Tyler Purcell

I've worked with the URSA 4k and 4.6k raw files. I've also worked with Red Dragon 4k files as well. So I have some experience with these codec's and cameras. What I've found is the URSA 4.6k is much easier to color and look natural then the RED, which even with heavy filtration, still has a green hue to it. I'm also not adverse to the Blackmagic's yellow/orange look. To me "WARM" is a lot better then "COLD". I guess if you're David Fincher, a naturally cold camera is OK, that's his look anyway. For me however, naturally warm is great because it's so easy to get cold from warm, it's hard to go the other way. I did download some Pro Res XQ test footage shot with the Cion and to my disappointment, it was horrible. Bright exteriors and the camera had huge highlight clipping issues, even more then Sony's. In my view, RAW is a big deal because especially with RED and Cinema DNG, you can adjust the compression ratio AND still get a RAW color space image. Cinema DNG @ 4:1 is actually smaller file sizes then Pro Res XQ at similar frame sizes. Plus, some people actually want to record the full bandwidth of the imager, which delivers better dynamic range then ever XQ.

Cion is unfortunately a joke. If they fixed it's issues, then it would be interesting, but it's nowhere near the Ursa Mini 4.6k. I also don't even think about it even existing because it doesn't have a RAW option.

It's suppose to fix everything. Plus with the 4.6k imager, it has better color sampling in 4k RAW then the older imager. They have some great RAW samples on their website you can download and color for yourself. Well worth checking out before contemplating buying. So far, the camera looks fantastic, but it's still not there yet. They had a huge setback when it comes to global shutter recently and it means none of the 4.6k cameras come with it stock. They claim it's related to noise, which makes sense since the 4k version is global shutter and SO DAMN NOISY! This is part of the reason the Alexa doesn't have a global shutter. I'm not sure how good the rolling shutter is on the 4.6k, but they have a hefty processor, so I bet it's not bad. Blackmagic are very close to making a great camera, the URSA Mini 4.6k will be their first forte. It's got a lot of bugs, like the lack of viewfinder stock, the power button being hidden behind a door, the lack of external VU metering like it's big brother, lack of 120+ FPS capturing in 4k.. etc. However, for the package price of $8500 (camera, viewfinder, shoulder kit, battery system) it's a killer deal. When you think about it's 12 bit RAW capture, it's 12 bit 444 Pro Res capture, it's size, weight, quality and price, there is nothing else like it out there. The 4k Red Raven package is around $9700 and it doesn't capture 12 bit 444 Pro Res, only 10 bit. Plus, it doesn't have the over sized imager which helps create a better colored image. Sony FS7II is a cold looking camera with highlight clipping issues and MPEG only capture for around the same price as the Ursa Mini 4.6k. So until someone else comes out with a camera that's even close to the look and features, I think the Ursa Mini 4.6k is the best package for the time being.

Sure, the color sampling is part of the issue, but the stepping or banding from 8 bit recording is the main issue. 10 bit 4:2:2 would be the lowest quality I'd ever shoot in, above or under water and with below the water, it's a huge problem due to banding. Here is an example of banding: Look at the rings which emanate from any bright source. You don't get that issue on land anywhere near as much, unless of course you're shooting through fog/smoke at a bright source. Also, you can only use automatic M4/3rds glass with the pocket camera in the housing. Nobody makes a housing big enough to support big glass. Naa, the production camera is a real pain, forget it.

Yep, another 2k DCP. The film prints were made from a 4k master, that's already been confirmed. So why would they make a 2k DCP? Ridiculous!

I personally wouldn't use flash for media storage for many reasons. We've found large files and large flash volumes to have issues dealing with lots of small files. It's a very common problem and it results in corrupted media in some cases, in others just slow volumes. Spinning disks are still better in a lot of ways, they're just a lot slower as single volumes vs SSD's. It's one thing to store camera files on them and read, it's another to be constantly reading and writing. Now, everything today is disposable right? So using an SSD as a boot volume on your computer and allowing it to write swap files constantly, isn't very good for it, but most vendors of computers don't care. I personally still run off spinning disks and will continue to do so until a day where SSD's price vs gig are equal or less then a mechanical device AND there have been many years of proven reliability.

Got ya, makes sense! I saw "San Francisco" and didn't realize you were going back to Europe! :) Work out something with Robert on his package, it's a KILLER deal!

Quite the contrary, the LTR's have Aaton mount, which allows you to use; Arri B and Nikon glass without much effort. Those two mount types equates to cheap/low-cost glass. I also have a film school in Los Angeles and a brilliant LTR kit that I will gladly ship to you for your film to save you some money.

Why don't you buy an LTR if you like them? There are a couple floating around on ebay in the last few weeks.

That's gonna be a tight budget. $200/day?

Ahh, just read an article about it. Yea, they did 4k captures from the 35mm and 8k captures from the 65mm They scanned the 35mm back to 65mm @ 5.6k and the IMAX material was 8k. Though it looks like they did finish the film photochemically and THEN scanned it to apply the IMAX DMR process. I guess over-all I'm just not impressed with 35mm blown up to 15/70, it never made sense to me. It would be fairly easy to shoot MOST of the film in 8 perf VistaVision and those critical close dialog scenes where you need quiet cameras, use a 5/70 camera.

Are you sure about that? I thought the Dark Knight was a photochemical finish like Interstellar with an optical blow up. Yea, but they don't push the film out 1:1, they always clean it up and remove grain. Plus, upscaling anything is never going to look good when done digitally. I've seen plenty of 35mm blown up to IMAX and I've never been impressed.

Yep I agree with what everyone said above. Hydration and shade are the two critical things for humans. Keeping the lenses covered when not in use, is critical for the equipment. I wouldn't change lenses outside in that environment. I'd have a van or something which was clean to do that work. Canned air and/or even a small compressor will help greatly. Logistics wise, tents are ok, but if the wind picks up, they can be a real pain. Vehicles are WAY better because you can crank the A/C and there are chairs for the actors to rest in. If you've got such a big crew, you really need at least two RV's with bathrooms. You may even try to score a third for camera/sound as well. This will give people the shade and coolness they need in between shots. As a filmmaker, your actors are everything. So keeping them happy in between takes is so important. This is the job of your 1st AD and you need to work with them to get the actors off camera and into the RV's between takes. Use another crew member for stand-in's, only let them out of the RV when the crew is waiting for them to shoot. This makes everyone MUCH happier.

Ohh laser digital projection is quite amazing. What they've developed is an all-new imager that works in conjunction with three different lamp sources which are already tuned to the specific colors. So what you get is more contrast, very dark blacks and very bright highlights. Honestly, I was blown away the first time I saw the IMAX laser projection. Sure it was still a 4k source, but man it was glass. No aliasing, no artifacts, just perfect image throughout. It's not one, but four steps above standard 4k digital cinema projection and MOST theaters/movies are still 2k. Since then, I've seen Dolby Vision twice and it didn't impress me at all. There was aliasing all over the screen and the moment the film started, the black levels went back to normal. So all the hype of rich blacks, didn't exist because the distribution company didn't send over a file with those black levels. IMAX controls all of that AND they're analyzing the image as it's being projected in real time to insure it's good and let me tell ya, IMAX laser is the best we have. Sure, it doesn't quite rival a photochemically produced 15/70 print in resolution, but once they can distribute 8k material (which the projectors can do, but the servers can't) I can see it taking over for our current technology and frankly, I'm very satisfied with what I've seen. Part of me is upset because I can see the path they are taking and even I have to admit, when they're projecting 8k someday, it will probably be superior to film in every way. Right now 5/70 and 15/70 photochemically finished, have the upper hand, but that will probably stop with 8k distribution. IMAX will absolutely be the first guys to do that and I hope it comes soon.

Unfortunately the print never made it to LA where I live. However, I wouldn't waste my time seeing a 4k image blown up on IMAX. Interstellar had an 8k workflow for everything including effects shots and a great deal of the material was done photochemically without scanning anything. The Force Awakens had a 4k workflow, it's 100% digital. I only compare those because even Interstellar on IMAX wasn't quite the experience of the 5/70 print. Partially because the 35mm stuff didn't look anywhere as good and MOST of Force Awakens is 35mm. So it will be all soft from the grain reduction and minus any of that punch you get with the IMAX stuff.

That's very fascinating... I didn't know that's what they did. :)

Waste of film

Ohh you can absolutely make digital better then analog, but nowhere near the price for resale. Imagine a DLP imager the same size as 15/70. Imagine huge 20TB raid solutions that store the movies for 800MBps playback. Imagine true 24 bit analog to digital converters at super high sample rates. These are all possible, but not at a cost relative to mass production. What kills digital anything is what I call the "lowest common denominator" factor. It's the same with analog in a lot of ways. You can give people a 15 ips, 1/4" , half track master on metal tape or you can give them a cassette. Which one is cheaper? Same goes for digital. As you pointed out, it's the conversion which looses much of the resolution (visual or audio), not the necessarily the storage medium. Optical disk formats have their own challenges, using data extrapolation and buffers to constantly error correct. However, linear PCM encoding isn't inherently bad, but it does require good mastering and excellent playback devices. I have BB55's in my CD player and it sounds pretty good for a digital device. 180 gram vinyl is pretty awesome, but most of the modern albums are digital, so it's back to the whole digital intermediate process once again. Analog instruments, recorded with digital equipment and pressed onto analog playback device. You loose quite a bit of data when you do that, if not done perfectly. Beck's Sea Change is one of the best 180 gram LP's I've heard. First playback, I recorded it onto my 1/2 track 15 IPS tape deck to capture that first playback and it was worth it! :)

For Pro Res HQ, those specs should be fine with a USB3 drive. For 4444 2.5k, probably too close for comfort. You will need a faster graphics card for coloring in real time tho.

Film from day one had and in a lot of ways, still has, a huge upper hand on video; it's see-through so you can project it. Unlike video which was designed from the ground up to be presented on CRT displays, motion picture film was always a see-through format for mass-audience presentation. The only way to project video until the advent of the LCD display, was using a three tube projector which weren't very bright and never calibrated properly. So it was the technology of the LCD display which ushered in the new age of video and finally allowed it to be projected. First projectors were B&W, but eventually turned into multi-layer color and we started seeing decent throw projectors in the early 90's, but nothing that could touch film. It wasn't until Texas Instruments developed the DLP imager that things changed. Finally an imager that could pass a lot more light and was decent quality. It took quite a feat to develop it however, it's a very complex system, but in the late 90's it started gaining speed and we've been using it in theaters since. So this was the first big problem and it wasn't solved until around 20 years ago. The second big problem is resolution and since the broadcast standard was 525 lines, it made no sense to make video tape machines run at a higher bandwidth. Sony did in the 80's with the 1125 standard in Japan, but it never took off in the states. Japan switched to "HD", which at the time was square hence the 1920x1125 vs the final standard of 1920x1080 which is 16x9. However, even those older analog systems were full of troubles and we just didn't have bandwidth to deal with them here in the states. So HD stayed away for quite sometime until a digital standard was released a decade later. In the late 90's the writing was on the wall for NTSC and standard definition as MPEG compression got better and smaller. The rest of the story we all know very well. So HD quality broadcast was the big leap necessary to make the switch, but it didn't really happen until the late 90's. This is what ushered in the new cameras like the F900 and eventually the Thompson Viper. Both designed for broadcast, but had cinema frame rate functions. Mix that with an SRW-1 VTR and you've got a pretty good setup for portable shooting, though it brings back memories of the u-matic days. So I guess my point is that analog video was never up to the challenge. We didn't have the technology 60 years ago to make it capable of doing what it does now. In fact, I'd argue we still don't have the technology to trump film today. Sure, 4k laser projection looks pretty good, but it's still nowhere near the quality of 5/70 or 15/70. In fact, there is no 6k or 8k distribution standard right now, let alone servers that can handle that sort of playback. Even IMAX is saying they're stuck at 4k for the time being. To me, that shows how limited digital really is and how it still isn't better then film in many ways. Easier to use? Yes... Less expensive? Yes... but that's about it. When we have 8k digital all the way around, things will be different. Since the vast majority of films and theaters are still 2k today, digital is nowhere close to the technology from 100+ years ago.

It really depends on what you're going to be shooting and how much surface support you'll have. Remember that the bigger the camera, the more difficult and expensive it is to use underwater. You mentioned the A7SII, that MAYBE a great choice. However, unlike shooting on land where maybe only a few things in any given shot are moving, underwater everything is moving all the time, even in a static shot. So MPEG long gop cameras tend to have problems dealing with being underwater. They will smear a lot and not give you as crisp of an image. Plus, the 8 bit nature of that format, will leave you with visible steps in the image. I'm also not sure if the A7SII battery is up for the challenge either. Some housings have built in battery doublers, but I haven't found one for the A7S yet. I've done a little bit of work with the blackmagic pocket camera and housing. It's not as sensitive as the A7SII of course, but the Nauticam housing is inexpensive, holds many batteries and is super small. Plus you can shoot everything in RAW with a 128gb card and get some amazing workable images. http://www.backscatter.com/sku/na-16103.lasso I'd personally aim for cameras that shoot actual RAW because they will give you the dynamic range to color correct and match later. If you are going to use lights, the pocket will be fine. If you can't use lights, then you should be finding a more sensitive camera, but I don't know of a small, sensitive, 12 bit RAW shooting camera other then what blackmagic makes. If you can tell me more about the production, I can do some research and let ya know.

Got ya, cool thanks. :)

Hey Robert, where did you find that Prod? I've been looking and haven't been able to find any. :(

Pro Res is an add-on which can be downloaded for any Windows based computer. I'm not sure if Pro Res 4444 is supported with the standard plugin though, that's worth examining further. But yes, I would absolutely have the telecine done in Pro Res 4444 because it's a 12 bit, full raster format which works very well as a source for color correcting. However with all that said, I doubt your computer will be able to playback Pro Res 4444. It really requires fast storage and even faster CPU. It uses distributed multithreaded decoding, so the more cores you have, the better it plays back. In terms of scanning quality, scanning a 2.5k for Super 16 and 3k for straight 16, is a smart idea. This will allow for the appropriate scaling into a 2k workflow. You could also go cheap and do a 1080p telecine and standard Pro Res HQ workflow with a flat, uncolored transfer. File sizes are a lot smaller, but it's still decent quality. Those files should work fine on a 5 year old computer without specialized storage. I work with them all the time on my old macbook pro and they're fine.

VistaVision and 8 perf 65mm, were heavily used as visual effects cameras. Most of the time they were used for plates, but there have been many VFX heavy films that use those cameras for dialog scenes as well, Roger Rabbit being one of them. It's always funny to see BTS stills of some older movies and the un-blimped 8 perf 65mm camera on set. For films like Star Wars, they actually used the elephant ear VistaVision cameras for many of the model shots. Outside of Paramounts VistaVision which was 1.85:1, Technicolor's Technirama was an anamorphic VistaVision format 2.25:1, using a very simple Delrama anamorphic element. This was far superior to that of even MGM Camera 65/Ultra Panavision, there was no anamorphic distortion. This enabled the filmmakers to blow up to 70mm. Technirama was used on films like "Sleeping Beauty", "Spartacus" and "Zulu", it was kind of the final iteration of the format before it went away. The interesting thing is Technicolor wanted it to be projected in 35mm, but it was too costly for theaters to upgrade. So even though they had a wonderful mag striped projection format, it never came to be. Yep, I've done the same thing when I've had video tap's available. It's easy to mount a recorder onto the monitor and record a take or two for everyone to watch before you actually roll film. I'm absolutely guilty of wasting film though. I've lost lead actors mid way through production. I've lost critical locations, mid way through production. I've had people get sick and their scenes re-done by someone else. Heck, I made an entire film and the actor wouldn't sign off on it, threatened to sue, so it's never been seen! I mean, this is the kind of crap that happens. When you finally get into the edit room, things can be quite messy, even if you plan it perfectly. The trick is to make it work and flow seamlessly as you said. Sometimes the final product however, is nowhere near what you want. Of course, on bigger shows where money is involved, it's a different story. Yea, which is kind of my beef because most of the experimental stuff I've seen has been random mess that people somehow watch.