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Why did George Lucas use digital in Star Wars Ep.2


Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

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Hi,

 

> And trust me there will be quite a few films coming out in the cinema that are

> going to be filmed with that

 

Maybe, maybe not. Obviously you aren't going to get big hollywood productions doing it and "28 Days Later" has been and gone. Why make big predictions? Who cares?

 

We have it on excellent authority that the XL2 isn't that great, anyway.

 

Phil

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Ah, XM2, I meant XL2. Canons new video camera coming out this september. And trust me there will be quite a few films coming out in the cinema that are going to be filmed with that. (That?s it, reply with some smart comment proving it wont...)

And no, not 1.3 mega pixels, 2.4.

Soo, who's excited?

Of course there will be films coming out that are shot on the XL2, but they won't look good...

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I watched 28 days later in the theatre, and, while I was not impressed, it suited the story perfectly. We must always stress that Digital is an alternative to 35mm, not a substitute. The next director that asks me: when will we duplicate 35 on DV, I think I will vomit. Personally, I only use 24p for documentaries. Otherwise, you get that "Video Game" look that I couldn't stand in Star Wars. I remember saying to my wife that the actors didn't look as sharp as the CG when we watched EP2.

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Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith
Of course there will be films coming out that are shot on the XL2, but they won't look good...

 

Well, no where near as good as film, but for the money I think it's brilliant. So you dont have to be some rich bastard to make a film.

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Rich bastard? You don't need a million dollars to make a film. With a little bit more time, money, and effort, film gives you much more professional looking results. I am doing a few little shorts on DR8 (the smallest movie film format) and so far it looks great, much grittier and livelier than DV or SVHS. If you want to move up to 16 or 35mm, there are bargains to be had with short ends and recans. Film just gives you a certain look that video doesn't have. Of course, with an F900, I honestly can't see a difference on a small TV set, but with HDTV or a theatre, there is still a big big difference. As for using the XL2 to make theatrical features, it ain't gonna happen. The XL2 is a DV camera. DV is in some respects worse than SVHS because there are compression artifacts unique to DV that show up especially under the scrutiny of large scale projection. 35mm, even after 4 generations of removal from the master negative, is almost grainless to my eyes. Back in the 70s, they were using 65/70mm, which was even better. Video has to come a long way to fill in the shoes of film. I personally don't plan on seeing Episode III of Star Wars because the previous two were such disappointments (I & II both had terrible story lines and hoky special effects, and II was just ugly because it was done on digital. Did you see the night time interior scenes of episode II?) Watch IV, V, and VI and then try and tell me I and II compare.

 

Regards.

~Karl Borowski

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I wish people would stop thinking that technology is the barrier to them making a movie!!!

 

"The Celebration" was quite successful and was shot on a single-chip $1000 Sony camera. The XL2, the DVX100A, etc. are just better DV cameras so deliver better results than a cheaper DV camera and not as good as an expensive pro camera. It's part of a continuum. It doesn't somehow create an opportunity to make movies cheaply that didn't exist before.

 

The barriers are elsewhere -- getting good actors, having a good script, finding locations, lighting equipment, crews, getting distribution, etc. Whether you shot it on a $1000 DV camera, a $5000 DV camera, a $22,000 DVCPRO-50 camera, or a $100,000 HDCAM camera is such a tiny part of the overall filmmaking equation. It's not like this $5000 camera is going to give you professional HD quality, just a better picture than other consumer DV cameras.

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i think the argument is not so much that video is an obstacle to making art, its just the plain fact that when watching episode II, most people are distracted by its "quality". especially when a standard has been established, as is the case with the original trilogy, people aren't known for their acceptance of change.

 

i used to have a book about jazz improvisation (not an easy thing to explain in words) and it held as its fundamental claim that an audience wants to be surprised half the time and to have their expectations met the other half. maybe for 'star wars' to suddenly start shooting in video, not to mention creating half of the world on a computer, was a little more surprise and change than the average fan could accept.

 

video is a perfectly acceptable medium in which to work, but as soon as 'episode II' began my first thought, and i guarantee the first thought of all those around me, was "this looks like crap." maybe my expectations were dashed too abruptly, maybe there is something to the consensus that video kind of sucks.

 

the fact that the story, dialogue, and acting sucked as well just adds to the misery of having to accept its incongruous look from the original films.

 

jk :ph34r:

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There must be something wrong with my eyes then because I didn't think that Episode 2 looked like crap. Looked like HDCAM, but that's not necessarily crap. I saw it twice in 35mm, twice in digital, and once in IMAX just to compare them too, which is quite an accomplishment considering it wasn't that good of a movie! I've even watched the DVD...

 

And I don't think that "most people" were distracted by the quality, not judging by the box office nor the audience reactions at these screenings.

 

I just don't get the constant berating of the look of Episode 2. It looked like what it was, digital photography: fairly sharp but not as sharp as 35mm anamorphic photography, finer-grained than Episode 2, fairly saturated, occasional noise artifacts, some occasional edge fringing on mattes, some aliasing, some compression artifacts, but hardly "crap." But I guess I simply don't have the good eyes and the refined visual taste of most of the people on this forum!

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ason wrote

"think the argument is not so much that video is an obstacle to making art, its just the plain fact that when watching episode II, most people are distracted by its "quality"."

 

Plain fact? Is this a personal or professional poll of audience reaction to Star Wars?

 

 

"video is a perfectly acceptable medium in which to work, but as soon as 'episode II' began my first thought, and i guarantee the first thought of all those around me,......."

 

You guarantee to know what the other members of the audience are thinking.....?

 

 

".....was "this looks like crap." maybe my expectations were dashed too abruptly, maybe there is something to the consensus that video kind of sucks."

 

What consensus do you refer?

 

I'll say it again the organisers of various digital cinema initiatives around the world state that even "top DPs" can't tell the difference when shown a test film intercut between HD and film.

 

The early Panavision test shot by Alan D four years ago fooled most people. Sure over the course of a movie there will be tell tale signs one way or another. The point is if the difference is so obvious to an audience it should be obvious in a test too!

 

By the way SWATC used the very first progressive cameras (very scary, black balance drifting backfocus problems ect) but since then improvements have been made in lens, ccd block, AD mapping, camera and recording technology as well as tape to film recording. All evident today in an improvement in quality to any competent user. The single chip cameras are another step forward.

 

 

So in your language video kind of sucks less than it used too:)

 

 

 

Slightly off topic...

Any empirical evidence that suggests there is an adverse reaction by audiences watching HD would be very useful. Most work is being done on digital projection. MIT? did a study monitoring heat rate of "video" vs "film" projection.

General result was higher heart rate in dramatic scenes when watching HD on digital projector than watching similar scene on film. Maybe someone stateside could check this out??

 

Screen Digest have been watching this closely. The only report I have seen is one that mentions multiplex owners are seeing greater revenue from digital screens! When STAC was released in one cinema that was screening it both on digital projector as well as film the digital cinema grossed (about) 50% more over a one month run.

 

Perhaps STAC was optimised for digital projection?

 

 

 

Mike Brennan

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Hi,

 

I find the splice jumps, grain, instability and dirt of a film print at least as objectionable as the digital artifacts of HD origination. I'm not a huge fan of the way the second Star Wars prequel was photographed, anyway - I like high contrast images, and of course that's exactly what they either didn't or couldn't shoot, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge. But even with the compounded artifacts of both video and film, it didn't look so bad to me that I thought it was really a problem. I'm sure we could switch all movies to pictures like that and most people would never even twig it was different. It's far from awful. Better would be... better, but I don't think there's anything disastrously wrong with HDCAM origination.

 

Phil

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Boy has this threat deevolved into old arguements. Maybe I can throw in more confusion.

 

HDCAM is not udder crap. I don't think too many audeince memebers paid much attention to what Ep 2 was shot on. I think audiences were distracted by the bad script. I will say I don't think any one who saw it in the cinema could miss the fact it had a different texture than nearly every movie seen today.

 

I have heard people not in film say that it felt plastic, or too sanitized. But I wouldn't say that's necissarily a bad thing just different. Some people will like that better.

 

Actually I think that's probably more the direction things will go. Films in the future will have a smoother less gritty texture to them. No gate weave, less grain, less scratches, or dirt.

 

Less grain, lower contrast film stocks will lead to smoother tonalities. DI will add an electronic feel to the image. I know many here purport to hate that look but I think that's where its going to go.

 

Audiences will become acustomed to the asthetic and look back at older grainier film prints and think of them as lesser quality.

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Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

They spent so much time on making the movie look good, that I think they forgot about the actually movie content...

 

I mean, it's more like watching Lord of the Rings. Star Wars has turned from en exciting adventure, into a special effects show. I mean, the film "Bravo 2 Zero" used the simplest effects going but it was an absolute brilliant film.

 

This seems to be a mistake by a lot of amateurs, it's not always what it looks like, it's the content.

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DI will not always introduce the "electronic" look to the image.

There will be a time when it will be 100% transperent. It will be a clean bridge

without introducing it's look. The softness can be avoided even today, with 4K resolution. What remains the problem, are skin tones, the deph and realism

of color shades etc. But this will be solved.

 

Why do I say this? Because I know that if done right, scanning

will not damage the image qualitty. In still image industry,slides (which are much harder to scan), can be scanned with 100% succes today and the physical output is always 100 times better looking than what you see on monitors (For example, an usual CTR monitor can not produce true red color).

Do you find high-end fashion catalogues to have plasticky skintones (they better not)? They are all done digitally.

 

It is all a matter of time. Perhapse today's laser or CTR output is not

good enough to record 100% real and organic film images. But that

will change.

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I think one area where a D.I. will be "visible" will be in the style of color-correction whenever one deviates from the traditional RBG printing look, which is inevitable -- otherwise what's the point? Creative use of desaturation or hyper-saturation of select areas of the frame, Power Windows, etc. will give you a look unique to a D.I., although a typical viewer may not notice. And depending on how extreme you force those corrections, you may pick up digital artifacts.

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Of course, this IS the purpuse of DI, I was refering to the raw scanning and recording. The DI process should not introduce any changes to the image

other than those done with creative decisions.

In other words, a scan/record without any corrections done should give

a negative that looks identical to human eyes.

 

By the way, by using larger color space (for example 16-bit versus today's 10-bit)

there will be a lot more headroom for pushing the corrections to extremes without

making the image fall appart.

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It goes back to Kubrick's argument: Chaplin used cheap sets, but the content was such that no one cares. Hindsight being 20/20, I found Ep2's picture quality to be standard for the format, but i'll take story over technology any day of the week.

 

Take The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example: Nykvist used regular 16mm B&W to shoot the invasion scenes, and it's far more realistic than anything Lucasfilms can dream up. I still prefer EP2 to something like Dogville, which, IMHO, looked like crap. Of course, Lucas' films are a litmus test. I can't wait to see what he's doing in 15 years.

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If the look of Dogville is rough it is intentional I asure you! I have seen the exact same cameras being used for other productions with the same crew, and you would not be able to tell if it was shot on HD or 35mm.

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"I have seen the exact same cameras being used for other productions with the same crew, and you would not be able to tell if it was shot on HD or 35mm."

 

 

Well if the "you" is the audience then I agree.

 

 

Mike Brennan

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Georgy used HD because he could... and he wanted to... and he saved millions in Telecine fees considering he would have scanned over a million feet of film to the D.I...

 

And on a film like SW.... Who really cars if it was shot on film... only 3-10% of the frame is actually live action anyway.

 

Landon D. Parks

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