When I started this article I thought it would be the “same old same old” with an emphasis on electronic post.  I can not tell you what a surprise I had once I stepped through the looking glass into the present.  I heard from many people that the biggest change in their work was the amount of technological change that takes place on an almost daily basis.  I thought of Moore’s Law that states that the capabilities of a chip will double every 18 months until it either hits a physical or organic wall.  It seems in the entertainment business that the technology we use and take for granted is changing at about the same rate.  The new technologies are being adapted to service us in ways we could only dream about yesterday.  These big additions to our creative toolbox are causing all the traditional lines to blurr since there’s now the ability to vastly extend cinematography beyond production.  

 

As my friend Leon Silverman at Laser Pacific told me, “The lab process has to be transparent to the creative process.  All the different origination formats also have to be transparent no matter if the output is to film or to digital presentation.”  During our conversation he went on to describe how his facility, and others as well, are making a post production process where digital origination productions have a lab friendly procedure.  “You might think of this as a new chemistry set to meet the new technologies,” Leon stated.  Most labs have either merged or made strategic alliances with companies in the electronic realm.  Some examples, FotoKem has it’s own electronic capabilities and works with NeTune Communications and others to fill in what they can not offer.  Deluxe works with Pivotal Post and other venders like NeTune.  CFI and Technicolor are partnered in the same company with Complete Post and other facilities around the world.  Liberty Media has a huge family of world wide media businesses that includes Hollywood Digital and 4 MC.  Merger mania and globalization has definitely hit entertainment and that has affected the tools and options we have on the productions where we work.  In this article I do not pretend to hit all the labs and post facilities and the hardware they offer nor everything they can do.  That laundry list would simply be longer than this article.  But I hope to shed a little light on some of the possibilities in our new workplace, define some of the post machines being used, and share some of the excitement of the new capabilities of tomorrow that are already here.  The easiest way to break it down is in the way we work: Pre-Production, Production, Post Production.

 

We are seeing some major changes in the way a film is pre-visualized by the director and the Cinematographer.  In speaking with Steve Poster, ASC, he said that he worked about 3 months of pre-production with the director on “Stuart Little 2” (SL2) developing animatics of each shot in the entire film.  This included animated 3-D modeling.  By doing this, he felt that it was easier to bring more life into the character.  Also he planned to work with a Digital Intermediate (DI) since 75% of the film was going to have some CGI element in it and was being scanned into the digital environment.  The DI also allowed the live action elements to have the same timing advantages CGI elements and to seamlessly merge with theos elements.  

 

A similar approach was also mentioned at a presentation I attended at the effects house, Radium.  Jonathan Keeton demonstrated Radium’s CGI work in a number of commercials to a group of Cinematographers.  He used the 7 Up commercial with the driver moving slowly that the people in the stands could see the 7 Up logo.  Meanwhile the other cars are screeching to a halt or hurtling over his car while he is oblivious.  Clearly the crashing cars could not be shot live because of the danger involved.  The artists at Radium used 3D modeling to develop an animatic of all the action.  This animatic was then used to position and film the driver in the slow car.

 

The standard areas that need to be addressed in pre-production are well known.  For example, the color of matte screen to use in a blue jeans commercial is pretty obvious.  But the order in which shots are created to be later composited now take more planning and thought.  Also, as Mike Most, the Visual Effects Supervisor on “Ally McBeal” told me, shots or elements he previously would ask Cinematographer Billy Dickson to shoot he will now create with CGI tools.  Is it better/cheaper/easier to create elements to be composited, during production, pre-production, or post production?  As these questions are asked, the Cinematographer will need to have greater knowledge about the tools and techniques added to the shots s/he creates.  Small things like adding flares to a rear window of a car in a green screen shot as opposed to keeping the rear window absolutely clean is a question that needs to be answered by the Effects Supervisor, or compositing house before production begins.

 

 

“Boujou takes moving footage from film or video and by analyzing the footage automatically…calculates the position and characteristics of the camera that had shot it at each frame or field.”

 

In layman’s terms, the program created a 3D model of the scene in real time that the CGI artists could then manipulate.  With the artist taking out the camera support arm in the beginning frame, the software could make the determination to take it out in successive frames.  Jonathan said that CGI artists were able to get rid of the camera support arm more quickly than anyone in the company imagined.  Think about the possibilities a Director of Photography has if s/he knows this tool is available.

 

Cinematographers must be involved in these technical decisions since they will affect our artistic decisions during production.  That generally translates into more prep time during pre-production.  I know many producers feel that the expense of bringing in the Cinematographer early in prep is a costly endeavor, but in actuality it will save the production more than what the Director of Photography will cost and increase quality.

A good show with a large number of transparent effects is “JAG,” shot by Billy Webb.  In describing his approach to shooting the show, he said, “because the cost of the back ground locations are so expensive and the limited access a production crew has to go to these locations, there’s a great deal of effects.”  Military bases and aircraft carriers serve as backgrounds for the show.  Generally Webb will shoot an element and the CGI artists will add helicopters, planes, people, and vehicles.  But at the same time, he mentioned that “the Point Magu tarmac has been used as the aircraft carrier top and the effects team deletes things.”  In this instance it is the surrounding land, and they replaced it with sky and a horizon with an ocean.  He said that he’s always panning off  blue skies to the character and later will see planes added to the shot.  He shoots the show on 5274, 5277, and 5279.  He said, “the film allows the post people a lot of latitude to do the effects.”  He mentioned that he did tests with HD video, but the highlights and whites held little or no detail and there simply wasn’t the dynamic range of film.

 

On SL2, Poster worked from the animatics and 3D previz created in pre-production.  Since all the CGI and “real” characters were pre-recorded, they could line up the camera in the manner indicated.  While filming the “real” actors, other actors were brought on set to provided the CGI characters’ voices.  This allowed the “real” actors to work off the CGI actor’s voices for a better performance.  He also used the Cinematography Electronics Syncro Lasers to indicate where characters were moving for consistent eye lines, and also to direct the cat’s looks to the location of the CGI character.  This total approach with the anamatics allowed everyone on set to be on the same page.  Finally, as each shot in the scene was completed, on set editor Ian Kelly edited it into the pre-viz animatic.  For the cleanest image from the video tap, Poster chose Panavision’s Millennium 35mm camera system.  This forethought and planning during pre-production, with Poster, assured the look and creative expression in the film.  

 

 

“NeTune Communications is an integrated full service communications company offering a ‘go anywhere’ set of service packages designed to provide instant broadband connectivity to any location on the globe.  NeTune operates its services on a secured private satellite network that can seamlessly integrate with any existing network infrastrastructure….NeTune supports fully meshed, point-to-point, and point-to-network configurations.”

 

For Cinematographers this means that we can send our film to the lab to be processed and view the telecine in real time or simply view the results of the telecine.  Producers can simultaneously receive the dailies.  The company offers many cutting edge services for production.  Please go to their website for more information.

 

 

“Media.net provides global connectivity and the applications that enable producers, directors, cinematographers, and editors the ability to view, approve, annotate and distribute content in a unique online environment.”

 

Pivotal Post who works with Deluxe can provide similar services, and I am sure there are other companies out there now who can provide them as well.  As you can see the “old” days of production are changing and with new technology, they will continue to change.  Leon Silverman told me that “there’s been a disconnection between the collaborators with the advent of dailies on VHS cassettes.”  Now we can see our work in high quality representation.  Film is transferred in High Definition and from there it can be distributed in any number of digital formats that are a closer representation of the actual image.  He believes that this is bringing back an element of the old studio system in which the Cinematographer, director, and producers all saw the same set of dailies on film.  Only now it will be delivered to each in a high quality digital format.

This is the phase of our business that has become almost totally electronic and now digital.  Non-linear editing is commonplace and the CGI work is amazing.  The discussion on the files used for film input/output (I/O) revolves around a 2K or a 4K file size.  Let’s not even get into the issues of using a 3/4” tape as a source for low resolution editing on a non-linear system.  I know I have had soft shots included in features by the editor or director, even when the shots were indicated on the camera report as unacceptable.  But during post-production the editor did not think the shot was that far out of focus by viewing the monitor, and later realizes while watching it projected that the shot really was not acceptable.  This is a common problem with low rez images from a 3/4” tape transfer.  

 

A 35mm frame of film contains between 5K and 6K of information, depending on whom you are speaking with and which 35mm format you are considering.  You can see that a 2K file contains between 2/5 to 1/3  (40% to 33%) of the total amount of information that is present in a 35mm frame.  This is not a big problem with images that do not have a lot of detail in them.  But for the best quality, at today’s capabilities, 4K files are the superior medium.  On SL2 Sony Imageworks recorded the picture in 4K files.  The files were down rez’d to work on, then the approved work was done in the 4K file environment for output to film.   Poster said he pre-timed the opticals as he has pre-timed cinex wedges on past features he has shot.  This is particularly important since in the final output the main character is a white mouse and if the timing needs to be adjusted, the white will make any later adjustments more visible.  As a side note, Poster’s timer at Imageworks is John Nicolard who has a background in film timing from Deluxe. Poster said this background allows John “to communicate digitally what is going on filmically.”  It is important for the skills to be there, but it is just as important to be able to communicate with the Cinematographer about the results of the timing.  

 

While timing the DI, the Director of Photography has a number of options.  For those of you familiar with the telecine process and all of the tools available, e.g. Power Windows exists in the DI timing bays.  All of the options are available to take the image to the final expression and to finesse those aspects that perhaps were not possible during production.  This is a powerful tool in the new digital tool box we have available to us.

 

In the photo-chemical arena, FotoKem has a system integrated with their film printers called DLC (dynamic light control).  As their website says, "This is accomplished with proprietary software and special printing light valves which allow density changes of as little as 1/300th of a stop of any duration.”  It’s a great tool to use to time your picture in the traditional manner.  These printers can also change their lights on 2-3 frame cuts.  This is a great tool quick cutting directors.

 

Getting back to “JAG’s” posting at Hollywood Digital, I spoke with the on line editor, Bob Williamson, who described the process the show uses to make the best quality images possible.  The backgrounds are selected by the producers and Donald Bellisario.  Although they look for film originated material, often the back grounds are on NTSC video.  The production negative is transferred to electronic anamorphic 24P HD.  All the effects on the NTSC video are done in standard def.  Once this is accomplished, those images can go to a number of effects houses and artists.  One is Eroc Morales at Encore.  Eroc will make whatever changes are required, that is, put people in, take them out, put in an aircraft carrier, take out the mountain.  He will put the images through the Inferno (more about that later) and add grain, make the images night from day shots, and generally do whatever production feels is necessary to make the images more filmic.  For the HD delivery tape, these shots are up rez’d to 24P.  For the NTSC standard def delivery, the standard def shots are edited into the down rez’d version.  The delivery to the network is unsqeezed on D5 30I.

One issue in Post-Production is what are these machines with funny names, like Henry, Flame, Inferno, Fire, Smoke, and Combustion?  Quite simply they are a combination of computer hardware, graphics programs, and multilayered editing machines.  Some are only graphics stations while others allow the user to edit while creating graphics or edits in a multi-layered environment.  Some of the older systems do not work in real time while others only work in D1 video.  My friend Rachel Dunn is an experienced compositor who has worked on “Titanic,” ‘The Fifth Element,” “Kundun,” “Armageddon,” “What Dreams May Come,” “Red Corner,” “The Grinch,” and “Oh Brother Where Art Thou.”  She walked me through the electronic maze.  As I write this, it probably is out of date since these machines are continually upgraded with plug-ins and new software.

 

The Harry was the first machine to be widely used for graphics.  The Henry replaced it.  These were the video versions of Paint Box.  The Henry has 8 layers of hardware rendering and can do many composites in real time.  It is ideally suited for broadcast promos.  The Henry is native D1 so there is no color space conversion, and no clipping at the input/output (I/O).  Quantel manufactures these machines.  

Flint, Flame, Inferno, Fire, and Smoke are made by Discreet.  They run on Silicon Graphics machines.  Flint is an older machine that uses a single processor.  Flame uses 2-8 processors, and Inferno uses any number of processors.  These machines can handle 2K files, which is 8 times more data than D1.  Fire and Smoke are edit only stations.  Fire is for HD and 2K editing while Smoke is D1 only.  Inferno is the system most film and commercial people use.  It can composite 8 layers of video in real time and works with 2K and 4K files.  Kodak’s Cineon, Nothing’s Real Shake, and Digital Domain’s Nuke all use another system of compositing called procedural compositing.  Only Shake is available to buy.

 

There are many more machines and solutions out there, and I suggest visiting the websites listed below for more detailed information about performance and applications.

 

Here is a list of websites for more information: