Saul Pincus

Utterly delightful. Great work and I'm sure your kids will love it – mine certainly does!

Plenty of experience here. Best advice: consult an entertainment lawyer or veteran music supervisor for films and television, micro-budget or not.

I shot quite a bit of 16mm Fuji 250T around 1992. It had marvellous color – vibrant and not what you'd necessarily choose for subtle work. But if you were looking for a larger than life sort of look, it gave you that with little work.

I guess Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the Iive action) was shot on the earlier 35mm iteration of Fuji 250T? It seemed very helpful with the redesigned Starfleet wardrobe and the more vibrant, escapist tone of the production design.

Seth Macfarlane was once quoted saying something to the effect of "comedy doesn't work in widescreen" which sort of makes sense to me. Goofy gags in cinemascope come off as tonally confused, as we're so accustomed to that aspect ratio for thrillers and epics.

Tell that to Blake Edwards! ;)

A printmaster is the master audio mix created for a film.

A four-track printmaster is likely just a Dolby-encoded two track, which when unencoded, produces three front channels and one surround. Four discrete tracks are combined into a matrixed stereo channel at the printing stage.

Interesting that these "indies" (who are not backed by studios; hence being independent) can afford to fund films that cost enough to pay off a single family residence without a mortgage and there are so many out there that can! I guess I am just very poor indeed.

Sometimes these projects take years to complete, and that's part of the plan for how to afford making them.

So I don't buy this notion that the Red One was out of the reach of low-budget filmmakers if you use the most accepted definitions of the term "low-budget".

Indeed.

So can you answer my query of how long it took to render a feature length export at 4k on an indie system?

The answer isn't simple because (1) it was much more common to work in 20 minute reels for features, (2) a lot depended on how complex and layered your color work was, and (3) whether you also worked with live keys. On a single MacPro it might take 20 hours to render a reel – but a simpler job could take less. Again, home brew economics... ;)

Saul, I can tell you that a "fast drive array" (which I assume you mean some protocol of RAID) is not enough to render massive amounts of data because your Processor or memory can become a bottleneck. 2008 was a long time ago in computing terms. I would think a good system for that sort of thing back then would be some server type setup like Intel Xeon with dual Processors....$$$ not cheap.

I never claimed rendering was "fast." It wasn't – but a lot of indie filmmakers gave up speed if it meant control and less $$$. That's a true snapshot of 2008.

Transcoding to ProRes for HD offline, by comparison, was real-time or better and therefore fine for single-camera shoots (which most indies were.)

I see. So there was still a Post house in the pipeline. I still stand by BM being a turning point for indies to achieve superb results with the maximum control and minimum of cash outflow. Most indies I know locally do all of their own post work and we dont even have a Post House in these parts (Northern California.) unless you go to SF.

You required a calibrated monitor, a fast drive array and talent in color correct, but a "post house" by traditional definition was not necessary even when working direct from 4K RAW.

It was a regular Mac desktop of whatever variety was available in 2008. FCP X didn't exist at the time, so it was more likely to have been FCP 5. The point is, it was transcoded and cut on readily available, consumer machines running software that was very popular with indie film-makers. No high end equipment, no expensive professional edit suites.

Final Cut Pro 6 was the tool of choice at the time. I worked with the Red One on a feature for six weeks as a producer, director and editor in the fall of 2008, and the workflow was simple and reliable. As Stuart notes, any relatively recent off the shelf Mac Pro of the period was capable of transcoding the material to HD for offline cutting with good efficiency. The $$$ came in external storage, which at the time, could cost the same as a semi-souped up Mac Pro. I think a lot of the "horror stories" conjectured about the Red post workflow from the period come about because the Red truly represented the first time a pro cameraperson or filmmaker could also theoretically be his/her own editor and finisher, with true high end gear and glass – but if you weren't trained in post, a lot of folks got lost and looked to place the blame on the system rather than their own inexperience. If you were a post professional or knew who to hire, then your after-camera life was bliss.

 

Facets of digital filmmaking were around before George Lucas, and will mos def be after. I remember reading something that stated he was the first guy running a major picture with some digital cameras and eventually became the first to finish an entire major film with digital cameras. There was a Rodriguez movie that did it early too, but Lucas even had a hand in that.

If you want to be precise, Lucas had a hand in the digital revolution decades before he shot Attack of the Clones with a CineAlta. He was always pushing digital imaging, editing and audio innovations, and many of the brightest minds in experimental computing and digital tech were recruited to Lucasfilm in the early 80s due to Lucas' mandate. This excellent and definitive history of Lucasfilm's digital and computer divisions covers the details: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0937404675/qid=1114447087/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9311989-3816147?v=glance&s=books

So, really, his shooting Episode II digitally was the natural final step in his desire for an all-digital pipeline (rather than a first)!

Thanks Richard. Yes, I'm in Toronto.

Wow another writer, director, editor, and producer, and here I thought I was the only one. :)

 

R,

Hardly... :)

My personal experience with Pathe cameras is that the viewfinders are not very good.

The frame has indistinct fuzzy borders with lots of internal reflections and the pellicule system gives a faint double image that makes accurate focusing difficult.

 

Cheers,

Jean-Louis

I'll second that - if only because this comes from Jean-Louis, who knows exactly what he's talking about when it comes to Super 8! :)

It made me believe in 3D being very useful for intimate situations too. Jake's various sleep beds are downright claustrophobic. I would love to have seen the Kill Bill Vol. 2. coffin sequence done this way.

You know, I wrote that and then thought about it more. I know that isn't the best order in which to do these things. ;)

 

With diopters you probably will introduce a bit of the anamorphic mumps, because you are focused closer than the in-lens corrections will be correcting for. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, though. It should be slight and I can't remember ever shooting faces with diopters on, to be honest, and that is where most people would notice the effect the most. I guess just use the weakest diopter that will do the job and that will minimize the effect.

I just directed a feature shot on the RED with round front Lomo anamorphic primes (a 35mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm and 150mm). I was often very close to my subjects and we employed diopters pretty much de rigeur. With regard to ana mumps, I noticed the longer focal lengths tended to fare better. A lot depends on the make of the anamorphic lens itself.

Martin Hart, the website's "curator," has been a frequent participant on the rec.movies.tech newsgroup since the early 90s. He also cracks a sharp wit.

Nicholas Hooper has confirmed (in this month's issue of Film Score Monthly Online, http://www.screenarchives.com/fsmonline/main.cfm) that he won't return for subsequent films. And for what it's worth, this is Hooper's second crack at Harry Potter and the third film in a row (after Patrick Doyle's score for the fourth film) that has barely referenced John Williams' rich thematic architecture.

Acquiring in 4K anamorphic with the Red One and anamorphic lenses gets you a 2764x2304 image. HD is only 1920x1080 - so if anything you're well covered, even of you should decide to blow an image up slightly in post.

The result can look great.

As a director and producer I spent six weeks shooting a feature with the RED this fall. In that time we spent a day on a process trailer and also made a few shots using car mounts.

We would have liked to have employed the CF cards, but we ran into an interesting anomaly: we were shooting with anamorphic lenses in RED's 4K anamorphic setting but the cards wouldn't format. The RED would consistently display an error message along the lines of "media not fast enough" - so we had to keep shooting with the RED drive, live with dropped frames, and do pickups where necessary.

Over the same period, we made numerous other shots with long spherical lenses (as we carried a very limited selection of anamorphics) at 4K 2:1 and the CF cards performed flawlessly.

I'm always willing to forgive a few mistakes when someone brings a genuinely new vision to the table. More so than THE MATRIX, the filmmakers are committed to visualizing in a language that's at once new, a conjunction of existing styles, and all their own. So many films claim to show you something new, but with SPEED RACER that claim is real. It's primarily designed for kids ? but don't be dissuaded by naysayers; it's highly entertaining and you'll be on your feet cheering at the climax.

See it in IMAX if at all possible.

I would love to hear some informed opinions on what Mr. Furie does actually contribute when making a film, especially on the visual front. I find it hard to give Furie any credit on that front when all of the cinematography on his movies scream the sole signatures of the DPs credited on them.

That's because Sidney gives them tremendous freedom to make that mark, and that freedom is an inherent function of Sidney's style.

I cut and supervised post on six films Sidney directed. He definitely knows what he's shooting, and why. He has very specific visual ideas, but prefers to filter them through his team. A lot of people define directing by some variation of the auteur theory, but there's a school of directing that's more about creating an atmosphere on set.

If you're looking for a trademark, look no further than the snap in-and-out zooms he often uses. That's often him operating.

Saul,

I realize what you are saying about the 70's look, but the film doesn't take place in the 70's. I'd place it more early 90's, e.g. ubiquitous cell phones. Even if a "French Connection" look was intended, a lot of times it just looked like poorly lit video. And flashing lifts the shadows, but what I watched had shadows that were pitch black.

It sounds like there's world of difference between the film print and the DVD! I haven't seen the DVD yet, but the print did not showcase deep blacks ? and to nice effect, IMHO.

I just finished watching "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and I have to say it didn't look so good to me. There were a lot of blown-out highlights, the darks had little gradation and the characters regularly moved move from being lit to being essentially blackened-out.

Peter, did you watch this on film or video?

I really enjoyed the feel of the film print; they seemed to be after a 70s-style look, as if they were trying to emulate flashing with stocks from that era. I rather liked it and thought it suited the story well.