Tyler Purcell

I have no idea what 4k and HDR has anything to do with "longevity". The problem with have now is that our digital movies are 50 - 200TB worth of data, which is expensive to store. The other problem is, unlike film which can be seen by the human body without translation, digital can't. Also, digital is not impervious to degrading. The difference is obsolescence becomes greater and extrapolating more from a fixed-pixel digital image is nearly impossible, when compared to formats without fixed pixels. Still, the cost issue is absolutely the highest priority. Remember when films were melted down after use to recoup some money from their cost? That's what digital is like today. Studio's will eventually spend hundreds of millions maintaining digital archives and they will pick and choose which content is stored online or nearline. I don't know if the PGA president knows this, but since the digital revolution started, we have lost many original masters to degrading tapes caused by poor storage and bad recording methods. That will not change, there is no 100+ year magic bullet for digital media. The problem is, it's the little guys who will hurt the most. Guys who make a great product, but maybe didn't get great distribution. Those wonderful products will most likely be lost because those filmmakers can't afford to keep backing up tape archives year after year to insure they're ok. A small mistake can loose everything. Sure, storage technologies are getting smaller, faster and less expensive. However, camera files are getting bigger/fatter and more difficult to work with. We have yet to see any storage breakthroughs, it's the biggest reason why we rely so heavily on the cloud for dealing with our media. The amount (cost) of server storage necessary to deal with the overhead of the next 20 years of high resolution digital masters. To this date, almost all of our data is 1080p OR LESS and we struggle to hold onto it all. Unfortunately, the only 'solution' are scanned out separation prints. They will last 300 years easily and don't cost nearly anything, sitting on a shelf. As a side note, a recent 2014 study stated, the previous decade was the least recorded since the early 1900's. Why? Because we create more content then ever before, yet very few people organize and backup what they've done in a way that's future proof. If the internet went down tomorrow, nobody would have anything. Where during the analog days, we'd have pictures stored in books, in our attic's, spread around the family on our mantle pieces, in our home movies, etc... All of that still happens, but a slight slip-up computer wise and everything you've done vanishes.

Wait, I thought this was a subjective thread about your 5 top B&W (black and white) movies... When did we start listing favorite color movies? EEK!!!

Well I think the creator of that list was picking single shots out of movies, not looking at the entire film's content. I think Gordon Willis was underrated because his style wasn't over the top, it was very natural and realistic, not purposely flattering of the actors or sets. It's usually the stand out performances which people win awards for. I look at Roger Deakins work... a man who should have won at least 5 oscars now and I see so many parallels with Willis.

Ohh yea, just "rich" people, they use http://www.primacinema.com/ Which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

Studio's will send DCP's for these guys to watch, just like a normal cinema.

Well today everyone is digital. In the not too distant past, private theaters were mostly film. I've been in to many older private cinema's and have seen double 35mm projectors. Today a guy like Micheal Bay can afford a fiber line and 4k cinema projector matching one at an actual cinema. So people at the studio can send him in real time 4k images off the edit so he doesn't have to leave home. There is also a semi-secret network available to rich people which allows them to view first run content immediately at home. Most guys like Bay will have that system installed at their house so they never have to go to the movies. If I had that kind of money, I'd just install a cinerama style curved screen, matching stereo, matching glass for the projectors and run double 35mm/70mm projectors along with a 4k digital cinema projector. I'd put my money into gobbling up buying prints of movies and having them to watch. Then again, I like being hands on with that sorta stuff, many filmmakers aren't interested.

That's been my experience as well. I did a shoot with an Epic and S16 recently. We had to take the RED outside between takes on S16 because the FILM camera was silent and the DIGITAL camera made too much noise for the ACTORS. They were getting pissed off by the noise in the extremely quiet room. There is no reason for fans and big gaping holes on a digital cinema camera, none what so ever. It all goes down to physical size and manufacturers trying to fit everything into a very small package. In my eyes, any cameras with gaping holes in them, which go directly to electronics, are absolutely worthless. A clever heat sync design can solve almost all of these problems. The URSA Mini for instance is silent.

It will absolutely sound like a hair dryer. IDK about the rest, I haven't used or colored a newer RED camera yet.

Pretty sweet, just got an e-mail about it being at Cinegear. If it works, I may actually go to Cinegear this year, I wasn't planning on going.

It's no different then an URSA Mini or even the Canon C series. Anything over 5lb and you're going to need all of that. Plus, the Alexa does shoot Pro Res XQ, which is perfectly good, so no raw conversions in post. I just spent the afternoon at Alan Gordon hanging out with the new sales manager, trying to get some package deals together for my school so when Wayne comes back, I can start figuring out pricing. We had a 535, 435, Arricam LT, Aaton III, Arri IIC and some Arri SR's of varying era's. It was a blast putting each one on a tripod and kinda jogging my memory on why I like smaller cameras. Obviously there is nothing in the film world that comes close to the weight of a Blackmagic Pocket camera, GH4 or A7S. You could compare those cameras to a Bolex EBM perhaps. But the Alexa size is more like an Aaton III, then anything else. It doesn't weigh very much, you don't need huge support (though more then a DSLR for sure), which is nice. It's when you get up into the 535 that things change dramatically, that thing is a tank and doesn't even fit in the same category as the Aaton III. The Arricam LT was pretty light, I could have probably used my lightweight tripod for it. I was kinda shocked to be honest, because each component is substantially lighter then the 535, more akin to the 435, which is a pretty light camera. Almost all of my 35mm work was done on MOS cameras like the Arri III and 435, so the LT is pretty foreign and I was shocked how light it was for a quiet sync sound camera, but we didn't put film it.. I think the Aaton III/Penelope are the only camera that is relatively close to the size, weight and resolution of an Alexa. All of those cameras would work fine on my $150 ebay special tripod, of which there are usually many of. I think they'd even work on a medium grade slider and I already know they'd be OK on a Steadicam flyer as I've used my XTR on one and it's heavier.

Ahh got ya. TO me, when someone says LED, I think of a display device, rather then a light source. Ohh I don't know anything about it, I just did a google search and came up with an answer. ;)

Quite under the radar, Panavision has not only updated their website, but has made a fantastic series of educational videos which are well worth watching. Their vimeo site is: www.vimeo.com/pvision Enjoy!

What's an LED projector? Anyway, there are 120FPS projectors out there... https://www.barco.com/en/Specsheets/abc55d7f-d8ba-43d3-b598-ed081f25817f/F50.pdf

I agree, price vs performance is such an essential thing. The Alexa is the best, but it's also the most expensive on that list. I too made the pocket camera investment because I know how important glass is. I understand that NOBODY is going to see anything I shoot in 4k, nor would I ever edit anything in 4k. So the whole "resolution" game, is irrelevant to me. Imager quality, lenses and codec are FAR more important in my eyes then resolution. The lenses are part of what makes the pocket so killer. It's easy to source high quality Super 16 coverage glass because very few people want it. Where full frame glass is MUCH more money for equal quality. It's nice to have a big professional camera, especially for bigger shows. Having just been involved with a feature shooting on the Canon C300MKII, I miss the more professional camera, with a decent viewfinder, that's easy to shoulder, that balances nicely and has more robust codec's. So there is absolutely a positive to shooting with better camera bodies, it's just... they don't need to be SOO expensive. The URSA Mini 4.6k is near the top of a very short list of cameras that do these things right, for not much money.

I remember seeing the first trailer for this movie quite a while ago. It kinda disappeared off my radar as the release date kept getting pushed back. I finally got an opportunity to see it last night at the Arclight cinema in Sherman Oaks California. It was put into one of their smaller houses for the 8:05 screening, which was depressing for a relatively new release. It was funny when the guy at the ticket counter said, this is where the art films go to die. He was joking of course, but maybe he wasn't? So THE LOBSTER... It's deadpan humor was pretty spot on. The story is of course, takes place in our world, todays date, the only thing that's changed is that the government controls relationships. If you aren't in a relationship, you are sent out of the city to this boot camp for single people and if you can't find a new perfect match in under a certain amount of time, you are killed. They say "transformed" into an animal, but in reality, they kill you. The cinematography is very plain, with the use of very few focal length lenses and very little added light. Most scenes seem naturally lit and there are some scenes of pretty decent sized grain particles during day exteriors, making me think it was shot at 800 ISO all the way through. The grain did make it seem more filmic, though I could tell right away it was shot with the Alexa. I was surprised with some of the clearly underexposed material which was pushed in post. Never the less, it did look good and very filmic for digital. Since there was very little camera movement in the movie, it was all about cutting and acting, rather then whiz bang camera moves, which was nice to see. Over-all I enjoyed the movie, even though it could have lost 20 minutes and been the same product (translation: it was too long).

1) BluRay uses a 8 bit, 4:2:0 MPEG 4 Transport Stream codec, with around 35 - 45Mbps. Web based streaming services are almost all flash based, which allows for lower bandwidth playback, with the same quality content. 2) Web-based streaming is generally Flash based, but non-web based streaming is similar 8 bit 4:2:0 MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 program stream, but bandwidth is no more than 10Mbps. Almost all web-based content providers ALSO transcode to a lower-resolution .h264 file for streaming on mobile devices (ipad/phone, etc). If you only have a mobile device, you may be seeing better quality video then your desktop computer, which is again, flash playback in most cases. 3) Refer to answer 2 4) Refer to answer 1 and 2 5) Well, you can do the math yourself. If you're streaming at 10Mbps... times 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour... 6) Refer to answer 2 7) What holds people back from streaming UHD content is the cost to them. Remember, they have to pay for bandwidth. So if they send you a 50Mbps file, they are paying 5 times the amount to do that, then a 10Mbps file. If the 10Mbps file looks fine, why would they send you a 50Mbps file? Also, our infrastructure can't support it. There is no way we will see UHD streaming to the quality of UHD BluRay anytime in our future, it just won't happen. Even Gigabit internet, which is right around the corner, can't deliver anything near the bandwidth of UHD BluRay. 8) Disks are dead already. The video stores went out of business. The retailers have decreased their media sections to a few hundred titles and big name movies are being pushed out the door for $4.99 on BluRay, just to clear inventory. The disk market is a zombie walking around with no direction today. The vast majority of people want instant access to media, quality doesn't really matter to them. They want to sit down, press a button and watch content. The only way for streaming services to reach the bandwidth of BluRay is if they charge consumers for that bandwidth. This would mean $50/month netflix for everyone. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Exactly, tests only say so much, in reality things can be slightly different. The comments you made about filtration as well are so important. A lot of people don't realize what happens to an image with over filtration.

Well yes David. You are right that the over-all images dynamic range as a total number, doesn't "decrease" per say. However, the "effect" of going over or under the base ISO, IS a detractor to the over-all image. Lower the ISO and you have less highlight dynamic range. Increase the ISO and you have less black dynamic range. So where the total number (lets say 14 stops) doesn't change. There is a significant difference in the imagers ability to capture the same dynamics as it's base ISO. http://www.provideocoalition.com/alexa_iso_settings_the_least_you_need_to_know/ Still, that's the Alexa... the most advanced cinema camera on the market. In reality, most cameras and imagers don't function anywhere near the Alexa.

Think of it a different way. Have you ever had a dimmer on lights before? You know, a knob or switch that you can vary which increases or decreases the brightness of light? An imager works in a very similar way. The dimming light switch is called a potentiometer and on an imager it's called a photosensor. So imagine your dimming light switch is in the middle, you have range to go up to full bright and down to full darkness. The middle would be considered your base ISO. It has a lot of headroom at the top and lots of room at the bottom. Now, imagine if you turned that dimming light switch almost to the top, what happens? Well, you don't have anymore room to go right? You have hit the peak of the switch and it's the same thing with a photosensor. If you over-saturate it with light, you are loosing your dynamic range. You've just lost that rage from the middle of the switch to the top and bottom. You've raised the black levels considerably AND over-driven the imager to the point near distortion. This is why on some cameras, you actually get color shift with lower ISO's and bright sunlight cinematography. Is that a good enough analogy to explain how it works? With digital, there is only one ISO per camera. To get different ISO's, the electronics change the way they process the data coming from the imager. Again, use the dimming light switch analogy from above. If you shoot 6000 ISO with an imager which is designed to work at 800, you have the dimming light switch almost all the way at the bottom, make sense? So if you wanted to see in a room with the lights all the way down, it would be really difficult wouldn't it? The way they compensate for that is by taking the little bit of data it's receiving and forcing it to create an image. Since it's an analog process in many ways, noise is introduced into the image, which is why high ISO has noise. ISO has nothing to do with a lens, it's all the imager and processor. All the lens and filtration do, is decrease the amount of light going into the camera. You don't really NEED an iris in a lens if you use filters and electronic compensation in the camera to make up for the light coming in. In fact, the whole premise of an Iris didn't come until much later in the age of photography. Zooming in digitally in post production.

Yea, I hear ya. So they're producing custom ASIC's like Canon's DIGIC which perform specific tasks. I always thought manufacturers used a more basic processor like Go Pro does with the A7. It has a multi-core GPU on board, which is part of the magic.

Well as Miguel said, you can't close the aperture that much. Most digital cinema cameras are so sensitive even at their lowest ISO, it's hard not to use filtration. The other issue is depth of field. The more you close the lens, the flatter the image. Cinematographers in general, kinda like shallow depth of field. This is what separates our subjects from the backgrounds and foregrounds. This is why a lot of cinematographers will tend to shoot at a certain stop for the whole show and compensate for light differences with ISO and filtration. As Miguel pointed out as well, most glass doesn't like to be all the way open or all the way closed. Glass in general is best used in the meat of the stop range. This in conjunction with keeping the aperture more on the open side for depth of field reasons, tends to push people towards T4 through T8 in a lot of cases. The reason why any of this is an issue is because unlike film cameras where you change the stock to get different native ISO's, digital cameras have a built-in native ISO that you can't change. The more light you let into the lens OVER it's native ISO, the less dynamic range you'll have. That extra light saturation, over-drives the imager and as a consequence, the highlight detail is lost. This isn't such a problem on cameras with a native 800 ISO, working at lets say 400. But it's a huge problem with cameras at a native 1600 or more, like some of the lower-end Sony cameras. The imager really looses it's ability to deal with highlights when you lower the ISO to a normal working outdoor ISO without several stops of filtration, which is not only expensive, but kind of a waste. In terms of your resolution question... I mean, the more resolution you have, the more you can manipulate in post. For instance, if you shoot something and you want to push in on the subject, you CAN do that with a 6k camera delivering in 4k, you've got lots of room. Plus, the rate technology is going, some people think we'll have 8k televisions and theaters soon, in that case we should be shooting everything today in 8k, to protect our assets for the future. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening at all. Most everything is shot in 4k and finished in 2k (1080p) for delivery. One funny side note, my friend works at one of the top content delivery/archival houses and he said 90% of his work today is still 1080p, including features. Which is really sad to think of, we went from shooting 35mm film for most features, which is arguably 4.5k when the original negative is scanned, to basically finishing everything in 2k or worse. The only reason they do it is because 2k is cheaper all the way though the process. Less storage space needed, visual effects take less time to render, you don't need super powerful computers to compile/composite your work either. This trend will eventually change, but for the time being, it's what most people do. The interesting part is, so far digital distribution has not succeeded the best quality of film and I doubt it will in my lifetime.

I have never done active camera logs on a documentary. I simply download the material every day, organize via subject/interview. Then when I have the time to watch material, I will log what I see in an editing program. As a cinematographer for hire, I generally make sure my camera has decent metadata.

I agree with Adam. I always shoot at the proper ISO for the given situation and then add filtration if needed. At the same time however, I've found it important to under expose slightly, just enough to protect your highlights. The noise at 800 ISO is unnecessary if you're shooting bright daylight scenes.

Pricing sounds right to me, blank VHS tapes aren't very expensive at all.

You need to read wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35_mm_film Just read those three articles, they will answer ALL of your questions.