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David Abell

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  1. I just looked at pictures of the Alexa on Arri's site and the camera they were using looks nothing like it. It had an Arri logo on, but not the rounded body of their video cameras. To me it looked more like a 535.
  2. First of all, Seasons 1 through 4 looked nothing like film. They looked like someone picked a prosumer video camera and hired a DP to emphasize the ugliness and limitations of said prosumer video camera. Seasons 5 and 6 look a lot better. Unfortunately, I don't know what they were shot with (I saw this thread looking for that info). I saw they were shooting with an Arri camera this season (at least the episodes shot in the US) but couldn't make out what it was. Whatever they used on the last episode, it looked much worse than the first two episodes of this season and looked very video-ish. Then again, sometimes it's hard to tell between well-shot video and awfully badly shot film. But regardless of what it was shot on, season 5 looked about 10,000 times better than season 4.
  3. Something to keep in mind is that digital camera manufacturers are employing every PR trick in the book to hype their product. If a movie or show uses a digital camera to film something on a TV screen, the PR release will make it look like the whole show/movie was shot with that one camera. This year has been a sad, sad year in the history of network television with the quality of cinematography taking a big nose dive in my opinion. There are DPs on this board opining that the Genesis is better than film and it's ludicrous. I understand that they think they're helping their future job prospects by saying publicly that their bosses are far-seeing geniuses (or perhaps they're just in denial ;) ) but really... I found this board trying to figure out why Law and Order: CI looks so bad this year, to the point where I lost most of my enjoyment of the show. I'm still not sure if it's because it's really well-shot Genesis images or really awful film (shot by the same DP). CSI Miami is now looking like a soap opera and the difference is night and day. One of the few shows that don't disappoint is The Mentalist that is shot on film and looks entirely magical (which I guess is appropriate! ;) ) I guess we're lucky it started shooting before the networks went after SAG by downgrading their shows to video. That's what happened for the most part. The Digital manufacturers and their Amen Corner in the press will tell you that shows are shooting on video because it's cheaper and there's no difference in quality, but the difference is quite huge (at least assuming you bothered to hire a good DP!) That said, the Genesis is, for my money, the least bad of the video systems. It is leaps and bounds better than the pallid RED and is the only digital system that can provide images that won't make you run away screaming from your screen if you enjoy good cinematography. That said, it's still not up to snuff if you care about quality images (which I realize most executives couldn't care less about - hence the continual pressure to shoot on the latest "hip" camera they read about in the trades).
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