John Brawley

Is it possible you're just seeing the noise floor of the sensor itself ? Why are you lifting the blacks up as high as 30% ? If you're lifting them as high as that I would expect you'd start seeing noise in the blacks.... jb

My first job was working in a camera rental company and I was exposed to a lot of the service and repair side of the gear. I always rent gear and if it breaks I ring the rental company and say "bring me another one....this one's broken" I know enough to detect and test for faults in the field...and I leave the fixing to the guys that own the gear and have the workshop to do it... jb

Hi. Tonight on ABC 1 @ 9PM. Lowdown is a comedy series I shot late last year (aside from tonights pilot), and is set in the world of celebrity tabloid journalism. Lowdown shines a spotlight on the life of a man whose job it is to feed the publics insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip...something it seems we just cant get enough of. With a very recognisable list of Australian cast, Lowdown is narrated by none other than Geoffrey Rush and also stars Kim Gyngell as the Sunday Sun editor, Paul Denny as Bob the Sunday Sun photographer and Alex's (played by wilfreds Adam Zwar) best mate and Beth Buchanan as Rita, Alexs on-again-off-again girlfriend. Alexs inept GP Dr James played by Dailan Evans fuels his cyber-chondria while Julia Zemiro plays Hope van der Boom, the gutsy publicist to the stars. The pilot, which airs tonight was actually shot waaaaaaay back in late 2008. Once the series was picked up we shot the rest of it at the end of 2009. It was amazing even grading the different footage from RED a year apart. It's a low budget production (hey it's the ABC) and we shot single camera over about 40 production days....pretty fast. Most of the show is handheld too...I had the Cooke 15-40 T2 on most of the time....not exactly lightweight !!! Those of you overseas can watch it here after it goes to air tonight ( i think) And there's a which was cut from offline edits (before grading) jb

Your biggest issue with this situation will be balancing the exposure level. If you're suing it as a backlight, there's a fair chance that you'll be looking at or out the window yes ? In that case, the bigger issue is reducing the glow you'll get from a hot window. It can overwhelm your subject. Instead of backlight you'll get a silhouette. You can try to balance this out by lifting the key level (and therefore your base exposure) but this generally requires more firepower than your "student" c.com status and use of CTB indicating tungsten lights only indicates you can access. The other option is to reduce the level coming in. Common techniques for a seemless result include using ND lighting gel cut out and stuck to the window, using ND perspex on the window or large nets or even shade cloth if you're not looking too closely at it. You can create a key from a non existent window. You have to use your own judgement about weather this looks true and even if you care that it looks true. I often will not match the CT of the key to a window source either. You might consider 1/2 CTB for better separation and less light lost through your presumably tungsten source. Remember though, that colour saturation decreases as you head towards brighter exposure. Your backlight will tend to look more white than any colour because it will be so bright. jb

Isn't that what lenses like the Optimo rouge lenses are all about ? jb

In Australia, the main advantages to incorporation are reducing the tax bracket you sit in. Corporate tax is 30% across the board in Australia. If you're in the highest personal income tax bracket it's .45c for every dollar earned. It's more expensive to set up and report, but if you're in a higher income bracket, it's generally worthwhile doing. jb

Really ? Why do you link it so strongly with 2001 ? I'd say it's closer to films like Silent Running or even Metropolis. I guess it is about interacting with allien species to humans. In moon, you just didn't know that it's telling it from the aliens' side and he doesn't know he's not really considered a human or of the same rights. The computer too is an alien I spose. jb

WATCH FOR SPOILERS NOW>>>>> Well I thought it played well in the film. I was expecting the GERTY character to be more malicious, but in fact was the opposite. I kept waiting for it to go wrong (a la HAL) In fact, to me that's what the film was about. Both Sam and GERTY are striving for humanity, for recognition of their own humanity. Neither of them are full citizens of the world. They are outsiders straining for acceptance. GERTY commits the ultimate act of grace and empathy in the end. What else is that other than human ? The question the film really asks is what is it that defines humanity itself and are we worthy of the notions that go with that. jb

ONe of the best films of 2009 in my opinion, and from a first time director. Who says you can't do low budget (this was something like 5 Million) and sci-fi well. Should have had more oscar glory. Especially for Sam Rockwell's amazing performance. He literally carried the film. jb

1000FPS is getting up there. I haven't done much in the way of ultra high speed, but I also am pretty sure there can be issues with flicker on tungsten sources lower than 2K at higher frame rates. There may be others who can comment more knowledgeably on this. Spacelights are great but you don't get heaps of level from them considering the wattage burning. And I wonder if there's enough for 1000FPS. Do you have any photometric data for the spacelights ? I'd be looking that up (or for an equivalent) and trying to work out if you have enough fc. My instincts point to that maybe not being enough in terms of level. jb

I've found SR3's and in particular the HS SR3's to be prone to being a little unreliable in precipitation. Many years ago I was on a 9 camera shoot in the rain at the Melbourne Cup. They all got a little wet. Only one of the 9 cameras stopped working and it was the Arri SR3 HS. If it's humid there can be issues with acclimatising the lenses and the viewfinder too. I gather it's an indoor water park ? If that's the case you may want to take everything inside some hours before the actual shoot to give the gear a chance to acclimatise to the humidity or you'll have issues with fogging. The longer it's int hat environment, the better. Open all your cases and try to prop the lenses up. (supervised) Make sure you've got a heated viewfinder cable too, but I've never found them that great on the Arri's either. jb

Evan, arricode is a joke. It's meant to make things easier, but the implementation was half-arsed and not really thought through response to the success of Aatoncode. I could tell you all the reasons why, but just take my word for it. It's junk. I've yet to meet a single person that's been able to make it work successfully without some kind of ongoing drama. I do know that the best chance you'll have of making it work it to go to a telecine facility with a keylink as they are the best readers of arricode (which are funnily enough made by Aaton). So either use a Timecode slate as discussed or a regular dumb slate and you'll enjoy the unique tribal ritual of bashing two bits of wood together for film that's been with us for nearly a century... jb

Do you need to see the floor ? jb

You can't go past Schneider classic softs. They are great for diffusion that doesn't look like diffusion. Depending on the strength you will get halation on point source highlights. Just keep those hot highlights out and you can't tell. jb

I bet they'll make masterprimes seem cheap jb

Dan you could look at an easyrig for endurance...but not for looks ;-) jb

There's a story in AC about them TRYING to use 65mm, but the Panaflex and the Arri 765 both broke down in the cold on the first day of shooting. They intended to use it for all his flashback material. They reverted to 35mm and they cooked up a recipe in the DI for a reversal sort of look. jb

The problem for me is that anyone who says "film is dead" is just buying into a ridiculous gear pissing match over numbers and statistics. Even in stills, film is actually not dead. Sure, not many people choose to use it, but there are plenty who still do. And critically perhaps in this analogy, it's fine artists rather than commercial photographers. It's like saying LP's are dead. Well they are not are they ? Diehards still use them. Yes they make up a small minority of the total music market. I'm realistic and would say most of my recent work hasn't been shot on film. This ridiculous clamouring to pronounce film being dead speaks volumes about the person making such pronouncements. It says they care more about specs than using their eyes. It says that they care more about the emotional choice to NOT shoot film and desperately want the reassurance that their chosen alternative is as good as film. Meanwhile, good DP's who care about telling stories visually will simply choose the best tool for the job, based on the script, directors intent and available budget. jb

They lost me when they said film is dead....but then again...it is a story by HDusermagazine. I guess they shouldn't even be looking at RED either seeing as it's anything but HD..... jb

Not really backing up though is it ? You've just moving it to another container for transport. A step that does have a small degree of risk. But you still only have one instance of your content until it hits the lab and is processed to a more stable and safe state. Even then though there's still only the one instance of the content, but at least it's in a safe, stable location where conditions are more controlled. I agree. I've had the best results simply taking a still and using lightroom. I'll email some notes to the colourist. Nothing else is worth the effort and seldom gives a better result.

Oh yeah. That's why I hate backing up on set. I'd much rather treat it like film and send the rushes offsite to be backed up in more controlled conditions. I've always been sceptical of on set backups. The chance of interrupted power, accidental hard drive knocks, constant moving of the set, constant moving of the DIT trolly. It just screams painful. I'm even more sceptical of onset colour correction, a la DIT. On a recent TV series, we simply shot to RED DRIVES instead of card. Every couple of hours of set time we swapped out the drive and sent them off to the lab (in this case Deluxe) with a runner at lunch and the end of the day. Deluxe would do visual and tech checks of every print take, two sets of backups to editorial drives, backed it up to their networked storage and this was then also backed up on their LTO tape system. The main chance of failure with this approach is then the camera drive itself. I feel like it's minimised by swapping it out religiously every couple of hours. Even if the drive fails, there's often a chance of recovery of most of the drive if a particular sector / take goes down. The most you loose is a couple of hours of set time if the drive totally fails. More than likely you'd also know on set if that happens to the drive because the camera will report a fault as you shoot. Not a bad trade off. And i can have one less person on set. Just a loader instead of a DIT and loader. jb

The only time I've seen this kind of artefact is when the blacks are highly lifted and you have flat fields of a lower shadow tone, near black or just above. I had always assumed it was more to do with fixed noise of the sensor. Mind you, if that's the worst it can do, then I've only seen it appear in the most drastic of situations. I still think I prefer it to DCT. I was just making a point that one has to arrive at your own *position* with regard to how you view the numbers and filter through the marketing talk to the real world outcomes. I think we do it with all cameras, not just RED. jb

Phil I'm not an engineer, and only barely keep up with an understanding of the underlying technology platforms. I am inherently sceptical of compression, and have certainly seen the shortcomings of other formats, but I'd put it way down the list of issues holding back RED image and picture fidelity. I've done a film and a TV series with RED, and I'm amazed out how good the compression is. It's certainly not getting in the way of pushing the picture around as much as other sensor limitations are. I'm sure you'll tell me that the compression artefacts are there, but I can't seem to see them in my everyday work. I can't say the same about almost any other camera / format. I have the greatest respect for your knowledge, but when you sledge RED for using this kind of compression when its clear (well in my experience) that it's far above anything else doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm genuinely trying to take on your point of view, but I really don't understand what your issue actually is because I just don't see it playing out in my own real world experience. Can you be any more definitive about what makes it some kind of subterfuge ? How would it play out in terms of end image result and what production conditions would reveal the fundamental problems of wavelet based compression. I can understand your sensitivity over the constant use of the term 4K if numbers are important to you. Long ago in my mind I accepted that RED creates a 4K (pixel) file out of a 3.2K(at best) image of the sensor. Most imaging professionals probably think the same way. Anyone who has half a clue about RED knows that the camera doesn't record 4K. It's interesting though because I don't think anyone else actually bothered to measure the shooting resolution of other digital formats. I was involved in some tests that were done by a local rental company. We couldn't even get 3.2K out of RED, but we also couldn't get anywhere near 1920 out of most HD cameras either. Red seemed to come closest to it's stated resolution. I also long ago realised that most manufacturers fib about their products. Or at best, tweak their results to the most favourable possible light. Battery performance for example. Lens apertures not being what's written on the barrel. "no ramping" is a favourite. In my mind, Sony are the worst offender. I've never been a fan of pointing cameras or lenses at charts though, cause they make for very boring subjects. Are they really so different to other manufactures wanting their products to be seen in the best possible way ? Is it that they are more successful than most ? Is it that their lower cost of entry as meant a flood of inexperienced imaging *experts* that think the best way to be a DP is to hitch your horse to one camera ? jb

Hi. Lake mungo is now available for download from iTunes. Now i feel like I've really made it...... :-) jb