Genesis for "Superman Returns"

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

 

THE BOMBSHELL

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well 30minutes later, and I've still got a blank screen! How big is the file, and what's the bombshell?

If it's too big I'll have to go to a public terminal with ADSL or something; I haven't got all day :blink:

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

www.kinetta.com.

 

And it's not compressed. It's also not available yet, but that's another story.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

True, but I don't think the Kinetta is quite there yet; give it a couple more years.

 

In any case, I think the future is more likely to be a combination of Hard Disk and "Blu-Ray" recordable HD DVD.

 

I also think such cameras would be wasting their time shooting movies, surely High Definition video surveillance would be a vastly more lucrative market.

[Guest fstop]

It's just a quicktime - it shows the footage from the GENESIS during a detailed looking sunset as well as a fake crew filmmaker forum discussing the politics of the new technology (made for the featurette audience who lap up this garbage).

 

Are you at the public library yet, Jim? ;)

[Mark Allen]

Well 30minutes later, and I've still got a blank screen! How big is the file, and what's the bombshell?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

To save the library trip.

 

Basically the 3:55 clip is them reviewing shots from the Genesis. Bryan indicates that he thinks it looks better than film. He comments that he can use venus as a tracking point for adding the rest of the stars in the sky. The second half of the movie is mostly a discussion of why it is actually taking longer to get the footage to the editor than in a film process. That's an interesting twist but they never once say why it takes longer than film. They cut out when the post production supervisor is about to talk about this. My guess is that it has to do with color correcting the footage and loading it up for the editor?

 

Now - is this all a joke? If it is, it isn't very funny which makes me pretty sure it isn't - they wouldn't have done it only for the benefit of the genesis curious out there. Unlike the King Kong blogs - these have been relatively serious and they make an effort to introduce the people working on the film as they go (as they have in this one).

 

There's an interesting dynamic where it seems like the DP (Tom Sigel) is the person most defending the usage of the Genesis.

 

Tom Sigel makes a note to point out the Colorist Trish Cahill's contribution.

 

Bryan Singer quote "Now that it looks better than film, how do we make it work faster than film."

 

Visually - it's mostly a bunch of people in a dark room with about four shots towards a projection screen. They show the farm house. Obviously you can't discern quality on the compressed movie.

 

Hope that helps.

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

AT LAST! PANAVISION ACTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THE GENESIS IS BEING USED ON SUPERMAN RETURNS!!

 

I'm not sure what to do with this; a friend in Australia has kindly scanned and forwarded me a two page article from the local Industry magazine "Inside Film" where for the first time someone from Panavision actually mentions "Superman Returns" and "Genesis" in the same sentence!

 

The images are far too big to post here, and would be a gross violation of copyright in any event. Inside Film is available online but they delay it a month after the print edition.

 

Anyway, it seems they aren't using the Genesis for everything; they're using 435s for over-cranked stuff and VistaVision for some of the background plates. Gary Woods of Panavison Sydney seems to be at great pains not to exaggerate the capabilities of the camera, and even admits that the CineAltas used for Star Wars II weren't all that crash hot anyway! (Of course he doesn't comment on the quality of the 950s used for Episode III, because they came from Plus8Digital!) All this sudden humility is a bit of a worry!

 

Apparently there's a UK feature starting quite soon that will also be using the Genesis, but they didn't elaborate. Ah well, I shall be viewing this film with great interest!

Edited April 29, 2005 by Jim Murdoch

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

It's just a quicktime - it shows the footage from the GENESIS during a detailed looking sunset as well as a fake crew filmmaker forum discussing the politics of the new technology (made for the featurette audience who lap up this garbage).

 

Are you at the public library yet, Jim? ;)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I left the computer downloading for an hour and I still just get a blank screen!

[David Mullen ASC]

It played fine on my computer...

 

I don't really get the discussion of the turnaround problem either, and I could tell that Tom Seigel was confused why it was happening. Afterall, they are delivering an HDCAM-SR tape to the post house, which then gets color-corrected on a DaVinci (probably) for HD & SD dailies -- so why should that take LONGER than with film dailies where you have processing and then printing time (and then telecine time)? I would think the turnaround would be the same unless there is some backlog at the transfer house -- i.e. neither faster nor slower. And that's only because the Genesis footage probably needs a color-correction step to make the dailies look right (and perhaps they are letterboxing them at this point too.) I'm sure they are recording a flatter, maybe greenish image to HDCAM-SR tape on the set.

 

The other movie using the Genesis is called "Flyboys" shooting in the U.K.

[John Sprung]

Our experience with Viper/900/950 shoots is that turnaround is faster. Instead of telecine at 1 - 5 AM after photochemical development, the camera original tapes go to the video house around 7 - 9 PM. We haven't used the lo-con/greenish mode, dailies transfer is just to put the selects on a new tape with continuous unique time codes. So there's no color correction at that point. The DP and DIT set it up the way they want, post passes it thru unchanged.

 

It really isn't an issue. Dailies from tape ready at 1 AM or dailies from film ready at 8 AM both arrive before anybody is here to look at them. It's an advantage for the facilities because they can start much earlier on the tape shows and use the whole night.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

It played fine on my computer...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Mine is a 2.5GHz Pentium with Windows XP and 512M RAM; it SHOULD work.....

 

 

I don't really get the discussion of the turnaround problem either, and I could tell that Tom Seigel was confused why it was happening. Afterall, they are delivering an HDCAM-SR tape to the post house, which then gets color-corrected on a DaVinci (probably) for HD & SD dailies -- so why should that take LONGER than with film dailies where you have processing and then printing time (and then telecine time)? I would think the turnaround would be the same unless there is some backlog at the transfer house -- i.e. neither faster nor slower.  And that's only because the Genesis footage probably needs a color-correction step to make the dailies look right (and perhaps they are letterboxing them at this point too.)  I'm sure they are recording a flatter, maybe greenish image to HDCAM-SR tape on the set.

 

The other movie using the Genesis is called "Flyboys" shooting in the U.K.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, that doesn't sound right to me either. Is it possible it's because they're recording RGB rather than standard 1080 component, and there aren't so many such playback machines available?

 

So...they're not doing the green/bluescreen effects shots "live" the way you would in a TV studio, (which was one of the things George Lucas kept salivating about at the end of the last century); everything is simply "post-produced" exactly as it would be if the "film" was shot on film.

 

If the "teaser" for the "making of" thingie can be believed, the throughput from film set to post is no faster than it would be from a film camera, even Panavision have stated that the Genesis is not really a substitute for 35mm film, and they're using film for some parts of it anyway!

 

So...WHY are they using the Genesis, again? If the rental is anything like a CineAlta package it's not going to save them any money, it doesn't seem to give them any extra flexibility, based on the miserable amount of technical information PV have released, I really can't see how it's going to give better pictures, so...er...what exactly is the big attraction chaps? Maybe PV are giving them an extra good deal...?

 

I await the results of this with keen interest. I think somebody is making a career decision here <_<

 

Panavison's CineAltas were a miserable failure in the cinematography marketplace, but they have brought in a nice bit of change renting then out for lower-end episodic TV production; you wonder why they didn't offer it to one of those outfits for the Genesis's shakedown cruise, rather than jumping in at the deep end like this.

 

The other movie using the Genesis is called "Flyboys" shooting in the U.K.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is there any information about that project anywhere? I can't find a single item about it using Google.

Edited May 1, 2005 by Jim Murdoch

[Guest Kai.w]

No, that doesn't sound right to me either. Is it possible it's because they're recording RGB rather than standard 1080 component, and there aren't so many such playback machines available?

 

So...they're not doing the green/bluescreen effects shots "live" the way you would in a TV studio, (which was one of the things George Lucas kept salivating about at the end of the last century); everything is simply "post-produced" exactly as it would be if the "film" was shot on film.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Although I do think this little clip does not enlighten anything I must say that now you tend to twist things too ;-)

I can't think of any good reason why it should take longer than film. I guess you'd just need a HDCAM SR deck, no? Making SD or component HD downconverts is no big deal... Strange.

Of course they are not doing the final comps live (and except for Lucas and maybe Zbig Rybczynski, I can't think of anyone who would actually do this). If they however do some on-set "preViz" the higher resolution would actually help quite a bit

 

-k

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Amusing background comment from someone about the translation of the image from on-set small-scale monitoring to projection - what, they're not used to doing that with a much smaller-scale, as well as soft, dim and flickering, 35mm eyepiece?

 

That nobody senior looks at anyway?

 

What on earth? They're just making up reasons to hate it.

 

Phil

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

 

, as well  as soft, dim and flickering, 35mm eyepiece?

 

 

Phil

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Phil,

 

With many Panavision cameras you can change the spinning mirror for a beam splitter If you don't like the flickering. The PV cameras I have looked through have sharp and bright eyepieces.

 

Stephen

[Michael Most]

So...WHY are they using the Genesis, again? If the rental is anything like a CineAlta package it's not going to save them any money, it doesn't seem to give them any extra flexibility

 

Yes, it does.

 

1. Everything is already "scanned," thus eliminating the scanning step and allowing us of any shot footage without additional costs. On a big VFX picture, this can amount to a significant amount of money and a bit of time.

 

2. Since the images have no "grain" per se, matting is considerably easier, cleaner, and more accurate, especially with a 4:4:4 format. If you don't believe this, take a look at "Sin City." Practically every stray hair on every actor's head is retained in the matte, and very cleanly. This, to me, is one of the primary advantages of newer, far less compressed, and better sampled digital formats - and one of the primary arguments for using them to shoot big VFX pictures.

[Michael Most]

Panavison's CineAltas were a miserable failure in the cinematography marketplace, but they have brought in a nice bit of change renting then out for lower-end episodic TV production

 

I wouldn't call network sitcoms "lower end" production. I wouldn't call "Joan of Arcadia" or "Enterprise" "lower end" either. I also wouldn't call Panavision's HD cameras a "miserable failure in the cinematography marketplace," as they have been used on a number of features and have competed well against the "standard" F900's supplied by other camera supply rental houses. While it is true that the F900 has not captured a large amount of feature work, that is not Panavision's fault. It is, to a degree, a vindication of the notion that it is going to take another generation of development to achieve digital capture systems that compete with film on a more even level.

 

Your personal hatred of and unexplained vendetta against Panavision is getting a bit tiresome, Jim.

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

I wouldn't call network sitcoms "lower end" production. I wouldn't call "Joan of Arcadia" or "Enterprise" "lower end" either.

 

 

Is that right? Well I would. Come back when they start shooting CSI Miami or Desperate Housewives on HD.

 

 

 

 

 

I also wouldn't call Panavision's HD cameras a "miserable failure in the cinematography marketplace,"

 

 

 

 

Er, well, to paraphrase something Arthur Dent said in "The Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy": "Ah. This must be some new usage of the term "success" that I haven't encountered before!" Perhaps you measure success by your own standards. I measure success of a new product on the percentage of sales it generates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it is true that the F900 has not captured a large amount of feature work, that is not Panavision's fault. It is, to a degree, a vindication of the notion that it is going to take another generation of development to achieve digital capture systems that compete with film on a more even level.

 

 

 

 

Huh? I would rather think it is "Panavision's" fault that they embraced such an inferior technology with such mindless enthusiasm.

 

It's a vindication of the notion that video cameras just plain aren't good enough! It's going to take more than "another" generation too; CCD and CMOS image sensors have been around for 35 years now, and this is about as good as they're going to get. The laws of physics can be terrible curmudgeons sometimes. And whatever happened to the Kinetta? The Dalsa Origin? The Arri D-20? What are they waiting for - Christmas? It ain't gonna happen dude!

 

Your personal hatred of and unexplained vendetta against Panavision is getting a bit tiresome, Jim.

 

 

 

The "hatred" is not personal, and it's certainly not "unexplained". You just haven't been paying attention, which actually got tiresome some time back.

[Michael Most]

Come back when they start shooting CSI Miami or Desperate Housewives on HD.

 

Oh, so I guess "high end production" is now determined by ratings, rather than budget, studio involvement, and methodologies. Gee, thanks for setting me straight on that one. I'll pass that on to the numerous pilot producers that wound up shooting on HD video this season, too.

 

The "hatred" is not personal, and it's certainly not "unexplained". You just haven't been paying attention, which actually got tiresome some time back.

 

I consider it something of a waste of time to "pay attention" to the rantings of someone as single minded as you seem to be. Once in a while you come up with some useful observations, but most of the time you spend here is devoted to convincing the rest of the world that Panavision as a company is useless and incompetant, and its products mediocre and overblown. You seem to constantly be on a mission to prove that you're right and the rest of the world is brain dead. You list yourself as a "digital image technician," and yet you go to great lengths to show that digital imaging is inferior. You take to task people like me and, on occasion, David Mullen, both of whom have repeatedly stated our format agnostic stance towards production, and try to "prove" to us that film is a superior imaging medium at this point in time - which we both already agree on.

 

Seems you're the one who needs to "pay attention." As for me, I'm done with this thread.

[Balazs Rozsa]

Jim Murdoch wrote: "It's going to take more than "another" generation too; CCD and CMOS image sensors have been around for 35 years now, and this is about as good as they're going to get. The laws of physics can be terrible curmudgeons sometimes."

 

Do you mean they will not get better from now on? In the last 35 years they have been improving nicely, especially in the last few years. What laws of physics would stop them getting better now suddenly?

[John Sprung]

a much smaller-scale, as well  as soft, dim and flickering, 35mm eyepiece?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The finder image from a 35mm camera isn't really "small" on the operator's retina. The image is formed on a ground glass identical in size and shape to the film. The rest of the finder is basically a low power microscope optimized to give the operator the best possible look at that image.

 

The image isn't soft, in most cases it's sharp enough to let you know if you have a focus error. You do have to focus the finder microscope for your eye. If you look thru one that's set for someone else, it can be extremely soft looking.

 

The image may or may not be dim, depending on the speed of the film. If you take fast film out in bright daylight, stop down and pile up ND filters, you get a dim finder image. Under most circumstances, it doesn't take long for your eye to adapt to the finder light level.

 

It does flicker, but you get used to that.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

You list yourself as a "digital image technician," and yet you go to great lengths to show that digital imaging is inferior.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So what does that tell you?

As they say: "The cynic is usually better informed...."

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

The image may or may not be dim, depending on the speed of the film.  If you take fast film out in bright daylight, stop down and pile up ND filters, you get a dim finder image.  Under most circumstances, it doesn't take long for your eye to adapt to the finder light level. 

 

It does flicker, but you get used to that.

-- J.S.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You only become aware of flicker when you have a non-flickering area to compare it with. Because your eye can only see the ground glass image you don't really notice it. I certainly don't find it irritating, and the resolution is far better than any electronic viewfinder I've ever seen.

 

Apparently the Genesis's electronic viewfinder also flickers, because it simply displays straight 24p video rather than converting it to 48 frame. This is presumably because doing that would introduce an unaceptable delay between the action and the viewfinder image.

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

Jim Murdoch wrote: "It's going to take more than "another" generation too; CCD and CMOS image sensors have been around for 35 years now, and this is about as good as they're going to get. The laws of physics can be terrible curmudgeons sometimes."

 

Do you mean they will not get better from now on? In the last 35 years they have been improving nicely, especially in the last few years. What laws of physics would stop them getting better now suddenly?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The laws of Quantum Mechanics for one.

The sensors haven't gotten that much better, it's more that the support electronics has gotten better at disguising their shortcomings.

[Balazs Rozsa]

The laws of Quantum Mechanics for one.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Could you please tell at least the basic idea behind this statement?

 

The sensors haven't gotten that much better, it's more that the support electronics has gotten better at disguising their shortcomings.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Look at the Fuji extended dynamic range sensors. If you are willing to dedicate half the number of your pixels to highlight aerias, you can extend the dynamic range. That is a possibility for the future, when increasing the resolution of the image will not be as important as increasing the dynamic range.

 

Or look what happened to CMOSes. A few years ago they were very noisy, now the Canon digital SLRs have quite low noise. Every time you can add one more transistor to a CMOS pixel cell, you can build one better amplification circuit with less noise. And miniaturization allows that.

 

Sure the fundamental workings of CCD and CMOS imaging devices did not change too much since their invention. But they are steadily getting better. Not big changes, but noise, dynamic range, resolution getting better steadily.

[Jon Kukla]

I can confirm the Flyboys shoot using the Genesis camera. Also, the Basic Instinct 2 crew has been testing it side by side with a Panaflex, for night exteriors only.

[Robert Sanders]

The laws of Quantum Mechanics for one.

The sensors haven't gotten that much better, it's more that the support electronics has gotten better at disguising their shortcomings.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I respect your demands for higher quality resolution in digital cinematography, but perhaps the British film community should focus on saving its own film industry with quality "content" first, rather than specifications...

 

PRODUCER SAYS UK FILM IN 'CRISIS'