John Brawley

Hi Tom. I went through this about 2 years ago and did some test for a film, and it's a bit different for me i guess because we wanted a 35mm film finish. I couldn't really pick much of a difference in resolution between HD and 2k Scans from super 16 using an arri scanner. Where I did pick differences was in workflow AFTER the scan. You want to make sure you can get the most out of your bit depth and colourspace. So HDCAM instead of HDCAM SR will for example will affect your results. Even on SR then can be big differences between 709 colourspace and LOG as well. When I was doing it, it was a lot cheaper to scan HD rather than 2k. And it meant I could scan and grade from uncompressed data BEFORE outputting to HDCAM SR which is what we did for the video masters. The film finish was struck from the uncompressed HD data files with it's own film LUT. jb

No there's no requirement for such things :-) jb EDIT I mean to say that it's 48k straight.

Hi John, Do you mean audio tc frame rates ? It's normally 25 FPS for BOTH 25 FPS vision and 24 FPS vision double system. Sample rates ? 48Khz and sometimes 96 Khz ? jb

Shouldn't matter too much. I've used them with daylight FG / Daylight balnce (shooting RED) and they work so very very well. jb

Don't forget to add some tracking markers in the corner for extra compositing joy. jb

In the case of Avatar i won't disagree with you. Every CG lighting system I've used won't let you work in real time. You have to render frames to see what the effect of changes are. There are real time approximations of previews but they are crude at best. The full effect isn't seen till you render. And that can be minutes, hours or even days PER FRAME. So yeah no time constraints there. And Im happy to work for weeks for free to get the lighting on a frame perfect because the tools allow me to. Again, you're talking about a specific case with Fiore and by and large I'm agreeing with you. But are you really arguing that because it was a rumoured $500 million dollar film that they had it easy ? That this film had no budget or scheduling constraints ? Do you know why they had so many lighting TD's ? Funny that almost every single major post or animation company seemed to have a credit on the film...where they sharing the love around, or in the last 6 months did they suddenly realise they couldn't finish the job i time and start farming shots out to anyone who wasn't busy ? It's naive and untrue to say that animation / CG based projects don't have budgetary or time constraints. Well I wasn't inferring that at all. That's your own spin of my comment. You made a reference to an artisan working on one off originals. I made the point that good design can still be mass produced and I drew a parallel with the manufacturing of films which are also mass produced. Films, in the way that we watch them, are not a one off piece of wood that's hand carved. They may start off as such, but for an audience they are most definitely not like the original. And I never said that it was a requirement of any award process nor did I intended to devalue the creative input of any cinematographer. It seems to me that the real issue is the perception that creating an image using a computer is just not considered worthy of those that don't use computers....like it's some kind of cheat that anyone can do.... Real cinematographers are in the trenches and get their feet wet. Nerds that light aren't worthy of the title of cinematographer. Cinematographers that might even decide to claim visual authorship of CG lighting processes amongst their live action work on a film, overseeing a team that collaborate to create a visually cohesive result are just pushing computer jockeys around fudging their way and copping out creating a homogenised result that anyone with the same computer application could do. If that's what you think then just call a spade a spade and let's move on. I do seem to recall though, similar disparaging comments ( even from me ), on these lists when DSLR's arrived, or when rumours of a 4K cinema camera were announced...or video for that matter. jb

It is disingenuous to simply list the lighting crew and say they lit the film. Is it any different if I grab the electrics list and the rigging crew etc from a live action film ? Your list is the virtual equivalent of listing the crew of a live action film. I'd classify compositors as VFX by the way, as they are only dealing with images that already exist. Of course both groups light the film. The point being that in theory, a DOP oversees the labour of many. Can we not agree that *IF* he had been intimately involved more closely with overseeing the virtual lighting and framing as well as the live action that he would be more deserving ? Ahh but we don't make a single film. We mass manufacture films to be enjoyed in aeroplanes, cinemas, DVD, TV and iPhones, on 35mm print, digital disc or as data. We creatively adjust for each medium (if we're lucky) and off they go. If we're really lucky they might not print it on Fuji stock when you've tested and timed for Kodak. Great design can also be mass produced. they aren't exclusive and Im sure someone else can come up with a great example. (personally i still love the original polaroid SX-70) You can carve a great object from wood and then replicate it. Sure it's not as good as the original. But we're always looking at some copied duplicated, DI/IP'd HD'd SD'd downloaded version as well, that's never as nice as the camera original. jb EDIT, I should also add that i think that this kind of cinematography should be recognised as a separate category in some way and I don't support the academy's view that this was the best cinematography. If you take a purist approach then that's fine as well, but I believe, having gone through the process of hands on lighting and framing a CG film, that the thinking processes and approaches as a DOP are nearly identical. I consider myself to have above average computer literacy but it still took me over a year to become comfortable just using the interface of Maya, let alone getting a result that I was happy with. If you think it's a simple as flicking a switch then you don't actually know anything about CG lighting.

Brad at first said... and then when I asked if a cinematographer used the same process on a live action set and was in charge of a CG crew to create CG images, (in other words, using their "creative" voice) he responded... It's illogical to argue that you'd award an oscar to an actor playing a CG character, but not a DP who has worked with a team to create images in the same way they would in a live action environment. Both are equally difficult and take very talented artists to created beautiful imagery. One group uses cameras, lights, lenses. The other group uses computers and software virtual cameras, virtual lights, virtual lenses. . One is cinematography, the other visual effects. virtual cinematography Extending this argument then, you'd have no trouble excluding a DP from oscar eligibility for any representation of sunlight that isn't actual sunlight in live action as well ? Anytime a DP uses a HMI for a shaft of sunlight for a studio interior is simply "rendering" sunlight. I guess I'd like to see someone hire Roger Deakins to actually DP rather than simply consult. Maybe he doesn't want to and that's fine but why shouldn't there be a DOP automatically on every animated feature ? It's unthinkable to shoot a live action film without a DP. It should be the same for animated films. I agree with Matthew. Awards like the oscars are for individuals that provide leadership over a crew of people to produce a consistent result, be they 2nd Unit, aerial or VFX DP's. In fact, looking at a film like LOTR, I imagine that there were very few frames that WETA didn't have a hand in having some kind of CG imagery. I wouldn't be surprised that as a percentage it was very different to Avatar. We were happy to respect Andrew Lesnie's contribution because the result was visually cohesive, despite having 14 disparate units and WETA probably creating more than half the images. jb

What if there is a DP in charge of it and overseeing all those those elements ? Leading a team or crew of people with specialisations in their respective fields ? How is that different to overseeing a crew that builds the tracks, sets the lights etc ? jb EDIT. I think that probably wasn't the case with Avatar, but I feel that we as DP's need to CLAIM this ground. Because at the moment, it's going to end up being designers and modellers and animators that will do it. We, as visual story tellers, as visual authors need to take our skills and familiar workflows and adapt them to a new mode of storytelling. Of course it's not the same as live action cinematography, but where do you draw the line ? Bluescreen ? Motion Control ? any 3D element integrated ? A percentage of CG ? What percentage ? What about if you motion capture the camera as well as the actors so then there's no live photography but it's all still driven by real operators and actors and a real camera ? It's very complex. I think the issue has arisen because we as an industry haven't taken charge of the visual authorship of these films. We've seen some token attempts, but until DP's actually ARE directing the photography of films that have a large percentage of CG elements then we'll get situations like this where the winner seems undeserving, something that is also pretty unfair on the winners. In the same way that in a way, we are fighting to assert to have our visual authorship respected in the DI suite because so many more people have a say in how our images end up. It was a different story back in the days of optical only finishes. You got what the DP gave you. jb

Hi Pablo. And welcome to the forums. I've worked on Australian naval frigates. Space is certainly at a premium. Most marine environments are usually 110V as well. Make sure your chargers and any lighting will work in this environment. LED's will be almost your only choice here i think. Perhaps small battery operated HMI's if you really feel you need the firepower. But as you say, if it's mostly interviews in rooms then LED's will be fine. Maybe a 1x1 and some of the smaller panels. Battery options here will also save some hassle and can act as ballast as well. Perhaps takes some photoflex style bounce if you're out on deck. Also, have you travelled much on the ocean ? Do you get sea sick ? So far I've been lucky but I've been on plenty of shoots where the entire crew have been wiped out by sea sickness. And once you get it, you will not be able to work. There are tablets you can take but as I understand it, you have to take them BEFORE you leave dock and keep taking them for them to work. Im not sure how the size of the swell is, but even through the frigate is not a small ship, it can still move around a lot. It's easy to loose your footing and lighting on stands for example will move and topple unless you're in a very calm sea so make sure you jave plenty of rigging options for your lighting. Good Luck ! jb

Karl you're wrong. This again shows your utter ignorance of CG lighting process and workflow. When you last put this position across in a similar discussion, I challenged you to widen your perspective and put yourself through a CG lighting process. Clearly you haven't done so and still perpetuate this myth that CG lighting is as easy as a keystroke. It's the same kind of head in the sand and ill informed comments people make about digital cinematography being simple because you get an instant picture when you turn on the camera. Sure some would be happy with what they get, but I'd like to think we've also seen work that can be exceptional once the same processes of lightign and shot construction are applied as well. I'm also agree with you by the way and don't agree with the awarding of Avatar, but for different reasons. I just don't think the DP on this occasion actually did the majority of the work, as indicated by the AC story. If the DP had actually been involved in overseeing the lighting of the CG environments and the designing of the coverage then I'd have less objections (although even then i still think better candidates where available) jb

ahh be careful ! The illumination will sleep after a few mins of inactivity if I remember. Once you roll or adjust a menu function the illumination will return. You can just push the show button once to restore the footage elapsed /frame rate dispaly. Are you sure it defective ? Jb

I think VCA is great if you want to write or Direct, especially if you alrady live in Melbourne. Im not sure it's as suitable for other craft disciplines. If you want to shoot, then AFTRS still is probably going to be the best place to go for cinematography specific training and support. jb

I doubt the Open Channel / Summer School course will be on a par with VCA or AFTRS. I'm sure actually that AFTRS still has a lot to offer, it's just that they've dumbed it down from such a high benchmark in practical skills based education. I went after I'd already worked as a freelancer for 5 years, with 5 years full time at an equipment rental company prior to that. In other words, 10 years in industry before i went *to school* I guess it depends on where you are with your career and skills. If you haven't done a lot of production and are just starting out I wouldn't discount them as a starting point. Plus you'll get to meet 22 new aspiring directors who might even be able to give you work one day ! jb

You mean the LCD is backlit and now the back lighting doesn't work, or the display itself is not working ? The illumination is always on, so if it's not working then there is a fault. jb

I've tested a couple of the RED zooms, but never been able to choose them over other lenses on jobs where I've shot RED. They are really excellent value for money, but there is a difference at the top end. I'm lucky enough to work on gigs that can afford to pay the premium price, but I always found them amazingly good optically (for the price), and perhaps a little bit of a let down in the actual mechanical side of things. I think they are ideally suited to owner operators that will take good care of them. jb

I think that a larger majority are not manufactured by US corporations. (India ? Nigeria ? China ?) US corporations do however lay claim to being the most successfully exported and the most profitable. jb EDIT. From MPAA.ORG "We are the only American industry to run a positive balance of trade in every country in which we do business."

Indeed. Brian I have to say i find it a little irksome that your subject line infers a pro-US position with regard to c.com. Whilst the list is owned and operated by a US citizen, a majority of the membership is US based, are we not an international filmmaking community ? I find it really hard to be sympathetic to mewings of US based members about the state of "their" film industry on these boards, when there's an inferred entitlement / protectionist mentality attached like this... We know you guys are doing it tough with the economy at the moment. After all, the US is the greatest promoter / imposer of democracy and capitalism going right ? Are you really suggesting a hypocritic backflip on that agenda when it doesn't go the US's way ?? shock horror.... In Australia, we too in the same way as the US have eliminated tariffs and protectionist policies across the board. We no longer have a car manufacturing industry as a result. We almost don't have a mass manufacturing base here at all now. Certainly many US films have been shot here as runaway productions when the exchange rate was favourable. Lately it's been very quite here for outfits that had setup to cater to now non existent US productions shooting here, that have taken flight to other cheaper environments. Like Canada, at least Australia has a genuinely functional public health care system and no fault work cover for work related injuries. I didn't really understand why the unions were so important in the US film industry until I worked there. Idiotic articles like this don't show the flip side either. Do you know how hard it is to raise finance for a film OUTSIDE of the US ? There must be literally hundreds of films that get made in the US in the under 5 million category. Australia produces about 40 features in a good year and almost NONE of them would have a budget above that figure and almost all of them have some form of direct government investment. Almost no Australian film makes a profit. Australian films at the Australian box office are only 5% of total BO figure in a good year. Sometimes it's as low as 2%. 2% !?! How about the the fact that US TV gets dumped here in Australia for a fraction of it's actual cost ? A typical hour of Australian drama costs $250-$500K to produce....way cheaper (more efficient??) than US production by and large yet an Aussie TV network get's V for 60K per ep. Which do you think they'd prefer to run ? Even so called low budget US indie films blow most regular domestic Australian budget's out of the water. And the IP still generally resides in the US, even for yahoo's like this guy. He's making the film in Thailand but the profits are returning to the US....one presumes. Are we simply more efficient at making films or can you raise more money in the US with it's larger audience ? I don't think these are easy questions to answer... jb

There sure is. Piet's a great DP and it would be great to have him around here. Welcome to the forums Piet ! Do you know Leonard Coster by any chance ? He's Sydney based and as been working on some great stereo rigs for various camera packages...i can put you in touch if you wish. jb

That's what is so sad about Kodak. They held all this great IP on colour science and digital imaging. They were leaders when it came to sensor design (Cinesite cineon / Spirit anyone ?) and they somehow threw it all away.... jb

It certainly does ring through doesn't it... one thing I would say though is that no one really knows what the public will embrace or not embrace.. I learned this playing the HSX game. At first i bought virtual shares in films I like the sound of, with directors or cast I liked. I nearly busted out. It's only once i started thinking about films that would succeed in the market that i turned my portfolio around...im now worth just over 100 million btw ;-) This new exchange also has a practice game going now. I actually got to see a preview of a blockbuster recently weeks before it's release. I thought the film stank and so in the practice exchange went hard at what I thought was a very unlikely BO. Well, the film did well upon release, people flocked and even though it was a crappy film, it still had an audience. So even when you think you have the inside running, it's still hard to predict ! There's no accounting for taste and if it was that easy, then hollywood would have worked out the perfect formula by now ! jb

I've been playing an online stock market simulation game called "Hollywood Stock Exchange" www.hsx.com for some years. The same people are behind this idea to create a futures market based on box office. With the HSX game, you are given 2 million virtual dollars and buy and sell stocks. The stocks delist after they hit 4 weeks of release in the US and it's delist price is determined by it's BO to that date. You can also by bonds (in actors and directors). I started playing, mainly because it's a great way to hear about films that have been green-lit, often way before they show up in other trade magazines and sources. The funny thing is, HSX has proven to be an incredibly accurate predictor of box office. More accurate than any other predictor. The guy that runs HSX now makes his money from studios and the like SUBSCRIBING to his information services, which are derived principally from monitoring his own stock exchange. Studios have been able to measure the success (or not) of trailers for example and WOM as the films progress to and past initial release. This new development is an interesting one. Essentially it's the same idea. The stock delists after 4 weeks and it's price is determined by it's BO to that point. The difference being you buy or sell options to OTHER players, essentially gambling on the what that figure will be. I think your scenario about a director or his mate buying futures in his own film as insider trading isn't a worst case scenario. A director will likely ALWAYS think their film will secretly be a runaway success. So will his mate. How many would buy against their film ? More likely a good form of insider trading would be a studio, with all the information it has at hand, test screening data, their previous experience and HSX data....realises that they have a turkey and options (or hedges ?) against it's own film. It can even ensure it's lack of success by reducing advertising, making a bad poster, reducing the number of screens etc. What about an actor who positions against themselves and then *throws* the game by turning in a crappy performance..... BTW, anyone that works in the film industry isn't allowed to operate an account....not that this would stop someone crafty enough to get around this. If you think about how much money would be required to hedge against a film that was going to be a turkey its astronomical. Surely that kind of money running against a film would be easily detected. But i do think it's very very easily corrupted by smaller scale insider trading. I think it's a bit of a stretch to argue this will somehow help the funding of films and somehow support the film industry generally. If you take it for what it is, gambling on the box office of films then if someone's idiotic to do then why not let them ?? There's nothing in this to help film production generally. And these kinds of markets always have winners....and losers.... jb

I so don't want to bash Kodak because I still love them, but it's just like their half-arsed Look Manager, which wouldn't even run on any of the 3 macs I tried to make it work on. jb

I've never understood this idea of changing the rating of the camera to somehow trick better exposure out of it. You do realise that all you're doing is recording a different set of metadata ??? All you're doing is changing the way the image displays on a monitor and how the various metering systems will work. RED has an amazing toolset for exposure. ISO is for film and it's never ever accurate for electronic imaging because different exposure areas will respond differently anyways. So use the camera's RAW setting, that is nominally 320 ISO. Then learn how to work with array of exposure assistance that's built into the camera. I like a setup where I plug false colour into button 2, 709/ RAW on button 1 then zebras (set at 100%) on 3 and black zebras (5%) on button 5. Then i can check all my exposure ranges, and even toggle between RAW and 709 with any of the exposure monitorings. jb

All zoom lenses are a compromise of sorts. I've used both the lenses you've mentioned. The canon is generally excellent. Realistically, it's more like a T2.8 for starters. It tends to fall over at the longer end of the zoom. Zoomed all the way in the lens tends to go milky in the blacks and the contrast will be lower. the flatness of the field also diverges from it's previously acceptable standard.... jb