Ruairi Robinson

It's not a period well covered online - early web days and all... btw Pleasantville was 2k, not 4k. Don't know where you are getting that info from...

The visual effects in Terminator 2 were done at 4k resolution.

Are you really offended by the name Lalaland? I kind of thought of it as a bit of silly fun. I say it all the time, and nobody has got offended before...!

according to the latest American Cinematographer, the 35mm stuff was scanned at 4k. "the final Imax print combined the 4k DMR filmout, 5.6k and 8k imax filmouts, and 18k contact prints from the imax negative" It also says (re: the 2.40 extraction of anamorphic 35mm from the imax frame for 35mm prints) "in fact, due to oversampling, it's probably the best anamorphic image we've ever seen. If we'd had time to scan the original negative at 6k, we could have produced even higher quality. The information is on the negative - 35mm film captures the equivolent of 6k and a color bit depth of 14 bits plus" But that's the executive vice president of Imax corp speaking, so he's obviously objective about film vs digital :) Not that I'm saying he's wrong... the film looks incredible. But using my incredibly scientific method of judging the film by eye from a single viewing, I'd say 6k for 35mm film may be stretching it a little. It was blatantly muddy and soft compared to the Imax footage, and actually sometimes it was distracting when it cut back and forth between them... The imax footage on the other hand... holy poop. It's amazing. I thought these were supposed to be slow lenses they were using, but you can see right into the shadows and pick out incredibly subtle fine details that are barely shades apart on some of the aerial shots. I really appreciate how the film has gone against the current trendy of applying some heavy handed overdone "look" and instead kept the colours natural and real... Oh wait, this is the Wall*E thread. Bleh.

I don't entirely fair to characterize that as "coming out of the woodwork" - you asking someone with their own camera to shoot it is you asking them for a favour. You supplying the camera so they can shoot on film is you doing them a favour in exchange for the favour they are doing you. Big difference! There are so many chancers out there trying to get people to do crap for them for free that will benefit them not one bit, that to turn this into an opportunity is really the best way to get people to work for free, and make them feel good about it. Nothing wrong with that! Best, R.

Well, one, so far...

Directing a movie for Warner Bros has the very occasional side benefit...

Yes, the term photograph is innacurate. Rendering is correct. That's why I avoided the word. Because... the word cinematography comes from the greek kinesis (movement), and grapho (to record) i.e. the recording of motion. Don't hear mention of photography anywhere there. And I think over time the definition will loosen up even more. according to wikipedia, that incontrovertable bastian of accuracy, the ASC defines cinematography as: Well I think that definition sucks, but the point is - even the ASC don't regard it as a subcategory of photography. Photography is one tool in the creation of cinematic moving images. Here's the thing... if you watch a live action movie, and the cinematography is hyper-mega-awesome, but in between live action shots, there was a cg shot you didn't know was CG, and the shot looked great, would you not agree that the cinematography was good in this shot? (at least until you found out it was CG and backtracked saying that's not REALLY cinematography, even though for all intents and purposes it SEEMS like it is...) Also, if you heard of any of the research by people like Paul Debevec into digital RELIGHTING, then you could see how the definition is going to loosen up even more in the future. He has created a technique, whereby you can shoot live action subjects, and relight them digitally... is it live action? yes. Is it CG? yes, it's both. It's footage captured with a high speed video camera, than can be relit with lights rendered on a computer. http://www.debevec.org/Publications/DEBEVE...200608-high.pdf

Basically, all the same techniques apply to CG as live action cinematography - just the method is slightly different in some cases. Focus pulling is not "live" - you set keyframes. So you aren't limited to one shot at getting it right, etc. you could place a different camera to catch the same "performance" of an animated character from a different angle, etc. Or relight it any way you want... In Vray, for example, the camera has controls for film gate, focal length, focus distance, f stop, you can control lens distortion, you set the film iso speed, you set the shutter angle, the exposure, you can set the number of blades on the iris, and the anisotropy of the lens to simulate the DOF of anamorphic lenses. You can create light sources that obey the inverse square falloff of real light sources, and set the colour balance to simulate daylight flourescent, halogen, sodium, xenon, whatever... You can even place bounce cards in your scene to reflect light around. Because guess what. CG films - they have to light 'em too. People who light in CG are called technical directors. Focus pullers? they are animators. They just do other things besides pulling focus, because setting two keyframes usually ain't a full time job. The job of DP? handled by the director who generally decides the framing, and the other tasks are subdivided among the animators and TDs, with some overlap... R.

er... because CG still uses lenses, albeit virtual ones, because the camera still has to be positioned, and moved, and because the shots still have to be lit. That's why.

So I went to a preview Imax screening of The Dark Knight last night. Chris and Jonah Nolan were in the row behind me. I gotta say, the film is fu**ing superb. Really, the best comic book movie ever made. I was blown away. I couldn't sleep last night after watching it because moments from the movie kept replaying in my head. It looks amazing too. Digital has a long way to go. It's funny how muddy and blurred the parts shot anamorphic 35mm look compared to the imax stuff. I really appreciate for a change seeing a movie without some cheap filtered "look" over every frame, here the colours are very natural, subtle and graceful. There are night-time shots soaring over Hong Kong where you see so much detail in the frame, and such subtle gradations in colour, it's awe inspiring. I generally loathe the look of DI's, but whatever process they went through here, they've preserved all the subtleties in colour and fine detail. I really hope this movie sets some kind of precedent/benchmark for storytelling and image quality for other films of this ilk to try and live up to, because I'm sick of the erosion of standards for image quality in films these days. And I'm sick of comic book movies that don't treat their characters as human beings. The visual effects are of an extremely high standard (bar a couple of moments where bluescreen/compositing was slightly visible, and there's a bank of screens which looked a bit Matrix/architect lair, but whatever. These are tiny details, and even those are probably better than the best shots in a lesser movie... There's a helicopter crash in the movie which looks utterly, seamlessly real. If there is CG here, I couldn't tell, and I'm usually pretty good at spotting this stuff. Oh and Heath Ledger is ever bit as good as people are claiming. He is note perfect as the joker. His "backstory" is probably my favourite detail in the film... oh and there's a shot of him outside a hospital which is... just go see it :) I could nitpick about details - the tone seemed a little unsteady for the first 20 minutes or so, and some of the action is still a little awkward/muddy and unclear for my taste, and I'm sure the continuity police will be out in force on this one, since that's about all they'll have to criticise. But none of this crap matters. Because I've already got my paid tickets to see it again when it opens up. And I'm sure I'll be watching it a bunch more times after that. Err... not to hype it up or anything... Cheers, R.

Just timed it - takes 17 seconds before it displays the output on the lcd. Total boot time in the latest build: 1 min 14 secs. So, getting better. Unfortunately there's a big red logo plonked on the centre of the screen during bootup, with the word "initializing" under it. Hopefully they'll put it in a less obtrusive place in the next update. R.

So... one less thing to whine about...

Yeah! What's the point in ever criticising anything!

I suspect he may have thought it through a little more carefully than that. R.

I dunno, jokes maybe? For it to be, you know... funny?

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=46244 Watch and weep. For the future of cinema.

I hate your freedomz.

Er... why on earth not? I could cite many many many great scripts that have used this device, from Billy Wilder script for The Apartment, to Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, to L.A Confidential, to the script for American Beauty (which uses it a LOT) The point is not to use anything to excess, not to tell people what they are allowed to write. R.

If a script like this went through Warner Bros formatting, they will translate every single one of these to action lines, and if you have these on practically every page, your script will baloon in length. Unless used sparingly, it's considered a bit of a lame cheat to try and cram more onto a page. (beat; looks up) is a particularly bad offender, because it doesn't really take a "beat" worth of page space to write this in parenticals. For the most part you should be able to imply their behavior just from the dialog, unless the action is crucial to the story. A lot of actors will just cross them out and ignore them. These are just suggestions, and for a short they wont really matter all that much, but it's good practice if you end up working on studio pictures to get your head around how they prefer things to be formatted. You are not using them wrong, you are just overusing them. As with any of these things, use sparingly. Is it really, really crucially important that the Mara character "finishes a sip" at this point? If you can cut ANYTHING out, and it still reads clearly without it, then do. Best, R.

Hah, awesome, that's the bestest way to quell the flames in an argument.

Here's a pretty good argument in favour of shooting digitally... http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/th...benjaminbutton/

Posting on the internet that you saw a camera once is just not enough. You should run out onto the streets in the middle of traffic, banging on car windows and and yelling at the top of your lungs "I saw a red camera once!" People will think you are AWESOME. R.

welcome to club irony bypass.

Good point. No camera, or roll of film has ever failed, once, ever, in the history of cinema. That's why shoots on film don't need insurance at all. Yours respectfully, R.