Tyler Purcell

Yep Adrian is spot on. A pre-shoot conversation discussing look and feeling with visual examples (taken from other movies or drawn) if possible. I also feel getting the DP involved with composition is also smart, that collaborative process really helps. Figuring out the color pallet for each scene prior to shooting is also important. This way art decoration, clothing and lighting can all work well together. Things like that can really make a film more professional. If you have the time, money and talent, decent storyboards can be a huge help. I've never done them because I can't really draw and hiring someone can be very expensive. So in extreme cases, I've done video storyboards, shooting key scenes with a video camera and friends, to work out exactly how things will intercut prior to shooting. This helps save money on set and keeps your production moving along since you won't have to discover very much during the shooting process. It allows the director and cinematographer to be on the same page for every day of shooting.

Yep, great test! Wish I had a dime or I'd do the 35mm test! Maybe if I get into production on my next film I'll have some left over stock. :)

I like it, start with the F65 vs Alexa, just as a comparison.

Thats kinda what I thought as well. Labs stay in business because they have quick turn arounds.

Ohh absolutely agreed, it's just we don't know how much of those movies were manipulated in post. At least with film, we know over-exposed areas will have no detail, but they won't be harsh. Satsuki, my thought was to put a 10 stop exposure chart in the parking lot. Set the cameras to their lowest ISO without filtration, get the right exposure set via the scopes and then shoot reflective objects. Look at histogram and waveform monitors, watch how the camera deals with clipping. It would be interesting to see the F65, F55, F5, FS7 AND Alexa back to back doing the same test. It would also be interesting to see if you put the cameras down at their native ISO and used heavy filtration, how it resolves some of these issues. Wish I had more rental house connections to do this test myself, but I lost them when I left Boston. :(

I think you'd find most films to have controlled lighting, even outdoors in the desert. You get a cookie if you can figure out what I mean without throwing a hissy fit. ;)

According to Kodak, the closest lab is "CineFilm" in Atlanta. That's really too bad another lab closed down. :(

With any capturing medium, there are always compromises. Digital cinema happens to have a great deal of compromises, this is one of the biggest and has nothing to do with the cinematographer.

Yea, but I think if you look closer, you'd see that a lot of both films have serious VFX work, mostly cleanup stuff. It's really hard to see what the camera looks like without any fixes, projected in 4k at the theater. I wanna see that F65 set up in a parking lot with an exposure chart. Then shoot reflections off cars in the mid day sun. That's where a lot of these cameras fall apart. I'm sure it would perform admirably, it's clearly leaps and bounds above the other Sony cameras.

Yeppers, I really would love to get my hand on that Napoleon script!

Film stocks dictate the sensitivity rating. Sure, you can "push" or "pull" stocks, but they inherently have a marked sensitivity which is where they work best. So imagine a CMOS sensor in the same way. The sensor has a base sensitivity. To use the pocket camera analogy once more, it works best at 800 ASA. When you set the camera electronically to a higher shutter speed or lower ASA in order to compensate for the excess lumens above the base sensitivity, you are basically telling the imager to work over-time. This, just like pushing and pulling film stocks, won't give you an "optimal" image. With film you simply change the stock to increase or decrease sensitivity. A CMOS imager is like a potentiometer. It has individual steps from black to full white. For sake of non-technical discussion, lets dumb it down a bit and say full black is 0 and full white is 100. Like my comment above, if you have an imager that's most happy at 800ASA at lets say 40 foot candles, it's capable of generating an image that goes the full range between 0 and 100. However, if you all of a sudden give that same imager 300 foot candles (what it would take to properly expose 50D stock at the same T stop), what happens? Well, that 0 (black level) is raised substantially and most importantly, the whites are over-driven, so there is literally no detail in them anymore. Plus, there is no difference between full white and 98% because the imager is simply over-driven. You won't see a difference until around 90% or even less in some cases. Of course, this dramatically hinders color space as well, crushing the colors to distortion and worst of all killing any dynamic range because there is physically less of it. The electronic sensitivity adjustment and shutter work by sampling the imager at a different rate. Imagine pushing a camera negative past 4 stops and expecting it to look good. Yep and that's why I'm here complaining about it. DP's shooting with ultra sensitive imagers outside without filtration. Again, imagers, like film stock, have an optimal sensitivity range, this is sometimes referred to as "base" sensitivity. I bet you can guess what kind of filtration is necessary to bring the lumens down to the imagers natural sensitivity on those particular cameras with ultra sensitive imagers. I can't think of a single F65 shoot where the filmmakers are shooting in direct sunlight without filtration or VFX covering highlights. Most of the films shot with that camera were on sound stages or in extremely controlled exterior locations. So I honestly can't tell you much about it. I only mentioned the F65 because I colored some green screen shots recently, I never mentioned it in relationship to the harsh clipping problems. In fact, I'd say the F65 is the best looking Sony camera ever made. It's also the least "Sony" looking camera they've ever made. I wouldn't doubt they bought an Alexa, took it apart, figured out what made it tick and built a camera around it because it's pretty darn good.

That's how it works and that's why the super sensitive cameras suffer from a lot of maladies like this.

Really? That's too bad. I bet they're sitting around in boxes somewhere.

Try panavision, they have lots of old-school toys sitting out back.

ROFL!!! Long story, but yea... wish that was the case! :(

It's rare that by the end of watching a TV show or movie that I can't tell which camera was used and even what the post process was. I know PLENTY of cinematographers who have the same ability. I've gone to movies with them and we've argued for hours afterwards about why the RED still looks like crap or why the Alexa is the closest thing to film, but not quite there. It's always funny when you get home and go on IMDB to check if you're right. It's also getting harder to tell as the cameras get better and colorists have learned how to hide the problems. Digital cinema as a whole is simply an interpretation of what actually exists. Then manipulate the ever living crap out of it through coloring and special effects process, what remains is something entirely different. So when I see highlight clipping on a big screen in a huge theater projected in 4k, it really, really, really pisses me off. Film doesn't clip harshly, the Alexa doesn't clip harshly, so why would you ever shoot with a camera that clips harshly and even if you DID, why wouldn't you clean it up in post? This is why I firmly believe, people who shoot with the RED are after something the Alexa doesn't have. If you're not after quality of image, what are you after? It must be resolution, that's the only thing that makes any sense. If you're making a $100M+ dollar movie, you can afford a few Alexa's, even an Alexa 65, which has a 6k workflow. So again, why would ANYONE in their right mind shoot on a RED, Sony or any other digital cinema camera on a BIG HOLLYWOOD FILM? When you read ASC and interviews, cinematographers have "excuses" like; I wanted to try this camera or I needed more resolution for XYZ reason. None of those guys realize that ILM still prefers film because it has more dynamic range and accurate colors. So if you're shooting on VFX shows, you really should be doing your plates on 70mm, but that's beside the point. It just shows, digital cinema is still in the "experimental" phase because there are still so many options. At one point, everyone will gravitate towards a single option which is the best and that will be the gold standard, like 35mm was. I think the Alexa 65 maybe just that package, but we've gotta wait and see. Digital cinema cameras don't have shutters, they don't have ASA/ISO, all of that is electronically controlled. Super sensitive imagers LIKE THE SONY ONES need to accept much more light AND still have differentiation between 100% white and 99.9% white. When you increase the lumens (IE lower ASA) what happens to the imager? It gets over-powered by the light and starts to distort. This is where you get the highlight clipping from, it's actually distortion. When you shoot in very dark situations, that distortion goes away, but anything that's bright and pointed towards the lens, will distort unless heavily filtered to bring down to the imagers working ISO. A good cinematographer will try to keep their cameras within the working ISO and simply use lots of filtration to compensate, this is why in some rare completely controlled situations, you don't see these problems. The reason why the blackmagic cameras don't have these problems is because frankly, until the URSA 4.6k, the imagers haven't been very good. Blackmagic wasn't sourcing ultra sensitive imagers like Sony and RED, they were using off the shelf one's, focusing on dynamic range and colors rather then sensitivity and resolution in their first generation cameras. This gave them a distinct advantage; less sensitivity, less problems. It's the same for Arri, they started with high dynamic range, amazing colors, low sensitivity and lower resolution sensors and over time have developed better and better imagers. Taking their time and instead of making a camera for "spec" purposes like the "Swiss army knife" mid-range (FS7 etc) Sony cameras. The only reason people shoot with Sony and RED cameras is because they either forgot how good film looks or they've never touched an Alexa. Honestly, I've seen some Alexa 65 material projected in 4k and it was outstanding. Not quite blow your mind away like 70mm film projection, but still a marketable improvement over previous digital cinema cameras.

Yep it sure is! However, for Bill's film where he only has 2 tracks right now, it made some sense. Plus, he's probably able to find a 35mm mag machine for rent or sale for peanuts. We threw away 10 of them recently, I was crying the whole time, wishing I could fit one into my BMW M Roadster... yea, it doesn't fit. :)

I'm beginning to think the "wonderful" images are in controlled situations. Both Sony and RED cameras suffer from similar "video-ish" highlight clipping. So when you go outside in direct sunlight, you see these issues come to life. There is a great graph I found a few years ago which shows this phenomena in greater detail, wish I could find it now. It showed the Sony and RED cameras have a harsh clipping at the top end, where the Alexa was very soft. The less-expensive Sony cameras have the worst problem with this. I'm always amazed by the harsh clipping and why nobody see's it. I see it, bothers the living crap out of me because it looks like a CCD imager on an ENG camera all of a sudden. What humors me the most is my Blackmagic cameras don't have this phenomena and when I shoot and edit with other cameras, it's generally under controlled lighting in one way or another. However, I have edited a lot of FS7/F5/F55/F65, Dragon/Epic and Alexa material, only to be blown away by how consistent the Alexa looks over the other's.

Knowing Kubrick, I'm sure his DP's were busy every moment the camera wasn't running. The moment that camera started, I'm sure they were pacing back and forward. It must have been quite stressful... I couldn't deal with it either.

I believe there have been far more productions using RED then Alexa. That's mainly due to RED coming out way before Arri got their act together. It's also due to RED's incessant marketing strategy to push for resolution over color science and quality. Arri spent too much time perfecting the imager and not enough time making the system higher resolution. So it wasn't until very recently that Arri had a 4k (and now 6k) solution for digital cinema acquisition. Also, RED cameras are substantially cheaper then anything Arri makes, so more people own RED then Alexa. I just saw "The Martian" and if you like blown out highlights and a "video" looking image, check out that film at your local 4k theater. It boggles the mind why anyone thinks that RED cinema looks good. I really think people have forgotten what a good image looks like.

Super 16mm is 1.67:1 aspect ratio and it sounds like you used the stock ground glass. So it sounds like a lab problem to me. You asked them to only pull something from the center of the image. This isn't a wise idea because unless your using a 1.85:1 ground glass, it's almost impossible to "compose" everything properly. You can very easily remove the stock ground glass and put some tape on it to matte it to 1.85:1 in the future. On this film, you will need the lab to scan the entire image and resize in post. This is what MOST people do with 16mm because it allows for the proper re-framing. You can ask them to give you a 16x9 (1.75:1) slightly cropped image OR pillar-boxed (1.67:1) full S16mm frame image.

Yea I mean, if you can set the audio sliders to one position and it sounds OK with the two tracks, you may be ok. You can always check it before making the optical track.

It's gonna be hard to mix on a steenbeck, the audio level controls are always so noisy. You'll have to raise and lower the volume as you playback the tracks and record them onto another locked mag machine. The other solution is to take your elements, throw it in a digital editor, mix it all and then export directly to a nice clean mag track. I found that to be the easiest and best sounding solution, unless of course you can find a few lockable mag readers and a small mixer. Usually most films need 3 tracks; dialog, effects, music and that's really hard to do with a 2 track steenbeck. If you could score a 35mm 3 track mag recorder, you could transfer each of those tracks to the 35mm mag stock. Then play it back and record the final with your single track mag recorder through a mixer.

Kubrick designed the lighting rigs, he choose his own lenses/cameras, he choose the composition and most of the time ran the camera. The reason he had a cinematographer was 2 fold... One; the unions wouldn't let him shoot his own stuff. Two; he needed someone to bounce his ideas off of. He was notorious for pissing off a few cinematographers early in his career, but Alcott worked well with him because he didn't have an ego. It's truly unfortunate he passed away suddenly from a heart attack in the mid 80's.

The big question is; why would you want to hinder the potential of your final product? Buyers of content today want 4k DCP's and if you don't have one, that's a cost they may not want to deal with. So if you truly want your film to be purchased, you've gotta shoot or at least finish in 4k. This is part of the reason why we're seeing such a big shift towards 4k shooting, it's almost a pre-requisite. Unlike film, where you can always extract more from the original elements, with digital cinema, what you shoot is the max resolution you'll ever get. So another reason people want to shoot 4k is an attempt to "future-proof" their product. This makes sense for bigger productions, but for smaller shows, it's kinda silly in my point of view. I can't afford to store 4k RAW material for a web video, it's just too costly. I'd rather shoot in a format that's easy to store, so in the future it won't be lost when drives go bad. Honestly, the reason why Arri and Red cinema cameras are so popular is simply because they work. People understand them, workflows exist and they're more built for shooting cinema then their predecessors. Are my Blackmagic Pocket cameras really different? In my eyes, not really. Sure the Alexa has external menu's which are more intuitive for people who are use to shooting cinema, sure it has industry standard I/O, large imager and all the other professional bells and whistles. However, do they function the same way? Yea they really do. Throw some prime lenses on the pocket and there is really no reason someone who is use to shooting digital cinema, couldn't figure it out in a few seconds and get some amazing images. Plus, owning an inexpensive small cinema camera is an enabler, something the bigger cameras really struggle with. With all that said, film is still better, in more ways then one! ;)