Tenolian Bell

I think a great part of this to is to really stop and with a critical eye analyze: are the HD production tools just as good or even superior to traditional film tools at what they are designed to do best. At this point there is nothing better than the 435 at what it is designed to do best. And it keeps evolving and getting better. I'm sure tomorrow we will look at the Genesis and say that it's really nice. But will we still be able to say "the Arricam is still better at X, Y, and Z"? If we are, then do we say the Genesis is good enough or do we say it is not totally to the task and rigours that have been developed with traditional film tools. If we are able to come to that conclusion then it's not really grasping on to nostalgia and the past, it would be the need to work with tools designed and optimised for what we do as film makers. I would wager when it comes to the point when we can look at the Genesis or whatever comes about, and no longer say the Arricam, Panaflex, or 435 is still better at X, Y, or Z then at that point I doubt many people will argue against it.

Is film dead yet poppa smurf?

That is pretty much the reason why they made different HD lens'. But that's a bit different from saying 35mm optics aren't good enough at all for HD which is what was being said back in 2000.

Also all of these 35mm size chips coming to market puts to rest one of the last myths. That 35mm optics aren't good enough for HD.

Another article. And another surprise Panavision is also bring another film camera to market. http://www.uemedia.net/CPC/cinematographer...icle_8554.shtml

One thing that remains constant is that there will always be something new. The DVX is the hot little camera right now. You can wait for the next thing to come out, but inevitably there will be the next after that.

Thinking of politics in movie distribution. There is a different dynamic between NY and LA cultures. In NY there are so many opportunities and avenues to have your small no budget, no name cast film screened. There is even the possibility of theatrical distribution, its not easy, and would be mostly religated to NY, Chicago, San Fransisco. But it is possible for your small no budget, no name cast film to be seen by a wide audience in NY. If the film community and arts community at large really like it, it can recieve a lot of attention from NY press which is akin to national press. From what I've seen in LA you really need to have known actors in your film for it to receive attention. LA is not really geared at all towards the small no budget, no name film. The best hopes for most of the people I know who make those types of features in LA are video rental. But if you don't have something going for you like a known producer, actor, director, there is very little to no chance your film will recieve much publicity, recognition, or distribution.

In my journey of learning lighting when I finally figured how to use and manipulate contrast made all the difference. I'm sure its different for everyone, I already had a good eye for interior natraulistic lighting. Outdoors and dealing with the sun when I finally figured out how levels of contrast worked it opened an entirely new world for me. I've been shooting in California a lot over the past few months and I've had to add more to the lesson because of how much more harsh the sun is there as compared to the East coast where I've mostly worked. I must be working with some poor sound guys. I really came more from shooting film, video has come with emergence of DV and HD. So sound into the camera is fairly new to me and I've only had to deal with it over the past couple of years. In my expiereince when sound goes into the camera it adds more responsibility for me, and is a pain in the arse.

I always vote for totally seperate sound. I don't like camera being linked to sound because often, sound and camera need to be in two seperate places in covering the scene and you have to deal with a tangle of cords. I also notice in camera sound tends to make the sound recordist a little more lazy and I to pick up some of the slack on sound since the meters, level controls, and headphones are all near or in the camera. I try to stress that I don't want to have anything to do with the operations of sound. One quick and rough way I check lighting when shooting miniDV. I use my light meter, more in the spirit of looking at exposure values than an acutal T stops. If relevant highlights are three stops over it's clipped, if relevant shadows are around five to six stops under they are crushed.

That's generally what everyone is complaining about what J is talking about is not the latest, it is a dream of what he wishes to come. And unfortunate souls who don't know the difference may think he is speaking of the latest. This is what makes going to NAB valuable you get to see the concept camera's of what Sony and Panasonic would like to do one day. But those camera's are generally shells with no electronics displayed in glass cases or high out of reach.

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technolo...its/03next.html Even better than High Definition braodcast even though it barely exists. UHDTV is 7680 X 4320.

I think he actually is doing to Republican's and big business exactly what they do to their political enemies. No its not nice at all. The difference is the Republican's do their dirt in plush corporate offices, wearing fancy suits, with a smile and a handshake. Moore is grass roots, angry, and in your face. He's wearing a dirty T-shirt and old faded jeans which is aesthetically far less attractive. How do you change the reason we went into Iraq several times and convince the public to go with it? Wave at the camera's and smile with a battle ship in the background. How do you convince people you are the war time president when you skipped your opportunity to go to war, and convince the people your opponent is soft on national security when he really has been to war was injured, volunteered to go back and get injured again? Wave to the cameras and smile with the statue of liberty in the background. How do you stir up the leftist grass roots groups to go fly wherever, get tear gased, and draged away by thier hair to jail; trying to disrupt the annual WTO meeting? You go to the CEO of Exxon stick a camera and mic in his face, show him a picture of a sad oil covered sea otter and ask him why doesn't he care. It's all sensationlist and manipulative. The whole thing is one unfortunate mess from both sides.

Yep you're right. My dyslexia kickin' in. I just saw Eastman Kodak, no intention 4K, I missed the Texas Instruments in the middle. I suppose Sony see's the demand for 4K projection just as they see the demand for 4:4:4 HD and is charging ahead. Inspite of thier positions years before.

The New York Times has an article about theatrical digital projection. http://nytimes.com/2004/05/31/technology/31projector.html Article says Sony has a new 4K (4096 X 2160) digital projector that is the "holy grail" of projectors. It has four times the pixels of 2K DLP. The article also states Kodak has no intention of developing a 4K projector, they want to work on improving contrast and color reproduction rather than resolution. This is an interesting developement since Larry Thorpe used to adamently state that film doesn't need to be scanned beyond 2K. Also what's strange is that I would imagine 4K projection, even digital would not flatter HDCAM at all. Would in fact highlight it's compression and subsampled colors. Then on top of that Kodak isn't interested in 4K digital projection. You would think they would be interested in the highest resolution projection technically possible, to highlight films superiority. The only purpose for a 4K projector would be a digital scan from film. Interesting from a company so heavily invested in HD.

I don't like the strong blue look for moon light. I liked what Roger Pratt did in Troy a monochromatic silvery moonlight. Quite beautiful.

Yeah I'll miss Larry at the technical summits at the IFP market. I remeber every year he said wait until you see what sony is about to come out with, but was very cryptic with any details. I guess it fueled excitment. Actually he may return and begin saying wait until you see what Canon is about to come out with.

Sounds like chromatic aberrations everyone's been complaining about. Something to do with the prism block. I'm sure Phil could explain it better.

I shot in an elevator on film, '79. My initial thought was kino's but once I put them in the elevator and turned them on there really wasn't enough room, the elevator had silvery walls, and the kino was really too much light. The wall's acted as bounce in the small space, so I just went with a small bounce card and the available light. The actors were of various skin tones so some were a little underexposed, but that was easily remidied by flattening out the contrast in telecine. A couple of years later I had another elevator shot this time on DVCAM, DSR-500. The elevator was in a fancy office building in Manhattan on Houston St. It had dark wood walls. So this time the bounce wasn't going to work the same way. We locked the elevator door open and I had a grip hold a small kino with a gobo arm into the elevator just over the actors heads. It was still a slightly hard light because of the small space so I places some diffusion over it.

I used to shoot small cheapy music video's on an Aaton 35 years ago. From what I remember it loaded like the Aaton 16 didn't it? For a tricky camera try the A-minima. Now that camera takes time to learn. I've shot with it a couple of times and have learned to get the A.C to load 3 mags and have them ready at all times. If you have to actually wait to load a mag and wait for it to be threaded into the camera, then it does cut into actual production time.

I guess this really is a matter of taste but I don't get why everyone is so much on the zoom shots. Kill Bill used them to mimick the campy feel of 70's martial arts films. I guess it was accepted because we are used to campy zooms in martial arts films. Sergio Leone used zooms to accent serious moments in the movie the same as Troy. So it is more acceptable just because he's Sergio Leone and the reputation he holds today? I bet back then someone wrote a review saying they hated those zooms and could tell the dialogue was out of sync.

Another bonus of footcandles in preproduction. Using photometrics and the specs of the set you will be working on you can predict practically everything about the lighting. Know how large the space will be and everything is arraigned in the space you can decide what lights to use how far they will have to throw the beam, and the quality of light on the subject. That is all determined in footcandels.

Actually I use foot candles all the time. I find it faster especially with a stock I've shot many times. I'll get a general exposure with T stops when I rough in the broad lights, then when I go in for more specific and intimate light I deal more in footcandles with a spot meter. In general working with 500 speed film you know a T4 is 40 footcandles. Then its halves, doubles, or quadruples from there. I find that way I'm a great deal more accurate on exposure and contrast. It's easier to get within 80% of the look we wanted and less time dealing with contrast in telecine. It's simple you know your key is at a T4 40 footcandles, your shadows are at 15 footcandels ( a stop and a half under), your rim light is at 120 footcandles ( a stop and a half over) and your back ground is at 60 footcandels ( a half a stop over). A quick check with the spot meter from the camera's perspective and you're done. I have the second AC (if I have one) keep detailed notes on what I've done, so if needed with a high degree of accuracy I can recreate the scene. In telecine if the colorist did something I didn't like I can reference my notes and know exactly how everything was exposed. Which has happened several times.

Also the quality of a blow up is in proportion to how much money the production can spend in post. I've spoken to Ellen Kuras about her DV blow ups and she said they cost just as much as the actual production, $150,000 to $200,000. I'm about to shoot a feature in the same situation. I'm shooting test footage in the same lighting conditions the feature will be shot. In my lighting I've already decided to avoid clipping the highlights or the shadows so that post has as much legal picture to deal with as I can deliver. Well I take that back some highlights will be clipped in certain circumstances its unavoidable. I'm going into the camera's menu to flatten out the gamma curve, and give myself a little more latitude. I'm also testing low contrast filters, and how much edge detail should I take out. It's been recommended that yout take out all edge detail, but I think on wide shots I'll put a little bit back in. I'm going to shoot all of these combinations and then do a test blow up at an LA lab. With the DVX-100 you are recording the same information as the XL-1, but Panasonic has made some advanced electronics to deliver a progressive picture and allows you to control color and gama, which is better than other camera's in this class. But I would say it is certainly inferior to DVCPro -50. I've been trying to push my production to at least shoot on the SDX-900. But the producer is in love with the DVX-100, marketing and whatnot. What I'm trying to tell him is you end up paying one way or the other. Shooting on DV 25 I'll have to spend a little more time and effort controling the light. In DV-50 I would have more control within the camera itself and would need to expend less energy controling the envoirnment around us. Then in post with DV 50 I would spend less time trying to lock in our look. So far my expeirience with DV-25 in post you spend just as much time trying to get around the inherent limitation of the format than you spend being creative with the material. I shot two music video's around the same time, one on Super 16 and one with the DVX-100. It took us one day in telecine to lock the look of the 16mm video, and took us two weeks of After Effects and rendering to lock the video shot on the DVX. I've shot lots of DV so I'm very familiar with it and what it does. The best advice is to go out and shoot it and become familiar with its characteristics, just like a new film stock. DV tape is cheap. And do a test blow up to see what it looks like on film. The difference though once I become intimately familiar with a film stock I only need to see foot candles and contrast in the lighting and I know what the film will look like. I've never been able to have that type of familiarity with any video format. To be anal and sure I need monitors and scopes.

Oh so I guess this is the first time I'm seeing 2K digital projection. Not bad, not that bad at all. Theater's that bought 1K projectors wasted their money, those 1K's have to go. In the future when I go see a digitally projected movie again I'll check if its 1K or 2K projection, their's no need to see 1K ever again.

<Now how many ships where there? <Thats to much for that era. Well Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships. Plus its a made up story anyway. I saw it at Manns Chinese Theater in Hollywood digitally projected. Actually this was the best digital projection I've ever seen, far better than Star Wars. I don't recall seeing any digital artifacts at all. On wide shots I could see the grid though especially in clear blue sky. And I was happy to actually see some dancing grain on flat contrasty areas. The blacks weren't that bad most of the time, I saw some grey if black was in large portions of the screen. I agree that anamorphic would have been the icing on the cake. I may go see a film print just to compare. The zooms didn't bother me so much they were spare and used to accent the moment, I thought that was ok. Plus the focus snapped into place, if they'd zoomed into an out of focus shot that would've blown the whole effect. As far as the Lord of The Ring battle shots. I sort of thought the same thing. But if the camera had only stayed level with the soldiers and the battle you wouldn't have gotten the perspective of how large the army's were. Plus the audience gets to a place of expectation and if you pull back and give less then it feels less. Why not show the god perspective of the armies. Actually the moon shot was my favorite sequence in the movie as far as lighting. I'm tired of blue moon light and his was silvery, with a slight hint of pale blue. I'm curious as to if that was achieved through filters, digital color correction, or print timing.