Tenolian Bell

It's pretty rare to actually be in a situation where you actually need to show 10 stops of range in a single image. I think its more the fact that 10 stops are there to be used is the point.

Still under testing is the last word I've heard on the D20 and the Panavision Genesis.

I wonder if the original poster feels his question has been answered? Maybe the answer is there are so many solutions to this there is no straight answer. Everyone has a certain system that works for them. I edit my show reels on Mac G5 dual 2.5 Ghz 4 GB of Ram Black Magic Deck Link Card Final Cut Pro HD Afer Effects for a little color tweeking DVD Studio PRO Apple Motion and Photoshop for DVD graphics Apple Cinema Display Since everything is made by or certified by Apple it all works together effortlessly. I don't worry so much about color matching, because my show reel looks slightly differently on every monitor its shown on.

I felt that was meant to highlight the dramatic change over the past 30 - 40 years. During the 50's and 60's it was really really bad.

They did have reason for using the 900. At the time they were shooting the Viper wasn't practicle, I don't remember why. The logic of shooting an all green screen film in HD over 35mm is pretty clear. But the cost of doing so is soft muted tones. I'm sure if there was a better camera than the 900 at the time they would've much preferred to use it.

Yeah I would agree in film there is always some grain present, because that is what makes up the picture. What I am curious about is the type of presentation you saw these two comparisons. Was it on an HD monitor or 2K projection?

What have you seen in HDCAM that indicates it "hates shadows"? That's normally touted as its strength.

Perhaps...... but digital projection does bring its own set of problems.

Thinking back to it. At the point we were looking at man made objects (concrete and steel) the animation worked a lot better. The illusion worked better. Maybe because of the texture of man made objects. But later in the film when we are looking at natural landscapes. Mountains, forests, the illusion doesn't work so well. That's just not how it looks in real life. To me the texture just wasn't right.

The problem they are facing is that their is no information in the shadows. So thier is very little to use in that part of the frame for the film out. The film out isn't causing the problem, the problem is lack of exposure during shooting. What the DP didn't realize or perhaps understand is that video works in db and the IRE scale. Looking at a monitor you cannot tell if a dark area is at 10, 7.5, or 0 IRE, nor on a monitor can you tell if a highlight is at 75, 90, or 100 IRE. Of course you do not want to light a flat uninteresting picture just to be NTSC safe. But that is where skill and mastry of your craft comes in. The DP has understands light, understands grey scale, exposure, and control of contrast. If he/she has a grasp of these tools then a room can be lit up bright to the eye with the desired contrast built into the exposure. In post contrast of the whole image can be brought down, shadows and highlights will fall into place because the DP built the desired ratio into the exposure.

Thing is, if he was lighting to the monitor (which is not incorrec) and if he liked what he saw, then there's nothing wrong with the way he's shooting other than it's potentially risky if you later decide you don't want it that crushed. From expereince I've learned its best to keep your options open during post. Crushing blacks isn't necissarily the end of the world, but can be a pain in the arse later on for various reasons. The director may want to recover some shadow detail for story or asthetic reasons. And crushed blacks can cause technical problems later on because, essentially that means there is no information in that part of the frame, whether its tape or negative. If he's happy with the blacks as they were on the monitor, the fault lies with the filmout technology. Why would it be a filmout technology problem when there is no information in the shadows for the filmout to record?

I don't know. I wasn't there on set when they'd shot it. I just saw what the video looked like as they tried to edit. The DP and director claimed it looked fine on monitor on set. They know about calibrating a monitor, and said they'd done that. But the state of the monitor on set I can't attest for. After seeing their reults I do believe without a doubt it would be most essential to have a vector scope when doing extreme color saturation in camera. The danger of the end result is completely useless video.

Recently I was helping out a friend and worked as an electric on his short film which was being shot on the Varicam. I'm not sure of the DP's previous experience with HD, but they were shooting with a monitor only no waveform or vectorscope. I think the DP is rather new to shooting, I believe he works as an electric most of the time. Because he didn't seem to have a great deal of confidence in his eye, he really depended wholly on the monitor and was constantly relighting everything. The director want a pretty low key, dark feel for the lighting. The DP took it literally and crushed the blacks as we were shooting, really just by not lighitng the shadow areas. I became concerned has to how deep he was letting the blacks go because he was leaving no way to retreave the shadows in post. I suggested to him that if we were looking at this scene on a waveform monitor the large mass of black behind the actors at times would be below 0 IRE, and detail in that would be unrecoverable in post. I don't think he totally knew what I was talking about and said he didn't want any detail recovered. Even when shooting film if I want the blacks to be completely crushed I don't crush them with exposure, I crush them in post. The project is now in post and I heard the director wanted to do a 35mm print blow up, but there may be a problem with it because the shadow areas are too underexposed.

I know some guys who were shooting a music video on the F-900. They wanted to saturate the colors like your standard MV. So with the paint box and the monitor they played with the colors until they got what they wanted. Without a vector scope however they had no way of telling if they'd stretched the colors beyond color gamut. Once in post and editing the MV, the colors were distorted, bled, aliased, and had red moire. Because they'd stretched it beyond color gamut and didn't realize it. They tried to do some HD color correction but still could not fix the problem, the colors were just gone.

An article in the Wall Street Journal today speaks about the future of television broadcast in the US. The article states that Congress gave the broadcast industry (for free) a new frequency worth untold billions with the promise that the industry would switch to HD and give back the analogue UHF and VHF frequencies. Of course neither of those has happened. The fear at the moment is that the broadcast industry will not use the new frequency for HD and instead broadcast digital Standard Def channels. This will enable them to squeeze more channels into the frequency and possibly have bandwidth left over to use for other services not originally intended, like cell phones. Congress came up with an idea to try and force the broadcast industry to begin to give up its analogue frequencies and move to digital. The idea stems from 9/11, where first responder service people were unable to clearly speak to each other because all of their communications are on different radio bands. So Congress came up with the idea of passing a bill that would give broadcasters a deadline of 2008 to give up the UHF analogue band. These frequencies could then be used by emergency personnel in every city, they would have the ability to more easily coordinate in a time of emergency. The rest of the unused band could be sold for various uses for untold billions. The government would be able to recoup giving away the HD frequency for free. The other part of the deal is that the government would give away free digital receivers to all consumers who don?t have televisions with built in digital receivers. This would enable those who don?t have cable to continue to watch free television. This venture is estimated at about 1 billion dollars, but would only be a fraction of the money earned by the government selling channels from the UHF band. But alas the broadcasting lobby was able to block the passing of the bill. The broadcasting industry felt switching in this manner will cause too much confusion and deny some customers the ability to watch free television. The industry says it is moving as quickly as it can for the switch to digital television.

I was amazed by the opening sequence. This film made Manhattan appear as the world of tomorrow. I imagine in the 1930's this is the image most people had of the dynamic stature of New York City. The original purpose of the observation deck on the Empire State Building was for docking zeppelins. But in reality proved too dangerous and was never really done. But an idea shown with graphic astonishment in the film. Pretty much after they left NY, then the astonishment of the animation wore off and I started to become bored with it. The soft tones, the muted colors, light and shadow acting in ways that defy the laws of physics. Definitely an interesting exercise in showing what can be done, and the possiblilites of photorealistic animation. I would have been satisfied with the first third of the film. I think what this clearly shows is that 2K is the absolute bottom in this type of venture, with 4K being the ultimate goal. Under 2K is just too soft.

That's not really that much different from now. Many smaller rental houses don't have the entire complete set of every prime lens set. They own the lens' that are going to rent out the most. To fill in they subrent from larger rental houses, which mostly have complete sets.

I saw George Lucas Saturday night, he presented the new cut of THX-1138. I last saw this film quite a few years ago. I remember understanding the whole point of what was going on, but I felt foggy on the details of how we got there. Now after seeing this recut I clearly understand what was going on. The reason the previous cut was so vague, first the studio recut it into something that Lucas hated, second the technology didn?t exist in 1970 to do what he had in his imagination. So the solution he used was photorealistic animation to fill in the gaps of what he wasn?t able to do at the time. Which normally I would totally object. But in this case I think this new THX was the film Lucas wanted to create all along but was unable to when he first made it. The difference is so striking and so clear that I think this was fine. The animated additions to the original Star Wars films were bad because they did not seamlessly fit into the story we already know. They felt like additions. While the animated additions to THX were completely seamless and added much more clarity to the story. He added more explanation and much much more depth to this world. Of course there?s almost ten years between the Star Wars additions and this new cut of THX. So I?m sure ILM made improvements to the technique. Of course we saw THX with digital projection, a Christie DLP projector. Which I groaned about because this is a 1K projector. The first sign of this was the opening Warner Brothers logo looked cartoonish. The problem I saw most with this projector was the contrast range. The enviornments of THX have vast white walls, at times of extreme whiteness the white wall would clip. How often do you see clipped whites at the cinema? Because much of the film had soft overhead lighting, the actors had a lot of raccoon eyes. These dark areas in the eye would take on a dark gray tone, which looked grainy and underexposed in the projection. Anything that was deep black seemed sufficiently black from what I could tell. But anything dark gray took on a weak grainy texture. During wide shots against the white walls the actor?s skin tone took on strange hues. It felt like a magenta shift. There seemed to be a struggle between producing pure white and Caucasion skin right near each other. There was a black actor in a scene with a large mass of white also but there didn?t seem to be the same problem with his skin tone. On wide shots the skin tone?s took on a soft mushy feel. It didn?t feel like focus, it felt like the lack of resolution in the projection. After the film Lucas gave a question and answer session. He seemed actually quite candid and vulnerable. Revealing what he thinks are his strengths and weaknesses. He revealed that he thinks he is a terrible writer, I wanted to ask why do you keep writing. He revealed that he thinks Steven Spielburg is a better director than he is. He said he marvels at the way Steven clearly knows what he wants and actually shoots the movie. While Lucas says he shoots a lot of material and finds the movie in that material. He says he?s trying to learn how to shoot less material, but he didn?t think he could ever fully do it the way Spielburg does it. The one thing I wondered is how he couldn?t he see the viability in photochemical film. He was able to take a 34 year old negative and still have the ability to get much more from it using the today?s technology. What more could be done with "Attack of The Clones" 34 years from now? But the conversation didn?t veer into digital vs film, so I decided not to go off in that direction. Lucas did actually proclaim himself computer illiterate. He said his kids know more about computers than he does.

I have to disagree Phil. For one there are various different designs of film camera's. There isn't only one. Who needs three to seven people to usa an Aaton A-minima, or an Aaton XTR, or an Arri SR, or the Arri 235? The XTR for instance is an elegant camera that sits on your shoulder with little problem. Bright viewfinder, only a couple buttons control the menu. While a beta designed camera is heavier, has lots of toggles switches, dials, menus. A black and whie viewfinder. Which seems to work fine for the people it was designed for. But if video camera's want to replace the XTR, they need to be as usable as the XTR.

I have to disagree Phil. For one there are various different designs of film camera's. There isn't only one. Who needs three to seven people to usa an Aaton A-minima, or an Aaton XTR, or an Arri SR, or the Arri 235? The XTR for instance is an elegant camera that sits on your shoulder with little problem. Bright viewfinder, only a couple buttons control the menu. While a beta designed camera is heavier, has lots of toggles switches, dials, menus. A black and whie viewfinder. Which seems to work fine for the people it was designed for. But if video camera's want to replace the XTR, they need to be as usable as the XTR.

It's good information for them to have. I've met many young filmmaker's (especially in NY) who think HD is equivalent to 35mm, and 16mm is equivalent to miniDV. There's still a lot of marketing misinformation and confusion.

At the end of these last two Star Wars films. The incredibly long lists of digital animators, illustrators, rotoscopers and so on clearly show he's doing it all by himself. Ironically enough I will be seeing George Lucas this weekend as he presents the directos cut of THX 1138 at USC.

I'm sure its no big a deal to convert 25P to NTSC, that's only one frame more than 24P to NTSC.

I wouldn't count on any film school guaranteeing you much of anything. Outside of putting you into dept. It's more your responsibility to take the expeirence and make something of it.

I will be curious to see these lens' taken through the paces. Essentially a super speed with the latest glass. Pushing 5218 one stop, shooting 2.5 footcandles as the key. Should be interesting.