Although might be possible if you cut the accessories to the bone and upgrade later. For instance it will work fine with a sub $100 Panasonic kit zoom from ebay. A set up that shoots images is doable under $2k. E.g kit zoom, SD (not CFast media), knock off LP-E6 Batteries, make do with the internal screen (its great) The you have a set up that has a future proof camera at the core and you can upgrade the glass and camera support later. I've shot several projects on the BM4K just using a couple of LP- batts ($40 each), Panasonic 14 -140 Lumix zoom (about $300 to $350 secondhand) and a lightweight tripod - bringing everying under 2k. Yes it would be nice to a better rig - but its doable and the think I like with the package is how far I can push the image in post. 8 bit footage isn't in the same ball park. At this stage you don't need decent lenses, but an "OK" lens, you can always rent better glass for high end projects. I'd rather have ProRes and a middling lens over h.264 8-bit and better glass. Also Lumix lenses are reasonably cheap and sharp enough. Any cheaper camera is either going to be limited by its internal codec, need for external recorder or need for ML hack. Or if you want to go super cheap - maybe look at a Panasonic AF-101 - they are going for very little on ebay($300-$400). Its not an amazing camera, but you get super 35 and a standard camcorder layout, XLR audio, built in ND and clean SDI/HDMI out. That would be a good starter cam for learning on.

Blackmagic Pocket 4K - you need a few bits and bobs to get it rigged (e.g external batt) But there is nothing to touch it in the sub $2k bracket. It shoots proper codecs RAW and ProRes, 4K and HD. Upto 120fps in Hd and the quality is superb and its easy to use in terms of menus. I've shot about 5 projects on it so far and I'm just blown away. It has great latitude and the low light is excellent. I may even break my "never buy a camera" rule and get this one

Chilled fog will rise when it heats up. On a warm day its not going to stay cool for very long. Perhaps if you shoot really early in the morning and get the fog really cold it will stay low enough, long enough to get the shot.

In terms of export settings isn't it a 1.33X squeeze? So when exporting you just multiply the horizontal by 1.33 So 1920 x 1080 becomes 2554 x 1080 https://www.shopmoment.com/momentist/4-easy-ways-to-de-squeeze-anamorphic-footage

Badly - I've been involved in a few mail outs back in the CD-R days. We had very low response rates and its an expensive form of marketing. Also lots of people won't risk playing a random disk thats turned up for fear of viruses etc.. Fewer devices have optical media drives and people are getting rid of their DVD players - so many people won't have the means to play a posted DVD. Also online tools like Facebook marketing is going to reach many more people for the same cost,. Its like $0.02 per person on facebook (a simplification) - but a DVD is going to cost several dollars to send and may only reach 1 person (if they play it).

yeah the is a quality hit since bayer cameras are lower resolution then their stated resolution. A 4k camera probably resolves about 3K. You do need to oversample, thats because a 4K sensor is only 2K green, 1k blue and 1k red - its not possible to resolve 4K RGB properly with that data set - the software has to interpolate. A 20% crop on 6k - gives nearly 5k. So thats more then enough for a 2K finish and not too bad for 4K. I guess they sought a balance between post flexibility and quality. I suppose on the lens thing, its a different feel - but lots of RED's have larger sensors so Fincher is just cropping down to around super 35mm. Personally I agree with Tyler, I prefer to push for the best quality for oversampling reasons - and believe its important to commit to a framing decision on set. That said you can't argue with Fincher's results his films do look pretty good....

who Fincher? I think its down to wanting perfection. Watch his recent films, the operating is flawless - better then is possible by a great operator, because its a combination of a well designed shot, good operating and post tweeking. I think the idea is if the technique is perfect, no wobbles etc... its invisible. Shooting with look around is just part of that strategy, its not about saving decisions till post, but if a shot needs to be post stablised you've got the room to do it without effecting the intended framing.. Its good for post as well, things like tracking markers can be placed outside the frame - save's having to paint them out Also if you've got an 6 to 8K camera - you can go for a big crop without having too much of a quality impact

Anyone, but the sound department. They like to pretend they are recording an on location radio drama. Looking viewfinders or monitors would break that illusion. Thats why they cross themselves and spit whenever they pass video-village and offer a short prayer to Les Paul, to cleanse themselves of the "visions" Due to union rules, on the "Fast and Furious" movies/film's only the Teamsters were allowed to look in the viewfinders. They would describe the shots using simple Baseball terms and the operator (blindfolded of course) would adjust. To an outsider it sounds ridiculous but its actually a very efficent workflow. It prevents the shot being constrained by arbitrary limitations. (any errors of course are cleaned up in post) I thought you knew this - its pretty standard workflow.

Depends on the scene - handheld can inject some energy into a scene or be a distraction if too wobbly. I don't mind hand held - but I only use it with larger camera and wider lens. The vibration type wobble you can get when hand holding small cameras is nearly always distracting. In those situations, I keep the camera on the tripod and pick up the camera and tripod and handhold both to provide some much needed inertia - gets heavy but looks more stable. But is down to taste. I use hand held a lot on music videos but I've never used it on a drama I've directed Its also down to the tool you have to hand. I've used handheld because we didn't have the budget for a stedicam or time to lay track etc... Its the cheapest simplest way to move the camera after all. Gimbals can improve handheld shots - but they can cause their own problems - you do see quite "robotic" looking gimbal operating with jerky pans from op's that arn't experienced on them - its usually easy to spot gimbal vs stedicam.

I think you pulled the lighting quite nicely - It looks natural and not too flat - looked like a tricky size space to work with. Just curious about the motivation to do it in a long take? For me it didn't really add much energy to the scene and at time compromises the coverage/lighting. The risk with long takes its it can make you hyper aware of the operating and moves Did you consider more conventional coverage would have allowed you to finesse the lighting/composition more?

I think they do what they can to plan - but when you have these giant movies with 1000's of VFX shots that have to be delivered on a date - it can become a case of throwing people at the task and its often not that efficient. The release date is often decided before principle photography starts. On big budgets when you using an A+ VFX house that can probably fix anything, there might be tendency to get sloppy on set. But in some case's its cheaper to fix in post then push an expensive crew into expensive overtime (swings and rounder bouts)

Just spotted this on the cooke website: http://shotoncooke.com/video/flickering-souls-set-alight/ Very unique look by having the anamorphic lens stretch vertically. I'd be keen to try this on my next short, since I'm looking for a different texture and conventional anamorphic is getting a bit ubiquitous. If done on a 4K or 6K camera you'd still have a decent amount of resolution to work with even if you cropped down to 1.85 or 2.39... enough for a 2K finish anyways... hmmmm interesting Any one else done something similar?

I've heard the Fuji Cabrio Eng lens series is good in Super 35 - but not quite the range of 2/3" zooms. I've not used Amira's in multicam. I have tried the Black Magic Ursa minis in multi-cam, you can control a lot of the parameters remotely and they work nicely on smaller multi-cam shoots using the BM Atem Switcher. Most of my live multi-cam experience is with 2/3" cameras. Is this for a live broadcast or will it have post production? Its a lot easier if you record ISO's and grade the footage afterwards.

However if the simulation theory is correct and we are all in a giant computer. Everything, even film would be digital or some quantum version of digital.

I think the main issue is finding long enough super 35mm zooms. Most big arena concerts rely on a couple 84x or 100x zooms on 2/3" cams at the back of the room. You could look at getting a the Canon CN-E 50-1000mm super 35mm zoom for the rear positions, but won't give you as tight a shot as on a 2/3" with similar focal length of course. So you might have to bring some of the camera positions forward, and/or only use the rear place cameras for wider shots. Or consider a mix - include a few 2/3" broadcast cams with zooms to get the range. I've spotted a lot of time it can be a mixure of cameras - e.g super 35 near the front to get the beauty shots and 2/3" for where you need the big zoom. The lighting at a concert is so dramatic - is easier to match different types of cameras, since the lighting is changing all the time - its harder to spot the quality diff between cameras if your careful: I was at the above gig and spotted at mix of 2/3" broadcast cams, RED Ones and 2 Panavision Genisis 's, it would probably be easier to match cams now The other advantage of 2/3" broadcast zooms is you can get stabalised ones. Panasonic do a 2/3" Varicam - so maybe match that way and do a full Panasonic or full Sony shoot. Would you put servos on the Iris's? On traditional multi-cam the exposure is controlled centrally by a racks operator in the truck. You might want to replicate that. Super 35mm cameras might have more latitude, but the dynamic range of concert lighting can be huge and you'd still need to co-ordinate iris shifts between cameras. Servos on the iris and a racks op is a little bit slicker then calling stops for the cam ops to ride on the fly. One concert TV lighting director I know, when working with 2/3" cameras would put Lee Diffusion (Soft 1) on the back of the lenses. A little bit of diffusion helps make the lights bloom and glow. So it might be something you want to consider. The nice thing about putting a gel filter on the back of the lens is its doesn't need matt boxes and the filters are cheap - glass filters would be a notable cost on a 15 cam shoot

I guess its the same linguistic short hand that makes us say Two Three Five!, when we mean 2.39:1. I can become an aspect ratio pedant if not careful. I once got into an argument about aspect ratios with Brian Tufano BSC, even though I'm a fan of his work, I still had to pick a fight. I hope I'd be more mature now... ?

When the good Lady Wife Paint and Roto Artist, her indoors - worked on movies I was always shocked to here how much was left in production for post to clean up. Some productions lean heavily on post, shots that you'd expect would be green screened are hand Roto'ed in post to save time on set and avoid setting up and lighting the green screen properly. Although it sounded like there was a lot of sloppy greenscreen lighting practice on the movies she worked on, most comps would need some for of roto to fix. I think schedualing's a factor these big movies hitting a release date. E.g visual effects would be happening parallel to the edit. Resulting in shots being worked on and composited even if they don't make the cut. More efficient thought and set and world flows probably give better results. But on these comic book movies - they have 1000's of VFX shots, so they have to put 1000's of VFX artists on it simultaneously. Its often not a case of one person being able to own an artistic decision, because so much is happening simultaneously at every stage. Or the VFX dept are asked to do miracles rather then reshoot. E.g my wife worked on shot (true story). The actors were running through some woods. The creatives decided they wanted to change the woods to a different location. So rather then reshooting. The whole sequence had to be hand roto'ed to cut the actors out of the back drop, the branches in the foreground needed to be painted out. One of the actors was waving a sword about - it had too much motion blur to be roto'ed so it had to be replaced by CGI. The shot was originally well shot by the by the DOP, but their was no intention to change the background or a green screen would have been used on set. The VFX guys did a great job, but the resulting shot didn't look brilliant because its impossible to really nail. It was an expensive dumb editorial idea to try and repurpose the footage rather then reshooting. The post house spend months on it, and in the end the editor trimmed it from the 297 frames that were painted and roto'ed to 23 in the final movie. (not that the post house complain since they can bill more hours) All sorts of mad decisions are imposed on the movies and thats why they now cost $200mill +. I won't name the film or post house, but a lot of people here will have seen it.

How so? I thought the whole point of their 2001 screenings were that they were in 70mm: https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/WhatsOn?f=7260457 They didn't have to run digital did they? Although digital is probably preferable to the terrible "unrestored" Nolan version 2001 in 70mm. I think a lot of the issues with rep screenings in 35mm or 70mm is the poor state of the print. The cinemas may be able to book prints from the distributor - but I've heard of situations where a digital back up is run because the print is so bad.

My relationship is, we got married and have a 6 year old now.

"A Film" tends to means to a peace of narrative storytelling where moving images are used. The title of "film" these days is divorced from recording or exhibition technology. "Lets go to cinema to see a digital video file projected" says no-one ever. Most people will us the statement "I am filming" to refer to the recording of moving images. The precise inaccuracy of the way video and film as terms are interchangeable, is really about the way the English language is used in practice. Its less a statement around technology or intent. Now if you excuse me I'll be Hoovering my carpet with my Dyson. My parents call public address loudspeakers "Tannoys", incorrectly all the time. Sometimes the speakers are made by Tannoy but more often then not they are Junk But Loud (JBL etc) Nobody likes a pedant (I have learn't through bitter expereince), even if they are technically correct

I've used a 1.2kw outdoors with some success in the past - but thats in typical dark grey UK weather. In those situations is useful to have something to punch in and a give a bit of shape to close ups, or extra help on fill when shooting Contra-Jour.

David Fincher uses 20% look around when setting up the frame lines. (see pic) Many cameras/field-monitors allow custom frame-lines to be set up. Some cameras will give you a 10% safe area frame-line option Or you can make your own with masking tape or a chinagraph pencil directly on the screen. If you want to work out the correct size for the frame lines this way. Print out you frame on paper e.g your composed frame within a 16:9 rectangle, point the camera at it and then trace the framelines on the screen/monitor/viewfinder. It won't be pixel accurate but close enough. You can of course eyeball it, but then your going to have to do different resizes on each shot in post. I'm sometimes lazy and will guess at 2.39:1 composition on a 16:9 camera, is usually fine - but I do find I have to adjust the shot position in post a bit more. Better to compose using an actual frameline. Then you can automate the crop in post and if your working with an editor it takes any guess work out of the equation.

The 2K scan image dosen't look crazy grainy for a Log scan. The HD version is a bit softer and the contrast is probably hiding some of the grain. Its also possible the HD telecine had some noise reduction in the chain - most telecine suites have some form of DVNR at hand and maybe it was applied. Last time I did a HD TK of 16mm - the operator had the noise reduction patched in from the start. Had to get him to tone it down - since I wanted it to look like film and have the grain be present. Personally looking at your content texture and grain is a good thing and you should embrace it rather then worry about it... If your new to grading the HD Telecine is going to easier to work with since its closer to the look your going for. You could get the same look with the 2k scans but its going to need a more aggressive grade to get there. So if its fast turn around work with the HD and use the 2K to practice on. Although Lumetri in prem is powerful, I've personally found it easier to do more subtle work in DaVinchi Resolve - so its worth investing the time to learn it. Its pretty intuative once you get started.

Enjoying it is the wrong word in my case. Its excellent and a pretty stressful watch. Had to pause it a few times to collect myself. Its great writing of course and dour production design and gloomy cinematography, just nail it building the oppressive atmosphere. Its the best kind of production, really serving the story without pushing too many visual or narrative tricks to make it more exciting/cinematic. I was impressed with long take during the "human robots" sequence on the roof- really worked. I can find that long takes can be a bit of a show off, technical excises... oooh look how clever we are in our bold staging.... But this really wasn't that - camerawork that really served the story

Take care to do your research on what DVD stock you use, some are more stable for archive then others. I'd assume the archive grade is better then HDD but at this point its still a guess. I think the main issue with DVD's is they don't hold much data. A 4TB HDD would take a lot of space if written out to DVDs. Blu Ray of course is better data wise - but I wonder if its more or less robust for archival purposes.