Alan Lasky

Yes, useful compression for production is a very difficult problem indeed. When I was a student at MIT's Media Lab many, many years ago we saw what the fourier transform, discrete cosine transform, and wavelet transform can do to images. Great for transmission, not so much for production and manipulation. These are all really, really difficult problems and there is no magic leprechaun that can solve them; just hard work and sweat. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

You may not have said it, but I certainly did. Making digital cinematography sensors is hard. Really goddam hard. Good on 'em if they have a working 4K sensor, take it from me, they ain't easy to make. And you are correct: recording, storing and manipulating 4K data isn't easy either. Again, take it from me, I do it EVERY DAY. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

You needn't go to the 'hinterlands' to see how bad 35mm can be. The DALSA offices are in the San Fernando Valley, just over the hill from Hollywood and when we go to the movies up here the quality of the experience is simply appalling. Bad prints, projector problems, sound drop-outs, focus drift, and everything in between. Just inexcusable. It's gotten so bad that we often drive to Hollywood to the ARCLIGHT (one of LA's 'Premiere' cinemas) and spend the extra money if we need to see anything projected 'correctly.' Not that these cinemas would do any better with 2K, 4K or any other technology. They just seem not to care at all anymore about the quality of the theater experience. Then everyone stands around with their hands in the air and asks: "Why is box office down?" Bah! Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Yeah, we have been trying to get over there for a while. I think now that we are joined up with CODEX, who are based in SOHO, it will be easier for us to get some things set up in the UK. I hope we can do something before September, but I do not hold the travel $$$ strings, unfortunately. I would like to get over and see some of the VFX people as well, like Framestore, Double Negative, etc. The Origin does make a mighty fine visual effects plate camera and we would like to get the opinion of some of the UK VFX professionals. We may have to do it around IBC time since we'll be in Amsterdam for the show. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

The CODEX, the "british made recorder" could likely be adapted for 4K use with the Olympus. I heard one of the Olympus engineers say that they are looking into INfiniband output for the camera. That is the path to using the CODEX for 4K capture. Not at 60fps though. =0 So, you got the low-down on how we do BAYER sampling then? Excellent, your description was remarkably accurate. It matters not though, everyone is going to say: "It's a BAYER pattern, its only 2K," no matter what we say. To be honest I don't fight it anymore, so much is changing so fast that it isn't worth fighting with a few nincumpoops who don't have the background for the argument in the first place. When are you going to come in and test the Origin for yourself? You know you are welcome. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema "Your enemy is not a digital movie camera, it's the XBOX 360..." James Cameron

Wow! Recording 4K is a piece of cake, huh? Delivery too? Been doing alot of 4K recording and delivery, have we 'androbot?' Well, on the plus side according to your intel RED seems to have it all covered so I needn't worry, I'll pack it up and go home. RED has 60 fps @4K? Amazing this modern world we live in! Please, for sanity's sake, do not make comments like this unless you know what you are talking about. David, I too was at the Olympus 4K demo and I agree with your comments regarding the 4K projector vs film projector. It is too bad that the night exteriors suffered from the vertical streaking because I thought the camera looked very good over-all. I sincerely hope they can fix that problem. I thought Dave Stump did a great job of presenting the material and it was a very thorough overview. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema like, 4K, today.....

Discussions of firearms 'realism' in Hollywood are pretty ridiculous in general. A while back we took a course from a gentleman named Massad Ayoob, one of the most experienced law-enforcement "gunfighters" in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massad_Ayoob His books: IN THE GRAVEST EXTREME and STRESSFIRE: GUNFIGHTING FOR POLICE are generally seen to be the classic texts on 'real world' firearms engagements. If you want to learn what real gunfights are like and how quickly they are over you should read Ayoob's books. If Hollywood showed real gun engagements (typically a few seconds of chaos), and followed up with an examination of the long term psychological effects it wouldn't be very entertaining. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

"You guys have to remember. 4k is four time bigger than 2k! It needs more storage. More computer power to process it etc." To paraphrase the Johnny Cash character from WALK THE LINE: "Do you think we forgot?" I work with 4K every single day and believe me, I know what kind of overhead it represents. We had the luxury of starting from scratch when we designed our infrastructure at DALSA. Our network fabric for moving data around is all infiniband (an extremely high bandwidth fiber protocol). Most facilities can not afford to change their current network topology in order to support 4K. It makes sense not to for most facilities, at least not at this point in time. Soon though the studios will demand it, and then there will be a 'forced change,' for better or worse. I believe network bandwidth is the single biggest impediment to 4K VFX workflow. Most of the available composite software can handle 4K fairly easily. Indeed I composite with Shake, After Effects, and Fusion quite reliably at 4096x2048. The other big problem is that the "high speed" compositing systems (Flame, Inferno, etc) are pretty much limited to 2K at this time. I have not used the Quantel Iq, but I have been told it can work in 4K at near real-time. Some facilities are gearing up for the 4K data tsunami and the hardware is out there to run it. We have a DVS Clipster and that thing chews up 4K like nobody's business. I am just waiting for that 10 terabyte solid-state-SAN driving a video card with a terabyte of texture memory. I used to think that was an umpteen-vajillion dollar pipe dream, but now I exect it at NAB within 3 years. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

David is absolutely correct. The VFX people are the ones pushing the hardest against 4K from our perspective. It is funny because the Origin 4K digital image capture pipeline is most analogous to the VFX/DI film scanning model. I can't really blame them though, having come from that world and knowing the insane schedules the VFX shops are up against these days. It's amazing anything can get delivered with any quality standard at all. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

I have seen some really unsafe gun handling on-set; so much so in fact that I applied for and received my "Entertainment Firearms Permit" from the Cailfornia Department of Justice. Seems ridculous for a digital camera / visual effects guy to hold the card but the quality of some production armorers has been in decline for a number of years. I got my permit so when I hold up a "yellow card" on safety issues I at least have an 'official' leg to stand on with the AD/Producer. I nearly got blinded by an improperly rigged squib a few years ago and since then I have been very, very cautious about these things. That was a special effects rig, not an armorer situation, but the template is the same. These were not low-budget films either. Of course when I asked about the gag the SFX supervisor said: "Don't worry about it..." I have learned that when you hear: "Don't worry about it" in ANY production situation that is the time you should worry about it, a lot. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Thanks for the kind words about our booth. Unfortunately we had to sub an After Effects demo in at the last minute because Digital Domain had to bail on their Nuke demo due to some business affairs stuff related to their recent management change. Not that I have anything against After Effects, I quite like it. We just did not have time to get a proper demo packaged before the show. I think we can post some 4K pixie pix if you want. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Glad you liked our pixies. Sorry you don't like our camera. Anyone who wants to stop by our booth ask for me, identify yourself as a forum member and I'll get you one of our special cool gifties. No matter what you think of the size of our rig. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema The "Technicolor" sized camera people. Send me $1000 and I'll send you a plaque and a receipt for our new 100K resolution camera the size of a ckoe can running at 60fps to an I-pod. Or come to our booth and check out 4K workflow that you can use today.

The review in the Hollywood Reporter was quite good as well. I sincerely hope SUPERMAN does well. $200 million dollars is a great deal of money to have invested in that property. Warner Brothers is taking quite a line bet on the film. More power to them if they can get it all back. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

The last film I did where we shot VistaVision was "DINOSAUR" for Disney back in the mid-1990's. DINOSAUR was the film where all the backgrounds were live action and all the characters were 3D CGI. We used several "butterfly" Vista Vision cameras on that job in order to have the extra "ooomph" on the negative for vfx. I quite liked using those cameras and the extra image area and resolution was worth the extra hassle. I have not seen a VistaVision camera on a job in quite a while though. We were looking at buying the set of PL re-mounted Leica lenses from DINOSAUR for the Origin. I see those lenses all the time, they really were quite sharp. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Oh, I know. Have you seen the "Saturday Night Live" skit where they take the piss out of the Blacke Eyed Peas? It's hilarious, they are ripping on them big time. The gag revolves around a fake commercial for "hiring the Black Eyed Peas." They have them playing at a Pfizer office party, A Wendy's fast food restaraunt opening, and a Bar-mitzvah, all for $25,000. It is on the "Best of Saturday Night Live" Commercial Parodies DVD that just came out. Saving hip-hop indeed. Don't throw any @#$ my way, we just show up and record the takes =0. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

I am not sure there was anything "wrong" with the Genesis footage at all. I believe what they shot in Australia was actually a live performance with the Black Eyed Peas. The "INSTANT DEF" material we shot with the DALSA Origin was actually a 'branded content' (the new buzz-word for advertising that will exist across several media formats) project for SNICKERS candy bars. The job was shot entirely green screen in order to facilitate the creation of a 'SIN CITY' style virtual environment. The content needed to be output in film, HD, NTSC, and for the internet so they took the "sample high, scale down approach." The 4K material was the big target for film output, and they could easily interpolate down from the high-resolution material for HD, NTSC, Web etc. Like many projects these days INSTANT DEF was a 'hybrid' digital production. Our camera was by no means the only acquisition tool used on the production. Indeed there was another full unit shooting with the Panasonic AG-HVX200 that records to the P2 cards. They did a remarkable job with very little time and the elements I have seen from that camera are very good. Static green-screen elements were also shot with a Canon digital still camera (I believe it was the EOS Mark II). The guys from FORM (the production company) had the foresight to build asset management into the on-set workflow so maintaining control over a rapidly expanding digital element database never got out of control. Hats off to them for that. These days you live or die by the quality of the post supervisor for jobs like this. Trust me, there are a lot more bad ones than good. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Yeah, I worked on it in Prague that summer of 2002. That was the year that the Czech Republic had the enormous floods...many of our sets and locations got water-damage. It was a bit of a nightmare. Nonetheless after principal photography wrapped there were some issues with the visual effects and the "digital intermediate." Several companies were involved and it took a very, very long time to sort it all out. A SOUND OF THUNDER did have a limited theatrical release, albeit very short. I did manage to catch it in the theater. Yikes. With all the dinosaurs and mutant ape/lizards the most frightening thing in the movie turned out to be Ben Kingsely's hair.

I have worked on two films with Peter Hyams (END OF DAYS, A SOUND OF THUNDER). He's a really smart, very funny, genuinely nice man. When I first started working on END OF DAYS my initial reaction was: "What on earth are all these cameras doing here?" I couldn't figure out why so many set-ups were done multi-camera. "Why do we need 8 cameras for this?" However after talking with the editors and the studio people and watching carefully the way he blocked action it was clear that he knew what he was doing. The people 'paying the bills' were very happy with all the coverage he got and we never heard: "You're not making your days!" His style of working took a bit of getting used to but I can honestly say I learned a great deal from him. He definitely knows how to get big movies made. He also has an enormous collection of bad Hawaiian shirts, wich he wears religously. Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema alan_lasky@yahoo.com

What does everyone think of the news that VFX facility Digital Domain was bought on Monday by "PEARL HARBOR" director Michael Bay? from the press release: "An investment group including helmer Michael Bay and former NFL star Dan Marino has purchased visual effects house Digital Domain. The purchaser of record is Wyndcrest Holdings, whose principals are Bay, Marino, former Microsoft executive Carl Stork, former Sims Snowboards chair John C. Textor, and Jonathan Teaford, formerly of GE Capital Services." Wow, that's a dream team. I guess Michael Bay needed his own facility for "TRANSFORMERS." I see the acid-tongued devils are already at work on the web: "In related news, Abel Ferrara, United States Senator Diane Feinstein, and Ollie of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" fame will be initiating a hostile takeover of the Post Group, following their successful acquisition of the Denny's onthe corner of Sunset and Gower." :o Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Mr. Jannard, I work for DALSA, the "other white meat" of 4K acquisition. We met briefly at NAB, and as we said at the show we, unlike some of the other camera companies, sincerely wish RED well. Any data-centric camera solution will help the market along and will be beneficial to the community at large. None of us here at DALSA subscribe to the "RED as hoax" mentality. Indeed it is clear that a great deal of effort and resources were put into the RED camera. Since we also build cameras we have a perspective on this sort of product development that many (especially on this forum) might not share. I would like to bring up some points regarding the RED presence at NAB that I believe I am qualified to talk about. I would venture to say that my team and I have shot more 4K digital footage than anyone on the planet at the moment and we are in a unique position to have the benefit of hindsight on many of these issues. Please understand that these questions and issues are not meant as a challenge to you regarding RED, but are meant to focus on some of the practical realities of digital acquisition that we all face. Focusing on reality is somewhat critical here, especially with a user-base that is often prone to 'magical-thinking' when it comes to technological development. Concurrently a good, open dialogue between manufacturers is important for the industry. 1. SENSOR. Having worked at DALSA going on 2 years now I can say without hesitation that the creation of image sensors is a very, very complex and difficult process. Especially when the sensor is meant to have imaging characteristics comparable with silver-halide crystals suspended in jello. As you know there is no magic leprechaun that can help with fill-factors, dynamic range, and slew rates. Most of the skepticism I heard at NAB regarding your camera (at least from people who actually know what they are talking about) was directed at the "Mysterium" sensor. Those of us in the sensor fabrication business know all of the sources for CCD's, CMOS, and FOVEAN (!) chips that are out there (and there are just not that many). The question I have is when will the actual specifications of the sensor be released? When will we see actual production footage from the Mysterium? This, possibly more than any other factor, will "call off the dogs" as far as the skeptics are concerned. 2. RECORDING TECHNOLOGY. This, I have to say, was where I fell off the wagon at your presentation. I saw an opening in the camera body only slightly bigger than an Ipod for a recording medium. Yes, if we are recording DV or HDV that might work, but I assume that a camera costing $17,500 with a PL mount will want to record at much higher resolutions and bit rates. "Problem Solver" Graeme Nattress was quick to point out that any 4K recording will be an "off-board" solution (whew!) but that everything up to 2K will fit in that Ipod sized slot. That, truthfully, is a tough sell. I stated my concerns to Mr. Nattress and he assured me that a propietary Wavelet Codec was in development for this purpose. That may in fact be the case, but coming from a digital visual effects background my first reaction is: "For the love of God! Do not compress my material at source!! I need all the bandwidth for my composites and keying!" This is a real issue. We are actually recording 4K today, and we have several more recording solutions on-deck, but I assure you none of them are anywhere near the size of an Ipod. 3. BACK-END WORKFLOW. I am sure you are aware that the camera is about 20% of the problem. We at DALSA have spent a great deal of time dealing with pipeline and workflow issues relating to 4K edit, conform, and VFX production. As we stated at NAB we would be happy to meet with you to share some of our experience regarding this area and to get your perspective on these matters. This has nothing to do with competitive analysis, it is simply imperative that all the manufacturers keep the workflow as tight as possible so we do not have vendors and post facilities supporting a number of unique and mutually exclusive data pipelines. Some of the Camera companies (but not all) have been working quietly with each other, software and hardware vendors, and some governing bodies (such as the ASC Technology committee) to make sure we are all on the same page regarding what happens to the image data once it leaves the 'digital lab.' Hopefully we will see RED join up with us. As I said, we wish you well. I myself love this kind of 'disruptive technology' as it makes waves in what has been a bit of a stagnant pond for a while. In today's "competition for eyeballs" we are fighting a mighty battle against video-games, the internet, and that pesky Ipod and if recent box-office is any indication we had all better do something damn quick or it wont matter what 'K' any of us record at or indeed what size our silver halide crystals are. Certainly I have more questions regarding what I saw at the show but this is simply not the forum for me to ask anything specific. sincerely, Alan Lasky DALSA Digital Cinema

Kim, You are not going to get away with saying ignorant stuff like that to me to make yourself look "smart." Have you ever gone through the procurement process with a large scale contractor of defense components? DALSA has several defense and aerospace contracts and we deal with suppliers of components used in many defense imaging systems. The "flash-mag" recorder in development uses solid-state components that are designed to go into tanks, uavs and helicopters. Since you seem to be a fan of Tom Clancy's fiction, and you clearly live in that world, let me give you some facts: the US is involved in 2 wars at the moment, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Perhaps you have heard? We have to put in orders for components very far in advance in order to get into the 'cue' and we are very, very far down in priority. This effects R&D and scheduling for a large number of companies, not just ours. Solid state 'Flash-Memory' components, especially mil-spec components rugged enough to go into an Apache or to be dropped by a 2nd assistant camera man are in high demand right now. So you need to actually know what you are talking about before you post. Clearly you do not, so in order to dispel your entirely stupid Tom Clancy reference and perhaps educate you in the business of actually creating real world products, lets look at some real world facts, shall we? Yes, Virginia, Solid State video recording for military vehicles does exist: http://www.teac-aerospace.com/DataRecorders/ http://www.spec.com/onboard/products_hd-q&a.html Here is a great article about the current state of procurement and why components are scarce: http://mae.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Di...TICLE_ID=163721 Now, as a final way to show you what we are up against how about some actual footage from a solid state recorder mounted in an Apache attack helicopter from Tal-Alfar, Iraq? Will that clear your little fantasy up? http://www.globalresearch.ca/audiovideo/apachehit.mpg As you can see, Tom Clancy is no where in sight. Just real people getting blown apart by a 30mm chain gun, all of it recorded to solid state memory components that we are also going to use. No fantasy, no 'camera-guy' posturing. Hmmmm, perhaps we should keep our mouths closed when we haven't the faintest idea what we are talking about?

"Your posts seem to imply that there is only one Origin camera at the moment, is that correct?" There are more than 20 at the moment, although not all of them have the newest electronics upgrades. They will soon though, perhaps by June. I hear you about getting "riled up on the internet," but remember what Gilbert & Sullivan say: "Things are rarely as they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream." There are reasons for everything, some more opaque than others.

"The fact that, instead of silver particles, you have a charged coupled device that uses human-designed algorythms to interpret an analog signal into digital information, is a scary one indeed. " Regards. Karl, Karl, Karl. Who do you think designs the "silver particles" that go into film stocks? God? T-grain emulsions were not designed by humans? Film response curves and the chemistry that goes into them are what? Magic? I hear what you are saying but come on...have you been to Rochester and met the scientists who whip up film stocks? They are quite human, I assure you.

"The reason people are suspicious when the world "algorithm" is thrown around is that it's usually shorthand for "a way we cover up our technical inadequacies." Not saying that's what's going on here, and I don't know anything about the Origin camera whatever, but if someone asks a pertinent technical question and you answer it with "mumble mumble algorithms which I won't tell you about because they're trade secrets", people will quite understandably say "bullshit", spin on their heels, and walk off." No, actually the reason people are suspicious of the word algortihm is they are often too lazy or unable to actually learn anything new. No one from DALSA has ever said "mumble mumble algorithms... which are trade secrets." As a matter of fact none of our algorithms are trade secrets and we answer by pointing people to our web site where there are actually white papers that go over in depth what our image processing algorithms are used for and how they work. Considering that most camera people have little to no background in computer science, image processing, or programming (and why should they?) it is often difficult if not impossible to give the foundational information for high-level image processing in a sound byte. Or in truly special cases they come up with a definition of "algorithm" like: shorthand for "a way we cover up our technical inadequacies." That's when we, quite understandably, say "bullshit", spin on our heels, and walk off.

"If one would want to come, where is the place for that? One of your sales offices on the web page or somewhere else?" Right now we have offices in Woodland Hills, California {oddly, right across the street from Panavision ;-)} and in Waterloo, Canada. However we are often out on the road with the camera. We have done 'roadshow' demo/training in New York, Montreal, Toronto, etc. Soon we will be in London, and Sydney, and we hope Asia for demos and training. I hope we can get somewhere soon that is near to you. If not, let's try and set something up. I think we are bringing a rig to NAB, although I have to check on availability. We do not have a booth so we'll have to trudge it around in the van. It might make a good bet at the Craps table...the Origin on the hard eight! Although I don't think my boss would be pleased.