Tenolian Bell

I agree language changes over time. I?m sure ghetto means something different in Europe than it does in the U.S. In fact the etymology is a bit different considering what it meant in 1940?s Europe. But in contemporary America today when anyone says the word ghetto the first definition that comes to mind for anyone is poor urban area. Maybe 20, 30, 50 years from now it will mean something different, but today that is what it means, when the word is mentioned that?s what it refers to. Words are not merely symbols on a page, we use them all the time to assign positive and negative attributes to everything around us. Words affect our attitudes and actions, often unconsciously. For instance the suburbs would pretty much be considered the polar opposite of the ghetto, and is generally where people go to live away from poor urban centers. The suburbs are generally regarded as places of peace and prosperity. If suburb were used as an adjective that is exactly what it would mean. The point of self deprecating humor is the ability to laugh at your own pain and misfortune. And is generally considered bad form for other people to join in. So it?s rather rude for people who may live in the suburbs (peaceful, prosperous) to join with people who live in the ghetto (poor urban area) in the self deprecating practice of using ghetto (adjective) to define anything as being less than or second class. Because people who may live in the suburbs (peaceful, prosperous) are defining people who live in the ghetto (poor urban center) as the adjective ghetto (less than, second class). And will think of people who live in the ghetto in this way and treat them this way.

Yeah David you are right. Most of the music video's I've shot over the past couple of years have largely post on Digibeta. A couple have finished 24P, that was for MTV Europe and the PAL converstion.

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a manager of a post house. He excitedly exclaimed how he can see 2K becoming more and more commonly used. He said his post house was soon taking delivery of Sony's new HDCAM SR decks. He said once you are working at 1080 4:4:4 RGB tape format you might as well go all the way to a 2K scan. You are shooting 35mm the information is there you might as well take advantage of it. He said he could see this path for television projects more and more. I asked even though television especially NTSC doesn't look any better. He explained that in music video and commercial work agencies are always exploring ways to make flashier photography and visual effects, and a 2K color space gives even more room to resolve more variations of color and dymanic range. Plus with 2K VFX being ubiquitous in motion picture it's easy to bring to television and will allow artist to create even more photorealistic enviornments and products, with flashier more detailed colors. I asked him about storage of the 2k files. He explained many top commercial/ music video finishing houses are already set up for D5 finshing, its not really that far to deal with HDCAM SR, and ultimately 2K. He predicted that first there would be 2K scans that are scaled immediately down to HDCAM SR. But eventually the film will be scanned, stored, and finished 2K, then the final product scaled down to SR for delivery. He said he could see this in commercial/ music video work because they are short form, a lot of money is spent on them, and the image is everything. He said cinematographers, director's, colorists, VFX artist are all very competative in working to attract ad agency attention, and would be pushing to work with the latest technology that will seperate themselves from everyone else.

I would rather see what's on the negative first. Before a lot of tinkering changes the look. For one a DP gets to see any mistakes made and learn from them. Two it alleviates any arguments with the colorist over what the film originally looked like. Three if you are testing a new film stock you get to see what it does naturally. If the DP only sees pleasing pictures tweaked by the colorist you never learn from your mistakes or can improve on your photography.

Sure any of us can say anything we want to say. But we don't. Because most of us have the maturity, understanding, and wisdom to know what to say and what not to say. What is appropriate and what is not.

It's interesting the two cultures of NY and LA and owning gear. I've lost two jobs this year in LA because I didn't own gear. The goal was to eliminate paying for gear altogether. As in paying me but not paying extra for my gear. What makes it so crazy is I could be the most qualified for the job, but they'll go with someone with their own gear even if they are less skilled with it. Almost every meeting I'm at in LA the question comes up of "what do you own?" In NY I've never lost a job because of lack of owning gear. Generally once I'm hired the production will borrow or rent the gear. Generally we are able to get better equipment than what I could own. But I imagine in time NY productions will start placing more emphasis on owning equipment.

"especially when considering the people who primarily live in the ghetto's of where this term come's from." huh? The term ghetto is used as an adjective to describe not only a place but a state of mind and a state of being. People from the ghetto (noun) began using ghetto (adjective) to describe actual experiences to qualify certain ways of being as ghetto (adjective). This comes from personal experience and rarely would they call anything ghetto outside of this context. In many ways it is self deprecating humor. But it is understanding an unfortunate and sad situation, those who have never had to experience would not fully appreciate. And now popular music has made using ghetto as an adjective popular among people who have never lived in, been around, or know anything about the actual experience. In popular culture ghetto is used to describe anything as lesser than or second class. And this is used by people who have never been there, so they are not describing themselves. Who are they describing? They would have to be describing the people who do live there.

Why'd you get a Millinium instead of Platinum body (just curious)? Did the story fit anamorphic better or are you concerned about grain in the super 35 blow up? How well does the Cooke zoom match the Primo primes? Is it your preference to shoot so many film stocks? From your tests will the Fuji/ Kodak stocks cut together produce a jarring look? Or is that the point? 5285 printed on Primier, I'm sure you are exposing for the shadows. Will you have strong spectral highlights?

Interesting how the term ghetto has come of use in the lexicon to symbolize almost anything of a lower stature, especially when considering the people who primarily live in the ghetto's of where this term come's from.

Many editors I know rent Digibeta or HD decks, they include the price f the rental in their budget for the job

It's only a matter of time as Sony and Panasonic are already making their way to tapeless media. But I wouldn't necissarily look to that route as being a great deal cheaper. Seeing as 4GB flash card in Panasonic's P2 system is $2000, and 4GB in video is nothing. But I do wonder are $200 serial ATA drives with Firewire or USB 2 connections really satisfactory for uncompressed 10 bit video? But anyway it appears wide use of tapeless media is coming soon. I don't think your friend was totally correct in that post houses will go out of business just because tapeless media being used in the telecine session. High end post houses provide services, expertise, quality and speed that still can't be had quite the same with a G5 in your home office.

I guess you need to put flexibility into a context. Camera operation, ergonomics, medium?

I also need to add we were trying to do something specific, that we should have been shooting film to accomplish. But in general the DVX-100 produces a great pricture. My point was in comparson to film, DVX still carries the good things and bad things of the DV25 codec and has some limitations.

I just had a conversation with someone who is a video technician and stickler describe the DVX-100 as not a pure 24P device. I asked why. I already know Panasonic HD records 60 fames progressive and extracts 24 frames from that to make 24 frame HD. He described while the DV25 codec is 60 frames interlaced. Panasonic scaled their HD technique down to DV25, so 24 frames is extracted from 60 the same way, exept they have to also pull a progressive frame from an interlaced format, which is accomplished through mathematical algorithms. The two biggest places you will find differences between DVX-100 (which is still a DV25 codec), is dynamic range and color. And you will run into particular road blocks in post. On one of my DVX projects some colors weren't recorded quite the way we thought they had been. In post to fix this the graphics designer had to build color patches in After Effects and lay that over the scene. We couldn't force the picture to produce the color we wanted because the information simply wasn't there.

Yeah I guess you are right that's not a good thing. I'm seeing so many ad's asking for DP's who own their own HD camera for nonpaid job's I'm tempted to send them all e-mails, asking if they realize what a ridiculous request they are making. But alas what're you going to do?

Yeah actually I asked them about that. Isn't it better to just work with one system that scales up instead of moving from system to system? The answer was not really. These guys said for at least right now its better to work on a system that was built for and is dedicated to the job it does. Avid's accelerators are optimized for what they do, that it is faster and easier to work with SD on a system made for SD. Then finish HD on a system optimized for HD. That Avid has made it easy to move media files from system to system, or you can painlessly move hard drives from system to system. They claim that trying to do too many things on one system causes too many problems and slows the whole process down. That Ad agency people cause them enough stress without having to deal with a lot of computer technical problems. The other advantage is that spreading systems out among different companies spreads the expense of owning and maintaining those systems. They said that possibly one day off line, on line, and finishing can be done quickly and efficiently on one system, but that's not today. Sounds like its just a matter of preference (well and money). I hear a lot of Indie?s down play Avid, of course they are happy to have a powerful NLE without having to pay tens of thousands. Then I hear people who use Avid say it does what we need it to do better than the other NLE's. But I digress I?m not an editor and don?t really use any of this stuff. I'm not advocating one over the other, I just ask questions and am regurgitating what I?ve heard

Yeah I'm sure you're right. Avid doesn't want to put too advanced an audio feature into its video editing, they own Digidesign and are trying to sell expensive audio work stations. That's pretty much how it works with the commercial editors I know. They don't really do anything to the audio themselves outside of laying down temp voice tracks, temp sound effects, and temp music tracks. All of the actual audio mixing, ADR, etc, is done at a totally seperate audio post house that ownes expensive Pro Tools work stations. And then they finish at another post house that on lines the commercial spot in HD on Symphony and lays down the final graphics or VFX on Inferno. I guess their basic point is this work flow has already been put together and is established in Avid, but currently their is no real fluid infrastructure in the same way to to accomplish this same work flow in FCP.

I just had a long conversation with some top end commercial editors about FCP and Avid. I wouldn't quite call them a dying breed, actually for a couple of valid reasons. Their oppinion of FCP was basically versions 1, 2, and 3 were plagued with flaws and vastly inferior to Avid, but version 4 really closes the gap a lot more. 4 still has quite a few software flaws, still doesn't do as much real time software stuff as Apple claims, or at least doesn't do it as well as Avid can. But they do see improvements in FCP by leaps and bounds. Even though FCP is scalable Avid still has a big lead in its media managment and storage. Avid has had a lot more time to work out how software and hardware deal with each other, its media managment and storage solutions are plug and play. Something you have to pull together from different vendors and then work the bugs out a lot more with a FCP system. Which they said can be a real pain in the arse. You are right that Avids come at heafty prices and are not scalabe, and you have to basically buy a new system as your upgrade. But the editors I've spoken to said you are getting a premium system for that premium cost, and their can be a lot of headache in trying to scale and FCP system up to do the same thing and Avid can do. But of course of Sinclair's purposes FCP works with DVCPRO-HD natively through firewire, all he would ultimately need is enough memory.

Maybe one good thing about HDV, when one sees a list for a DP who owns his own HD camera, for a nonpaid job, you just show up with one these for $4000. Instead of showing up with a $100,000 camera for a nonpaid job.

From my experience with shooting DV, then it being post by different people with different levels of skill and different equpment, its not very difficult to destroy the image. Especially with poor photography, or poor imputs, then treating the image with color correction, or effects, it will easily fall into a haze of artifacts and moire. I don't know if this is your situation, my point is its actually not very difficult to have this outcome. Even though DV is tauted as the everyman or woman's format, it really still requires technical know how and skill. You see clear differences between those who have developed the skill to properly post DV and those who have not.

I'm extremely impressed with Arri's entry into the datascan market. I got to see the scanner at NAB and ask lots of questions. Arri uses a monochromatic CMOS sensor and illuminate the film with red,green, and blue LED's, with possible infrared for scratch/ dust. In essence three full pictures are taken in RGB of each frame. The CMOS sensor is native 3K so you are always over sampling. You scan 3k and scale down to 2K. Or scan 6K and scale down to 4K. The scanner also captures true 6K by moving the sensor to scan the entire frame. The scanner also captures true 16 bit and more dynamic range of film. By taking two pitures, on for the highlights and one for the shadows, then disreguarding the clipped highlights/ shadows. The machine can achieve a full 4K 16 bit frame, which can be scaled down to a managable file. But in the original scan you have captured a great deal of visual information. Of course all of this capture costs money and time. If DI becomes as ubiquitous as many expect then the economy should be right for some one to built a film rendor farm. Essentailly a room full of scanners that drastically cut the time it takes to scan an entire movie. I'm excited, can't wait to see what happens.

I'll have to go with Aaton in 16. I can't believe anyone having trouble loading the mag's. In a pinch I taught a friend of mine how to load in 5 minutes, it's really so simple he was an expert by the end of the shoot. Over all I find the Aaton a better built camera. The video assist, the 800 foot mag, the wooden right handle, the camera so classic. Even though there are way more SR's out there to use, and I used SR's for years before I ever used an Aaton but after I did I never went back. It's like when I used PC's for years and when I finally used a Mac, I said oh man this is so much better.

From what I observed at NAB. I was only in Vegas for a couple of days, the entire convention is so overwhelming, I really feel like I only glossed over most of it. The kinetta looks great. Finally a electronic camera (Jeff exclaims its not a video camera) that feels more like film camera, that will fit film accessories. One interesting point Jeff made that I didn't get him to elaborate, he said that one chip cameras aren't very good for VFX, and I was wondering why. And do other manufacturers of one chip cameras know this? I ventured by Dalsa, and watched some footage on a small screen. Looked nice I wish I could've seen it projected large screen. I don't like the camera design at all. It's like going back to a huge mitchell. I'd heard about Canon's anamorphic lens that was one booth I briefly passed, and didn't get to spend a great deal of time asking questions. Sony and Panasonic switching to tapeless SD formats with tapeless HD on the horizon. Actually I like Panasonic's idea better, but Sony's idea can be done now and with less pain. I like both ideas because it frees the media from the constraint of codecs, the media can be used for any codec, unlike tape. Especially in the Sony world where every year they develop a new codec that doesn't work at all with previous codec?s. I like the idea of flash memory non moving parts. But the cost of the media has to come down significantly. Panasonic displayed a nonworking prototype of a D5 camera based on the P2 platform. The memory cards would be 128 Gig?s. They don?t expect this to be viable for another 4-5 years. But media cost will still be an issue. I can hear people saying I might as well shoot on film for that cost. Panasonic is working on a P2 Varicam however and want to deliver it in about 2 years. I would like to work with Sony?s blu-ray system but I don?t really shoot DVCAM or IMX. In that class of camera I?d more likely work with the DVC-PRO 50. HDV, I glanced at Sony?s version behind its glass case. I curiously looked to see if JVC improved on their HDV camera, but honestly I?m not very excited about this format. My caveat is however I know at some point I?ll be shooting it, with a director who feels he?s working with the equivalent of the F-900 at MiniDV prices. But honestly I can just see too much corporate positioning and marketing gears turning. We don?t really need a heavily compressed HD format. It?s not a great format in fact everyone has to figure out how to make it work. Plus as time goes on and HD improves the price of HDCAM and DVCPRO-HD are going to come down. This is what I see, the major video vendors had a bonanza with the success of MiniDV. Now that the hype has settled and MiniDV is finding its realistic position in the market place sales of MiniDV camera?s is flattening out and the major vendors want another hit. Digital itself used to be the buzz word that caught everyone?s attention caught ears all around, now that has reached market saturation and digital is more common place. We need something new to laud and sensationalize. HD is the big buzz phrase now, why not make HD that?s affordable for everyone. Which in of itself isn?t really a bad thing, but this is really aiming to be used as a pro format. Or at least aiming at an audience who wants to use pro equipment but can?t really afford it. So all in all, this is a way to sell thousands of cameras and a continuation to sell hundreds of thousands of MiniDV tape, with a format that doesn?t look very good on paper, but they are going to make it work anyway. Honestly I?d advocate shooting a less compressed, less subsampled SD format. But its only inevitable that the siren call of HD in what ever configuration the masses can get it will drown out the truth. I spent a lot of time at Apple?s booth. Motion looked interesting, I?m not an expert in video motion graphics, but it looked good to me. I?m sure Adobe isn?t happy. But competition is a good thing. I heard someone ask an Apple representative in anger about Apple introducing its own software in direct competition with others that have cooperated with Apple. The representative said if any one is unhappy with our software they are free to make a version that works better. In essence competition. Final Cut Pro can also natively work with DVC-PRO HD through firewire without any additional hardware. To me that is bringing real HD to the masses. They will also have an update for HDV, but DVC-PRO is the real deal.

Even though NAB declared 2004 the year of HD, there doesn't seem to be much post NAB fervor. There were actually some interesting HD ideas and proposals for the future at NAB.

A friend of mine and I were looking at photo scanners. We saw one that had 3.1 DMax he thought a scanner under 4.0 DMax wasn't worth it, but I said a desity of 1.2 is about 7 stops, 3.1 doesn't seem bad at all. I know in motion film scanning 2.0 is very dense negative, but I don't know much about scanning stills. Can someone enlighten me.