"The visual quality of the digital work is so unattractive -- flared lights, grainy textures, bad balance and unviewable faces abound -- that, after the likes of >this, "Bamboozled," "Tadpole" and most of the Danish Dogme films, one feels like boycotting all further digitally shot theatrical features until further notice."
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Wide shots (of people) that go too wide (unless you want faceless faces)
Low light and/or low contrast situations
Pans that aren't motivated (must be following something or else you have to pan slowly). For DV-to-film the best pans are "countered" by a dolly-move.
The other problem I see a lot in other video-to-film stuff is bad editing. A small video monitor can fool you into thinking that certain cuts are working...and this may not be the case when the picture is projected.
And then there's post-production. Not all transfer houses are created equally. I use Cinema Concepts in Atlanta. I won't name the houses in New York or Los Angeles that I used to use but I found it interesting that such horrible transfers could possibly come out of those cities.
Audio is another factor. It took some experimentation before we came up with a satisfactory method of ensuring that the soundtracks would playback correctly in a cinema. My audio tracks are sync popped and then sent to a sound house in Los Angeles where a Dolby-SR negative is made. Most people don't seem to bother with allowing the extra time and money to get Dolby encoding and then they wonder why their "digital sound" is all muffled.
As for grain...some people are actually stupid enough to add artificial grain to make the video look like it was shot on film. Of course, when the footage is transferred to film the effect is that there's twice as much grain. You wouldn't believe how common this problem is.
These techniques might be possible to do in simple commercials, but it is rather limiting for feature production.
Another way DV production can look okay on a big screen ---- sit far away from the screen. Even NTSC or PAL can look okay from a distance of six screen heights.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
The key is to select material that is better-suited to the medium. If your project (or your shooting style) demands film, then you need to sit tight until you can afford a bigger budget.
You can't set out to create a great oil painting if all you've got is a box of crayons, right?
I didn't find it too limiting. In fact, I found it to be a very liberating experience...I was making a movie instead of talking about how expensive/impossible it is to make a movie...Hopefully one day soon you'll be able to see my DV feature on film.
Yah, like in the next theatre showing a film shot on film.
Frank
Ha-Ha!
(Brad we need a giff file of that mean kid on The Simpsons that goes Ha-Ha!)
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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
"NOTE: The film's digital photography is inadequate to the task of filming under the bright sun of the island. A portentous zoom to the sun is almost ruined because the image is so overexposed you hardly notice the sun. Since voluptuous visuals were obviously part of Medem's plan, he should have used film. Digital is still too anorexic for his purposes."
Quote from Rodger Ebert about The Fast Runner.
"Or we could begin with the story of the film's production. It was shot with a high-definition digital video camera, sidestepping the problems that cinematographers have long experienced while using film in temperatures well below zero."
BTW, digital cameras have to be heavily shielded in space --- the cosmic rays cause permanent "dead pixels".
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Folks don't seem to realize that there is a big difference between digital cinematography and digital cinematography. Critics bust on Bamboozled, Tadpole, Sex and Lucia, The Anniversary Party and the forthcoming Full Frontal for their poor digital look. But these are all films shot on standard defination 'pro-sumer' and industrial cameras, not on HD cameras designed specially for electronic cinematography. There is a world of difference between the $3500 Canon XL1 and the $150,000 Sony Cine Alta or Thompson Viper (the same way there is a world of difference between my old Sears Super 8 load-n-shoot and a fully configured 35mm. Arriflex). As an example, people don't seem to have a lot to say about the look of Lovely And Amazing, which was shot on the Cine Alta with great care and taste by Nicole Holofcener and Harlan Bosmajin. I sat thru the entire film without once marking it as a video shoot, and it looked freakin' great.
On the other hand, I saw Road to Perdition last week carefully projected on a large screen (at the Bridge Cinema in LA) and at several points in the movie the dancing film grain was enough to distract me from the dialog.
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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
What Mark's trying to say is that they are two completely separate things. Comparing the images from LOVELY AND AMAZING to those in FULL FRONTAL is rather pointless because they have nothing to do with each other in terms of price, ease of use, or quality.
Folks don't seem to realize that there is a big difference between digital cinematography and digital cinematography.
-----
huh?
There is a difference between digital cinematography with consumer/industrial cameras and digital cinematography with High Defination 24p cameras.
Capice?
quote:
Hmm...Robert Flaherty didn't seem to have any problems with shooting 35mm for "Nanook of the North"....
He certainly did have problems. The camera Flaherty used was an Akeley - the only one of several he tried that was (i) able to be hand-operated, and (ii) did not seize up in the Arctic climate. One of the Akeley's many drawbacks was the magazine capacity of 100 feet, hence the fact that you never see any lengthy shots in that film.
But I think the point you were trying to make is that he overcame the problems - not that he had any alternative, as Nanook was made four years before 16mm was invented. Neither did the 35mm format put off Herbert Ponting or Frank Hurley, who shot footage of the Scott and Shackleton expeditions to the Antarctic in 1911-12 and 1914-15 resepectively.
BTW, not only did these people shoot 35mm in less than ideal circumstances, but they developed it and, when Flaherty was working on Man of Aran in 1933, he printed rushes in a field lab as well!
Perhaps we should put signs in the box office stating "come see Full Frontal, shot with digital cameras." 
"One of the Akeley's many drawbacks was the magazine capacity of 100 feet, hence the fact that you never see any lengthy shots in that film."
Actually, the Akeley ("Pancake") camera takes 200 foot rolls in internally mounted, darkroom loaded aluminum magazines with a loop left sticking out so that magazines can be changed in seconds. When inserted in the air-tight metal drum of the camera body, the film is extremely well protected.
The Akeley, developed by Carl E. Akeley for filming wildlife on the run in Africa, was actually quite advanced for its time, being weatherproof, with two-speed gyro pan and tilt mechanisms built into
its ball-leveled tripod, making very smooth (but noisy) and rapid movements possible. Provision for changing the shutter (180' and 230'
shutters could be changed by the operator), backwind, single-frame or 8 frame cranking, provision for electric motor drive, twin normal lenses geared together for viewing and taking, five lenses to extreme
telephoto supplied in the metal camera case, internal film notcher
and spirit level, plus a swiveling viewfinder were some of the standard specs of this remarkable machine. All Akeley production was commandeered by the War Department in WWI (Akeley served as consultant without salary) and the cameras were used both in the air and on the ground in both World Wars.
What movie camera did Hurley use on the Scott and Shackleton expeditions?
Gerard
We are sure on the same page with this one Brad, I wrote in a review of CHELSEA WALLS for imdb.com:
------------------------------------------------
"Date: 26 April 2002
Summary: Pretentious, self-indulgent....how many times can you say BORING?! Typically what you expect to see from any Film School student's first project.
><it seems that the director evidently feels that all he has to do is aim a (video) camera and shoot without benefit of script, or even a vague notion of what happens from point A to point B, without adequate lighting or even a simple focus puller, and that will somehow the resultant murky, low contrast, dark (in many scenes, barely visible) and mostly out-of-focus images will rise to "Film Festival Winner" quality.
If this is what video-to-film is going to engender -- all those actors who think can be directors because they can cough up enough money to direct a vanity "movie," then please, in the spirit of truth in advertising, let it be clearly stated on the marquee before we plunk down our $9.50 -- "This film was made with a video camera for less money than most (film) productions spend on sandwiches for the crew -- enter at your own risk."
BTW I think the rest of what you wrote makes a whole lot of sense.
Still, even 200 feet is only 3'20" at 16fps (2'15" at 24fps), so he must have been reloading all the time. Presumably there was a limit to the number of loaded magazines he could take with him, and so he must have had some sort of darkroom facility on location, if only to reload magazines.
Dunno what cameras Ponting and Hurley used off-hand but Hurley's had a wooden body and magazine, so maybe it was an early model Bell & Howell or Debrie (both of which were used widely in Europe during the teens). Will check Caroline Alexander's book when I get a moment (and can find it)...
With the cost of a major feature production being what it is, and having the target result being a high quality image, film is the only way to go. Doing "digital" is just hyping "digital" as a gimmick. And it is still videography, not cinematography.
Videotaping production photography, no matter what kind of camera is used, is going to be inferior to the results attained by high quality 35mm film cameras. If the producers, directors and directors of photography really intend to give the viewer the highest quality image availble, they need to just sidestep the digital bandwagon and get down to something that really produces razor sharp results --like VistaVision and 70mm. Sure, it is analog, but it works.
Super35 has its own problems, one of them being the intended "fashion" in the industry of showing gritty, color drained images. This kind of thing is totally unsuitable to use as a comparison of promoting the use of videography. It is just as unsuitable as the promoters of DLP selling their systems by only comparing their setups to "film done wrong" shows in low quality theaters. As I've said, they need to have the balls to compare their product against a film presentation where the projection and print handling is done expertly.
When electronics companies can improve the resolution of HD video cameras to something at least 2 or 4 times the 1080 HD standard and improve the color handling then there might be a chance those cameras would be suitable to use on a major motion picture production. Right now the video cameras just need to stick to TV production and leave it at that.
The camera im my photo is a Bell & Howell Model Q Eyemo, the so-called "Spider Eyemo" because the turret lenses stick out from the center on legs so as to avoid overlapping each other's field of view,
and to provide sufficient clearance for manipulating the focus and diaphragm controls. Although the 35mm Eymo was designed AFTER the success of the 16mm B & H Filmo Model 70, which had a compact turret, the larger 35mm lenses made the Spider (Q) design more practical.
The Eyemo was also made in Models K,L,M,N,O, and P.
Leo:
The Akeley internal magazines may LOOK like they contain only 100 feet, being about the size of two 100 foot spools end-to-end (As they appear inside the Filmo, Eyemo and Bolex), but within the magazine the film is wound on wooden cores. As the feed roll diminishes, the takeup roll fills the space it occuppied, so the overall space remains the same. The ASC Handbook and Souto's Technique of the Motion Picture Camera mention only the 200' magazine.
My Akeley is the original model and one of the earliest manufactured,
and all its magazines, plus the descriptions and graphics in the Operator's Handbook, refer to the same 200' magazine. Of course it is posible to load a magazine with less film, but I can't think of
a reason for doing so, especially since there is a footage counter and film notcher built into the camera.
<<Dunno what cameras Ponting and Hurley used off-hand but Hurley's had a wooden body and magazine, so maybe it was an early model Bell & Howell or Debrie (both of which were used widely in Europe during the teens)>>
Could they have used the early wooden , very popular Pathe model with both square magazines mounted on top?
Gerard
A standard DV camera is all you need to exceed 70mm resolution. Just take your DV footage (720 x 480) and interpolate it up to 1440 x 960. Then interpolate that up to 2880 x 1920. Then keep interpolating up until you have 32,400 x 21,600. Unlimited resolution beating the hell outta IMAX! I don't see why anyone needs anything more advanced than video.
quote:
A standard DV camera is all you need to exceed 70mm resolution. Just take your DV footage (720 x 480) and interpolate it up to 1440 x 960. Then interpolate that up to 2880 x 1920. Then keep interpolating up until you have 32,400 x 21,600. Unlimited resolution beating the hell outta IMAX! I don't see why anyone needs anything more advanced than video.
Joe, unfortunately, many non-technical people would believe that statement. I promise you that if you made this statement to random people, say, on the street or in a mall, that over half would believe it. That's the problem! Even some of my technical friends talk about how they can scale low-res video up to high resolutions like 1024x768 and 1280x1024 even though the source may only have 240 scan lines. They think they're adding information to it. I often have to explain that if they are scaling up to a non-integer multiple of what they had originally, they're actually losing a bit of the information. 
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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site
For "Ghosts of the Abyss", Cameron likely chose the 24P HD format to avoid having to reload the 3D cameras during the deep dives, knowing the murkiness would hide any noise or lack of sharpness.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Even though the romantic comedy Tadpole, which opened in limited release to mostly terrific reviews last Friday, was shot for $150,000, it could have looked a whole lot better on screen, according to director Gary Winick. In an interview with today's (Wednesday) Boston Globe, Winick complains that cinematographer Hubert Tacnazowski, whose credits include several low-budget studio films, simply could not adapt to using consumer digital cameras. "The whole idea with these little cameras is that they want to be automatic, '' Winick told the newspaper. ''So you have to override them every step of the way: focus, gain, exposure, shutter speed. Unfortunately my cinematographer did not care, and after the second day he wanted to leave. ... The picture would have looked 70 percent better, if not 80 percent better, if he had actually cared." Tacnazowski, in a separate interview with the Globe, acknowledged that he had never previously operated digital cameras but blamed the problems on the film's 13-day shooting schedule, which, he said, left him no time to light the scenes properly.
- - - -
So, there ya go.
Side note to Manny: absolutly no offense intended. It was a failed attempt at irony on my part.
By the way, on Nanook of the North, I have often heard that the eskimos themselves developed the film and repaired Flaherty's cameras for him (while he was out making them look like primitive savages). I'm sure that I once read this in what I considered a reputable source. Truth or bull?
Dancer in the Dark looked washed-out in places (yes, it's one of the Dogme movies).
The Anniversary Party had a dark theme and fittingly looked dark.
Star Wars Episode 2? I nearly fell asleep in that one.
Lovely & Amazing looked good for the most part though some of the indoor scenes were dark. In fact, Lovely & Amazing wasn't a chore for me to look at. See the thread "Where missed cues actually improved a show" in Film Handler's Forum.
But with HD videotape, what exactly is the point of blowing it up to IMAX? Is it so everyone will feel like they need to see an optometrist for all the blurry non-detailed images?