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Cinegear '05


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Just returning from Cinegear.

 

Yesterday I saw the ASC Technology committee headed by Curtis Clark ASC. The discussion was basically about wrangling the wild wild West nature of digital into something more user friendly. With a predictable and repeatable practice.

 

The main topics were production workflow, display, control of color consistency, and archiving.

 

The workflow discussion primarily involved producing a streamlined process of preproduction, shooting, and post. Many vendors and manufacturers are coming up with their own ideas of how to solve problems and in some cases creating new problems. The ASC Technology committee is looking to get ahead of many of these things and building a clear and concise working model. So all of this doesn?t become a mess of confusion, and proprietary practices.

 

Display deals with how the image looks on various devices and keeping colors consistent. From monitors on set, to monitors in the editing bay, and color correction facilities, to digital or film projection. The ASC committee is researching various techniques and practices of how to keep these things working and consistent.

 

The committee is developing in conjunction with color correction manufacturers a system called the Color Decision List. Ultimately it is a simple way to keep the DP?s look of the film consistent from shooting through post production. Also keeping it across all platforms. Several color vendors are adopting an open standard that will work on all of their systems. The Color Decision List will mostly work in the limits of simple color manipulation and not invlove complex or proprietary tools from each manufacturer.

 

They also spoke about archiving. How to practically store digital data in the long term, which they seemed to be divided on at best, and have no idea how to do at worst. Two sides of the debate were storing digital data itself on film. Which they know will last if properly stored for a long time and the data will be recoverable for a long time.

 

The other side of the debate was storing digital data on magnetic tape or disk. Which they know will only be viable for 20 ? 30 years at most before it will need to be transferred to a future medium. The problem with that way is as time goes on you will have more material to archive and store, and you will have more transfers to make. In the long run it becomes impractical. So they are still debating how to do it.

 

Today I saw a group of cinematographers who discussed their experience with the DI process. Not really a great deal new to report that we don?t already debate here on the list.

 

The most interesting part of the conversation was from Wally Pfister who just shot Batman Begins. He discussed why he did not do a DI for Batman. The studio even assumed he would want to do a DI. When he told them he didn?t they were shocked and he had to explain why.

 

Simply he said he doesn?t feel at this point that its good enough. He and the director wanted to shoot anamorphic and get the largest negative possible. Why shoot an anamorphic negative and then view it at 2K resolution. He said he doesn?t like the look of 2K with interpolation and grain reduction. From what he was saying the studio would pay for a 4K scan but not a 4K print.

 

Pfister said he and the director wanted to largely do the entire film in a more low tech in camera philosophy. Less CGI more real stunts and wire work.

 

Actually for the IMAX blow up the edited film was scanned at 6K, which Pfister said looks amazing. He said if he could have done the entire film at 6K from the raw negative, and and at least a 4K print, he would have done a DI for the entire film.

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What was amazing at Cinegear 2005 yesterday was listening to cinematographers (Laszlo Kovacs, Shelly Johnson, David Mullen, Isidore Mankofsky, Ron Garcia, Dennis Lenoir, Karl Lindenlaub, Allen Daviau) talk in detail about how they lit select scenes. It was very inspiring.

 

Laurence

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(This was taken partially from a post I made on Rec.Arts.Movies.Tech about Todd-AO anamorphics, originally created in the mid 1960's by Dr. Richard Vetter.)

 

I had a wonderful chat this weekend at CineGear about Todd-AO anamorphics with various people, mainly Joe Dunton but also Denny Clairmont (who rents them.) Joe had to reservice a set of Todd-AO's back in the late 1970's when Dino DeLaurentis bought a bunch of them for "The Hurricane." He was really impressed with how low the distortion was in them (they still stretch the background though, but have low barrel distortion and other problems.) He said they were mainly made up of Japanese optics ordered by Richard Vetter. The particular arrangement of elements in the front for squeezing was patented by Vetter, but it is similar to all the designs using anamorphic cylindrical lens elements in the front of the lens. Joe said that the problem with Todd-AO was mainly that the lenses weren't color-matched well and had a warm tint. Denny Clairmont said about the same thing about the color. Joe felt that Todd-AO would probably rival Panavision C-Series for sharpness while Denny felt that C-Series were sharper (they date back to the late 1970's.)

 

JDC and Technovision anamorphics are mainly built around Cooke S3's spherical elements and anamorphic elements from Japan (originally by Shiga but he passed away, now it's someone else.) The Japanese company that worked on Todd-AO was not Shiga but something else (Naka?)

 

Joe Dunton said that DeLaurentis' Todd-AO lenses eventually were sold to some camera rental house in Miami but I don't know if they stayed there. Maybe they are the basis of what Clairmont has; Joe seemed to imply that there were not that many sets built.

 

Joe Dunton had on display at CineGear the first lens in a new set of "compact" anamorphics (and his regular lenses were never that big to begin with.) It was a 32mm and I was really impressed. Large in diameter but short in length (I mean, it was like a quarter the length of a 35mm Primo anamorphic!) and very low in barrel distortion for such a wide-angle lens (I'd be tempted to say that it had no barrel distortion at a glance.) Being made up of Cooke S3 elements combined with Japanese anamorphic elements, it will still have the lower-contrast look of his other JDC anamorphics.

 

I once asked him why he didn't adapt the new Cooke S4 elements or Zeiss Ultra Primes and he said that the final lens, once you made a front anamorphic element large enough to minimize barrel distortion, etc., would end up fairly large and heavy -- like the Primos, Arriscopes, and V-Series Hawks are.

 

He was also quite adamant about using Japanese-made anamorphic elements rather than Russian-made one; he felt that the Russian glass was greener.

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When I was at CineGear last month one of the equipment vendors (DPR) asked if anyone standing nearby with a camera would please take a picture of the distinguished guests visiting their booth. I had my little PDX10 video cam, so I took the attached snapshot & sent it to them.

 

I believe the gentleman at the right of the frame is Allen Daviau, but I don't know the others. I'd appreciate it if someone could identify them.

 

Also, is that David Mullen in the upper-left corner of the frame???

 

(My apologies for the picture's poor quality, but it's a video cam, not a still cam.)

 

Here's the snapshot:

post-3440-1120413137.jpg

 

All the best,

 

- Peter DeCrescenzo

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I believe the gentleman at the right of the frame is Allen Daviau, but I don't know the others. I'd appreciate it if someone could identify them.

 

Also, is that David Mullen in the upper-left corner of the frame???

 

 

 

Yes David Mullen, ASC in the background, and I believe Robert Primes, ASC to the left of Lazlo Kovacs, A.S.C. who is sitting next to Allen Daviau, A.S.C.

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Wow, cool. Thanks for the confirmations everyone.

 

(If this conversation were happening in the analog world I guess I'd ask Mr. Mullen for his autograph?) :)

 

All the best,

 

- Peter DeCrescenzo

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Ah, a photo with so many great and talented minds in one room. It's very impressive to us screenwriter/directors who secretly want to be DPs.

 

And I just have to say...Allen Daviau is one of the most generous, friendly people I've met in this field. He's like so many people on this board -- genuinely interested in sharing ideas, answering questions, imparting knowledge. A great guy with a really kind, gentle sense of humor and spirit. And his work is inspiring.

 

Mark

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