digital cinematography, march/april 2005

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DIGITAL
digital acquisition digital workflow
digital effects digital intermediates
Cinematography
vol. 1 no.1
march | april 2005
FILMSTREAM
DREAM ON
SILENCE
BECOMES YOU
PANAVISED
MADNESS
PREMIERE
ISSUE!
THE BACK
ALLEYS OF
S
I
N
C
I
T
Y
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DIGITAL
cinematography
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DIGITAL
editor’s view
Cinematography
THE OPENING SHOT
So this is Digital Cinematography, our new magazine. I hope you read, respond and,
most importantly, learn.
volume 1, issue 1
editor
managing editor
contributing editors
Our idea was to make a magazine for the creative professionals involved in
digital production and post. There are so many amazing developments in the
digital workflow ... cinematography, the digital intermediate (DI) process, film
scanning and recording, digital effects, data management and film mastering. As
a result of the imagination and ingenuity of these creative professionals, we’re
group publisher
seeing amazing projects. And we want to bring them to you.
The plan is to keep you updated on all of the new concepts, experiments,
publishing manager
products and projects through the magazine, our Web site (www.dcinematography.com) and our electronic newsletters. For a free subscription to the maga-
east coast sales
zine and/or the e-newsletters, visit www.dcinematography.com/subscribe.
But we really look to you, our readers, to help us develop and guide the mag-
west coast sales
azine. Tell us what you’re working on, what you’ve tried, what you’d like to read,
what kinds of questions you’d like answered ... and we’ll do everything we can
to bring you that content.
midwest & canadian
sales/classified sales
Call or e-mail me any time with your ideas, news, suggestions and
comments.
And enjoy the first issue of Digital Cinematography. We certainly enjoy
bringing it to you.
Cristina Clapp, Editorial Director
national sales
manager/director
of internet sales
senior art director
art directors
DIGITAL
Cinematography
THE BACK
ALLEYS OF
SIN CITY
24
contents
production
Behind the Camera on Project Greenlight, Protocols of Zion Produced with
Panasonic AJ-SDX900, Bob Aschmann
Goes Natural for The L Word, Viper
FilmStream Goes to Iceland’s LazyTown
6
FILMSTREAM
DREAM ON
SILENCE BECOMES YOU
28
postproduction
Company 3 Takes Constantine to DI, Post
Logic Preps Daniel Johnston, Why We
Fight, PostWorks Enjoys Romance and
Cigarettes, Autodesk Rebrands Discreet
10
toolkit
CLIPSTER 2.0
COMES TO
THE FORE 33
PANAVISED
MADNESS
34
march | april 2005
international sales
manager
Sony DSR-400 and DSR-450WS Camcorders, Edifis Finaliser, Panasonic AJSD965 VTR, JVC GY-HD100U ProHD
Camcorder, Kodak Vision2 HD System,
Doremi Labs Compressed HDTV Disk
Recorders, SpectSoft RaveHD Xenon
System, Thomson Grass Valley Venom
FlashPak
16
www.dcinematography.com
production manager
assistant production
manager
circulation manager
Cristina Clapp
310. 429. 8484
[email protected]
Katie Makal
James Careless
Matt Hurwitz
Elina Shatkin
Jon Silberg
Andrew Takeuchi
An Tran
Alicia Zappier
Herb Schiff
310. 837. 6460
[email protected]
Heather O’Connor
212. 378. 0462
[email protected]
David J. Miller
212. 378. 0464
[email protected]
Jeff Victor
847. 367. 4073
[email protected]
Michael Valinsky
212. 378. 0408
[email protected]
Gary Rhodes
631. 274. 9530
[email protected]
Toby Sali
310. 396. 9554
[email protected]
Nicole Cobban
Gregory Gennaro,
Annmarie LaScala
Fred Vega
Ariel Steinberg
Annette Gollop
CMP INFORMATION, INC.
president/ceo
group publishing
director
vice president/
controller
director of editorial,
marketing, and
creative development
director of
operations
published by
executive offices
Tony Keefe
Adam Goldstein
Doug Krainman
Tony Savona
Cristina Ernst
CMP Information, Inc.
460 Park Ave. S., 9th Fl.
New York NY 10016
Tel: 212. 378. 0400
Fax: 212. 378. 2160
www.dcinematography.com
Digital Cinematography is published bi-monthly by CMP
Information, Inc. 460 Park Avenue South, Ninth Floor New
York, NY 10016. Postmaster: send address changes and
inquires to Digital Cinematography. P.O. Box 564, Lindenhurst, NY 11757-0564. Subscriptions: US: 1 yr. $52, 2
yr. $94; Canada: 1 yr. $88, 2 yr. $166; Foreign: 1 yr. $102, 2
yr. $194. Back issues are $6. Copyright 2005 CMP Information, Inc. PRINTED IN THE USA.
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contents
production
Behind the Camera on
PROJECT GREENLIGHT
DIGITAL
cinematography
6
Page 6
◗ shorts
CML Lighting
Book Available
The Cinematography
Mailing List (CML),
an online forum that allows cinematographers and crew to
exchange ideas about cinematography, has released The CML
Lighting Book.
This book consists of edited
online conversations that took
place among DPs, gaffers, their
crew and equipment suppliers from
the period of January 2001 to
January 2005. The offering is
available as a download ($11.05)
and as a printed, bound
book ($25).
Fauer’s ARRICAM
2nd. Ed. Available
Cinematographer Tony Sacco, director
of photography for Miramax Television’s
Project Greenlight, used Panasonic’s
AJ-SDX900 DVCPRO camcorder to
record the third season of the filmmaking contest and behind-the-scenes documentary series, which debuted on Bravo in March. Sacco, who owns his own
SDX900, shot the season’s nine onehour episodes in 24p.
Created by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
and Chris Moore, this season’s Project
Greenlight focuses on the making of
Feast, a horror movie. First-time director
John Gulager helms the winning script,
which was envisioned by first-time
screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. The novice filmmakers also draw on the wisdom of master horror
director Wes Craven, who produces the
project.
“For me to DP a show and visually
make it stand out from the rest of the
pack, 24p was the answer,” Sacco says.
“I was able to test the camera for a
week, shooting at 24p, 30p and 60i, 4:3
march | april 2005
and 16:9. I did further tests specific to
reality television using mixed lighting
and low lighting to see how it would
handle. Even I was surprised at how well
it performed in low light—faster than Beta and with very low noise in the gains.”
Even with the run-and-gun style of
Project Greenlight, Sacco wanted a look
that wasn’t typical video. “Shooting in the
progressive mode in combination with the
cine-like gamma curve creates the look
of film and is far superior to standard 60i
video. In the unpredictable world of reality
filming, where you’re not able to paint
each scene and light everything, the
SDX900 passes with flying colors.”
The second edition
of ARRICAM (book
and DVD) from
Cinematographer
Jon Fauer, ASC, will
be available this
month. Fauer has
completely updated
and revised the
book to reflect current trends, and the DVD is new
to this edition.
The DVD features interviews with
leading cinematographers on film
origination, digital intermediates,
scanning, color management and
film recording. The DVD also
includes 60 minutes of how-to tips
and techniques on camera prep,
setup, loading, wireless lens controls, lens data systems, speed
ramps and more.
All proceeds from the sale of the
book and DVD will be used to support the American Society of
Cinematographers Museum and
Education Center.
www.dcinematography.com
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contents
clips
DIGITAL
cinematography
PROTOCOLS OF ZION
Produced with Panasonic AJ-SDX900
The Protocols of Zion, an appraisal of contemporary anti-Semitism from veteran documentarian Marc Levi, was shot by Cinematographer Mark Benjamin with a
Panasonic AJ-SDX900 DVCPRO 24p
camera.
Noting an upsurge of anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States and around the
world, Levin polls a range of people to explore the notion that Jews are “out for world
domination”—a theory propagated by The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a century-old
tract that, despite being discredited as a libelous forgery, is still widely available.
Cinematographer Mark Benjamin explains,
“The SDX900 doesn’t have a ‘DigiBeta’ look,
which has come to be viewed as too clean,
too newsy, too real—in short, not cinematic
enough. The SDX900 has a softer edge, similar to 16mm, as well as native 16:9 and 24p,
which gives the material a desirable temporal
stutter.”
Benjamin shot Protocols at 24p utilizing
Cine Gamma and “a very reasonable setting
that didn’t overcrank to look like enhanced
video.” He used two lenses, a super-wide and
a 22:1 zoom.
For the Protocols offline, material was
down-resed to DVCAM, which was dubbed
via FireWire into Avid Xpress DV. For the online, the editors had a DVCPRO50 deck playing back into Avid Symphony, followed by the
color-correct and an up-res to HD 30i.
“The camera makes a surprisingly strong,
Bob Aschmann Goes
Natural for THE L WORD
Cinematographer Bob Aschmann is the
first one to admit he doesn’t watch much
television, but he was excited about the
prospect of shooting The L Word because of the way the episodic drama
treats issues of relationships and sexuality. “I liked all the dramatic elements of
the show,” says Aschmann. “I thought it
was really dealing with some issues that
hadn’t been seen on TV.”
Although the show is shot in Vancouver, Aschmann takes care to emulate the
look of sunny Southern California, which
is one of the reasons why he plays his
lights extremely soft. “Part of that was my
observation that the light is always quite
www.dcinematography.com
soft in Los Angeles. The sun never gets
as hard and crisp as it does here in Vancouver.” The happy side effect is the way
the light flatters the show’s primarily female cast. Aschmann has taken the diffused lighting look and, in his words, “run
with it in other situations.”
Another reason for the prevalence of
7
elegant up-res to HD, either 24p or 30i, capturing the aesthetic of what you’ve color-corrected,” Benjamin says.
Benjamin notes that he used Panasonic’s AG-DVX100A Mini DV camcorder as a
second, “run-and-gun” camera on the Protocols shoot.
diffused light is the show’s format. The
L Word is shot in high definition with
the Sony HDW-F900. Aschmann
makes sure there’s always some kind of
diffusion on the lens, generally softcontrast filters or classic softs. “I always
have some type of diffusion on the
camera because I’m shooting in HD. I
actually feel like I don’t have to do much
diffusion for the actors. I use diffusion
on the lens whether I’m shooting a
close-up or not.”
Aschmann also tries to maintain a
naturalistic feel when it comes to camera movement. He thinks of the camera
as a non-obtrusive observer and
prefers not to move it unless it’s absolutely necessary.
march | april 2005
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DIGITAL
cinematography
8
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clips
production
Viper FilmStream Goes to Iceland’s LAZYTOWN
Thomson Grass Valley’s Viper FilmStream digital cinematography camera is being used to shoot LazyTown,
a children’s program that airs on
Nickelodeon Jr. and CBS. Mark Read
of production company Hypercube
(Boulder, Colo.) and Magnús Scheving
of LazyTown Studios (Reykjavík, Iceland) began collaborating in late
2003 to create a children’s show that
would blend puppets, live action and
CG backgrounds—and to devise an
all-digital, data-centric workflow to
make it happen.
LazyTown’s data-heavy production
and post workflow takes advantage of a
custom-built tapeless universal production environment that allows ideas and
television episodes to evolve from concept to realization all under one roof, and
the roof is located in Gardabær, Iceland.
Everything from the script to the finished
product is produced within the studio
building, with offices and rooms for producers, makeup, image data processing,
Dalsa to Open
Digital Cinema Center
Dalsa Corp.
opens the doors
to the Dalsa
Digital Cinema
Center in
Woodland Hills,
Calif., a suburb
of Los Angeles, this month. The full-service
rental facility will feature Origin, Dalsa’s 4K
digital motion picture camera. The center will
also provide a full spectrum of digital cameras, accessories and services to meet the
needs of production companies and directors
of photography for virtually any production.
To realize this goal, Dalsa acquired the
assets of Broadcast Plus, a video equipment and services provider in Los Angeles.
Bob DaSilva, owner and founder of Broadcast Plus, will serve as the general manager
of the Dalsa Digital Cinema Center.
The center is currently planning a series
of open houses and in-house seminars.
march | april 2005
CGI, compositing, editing, color correction, finishing, music and sound composition, recording and editing.
The pipeline is fed six days a week
during production by Director of Photography Tomas Örn and his Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera. The digital
cinematography camera’s three 9.2-million-pixel CCDs capture images at
1920x1080 resolution. In FilmStream
mode, Viper records unprocessed, uncompressed video—RGB 4:4:4 10-bit
log data—to disk, allowing a completely
tapeless production and post process.
Greenscreen images captured by the
Viper and its Zeiss DigiPrime lenses are
sent to an Ultimatte HD system for
keying and are stored on a 60TB SAN
for universal mastering. To record the
Viper’s 4:4:4 RGB output, Read employs DVS CineControl, Drastic Technologies WVW series digital disk
recorder and Baytech CineRAM. The
CG backgrounds are created by 12
artists using Alias Maya, Kaydara’s Online virtual set software and Apple’s
Shake. Editing is performed on Avid
Adrenaline. Online editing and color
correction use Iridas SpeedGrade.
Once each episode is finalized, DPX
files are recorded to a Sony SRW-5000
RGB VTR.
Shooting Multi-Cam HD for LIFE ON A STICK
FOX network’s Life on
a Stick, which premiered on March 24, is
a sitcom about the adventures of two friends
just out of high school
who take jobs at a hot
dog stand at the local
mall’s food court. Veteran cinematographer
Jim Roberson shot most of this slice of
Americana using four Sony HDW-F900
CineAlta 24p high-def cameras.
The advent of high-def production has
had minimal impact on Roberson’s lighting
style. “When I started shooting sitcoms
back in the ’90s, I basically stayed with my
same lighting style,” he says, “only I would
accommodate for four cameras.” When
Roberson went from film to HD, “I didn’t
change anything in the way I lit. High def is
more sensitive to the high end and the low
end, and you’ve got to be careful in the
mid-range, but I really haven’t changed dra-
matically from the way I
was lighting in film.”
As a cinematographer who has grown up
with film, Roberson
tries to emulate its look
as much as possible.
“I’ve gone into the
F900 and tried to tweak it to where it will
emulate film stock, so you’ve got detail in
the blacks, crush the high end so it doesn’t
get totally away from you.
But for all of HD’s advantages, multicamera high-def shoots present some
unique challenges. “In the high-def world,
everybody likes to think that everything is
constant, but the four cameras that we use
are not all the same,” Roberson explains.
“Temperature affects them. Whether they’ve
been bounced across the floor or on the
street or by being moved from show to
show—all that affects them, and each
camera will change a tiny bit.”
www.dcinematography.com
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post
Company 3 Takes CONSTANTINE to DI
Company 3 colorist David Hussey provided digital intermediate services for Director Francis Lawrence and the Warner
Bros. feature film Constantine. The project marks the first feature film outing for
both Hussey and Lawrence, though the
pair have previously collaborated on numerous music video projects that involved
digital intermediate work.
Lawrence was insistent on using the DI
process to post his film. Citing his background in music videos, he said that the DI
environment offered him real-time interactivity and the ability to work directly with a
colorist he was used to. “I’m used to having
control over the color and contrast, and I
was nervous about having to work the old
fashioned way of color timing in a lab. DI
makes color timing seem archaic. I wanted
to have control—control over the contrast,
control to put color in the blacks. I wanted
to have the ability to make subtle color
changes and to use windows to affect discrete areas of the image.”
Hussey explains the differences between timing three-minute videos and a
two-hour feature. “With a music video, you
scan through the film quickly and start
playing with your ideas. In a day or two, it’s
done. With the movie, we had weeks to do
it. We could come up with different looks.
We could create different looks within
scenes. We could see how they looked together. We could change our minds. The
Post Logic Preps
DANIEL JOHNSTON
Post Logic Studios provided digital intermediate services for the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
The post and DI process for The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary
portrait of musical artist/songwriter
Daniel Johnston, required Post Logic to
meld new footage and interviews shot on
Super 16mm with archival footage shot
on Super 8, VHS and DV.
“This documentary has a huge variety and richness of material,” says Jeff
Feuerzeig, the film’s director. “We collected archived footage, including concert performances, and also had media coming in on Super 8 and other
home video formats. The only way to bring all of this together—plus our After
Effects graphics and files—was through the Post Logic Studios DI. We were
impressed by the facility’s toolset, which includes the Quantel iQ, and by the
company’s expertise in assembling the elements in the digital nonlinear
space. Post Logic’s 2K scan of our Super 16 original was absolutely beautiful, and our 35mm print, color-timed by Michael Underwood, looks great.”
march | april 2005
look of the film evolved over time. It was
helpful to have the luxury of time, to not
feel so rushed.”
This being his first experience with DI
for a feature film, Hussey was concerned about how his work would translate when it was output to film. “Film is a
different medium—it’s a more organic
source—but I was very pleasantly surprised by the results. It was very close,
almost an exact match for the digital
projection. We didn’t have to change a
thing. The translation was amazing.”
PostWorks Assembles
WHY WE FIGHT
At PostWorks’ facility in SoHo and at its subsidiary,
Photomag Sound & Image in Midtown Manhattan,
Director Eugene Jarecki oversaw finishing for his
documentary Why We Fight. Work included sound
design and final audio mixing, 24p conform in Avid
DS Nitris, color correction in PostWorks’ digital intermediate theater, titling in Nitris and mastering to
HDCAM 1080i.
“Why We Fight is a film that combines a lot of
different types of elements. In a way, it’s a case
study in the beauty of modern technology being
able to bring together extremely disparate information so that storytelling can be informed by elements from a lot of different viewpoints and
places,” Jarecki explains. “There are actually a lot
of aesthetics involved in bringing the information
to the screen; those aesthetics come down to real
decisions made in the post environment.”
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Page 11
© Eastman Kodak Company, 2005. Kodak is a trademark.
DC_0405
FEEL IT.
OR
FORGET
IT.
FILM. THE DIFFERENCE.
ONLY FILM SEES THE WAY YOU DO.
You see it. More importantly, you feel it.
It’s the difference 10 times more
resolution makes in portraying nuance
and detail. And it’s the way film’s organic structure sees like the human eye—
not like a machine. So there’s nothing
between you and your audience.
KODAK Motion Picture Film.
Make your story one to remember.
www.kodak.com/go/motion.
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post
◗ shorts
cinematography
12
5:22 PM
DIGITAL
IVC Upgrades its
Digital Vision Systems
PostWorks Enjoys
ROMANCE AND
CIGARETTES
PostWorks in New York developed a new
post workflow for the production of Director
John Turturro’s Romance and Cigarettes.
“Our custom dailies workflow included direct-to-disk telecine transfer, as well as simultaneous HD and SD transfers,” explains
Executive Producer Matthew Reedy. “The
process allowed the project’s editor, Ray
Hubley, rapid, ready access to audiosynched select takes in the Avid. It also
archived the same takes to 1080/24p HD
so that the final HD onlines could quickly be
assembled once the edit was locked.”
To simultaneously transfer selected takes
from the 35mm, 2.40 scope negative
source to 1080/24p HD and to standard
definition for use in Avid Symphony, Reedy,
Colorist Sam Daley and Editorial Assistant
Tim Hedden fine-tuned the workflow.
The Thomson Spirit DataCine was used
with a da Vinci 2K color system to feed the
HD content to D5-HD via a Panasonic AJHD3700 deck while transferring the SD
content to DVCAM and to an Avid Unity
workspace.
Visual windows and Flex files were created using the Evertz KeyLog Tracker system
on the DVCAM- and Unity-transferred media only.
On the set, audio was recorded to DVDRAM discs using a Fostex PD-6 deck. In
post, audio synch was achieved during film
march | april 2005
transfer for the first few days, then was handled by an assistant editor in one of PostWorks’ offline edit suites.
“The HD transfers allowed the filmmakers a chance to visualize a high-quality conformed master for preview screenings without having to resort to doing a work print cut
or a lower quality SD online,” Reedy says.
“With the use of our media storage capabilities, we were able to store and make
changes according to editorial decisions in a
fast and economical way with Avid DS Nitris
HD system. We also held preview screenings in our DI theater using our new Digital
Projection IS8-2K projector and the D5-HD
masters that we created.”
“The end result of this workflow is really
a big deal when you think about being able
to automatically conform for each successive screening,” adds PostWorks president
Billy Baldwin. “Nowadays, preview screenings carry a lot of importance in the filmmaking process. With all the editorial work
taking place within our nonlinear environment, we were able to automatically conform the latest changes for each preview
screening.”
IVC recently expanded its digital cinema mastering and HD mastering
capablities with new and upgraded
systems from Digital Vision. IVC, a
division of Point.360, ordered Digital
Vision’s ASC3 ME Film Dirt and
Random Scratch Concealer with
Motion Estimation, upgraded its Digital Vision AGR4 ME Grain & Noise
Management System with Motion
Estimation and upgraded its Valhall
color correction system. The new
ASC3 ME, upgraded AGR4 ME and
upgraded Valhall will be installed at
IVC’s facility in Burbank.
IVC has a large number of Digital
Vision DVNR systems in its facility.
The addition of the new systems allows IVC to take advantage of the
processing power afforded by Motion Estimation’s new restoration algorithms and filtering techniques.
IVC has been using the Valhall
color corrector for more than two
years. Improvements in the version 2
upgrade include enhanced gamma
range, user-definable transfer functions (curves), selectable processing
orders, an adjustable RGB legalizer,
invertible secondary vectors, additional layers (including a dedicated
vignette function layer) and true layer handling.
IVC chief engineer Wayne
Veitschegger says, “We are very impressed with the image quality provided by the new ME algorithms;
they will allow us to work faster and
more efficiently, and the picture
quality is outstanding. The new version of the Valhall color corrector
will help us as well; the multiple windowing functions will be particularly
helpful. These upgrades will also allow us to provide full bandwidth,
real-time, 4:4:4 RGB image processing to our clients. Until now, this
simply has not been possible in a
real-time process.”
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DIGITAL
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Deluxe Rolls Out
TCS’ Proof-of-Delivery
Notification
Deluxe Labs has added 20/20 Delivery from TCS (TeleCommunication
Systems) to provide Proof-of-Delivery
to its clients. The service provides essential wireless data technology tools
to confirm the delivery of film prints,
trailers and marketing materials to
theaters throughout North America,
no matter what time of the day or
night the deliveries occur.
Deluxe Labs works with film studios as a global processor and distributor of film prints and related marketing materials. TCS’ technology further
adds to Deluxe’s ability to track and
communicate the location and delivery
of client content anywhere along the
distribution supply chain.
Deluxe scans barcodes on the
movies and marketing materials, along
with unique location barcodes at theaters, promptly confirming that the
items were delivered to the correct location. Real-time wireless updates enable Deluxe to send e-mail confirmations of delivery to customers within
minutes of completion.
clips
Autodesk Rebrands Discreet
The results of Autodesk Inc.’s corporate branding effort are in: Discreet is
getting a new name. Now known as
Autodesk Media and Entertainment,
the division’s focus remains on film,
video, postproduction, gaming and related media and entertainment markets. Autodesk notes that sales, support and product development teams
will remain unchanged. Autodesk Media and Entertainment is headquartered in Montreal, where Discreet has
been based since Autodesk acquired
Discreet Logic in 1999.
According to the company, the
brand change signifies the incremental resources Autodesk Media
and Entertainment will be utilizing
to better serve customers. Additionally, Autodesk Consulting is extending its organization by adding a
dedicated Media and Entertainment
practice.
“The media and entertainment industries
are at an inflection point, where creativity
and productivity must meet,” says Martin
Vann, vice president of Autodesk Media and
Entertainment. “By integrating and unifying
our brand with Autodesk, we position our-
selves to become a more closely aligned division of a billion-dollar-plus company. Autodesk Media and Entertainment will not
only provide a broader and more strategic
presence for Autodesk, but a better platform for us to compete within our core markets of film, television, gaming and design
visualization.”
iO Film Plans Expansion
Digital film finishing company iO
Film entered into a strategic and financial partnership with Matt
Cooper, owner of duplication firm
Lightning Media, that allows iO
Film to relocate to a 30,000square-foot facility in Hollywood
this summer. Resources at the new
site will triple the number of digital
intermediate suites available to iO
Film; the company is also making
significant investments in hardware
and software. iO Film will operate a
49-seat digital and film projection
screening room at the new location,
with future hardware investments
set to include multiple 2K/4K DI
suites, additional ARRILASER film
recorders and increased storage
for scanning.
march | april 2005
Matchframe Goes to CHARM SCHOOL
Director Randall Miller engaged Burbank’s Matchframe Digital Intermediate for Marilyn
Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, which premiered at Sundance. With a
cast that includes Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei and John Goodman, the film follows a
widower who embarks on a journey to find a dying man’s lost love.
The film is based on a 16mm short of the same name that Miller directed 16 years
ago while at AFI. Miller asked MDI to restore much of the 16mm film to serve as a key element of the 35mm anamorphic version. “The 16mm negative was 16 years old,” notes
MDI president Dave Waters, “and it was so warped in many places that it was impossible
for us to scan. We made a wet gate IP and scanned 2K files from the IP.”
While the wet gate process removed much of the dirt and scratches from the original,
there were still many sections where stains, dirt and hair were visible. MDI used various
software tools along with FilmLight’s Baselight 2K DI color grading system to restore the
16mm, digitally color grade and transform the 16mm to 35mm anamorphic output.
www.dcinematography.com
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BROADCAST
SYSTEMS
DIGITAL
TP-80 PNEUMATIC
PEDESTAL
SONY
DSR-400 AND DSR-450WS CAMCORDERS
Sony’s new standard-definition DVCAM professional camcorders are engineered
around three 2/3-inch Power HAD EX CCD imaging sensors. The DSR-450WS is a
widescreen model that can capture images in 60i at 24PsF, 25PsF (PAL model only) and
30PsF. The DSR-400 features a 4:3 version of the Power HAD EX CCD. The camcorders
are capable of recording in DVCAM and DV formats, on small or large cassettes, with
i.LINK (IEEE 1394) digital interface connectivity. Up to 4.5 hours of footage can be
recorded on a single full-size cassette in DV mode, or three hours when recording in
DVCAM mode. The camcorders’ enhanced imaging performance is complemented by a
fold-out 2.5-inch color LCD monitor screen that allows users to frame and assess shots
with greater precision, even in full sunlight. Sony, www.sony.com/professional
PANASONIC
EDIFIS
FINALISER
Edifis’ Finaliser is a nonlinear color grading
and delivery system with integrated disk
store for standard-definition and high-definition output. Finaliser is designed to take
over the postproduction process after the
edit is finished, providing the tools needed
for high-end in-context color correction and
production of multiple deliverables from a
universal master. The system, with its colorist’s control surface, supports up to 32 layers of video and effects, at either HD or SD
resolution, with no rendering.
Edifis, www.edifis.us
march | april 2005
Shotoku Broadcast
Systems, a manufacturer of broadcast-quality camera
support equipment,
has extended its
suite of studio
pedestals with the
TP-80 pneumatic
pedestal, a balanced, four-stage
air pedestal with a
capacity of 230 lb.
The pedestal can be
operated with almost half the air
AJ-SD965 VTR
Panasonic’s AJ-SD965 is a
DVCPRO50 studio VTR with built-in
color LCD monitor. The AJ-SD965
utilizes the DVCPRO XL cassette,
allowing two hours of recording in
4:2:2 DVCPRO50 (50Mb/s) with
four-channel, 48kHz, 16-bit digital
audio, and four hours of recording
in 4:1:1 DVCPRO (25Mb/s) with twochannel digital audio. The VTR is selectable between 525 and 625 operation. The compact, 4RU-size VTR
features playback of DVCPRO50,
DVCPRO, DVCAM and DV format
recordings. Panasonic,
www.panasonic.com/broadcast
pressure of existing
pneumatic pedestals, minimizing
the effects of temperature change.
The TP-80 also has a
built-in easy cable
guard height adjustment mechanism.
Maximum height is
59 in., minimum is
19.7 in.
Shotoku Broadcast
Systems,
www.shotoku.tv
www.dcinematography.com
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DIGITAL
JVC
GY-HD100U
cinematography
The GY-HD100U is a cost-effective, full resolution
ProHD progressive camcorder that utilizes three
newly developed 1/3-inch CCD image sensors, each
one featuring an array of 1280x720 pixels (approximately 1 megapixel), with micro lenses. Eliminating
the need for image scaling, its native resolution
matches that of most HDTV displays. In addition, the
GY-HD100U provides real-time playback in all major
DTV formats, allowing easy conversion of recorded
data to other formats without compromising the level of quality.
The GY-HD100U is ideal for documentary and news
programs as well as electronic cinematography. The
camcorder enables recordings to be transferred to
16mm or 35mm film with full HD fidelity without
frame rate conversion. Utilizing a user-selectable
motion filter, this system is designed especially to
provide smooth motion similar to that seen in motion pictures (24p).
A variety of features on this camera makes the recording, editing and archiving process simple. It has a builtin ProHD recording system that records full high-definition images on inexpensive Mini DV cassettes. Data is
recorded in the MPEG-2 format with full broadcast resolution and quality. In addition, the GY-HD100U can connect directly to an external hard disk recording module,
allowing footage to be edited immediately and eliminating time-consuming transfers. JVC, http://pro.jvc.com
www.quantel.com
iQ
the only DI business model
that works and works
pre-vis · assembly · color grading · trailers · deliverables
...all in a single, extraordinary system
iQ delivers five revenue streams from one extraordinary DI machine.
This incredible versatility is the reason that iQ uniquely makes money in DI,
and is the reason why it’s the backbone of more DI businesses worldwide
than any other system. Get the full picture now at www.quantel.com.
iQ is DI™
Star Wars image courtesy of Lucas Digital
17
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DOREMI LABS
DIGITAL
COMPRESSED HDTV DISK RECORDERS
KODAK
VISION2 HD SYSTEM
Kodak is now shipping its Super
16mm film system designed for costeffective production of content in
either standard- or high-definition
television formats. The Vision2 HD
System combines Kodak's new
Vision2 HD Color Scan Film 7299 with
Kodak's Vision2 HD Digital Processor
image processing technology. The
latter is a postproduction tool used
to adjust digital files of scanned film
to emulate the imaging characteristics of any current Kodak negative,
including grain, contrast and colors.
Cinematographers can choose to
rate the scan-only film for an E.I. of
either 500 or 320. The new film
offers an extended dynamic range
◗ SPECTSOFT
and broader exposure latitude coupled with the sharpness and fine
grain imaging characteristics similar
to the 500-speed Kodak Vision2
5218/7218 Color Negative Film.
In addition to mimicking the imaging characteristics of different emulsions, the system compensates for
under- and over-exposure, as well as
for variations in color temperatures.
The system also provides creative
control of the "look" throughout the
workflow, from preproduction
through postproduction. The post
facility specified by a filmmaker will
be provided with a Kodak Vision2
HD Digital Processor.
Kodak,
www.kodak.com/go/motion
RAVEHD XENON SYSTEM
SpectSoft’s RaveHD is a Linux-based hybrid digital disk drive recorder and
video editor for the film and graphics industries. It utilizes open standards and
protocols to achieve a product that is elegant, easy to integrate and totally
customizable. It features a data-agnostic core that allows it to work with today’s uncompressed SD and HD video as well as tomorrow’s high-data-rate
video. The DDR offers hardware-accelerated up- and downconversion as
well as I/O for SD, HD and Dual Link on a single board. The RaveHD Xenon
system features integrated RS-422 hardware that allows for both slave and
master control. RaveHD supports uncompressed SD (SMPTE 259M), HD
(SMPTE 292M) and 4:4:4 Dual Link HD (SMPTE 372M) for both capture
and playback in a single system and includes a standard file system in which
video exists as sequential frames. The media sits on a standard SGI XFS file
system that allows access via standard file transport protocols such as NFS,
Samba, FTP, RCP, SCP, HTTP, etc. Though RaveHD is natively frame-based,
it does offer some built-in tools for those working with QuickTime and will
soon support AVI. Other features include RP188 (embedded timecode), VariCam flagging support, real-time color correction and a programmable cadence engine (2:3, 3:2:3, 2:3:3:2). Priced at $25,000, the RaveHD Xenon
system features 6TB of local storage in a SATA array configuration that is
upgradable to 9.6TB. SpectSoft, www.spectsoft.com
march | april 2005
Doremi Labs will be showing its
V1 line of HDTV disk recorders,
including the V1-UHD for uncompressed HD video and V1HD for compressed HD, at NAB.
The V1-HD video disk recorder,
which began shipping in January, records HD-SDI and SDI
video using JPEG2000 compression at up to 300Mb/s.
JPEG2000 is particularly suited
to HD video compression. It can
provide two hours of near-uncompressed quality video on
just one SCSI hard drive. The
V1-HD may function as a dropin replacement for any HD VTR
and a playback device for projectors and displays. The V1-
HD’s random access and simple video clip and playlist
programming provide for efficient on-air and live event operation. In a film or mastering environment, the V1-HD becomes
a multiformat recorder of SD
and HD video. Optional functionality on the V1-HD includes
an independent record and play
option and Dual Link HD-SDI.
The Dual Link HD-SDI option
offers 4:4:4 2K resolution for
applications such as digital cinema, 3D video and superwidescreen (stereoscopic)
video. Its independent record
and play option is ideal for
broadcast time delay and
sports slow-motion replay. In
sports applications, one channel can be set to record the live
event, while the other is free to
play back any part of the
recorded video in slow motion.
Doremi Labs,
www.doremilabs.com
www.dcinematography.com
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DAX
SOLUTIONS
DIGITAL
ROUGH CUT MANAGER
QUANTEL
EIGER FOR EQ AND IQ
Quantel’s EIGER (Effects, Imaging, Grading and Editing Release) is the latest toolset release for eQ and iQ systems for post and digital intermediate workflows. EIGER’s compositing tools include new process tree ergonomics, motion-sensitive blur, layer blend
modes and a mesh-based warper. EIGER also introduces Quantel’s UniKey system, a multiformat, multi-color-space keying toolset. EIGER builds on the QColor DI grading system
option for eQ and iQ, adding a new set of HSL-based tools and ergonomic enhancements.
Provisions for live pan and scan and output image masking simplify the process of multiformat versioning. With EIGER, eQ and iQ can convert from HD to SD, apply a LUT, mask
the output image and perform on-the-fly pan and scan—totally live at full resolution and in
real time—without the need for proxies and with no new media created. EIGER is supplied
as standard on all new Quantel eQ and iQ systems and is available free to all eQ and iQ
customers with current QCare contracts. Quantel, www.quantel.com
DAX Solutions, a
supplier of production asset management and creative
collaboration solutions, will use its first
appearance at NAB
to introduce Rough
Cut Manager, which
allows users instant
viewing of media including rough cuts,
trailers, promos,
screeners and commercials via the company’s Digital Asset
Xchange (DAX) service. DAX is a secure,
Web-based content
exchange and asset
management solution developed to
help film, television
THOMSON GRASS VALLEY
VENOM FLASHPAK
Thomson Grass Valley’s Venom FlashPak
solid-state recording system captures the
uncompressed output of the Viper FilmStream Digital Cinematography Camera
in a lightweight, compact, dockable and
rugged system. When shooting with the
Viper in the uncompressed FilmStream
mode (RGB 4:4:4 10-bit log), each Venom
system has a 10-minute capacity; shooting
in 4:2:2 HD extends the capacity to 18 minutes. As a solid-state recorder, it has no
moving parts, making it durable and rugged
for production work. The dockable Venom
FlashPak system can output to a range of
devices. Equipped with a Bluetooth interface, the system allows a production assistant to sit on a set and wirelessly create and
edit metadata to be recorded and permanently associated with the content. On a
typical movie shoot there might be two or
three Venom FlashPak systems in use: one
in the camera, one ready to replace it and
one writing to the transport medium. The
march | april 2005
Venom FlashPak system also supports the
Grass Valley LDK 6000 mk II WorldCam
camera. With the Venom FlashPak system
and its 18-minute HD capacity, the LDK 600
mk II becomes a camcorder suitable for field
production, including television episodic and
drama series and commercial work.
Pricing for the Grass Valley Venom FlashPak system starts at about $59,000. It is
scheduled to be available in July, in time for
the 2005 summer production schedules.
Thomson Grass Valley,
www.thomsongrassvalley.com
and advertising producers reduce costs
by sharing resources,
enhancing collaboration and speeding
distribution. Offering
video-on-demand access to DVD-quality
audio/video elements and rich media
content, the system
enables personnel to
upload, stage and
collaborate on the
creation and delivery
of digital content.
DAX Solutions,
www.dax
solutions.com
www.dcinematography.com
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EDITCAM HD CAMCORDER
BAND PRO
ZEISS DIGIPRIME 3.9MM DIGIWIDE T1.9
Band Pro announces the Zeiss DigiPrime 3.9mm DigiWide T1.9 lens,
which is expected to be the widest prime lens available for HD cinematography when it is released in December. The DigiWide 3.9mm offers an extremely wide field of vision with unprecedented image clarity. Unlike wideangle zooms, which tend to exhibit a great deal of barrel distortion at
their short end, the DigiWide 3.9mm was engineered to eliminate geometric distortion. In 4:3 format, the lens’ angle of view is 98.2 degrees horizontal, 81 degrees vertical and 111.8 degrees diagonal. In 16:9 format, the
angle of view is 103.6 degrees horizontal, 70 degrees vertical and 111.8
degrees diagonal. Band Pro, www.bandpro.com
SILICON COLOR
FINALTOUCH HD
Silicon Color’s FinalTouch HD is a real-time
HD color correction and grading solution.
The software features advanced controls
for shadows, midtones, highlights, lift, gamma, gain, hue and saturation, integrated
vectorscopes, waveform monitors, histogram and multiple live grades. Other features include HSL controls with fall-off, hue
auto-qualify, additive and subtractive (RGBCMY) auto-qualify, hue curves, saturation
curves, luminance curves, vignettes, trackers and keyframes.
Silicon Color, www.siliconcolor.com
ERG VENTURES
HDM-EV85D MONITOR
ERG’s HDM-EV85D 8.4-inch monitor is
designed for Sony’s HVR-Z1U and
HDR-FX1 HDV camcorders. The
HDM-EV85D offers enhanced color,
frame markers and a convenient
memory preset function. Its HD analog input enables Sony’s HDV camcorders to connect directly. The monitor will accept most popular video
image formats, including 1080i,
1080PsF and 720p. The HDM-EV85D
power unit is compatible with the
HDV camcorder’s 7.2V battery.
ERG Ventures, www.erg-ventures.com
www.dcinematography.com
march | april 2005
Ikegami’s Editcam HD camcorder uses the Avid DNxHD
mastering codec to deliver HD
resolution, full raster images
(1920x1080) that can be edited
on laptop and desktop systems
in real time. Because DNxHD is
an open system that can be licensed for free, it ensures viability of the camcorder into the future. Editcam HD employs a data
rate of 140Mb/s to provide
1080/60i, 1080/24p and
720/60p recording and playback using Ikegami’s FieldPak2
recording media. The DNxHD
codec also supports 220Mb/s
for increased performance in the
future. The FieldPak2 media disk
is now available in a 120GB version, which provides more than
one hour of HD recording.
Ikegami, www.ikegami.com
cinematography
IKEGAMI
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THE BACK ALLEYS OF
march | april 2005
www.dcinematography.com
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James Careless
SINCITY
Bringing a graphic novel to film: It’s an act of courage if you succeed, an
ate that comic book look: The gun not only has to be in the right
act of stupidity if you fail. Fortunately for directors Robert Rodriguez and
place but also captured with the right angle and perspective. With HD
Frank Miller (who originated the graphic novel), the hard, stark look of
video, we were able to take the shots and then check them immediately
Sin City puts this film in the courage category, in no small part due to
[on HD monitors]. We were able to get every image right.”
Rodriguez’ decision to shoot Sin City in high-definition video. And not
SIN CITY TECH
just any old high definition—Sin City was shot digitally with Sony’s
Sony’s HDC-F950 camera was the real “unseen angel” on the Sin City set.
HDC-F950 camera in 4:4:4—full bandwidth, uncompressed video—
“What makes the HDC-F950 different from all other Sony HD cameras is its
on HDCAM SR videotape.
ability to shoot and record uncompressed 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB digital 24p,” says Yasu Mikami, Sony Electronics’ marketing manager for TV and motion picture
This said, many of the benefits that HD video brought to the
production. “To do this, we have linked the HDC-F950’s three CCDs with a fiber
production aren’t obvious on screen. The reason: Like a good
optic transport system capable of moving up to 3GB of image data per second.
special effect, much of what HD video gave to Sin City does not
This information is then stored on our HDCAM SR format videotape, whose
stand out and scream for attention. Instead, the increased reso440Mb/s transfer rate is three times faster than standard HDCAM.
lution simply enhanced and reinforced the raw look that Rodriguez and Miller were aiming for in their drive to bring the
“Better yet, HDCAM SR’s higher capacity means that images as large as
Sin City graphic novels to life.
1920x1080 pixels can be recorded, rather than HDCAM’s 1440x1080,” Mika“HD video really suited the way Robert wanted to shoot
mi adds. “This allows you to capture the full 4:4:4 RGB HD data provided by
this film,” explains Sin City camera operator Jimmy Lindsey,
the camera head.”
who shot the film with Rodriguez. “When you’re shooting a
Footage on HDCAM SR tapes was ingested using Sony’s SRW-5000 HD
graphic novel on film, every element has to faithfully re-credigital videocassette recorder connected to a SpectSoft RaveHD DDR via a
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SINCITY
Dual Link SDI connection (consisting of two HD-SDI cables, each running
1.485Gb/s), with an AJA Xena HD22A SDI card inside the RaveHD.
“When you are shooting a film like Sin City, visual details are everything,” says Lindsey. “You need the kind of crisp and sharp details that the
HDC-F950 captures.”
The capture of crisp details was also enabled by Rodriguez’ lens choices. Optics for the HDC-F950 were supplied from Fujinon’s family of cine-style HD
zoom lenses. Specifically, Rodriguez used the Fujinon E Series HAe5x6 (630mm) and HAe10x10 (10-100mm) zoom lenses. Fujinon’s E Series lenses are
designed for distortion-free optics, minimal focus breathing and reduced
chromatic aberration.
“One of the reasons Rodriguez selected these lenses was to avoid the time
lost from switching prime [fixed length] lenses for different shots,” says Dave
Waddell, Fujinon’s marketing manager. “Meanwhile, the larger diameter of
these lenses helps keep the f-stop value from falling off when you change the
focal length. You need the highest resolution images possible when you’re
dealing with effects, and the E Series gives you that.”
ON THE SET
In general, “Sin City was a two-camera show, with Robert and I both operating wide and tight frames,” says Lindsey. “When only one camera
worked, he usually did the actor-intensive stuff and I usually did the dolly
and crane shots. Of course, when you are working with Robert Rodriguez,
there are no rules. However, this doesn’t mean that we shot without planning. Each angle was planned out by Robert and served a specific purpose for the edit.”
To convincingly create Sin City’s gritty graphics and comic bookstyle visual effects, Rodriguez shot much of the film against greenscreen. He then relied on the speed and immediacy of HD video
not just to capture what was being staged in short order but also to
allow for accurate blocking and continuity checks on the fly.
As a result, Rodriguez specified that his HDC-F950s be
equipped with LCD HD monitors rather than conventional filmstyle eyepieces. Having these monitors helped ensure accurate focusing and framing, Lindsey says. “Had we used NTSC monitors,
we would not have seen the same level of detail about lighting
and focus that is provided on HD displays.”
Using monitors also made it easier for Lindsey and his assistant
GREENSCREEN COMPOSITING
to work together on complex shots. “We could both see clearly and
Again, the benefits of the HDC-F950’s 4:4:4 video capture are not necessarily
in detail what was coming through the lens thanks to the moniapparent in what turned out to be a nearly monochromatic movie. The filmtor,” he says.“You just can’t do this when you’re using an eyepiece.”
makers sought the greater color depth afforded by the 4:4:4 format to aid the
As mentioned earlier, HD video’s immediacy made instant
extensive chroma keying process in this film, which relied heavily on greenplayback possible, allowing for accurate shot lineups and contiscreen compositing techniques.
nuity checks. The ability to see what had just been shot also let
It is much easier for compositors to isolate and pull keys from Dual
Rodriguez craft every sequence in Sin City deliberately and meLink (4:4:4) source footage than Single Link (4:2:2) because of the
thodically, just as Sin City artist Frank Miller crafts the Sin City
greater proportion of chroma sampling in the encoding.
graphic novels when he draws them.
Most digital video cameras convert captured video from the RGB colOne thing that wasn’t done on the set, however, was the
or format to YCbCr color format and also downsample the chroma porrendering of Sin City’s video in stark black and white. “We
tions. Downsampling allows compression of the video signal and sepashot the movie in full color in order to provide Robert with
rates the luma signal (Y), which is perceptually (to the human eye) more
maximum flexibility during post,” Lindsey says. “If the colimportant, from the chroma signal (Cb and Cr), perceptually less imporor’s in the video, you can always take it out later. But the last
tant and therefore able to be represented at a lower resolution. (The human
thing we wanted was to send him into post with black-andeye is more sensitive to brightness information than color—among colors,
white footage, only for him to decide that he really wanted
by the way, our eyes are most sensitive to the color green. Engineers recogsome color in a specific sequence.”
nized this fact when devising video codecs by representing green more
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SINCITY
help
contents
prominently in video signals. Chroma keying with digital video is therefore ofcording to Jason Howard of SpectSoft, “The shots
ten executed against a green screen.)
would be rendered into linear 10-bit RGB DPX and
The 4:1:1 encoding of DV and DVCPRO samples the chroma at 1/4 the
transferred to the storage array connected to the Raveluma. In other words, luminance is sampled for each pixel, while Cb and Cr
HD system. From that point, [The Orphanage team]
are sampled at every fourth pixel. In 4:2:2 video, such as DVCPRO50 and
would use RaveHD to play back each clip to check it on
Digital Betacam, the chroma is sampled at half the luma, which is acceptable
a calibrated monitor in full RGB gamut. If it made the
for viewing because of the human visual system’s greater sensitivity to lumigrade, they would use the RaveHD box to print the
nance detail. The 4:2:2 encoding is less suitable, however, for compositing
frames back to tape [via an insert edit].”
work; computer processors do not share the human eye’s preference for
Canadian firm Hybride Technologies tackled 600 shots
brightness over color. When chroma is represented at half the level of luma
on “Hard Goodbye,” the first chapter in Sin City, and Santa
information, adjacent pixels will share color information, making it diffiMonica’s CaféFX provided 600 effects shots for the middle
cult for compositors to get a clean key edge. In full bandwidth 4:4:4 enstory, “Big Fat Kill.”
coding, all channels are sampled equally and may be selected during keyThe team at CaféFX had the opportunity to display
ing with much greater accuracy.
their improvisational skills on the project. “We were basically handed the footage and told, ‘Okay, create Sin City,’”
VISUAL EFFECTS
says Visual Effects Producer Edward Irastorza. “The panels
The noir drama Sin City is divided into three chapters named for titles in the
of the comic were our storyboards. In fact, the only refercomic series. Rodriguez chose to allow three visual effects companies (The Orence we were given was a copy of the book.
phanage, CaféFX and Hybride Technologies) to handle the effects in each
“To make it more challenging, as we were beginning our
work, Robert was on another shoot for a month and a half
and out of contact, so the feedback turnaround was difficult.
We just trusted our research and instincts. Thankfully, he
loved it.”
Not only does Sin City the film emulate the panels and storylines of the novels, it emulates the original graphic style. “All
of the footage was filmed in color and needed to be changed to
black and white,” adds Irastorza. “And, by black and white, I
don’t mean grey, which is probably what you’re used to seeing
when watching a black-and-white movie. I mean either black or
white, with very little to no grey in between. The same went for
all of the environments we created—which is exactly how everything is drawn in the novels—to essentially create a moving comic. And, like the book, we added select splashes of color. All the
characters have eye color, Dwight’s shoes are red, and so forth. The
book was our guide.”
Directors Rodriguez and Miller relied on DLP Cinema projectors to
chapter, with one chapter per facility. Rodriguez also allowed each
ensure rich and consistent color in the movie. The hyper-realistic black
house to come up with its own techniques to bring Miller’s graphic
and white and desaturated color look of Sin City was achieved through
style to the screen.
the use of a DLP Cinema projector at EFILM, where the color-correction
The Orphanage’s visual effects and animation division comprocess took place. The film was color-timed for both film and digital
pleted nearly 600 visual effects shots for “That Yellow Bastard,”
projection. “With a one-to-one ratio between what is done and what is
the third chapter in the film. Visual effects supervisor and
projected, changes can be viewed immediately, rather than waiting for
company partner Stu Maschwitz headed up The Orphanage
days in the traditional photochemical, film-based process of color timing,”
team. More than 70 visual effects artists completed the work,
says Rodriguez. “The DLP Cinema projector was key as both a valuable
which included full digital environments, hard surface modeltimesaver and creative tool in the digital workflow.”
ing and animation, advanced compositing and CG snow and
water effects.
HD VIDEO AS A WAY OF LIFE
“Sin City is hands down my favorite graphic novel series,”
With a film career stretching back to the 1991 short Bedhead, followed by hits
says Maschwitz. “For me, there’s nothing cooler than having
such as the Spy Kids trilogy and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Robert Rodriguez is
the chance to help Robert bring Frank Miller’s vision to the
no stranger to 35mm film. However, don’t expect him to move back to that mediscreen in all its black-and-white glory.”
um anytime soon, if ever.
The Orphanage used a setup similar to the film’s pro“HD video is perfect for Robert’s style of filmmaking: it keeps up with
duction team for dailies, finals and to transfer clips from
his speed and precision,” explains Lindsey.“It’s great to see him knowing exRaveHD (with its AJA Xena HD22A SDI card) back to
actly what’s being captured and being able to make changes on the fly as he
HDCAM SR tape for delivery of shots to Rodriguez. Acsees fit. Frankly, I can’t imagine him shooting on film again.”
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James Careless
DIGITAL
cinematography
28
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29
DIGITAL
SILENCE BECOMES YOU
Would you shoot your studio’s first feature film using a brand new digital cinematography system—one that offers interesting visual and production possibilities
but also the risks associated with any new
application? This was the dilemma that recently confronted Stephanie Sinclaire,
founder of UK studio Dragonfly Films
and co-producer of the 2000 Oscar finalist
short film The Dance of Shiva.
WHY DIGITAL
Sinclaire was about to start shooting Silence Becomes You, a film she had written,
was producing and was going to direct,
with actors Alicia Silverstone, Sienna Guillory and Joe Anderson. Silence Becomes
You is the story of two reclusive sisters living in an isolated New England mansion
who seduce a man for the sole purpose of
getting them pregnant. Of course, the sisters’ tidy plan goes awry when love and
lust come into play.
At about the same time, UK post
house MotionFX had teamed up with
film consultancy Digital Praxis. Together, with a yet-to-be-determined film studio, they planned to shoot a feature film
using Thomson Viper cameras in FilmStream mode. (Viper’s FilmStream
mode captures full resolution, uncompressed video—RGB 4:4:4 10-bit log—
and transfers it to a disk recorder using
Dual Link HD-SDI. Additionally, its
CCDs, which consist of 1920 horizontal
pixels and 4320 vertical sub-pixels , allow the Viper to support a 2.37 Cinemascope aspect ratio without the need
to use anamorphic lenses. In effect, what
the Viper gains by using sub-pixels is the
ability to support multiple aspect ratios
using spherical lenses.) As the first-ever
feature to be shot using Viper’s FilmStream mode, the film would demonstrate the quality, portability and flexibility of FilmStream HD video.
As fate would have it, Digital Praxis
founder and CEO Steve Shaw had
worked with Sinclaire on The Dance of
www.dcinematography.com
Shiva. Having read her script for Silence
Becomes You, and mindful that the film’s
mansion setting would fit well with
FilmStream’s mobility restrictions—
currently the cameras are tethered to
large hard disk recorders that are not
easy to tote around—Shaw spoke with
MotionFX about choosing Silence Be-
lence Becomes You lent itself well to FilmStream production. The reason is that FilmStream is not exactly portable. To be precise,
the Thomson Viper FilmStream digital cameras were connected to S.two D.MAG DFR
digital film recorders via “umbilical” cables so
that the camera operators didn’t have to carry
the DFRs around the set. For field work, Sin-
comes You to be the first FilmStream feature project. They then approached
Stephanie Sinclaire with the idea that
MotionFX would co-produce.
“I knew it was risky, but it was also fun
and exciting to shoot in a different kind
of format,” Sinclaire says. “Besides, shooting in uncompressed HD appealed to me
because it provided a more film-like look
than conventional video would.”
claire’s second unit mounted a DFR on a
wheeled cart.
On the set, the scenes were shot using
two Viper cameras equipped with spherical Zeiss DigiPrime lenses. Sometimes
the two cameras shot simultaneously,
providing two views of the same scene
for easy editing later. At other times, the
cameras were shared between the film’s
first and second units, with the on-set
production accomplished with a single
Viper.
The Viper A camera output was fed to
a normal B&W viewfinder, an Astro
SHOOTING IN FILMSTREAM:
THE PROCESS
Since it takes place inside a mansion set with
very few second unit location sequences, Si-
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FILMSTREAM DREAM
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30
combined waveform monitor and a vectorscope. Meanwhile, the B camera feed was
sent to an AccuScene color viewfinder. “This
combination was used so that the A camera
provided accurate technical monitoring for
main shots and the B camera, with the AccuScene viewfinder, provided level clip
warnings and an image that was camera operator-friendly,” says Shaw. A Sony 23-inch
flat-panel LCD monitor mounted on a
flight case, partnered with the Astro waveform monitor for level checking, was used
for on-set monitoring, “specifically for the
director and DP Arturo Smith,” adds Shaw.
For beauty shots, MotionFX developed
optical filters for the Viper cameras to balance the color characteristics prior to capture; since the filters reduced the camera’s
light sensitivity by about a stop, they were
used only for those instances “where light
level wasn’t an issue,” Shaw notes.
A number of shots required high-speed
capture, which the production team approached in two ways. For visual effects
shots—including flames, water and a mer-
maid in a swimming pool—the team used a
Weinberger CineSpeed digital camera running at 500fps. Meanwhile, dance and
dream sequences were captured at 60fps on
the Vipers for 24fps playback. HD-DPM+
image sensors provide Viper’s overcranking
support. One of FilmStream’s modes allows
the camera to capture 1920 horizontal pixels by 720 vertical lines at 60fps. To arrive at
the 720p standard, the FilmStream camera’s
output switches to 1280x720 at 60fps. Dur-
ing post, these 60 frames per second can be
slowed to 24fps, thus achieving a 2.5x slow
motion. Although there is some loss of resolution in the slow-motion mode, since the
CCDs keep running on 1920 pixels horizontally, the visible loss is small.
ON-SET IMPRESSIONS
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff served as The
Dance of Shiva’s DP. Given how successfully he
and Sinclaire had collaborated on that project,
Sinclaire was happy to hire Cardiff as visual
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32
into our offline editing system in compressed HD form,” says Shaw. “The uncompressed FilmStream video was then backed
up onto an Adic LTO2 tape archive jukebox
using S.two’s A.Dock backup system. The
D.mag media units were then available for
re-use for the next day’s shooting.” The Adic
LTO2 generates two clone tapes, “with
checksum verification to ensure 100 percent
accurate dupes of the original data,” he adds.
the LTO2 archive tapes was done using
10TB NAS disk systems,” says Shaw. “It
served as a buffer store that was connected
to the iQ using a Gigabit Ethernet network.” Meanwhile, visual effects shots were
produced separately by MotionFX using
Digital Fusion, 5D Cyborg and Alias Maya
3D, then dropped into the online iQ edit
as needed. The final edit was done
at Marino Studios in Carasco,
Italy, along with the insertion of a THXcertified 7.1-channel surround sound audio track.
consultant for Silence Becomes You. In this role,
Jack Cardiff got a lot of hands-on experience
with the Viper/FilmStream digital process and
the ability to knowledgeably compare it to conventional 35mm cinematography.
So what’s his take on this form of digital cinematography? “Presently, the film
camera and lens do a superior job because
we are fully aware of their capabilities and
flexibilities,” Cardiff replies, “and by using
certain learned techniques, we are able to
capture distortions and flaws that we use
for our purposes to create various effects.
In most cases, because the digital format is
self-correcting, those effects must be created in the editing room, which is now the
digital lab. This eliminates some of the
cinematographer’s ability to be spontaneously creative.
“Our little tricks on film took the industry more than 100 years to develop; now the
challenge is to create those effects digitally,”
he adds. “Then and only then will we be able
to develop our own new styles and tech-
POSTPRODUCTION
In general, there were no major problems for
Sinclaire and company while shooting; postproduction, however, was another matter. The
problem had to do with setting up the proper
offline editorial workflow. The equipment
spec, initially Apple Final Cut Pro, was later
changed to Avid. According to Shaw, the problem with Avid offline systems is that, because
they are SD-based, they are poor at 24fps operation and final EDLs are therefore not 100
percent frame-accurate. Newer systems from
Adobe and Apple, however, can ingest 24fps
HD material directly. The Avid kit was rejected
CONCLUSIONS (TO DATE)
For Stephanie Sinclaire, shooting in FilmStream has been a groundbreaking adventure.
Working in this uncompressed HD format
provided Silence Becomes You with a level of visual quality that wouldn’t be economically possible on 35mm. In a very real way, working digitally has allowed her to do more with less.
Has it been a scary experience? “I think
there’s always something nerve-wracking
taking place on a film set, no matter what
niques using this digital format. Concurrently, we must remain aware of the fact that
presently every problem cannot be solved
with a digital camera and lens or even in the
digital lab; at present, there still remain effects that you cannot yet get digitally, effects
that are possible only using film.”
On the upside, it was possible to produce FilmStream dailies very easily for
viewing via a JVC HD digital film projector.
“The playback from the dailies was also fed
because of its 24fps timing issues, and Adobe
then offered to supply a Premiere Pro system
in its place. Unfortunately, the editorial team
didn’t have the time to learn a new system
from scratch, so the team returned to the first
choice of Final Cut Pro. There was a two-week
delay in initiating offline while the various options were considered.
The actual post was done using an offline-generated EDL loaded into a Quantel
iQ DI editing server. “The extraction from
medium you’re shooting in,” Sinclaire
replies. “Fortunately, the MotionFX people
were always ready to help when problems
arose with the equipment.”
This said, Sinclaire is pleased with the results she’s achieved using FilmStream and
the extra attention it has generated for Silence Becomes You. “I won’t be surprised if
the whole tech world turns out to see the
film, to decide whether the risk we ran was
justified or not!”
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Elina Shatkin
new features. “4K and 12-bit resolution are
features that are very important for digital
cinema,” he says. “With Clipster, clips of any
resolution, color space and bit depth can be
mixed on a single timeline.”
Clipster 2.0 can render primary and secondary color correction, pan and scan, cropping, rotation, flip/flop and transitions in real
time.“The idea is for Clipster to do most or
all of the processing that is required for the DI
workflow at hardware-accelerated speeds up
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Clipster 2.0 also boasts a technical interface that allows a wide
range of third-party applications.
Another new feature in version 2.0 is a realtime 3D lookup table (LUT) that helps
achieve a “film look” during grading. Plus,
Clipster supports color management tools
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Since the product’s introduction two
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At NAB 2005, German manufacturer Digital Video Systems (DVS)
will release version 2.0 of Clipster,
a digital intermediate and HD real-time online editing, conforming and finishing system. Running
under Windows and Linux, Clipster 2.0 is essentially a workstation
designed to facilitate the digital
intermediate process by combining software- and hardware-accelerated real-time processing.
The system stores video material in its native resolution and format, allowing users to
avoid time-consuming pre-conversion and
compression. Until recently, Clipster’s hardware allowed resolutions up to 2K in 10-bit
RGB color space, but version 2.0 enhances
the system’s functionality, allowing users to
work with uncompressed video in 4K resolution and 12-bit color space.
DVS president Peter Spoer is looking to
the future of content delivery with these
DIGITAL
Clipster 2.0 Comes to the Fore
33
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DIGITAL
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34
Panavised MADNESS
When Jan Kiesser, CSA, ASC, was tapped to shoot
the raucous musical Reefer Madness, the job offered him a unique opportunity to explore new
ground. Based on the stage production of the
same name, Reefer Madness, directed by Andy
Fickman, is a campy, backhanded homage to the
ham-fisted anti-pot propaganda films of the
1930s. Alan Cumming, Steven Weber and Neve
Campbell lead the large cast of this elaborate musical comedy that features a significant number of
extravagant fantasy musical numbers. Kiesser
found the experience of lighting and shooting
Reefer Madness—particularly the kinetic, colorful
musical segments—“an exciting artistic opportunity that actually played nicely into my sensibilities about cinematography.”
On the technical front, Kiesser had also
never shot a feature-length show in HD before, and he welcomed the chance to learn
about the format’s pros and cons. Showtime
had previously mandated that all of its original programming was to be produced in HD
rather than film, so it had been arranged that
the production would make use of
“Panavised” Sony F900/2 cameras and Primo
zoom lenses from Panavision of Vancouver.
Kiesser admits that HD might not have
been his first choice.“With the technology
march | april 2005
being where it was when we shot, it would
have been easier to shoot on film. We were
encumbered by a tremendous number of cables, and the logistics of having to work from
an engineering station—especially with two
and three cameras running at once—added
some difficulty to the shoot.” He adds that he
is keeping a close watch on developments in
the more robust fiber optic cabling solutions,
which might soon eliminate some of these
issues.
The cinematographer essentially stuck
with the provided setups for the cameras,
preferring to affect the color traditionally by
gelling the lights and to leave the fine-tuning
of contrast to the postproduction phase.
During production, he says,“I really wanted
to concentrate on getting the most information on the tape. I kept the blacks down low,
but not crushed, and I tried to keep whites at
a level that would let me preserve as much
information as possible.”
Kiesser pre-lit sets the way he would for a
film shoot: he rated the camera at the nominal ASA of 320 and used a traditional light
meter to set the instruments. Prior to actually shooting, he would then fine-tune his
lighting using the calibrated HD monitor, a
vectorscope and a waveform monitor—all
essential tools for a cinematographer working in HD, Kiesser says.
During shooting, cameras all had to be
cabled to and from the central engineering
station where the Sony MSU control unit
and the scopes and monitors were situated.
“When I had three cameras,” Kiesser recalls,
“we were able to bring in a digital engineering technician. I wish we’d had one for the
entire shoot, but the budget didn’t allow for
it. I had to do that work, along with my assistant, Simon Jori, who was more experienced
in HD than I was at the time. Simon was a
great asset. I leaned on him quite a bit.”
Though the HD technology available to
Kiesser did present him with the above-mentioned cabling challenges, he also noticed a
strong advantage to working in the format.
“Shooting with film,” he notes,“you have to
screen your work the next day, or even days
later, to make sure you’re tracking okay and
you’re not making mistakes and so you can
learn from what you’ve been doing. On this
show, we could see the real thing as we were
shooting. So I’d say that on an HD show, a
cinematographer is likely to get a little more
sleep at night.”
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