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»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Community » Film-Yak » Everything is Scope this summer (Page 3)

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Topic: Everything is Scope this summer

Mark Gulbrandsen
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posted 07-16-2007 06:48 PM

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quote: Bobby Henderson
You're trying to insist those cameras are not "video cameras." I contend that they are.

I think you should call Panavision and ask them what they call it. I am quite sure they will not call it a video camera. In fact for proof here's what they call it on their web site.

"Genesis® Super 35 Digital Cinematography Camera System"

Now where does that name refer to the word video? And show me on this page where the system is refered to as a video camera.... pleeze????
Also this camera does not use a Bayer type image sensor as all video cameras use... It uses a true RGB sensor! So it is very definately unlike a video camera right from the beginning at the image sensor.

So Bobby, We're also still waiting for you to answer the rest of the questions above... the ones that really matter.

Thanks,
Mark

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Mike Blakesley
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posted 07-16-2007 10:07 PM

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How about calling it an "Automatic Picture Saving Machine" like they would have in the 1800s?

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

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posted 07-16-2007 11:00 PM

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I'm going to give Bobby two things....it IS a video camera and anamorphic photography can not be composed with spherical lenses. The focal lengths in the vertical and horizontal planes are not the same with anamorphic and that will affect the forground/background look and do so differently than a spherical lens would. As a result the DP must use a single focal length and adjust his camera location to the subject differently. This has nothing to do with digital vs film.

I think Mark is trying to make a distinction between digital and video rather than film and DCinema. I look at digital as the evolution of video, not film. How digital captures the image vs traditional video systems is different but it is an evolution...one can see the steps that lead up to it from video. But seriously...you are arguing over semantics on this one.

And Mike with that sort of terminology...you'll start calling Projectionists "Moving Picture Machine Operators" or some such nonsense [Wink]

[Wink]

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Mike Heenan
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posted 07-16-2007 11:45 PM

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If there isn't a strip of film running through the camera during production or the projector during exhibition, it shouldn't be called a fil.... ahh who gives shit. [Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

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Anslem Rayburn
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posted 07-17-2007 08:23 AM

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quote: Mike Heenan
Anyone see the last Sopranos episode? Pretty cool!

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Mark Gulbrandsen
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posted 07-17-2007 09:56 AM

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quote: Steve Guttag
The focal lengths in the vertical and horizontal planes are not the same with anamorphic and that will affect the forground/background look and do so differently than a spherical lens would.

And thats exactly why Stupid 35 exists Steve. There is a desire for different looks, sometimes for good reasons.. a third look is available if you count digital cinamatography. Also, todays high end anamorphs are much more capable than the ones from even the 80's. They have much better depth of field in both planes and almost non-existant lens flare because of better light baffling and todays superb coatings but they are still no where near the constant afforded by spherical optics.... spherical in all fairness suffers from the same degrees of flare as well. You just don't see the flare stretched into an oval.

I will give the fact that the every day CCD imager is a shift regester based analog outputing device however the imagers in the Genesis and other digital cinematography cameras are not exactly the same as the run of the mill stuff we are all thinking about. But... even run of the mill CCD's do not put out a video signal. They output a voltage representing the brightness falling on each pixel via a clock. The resulting waveform as scanned by the clock doesn't look anything like a video signal until it is processed many stages later down the line until aperature corrected and standard sync pulses and such are added to the stripped CCD signal. Digital Cinematography Cameras and a home digital camcorders for that matter run the output of the scanned CCD's though digital processing circuitry to create a standard recordable digital pulse train similar to what is done in Digital Audio recording.. So in simple terms Digital bits representing the scanned output of the CCD are recorded directly onto the tape, hard drive or other type of memory device.

quote: Steve Guttag
And Mike with that sort of terminology...you'll start calling Projectionists "Moving Picture Machine Operators" or some such nonsense

We used to refer to Local 110 as the "Moving Picture Machine Sleepers Union". Just about every booth had a cot, microwave, refregerator and many missed changovers. Hopefully that attitude has changed today...

Mark

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Steve Guttag
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posted 07-17-2007 10:18 AM

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Hey, I never disputed why a DP would want to not shoot in Scope...it has a look that normally shows the mechanics of the technology in addition to what was intended to go on the frame. However, Super-35 is a very poor way of getting away from those technicalities...65mm is a much better way. Sure the arguement will be made that with 65mm you need more light and much shorter lenses when doing close ups...yadda, yadda...yadda...but there is no getting around the fact that Super-35 looks so bad with very large gains and so forth. 65mm should be the predominate spherical wide-screen origination process. Super-35 should be the exception for some shots. Kinda like matte paintings...only used long enough to convey the image but not long enough to see that you are being fooled.

On a related issue...I just recently saw Scarface (1980) and noted that it has a mix of spherical and anamorphic photography...the spherical stuff looked REALLY bad...very lacking in detail.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
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posted 07-17-2007 11:02 AM

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No arguemant on any of that except...

quote: Steve Guttag
65mm is a much better way

Just because its 65mm does not mean that there are less limitations. I know in fact that most 1st assistants will tell you there are alot more limitations shooting 65mm. For instance, take the 65mm format equivelent lens to say an 18mm for Super 35 format The 65mm format lens has much less depth of field that the 18mm does because its a longer focal length lens.... and this is at any aperature setting. So the depth of field thing can come into play for 65mm just as it does for anamorphic scope... although certainly not to the same degree. Also take a lens that would equal that 18mm Stupid 35 lens for the large 65mm format and it will tend to exhibit more distortion... barrel and pincushion than the 18mm will.

Put 65mm or any of the other shooting formats for that matter in the hands of an inexperienced director, DP, and lab and you'll end up back at about a fair quality anamorphic scope image at best.

Again, You can't blame any individual format for looking bad when its in the hands of the inexperienced. Now even I remember you saying how exceptionally good the 70mm prints of True Lies looked at the Uptown.... In the right hands the Stupid format can still be dam good.

Mark

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

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posted 07-17-2007 12:53 PM

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I think you will find that I commented on True Lies' sound as being one of the hottest/best sounding SR magnetic tracks I've ever heard...and that remains true...it could be very loud without any pain. As to it looking very good...it was not exceptional as 70mm goes. Cameron and crew do get as much out of Super-35 as anyone does. Titanic had it moments...both good and bad. 65mm would have just looked that much better. I wonder how many tests Cameron and crew have done with 65mm to see what they can get out of the format...and then look at the results on a decent sized screen...Super-35 will have a hard time competing with that.

If FA Young could do it with 65mm (or scope)...why can't these guys?

Steve

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Bobby Henderson
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posted 07-17-2007 09:50 PM

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quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I will give the fact that the every day CCD imager is a shift regester based analog outputing device however the imagers in the Genesis and other digital cinematography cameras are not exactly the same as the run of the mill stuff we are all thinking about. But... even run of the mill CCD's do not put out a video signal.

The native image from those cameras still looks like video. It doesn't look like a film image at all until it has undergone a lot of processing in post production.

This even goes for that new Panavision Genesis camera or Arri's D20. Their unaltered imagery from the sensors looks like video.

I watched Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto which was shot with that Panavision Genesis camera and there were plenty of points in that movie that looked video-ish despite efforts in post production to mask the look. There was even some serious image smear happening in some of the action scenes (like when the melanistic Jaguar was chasing "Jaguar Paw" through the jungle).

Sin City was one of the more successful attempts at making video look like film. But if you look at the green screen version of the movie on the 2nd disc of the SE DVD you'll see that the original footage looks every bit as much like video as you see on the 6 o'clock news or some afternoon soap opera.

With that said, I'm going to keep calling it video. It makes little difference to me whether the video was sourced in analog via tubes or digital through a CCD, CMOS or other type of chip. The native footage still has the same appearance.

Honestly, many of these movie-makers using "digital cinematography equipment" are kind of screwing themselves by trying to make that video image look like film. I still believe that Michael Mann's Collateral would have probably been more visually interesting if he had the stones to leave the video looking like video.

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Mike Blakesley
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posted 07-17-2007 11:54 PM

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Y'know, if a movie is any good, I find myself forgetting (and not caring) whether it's in scope or flat, b&w or color, video or film, or whatever. This is partly because, as a non-technical person, I don't understand all of the differences you guys are discussing; but mostly because it makes no difference to the average viewer. As long as it's in focus and in frame, if you can get lost in the story and leave your world behind, the movie or "file" or whatever you want to call it, has served its purpose.

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Monte L Fullmer
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posted 07-18-2007 05:07 AM

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Only film that really was a letdown was the disasterous "Waterworld" ("Road Warrior on the Ocean") when we had scope trailers figuring that the feature is in Scope since they did look good on the widescreen..

BUT, film comes in and the dang movie was in flat.

You'd think such a movie as that would take advantage of the widescreen format...so who goofed up on that one..?

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Mark Gulbrandsen
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posted 07-18-2007 11:19 AM

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quote: Bobby Henderson
This even goes for that new Panavision Genesis camera or Arri's D20. Their unaltered imagery from the sensors looks like video.

quote: Bobby Henderson
It doesn't look like a film image at all until it has undergone a lot of processing in post production.

quote: Bobby Henderson
The native footage still has the same appearance.

So Bobby,

I never realized that you worked in post production. Exactly how much NATIVE footage have you seen from the Panavision and Arri Digital cameras? Its highly unlikely that you've ever even seen native footage printed from a 35mm film production? Unless you're privy to dailies on these shoots then in reality you've seen none! Ok... insert foot in mouth and begin to chew [Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

. We'll let you know when to remove whats left of the foot.

Mark

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Bobby Henderson
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posted 07-18-2007 12:47 PM

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quote: Mike Blakesley
Y'know, if a movie is any good, I find myself forgetting (and not caring) whether it's in scope or flat, b&w or color, video or film, or whatever. This is partly because, as a non-technical person, I don't understand all of the differences you guys are discussing; but mostly because it makes no difference to the average viewer.

It must make enough of a difference for just about any video-sourced movie to be put through digital post processing or even a crude film transfer step to try to mimic the film look.

Many people associate the appearance of video with TV programs most often shot on video, such as talk shows, the evening news, soap operas, etc. The appearance of film is very different. People associate it with movies. It carries a certain level of prestige.

The problem is that it is very rare that attempts to make video look like film succeed very well at all. More often than not, the attempts actually harm the image quality. You get a lot of "crush" in the shadow and highlight areas. And overall the image just ends up looking dingy. I think movies like Collateral and Apocalypto would have looked a lot better without the film look processing tricks that just killed a lot of the dynamic range in the color signal. But they're not going to do that because too many people, particularly those watching it in D-cinema or on DVD will just think it looks too much like TV.

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I never realized that you worked in post production. Exactly how much NATIVE footage have you seen from the Panavision and Arri Digital cameras?

Mark, stick your comment up your butt. Watch Apocalypto carefully. There's a lot of points in there that very much look like they were video sourced. Same goes for the stuff from Michael Mann's last 2 movies. You can try as hard as you like to discredit me for commenting on what IS PLAINLY VISIBLE TO ANYONE WATCHING THOSE MOVIES. You're blind as a bat (or just lying your ass off) if you claim you don't see the problems either.

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Brad Allen
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posted 07-18-2007 12:58 PM

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quote: Mike Blakesley
but mostly because it makes no difference to the average viewer. As long as it's in focus and in frame, if you can get lost in the story and leave your world behind, the movie or "file" or whatever you want to call it, has served its purpose.

Exactly. Joe six pack has thought it is all video for years now. "you use a vcr in there right?"

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