Mon blog déménage
Comme je voyage beaucoup, je continue ce
blog à une nouvelle adresse: http://chefop.blogspot.com
La plateforme de Blogger me permettra de poster
depuis d'autres ordis dans divers coins de la planète. Je me réjouis
de continuer à partager ma passion avec vous
;-)
Ca commence fort: je reviens d'Argentine, où j'ai visité un loueur de matériel ciné organisé comme une armée germanique! Je vous propose une visite guidée.
Ca commence fort: je reviens d'Argentine, où j'ai visité un loueur de matériel ciné organisé comme une armée germanique! Je vous propose une visite guidée.
Etalonnage de "L'Improbable Odyssée"
Tourné avec un gamma cinéma, qui
imite mieux la dynamique extrême des images tournées su pellicule
(noirs plus riches, mais surtout blancs plus détaillés), le film a
été étalonné sur une station Matrix. Mais les indications
générales ont été établies depuis une station Final
Cut, à distance.
Comme je n'ai pas pu assister physiquement à la
séance d'étalonnage, j'ai donné des indications précises en
capturant sur mon écran certains réglages, et en les envoyant par
e-mail à Boris Rabusseau, spécialiste de la station Matrix. Le
réalisateur Pascal Forney assistait à l'étalonnage aux
côtés de Boris (il a d'ailleurs étalonné une partie du film
lui-même). Une conversation téléphonique plus tard, et nous
étions tous sur la même longueur
d'ondes.
Les réglages Final Cut apparaissent ici comme des indications générales pour l'étalonneur: refroidir l'image, la désaturer, "clipper" les noirs (les gris foncés deviennent noirs). Les indications de l'oscillo, à droite, donnent la gamme des luminosités de l'image. Vous voyez par exemple que l'image actuelle ne comporte plus de blanc (100), ce qui peut poser un problème si les plans précédents et suivants en contiennent. L'étalonnage sert - entre autres - à uniformiser le look de tous les plans, pour qu'ils donnent l'impression de faire partie de la même séquence.
Vous voyez, sur l'écran de droite, les étapes "avant-après" de é'étalonnage de ce plan (moins jaune, gris intermédiaires plus clairs, noirs clippés, désaturation, et teinte réglée pour diminuer le magenta sur les tons de peau).
Les réglages Final Cut apparaissent ici comme des indications générales pour l'étalonneur: refroidir l'image, la désaturer, "clipper" les noirs (les gris foncés deviennent noirs). Les indications de l'oscillo, à droite, donnent la gamme des luminosités de l'image. Vous voyez par exemple que l'image actuelle ne comporte plus de blanc (100), ce qui peut poser un problème si les plans précédents et suivants en contiennent. L'étalonnage sert - entre autres - à uniformiser le look de tous les plans, pour qu'ils donnent l'impression de faire partie de la même séquence.
Vous voyez, sur l'écran de droite, les étapes "avant-après" de é'étalonnage de ce plan (moins jaune, gris intermédiaires plus clairs, noirs clippés, désaturation, et teinte réglée pour diminuer le magenta sur les tons de peau).
Odyssée: les photos
Julien Etienne, le photographe de plateau
du film, a mis online plus de 300 photos du tournage. Elles rendent bien
l'ambiance du plateau. Et elles sont magnifiques!
http://lestatdreams.free.fr/Odyssee_d'un_Epouvantail_Tourmente/imgcol/contact_1.htm
Nous avons tourné cette séquence en studio (elle se passe aussi dans un studio de cinéma dans le scénario). C'est pourtant un extérieur nuit. Un choeur grec d'épouvantails raconte la courte vie de Gustave, l'épouvantail qui rêvait de gloire. L'apparition de ce choeur est accompagnée d'une lueur "biblique" qui descend du ciel.
Projecteurs: HMI de 1200 W à 6 kW. Léger smog. Gélatines.
Nous avons tourné cette séquence en studio (elle se passe aussi dans un studio de cinéma dans le scénario). C'est pourtant un extérieur nuit. Un choeur grec d'épouvantails raconte la courte vie de Gustave, l'épouvantail qui rêvait de gloire. L'apparition de ce choeur est accompagnée d'une lueur "biblique" qui descend du ciel.
Projecteurs: HMI de 1200 W à 6 kW. Léger smog. Gélatines.
Odyssée terminée
Le tournage s'est terminé sans
encombre (enfin si on met de côté les 3 vaches explosées par la
foudre à 70 mètres du plateau).
La post-prod va bon train. Chaque semaine, retrouvez
sur le site du
film le point sur l'avancée du chantier.
Odyssée dans un champ de blé fribourgeois
Pascal Forney réalise son nouveau
court-métrage "Odyssée d'un épouvantail tourmenté" dans un
champ du petit village d'Orsonnens (FG). Joli scénar, grosse équipe,
météo pour l'instant favorable, lumière abondante aux alentours
du solstice: tout se passe bien. Tournage en HVX200 de Panasonic, la caméra
DVCPro HD qui met à peu près tout le monde d'accord sur ce nouveau
format.
photos © Julien Etienne
Le journal de bord du tournage est posté chaque nuit vers les 4 heures du matin (!). Arturo Brachetti, l'illusionniste italien, est passé sur le plateau pour un petit rôle le premier jour. Nous tournons actuellement en extérieurs, dans un champ de blé vert. Jetez un coup d'oeil aux journal de bord sur le site du film, www.odyssee-lefilm.info
AUTOPORTRAIT en 4:4:4
Tournage d'un segment de film
réalisé par Renzo
Monti
Format: Viper Filmstream 4:4:4 (BVS Video , Geneve)
Equipe: Carapace Films , Lausanne
Matériel lumière: Action Light SA , Genève
Réalisé dans le cadre d'un cours lumière de 3 jours, à la Haute Ecole des Arts Appliqués de Genève
La dynamique des capteurs de la Viper a permis de saisir les plus fines nuances des hautes et des basses lumières.
Format: Viper Filmstream 4:4:4 (BVS Video , Geneve)
Equipe: Carapace Films , Lausanne
Matériel lumière: Action Light SA , Genève
Réalisé dans le cadre d'un cours lumière de 3 jours, à la Haute Ecole des Arts Appliqués de Genève
La dynamique des capteurs de la Viper a permis de saisir les plus fines nuances des hautes et des basses lumières.
Le décor (ici en cours de construction) en murs mobiles reproduit un univers mental. D'autres photos du tournage suivront, ainsi que des images tirées du film.
L'un des objectifs du cours est de montrer les effets primaires et secondaires d'une source lumineuse. Dans ce décor, une seule lumière (un HMI) produit non seulement un "key" crédible, mais rebondit contre les murs et donne un fill suffisant et réaliste. L'écran bleu derrière la fenêtre fera place à un décor automnal qui raccordera avec la direction de la lumière qui entre dans la pièce.
Tournage de JEUX D'OMBRES
Réalisation: Jeanne
Rektorik
En noir et blanc stylisé. Librement inspirés du travail d'Henri Alekan, les éclairages du film servent une histoire qui tourne autour de la lumière.
En noir et blanc stylisé. Librement inspirés du travail d'Henri Alekan, les éclairages du film servent une histoire qui tourne autour de la lumière.
photo du tournage. Eclairages tungstene, pas mal de variateurs, tournage en HDV progressif.
Eclipse totale, Niger 2006
Vivre une éclipse totale en plein
Sahara, c'est une expérience que je souhaite à tout le monde. Et en
particulier à tous les amateurs de lumière.
Illias, un Touareg, observant l'éclipse dans une brume surnaturelle...
Derniers tournages en 4:4:4
Les longs-métrages tournés en non
compressé commencent à s'aligner. Michael Mann termine Miami Vice,
David Fincher Zodiac. Quelques liens.
Les films tournés en Viper: liste sur IMDB
Bande-annonce de Miami Vice (notez les nuits très limpides): ici
Mel Gibson termine son nouveau long, tourné en Panavision Genesis: Apocalypto
Bryan Singer met la dernière patte à son Superman Returns . Tourné en Genesis.
Miami Vice. DoP: Dion Beebe, amateur de cinéma digital et vainqueur de l'Oscar 2006 pour Memoirs of a Geisha, filmé sur pellicule.
Bande-annonce de Miami Vice (notez les nuits très limpides): ici
Mel Gibson termine son nouveau long, tourné en Panavision Genesis: Apocalypto
Bryan Singer met la dernière patte à son Superman Returns . Tourné en Genesis.
Miami Vice. DoP: Dion Beebe, amateur de cinéma digital et vainqueur de l'Oscar 2006 pour Memoirs of a Geisha, filmé sur pellicule.
Oscars 2006
Meilleure photo: Memoirs of a Geisha. DP:
Dion Beebe.
Extraits d'un article intéressant paru dans le magazine de l'ICG, International Cinematographers Guild.
Extraits d'un article intéressant paru dans le magazine de l'ICG, International Cinematographers Guild.
Dion Beebe, ASC
Recreates Period Japan
For Memoirs of a Geisha
“Much of the story takes place in
candlelight or extremely low light,” explains Beebe. “Not that easy
to do in the anamorphic format. So, we had a little ‘get together’
in prep. Phil Radin and Dan Sasaki from Panavision and first assistant Mike
Weldon joined me to ‘prepare’ for the shoot. I explained my desire
to shoot high-speed stock in very low light conditions.
“When Mike recovered from the
initial shock of doing an anamorphic movie essentially wide open on high speed
lenses, he picked himself up off the floor, got excited about the challenge and
we began testing every fast anamorphic lens available at
Panavision.”
“Almost every shot using an
anamorphic lens is tricky,” says Weldon. “Each lens has its own
characteristic, so it is important to make sure the lenses of choice are
fine-tuned and that we completely understand their ‘character.’ I
always refer to the great lens technician Dan Sasaki to tune up my lenses before
I shoot a foot of film through them. On this project, he was invaluable. Not
only did he help us find lenses that could work below a T-2 stop, he also
customized a high speed 40mm with a stop of T-1.8 for us.”
To capture this epic story, Beebe decided
to use Kodak’s 5218 500T stock, often pushing it one stop. With Weldon, he
chose Panavision Platinum and Millennium cameras, using E-series anamorphic
lenses for the bulk of the project, adding C-series for Steadicam and handheld
as well as a short zoom with a range of 40-80mm (T-2.8) and the customized
high-speed 40mm. “I even found two lenses that went to T-1.3 hidden under
Mike’s kit bag,” says Beebe. “The ability to shoot in
extremely low light conditions was key to the lighting design of the movie. Had
I not had the skills of Mike Weldon on A-camera and John Grillo on B-camera, I
could not have shot the picture this way. We would have been too compromised by
focus difficulties. They were working with minimal depth on cameras that were
always moving and they nailed it. These guys were my heroes.”
In addition to an extensive camera and
lens testing process, Beebe worked with production and costume design to create
a world of the Geisha that would be real on the screen. “I worked with
production designer John Meyer and costume designer Colleen Atwood on Chicago,
so we were familiar with each other’s styles and abilities,” says
Beebe. “They are both so meticulous and carefully researched, but also
bring artistry to their work that is inspiring.
“One of the first things that John
and I approached was the various traditional paper Shoji screens that would be
used throughout the movie. It seemed whenever these screens are photographed for
movies, they simply appear white and over-exposed. Either too much light washes
over the front of these screens or too much light is blasting in the
back.
“For us, to have rooms with bright
white paper screens everywhere would not fit into the dark mysterious world we
all wanted to create. So, we began testing papers of different densities and
with varying degrees of staining, often doubling up samples to find the correct
opacity. We also tested fabrics within the screen doors—fabrics that
created a different feel and texture. We then subjected our choices to tests
under a simulation of our lighting conditions.
“The end result was a mix of about
ten to 20 different materials. The papers with subtle textures that had been
pressed between the sheets with a dark stain applied were the most
successful.
“With costumes,” he
continues, “the same pressure applied. I worked closely with Colleen to
ensure that the warm yellow light of our interior world did not work against the
wonderful palette of colors she had created for each of our principal actors. We
tested fabrics under different lighting conditions and tracked their place in
the movie to ensure we never ended up with lighting conflicting with costume.
The result was some of the most beautiful costumes I’ve ever
photographed.”
So much of Memoirs of a Geisha takes
place in a shadowy world, whether it is the poverty and degradation of
Chiyo’s childhood and servitude beginning in 1929, to the private lives of
the Geisha pre World War II. Candles, lanterns and firelight were the only
illumination available for interiors.
“What you can accomplish on any
movie ultimately comes down to how good your crew is,” says Beebe.
“I had a great crew on Geisha. My gaffer, John Buckley, understood the
mood and atmosphere of the script. He has a great eye and a great ability to
plan and organize the set. We went from lighting scenes with a couple of
lanterns and flicker boxes to lighting an entire Japanese 1930s town at night.
This film places a lot of emphasis on lighting and John and his guys worked
incredibly hard.”
The centerpiece of the story was the
production’s “back lot” built at Ventura Farms about an hour
outside of Los Angeles. Production designer John Meyer created period Japan in
the Santa Monica Mountains with streets, alleyways, functioning teahouses,
shops, temples, shrines, bridges and a river where the water level and current
could be changed. “No one who visited the set could walk away
unimpressed,” says A-camera/Steadicam operator Peter
Rosenfeld.
“The sets were beautiful,”
says Buckley, “but the interiors were built to scale. If you were five
feet two inches, you could manipulate easily. Mike Weldon is well over six feet
tall, and I don’t think any of our crew is less than five ten. Every one
of us got smacked at least half a dozen times, but that was part of the reality
of the story and the times we were depicting.
“I love doing a period
piece,” Buckley adds. “When Dion and I first started to talk about
this picture, he explained most of the lighting would be lanterns and fires.
Most people use CTO and go into the red zone. Instead, we decided to go yellow
and straw. Yellow fires with a little red in the embers.
“There are different ways to make a
flame look like a real flame,” Buckley continues. “Some look very
mechanical. To make ours look as real as possible, we carried what we call
‘covered wagons.’ They are sockets with 100-watt globes, grid cloth
and full straw in a two-by-four foot cage. Each globe had two separate dimmers.
By flickering one at one rate and one at another, the light never felt
mechanical.”
In order to create a Japanese winter
light in sunny Southern California, production would have to block out the sun.
To accomplish this, key grip Scott Robinson and rigging key Don Reynolds worked
with ShowRig to create the largest freestanding diffusion ever made. “It
was like some sort of installation art work,” says Beebe. “Christo
would have been proud. It was risky and a contentious expense for Sony as
nothing had been built to this scale before but with our insistence and
Rob’s unwavering support, they became convinced and backed the idea. This
rig ultimately allowed us to create four seasons, turn sunny days in Los Angeles
into snow filled winter landscapes and shoot night for day—it was key to
creating a seamless exterior world. It took a lot of guys, a lot of money, and
very little wind to make this rig fly, but it helped turn a field in Ventura
farms into a mysterious Japanese town lost in time.”
“It was made up of two massive
steel trusses that were able to pull panels of silent grid cloth over the set to
cut out and diffuse the direct sunlight,” explains Rosenfeld. “For
our night work, gaffer John Buckley would direct Beebee lights through the
material. The result was a stunningly realistic moonlight effect. It created
enormous spread with very little fall off. The village was lit in just about any
direction the camera could point.
“One day, while we were trying to
complete a day scene after the sun had gone down, we discovered that John
Buckley could recreate daylight,” Rosenfeld continues. “By using
several Beebee lights through the immense grid cloth, he could increase the
ambient levels to about a T-2.8. Once we saw the effect, we all fell in love
with it. The quality of light was very similar to what you would see in New York
on a cloudy winter day in the late afternoon. A soft, shadowless light that had
a wintery feeling.
“One of my favorite scenes shot
with this light is when Japanese troops occupy the village and evacuate the
residents,” Rosenfeld recalls. “We shot the scene with two handheld
cameras that could follow the chaotic action a full 360 degrees. Aside from a
few well placed bounce cards, the scene was lit from the grid cloth and looked
incredible.”
The crew had many favorite shots from the
film. “The snow sequences were so beautiful,” says Weldon.
“Combine the use of overhead silk and the addition of fake snow on the
rooftops and ground and there was something magical. Dion decided not to use an
85 filter and let the film go blue. That made the fake snow look real, cold and
breathtaking.”
“One was a complicated Technocrane
shot that followed a lone figure walking through the snow from above,”
adds Rosenfeld. “The grid cloth was slid overhead and the entire village
was covered in snow. Scott and his crew built us an elevated platform for the
50-foot Technocrane so the lens could float overhead, weaving through the
alleyways. The resulting images were almost like a Japanese watercolor
painting.”
“Rob wanted a sweeping shot through
the village that ended up looking in the window of the Okiya,” Beebe
explains. “This was a key transition from the young Chiyo to the older
Chiyo, years later. Scott, Don and I discussed many options of how best to
achieve this.
“We spoke with Cablecam and
SpiderCam about spanning the town with cable and suspending a remote camera, but
due to the fact that the building structures were not real, rigging the cables
became complicated and expensive. Then, one day we thought, what about a
platform built above the rooftops? We used a model of the village to plot the
shot, mapped out the platform position and Don Reynolds built this enormous
platform and lifted the 50-foot Technocrane on top with a construction
crane.
“It worked like a charm. Peter and
his crew did a great job operating the shot. It makes me smile when I think of
looking over my shoulder from on top of the platform and seeing the blazing
sunlight through the fake snow. If only the audience knew what lay beyond the
edge of our frame.”
“The shot started looking out over
the village,” explains Rosenfeld. “We then tilted down to find a
lone figure walking through snow-covered alleyways The camera then tracked the
figure overhead, eventually gliding over roof tops to find Ziyi Zhang opening
the 2nd floor window of the Okiya. This is her first appearance in the movie,
and the first time we see Chiyo as a young adult.
“A shot like this takes careful
planning well in advance,” he adds. “On the day, it requires a
precise co-ordination between the AD’s, crane grips and focus puller to
make it happen but when it does, it is an exhilarating experience. We used the
50-foot Technocrane with a stabilized three-axis head from Pictovision and our
favorite lens—the 40-80mm anamorphic zoom.”
For Beebe, Chiyo’s journey through
the Okiya (training house for the Geisha) is a metaphor for the story. The way
the team transitions Chiyo’s world into Sayuri’s is a synergy of
sets and lighting. “When we first enter the Okiya, it is a dark and
forbidding place,” Beebe says. “We feel constricted and trapped
within the narrow corridors. Chiyo’s entrapment is fully realized when she
is finally led up to the rooftop of the Okiya and we reveal the tightly packed
sea of rooftops that surround her. She has nowhere to go. The house ultimately
metamorphosed as Chiyo gains confidence and some control of her life. It is then
that we begin to open up the space.
“This was achieved through the use
of traditional Japanese sliding doors, which could be removed or rearranged to
create altered spaces, allowing us to open or close an area, depending upon the
demands of the scene. The screens were also seasonal and the material changed
with the seasons—from solid woods, open weaved Bamboo, glass and
traditional paper screens. John Buckley was key to pulling off the multiple
looks inside this interior, as it progresses from a dark, flickering oil lantern
filled world to slowly lifting the veil and letting the light into this
mysterious place.”
“We changed how the sunlight
entered into the house and used it to create bounce light at different
angles,” Buckley explains. “Then we changed the color and density
levels of the light as we progressed into the modern age of electricity. This
brought us to 3200 degrees Kelvin, creating a more neutral level of light that
is seen today.”
The sequences in the theatre were some of
the most beautiful in the film. “The way Dion used the practicals,”
says Weldon, “and the way he photographed the principal actors in the
audience watching Sayuri on stage. I got chills watching that footage in
dailies. It was astounding.”
“Same for Rob and me,” adds
Beebe. “It took us back to our days on Chicago. We took a lot of liberty
with the lighting, using high tech Vari-Lites, but mixing them with gas burning
footlights that ran along the front of the stage and paper lanterns that framed
the musicians. All the lighting was run through two mixing desks.
“Ultimately, we favored mood and
atmosphere over historical accuracy. This is a key sequence in the movie, as it
demonstrates the artistry of the Geisha. Key, too, is the fact that the audience
is filled with all the players in the story and the subtle reactions of each of
them towards Sayuri’s stunning performance is a wonderful piece of
choreography and direction. This was the very first scene we shot at the start
of production and it really set the tone for everyone.”
Everyone is in agreement that the
sequences shot at Descanso Gardens at night in a hot springs environment were
challenging and interesting. “I think there were seven actors in water
from the neck down,” recalls Weldon. “We used cameras on crane arms,
cameras in the water on tripods and handheld. It was a challenge because there
was no way to set any marks for their positions. And, of course, they would not
always hit the same marks twice. So, with all those actors, it required quite a
bit of coverage from many different angles.”
“We used the ‘covered
wagons’ to light this,” explains Buckley. “The lighting was
simple. The challenge was for Peter and Mike to move around the water and deal
with the bamboo roof we had over the top of the bath.”
“The hot springs set certainly was
a great challenge for us,” adds Rosenfeld. “Moving the camera was
best accomplished on the Hot Gears in the under-slung mode. However, because it
was night, we were wide open on the lens with no eye on the eyepiece. It was
also difficult to control the amount of steam and match it effectively from shot
to shot. Eventually, Mike and I ended up in the water with the
actors.”
To emphasize the lyrical aspect of the
story, Beebe chose to move the camera almost constantly. “The Hot Gears
was a godsend to us,” says Weldon. “We used that head for a number
of different scenes; in the ArriHead (low mode or normal mode set up) and also
with the Lamdahead mode, when it required extreme tilts of up or
down.
“Focus does sometimes become a
little more challenging when the camera is floating in mid air,” he
admits. “With a dolly grip and a grip on the crane arm that understands
the need for hitting their particular marks, it becomes a bit
easier.”
“It took a lot of guts to make this
picture,” says Beebe. “Rob is an inspirational director and my
camera crew was incredible. Peter Rosenfeld and B-Camera operator Sion Michel
were a great team. They are both very intuitive and brought artistry to
everything they did. Peter had operated for us on Chicago, which was a nice
continuity for all of us. And I worked with Sion in Australia before. Mike
Weldon and John Grillo both are extraordinary focus pullers and we needed their
calm and expertise more than ever on this project. And, our seconds, Paul
Santoni and EJ Misisco as well as loader Cameron Duncan were definitely up to
the challenge. When it comes right down to it, in the end, you are only as good
as your crew. And this was a great crew for a great picture.”
Oscars 2006: nominations meilleure photo
5 nominés extrêmement talentueux,
cette année. Tous ces films se passent autrefois ou ailleurs. Du strict
point de vue cinématographique, Brokeback Mountain est mon favori, mais le
noir et blanc du film de Clooney est plus frappant, et les paysages du Nouveau
Monde de Lubezki devraient cartonner. Une surprise: Munich de Spielberg n'est
pas mentionné.
Les liens ci-dessous renvoient aux articles du New York Times.
Les liens ci-dessous renvoient aux articles du New York Times.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
NOMINATIONS
Wally Pfister, "Batman Begins"
Rodrigo Prieto, "Brokeback Mountain"
Robert Elswit, "Good Night, and Good Luck"
Dion Beebe, "Memoirs of a Geisha"
Emmanuel Lubezki, "The New World"
La meilleure cellule pour mesurer la lumière
Les Reflex numériques sont devenus
l'un des moyens les plus fiables pour contrôler la lumière sur un
tournage.
Pendant longtemps les chefs ops utilisaient
des Polaroids Noir-Blanc pour vérifier l'amplitude des contrastes.
Aujourd'hui, on utilise couramment les appareils photo numériques, et
particulièrement les Reflex. Le petit dernier de Canon, l'EOS 350, est l'un des meilleurs du lot. C'est
particulièrement vital quand on tourne en
pellicule.
La meilleure méthode est de prendre des photos (gros plans, vues générales) sans flash évidemment, et de les archiver rapidement. Vous pouvez aussi imprimer celles que vous voulez annoter.
3 avantages:
- remplace un carnet de notes visuelles (pour assurer des raccords parfaits)
- vous donne une idée précise des sur- et sous-expositions, si vous prenez des photos pendant le keylite. Après le visionnement des rushes du keylite, vous saurez exactement où vous pouvez vous permettre de frôler les limites d'exposition, en comparant l'amplitude d'exposition de vos photos avec celle de votre émulsion.
- sert de référence pour la suite de la post-prod (vous trouvez un look sur Photoshop, et vous envoyez ça par mail au coloriste qui saura exactement ce que vous avez en tête)
La meilleure méthode est de prendre des photos (gros plans, vues générales) sans flash évidemment, et de les archiver rapidement. Vous pouvez aussi imprimer celles que vous voulez annoter.
3 avantages:
- remplace un carnet de notes visuelles (pour assurer des raccords parfaits)
- vous donne une idée précise des sur- et sous-expositions, si vous prenez des photos pendant le keylite. Après le visionnement des rushes du keylite, vous saurez exactement où vous pouvez vous permettre de frôler les limites d'exposition, en comparant l'amplitude d'exposition de vos photos avec celle de votre émulsion.
- sert de référence pour la suite de la post-prod (vous trouvez un look sur Photoshop, et vous envoyez ça par mail au coloriste qui saura exactement ce que vous avez en tête)
Eclairage "intérieurs bougie" de "Memoirs of a Geisha"
Le chef op du film Dion Beebe et son chef
électro John Buckley, donnent un truc utile. La photo de Geisha est
nominée à l'ASC Awards 2005.
“There are different ways to make a flame look like a real flame,” Buckley continues. “Some look very mechanical. To make ours look as real as possible, we carried what we call ‘covered wagons.’ They are sockets with 100-watt globes, grid cloth and full straw in a two-by-four foot cage. Each globe had two separate dimmers. By flickering one at one rate and one at another, the light never felt mechanical.
Et encore 3 nouvelles pubs Nespresso
Toutes voiles dehors, comme
d'habitude.
Cette fois tournage en HD-CAM.
Prod: Pixit Communications SA, Lausanne
Caméra HD: Amarock, Genève
Lumière: Luxan, Genève
Cette fois tournage en HD-CAM.
Prod: Pixit Communications SA, Lausanne
Caméra HD: Amarock, Genève
Lumière: Luxan, Genève
Cette fois la machine cumulait trois difficultés: alu brossé, surfaces réfléchissantes et parties totalement transparentes. L'éclairage de l'alu brossé implique certains réglages qui ne conviennent pas aux surfaces translucides.
Des caches spéciaux (drapeaux et diffuseurs qui bougeaient pendant les prises) ont du être spécialement conçus pour générer des réflections noires ou blanches sur les différentes parois de la machine.
Syriana
Tourné à 100% en
caméra épaule, Syriana vise le
réalisme.
Extrait d'une longue interview de Roger Elswit.
Source: Cameraguild.com
Extrait d'une longue interview de Roger Elswit.
Source: Cameraguild.com
The film was shot in 80 days entirely on
location, half in Baltimore and Washington D.C. and the other half in Morocco,
Switzerland, Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. This was a marked contrast to
Good Night, and Good Luck, which was shot almost exclusively on sets built at
CBS Radford in Studio City. According to Elswit, because of the actors’
tight schedules, there was little time for location scouting and pre-production
with Syriana. “We were very rushed in prep and found ourselves still
running around securing locations while we were shooting,” says
Elswit.
Though they knew the style of Syriana would be
vastly different, Elswit and Gaghan screened seminal 1970s thrillers Three Days
of the Condor and Klute for inspiration. Elswit also drew inspiration from The
Insider, with its fluid integration of handheld shots and classically designed
set-ups. “Michael Mann does it better than anybody,” says Elswit.
“I think we’ve all been stealing from him for
years.”
The creative challenge of Syriana was
maintaining a sense of visual unity while subtly differentiating among the five
distinct storylines. Gaghan and Elswit knew from the outset they wanted to avoid
highly stylized color manipulations that had been used to great effect in films
like Traffic and The Constant Gardener. “We wanted to minimize the
contrast between the West (the U.S. and Geneva) and the Middle East, but not to
exaggerate the difference,” says Elswit. “Stephen wanted the
storylines and all of the locations to feel connected.”
Instead of creating a reductive color-palette
where certain colors always represent certain locales, (for example, blue in the
West and yellow in the Middle East), Gaghan wanted a documentary style that
didn’t use lighting or color to distinguish between the stories or
locations. “We knew the locations would look wildly different from one
another anyway,” says Elswit. “If anything, Steven wanted the visual
style of the film to emphasize their similarities.”
In his conception of Syriana, Gaghan knew he
wanted to shoot the entire film
handheld,
in
widescreen
and use two cameras as much as possible. In the end, he achieved his goals.
Elswit originally considered shooting anamorphic, but instead decided on
Super
35 owing to the
greater
depth-of-field of the lenses. “It
was more practical to shoot Super 35 because it gave us more options in staging
and a greater variety of choices given the way Steven wanted to shoot the
film,” says Elswit. “Anamorphic forces a certain staging and design
on a movie and we wanted to do something a bit more spontaneous in
Syriana.” (Elswit is however, tentatively planning on shooting handheld
anamorphic for his next film, Michael Clayton, another thriller starring George
Clooney.)
Elswit and Gaghan wanted to tell the story in
a very subjective way through the eyes of the characters, but without the
deliberate reframing and shakiness that marks some documentary-style movies.
Aside from a few specially mounted shots and a bit of aerial footage, Syriana
was 100% handheld, as opposed to Good Night, and Good Luck, where nearly every
shot required a dolly. This presented a dilemma not only for Elswit, but also
for his operator, Colin Anderson, and his camera assistants, Barry
“Baz” Idoine and Gregor Tavenner. “Pulling focus was very
challenging,” says Elswit, “especially when you have a film that
moves to this many places, and you’re trying to shoot two cameras without
adequate rehearsals and marks… Both Gregor and Baz were
exceptional.”
Unlike Good Night, and Good Luck, which was
all done with an 11:1 zoom, almost every scene in Syriana was shot with two
Panavision Millennium XL cameras using Primo lenses ranging from the 40mm all
the way up to the 150mm. Elswit likes the compressed, contemporary look of the
medium-long focal length and finds that it makes it easier to shoot with two
cameras. “We didn’t do a lot of wide angle set-ups and we
didn’t do any wide angle close-ups,” says Elswit. “We played
with it for a while but it didn’t seem right. The 25mm close-ups seemed
wrong for this film. They were too theatrical.”
In keeping with the documentary style,
Syriana was shot with next to no filtration, just the occasional polarizer, and
Elswit used only one stock, Kodak 5218 (500 ASA), rated at 320. “I think
it’s the nicest of the Vision stocks for low light,” says Elswit.
“To try to go into these interiors and make them look like we didn’t
light them, you need to use a fast film and not to vary the
film.”
Elswit and his gaffers, Mike Ballman in the
U.S. and Jim Plannette abroad, relied on whatever incandescent lights were built
into the locations and “a huge mix of almost everything you could use in a
movie: 18Ks, Kino Flos, HMIs,” he says. “The attempt in each of
these locations was to make them feel like we hadn’t actually done any
lighting.”
Elswit avoided theatrical and dramatic
lighting effects, and lit the interiors sparingly to match the quality of light
outside. In the Middle East, he generally used HMIs to replicate outdoor color
temperature while in Geneva, he relied more on daylight-balanced Kino Flos to
light the interiors. “We wanted to light the spaces as naturally as we
could and let each location dictate the quality and color of the light,”
says Elswit.
Sometimes he got lucky and sometimes he
didn’t. In one quietly agonizing scene where Bryan (Matt Damon) and his
wife watch as their youngest son plays by a fountain not long after their other
son has died in a freak accident, Elswit was cursed with a sunny day. “It
seemed wrong for the mood of the scene and, of course, it’s impossible to
keep the look consistent during 8 hours of shooting,” says
Elswit.
In some of the scenes in the Geneva hotel,
Elswit swears that if it had been an overcast day, we would have been able to
see out the windows. “I didn’t have the equipment or the time to
control the windows in Geneva,” he says. “Sometimes we got lucky
with the weather and, and other times the windows just blew
out.”
Because of the extraordinary number of
locations, maintaining the rigorous shooting schedule required an enormous
amount of pre-rigging. “It wasn’t the kind of movie where you stay
in one place for a week. The longest we spent in one location was three
days—mostly we were in and out in one day,” says Elswit, who praises
his grip and electric crew, led by key grips Mike Kenner in the U.S. and Tommaso
Mele abroad, for keeping up with the hectic pace.
The scene where George Clooney is interviewed
in a situation room in the bowels of the White House was a typical one-day
shoot. A four-page scene with 12 people sitting around a table and shots looking
in four directions, Elswit knew he had to have lighting units ready to
go.
“Steven was wonderful about committing
ahead of time to basic staging for scenes where we had no time to light after a
rehearsal,” says Elswit. “In that kind of a situation, it’s
important to be able to turn the lights on when you walk in. After you look at a
rehearsal, if you hate it, or the staging changes, you have a better chance of
having the time to fix it.” Hanging from the grid were approximately 15
Leikos, 15 Source 4s and 15 Rifas. He aimed the Source 4s and Leikos straight
down at the table and used the Rifas as backlights.
Shooting with two cameras sometimes created
lighting problems as one angle might have contrast while the other was flat.
Especially outdoors, Elswit tried to play the real spaces and find shots that
felt haphazard, random and very subjective. “Even though we’re
looking at things in a dispassionate way, we want it to feel like you’re
seeing it from the character’s point of view,” says
Elswit.
For example, throughout Syriana up-and-coming
lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is almost never foregrounded since
he’s a pawn, batted around by more powerful individuals. The first time he
appears on screen, he is standing in the background, out of focus, as the
founder of his law firm prunes a rose bush in the foreground. “We wanted
to convey what it was like to be a young lawyer in the presence of one of the
most powerful lawyers in Washington,” says Elswit. Only toward the
film’s conclusion is he foregrounded, when he has learned to play the game
and sells out his boss.
“We did the same thing with Matt
Damon’s character a little bit,” says Elswit. “The torture
scene too. We really wanted to feel what Clooney’s experience was. We
would ask ourselves that stuff all the time. It kept us from making arbitrary
decisions. Steve wanted to find a subjective POV with each storyline. Our only
rule was to try to discover a clear point of view through the staging and
shooting that would reflect this. The lighting and décor would feel
naturalistic but our camera placement and blocking would hopefully create the
personal perspective that he wanted for each story.”
Elswit knew from the beginning the
film would have a DI so digital dailies were a natural choice but the overseas
production meant few labs could keep up with dailies at the rate Syriana was
shooting. The film was processed and scanned at Technicolor New York while
production was in the U.S. and at Technicolor London when abroad. “There
just aren’t enough people who know how to do it,” says Elswit.
“When shooting with two cameras, it’s easy to print 10,000 or 20,000
feet per day. One person supervising the telecine transfer simply can’t
complete it all in one shift. Because of how quickly we were moving this became
a real problem.
“The irony of digital dailies is that it
takes longer to transfer your dailies because unlike film dailies, they’re
scanned in real time,” continues Elswit. “In the end, you may save
time and money in post-production, but during the actual shooting of the film we
found ourselves as much as two weeks behind with dailies. It’s a horrible
trade off and a frightening proposition for any director and
cinematographer.” Elswit was able to print a limited amount of footage
every week, and it was projected wherever a space could be found: a screening
room, a university, even a local cineplex in Dubai.
Elswit is currently color timing the movie
with colorist Stephen Nakamura at Technicolor Digital Intermediate in Burbank.
There’s been little manipulation except to pull out some of the chroma
where the colors are very saturated owing to weather or time of day. “In a
very simple way, we’re trying to get all these places to appear the way we
shot them,” says Elswit.
Still, a little digital manipulation
doesn’t hurt. The opening scene of the movie, identified by a title card
as Tehran, was actually shot early in the morning from the window of
Elswit’s hotel room in Casablanca, Morocco and the mountains of Iran were
added during post-production.
It all plays into Gaghan’s vision of
creating an onscreen world where cultures transcend national boundaries. Even
the film’s title reflects this idea. Though it’s never explained in
the movie (that scene was left on the cutting room floor), Syriana is an ancient
name, fused together from three very real countries, Syria, Iraq and Iran, and
it refers to the Middle East’s centuries-old familial and tribal
alliances, which defy and often complicate the region’s artificial,
colonial boundaries. “I think Stephen would have been happy,” says
Elswit, “if the Middle East and the West had looked and felt exactly the
same.”
Shooting Munich
Le chef op Janus Kaminski s'est
à nouveau dépassé pour restituer les atmosphères
contrastées du dernier Spielberg, "Munich". Zooms, couleur rouge sang,
"bleach bypass".
Extraits des propos de Kaminski.
Source: cinemareview.com
Extraits des propos de Kaminski.
Source: cinemareview.com
The story of Munich unfolds in three separate realms: the extremely public events of the Munich Olympics which took place under the glare of the international media, the extremely secretive and shadow-laden world of the Mossad and its unacknowledged hit squads operating around the world under an opaque cloak, and the internal worlds of the five diverse assassins themselves as they take on the psychological twists and turns of their unprecedented assignment.
To capture all of this visually, Steven
Spielberg turned to one of his longtime trusted collaborators, the two-time
Academy Award®-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who has worked with
Spielberg on nine previous films. A Polish teenager in 1972, Kaminski watched
the events of Munich from a somewhat different perspective—through the
veil of the Iron Curtain. “In Poland it was seen of course as a tragic
event, as it was all over the world,” he says, “but the news that we
got through official sources indicated a certain bias.”
Yet the cinematographer believes that one of
the most fascinating elements of turning the events surrounding Munich into a
motion picture is that nearly everybody has both a uniquely personal memory of
it. “We all have our own experience with this event,” he says.
“Even if you weren’t born yet, you’ve seen bits of it on
television or in history books. Or you’ve been introduced to it through
recent events. But whichever way you come at it, it is very
relevant.”
Working in the usual manner of their unique
collaboration, Kaminski’s initial action was to shoot a series of
photographic tests to find a look that he and Spielberg felt suited the intense
mood and suspenseful structure of the film—one that they hoped would echo
some of the classic paranoid thrillers of the ’70s but with a contemporary
edge.
“Steven and I are at a point in our
relationship right now that we have to discuss things very little,”
Kaminski notes. “He knows and trusts my judgment and I know his aesthetic
sense very well. We converse a little, mostly about what we really
shouldn’t do, but pretty much the visual style is left for me to
determine. So I went to Paris in 2004 and started experimenting with various
color schemes, various filters, various lenses, various lighting and various
chemical processes.”
In further developing the film’s visual
style, Kaminski looked at the story through the prism of a world map.
“There are 8 different countries in the film, and I decided to give each a
different look, very subtly, and each with a somewhat different color palette.
This way each country has its own individuality, even though most of them were
shot in Malta and Hungary,” he says. “So everything that happens in
the Middle East is more colorful, warmer, sunnier. But once we leave that part
of the world for Paris, Frankfurt, London and Rome the colors become cooler and
more de-saturated. And even each of those European cities have their own
character and colors.”
For example, Kaminski points out that for the
scenes in Cyprus he emphasizes more vibrant, sun-baked yellow tones, while in
Athens the color palette veers towards Aegean blues, and then in Paris, the
palette becomes much softer with an ambience of rainy skies. The lighting also
shifts in the film, starting with a friendlier tone as the hit squad first gets
to know one another at an intimate dinner and moving to a harsher photo-chemical
process full of darker shadows that reflect the characters’ inner turmoil
as their mission becomes more frightening and filled with doubts.
Each one of the assassinations is also shot in
a unique manner, which is how Spielberg envisioned the film unfolding. “I
wanted every assassination to be different, because as the team experiences each
one, their views about what they’re doing change, the group dynamics
shift, they change their feelings about themselves and each other, and
there’s more and more stress, anxiety and pressure,” Spielberg
explains. “So each of the missions has its own personal
character.”
The choice of lenses was influenced by
Spielberg’s desire to hearken back to a grittier, ’70s style of
filmmaking. “Steven insisted, rightfully, that we use zoom lenses,”
Kaminski notes. “He felt that ’70s cinema was so full of zooms that
if you start zooming in and out you’re allowing the viewers to feel like
they’re watching a film made in that time. It’s a very effective way
of creating the sense of period.” Kaminski cites such realistic thrillers
as The French Connection, Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor as
inspirations for his work on Munich.
One of the biggest challenges for the cast and
crew, including Kaminski, was re-creating the Olympic hostage situation with
accuracy and riveting suspense. Scenes from the Munich Olympics open the film
but are then revealed in much greater detail through flashback sequences that
merge dramatic re-creations of the events with vintage documentary
footage.
Spielberg felt that the flashback sequences
would keep the emotional motivation behind all the events palpable throughout
the film. “I felt there needed to be a constant reminder of what this
story is hinging on, lest we forget what started this round of
blood-for-blood,” he notes.
But shooting the re-creations was very
emotional and wrenching. “You can imagine how difficult it was,” he
says. “I hired Arab actors to play the Palestinians and Israelis to play
Israelis . . . and they took it very much to heart. It was a very emotional
catharsis and I wasn’t thinking so much of technique as I was about just
holding this cast and crew together and keeping everybody on an even keel. It
was a rugged couple of weeks.”
For the opening sequence, Kaminski focused on
a searing, unadorned realism—“it’s a little bit flat, almost
void of color,” he explains—but for the flashbacks he used a process
known as “skip bleach” (most recently seen in the contemporary war
film Jarhead) which gives a very harsh, grainy, color-saturated appearance to
the scenes. “The flashbacks are darker, grainier, more foreboding. I
wanted them to feel quite different from the present time,” the director
of photography explains.
Comments Spielberg, “The bleach bypass
is particularly effective in this film because it is inter-cut with the rosy
grace notes of more standard lighting and set-ups. It tells you that
you’re going somewhere else, inside Avner’s head and back into the
past.”
When it came to the violence in the film,
Kaminski understood that Spielberg did not want to hide the brutal nature of any
of the events involved. “I think in this film, violence is purposely
presented to the audience without any abstractions,” he says. “If
you think of Saving Private Ryan, that movie was also extremely graphic but the
audience realized it was there to convey the tragedy, the horror of those
historical events.”
He continues: “I think this is a movie
that tries to deal with a very serious subject in a mature and objective way.
But it’s also a suspenseful movie, so that also created a very important
need to stage the scenes in an unusual way. The way Steven created certain
scenes was really amazing because he can convey suspense in just three shots. He
uses zooms, he uses reflections, he uses extensive blocking, he uses cars wiping
the frame revealing another portion of the scene. He’s a very skillful
director when it comes to the camera.”
Pub CTE Viper > 35mm
Pour le Festival International Cinema Tout
Ecran
Tournage en Viper, format Filmstream (4:4:4)
Objectif: allusion à une séquence de Fight Club, mais en un plan-séquence de 50 secondes. Retrouver les teintes, les éclairages et l'ambiance générale de la séquence originale.
Camera Thomson Viper: BVS Video, Geneve
Post-prod 4:4:4 real time sur Matrix: Free Productions (Boris Rabusseau)
Matériel lumière: Action Light SA
Machinerie: Cinetec
Shoot Arri Laser >35mm: Swiss Effects AG (Zurich)
Labo film Schwarz Film AG
Tournage en Viper, format Filmstream (4:4:4)
Objectif: allusion à une séquence de Fight Club, mais en un plan-séquence de 50 secondes. Retrouver les teintes, les éclairages et l'ambiance générale de la séquence originale.
Camera Thomson Viper: BVS Video, Geneve
Post-prod 4:4:4 real time sur Matrix: Free Productions (Boris Rabusseau)
Matériel lumière: Action Light SA
Machinerie: Cinetec
Shoot Arri Laser >35mm: Swiss Effects AG (Zurich)
Labo film Schwarz Film AG
Clip incha'Allah
Tournage d'un clip destiné au
Moyen-Orient et au Maghreb.
Objectif: inviter les jeunes arabophones à se méfier des intégrismes.
Artiste et réalisateur: E-lam Jay
Production: MD Prod, Genève
Post prod: Free Productions, Genève sur Matrix & BVS Video
Caméra: HD 750 (Sébastien Moret, Genève)
Objectif: inviter les jeunes arabophones à se méfier des intégrismes.
Artiste et réalisateur: E-lam Jay
Production: MD Prod, Genève
Post prod: Free Productions, Genève sur Matrix & BVS Video
Caméra: HD 750 (Sébastien Moret, Genève)
Concept pour trouver les décors: permettre un
passage de la nuit au jour, du fond d'une grotte au plein
ciel.
Tourné dans 3 décors très spectaculaires, dont deux naturels:
- La source de la Loue (une des sources du Doubs, dans le Jura français)
- La Pointe percée, massif des Aravis
Atteindre le décor du massif des Aravis a été une véritable aventure. Monter la grue (300 kilos). Deux heures d'ascension pour arriver au lieu choisi pour les plans. Descente de nuit, après le coucher du soleil (et un bon repas au refuge du Gramusset).
Résultat: tournage de nuit source de la Loue
Tourné dans 3 décors très spectaculaires, dont deux naturels:
- La source de la Loue (une des sources du Doubs, dans le Jura français)
- La Pointe percée, massif des Aravis
Atteindre le décor du massif des Aravis a été une véritable aventure. Monter la grue (300 kilos). Deux heures d'ascension pour arriver au lieu choisi pour les plans. Descente de nuit, après le coucher du soleil (et un bon repas au refuge du Gramusset).
Résultat: tournage de nuit source de la Loue
Pub Loterie Romande
Pub TV, tournage en HD Cinealta
900
Production: amata, Genève
Production: amata, Genève
Essentiellement des "talking heads", qui subissent
une avalanche de billet et de lingots.
Le dispositif permet aux bandes noires 16/9 de monter et descendre pour engloutir les comédiens.
Eclairage: essentiellement doux, 3/4 face, avec une décro diffuse (pour qu'elle soit large et douce, surtout sur Hélène Hudovernic, la comédienne).
Fill: généreux sur elle, plus discret sur lui, pour acentuer les contrastes.
L'envers du décor. Le poly au fond, éclairé par la "Blonde" au premier plan, crée la décro douce sur la partie gauche du visage des acteurs.
Lambert Bastar, essai lumière. La gélatine qui colore le fond est assortie à ses vêtements et lourdement recouverte de ND pour que le fond n'attire pas l'attention.
Hélène, entre les répétitions.
Le dispositif permet aux bandes noires 16/9 de monter et descendre pour engloutir les comédiens.
Eclairage: essentiellement doux, 3/4 face, avec une décro diffuse (pour qu'elle soit large et douce, surtout sur Hélène Hudovernic, la comédienne).
Fill: généreux sur elle, plus discret sur lui, pour acentuer les contrastes.
L'envers du décor. Le poly au fond, éclairé par la "Blonde" au premier plan, crée la décro douce sur la partie gauche du visage des acteurs.
Lambert Bastar, essai lumière. La gélatine qui colore le fond est assortie à ses vêtements et lourdement recouverte de ND pour que le fond n'attire pas l'attention.
Hélène, entre les répétitions.
Meilleure Photo aux MTV Awards: Broken Dreams de Green Day
Un clip très travaillé remporte
le prix de "la meilleure photo pour un clip video" aux 22e MTV
Awards.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams, de Green Day a été nominé dans 8 catégories.
C'est Samuel Bayer, qui a aussi réalisé le clip, qui remporte la récompense.
Extrait d'un article pour le magazine Kodak:
"Bayer spent two days shooting projection plates at locations in downtown Los Angeles, the desert outside of Palmdale, and in Las Vegas. The performance portion was filmed over a day and a half on a stage at the Delta hanger at LAX Airport. Bayer wanted a soundstage large enough to provide sufficient distance between the screen and projector.
"In this modern age, I thought using rear screen
projection would be really beautiful," says Bayer. "It is not greenscreen, and
there is no compositing. Every shot of them walking was done on a treadmill.
They never went outside. I like the illusion it creates. There is surreal
quality to the video because it isn't quite
real."
Le clip se trouve ici
Le clip se trouve ici
Interviews pour l'ONU au Guatemala et au Costa Rica
Production: Tlaloc Films,
Genève.
Caméra HDV de Sony.
Interviews de responsables agissant à tous les échelons pour les Droits Humains.
Caméra HDV de Sony.
Interviews de responsables agissant à tous les échelons pour les Droits Humains.
Très peu de matériel, principalement des
réflecteurs de type Lite Disc de Photoflex - un argenté et un
doré.
L'expérience a prouvé que ce matériel très léger (et discret, un impératif dans ces pays... sensibles) était suffisant dans presque tous les cas pour éclairer à la fois le visage et le fond.
Le truc était de sélectionner un fond intéressant, de reculer la caméra au maximum, et de modeler le visage avec la lumière en fonction de la physionomie des intervenants (latéral pour visages ronds, pénombre douce pour les visages marqués, etc.).
Réglages caméra: skin detail ON, skin level detail LOW, gamme skin detail HIGH (tons de peau englobant les visages mats des personnes interviewées), gamma cine augmentant les détails dans les noirs.
Autre réglage utile dans ces pays à forts contrastes lumineux: un tassement des surexpositions, pour faire apparaître des détails fins dans les zones "cramées".
J'ai utilisé les ND de la caméra pour réduire au maximum la profondeur de champ, ce qui découpe harmonieusement les visages sur un fond flou. Qui a dit que c'était impossible en DV?
Malgré quelque défauts mineurs, cette caméra est très pratique et a visiblement été conçue pour permettre un contrôle fin de l'image. Je la recommande chaudement.
L'expérience a prouvé que ce matériel très léger (et discret, un impératif dans ces pays... sensibles) était suffisant dans presque tous les cas pour éclairer à la fois le visage et le fond.
Le truc était de sélectionner un fond intéressant, de reculer la caméra au maximum, et de modeler le visage avec la lumière en fonction de la physionomie des intervenants (latéral pour visages ronds, pénombre douce pour les visages marqués, etc.).
Réglages caméra: skin detail ON, skin level detail LOW, gamme skin detail HIGH (tons de peau englobant les visages mats des personnes interviewées), gamma cine augmentant les détails dans les noirs.
Autre réglage utile dans ces pays à forts contrastes lumineux: un tassement des surexpositions, pour faire apparaître des détails fins dans les zones "cramées".
J'ai utilisé les ND de la caméra pour réduire au maximum la profondeur de champ, ce qui découpe harmonieusement les visages sur un fond flou. Qui a dit que c'était impossible en DV?
Malgré quelque défauts mineurs, cette caméra est très pratique et a visiblement été conçue pour permettre un contrôle fin de l'image. Je la recommande chaudement.
Un joli prix pour La Limace
Premier court-métrage francophone
tourné en Viper au format Filmstream, La Limace vient de décrocher un
prix prestigieux au 58e Festival International du Film de
Locarno.
Les deux réalisateurs Anthony Vouardoux et
Tania Zambrano-Ovalle ont remporté le Léopard d'Argent (Prix Kodak) du
meilleur court. Une belle récompense pour avoir osé essuyer les
plâtres du nouveau système de cinéma digital. Dommage que Domaine
Privé n'aie rien obtenu, mais les voies des jurys sont
impénétrables.
Pubs Nespresso 2005: suite à Hawaii
Travellings sur les pentes d'un volcan, au
milieu de caféiers.
Le soleil hawaiien étant capricieux, je prends mes précautions pour maîtriser les contrastes (negative fill, diffusion, HMI pour rayons de soleil additionnels).
Remarquez par exemple la toile double tendue au-dessus du silk sur le cadre 6m x 6m, pour couper l'influence trop forte de la lumière du ciel sur les caféiers au premier plan.
La Fisher est montée sur sur un "32 roues". Un bricolage à 900 dollars que les Américains utilisent beaucoup. La fluidité du travelling est parfaite, même sur ce terrain accidenté plein de roches volcaniques. Notre chef machino, Steed, en a vu d'autres.
Deux films tournés avec la Viper en compétition à Locarno 2005
Le 58e Festival International de Locarno a
sélectionné en Compétition Officielle les deux films que j'ai
tourné avec mon équipe en format Filmstream avec la caméra Viper
de Thomson Technicolor. LA LIMACE d'Antony Vouardoux et Tania Zambrano, et
DOMAINE PRIVE de Rafael Wolf seront projetés le 12 août 2005 sur
l'écran géant de la Sala.
Ces deux films, qui furent les deux premiers à
être tournés en Suisse (avant même que la France n'adopte le
système), sont projetés en 35mm
scope.
La qualité finale de l'image (granularité, contrastes, couleurs) est carrément étonnante. Impossible de deviner que l'original est numérique.
Sur le tournage de La Limace, fin 2004.
La qualité finale de l'image (granularité, contrastes, couleurs) est carrément étonnante. Impossible de deviner que l'original est numérique.
Sur le tournage de La Limace, fin 2004.
Procter 2005: tournage en 4:4:4 non compressé
Tournage en Viper
Filmstream
Objectif: obtenir une résolution maximale pour
post-prod intensive (zooms, animations, color
key).
Thomson Grass Valley Viper Camera: BVS Video, Genève
Production: Free Prod, Genève
Plateau: Studio 4 (TSR Genève)
Post-prod: Demain La Lune & Free Prod (Boris Rabusseau)
Photo prise avec mon téléphone mobile... Le personnage se déplacera dans un décor stylisé et animé tout blanc. La lumière est donc enveloppante, mais les chimeras en contre-jour léger donnent du relief au visage. Pas de gélatines (même pas de cosmetic highlight). Je ne publie pas d'autres photos par respect du client, qui souhaite une certaine confidentialité.
Thomson Grass Valley Viper Camera: BVS Video, Genève
Production: Free Prod, Genève
Plateau: Studio 4 (TSR Genève)
Post-prod: Demain La Lune & Free Prod (Boris Rabusseau)
Photo prise avec mon téléphone mobile... Le personnage se déplacera dans un décor stylisé et animé tout blanc. La lumière est donc enveloppante, mais les chimeras en contre-jour léger donnent du relief au visage. Pas de gélatines (même pas de cosmetic highlight). Je ne publie pas d'autres photos par respect du client, qui souhaite une certaine confidentialité.
Pubs Nespresso 2005
Nouvelle édition des pubs
Nespresso.
Production: Pixit SA, Lausanne, Suisse
Production: Pixit SA, Lausanne, Suisse
Comme l'année dernière, nous avons
utilisé beaucoup de grands diffuseurs pour que les reflets
révèlents les formes des machines.
Cette année le fond est rouge, ce qui ne va pas avec tous les visages ni toutes les couleurs. J'ai assorti les gélatines au rouge de référence.
Les visages sont principalement éclairés avec des diffuseurs et des réflecteurs (=sources larges), doublement diffusés.
Gels: cosmetic highlight, CTS, straw tint, et quelques petits secrets ;-)
Cette année le fond est rouge, ce qui ne va pas avec tous les visages ni toutes les couleurs. J'ai assorti les gélatines au rouge de référence.
Les visages sont principalement éclairés avec des diffuseurs et des réflecteurs (=sources larges), doublement diffusés.
Gels: cosmetic highlight, CTS, straw tint, et quelques petits secrets ;-)
Le Banquet
Super-16
Réal: Ufuk Emiroglu
Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Genève
Réal: Ufuk Emiroglu
Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Genève
HMI pour les extérieurs (ici celui de face est diffusé et reflété dans l'eau). La diffusion sert à éviter les reflets trops mobiles de l'eau sur les visages.
Beaucoup de "talking heads" dans ce film. Une occasion de faire jouer la lumière sur différents visages.
Petites sources tungstène pour modeler précisément les visages. Deux personnes côte-à-côte sont souvent éclairés de deux façons différentes.
Interview (mai 2005)
Pour ceux que ça intéresse, le
résultat d'une interview que j'ai donnée à un étudiant en
cinéma de CineCreatis, à Nantes.
- Comment avez-vous commencé dans le
métier ?
En montant les films super-8 de mon père, en découvrant le premier Star Wars à 13 ans,
puis en réalisant des séquences d'animation avec des poupées articulées,
puis en aidant des copains de classe à faire leurs films (je trouvais que la lumière pouvait et devait jouer un rôle non négligeable),
puis en fréquentant des festivals (j'ai été jusqu'à Gand en Belgique en 91 pour rencontrer Ray Harryhausen et quelques gourous des effets spéciaux d'ILM),
puis en hantant des plateaux de cinéma dès qu'une occasion se présentait,
et surtout en voyant beaucoup de films (deux par jour pendant quelques années dans un ciné-club de Genève).
- Comment êtes-vous arrivé au poste de chef opérateur ?
Tout le monde autour de moi voulait jouer devant la caméra ou réaliser, ou seulement cadrer. Moi je me trouvais mieux avec les projecteurs, entouré de mon équipe qui comprenait ce que je faisais.
- Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé dans cette voie ?
Ma fascination de la lumière remonte à mes premières couches, puisque mes parents avaient trouvé que la seule façon de me calmer quand j'étais bébé était d'allumer une bougie dans ma chambre. Les ombres dansantes contre les murs me laissaient bouche bée.
La lumière reste un mystère pour moi, même si j'ai l'impression que je sais à peu près comment elle se comporte, et le rôle qu'elle peut jouer pour ancrer des émotions, une atmosphère, un style.
C'est un métier exactement à la croisée des chemins technologiques et artistiques. Comment faire de l'art en utilisant au mieux des outils de plus en plus sophistiqués? Les projecteurs, caméras et la post-production ont aujourd'hui atteint une complexité qui m'oblige à me tenir au courant des innovations dans ces domaines. C'est sans doute mes études scientifiques qui me font apprécier toute cette technologie, parce que je comprends comment ça marche. Mais sur un plateau, c'est l'instinct qui compte. Ce qui reste quand j'ai oublié toutes les formules, et ce qui s'imprimera à l'écran de façon indélébile.
Je viens de la pellicule, et j'ai abordé les nouveaux médias digitaux avec le même respect pour les images. J'apprécie aussi la discipline et la rigueur qui régnaient sur les plateaux "pellicule", et que j'aime partager avec les nouveaux cinéastes de l'ère digitale. Le constat que chaque image compte, que la concentration est primordiale, et que le travail de l'instant va être "gravé dans le marbre" pour longtemps, et que chaque décision est donc cruciale.
- Quel est, selon vous, le « meilleur parcours » pour devenir chef opérateur ?
Un an de congé sabbatique après les études (genre bac +3 ou 4). Cette année est consacrée à travailler sur des plateaux de cinéma professionnels. Puis, si l'envie est là, continuer avec une école de cinéma (Louis Lumière à Paris, Lodz en Pologne, ou encore des stages de quelques mois à l'école de Cuba). L'INSAS est aussi un bon choix, plus généraliste.
- Quelles sont les qualités essentielles qu’un chef opérateur doit avoir ?
- avoir le sens de l'observation (un chef op est une éponge visuelle, où qu'il se trouve) et une bonne mémoire visuelle
- aimer le travail en équipe
- être rapide (avoir le sens pratique)
- avoir assez de cran pour défendre ses options sur un plateau rempli de gens stressés, et assez de tact et de diplomatie pour motiver l'équipe et arrondir les angles
- avoir une solide culture iconographique
- cultiver un goût pour la simplicité (les plus belles choses sont souvent les plus simples, et c'est tout sauf apparent lorsque 40 projecteurs sont allumés alors que 3 suffiraient et seraient plus éloquents)
- ne pas avoir peur de la solitude (les responsabilités d'un chef op sont énormes, stressantes, et personne ne comprend vraiment son métier sur un plateau). On comprend quand un ingénieur du son fait attendre l'équipe parce que tout le monde entend le bruit qui le dérange. Mais on ne comprend pas ce qui obsède un chef op parce que la lumière est une matière esotérique pour la plupart des hommes, et en particulier pour la plupart des techniciens de cinéma.
- Comment se porte le cinéma Suisse ?
Il est en convalescence, ou encore sous assistance respiratoire, selon les avis.
Le cinéma suisse est subventionné comme un art, pas comme une industrie. D'où le divorce avec le public, qui se voit proposer des films fragiles plutôt que des oeuvres fortes soutenues par des moyens conséquents. Faire un film reste cher, mais peut être très rentable. Il suffit d'y croire pendant quelques années pour amorcer la machine. La sphère économique devrait prendre nos métiers en considération, et les valoriser. Le milieu artistique n'a pas les capacités à soutenir nos métiers.
La Suisse n'aime pas beaucoup le cinéma. Genève donne plus par année à son opéra que la confédération à son cinéma.
On sent quand même de partout un bouillonnement qui promet de belles années de cinéma savoureux et exportable. Je crois beaucoup en la relève, et je dirige d'ailleurs au Festival du Film de Locarno un prix destiné aux réalisateurs suisses les plus prometteurs, le Prix Action Light.
- Est-ce qu’un chef opérateur peut travailler toute l’année en restant en Suisse ?
En tant qu'intermittent, oui. Mais c'est quand même difficile. Nos professions exigent énormément de sacrifices et ne sont pas officiellement reconnues. Une secrétaire de direction gagne plus du double en un an qu'un chef op qui travaille souvent. C'est décourageant pour un jeune qui se destine à ces professions marginales.
- Comment choisissez-vous les films sur lesquels vous travaillez ? Cela dépend-il du scénario, du réalisateur, du genre?
Ca dépend essentiellement du scénar et du réalisateur. Ses qualités humaines, ce qu'il veut transmettre, mais surtout sa volonté de travailler sans relâche à son film, quitte à se remettre souvent en question. J'accorde beaucoup d'importance au travail et à l'exigence personnelle de mes collaborateurs, que ce soit dans mon équipe, ou avec les réalisateurs qui font appel à moi. Je me méfie des réalisateurs qui font table rase du passé. La DV a fait beaucoup de bien en ce sens qu'elle a démocratisé les moyens de faire des films. Mais elle a aussi fait beaucoup de mal parce qu'elle a rendu bon nombre de cinéastes paresseux ("il suffit d'appuyer sur un bouton pour avoir des images"). Faire un film, pour moi, touche presque à quelque chose de sacré. J'ai de la peine à travailler avec des cinéastes qui considèrent les plateaux comme des endroits fun et qui captent des moments au hasard avec une caméra virevoltante, sous prétexte d'"expressivité sans entraves". J'aurai pu devenir un moine cistercien, je suis devenu chef op. Personne n'est parfait.
En montant les films super-8 de mon père, en découvrant le premier Star Wars à 13 ans,
puis en réalisant des séquences d'animation avec des poupées articulées,
puis en aidant des copains de classe à faire leurs films (je trouvais que la lumière pouvait et devait jouer un rôle non négligeable),
puis en fréquentant des festivals (j'ai été jusqu'à Gand en Belgique en 91 pour rencontrer Ray Harryhausen et quelques gourous des effets spéciaux d'ILM),
puis en hantant des plateaux de cinéma dès qu'une occasion se présentait,
et surtout en voyant beaucoup de films (deux par jour pendant quelques années dans un ciné-club de Genève).
- Comment êtes-vous arrivé au poste de chef opérateur ?
Tout le monde autour de moi voulait jouer devant la caméra ou réaliser, ou seulement cadrer. Moi je me trouvais mieux avec les projecteurs, entouré de mon équipe qui comprenait ce que je faisais.
- Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé dans cette voie ?
Ma fascination de la lumière remonte à mes premières couches, puisque mes parents avaient trouvé que la seule façon de me calmer quand j'étais bébé était d'allumer une bougie dans ma chambre. Les ombres dansantes contre les murs me laissaient bouche bée.
La lumière reste un mystère pour moi, même si j'ai l'impression que je sais à peu près comment elle se comporte, et le rôle qu'elle peut jouer pour ancrer des émotions, une atmosphère, un style.
C'est un métier exactement à la croisée des chemins technologiques et artistiques. Comment faire de l'art en utilisant au mieux des outils de plus en plus sophistiqués? Les projecteurs, caméras et la post-production ont aujourd'hui atteint une complexité qui m'oblige à me tenir au courant des innovations dans ces domaines. C'est sans doute mes études scientifiques qui me font apprécier toute cette technologie, parce que je comprends comment ça marche. Mais sur un plateau, c'est l'instinct qui compte. Ce qui reste quand j'ai oublié toutes les formules, et ce qui s'imprimera à l'écran de façon indélébile.
Je viens de la pellicule, et j'ai abordé les nouveaux médias digitaux avec le même respect pour les images. J'apprécie aussi la discipline et la rigueur qui régnaient sur les plateaux "pellicule", et que j'aime partager avec les nouveaux cinéastes de l'ère digitale. Le constat que chaque image compte, que la concentration est primordiale, et que le travail de l'instant va être "gravé dans le marbre" pour longtemps, et que chaque décision est donc cruciale.
- Quel est, selon vous, le « meilleur parcours » pour devenir chef opérateur ?
Un an de congé sabbatique après les études (genre bac +3 ou 4). Cette année est consacrée à travailler sur des plateaux de cinéma professionnels. Puis, si l'envie est là, continuer avec une école de cinéma (Louis Lumière à Paris, Lodz en Pologne, ou encore des stages de quelques mois à l'école de Cuba). L'INSAS est aussi un bon choix, plus généraliste.
- Quelles sont les qualités essentielles qu’un chef opérateur doit avoir ?
- avoir le sens de l'observation (un chef op est une éponge visuelle, où qu'il se trouve) et une bonne mémoire visuelle
- aimer le travail en équipe
- être rapide (avoir le sens pratique)
- avoir assez de cran pour défendre ses options sur un plateau rempli de gens stressés, et assez de tact et de diplomatie pour motiver l'équipe et arrondir les angles
- avoir une solide culture iconographique
- cultiver un goût pour la simplicité (les plus belles choses sont souvent les plus simples, et c'est tout sauf apparent lorsque 40 projecteurs sont allumés alors que 3 suffiraient et seraient plus éloquents)
- ne pas avoir peur de la solitude (les responsabilités d'un chef op sont énormes, stressantes, et personne ne comprend vraiment son métier sur un plateau). On comprend quand un ingénieur du son fait attendre l'équipe parce que tout le monde entend le bruit qui le dérange. Mais on ne comprend pas ce qui obsède un chef op parce que la lumière est une matière esotérique pour la plupart des hommes, et en particulier pour la plupart des techniciens de cinéma.
- Comment se porte le cinéma Suisse ?
Il est en convalescence, ou encore sous assistance respiratoire, selon les avis.
Le cinéma suisse est subventionné comme un art, pas comme une industrie. D'où le divorce avec le public, qui se voit proposer des films fragiles plutôt que des oeuvres fortes soutenues par des moyens conséquents. Faire un film reste cher, mais peut être très rentable. Il suffit d'y croire pendant quelques années pour amorcer la machine. La sphère économique devrait prendre nos métiers en considération, et les valoriser. Le milieu artistique n'a pas les capacités à soutenir nos métiers.
La Suisse n'aime pas beaucoup le cinéma. Genève donne plus par année à son opéra que la confédération à son cinéma.
On sent quand même de partout un bouillonnement qui promet de belles années de cinéma savoureux et exportable. Je crois beaucoup en la relève, et je dirige d'ailleurs au Festival du Film de Locarno un prix destiné aux réalisateurs suisses les plus prometteurs, le Prix Action Light.
- Est-ce qu’un chef opérateur peut travailler toute l’année en restant en Suisse ?
En tant qu'intermittent, oui. Mais c'est quand même difficile. Nos professions exigent énormément de sacrifices et ne sont pas officiellement reconnues. Une secrétaire de direction gagne plus du double en un an qu'un chef op qui travaille souvent. C'est décourageant pour un jeune qui se destine à ces professions marginales.
- Comment choisissez-vous les films sur lesquels vous travaillez ? Cela dépend-il du scénario, du réalisateur, du genre?
Ca dépend essentiellement du scénar et du réalisateur. Ses qualités humaines, ce qu'il veut transmettre, mais surtout sa volonté de travailler sans relâche à son film, quitte à se remettre souvent en question. J'accorde beaucoup d'importance au travail et à l'exigence personnelle de mes collaborateurs, que ce soit dans mon équipe, ou avec les réalisateurs qui font appel à moi. Je me méfie des réalisateurs qui font table rase du passé. La DV a fait beaucoup de bien en ce sens qu'elle a démocratisé les moyens de faire des films. Mais elle a aussi fait beaucoup de mal parce qu'elle a rendu bon nombre de cinéastes paresseux ("il suffit d'appuyer sur un bouton pour avoir des images"). Faire un film, pour moi, touche presque à quelque chose de sacré. J'ai de la peine à travailler avec des cinéastes qui considèrent les plateaux comme des endroits fun et qui captent des moments au hasard avec une caméra virevoltante, sous prétexte d'"expressivité sans entraves". J'aurai pu devenir un moine cistercien, je suis devenu chef op. Personne n'est parfait.
Clip SAHARA pour E-Lam Jay
Tournage de 3 jours en HD (Cinealta 900)
dans une ancienne usine de sucre restaurée, dans la banlieue riche de
Marrakech.
Matériel:
Cinedina / MPS (lumière), Casablanca
Sigma (caméra), Casablanca
Post-prod: Demain La Lune (Boris Rabusseau), Genève.
E-Lam Jay s'est fait connaître au Maroc pour son clip Maurena (que j'avais tourné en 2003), qui est devenu le tube Coca-Cola de l'été 2004.
Cet artiste a mis la barre encore plus haut cette fois-ci. Son clip est produit par une grande chaîne de télévision égyptienne.
L'équipe technique marocaine a été très efficace et d'une grande aide sur ce tournage particulièrement exigeant.
Matériel:
Cinedina / MPS (lumière), Casablanca
Sigma (caméra), Casablanca
Post-prod: Demain La Lune (Boris Rabusseau), Genève.
E-Lam Jay s'est fait connaître au Maroc pour son clip Maurena (que j'avais tourné en 2003), qui est devenu le tube Coca-Cola de l'été 2004.
Cet artiste a mis la barre encore plus haut cette fois-ci. Son clip est produit par une grande chaîne de télévision égyptienne.
L'équipe technique marocaine a été très efficace et d'une grande aide sur ce tournage particulièrement exigeant.
Le clip se passe dans la salle du trône d'une
reine, puis dans les cachots du château, et sous
l'eau.
Le niveau artistique de l'équipe était motivant: le stylisme, les décors, les maquillages, les chorégraphies (et le niveau des danseurs).
D'autres photos suivront bientôt, ainsi que des extraits du clip.
E-Lam Jay en tenue de Romain, avec un danseur pendant une courte pause.
Le niveau artistique de l'équipe était motivant: le stylisme, les décors, les maquillages, les chorégraphies (et le niveau des danseurs).
D'autres photos suivront bientôt, ainsi que des extraits du clip.
E-Lam Jay en tenue de Romain, avec un danseur pendant une courte pause.
UK pioneers digital film network
The world's first digital cinema network
will be established in the UK over the next 18 months.
The UK Film Council has awarded a contract worth
£11.5m to Arts Alliance Digital Cinema (AADC), who will set up the network
of up to 250 screens.
AADC will oversee the selection of cinemas across the UK which will use the digital equipment.
High definition projectors and computer servers will be installed to show mainly British and specialist films.
Most cinemas currently have mechanical projectors but the new network will see up to 250 screens in up to 150 cinemas fitted with digital projectors capable of displaying high definition images.
The new network will double the world's total of digital screens.
Cinemas will be given the film on a portable hard drive and they will then copy the content to a computer server.
Visually lossless
Each film is about 100 gigabytes and has been compressed from an original one terabyte-size file.
Fiona Deans, associate director of AADC, said the compression was visually lossless so no picture degradation will occur.
With digital prints, every cinema will have its own copy
Fionea Deans, AADC
The film will all be encrypted to prevent piracy and each cinema will have an individual key which will unlock the movie.
"People will see the picture quality is a bit clearer with no scratches.
"The picture will look exactly the same as when the print was first made - there is no degradation in quality over time."
Key benefit
The key benefit of the digital network will be an increase in the distribution and screening of British films, documentaries and foreign language films.
"Access to specialised film is currently restricted across the UK," said Pete Buckingham, head of Distribution and Exhibition at the UK Film Council.
"Although a genuine variety of films is available in central London and a few other metropolitan areas, the choice for many outside these areas remains limited, and the Digital Screen Network will improve access for audiences across the UK,"
Digital prints cost less than a traditional 35mm print - giving distributors more flexibility in how they screen films, said Ms Deans.
"It can cost up to £1,500 to make a copy of a print for specialist films. "In the digital world you can make prints for considerably less than that.
"Distributors can then send out prints to more cinemas and prints can stay in cinemas for much longer."
The UK digital network will be the first to employ 2k projectors - which are capable of showing films at resolutions of 2048 * 1080 pixels.
A separate competitive process to determine which cinemas will receive the digital screening technology will conclude in May.
The sheer cost of traditional prints means that some cinemas need to show them twice a day in order to recoup costs.
"Some films need word of mouth and time to build momentum - they don't need to be shown twice a day," explained Ms Deans.
"A cinema will often book a 35mm print in for two weeks - even if the film is a roaring success they cannot hold on to the print because it will have to go to another cinema.
"With digital prints, every cinema will have its own copy."
AADC will oversee the selection of cinemas across the UK which will use the digital equipment.
High definition projectors and computer servers will be installed to show mainly British and specialist films.
Most cinemas currently have mechanical projectors but the new network will see up to 250 screens in up to 150 cinemas fitted with digital projectors capable of displaying high definition images.
The new network will double the world's total of digital screens.
Cinemas will be given the film on a portable hard drive and they will then copy the content to a computer server.
Visually lossless
Each film is about 100 gigabytes and has been compressed from an original one terabyte-size file.
Fiona Deans, associate director of AADC, said the compression was visually lossless so no picture degradation will occur.
With digital prints, every cinema will have its own copy
Fionea Deans, AADC
The film will all be encrypted to prevent piracy and each cinema will have an individual key which will unlock the movie.
"People will see the picture quality is a bit clearer with no scratches.
"The picture will look exactly the same as when the print was first made - there is no degradation in quality over time."
Key benefit
The key benefit of the digital network will be an increase in the distribution and screening of British films, documentaries and foreign language films.
"Access to specialised film is currently restricted across the UK," said Pete Buckingham, head of Distribution and Exhibition at the UK Film Council.
"Although a genuine variety of films is available in central London and a few other metropolitan areas, the choice for many outside these areas remains limited, and the Digital Screen Network will improve access for audiences across the UK,"
Digital prints cost less than a traditional 35mm print - giving distributors more flexibility in how they screen films, said Ms Deans.
"It can cost up to £1,500 to make a copy of a print for specialist films. "In the digital world you can make prints for considerably less than that.
"Distributors can then send out prints to more cinemas and prints can stay in cinemas for much longer."
The UK digital network will be the first to employ 2k projectors - which are capable of showing films at resolutions of 2048 * 1080 pixels.
A separate competitive process to determine which cinemas will receive the digital screening technology will conclude in May.
The sheer cost of traditional prints means that some cinemas need to show them twice a day in order to recoup costs.
"Some films need word of mouth and time to build momentum - they don't need to be shown twice a day," explained Ms Deans.
"A cinema will often book a 35mm print in for two weeks - even if the film is a roaring success they cannot hold on to the print because it will have to go to another cinema.
"With digital prints, every cinema will have its own copy."
Aviator remporte l'Oscar de la meilleure photo
Dommage, il y avait plus intéressant.
Richardson emploie toujours les mêmes recettes. Très joli
résultat, mais l'inspiration fait défaut.
Robert Richardson a gagné la
statuette. Interview dans les coulisses visible sur le site des Oscars
.
Xiaoding Zhao avait plus d'imagination sur le Secret des Poignards Volants.
Xiaoding Zhao avait plus d'imagination sur le Secret des Poignards Volants.
D-Cinema: qu'est-ce que c'est que ce nouveau machin?
35 milliards de couleurs, des images de 25
mètres de base...
Les normes, l'historique de ce qui semble devenir un nouveau standard.
Les normes, l'historique de ce qui semble devenir un nouveau standard.
D-CINEMA
L'appelation D-Cinema recouvre l'ensemble des technologies et des matériels permettant de diffuser un film digital en salle dans des conditions
équivalentes voire supérieures à une projection 35mm. A opposer à l'appelation E-cinema qui regroupe toutes les technologies et matériels vidéo utilisés en salle pour la diffusion de publicités ou de contenus alternatifs (retransmission d'événements, documentaires, programmes TV...)
Les matériels D-cinema doivent répondre à l'ensemble des normes validées par les organismes de normalisation des industries cinématographiques. Les recommandations les plus en vigueur sont celles du DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) qui regroupe les 7 principaux studios américains. (voir DCI : normes).
La seule technologie validée à ce jour en D-Cinema est la technologie DLP cinema.
DCI: recommandations
DCI est une entitée qui regroupe les 7 principaux studios américains et qui a vocation à définir un standard unique pour le cinéma numérique.
DCI a été crée par Disney, MGM, Fox, Paramount, Warner, Sony et Universal.
Ces studios sont convaincus que l'arrivée du numérique apportera de réels avantages à tous les acteurs de l'industrie cinématographique mais également aux spectateurs. Ils sont cependant attentifs à ce que le passge au numérique ne s'éffectue que dans une complète et totale standardisation, compatibilité et interopérabilité des produits et des services.
Les recommandations de DCI porte sur toute la chaine numérique en partant du DSM (Digital Source master) jusqu'à la diffusion en salle.
Parmi les recommandations déjà éditées, on retiendra la norme MJEG 2000 pour les serveurs et la technologie DLP cinema 2K pour les projecteurs.
L'ensemble de ces recommandations sont disponibles sur le site DCI
DLP (Digital Light Processing)
Technologie développée par Texas Instrument.
Cette technologie appelée aussi micro-miroir est basé sur l’utilisation de 3 matrices DMD (Digital Micro-miror Device). Chaque matrice se compose de plus d’un million de petits miroirs d’une dimension de 16 microns. Chaque miroir se comporte comme un interrupteur à lumière en pivotant sur un axe et renvoie la lumière d’une lampe soit vers l’écran soit vers un piège à lumière.
DLP Cinema
Le DLP cinema est un développement de la technologie DLP spécialement conçu pour la projection de films en salle de cinéma.
C’est à ce jour la seule technologie permettant la projection d’un film dans des conditions équivalentes au 35mm.
Cette technologie est la seule acceptée par Hollywood pour la projection de films en salle.
Le DLP cinema comporte des spécifications uniques :
L'appelation D-Cinema recouvre l'ensemble des technologies et des matériels permettant de diffuser un film digital en salle dans des conditions
équivalentes voire supérieures à une projection 35mm. A opposer à l'appelation E-cinema qui regroupe toutes les technologies et matériels vidéo utilisés en salle pour la diffusion de publicités ou de contenus alternatifs (retransmission d'événements, documentaires, programmes TV...)
Les matériels D-cinema doivent répondre à l'ensemble des normes validées par les organismes de normalisation des industries cinématographiques. Les recommandations les plus en vigueur sont celles du DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) qui regroupe les 7 principaux studios américains. (voir DCI : normes).
La seule technologie validée à ce jour en D-Cinema est la technologie DLP cinema.
DCI: recommandations
DCI est une entitée qui regroupe les 7 principaux studios américains et qui a vocation à définir un standard unique pour le cinéma numérique.
DCI a été crée par Disney, MGM, Fox, Paramount, Warner, Sony et Universal.
Ces studios sont convaincus que l'arrivée du numérique apportera de réels avantages à tous les acteurs de l'industrie cinématographique mais également aux spectateurs. Ils sont cependant attentifs à ce que le passge au numérique ne s'éffectue que dans une complète et totale standardisation, compatibilité et interopérabilité des produits et des services.
Les recommandations de DCI porte sur toute la chaine numérique en partant du DSM (Digital Source master) jusqu'à la diffusion en salle.
Parmi les recommandations déjà éditées, on retiendra la norme MJEG 2000 pour les serveurs et la technologie DLP cinema 2K pour les projecteurs.
L'ensemble de ces recommandations sont disponibles sur le site DCI
DLP (Digital Light Processing)
Technologie développée par Texas Instrument.
Cette technologie appelée aussi micro-miroir est basé sur l’utilisation de 3 matrices DMD (Digital Micro-miror Device). Chaque matrice se compose de plus d’un million de petits miroirs d’une dimension de 16 microns. Chaque miroir se comporte comme un interrupteur à lumière en pivotant sur un axe et renvoie la lumière d’une lampe soit vers l’écran soit vers un piège à lumière.
DLP Cinema
Le DLP cinema est un développement de la technologie DLP spécialement conçu pour la projection de films en salle de cinéma.
C’est à ce jour la seule technologie permettant la projection d’un film dans des conditions équivalentes au 35mm.
Cette technologie est la seule acceptée par Hollywood pour la projection de films en salle.
Le DLP cinema comporte des spécifications uniques :
▪
Cine BlackTM : renforcement et stabilité du niveau des
noirs.
▪
Cine PaletteTM : correction couleurs en 7 points - colorimétrie identique
au film (35 milliards de couleurs)
▪
Cine LinkTM : management de l'image et incrustation directe de signes dans
l'image (sous-titres)
▪
Cine CanvasTM : liaison encryptée jusque dans la tête numérique
du projecteur.
Projecteurs
D-Cinema
Projecteurs de cinéma numérique utilisant la technologie DLP cinema.
3 constructeurs disposent aujourd'hui de la licence d'utilisation de la technologie DLP cinema
1 européen : Barco
1 américain : Christie
1 japonais : Nec
Ces projecteurs sont capables de produire des images jusqu'à 25 mètres de base dans une résolution de 2K.
____
tiré du site http://www.digital-cinema.org/dcinema
Projecteurs de cinéma numérique utilisant la technologie DLP cinema.
3 constructeurs disposent aujourd'hui de la licence d'utilisation de la technologie DLP cinema
1 européen : Barco
1 américain : Christie
1 japonais : Nec
Ces projecteurs sont capables de produire des images jusqu'à 25 mètres de base dans une résolution de 2K.
____
tiré du site http://www.digital-cinema.org/dcinema
Projecteurs digitaux dans les cinémas: comment ça fonctionne
L'exemple de Kinepolis, une chaîne
belge de multiplexes qui équipe une partie de ses salles avec des
projecteurs 2K.
Le prochain Bergman, "Sarabande", y sera projeté sur ce support.
Le prochain Bergman, "Sarabande", y sera projeté sur ce support.
L'histoire commence par une percée en
micro-ingénierie et se termine par la meilleure qualité d'image
présente sur le marché.
1. Le semi-conducteur qui a tout changé
2. Digital Light Processing I : L'image en demi-teintes
3. Digital Light Processing II : Adjonction de la couleur
4. Système de projections à 3 puces DLPTM
1. Le semi-conducteur qui a tout changé
Au cœur de chaque système de projection DLPTM, on trouve un semi-conducteur optique connu sous le nom de dispositif à micromiroir numérique, ou puce DMD, inventée par le Dr. Larry Hornbeck de Texas Instruments en 1987.
La puce DMD est sans doute l'interrupteur lumineux le plus sophistiqué au monde. Il comporte un réseau rectangulaire de miroirs microscopiques articulés dont le nombre peut atteindre 1,3 million d'exemplaires ; chacun de ces micromiroirs mesure moins d'un cinquième de la largeur d'un cheveu humain et correspond à un pixel d'une image projetée.
Lorsqu'un puce DMD est coordonnée avec un signal vidéo ou graphique numérique, une source de lumière et une lentille de projection, ses miroirs peuvent refléter une image entièrement numérique sur un écran ou une autre surface. Le DMD et l'électronique sophistiquée qui l'entourent sont ce que nous appelons la technologie Digital Light ProcessingTM.
2. Digital Light Processing I : L'image en demi-teintes
Les micromiroirs d'un panneau DMD sont montés sur de minuscules charnières qui leur permettent de basculer soit en direction de la source lumineuse d'un système de projection DLPTM (MARCHE) soit du côté opposé à source (ARRET), créant ainsi un pixel lumineux ou sombre sur la surface de projection.
Le code d'image à train binaire qui pénètre dans le semi-conducteur donne l'ordre à chaque mémoire de s'enclencher et de se déclencher jusqu'à plusieurs milliers de fois par seconde. Lorsqu'un miroir est enclenché plus souvent qu'il n'est déclenché, il reflète un pixel gris clair ; un miroir qui est déclenché avec une plus grande fréquence reflète un pixel gris foncé.
De cette manière, les miroirs d'un système de projection DLPTM peuvent refléter des pixels dans 1.024 nuances maximum de gris pour convertir le signal vidéo ou graphique qui pénètre dans le DMD en une image aux demi-teintes très détaillées.
3. Digital Light Processing II : Adjonction de la couleur
La lumière blanche générée par la lampe d'un système de projection DLPTM traverse un disque de couleur lors de son trajet en direction de la surface du panneau DMD. Ce disque de couleur filtre la lumière pour donner du rouge, du vert et du bleu ; à partir de là, un système de projection DLPTM à puce unique peut créer un minimum de 16,7 millions de couleurs. Le système à 3 puces DMD que l'on trouve dans les système de projection DLP CinémaTM est capable de produire non moins de 35 trillions de couleurs.
Les états actifs et inactifs de chaque micromiroir sont coordonnés avec ces trois modules de couleur de base. Par exemple, le miroir responsable pour la projection d'un pixel pourpre reflètera uniquement la lumière rouge et la lumière bleue vers la surface de projection ; nos yeux mélangeront ensuite ces éclairs à l'alternance rapide de manière à voir la nuance recherchée d'une image projetée.
4. Système de projections à 3 puces DLPTM
Les projecteurs prévus pour une technologie DLPTM pour une qualité d'image très élevée ou pour des applications très lumineuses comme le cinéma comptent sur une configuration à 3 puces DMD pour produire des images stupéfiantes, qu'elles soient mobiles ou immobiles.
Dans un système à 3 puces, la lumière blanche générée par la lampe traverse un prisme qui la divise en rouge, vert et bleu. Chaque puce DMD est dédiée à l'une de ces trois couleurs, la lumière colorée qui est reflétée par chaque micromiroir est combinée ensuite et traverse une lentille de projection de manière à former un pixel unique dans l'image.
1. Le semi-conducteur qui a tout changé
2. Digital Light Processing I : L'image en demi-teintes
3. Digital Light Processing II : Adjonction de la couleur
4. Système de projections à 3 puces DLPTM
1. Le semi-conducteur qui a tout changé
Au cœur de chaque système de projection DLPTM, on trouve un semi-conducteur optique connu sous le nom de dispositif à micromiroir numérique, ou puce DMD, inventée par le Dr. Larry Hornbeck de Texas Instruments en 1987.
La puce DMD est sans doute l'interrupteur lumineux le plus sophistiqué au monde. Il comporte un réseau rectangulaire de miroirs microscopiques articulés dont le nombre peut atteindre 1,3 million d'exemplaires ; chacun de ces micromiroirs mesure moins d'un cinquième de la largeur d'un cheveu humain et correspond à un pixel d'une image projetée.
Lorsqu'un puce DMD est coordonnée avec un signal vidéo ou graphique numérique, une source de lumière et une lentille de projection, ses miroirs peuvent refléter une image entièrement numérique sur un écran ou une autre surface. Le DMD et l'électronique sophistiquée qui l'entourent sont ce que nous appelons la technologie Digital Light ProcessingTM.
2. Digital Light Processing I : L'image en demi-teintes
Les micromiroirs d'un panneau DMD sont montés sur de minuscules charnières qui leur permettent de basculer soit en direction de la source lumineuse d'un système de projection DLPTM (MARCHE) soit du côté opposé à source (ARRET), créant ainsi un pixel lumineux ou sombre sur la surface de projection.
Le code d'image à train binaire qui pénètre dans le semi-conducteur donne l'ordre à chaque mémoire de s'enclencher et de se déclencher jusqu'à plusieurs milliers de fois par seconde. Lorsqu'un miroir est enclenché plus souvent qu'il n'est déclenché, il reflète un pixel gris clair ; un miroir qui est déclenché avec une plus grande fréquence reflète un pixel gris foncé.
De cette manière, les miroirs d'un système de projection DLPTM peuvent refléter des pixels dans 1.024 nuances maximum de gris pour convertir le signal vidéo ou graphique qui pénètre dans le DMD en une image aux demi-teintes très détaillées.
3. Digital Light Processing II : Adjonction de la couleur
La lumière blanche générée par la lampe d'un système de projection DLPTM traverse un disque de couleur lors de son trajet en direction de la surface du panneau DMD. Ce disque de couleur filtre la lumière pour donner du rouge, du vert et du bleu ; à partir de là, un système de projection DLPTM à puce unique peut créer un minimum de 16,7 millions de couleurs. Le système à 3 puces DMD que l'on trouve dans les système de projection DLP CinémaTM est capable de produire non moins de 35 trillions de couleurs.
Les états actifs et inactifs de chaque micromiroir sont coordonnés avec ces trois modules de couleur de base. Par exemple, le miroir responsable pour la projection d'un pixel pourpre reflètera uniquement la lumière rouge et la lumière bleue vers la surface de projection ; nos yeux mélangeront ensuite ces éclairs à l'alternance rapide de manière à voir la nuance recherchée d'une image projetée.
4. Système de projections à 3 puces DLPTM
Les projecteurs prévus pour une technologie DLPTM pour une qualité d'image très élevée ou pour des applications très lumineuses comme le cinéma comptent sur une configuration à 3 puces DMD pour produire des images stupéfiantes, qu'elles soient mobiles ou immobiles.
Dans un système à 3 puces, la lumière blanche générée par la lampe traverse un prisme qui la divise en rouge, vert et bleu. Chaque puce DMD est dédiée à l'une de ces trois couleurs, la lumière colorée qui est reflétée par chaque micromiroir est combinée ensuite et traverse une lentille de projection de manière à former un pixel unique dans l'image.
Tournage d'un film en scope filmé en VIPER
Domaine Privé de Rafael Wolf a
bénéficié d'un tournage en format FilmStream (4:4:4 non
compressé).
Les résultats sont très convaincants, et ce format s'impose comme une alternative sérieuse au tournage en pellicule.
Les résultats sont très convaincants, et ce format s'impose comme une alternative sérieuse au tournage en pellicule.
Les leçons de ce tournage se trouvent
dans la rubrique Tournages Récents de ce blog.
Moyen-métrage tourné en VIPER au format 2.35
DOMAINE PRIVE de Rafael Wolf a
été tourné avec le nouveau format FilmStream 4:4:4 sans aucune
compression.
La VIPER de Thomson / Technicolor a été soumise à divers traitements de chocs sur ce tournage, pour éprouver les avantages et les désavantages de la caméra et du format.
Matériel VIPER: DigitOne, Bologne, Italie
Backup et post-prod 4:4:4 temps réel : sur MATRIX chez Free Prod, Genève.
La VIPER de Thomson / Technicolor a été soumise à divers traitements de chocs sur ce tournage, pour éprouver les avantages et les désavantages de la caméra et du format.
Matériel VIPER: DigitOne, Bologne, Italie
Backup et post-prod 4:4:4 temps réel : sur MATRIX chez Free Prod, Genève.
Le précédent court-métrage
tourné ici en VIPER nous a appris beaucoup de choses sur la logique du
tournage (sur le plateau), la logistique des backups, et la
post-production.
Sur ce film, nous avons utilisé la VIPER en diverses configurations rencontrées habituellement sur les plateaux de fiction:
- sur pied, entièrement accessoirisée façon 35mm, avec des optiques lourdes
- à l'épaule, en mode plus léger, avec des optiques en général fixes
- sur steadicam, avec des optiques fixes, et avec une connectique souple (2 câbles SDI légers au lieu du câble semi-rigide habituel)
Le seul problème rencontré a été, en mode steadicam, que le signal émis par la caméra sur deux câbles SDI n'arrivait pas toujours de manière synchronisée à l'ordinateur. Il existe un moyen simple de remédier à ce problème, c'est de "re-clocker" le signal avant qu'il n'entre dans l'ordinateur.
En règle générale, le maillon faible de la VIPER n'est pas dans la caméra mais dans la connectique: les câbles SDI standard sont un peu fragiles, mieux vaut éviter de marcher dessus. Et dans la mesure du possible, utilisez des SDI renforcés ou, plus simplement, le câble standard (environ 10mm de diamètre).
Ces câbles peuvent être très longs (quelques dizaines de mètres sans amplificateur de signal à plusieurs centaines de mètres avec amplificateur). Il est donc possible d'éloigner l'unité de capture (l'ordinateur et les disques durs relativement bruyants) du plateau.
Pour ce qui est du son, la caméra est pourvue d'un petit ventilateur qui émet un bruit perceptible. Il est possible de le couper brièvement, ou de blimper la "bouche d'aération" de la caméra. C'est un son régulier, qu'il est possible d'enlever en post-prod.
Ces quelques points de détail mis à part, un tournage en VIPER ressemble à un tournage en pellicule, c'est-à-dire qu'il faut s'imposer une discipline (pour le choix des prises à sauvegarder, pour la systématique des backups, et pour la communication avec l'ingénieur de la vision, qui se trouve généralement à 30 mètres du plateau, et qui doit être tenu au courant de ce qui se passe autour de la caméra).
Les rôles des assistants sont légèrement modifiés. Le premier assistant fait le point et accessoirise la caméra, tandis que le second s'occupe plutôt de la connectique et du lien avec l'ingénieur de la vision. Ce dernier ne peut quitter son poste qu'entre les prises, mais il vaut mieux le laisser en paix et le mettre en rapport avec le second.
Tourner au format FilmStream est un vrai régal. C'est un peu du luxe pour un film qui ne nécessite pas de post-prod spéciale (colorimétrie spécifique et/ou effets spéciaux), mais c'est un réel avantage pour les productions qui seraient de toutes façon passées par un téléciné en 2K (Digital Intermediate). L'économie est de taille, et l'absence de grain du FilmStream facilite le travail digital. Les films standard, sans colo particulière ni effets spéciaux, peuvent se contenter de la HD en 4:2:2. Il est à noter que la VIPER peut aussi fonctionner sous ce mode (VideoStream), et ne nécessite alors plus qu'un câble SDI pour sortir le signal.
Nous avons tourné ce film au format Scope 1:2.4 (c'est le format le plus proche du 1:2.35) avec des lentilles sphériques. La VIPER attribue ses pixels de façon spéciale dans ce mode, ce qui lui permet d'utiliser la pleine résolution pour définir chaque image.
Tourner un film en Scope avec des lentilles sphériques représente un gros avantage par rapport aux lentilles anamorphiques (location des objectifs moins chère et plus courante, profondeur de champ contrôlée, plus vaste gamme d'objectifs).
La qualité des images, la profondeur des informations qu'elles contiennent m'ont surpris. Je conseille vivement cette caméra et ce format aux réalisateurs et producteurs qui souhaitent maîtriser totalement le look de leurs films tout en gardant la qualité de la pellicule (les capteurs de cette caméra "voient" la lumière comme un négatif film, de façon logarithmique).
Je vous tiendrai au courant de la suite des opérations (en particulier du travail d'étalonnage et d'effets spéciaux sur MATRIX).
J'ai été surpris par la qualité de restitution des nuances les plus infimes de la caméra, et en particulier dans les basses lumières.
Nous tournions souvent aux alentours de 2 ou 2.8, et les nuances dans l'obscurité sont encore perceptibles à -4.5 diaphs.
Sur ce film, nous avons utilisé la VIPER en diverses configurations rencontrées habituellement sur les plateaux de fiction:
- sur pied, entièrement accessoirisée façon 35mm, avec des optiques lourdes
- à l'épaule, en mode plus léger, avec des optiques en général fixes
- sur steadicam, avec des optiques fixes, et avec une connectique souple (2 câbles SDI légers au lieu du câble semi-rigide habituel)
Le seul problème rencontré a été, en mode steadicam, que le signal émis par la caméra sur deux câbles SDI n'arrivait pas toujours de manière synchronisée à l'ordinateur. Il existe un moyen simple de remédier à ce problème, c'est de "re-clocker" le signal avant qu'il n'entre dans l'ordinateur.
En règle générale, le maillon faible de la VIPER n'est pas dans la caméra mais dans la connectique: les câbles SDI standard sont un peu fragiles, mieux vaut éviter de marcher dessus. Et dans la mesure du possible, utilisez des SDI renforcés ou, plus simplement, le câble standard (environ 10mm de diamètre).
Ces câbles peuvent être très longs (quelques dizaines de mètres sans amplificateur de signal à plusieurs centaines de mètres avec amplificateur). Il est donc possible d'éloigner l'unité de capture (l'ordinateur et les disques durs relativement bruyants) du plateau.
Pour ce qui est du son, la caméra est pourvue d'un petit ventilateur qui émet un bruit perceptible. Il est possible de le couper brièvement, ou de blimper la "bouche d'aération" de la caméra. C'est un son régulier, qu'il est possible d'enlever en post-prod.
Ces quelques points de détail mis à part, un tournage en VIPER ressemble à un tournage en pellicule, c'est-à-dire qu'il faut s'imposer une discipline (pour le choix des prises à sauvegarder, pour la systématique des backups, et pour la communication avec l'ingénieur de la vision, qui se trouve généralement à 30 mètres du plateau, et qui doit être tenu au courant de ce qui se passe autour de la caméra).
Les rôles des assistants sont légèrement modifiés. Le premier assistant fait le point et accessoirise la caméra, tandis que le second s'occupe plutôt de la connectique et du lien avec l'ingénieur de la vision. Ce dernier ne peut quitter son poste qu'entre les prises, mais il vaut mieux le laisser en paix et le mettre en rapport avec le second.
Tourner au format FilmStream est un vrai régal. C'est un peu du luxe pour un film qui ne nécessite pas de post-prod spéciale (colorimétrie spécifique et/ou effets spéciaux), mais c'est un réel avantage pour les productions qui seraient de toutes façon passées par un téléciné en 2K (Digital Intermediate). L'économie est de taille, et l'absence de grain du FilmStream facilite le travail digital. Les films standard, sans colo particulière ni effets spéciaux, peuvent se contenter de la HD en 4:2:2. Il est à noter que la VIPER peut aussi fonctionner sous ce mode (VideoStream), et ne nécessite alors plus qu'un câble SDI pour sortir le signal.
Nous avons tourné ce film au format Scope 1:2.4 (c'est le format le plus proche du 1:2.35) avec des lentilles sphériques. La VIPER attribue ses pixels de façon spéciale dans ce mode, ce qui lui permet d'utiliser la pleine résolution pour définir chaque image.
Tourner un film en Scope avec des lentilles sphériques représente un gros avantage par rapport aux lentilles anamorphiques (location des objectifs moins chère et plus courante, profondeur de champ contrôlée, plus vaste gamme d'objectifs).
La qualité des images, la profondeur des informations qu'elles contiennent m'ont surpris. Je conseille vivement cette caméra et ce format aux réalisateurs et producteurs qui souhaitent maîtriser totalement le look de leurs films tout en gardant la qualité de la pellicule (les capteurs de cette caméra "voient" la lumière comme un négatif film, de façon logarithmique).
Je vous tiendrai au courant de la suite des opérations (en particulier du travail d'étalonnage et d'effets spéciaux sur MATRIX).
J'ai été surpris par la qualité de restitution des nuances les plus infimes de la caméra, et en particulier dans les basses lumières.
Nous tournions souvent aux alentours de 2 ou 2.8, et les nuances dans l'obscurité sont encore perceptibles à -4.5 diaphs.
Compte-rendu d'un tournage en VIPER
Steve Shaw relate les étapes de son
dernier tournage avec la VIPER, au format
FilmStream.
Il est enthousiaste ;-)
Il est enthousiaste ;-)
Silence Becomes
You
The World's first Digital Cinematography Feature Film
A unique feature film project started principle photography late in December 2004, as a co-production deal between companies in the UK and Lithuania.
It's unique as it's the world's first 100% digital cinematography feature film.
A Plan is Formulated
Silence Becomes You is the world's first 100% digital cinematography film captured via the Thomson Viper camera in uncompressed FilmStream RGB 4:4:4 Log 2.37 operation, with all Digital Intermediate post production performed via Quantel iQ, assisted by additional digital image processing systems for 3D and 2D vfx work.
This project came to be because of the forward thinking of MotionFX, one of the UK's premier digital cinematography and digital intermediate post-production operations.
MotionFX invested in digital cinematography and digital intermediate equipment at the very start of its introduction to the market, with the purchase of a Viper camera and iQ DI system in mid 2003.
From that time experimentation, testing and the odd short film and commercial enabled MotionFX to build a unique operational digital film environment, with limited market alternative or peers.
Late in 2004 MotionFX partnered with Digital Praxis, world leading digital film consultancy, with the intention of developing a full digital cinematography feature film, working in partnership with an existing film production company. With the knowledge gained from this initial project a true scene-to-screen digital film production and post-production operation could grow and develop.
A Partnership is Agreed
Dragonfly Films is a production company that was already in discussion with MotionFX, and Stephanie Sinclaire, Director and Writer with Dragonfly Films, had a previous history with Steve Shaw from Digital Praxis as they had both worked on Oscar short listed short film The Dance of Shiva, along with Jack Cardiff who was DoP for The Dance of Shiva, and consulting on Silence Becomes You.
With an interesting script already written, and time spent on treatment, Silence Becomes You was an obvious first choice for testing and proving the concept of scene-to-screen digital film.
The script was ideally suited to a first digital cinematography project as it's a physiological thriller based around a rambling old manor house as the main location. This made the use of digital cinematography an easier option, as the main restriction with its use at present is wider mobility, with the camera being tethered to its uncompressed disc based recording medium.
However, with Flash memory based recording close on the horizon in the form of camera packs, the time was right for a leap of faith to prove the basic technology and workflows in readiness for a sea-change in film production and post-production.
An agreement was reached where MotionFX would become co-producers for Dragonfly Films, enabling MotionFX and Digital Praxis to provide the guarantees necessary for the technology used in making the film. In this way MotionFX was able to assist in the film's production while taking on all post-production, managing all the digital technology, from scene-to-screen.
Digital Workflow
With agreement's in place the workflow was decided, with some very key additional purchases made by MotionFX, including two additional Viper FilmStream digital cinematography cameras, two additional S.two D.mag DFR Digital Film Recorders with numerous additional D.mag packs and an A.dock backup and archive unit with Adic Scalar 24 LTO2 multiple tape Jukebox.
For production assistance a JVC HD digital film projector was purchased for immediate dailies review, with the intention of data being loaded into the off-line system during dailies review and archive backup.
For post-production there was the purchase of an additional Quantel iQ system for digital intermediate operation, with three Digital Fusion 2D compositing stations, all combined with MotionFX's existing Viper camera, iQ number one, 5D Cyborgs, 3D workstations, etc.
Sister company Marina Studios in Carasco, northern Italy, became responsible for all audio post-production, to be performed in parallel with the on-line editing and DI in their THX certified 7.1 surround sound critical screening room with Barco DP100 2K digital cinema projector, calibrated via Kodak KDM LUTs running directly on the Quantel iQ.
A truly scene-to-screen digital film operation.
Production
The production workflow used two Viper cameras, in uncompressed Log RGB 4:4:4 FilmStream mode, capturing a 2.37 image direct to their respective S.two Digital Film Recorders.
Being able to capture a 2.37 anamorphic image using spherical Zeiss DigiPrime lenses, while using the full resolution of the CCD sensor, is a real benefit of the Viper camera, producing stunning anamorphic images.
The S.two's were housed in MotionFX developed wheeled rigs for ease of mobility when required, complete with batteries and chargers for non-mains powered operation - especially useful for roving shots. A number of different Viper camera looms were used depending on camera requirement. 10m to 40m multi-core for main set work, providing power and image paths, while a longer Dual HD SDI cable was provided for steady-cam and longer roving shots, with the Viper running local battery packs.
An AccuScene colour viewfinder was used on the 'B' camera, with an Astro combined waveform monitor and vectorscope used with the normal B&W viewfinder on 'A' camera. This combination was used for the A camera to enable accurate technical level monitoring for main shots, while the AccuScene viewfinder provides level clip warnings and an image that is camera operator friendly, and therefore ideal for second unit work which requires a more 'un-structured' approach to shooting, often with just a two man team operating at remote locations with a Viper and S.two in the back of a car, with small monitor fed from the S.two's down convert output. This mobility was accomplished by using large 24v dc battery packs capable of 3.5 hour continuous operation, which were also used to provide mains isolation when running on local supply.
A Sony LCD 23" flat panel monitor, mounted in a flight case, was used for on-set monitoring, specifically for the director and DoP, partnered with the Astro waveform monitor for level checking. However, we did have a small technical problem with this monitor and used an Apple LCD display and Black Magic HDlink converter for a couple of days. It was interesting to see the difference, with both monitors having differing benefits.
Specifically, the Sony having built in audio capability and an image that was more appealing to the DoP and Director, with the Apple/HDlink combination being preferred by the technical boys, especially because of its ability to run user defined LUTs, which means that the technical waveform monitoring is performed off of the raw camera signal, while image monitoring for DoP and Director is LUT modified to look closer to the true final image.
The Sony monitor being able to run off 12v & 15.5v dc was also a big help when in remote locations. Something not possible with the Apple & HDlink combination.
It was also very interesting that Arturo Smith, the DoP, often chose to see the un-modified 'green' LOG image as he liked to see the full range being captured to understand the true level of shadow and highlight detail available in the recorded image, while the talent and director preferred an image looking closer to the graded final.
There is work to go here, but the possibilities for better interactive viewing, combined with raw data technical monitoring are obvious.
The 'A' camera signal was technically controlled by Florian Rettich, who monitored image via the Astro for optimal signal levels, as well as controlling the S.two disc recorder via an Apple laptop. Flo, as he obviously became known, is now the worlds first DFT - Digital Film Technician, and will have a film credit as such.
When running both cameras as A and B cameras on-set, both were connected to the monitoring station to enable quick signal checking of both setups.
At other times the two cameras were run as 1st and 2nd unit cameras, shooting independently.
The S.two systems can also provide calibrated LUTs to show viewable images balanced for final projection cinematography, removing the LOG and green cast characteristics of the Viper, although as described above, these LUTs were often disabled to enable the full dynamic range image to be monitored.
For critical beauty shots, where light level wasn't an issue, MotionFX developed optical filters were used to balance the image colour characteristics prior to capture. This is a preferable method for colour balance, but does reduce the camera operation by about a stop, depending on the density of the filter being used, which in turn depends on the colour temperature of the light.
The following images show the difference to these two approaches.
Raw Viper Image
Image with rough grade & print LUT
Viper image shot with MFX filters
Image with rough grade & print LUT
A number of shots also required high speed capture, and we approached this in two ways. For dance and dream sequences we shot with Viper set to capture 60fps progressive, which when played back at 24fps gives a 2.5 times slowdown, which was ideal for these shots, and for true high speed requirements we used the CineSpeed camera from Weinberger running at 500 frames per second. This was especially useful for vfx shots including flames and water, as well as a Mermaid shot in a swimming pool. We also shot at 30fps for minor slow motion effects when played back at 24fps.
To help with camera depth of focus, ND filters were also employed to enable the cameras to run as wide open as possible, although there was a discussion with the focus pullers, Uli Schmidt and Christine Wagner, about the preferred T-stop position for optimum focus. Their preference being a maximum of T-1.8 for sharpness, although the rest of us preferred higher values for depth of field, feeling the focus pullers only wanted to make their job easier ;-)
Audio was recorded by Clive Copland on a DAT recorder, which was also connected directly to the S.two DFRs to provide in-sync audio with the images, with the audio being contained within the image dpx file header. This meant that when reviewing shots and loading into the off-line system the audio was always immediately available and always in-sync.
Timecode was also provided from the audio deck to maintain locked reference between the master DAT audio and digital images. This worked like a dream, even when shooting simultaneous two cameras on the same shot.
Each evening the days rushes were viewed as dailies via the JVC HD digital projector, providing immediate feedback on the day's shooting, with the playback also being used to feed images to the off-line system, being loaded in real-time via its HD compression codecs.
However, one over-looked problem was that with no Flex file being generated automatically from the S.two systems this automatic feed to the off-line system didn't really work, so a separate digitising station was set-up for manual data loading and shot logging via a third S.two DFR. This worked very well, but S.two are now very aware of the batch-loading requirement and we have fingers crossed for a Flex file generation capability, or alternative batch load process, very soon.
After data capture into the off-line system uncompressed feeds were backed-up to the Adic LTO2 tape archive Jukebox via S.two's A.Dock backup system. The D.mags were then available for re-use for the next day's shooting.
The Adic LTO2 system generated two cloned tapes; a usable copy and safety, with checksum verification to ensure 100% accurate dupes of the original data.
Time wise, digitisation to the off-line system was real-time with each D.mag recording approximately 35 minutes of material, although manual logging added to the time taken. The archive function took around 400 minutes per D.mag to generate the main and safety backups, which is 200 minutes more than it should be and was due to the two tape sets not being made simultaneously by the Adic, but being done sequentially due to present limitations with the A.dock software. This will soon be sorted I'm told, as we had Steve Roach and Mike Morrison from S.two come over and visit us on-set to see our workflow.
As an aside, discussions with the bonding company were not the issue many may have expected, as in reality the safety measures standard with such digital cinematography means that possible data losses are very limited, with a single half hour S.two magazine the realistic worst case loss based on a catastrophic failure (someone dropping the magazine into a river, or some such). In reality, a lot less worrying than a lab failure while processing 35mm.
The use of daily 'dailies' review via digital projection is a major benefit as well, allowing the full production operation to see the progression of the film, while making sure all material is as expected and needed.
Having said that, due to the length of days being worked the dailies review process became intermittent at best, also partly due to the confidence the production team gained with the quality of the images being captured. A very positive endorsement for digital cinematography.
And, combined with on-set monitoring, it enables material selection to be made via informed judgement, reducing the variables for off-line. We can happily delete those takes that are never going to be considered for on-line, such as fluffed lines, missed cues, bad focus pull, etc.
This betters the more traditional celluloid film based dailies approach for all the reasons listed above.
Performing the off-line via compressed HD also helped as the quality was far superior to the normal SD approach used on traditional 35mm film projects.
The two Vipers were also used for simultaneous two camera shoots, both locked to timecode from the audio deck for synchronised recording. This was another first, and worked flawlessly.
All together, a far slicker approach to cinematographic production.
And just to complete the list of firsts the Viper was also used underwater to shoot part of a dream sequence with a mermaid swimming underwater. A splash-pack was used to perform this sequence, with the dual-link output and power being connected via waterproof connections.
Problems?
To say there were no problems during the production phase would be a lie, but none were that serious or critical.
Interestingly, it was the more traditional needs for off-line editorial that caused the first production problems.
There had been some initial confusion regarding the off-line workflow, with the kit specification initially being FCP, and then being changed to Avid.
The problem with Avid off-line systems is that they are poor at 24fps operation being SD based, requiring a NTSC 30fps approach using 3-2 pull-up to change frame rate from 24 to 30. This means the final edl is not 100% frame accurate.
The newer systems from Adobe and Apple can directly ingest 24fps HD material, using impressive compression codecs to provide true 24fps editing, with no frame timing issues as with the Avid approach.
The Avid kit was therefore rejected and Adobe offered to supply a Premier Pro system in its place.
However, learning a new editing system from scratch within such a short time-frame is not a practical proposition, and so editorial returned to the first choice of an Apple FCP system.
This editorial confusion was the first major issue for the production and resulted in a 2 week delay in initiating off-line. Luckily this hasn't affected anything long term, as the D.mags from the early days that weren't loaded into the off-line during this 2 week editorial delay were simply re-constituted later in the production for off-line loading.
With all that bleeding-edge technology being utilised for the first time on a major motion picture it's interesting that the biggest problem was related to the more traditional requirements of film making.
The off-line editorial team also provided DVDs of the rushes and the growing edit to enable production to see where additional pick-up and coverage shots were required, also helping with continuity checking.
The problem we had with this was that as FCP on a Mac uses quicktime it was not possible to generate 24fps DVDs, so 3-2 had to be implemented. If we had gone with the Adobe off-line system on a PC we could have generated WM9 24fps clips, which would have been ideal.
This checking of material also highlights an area where a digital approach could further benefit the production operation, and we are now looking at generating a simultaneous lower resolution copy of all material for on-set checking. A small converter that will provide a real-time firewire output from a video tap would be ideal, generating WM9 video clips for example.
The first equipment based issue was caused by bringing the camera equipment into a warm interior environment from the freezing outdoors.
For time related requirements (too many shots, not enough time to do them) there was not enough acclimatisation time given to the camera equipment which resulted in back-focus shifts during shooting, making the image appear slightly soft.
As it happens, these first interior scenes were to form part of a fantasy sequence which was planned for post-production manipulation, so part of our job had been done for us. Lucky, and we allowed more acclimatisation time from that point onwards, as you would for any film camera when moving between a dry low temperature external environment and a humid warm internal one!
It would also be fair to say that the tape based archive operation was not initially as slick as would later be.
The S.two A.dock backup system, working with the dual tape drive Adic LTO2 writer initially worked with only one tape drive, requiring each backup to be done twice, once for on-line use, and the second for safety copy.
This was exasperated by a faulty tape drive within the Adic system, and as this had not been planned for we started to drop behind with archiving, filling up more D.mag disc packs than anticipated.
However, S.two were very supportive and provided an additional backup system while they sorted the various issues. Great support, and we soon caught up with archiving.
We also had an AccuScene viewfinder fail to power-up which was very quickly replaced by the manufacturer.
It's also worth saying that the manufacturers took the opportunity to spend some considerable time on-set seeing their products being used in a live environment to gain first-hand feedback. Their support was much appreciated in this 'bleeding-edge' production.
This included Thomson coming over on-mass to see our workflow and show us a non-working prototype of the soon to be released Venom Flash Pack. Very interesting!
Another problem was to do with the amazing resolution of the capture medium. For example, during the first few days of shooting there were issues with skin textures seen on-screen. The problem was that the face powder being used was showing up on the final image, something not seen when shooting 35mm film. The solution was to use oil based face creams that produced a smoother finish. A fantastic problem to have!
There was a final problem with timecode, in that for reasons not worth going in to the master timecode source was initially re-set to zero hours each day, rather than increasing an hour for each day. This resulted in multiple timecode values existing within some D.mags, something that we will need to be aware of when performing the on-line from the off-line edl. Not a major problem, and something we corrected half way through the 39 day shoot.
It was probably the sound department that had the most issues with the digital film equipment as the fans in the S.two, and to a lesser extend the Viper cameras, are rather noisy when recording low-level dialogue.
The camera fans can be shut down, but this has to be done via the operational menus, and so is not really practical, while the S.two DFR fans cannot presently be shut down at all.
To overcome this the DFR units were positioned away from the set as much as possible, while the camera fans never really caused too much concern.
For the future S.two intend to provide a silent mode for the DFR, which will shut down the fans when the system is in record mode. I'm also hopeful that Thomson will do the same with Viper.
Production Conclusions?
The production phase of the project has shown the validity of digital cinematography, without serious problems being encountered.
The equipment, including Viper cameras, S.two D.mags and operators, worked at minus 14°C without problem, got bounced around in the back of some very rickety old cars for 2nd unit work, was set-up in the middle of a wood in two feet of snow, got hooked to the back of a low-loader for through-the-windscreen two shots, and in all cases performed flawlessly. We ran on 12v & 24v dc, local mains and production generator power, even suffering floating earth problems when on local power, but all without failure or error.
The immediacy of the production workflow was praised by all involved, while the images generated, even before post-production colour correction and viewed via basic LUTs, were classed as stunning by all who saw them.
In total there will be in the order of 25TB of footage recorded, amounting to over 60 D.mags filled throughout the production phase, adding up to a total of over 33 hours of material. A shooting ratio of about 18:1, and the equivalent of 180,000 feet of 35mm. All backed up onto 240 individual LTO2 tapes, 120 per copy.
This is a very good example of the cost benefits of shooting digital cinematography. For any independent film production running a relatively small budget, as with Silence Becomes You, it would be impossible to shoot such an amount of 35mm film. Even with a relatively good lab deal the cost is going to be around 80 pence a foot for the negative film stock, processing and telecine to beta tape for off-line. Film dailies, transportation, risk in transit insurance, etc…, being extra. The likely total makes the traditional approach cost a minimum of £150K to the production company.
Going the digital cinematography route costs an average of £35 per minute of material to match the same result, making a total of £70K. For independent film making this is a significant difference.
And that doesn't take into account the benefits of immediacy, interactivity, short decision-making time scales, full quality dailies, etc, etc.
Our Conclusions!
Digital Cinematography works, and works well. We expected far more problems than we encountered and were amazed by the ease of the production process.
We have ideas on improving the process even further, as outlined above, and when we start our second Digital Cinematography feature in April we will be even slicker. There's no looking back from this point.
And the Saturday night/Sunday morning socialising in Vilnius, which tended to include most of the UK and Lithuanian crew, was just amazing. If you've never been to Vilnius we would recommend it!
Post-Production
Post-Production began during the production phase, with LTO2 tapes being send back to MotionFX's UK operation for vfx and 3D work to begin, and with the off-line editorial being performed on location as described above.
As this is being written we are nearing the end of the production phase, with main post-production just beginning. It will be interesting to see if the fluid workflow attained so far can be maintained through to the end of production, and into full post-production. Experience suggests it can, and we foresee no issues for the on-line, digital intermediate and vfx post-production.
The plan for post-production is very straight forward, with a digital intermediate workflow approach as used for 35mm shot material, scanned into digital.
But, with a digital cinematography approach the workflow is even simpler as the transfer of image data throughout the pipeline is very straightforward.
The off-line edl will be used to autoconform from the archived data tapes, extracting the selected shots into a Quantel iQ via an edl based pull list.
The extraction from the archive tapes will be via a 10TB NAS disc system used as a buffer store working in the background to the main iQ operation via a Gigabit Ethernet network with frame transfer rates close to real time. The beauty of the iQ approach is that we can initiate the post-production vfx and grading work as the material is being ingested; no waiting for the one process to finish before another can begin. This is a major benefit in reducing time scales and keeping costs low.
When the film is fully loaded within the iQ and autoconformed via the off-line edl it will be split-screen checked against the off-line video to ensure no edl errors. Also, at this stage any editorial alterations can be made, based on seeing the edit in real-time on a large projection screen.
The vfx shots will already have been sent to the assist workstations for processing, including the new Digital Fusion systems as well as 5D Cyborgs and Alias Maya 3D, and will be dropped back into the on-line edit as available, replacing the initial background plate loaded during the autoconform. This means we can use the background plate to set-up and grade or pan & scan before the vfx work is complete, simply swapping the shots over while keeping the applied settings. Yet another example of the benefits of our workflow approach using iQ as the hero suite for the DI work.
This work will be performed at MotionFX's headquarters in London, working via a digital projection screening setup to a point where the film is complete except for the full final grade.
The final on-line, with vfx shots correctly placed within the film and a preliminary grade, will then be relocated to Marina Studios in Carasco, northern Italy for the final digital intermediate grade, using Marina's critical digital screening room, and to link with their audio post-production.
You might ask why relocate just for the final grade? The answer is simple. Because we can!
Given the choice of a THX certified 7.1 critical screening room situated on the Italian Riviera, with great beach-side hotels and restaurants, and cheap flights into Genoa, what would you choose?
Marina Studios will also be performing the audio pre-mix and final mix on the project, working from the on-set captured audio and later ADR performed in the UK. With the toys at their disposal the sound will be fantastic, matching the glorious images generated by Stephanie's set design and costumes, as well as Lithuania's amazing scenery, captured via Arturo's digital cinematography.
The final film will fall out post-production before the end of March, complete and finalised. The director's cut will follow, and be available shortly there after. Time scales are easy to compress when all the original digital information is so easily available. You want to make a change - it's made... No way it could be that easy with the traditional film approach. Hunting through reels of negative to find and scan an alternate shot is something you can only do within the off-line process. We can do it on-line too. How cool is that?
Technical crew list
The World's first Digital Cinematography Feature Film
A unique feature film project started principle photography late in December 2004, as a co-production deal between companies in the UK and Lithuania.
It's unique as it's the world's first 100% digital cinematography feature film.
A Plan is Formulated
Silence Becomes You is the world's first 100% digital cinematography film captured via the Thomson Viper camera in uncompressed FilmStream RGB 4:4:4 Log 2.37 operation, with all Digital Intermediate post production performed via Quantel iQ, assisted by additional digital image processing systems for 3D and 2D vfx work.
This project came to be because of the forward thinking of MotionFX, one of the UK's premier digital cinematography and digital intermediate post-production operations.
MotionFX invested in digital cinematography and digital intermediate equipment at the very start of its introduction to the market, with the purchase of a Viper camera and iQ DI system in mid 2003.
From that time experimentation, testing and the odd short film and commercial enabled MotionFX to build a unique operational digital film environment, with limited market alternative or peers.
Late in 2004 MotionFX partnered with Digital Praxis, world leading digital film consultancy, with the intention of developing a full digital cinematography feature film, working in partnership with an existing film production company. With the knowledge gained from this initial project a true scene-to-screen digital film production and post-production operation could grow and develop.
A Partnership is Agreed
Dragonfly Films is a production company that was already in discussion with MotionFX, and Stephanie Sinclaire, Director and Writer with Dragonfly Films, had a previous history with Steve Shaw from Digital Praxis as they had both worked on Oscar short listed short film The Dance of Shiva, along with Jack Cardiff who was DoP for The Dance of Shiva, and consulting on Silence Becomes You.
With an interesting script already written, and time spent on treatment, Silence Becomes You was an obvious first choice for testing and proving the concept of scene-to-screen digital film.
The script was ideally suited to a first digital cinematography project as it's a physiological thriller based around a rambling old manor house as the main location. This made the use of digital cinematography an easier option, as the main restriction with its use at present is wider mobility, with the camera being tethered to its uncompressed disc based recording medium.
However, with Flash memory based recording close on the horizon in the form of camera packs, the time was right for a leap of faith to prove the basic technology and workflows in readiness for a sea-change in film production and post-production.
An agreement was reached where MotionFX would become co-producers for Dragonfly Films, enabling MotionFX and Digital Praxis to provide the guarantees necessary for the technology used in making the film. In this way MotionFX was able to assist in the film's production while taking on all post-production, managing all the digital technology, from scene-to-screen.
Digital Workflow
With agreement's in place the workflow was decided, with some very key additional purchases made by MotionFX, including two additional Viper FilmStream digital cinematography cameras, two additional S.two D.mag DFR Digital Film Recorders with numerous additional D.mag packs and an A.dock backup and archive unit with Adic Scalar 24 LTO2 multiple tape Jukebox.
For production assistance a JVC HD digital film projector was purchased for immediate dailies review, with the intention of data being loaded into the off-line system during dailies review and archive backup.
For post-production there was the purchase of an additional Quantel iQ system for digital intermediate operation, with three Digital Fusion 2D compositing stations, all combined with MotionFX's existing Viper camera, iQ number one, 5D Cyborgs, 3D workstations, etc.
Sister company Marina Studios in Carasco, northern Italy, became responsible for all audio post-production, to be performed in parallel with the on-line editing and DI in their THX certified 7.1 surround sound critical screening room with Barco DP100 2K digital cinema projector, calibrated via Kodak KDM LUTs running directly on the Quantel iQ.
A truly scene-to-screen digital film operation.
Production
The production workflow used two Viper cameras, in uncompressed Log RGB 4:4:4 FilmStream mode, capturing a 2.37 image direct to their respective S.two Digital Film Recorders.
Being able to capture a 2.37 anamorphic image using spherical Zeiss DigiPrime lenses, while using the full resolution of the CCD sensor, is a real benefit of the Viper camera, producing stunning anamorphic images.
The S.two's were housed in MotionFX developed wheeled rigs for ease of mobility when required, complete with batteries and chargers for non-mains powered operation - especially useful for roving shots. A number of different Viper camera looms were used depending on camera requirement. 10m to 40m multi-core for main set work, providing power and image paths, while a longer Dual HD SDI cable was provided for steady-cam and longer roving shots, with the Viper running local battery packs.
An AccuScene colour viewfinder was used on the 'B' camera, with an Astro combined waveform monitor and vectorscope used with the normal B&W viewfinder on 'A' camera. This combination was used for the A camera to enable accurate technical level monitoring for main shots, while the AccuScene viewfinder provides level clip warnings and an image that is camera operator friendly, and therefore ideal for second unit work which requires a more 'un-structured' approach to shooting, often with just a two man team operating at remote locations with a Viper and S.two in the back of a car, with small monitor fed from the S.two's down convert output. This mobility was accomplished by using large 24v dc battery packs capable of 3.5 hour continuous operation, which were also used to provide mains isolation when running on local supply.
A Sony LCD 23" flat panel monitor, mounted in a flight case, was used for on-set monitoring, specifically for the director and DoP, partnered with the Astro waveform monitor for level checking. However, we did have a small technical problem with this monitor and used an Apple LCD display and Black Magic HDlink converter for a couple of days. It was interesting to see the difference, with both monitors having differing benefits.
Specifically, the Sony having built in audio capability and an image that was more appealing to the DoP and Director, with the Apple/HDlink combination being preferred by the technical boys, especially because of its ability to run user defined LUTs, which means that the technical waveform monitoring is performed off of the raw camera signal, while image monitoring for DoP and Director is LUT modified to look closer to the true final image.
The Sony monitor being able to run off 12v & 15.5v dc was also a big help when in remote locations. Something not possible with the Apple & HDlink combination.
It was also very interesting that Arturo Smith, the DoP, often chose to see the un-modified 'green' LOG image as he liked to see the full range being captured to understand the true level of shadow and highlight detail available in the recorded image, while the talent and director preferred an image looking closer to the graded final.
There is work to go here, but the possibilities for better interactive viewing, combined with raw data technical monitoring are obvious.
The 'A' camera signal was technically controlled by Florian Rettich, who monitored image via the Astro for optimal signal levels, as well as controlling the S.two disc recorder via an Apple laptop. Flo, as he obviously became known, is now the worlds first DFT - Digital Film Technician, and will have a film credit as such.
When running both cameras as A and B cameras on-set, both were connected to the monitoring station to enable quick signal checking of both setups.
At other times the two cameras were run as 1st and 2nd unit cameras, shooting independently.
The S.two systems can also provide calibrated LUTs to show viewable images balanced for final projection cinematography, removing the LOG and green cast characteristics of the Viper, although as described above, these LUTs were often disabled to enable the full dynamic range image to be monitored.
For critical beauty shots, where light level wasn't an issue, MotionFX developed optical filters were used to balance the image colour characteristics prior to capture. This is a preferable method for colour balance, but does reduce the camera operation by about a stop, depending on the density of the filter being used, which in turn depends on the colour temperature of the light.
The following images show the difference to these two approaches.
Raw Viper Image
Image with rough grade & print LUT
Viper image shot with MFX filters
Image with rough grade & print LUTA number of shots also required high speed capture, and we approached this in two ways. For dance and dream sequences we shot with Viper set to capture 60fps progressive, which when played back at 24fps gives a 2.5 times slowdown, which was ideal for these shots, and for true high speed requirements we used the CineSpeed camera from Weinberger running at 500 frames per second. This was especially useful for vfx shots including flames and water, as well as a Mermaid shot in a swimming pool. We also shot at 30fps for minor slow motion effects when played back at 24fps.
To help with camera depth of focus, ND filters were also employed to enable the cameras to run as wide open as possible, although there was a discussion with the focus pullers, Uli Schmidt and Christine Wagner, about the preferred T-stop position for optimum focus. Their preference being a maximum of T-1.8 for sharpness, although the rest of us preferred higher values for depth of field, feeling the focus pullers only wanted to make their job easier ;-)
Audio was recorded by Clive Copland on a DAT recorder, which was also connected directly to the S.two DFRs to provide in-sync audio with the images, with the audio being contained within the image dpx file header. This meant that when reviewing shots and loading into the off-line system the audio was always immediately available and always in-sync.
Timecode was also provided from the audio deck to maintain locked reference between the master DAT audio and digital images. This worked like a dream, even when shooting simultaneous two cameras on the same shot.
Each evening the days rushes were viewed as dailies via the JVC HD digital projector, providing immediate feedback on the day's shooting, with the playback also being used to feed images to the off-line system, being loaded in real-time via its HD compression codecs.
However, one over-looked problem was that with no Flex file being generated automatically from the S.two systems this automatic feed to the off-line system didn't really work, so a separate digitising station was set-up for manual data loading and shot logging via a third S.two DFR. This worked very well, but S.two are now very aware of the batch-loading requirement and we have fingers crossed for a Flex file generation capability, or alternative batch load process, very soon.
After data capture into the off-line system uncompressed feeds were backed-up to the Adic LTO2 tape archive Jukebox via S.two's A.Dock backup system. The D.mags were then available for re-use for the next day's shooting.
The Adic LTO2 system generated two cloned tapes; a usable copy and safety, with checksum verification to ensure 100% accurate dupes of the original data.
Time wise, digitisation to the off-line system was real-time with each D.mag recording approximately 35 minutes of material, although manual logging added to the time taken. The archive function took around 400 minutes per D.mag to generate the main and safety backups, which is 200 minutes more than it should be and was due to the two tape sets not being made simultaneously by the Adic, but being done sequentially due to present limitations with the A.dock software. This will soon be sorted I'm told, as we had Steve Roach and Mike Morrison from S.two come over and visit us on-set to see our workflow.
As an aside, discussions with the bonding company were not the issue many may have expected, as in reality the safety measures standard with such digital cinematography means that possible data losses are very limited, with a single half hour S.two magazine the realistic worst case loss based on a catastrophic failure (someone dropping the magazine into a river, or some such). In reality, a lot less worrying than a lab failure while processing 35mm.
The use of daily 'dailies' review via digital projection is a major benefit as well, allowing the full production operation to see the progression of the film, while making sure all material is as expected and needed.
Having said that, due to the length of days being worked the dailies review process became intermittent at best, also partly due to the confidence the production team gained with the quality of the images being captured. A very positive endorsement for digital cinematography.
And, combined with on-set monitoring, it enables material selection to be made via informed judgement, reducing the variables for off-line. We can happily delete those takes that are never going to be considered for on-line, such as fluffed lines, missed cues, bad focus pull, etc.
This betters the more traditional celluloid film based dailies approach for all the reasons listed above.
Performing the off-line via compressed HD also helped as the quality was far superior to the normal SD approach used on traditional 35mm film projects.
The two Vipers were also used for simultaneous two camera shoots, both locked to timecode from the audio deck for synchronised recording. This was another first, and worked flawlessly.
All together, a far slicker approach to cinematographic production.
And just to complete the list of firsts the Viper was also used underwater to shoot part of a dream sequence with a mermaid swimming underwater. A splash-pack was used to perform this sequence, with the dual-link output and power being connected via waterproof connections.
Problems?
To say there were no problems during the production phase would be a lie, but none were that serious or critical.
Interestingly, it was the more traditional needs for off-line editorial that caused the first production problems.
There had been some initial confusion regarding the off-line workflow, with the kit specification initially being FCP, and then being changed to Avid.
The problem with Avid off-line systems is that they are poor at 24fps operation being SD based, requiring a NTSC 30fps approach using 3-2 pull-up to change frame rate from 24 to 30. This means the final edl is not 100% frame accurate.
The newer systems from Adobe and Apple can directly ingest 24fps HD material, using impressive compression codecs to provide true 24fps editing, with no frame timing issues as with the Avid approach.
The Avid kit was therefore rejected and Adobe offered to supply a Premier Pro system in its place.
However, learning a new editing system from scratch within such a short time-frame is not a practical proposition, and so editorial returned to the first choice of an Apple FCP system.
This editorial confusion was the first major issue for the production and resulted in a 2 week delay in initiating off-line. Luckily this hasn't affected anything long term, as the D.mags from the early days that weren't loaded into the off-line during this 2 week editorial delay were simply re-constituted later in the production for off-line loading.
With all that bleeding-edge technology being utilised for the first time on a major motion picture it's interesting that the biggest problem was related to the more traditional requirements of film making.
The off-line editorial team also provided DVDs of the rushes and the growing edit to enable production to see where additional pick-up and coverage shots were required, also helping with continuity checking.
The problem we had with this was that as FCP on a Mac uses quicktime it was not possible to generate 24fps DVDs, so 3-2 had to be implemented. If we had gone with the Adobe off-line system on a PC we could have generated WM9 24fps clips, which would have been ideal.
This checking of material also highlights an area where a digital approach could further benefit the production operation, and we are now looking at generating a simultaneous lower resolution copy of all material for on-set checking. A small converter that will provide a real-time firewire output from a video tap would be ideal, generating WM9 video clips for example.
The first equipment based issue was caused by bringing the camera equipment into a warm interior environment from the freezing outdoors.
For time related requirements (too many shots, not enough time to do them) there was not enough acclimatisation time given to the camera equipment which resulted in back-focus shifts during shooting, making the image appear slightly soft.
As it happens, these first interior scenes were to form part of a fantasy sequence which was planned for post-production manipulation, so part of our job had been done for us. Lucky, and we allowed more acclimatisation time from that point onwards, as you would for any film camera when moving between a dry low temperature external environment and a humid warm internal one!
It would also be fair to say that the tape based archive operation was not initially as slick as would later be.
The S.two A.dock backup system, working with the dual tape drive Adic LTO2 writer initially worked with only one tape drive, requiring each backup to be done twice, once for on-line use, and the second for safety copy.
This was exasperated by a faulty tape drive within the Adic system, and as this had not been planned for we started to drop behind with archiving, filling up more D.mag disc packs than anticipated.
However, S.two were very supportive and provided an additional backup system while they sorted the various issues. Great support, and we soon caught up with archiving.
We also had an AccuScene viewfinder fail to power-up which was very quickly replaced by the manufacturer.
It's also worth saying that the manufacturers took the opportunity to spend some considerable time on-set seeing their products being used in a live environment to gain first-hand feedback. Their support was much appreciated in this 'bleeding-edge' production.
This included Thomson coming over on-mass to see our workflow and show us a non-working prototype of the soon to be released Venom Flash Pack. Very interesting!
Another problem was to do with the amazing resolution of the capture medium. For example, during the first few days of shooting there were issues with skin textures seen on-screen. The problem was that the face powder being used was showing up on the final image, something not seen when shooting 35mm film. The solution was to use oil based face creams that produced a smoother finish. A fantastic problem to have!
There was a final problem with timecode, in that for reasons not worth going in to the master timecode source was initially re-set to zero hours each day, rather than increasing an hour for each day. This resulted in multiple timecode values existing within some D.mags, something that we will need to be aware of when performing the on-line from the off-line edl. Not a major problem, and something we corrected half way through the 39 day shoot.
It was probably the sound department that had the most issues with the digital film equipment as the fans in the S.two, and to a lesser extend the Viper cameras, are rather noisy when recording low-level dialogue.
The camera fans can be shut down, but this has to be done via the operational menus, and so is not really practical, while the S.two DFR fans cannot presently be shut down at all.
To overcome this the DFR units were positioned away from the set as much as possible, while the camera fans never really caused too much concern.
For the future S.two intend to provide a silent mode for the DFR, which will shut down the fans when the system is in record mode. I'm also hopeful that Thomson will do the same with Viper.
Production Conclusions?
The production phase of the project has shown the validity of digital cinematography, without serious problems being encountered.
The equipment, including Viper cameras, S.two D.mags and operators, worked at minus 14°C without problem, got bounced around in the back of some very rickety old cars for 2nd unit work, was set-up in the middle of a wood in two feet of snow, got hooked to the back of a low-loader for through-the-windscreen two shots, and in all cases performed flawlessly. We ran on 12v & 24v dc, local mains and production generator power, even suffering floating earth problems when on local power, but all without failure or error.
The immediacy of the production workflow was praised by all involved, while the images generated, even before post-production colour correction and viewed via basic LUTs, were classed as stunning by all who saw them.
In total there will be in the order of 25TB of footage recorded, amounting to over 60 D.mags filled throughout the production phase, adding up to a total of over 33 hours of material. A shooting ratio of about 18:1, and the equivalent of 180,000 feet of 35mm. All backed up onto 240 individual LTO2 tapes, 120 per copy.
This is a very good example of the cost benefits of shooting digital cinematography. For any independent film production running a relatively small budget, as with Silence Becomes You, it would be impossible to shoot such an amount of 35mm film. Even with a relatively good lab deal the cost is going to be around 80 pence a foot for the negative film stock, processing and telecine to beta tape for off-line. Film dailies, transportation, risk in transit insurance, etc…, being extra. The likely total makes the traditional approach cost a minimum of £150K to the production company.
Going the digital cinematography route costs an average of £35 per minute of material to match the same result, making a total of £70K. For independent film making this is a significant difference.
And that doesn't take into account the benefits of immediacy, interactivity, short decision-making time scales, full quality dailies, etc, etc.
Our Conclusions!
Digital Cinematography works, and works well. We expected far more problems than we encountered and were amazed by the ease of the production process.
We have ideas on improving the process even further, as outlined above, and when we start our second Digital Cinematography feature in April we will be even slicker. There's no looking back from this point.
And the Saturday night/Sunday morning socialising in Vilnius, which tended to include most of the UK and Lithuanian crew, was just amazing. If you've never been to Vilnius we would recommend it!
Post-Production
Post-Production began during the production phase, with LTO2 tapes being send back to MotionFX's UK operation for vfx and 3D work to begin, and with the off-line editorial being performed on location as described above.
As this is being written we are nearing the end of the production phase, with main post-production just beginning. It will be interesting to see if the fluid workflow attained so far can be maintained through to the end of production, and into full post-production. Experience suggests it can, and we foresee no issues for the on-line, digital intermediate and vfx post-production.
The plan for post-production is very straight forward, with a digital intermediate workflow approach as used for 35mm shot material, scanned into digital.
But, with a digital cinematography approach the workflow is even simpler as the transfer of image data throughout the pipeline is very straightforward.
The off-line edl will be used to autoconform from the archived data tapes, extracting the selected shots into a Quantel iQ via an edl based pull list.
The extraction from the archive tapes will be via a 10TB NAS disc system used as a buffer store working in the background to the main iQ operation via a Gigabit Ethernet network with frame transfer rates close to real time. The beauty of the iQ approach is that we can initiate the post-production vfx and grading work as the material is being ingested; no waiting for the one process to finish before another can begin. This is a major benefit in reducing time scales and keeping costs low.
When the film is fully loaded within the iQ and autoconformed via the off-line edl it will be split-screen checked against the off-line video to ensure no edl errors. Also, at this stage any editorial alterations can be made, based on seeing the edit in real-time on a large projection screen.
The vfx shots will already have been sent to the assist workstations for processing, including the new Digital Fusion systems as well as 5D Cyborgs and Alias Maya 3D, and will be dropped back into the on-line edit as available, replacing the initial background plate loaded during the autoconform. This means we can use the background plate to set-up and grade or pan & scan before the vfx work is complete, simply swapping the shots over while keeping the applied settings. Yet another example of the benefits of our workflow approach using iQ as the hero suite for the DI work.
This work will be performed at MotionFX's headquarters in London, working via a digital projection screening setup to a point where the film is complete except for the full final grade.
The final on-line, with vfx shots correctly placed within the film and a preliminary grade, will then be relocated to Marina Studios in Carasco, northern Italy for the final digital intermediate grade, using Marina's critical digital screening room, and to link with their audio post-production.
You might ask why relocate just for the final grade? The answer is simple. Because we can!
Given the choice of a THX certified 7.1 critical screening room situated on the Italian Riviera, with great beach-side hotels and restaurants, and cheap flights into Genoa, what would you choose?
Marina Studios will also be performing the audio pre-mix and final mix on the project, working from the on-set captured audio and later ADR performed in the UK. With the toys at their disposal the sound will be fantastic, matching the glorious images generated by Stephanie's set design and costumes, as well as Lithuania's amazing scenery, captured via Arturo's digital cinematography.
The final film will fall out post-production before the end of March, complete and finalised. The director's cut will follow, and be available shortly there after. Time scales are easy to compress when all the original digital information is so easily available. You want to make a change - it's made... No way it could be that easy with the traditional film approach. Hunting through reels of negative to find and scan an alternate shot is something you can only do within the off-line process. We can do it on-line too. How cool is that?
Technical crew list
• 1st Unit DoP - Arturo
Smith
• Camera Operator - Aldo
Chessari
• Focus Puller - Christine
Wagner
• 2nd Unit DoP - Ross Fall
• Camera Operator - Uli
Schmidt
• Gaffer - Joe Allen
• Digital Film Consultant - Steve
Shaw
• DFT (Digital Film Technician) - Florian
Rettich
• VFX Supervisors - Steve Shaw & David
Bush
• Data Monkey - John
O'Quigley
• 1st ADM (Assistant Data Monkey) - Mike
Morrison
• 2nd ADM - Steve Roach
• Sound Mixer - Clive
Copland
• Boom Operator - Jerome
McCann
So What next for MotionFX?
MotionFX is currently working on three feature film projects, one of which is Silence Becomes You, the other two being more traditional 35mm shot digital intermediate projects.
Specialising in HD & 2K digital cinematography production and digital intermediate post-production (including 2D & 3D vfx work), motion control and THX & Dolby digital audio, MotionFX have a lot to offer the motion picture industry, and more importantly are proving that their technology and workflow works!
As a follow-on to this world first digital film project MotionFX will be holding a selection of workshops and private seminars for DoP's, Directors and Producers who wish to learn more about Digital Cinematography at this level, specifically using the Viper in uncompressed Film Stream mode with iQ based post-production. For more information, please contact MotionFX Group Sales Manager Justin Lanchbury by e-mail on Justin@motionfx.co.uk, or John O'Quigley, Operations Manager, on john@motionfx.co.uk.
Steve Shaw
Digital Praxis Ltd.
www.digitalpraxis.net
steve@digitalpraxis.net
So What next for MotionFX?
MotionFX is currently working on three feature film projects, one of which is Silence Becomes You, the other two being more traditional 35mm shot digital intermediate projects.
Specialising in HD & 2K digital cinematography production and digital intermediate post-production (including 2D & 3D vfx work), motion control and THX & Dolby digital audio, MotionFX have a lot to offer the motion picture industry, and more importantly are proving that their technology and workflow works!
As a follow-on to this world first digital film project MotionFX will be holding a selection of workshops and private seminars for DoP's, Directors and Producers who wish to learn more about Digital Cinematography at this level, specifically using the Viper in uncompressed Film Stream mode with iQ based post-production. For more information, please contact MotionFX Group Sales Manager Justin Lanchbury by e-mail on Justin@motionfx.co.uk, or John O'Quigley, Operations Manager, on john@motionfx.co.uk.
Steve Shaw
Digital Praxis Ltd.
www.digitalpraxis.net
steve@digitalpraxis.net
Steve Shaw raconte le tournage du premier long-métrage entièrement tourné en VIPER FilmStream
Steve Shaw est un vétéran dans le
monde de l'image. Son expérience lui permet de jauger les mérites des
nouveaux formats qui aparaissent sur le marché. Pour lui, le format
FilmStream de la VIPER de Thomson est le choix le plus
réfléchi.
Le récit du tournage de
Silence Becomes
You se trouve ici
.
Son site web traditionnel: digitalpraxis.net
Son site web traditionnel: digitalpraxis.net
Micro Salon 2005
Le grand rendez-vous des techniciens de
l'image aura lieu à la FEMIS le 10 mars prochain.
Infos et inscriptions ici: http://afcinema.com/
nominations Oscars 2005
Trois DP de
l’AFC sont nommés pour le César
2005 de la meilleure photographie :
Bruno Delbonnel pour Un long dimanche de fiançailles de Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Jean-Marie Dreujou pour Deux frères de Jean-Jacques Annaud
Eric Gautier pour Clean d’Olivier Assayas.
Sont nommés aux Oscars
Pour la meilleure photographie
Bruno Delbonnel pour Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Caleb Deschanel, ASC pour La Passion du Christ de Mel Gibson
John Mathieson, BSC pour Le Fantôme de l’Opéra de Joel Schumacher
Robert Richardson, ASC pour The Aviator de Martin Scorsese
Xiaoding Zhao pour Le Secret des poignards volants de Zhang Yimou
Bruno Delbonnel pour Un long dimanche de fiançailles de Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Jean-Marie Dreujou pour Deux frères de Jean-Jacques Annaud
Eric Gautier pour Clean d’Olivier Assayas.
Sont nommés aux Oscars
Pour la meilleure photographie
Bruno Delbonnel pour Un long dimanche de fiançailles
Caleb Deschanel, ASC pour La Passion du Christ de Mel Gibson
John Mathieson, BSC pour Le Fantôme de l’Opéra de Joel Schumacher
Robert Richardson, ASC pour The Aviator de Martin Scorsese
Xiaoding Zhao pour Le Secret des poignards volants de Zhang Yimou
Delbonnel remporte l'ASC award
Bruno Delbonnel, AFC took top honors for A
Very Long Engagement in the feature film competition here tonight at the 19th
Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) (www.theasc.com) Outstanding
Achievement Awards at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood &
Highland.
...Nominees in the feature category were Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and Paul Cameron for Collateral, Caleb Deschanel, ASC for The Passion of the Christ, Pawel Edelman, PSC for Ray, and Robert Richardson ASC for The Aviator.... "Each of the nominees has earned the respect of their peers for their artful and skillful rendering of images that accurately reflect the spirit of the stories they tell," Baldwin said.
...Jonathan Freeman, Robbie Greenberg, ASC and Nathan Hope claimed ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in the three television categories.
...The cinematographers also feted Gilbert Cates, who received the organization's Board of Governors Award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made extraordinary and enduring contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking.
...Delli Colli compiled 137 credits over 60 years, including such classic films as The Name of the Rose, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, and Life is Beautiful.
...The award was presented to Maltin by cinematographer Allen Daviau, ASC, who said, "Film critic doesn't begin to describe who Leonard Maltin is, and what he does for all of us. He is a scholar, journalist, historian, preservationist and passionate aficionado of the art form."
...Nominees in the feature category were Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and Paul Cameron for Collateral, Caleb Deschanel, ASC for The Passion of the Christ, Pawel Edelman, PSC for Ray, and Robert Richardson ASC for The Aviator.... "Each of the nominees has earned the respect of their peers for their artful and skillful rendering of images that accurately reflect the spirit of the stories they tell," Baldwin said.
...Jonathan Freeman, Robbie Greenberg, ASC and Nathan Hope claimed ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in the three television categories.
...The cinematographers also feted Gilbert Cates, who received the organization's Board of Governors Award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made extraordinary and enduring contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking.
...Delli Colli compiled 137 credits over 60 years, including such classic films as The Name of the Rose, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, and Life is Beautiful.
...The award was presented to Maltin by cinematographer Allen Daviau, ASC, who said, "Film critic doesn't begin to describe who Leonard Maltin is, and what he does for all of us. He is a scholar, journalist, historian, preservationist and passionate aficionado of the art form."
Bruno Delbonnel, AFC took top honors for
A Very Long
Engagement in the feature film competition here
tonight at the 19th Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) (www.theasc.com) Outstanding
Achievement Awards at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland. It was the
first ASC Award for Delbonnel, who was also nominated for
Amelie in
2002, another collaboration with director Jean-Pierre
Jeunet.
The film follows a French woman's dogged attempts to learn the fate of her fiance, who disappeared during World War I. Nominees in the feature category were Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and Paul Cameron for Collateral, Caleb Deschanel, ASC for The Passion of the Christ, Pawel Edelman, PSC for Ray, and Robert Richardson ASC for The Aviator. Alec Baldwin presented the award to Delbonnel. "Each of the nominees has earned the respect of their peers for their artful and skillful rendering of images that accurately reflect the spirit of the stories they tell," Baldwin said. "Each successfully interpreted the intentions of the directors and performances of the cast in ways that allow audiences to embrace the story."
Jonathan Freeman, Robbie Greenberg, ASC and Nathan Hope claimed ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in the three television categories. Greenberg claimed top honors for Iron Jawed Angels (HBO) in the cable movie competition. Freeman won for Homeland Security (NBC) in the competition for original movie for broadcast television. Hope won the episodic series competition for the segment "Down the Drain" of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS). The awards were presented by Victor Garber (Alias), Kathryn Morris (Cold Case), and Poppy Montgomery (Without a Trace), respectively.
Greenberg previously took top honors in the made-for-cable movie competition for Winchell in 1999 and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 2000. Freeman was nominated for Prince Street in the episodic TV competition in 1998, the telefilm Strange Justice in 1999, and the miniseries Taken in 2003. This was his first win. This was the first ASC nomination for Hope.
Fred Koenekamp, ASC received the prestigious ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. The cinematographer compiled nearly 90 film credits during his career, which stretched over some 40 years. He earned his first director of photography credit in 1964 for the pilot episode of the classic The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series. Koenekamp won an Oscar for The Towering Inferno in 1975. He also received nominations for Islands in the Stream and Patton. His body of work also includes such classic films as The Great Bank Robbery, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Kansas City Bomber. The award was presented to Koenekamp by cinematographer William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC who was the 2000 recipient of the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. Koenekamp offered sage advice to the next generation of cinematographers, "Be proud of yourselves, be patient, and never give up on your dreams."
The cinematographers also feted Gilbert Cates, who received the organization's Board of Governors Award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made extraordinary and enduring contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking. It is the only annual award that ASC reserves for an individual who is not a cinematographer. The award was presented to Cates in recognition of his achievements as a producer and director, and for his many services to the industry. Debbie Allen presented the award. She said, "Gil Cates is a true renaissance man who has earned our respect and admiration as an artist and human being. I am so happy to have this opportunity to publicly thank Gil Cates for everything he does for all of us."
Alan Alda presented the ASC International Achievement Award to Tonino Delli Colli, AIC. The legendary Italian cinematographer began his career at Cinecitta Studios in Rome in 1938 when he was 16 years old. He was a driving force in the birth and evolution of neorealist cinema in Italy during the mid-1940s and 1950s. Delli Colli told the audience that neorealism was "a child of necessity." He explained that the defining characteristic of those films was that they were shot in real-life environments. "We used only ambient light and the light coming through windows as the starting point for photography," he added.
Delli Colli compiled 137 credits over 60 years, including such classic films as The Name of the Rose, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, and Life is Beautiful. He was a frequent collaborator with such iconic Italian filmmakers as Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini and Louis Malle.
Alda said, "It's impossible to sum up the life and career of this extraordinary artist. Tonino said it best, 'The magic of film can't be put into words.'"
Film critic Leonard Maltin received the first-ever ASC Award of Distinction. The award was presented to Maltin by cinematographer Allen Daviau, ASC, who said, "Film critic doesn't begin to describe who Leonard Maltin is, and what he does for all of us. He is a scholar, journalist, historian, preservationist and passionate aficionado of the art form."
Peter Fonda presented the Presidents Award to Richard Moore, ASC. Moore co-founded Panavision with Robert Gottschalk in 1954. He shared a technical Oscar for designing and developing a 65 mm camera system. About eight-and-a-half years deep into Panavision history, Moore returned to his first love, cinematography. Fonda and Moore collaborated on Roger Corman's The Wild Angels. Moore went on to shoot such classic as The Reivers, Myra Breckenridge, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Life and Time of Judge Roy Bean, and Annie.
"Richard (Moore) deserves two of these awards," Fonda said. "One for the remarkable tools he invented after co-founding Panavision, and another one for his filmography."
ASC also gave a nod to the future with the presentation of the Charles B. Lang, Jr., ASC Heritage Award to PJ Raval from the University of Texas at Austin. The award is presented annually to one or more promising student filmmakers. It is dedicated each year to the memory of an ASC member who made a seminal impact on the art of filmmaking. Lang earned 18 Oscar nominations. He took top honors in 1934 for A Farewell to Arms.
"My advice to you is to never give up," said Woody Omens, ASC who presented the award. "This is the beginning of a lifelong journey. Keep learning and keep believing in yourself."
The film follows a French woman's dogged attempts to learn the fate of her fiance, who disappeared during World War I. Nominees in the feature category were Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and Paul Cameron for Collateral, Caleb Deschanel, ASC for The Passion of the Christ, Pawel Edelman, PSC for Ray, and Robert Richardson ASC for The Aviator. Alec Baldwin presented the award to Delbonnel. "Each of the nominees has earned the respect of their peers for their artful and skillful rendering of images that accurately reflect the spirit of the stories they tell," Baldwin said. "Each successfully interpreted the intentions of the directors and performances of the cast in ways that allow audiences to embrace the story."
Jonathan Freeman, Robbie Greenberg, ASC and Nathan Hope claimed ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in the three television categories. Greenberg claimed top honors for Iron Jawed Angels (HBO) in the cable movie competition. Freeman won for Homeland Security (NBC) in the competition for original movie for broadcast television. Hope won the episodic series competition for the segment "Down the Drain" of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS). The awards were presented by Victor Garber (Alias), Kathryn Morris (Cold Case), and Poppy Montgomery (Without a Trace), respectively.
Greenberg previously took top honors in the made-for-cable movie competition for Winchell in 1999 and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 2000. Freeman was nominated for Prince Street in the episodic TV competition in 1998, the telefilm Strange Justice in 1999, and the miniseries Taken in 2003. This was his first win. This was the first ASC nomination for Hope.
Fred Koenekamp, ASC received the prestigious ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. The cinematographer compiled nearly 90 film credits during his career, which stretched over some 40 years. He earned his first director of photography credit in 1964 for the pilot episode of the classic The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series. Koenekamp won an Oscar for The Towering Inferno in 1975. He also received nominations for Islands in the Stream and Patton. His body of work also includes such classic films as The Great Bank Robbery, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Kansas City Bomber. The award was presented to Koenekamp by cinematographer William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC who was the 2000 recipient of the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. Koenekamp offered sage advice to the next generation of cinematographers, "Be proud of yourselves, be patient, and never give up on your dreams."
The cinematographers also feted Gilbert Cates, who received the organization's Board of Governors Award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made extraordinary and enduring contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking. It is the only annual award that ASC reserves for an individual who is not a cinematographer. The award was presented to Cates in recognition of his achievements as a producer and director, and for his many services to the industry. Debbie Allen presented the award. She said, "Gil Cates is a true renaissance man who has earned our respect and admiration as an artist and human being. I am so happy to have this opportunity to publicly thank Gil Cates for everything he does for all of us."
Alan Alda presented the ASC International Achievement Award to Tonino Delli Colli, AIC. The legendary Italian cinematographer began his career at Cinecitta Studios in Rome in 1938 when he was 16 years old. He was a driving force in the birth and evolution of neorealist cinema in Italy during the mid-1940s and 1950s. Delli Colli told the audience that neorealism was "a child of necessity." He explained that the defining characteristic of those films was that they were shot in real-life environments. "We used only ambient light and the light coming through windows as the starting point for photography," he added.
Delli Colli compiled 137 credits over 60 years, including such classic films as The Name of the Rose, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, and Life is Beautiful. He was a frequent collaborator with such iconic Italian filmmakers as Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini and Louis Malle.
Alda said, "It's impossible to sum up the life and career of this extraordinary artist. Tonino said it best, 'The magic of film can't be put into words.'"
Film critic Leonard Maltin received the first-ever ASC Award of Distinction. The award was presented to Maltin by cinematographer Allen Daviau, ASC, who said, "Film critic doesn't begin to describe who Leonard Maltin is, and what he does for all of us. He is a scholar, journalist, historian, preservationist and passionate aficionado of the art form."
Peter Fonda presented the Presidents Award to Richard Moore, ASC. Moore co-founded Panavision with Robert Gottschalk in 1954. He shared a technical Oscar for designing and developing a 65 mm camera system. About eight-and-a-half years deep into Panavision history, Moore returned to his first love, cinematography. Fonda and Moore collaborated on Roger Corman's The Wild Angels. Moore went on to shoot such classic as The Reivers, Myra Breckenridge, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Life and Time of Judge Roy Bean, and Annie.
"Richard (Moore) deserves two of these awards," Fonda said. "One for the remarkable tools he invented after co-founding Panavision, and another one for his filmography."
ASC also gave a nod to the future with the presentation of the Charles B. Lang, Jr., ASC Heritage Award to PJ Raval from the University of Texas at Austin. The award is presented annually to one or more promising student filmmakers. It is dedicated each year to the memory of an ASC member who made a seminal impact on the art of filmmaking. Lang earned 18 Oscar nominations. He took top honors in 1934 for A Farewell to Arms.
"My advice to you is to never give up," said Woody Omens, ASC who presented the award. "This is the beginning of a lifelong journey. Keep learning and keep believing in yourself."
Les plus beaux films de 2004
Un grand chef op US a donné ses
préférés: les plus beaux films du point de vue de l'image. A vous
de voir.
"The Aviator" and "Sky Captain of the World of
Tomorrow" for their obvious
love of 1930's Hollywood cinema.
"Hidalgo" for its classic anamorphic landscape photography as well as some
lovely low-key interior lighting, particularly during the Buffalo Bill Wild
West Show section.
"Man on Fire" for its use of hand-cranked cameras and other techniques to
abstract the image.
"A Very Long Engagement" for sheer beauty.
"Hero" (a sixth film, if allowed) for its dazzling color stylization.
Runners-up: "Alexander", "Collateral", "The Passion of the Christ" (or as
someone on the Kubrick newsgroup has called it, "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre"),
"Phanton of the Opera", "The Terminal", "The Village", "Exorcist: The
Beginning", "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", "Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Van Helsing", "House of Flying Daggers".
I was working a lot this year and missed some films like "Motorcycle
Diaries" (but I liked what little I saw of that) or "Birth".
Movies I liked as overall movies this year: "Farenheit 9/11", "Kitchen
Stories", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Battle of Algiers"
(revival), "The Terminal", "Spider-Man 2", "Collateral", "Hero", "House of
Flying Daggers", "Shawn of the Dead", "Intimate Strangers", "The
Incredibles", "Kinsey", "Finding Neverland", "Sideways", "A Very Long
Engagement", "The Aviator".
David Mullen, ASC
Los Angeles
love of 1930's Hollywood cinema.
"Hidalgo" for its classic anamorphic landscape photography as well as some
lovely low-key interior lighting, particularly during the Buffalo Bill Wild
West Show section.
"Man on Fire" for its use of hand-cranked cameras and other techniques to
abstract the image.
"A Very Long Engagement" for sheer beauty.
"Hero" (a sixth film, if allowed) for its dazzling color stylization.
Runners-up: "Alexander", "Collateral", "The Passion of the Christ" (or as
someone on the Kubrick newsgroup has called it, "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre"),
"Phanton of the Opera", "The Terminal", "The Village", "Exorcist: The
Beginning", "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", "Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Van Helsing", "House of Flying Daggers".
I was working a lot this year and missed some films like "Motorcycle
Diaries" (but I liked what little I saw of that) or "Birth".
Movies I liked as overall movies this year: "Farenheit 9/11", "Kitchen
Stories", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Battle of Algiers"
(revival), "The Terminal", "Spider-Man 2", "Collateral", "Hero", "House of
Flying Daggers", "Shawn of the Dead", "Intimate Strangers", "The
Incredibles", "Kinsey", "Finding Neverland", "Sideways", "A Very Long
Engagement", "The Aviator".
David Mullen, ASC
Los Angeles
Timing Alexander
Interview intéressante pour comprendre les
possibilités du "digital intermediate" (film>scan>traitement
numérique>shoot sur film)
During postproduction on Alexander, Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC collaborated on the film’s digital intermediate with colorist Yvan Lucas at Éclair Laboratories near Paris. Prieto is well-acquainted with the DI process, having digitally graded Frida, 25th Hour, 8 Mile and some shots in 21 Grams. Nevertheless, he faced new challenges on Alexander, notably with infrared and bleach-bypass footage.
During postproduction on Alexander, Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC collaborated on the film’s digital intermediate with colorist Yvan Lucas at Éclair Laboratories near Paris. Prieto is well-acquainted with the DI process, having digitally graded Frida, 25th Hour, 8 Mile and some shots in 21 Grams. Nevertheless, he faced new challenges on Alexander, notably with infrared and bleach-bypass footage.
by Benjamin
Bergery
American Cinematographer: Yvan, you’ve worked with many top cinematographers. What do you think of Mr. Prieto?
Lucas: Rodrigo knows exactly what he wants. Usually I interpret what the cinematographer says and do my own little cuisine. But not with Rodrigo — he’ll call me on it and say, “Didn’t we say magenta, not red?” [Laughter.]
Just how big is Alexander?
Lucas: Huge. Last time we counted there were 3,300 shots. A normal film may involve from 500 to 2,000 shots. By the way, I was assisted in the grading by Isabelle Julien.
Rodrigo, why did you choose to go DI?
Prieto: We had a lot of day exteriors with many cameras and no control of when you shoot. It could be sunny, cloudy, you name it. Even in interiors, there were a lot of continuous Steadicam takes with 360-degree coverage, making it difficult to control contrast for every angle. So I let some things go on the set, knowing that I would be able to correct them later.
What do you like about DI?
Prieto: Beyond the windows and all these extra controls, I like the interactivity. For me, that’s the best thing about DI. Here in this suite, I can see the difference immediately between one and two points of yellow.
You don’t have to wait for tomorrow?
Prieto: Exactly, because by tomorrow my perception will have changed; I will have gone out to the street and I won’t notice the difference. I like to use DI for those very subtle changes. You might think digital grading is great for big manipulations of the image, but I think it’s best for the subtleties.
As a cinematographer, do you always want to use a DI?
Prieto: Not necessarily. I just finished a film with Ang Lee called Brokeback Mountain, and we won’t be using a DI because we don’t feel it’s necessary. It was a much more controlled shoot. The shooting style was stoic and simple, like the cowboy characters.
What kinds of corrections are you doing to Alexander?
Prieto: Most of the time we’ve been dealing with the primary color correction. I prefer that, because sometimes when you push things too much, it looks electronic.
Prieto and Lucas pause in their grading to watch a reel of “digital dailies,” a short 35mm positive with selected images. Digital dailies are used throughout the grading process to check how the DI will look on film.
There seems to be a slight difference between the same scene on the digital projector and on the digital dailies.
Prieto: The one thing you can’t see completely accurately on the digital projector is contrast. It lacks the blacks of the print. It’s sometimes difficult to tell whether the grading is correct until you see the digital dailies.
Lucas: We want deep blacks in projection, as with ENR. However, the contrast of the projected film is not created by the negative, but by the positive.
So you have to make a mental note that the image you see in DI will have more contrast on the print?
Prieto: That’s the most difficult thing about the process. The danger is pushing it too much. On 8 Mile I brightened stuff to see detail that was hard to see in the digital 1K projection during grading, but when I saw the print I found I didn’t need to because it was already there.
Lucas: That’s where you may get a surprise when you see digital dailies. The color match between film and the digital projection is very accurate, but it’s less so with the blacks. The contrast also has to do with the resolution of the digital projector. A 2K image will appear to be more brilliant than 1K because there’s more detail.
We look at an image with a subtle darkening around the edges, created by a soft-bordered Power Window at the center of the frame. The effect is similar to vignetting, a technical problem with some lenses that transmit more light in the center than on the edges.
Vignetting is usually considered a problem, but here you are actually adding vignetting to the image?
Prieto: Yes. We have sometimes put in vignetting with masks to enhance the sensation of darkness, while keeping the center of the frame the same density.
Prieto and Lucas grade Alexander’s Macedonian wedding. Lucas adds a mask to offset the soft shadow of the camera on the veiled bride’s face as the camera tracks out. Other shots have color changes.
What are you doing to the color in this sequence?
Prieto: The weather was very cloudy during the shoot, and we didn’t have enough exposure to use the chocolate filter I was using for that segment of the film, so we had to put it in afterwards.
Why use a filter at all, knowing that you could add a virtual filter in the grading?
Prieto: I wanted the filters to be incorporated into the image while Oliver was editing. I knew that if I didn’t use the filters, he might grow to like the image without a filter as he looked at the footage over and over. The same is true of bleach bypass. If you don’t do it on the negative, you can change your mind later.
Is it difficult to deal with bleach bypass in DI?
Prieto: Scanning the 35mm is very difficult. On 25th Hour we had to rescan several shots. The contrast is so great that sometimes the highlights were okay but we couldn’t darken it enough — we would darken but get no detail. So we had to rescan it and tilt the scale toward the darks.
Lucas: We’re using a Northlight to scan this film.
How are you grading the bleach bypass?
Prieto: Most of the time we’ve been adding saturation, like in the Indian palace, where the concept of the scene is the contrast of color as well as the contrast of light and dark. We used bleach bypass for the pure contrast, but we brought back the color with grading.
That’s a new approach to bleach bypass. With traditional film grading, bleach bypass has often been used to desaturate the image. Now, that is easily done in DI. What else do you like about bleach bypass?
Prieto: The grain comes alive. Perhaps the grain also becomes more apparent when you exaggerate contrast digitally, but I feel the grain structure is more organic when it’s integrated into the negative.
What print stock are you using?
Prieto: That’s a problem area. I find Kodak Vision Premier [2393] to be far superior to the 2383, particularly in terms of the blacks.
But it’s more expensive.
Prieto: Yes, it’s been a big issue on every movie that I’ve done a DI on; usually the studio doesn’t want to pay for a massive release on Premier. So I have to do a big negotiation, and sometimes I’m faced with doing some prints on 93 and the rest on another stock. I don’t know if a new stock should be created for DI or how else to resolve this issue, but it has become very frustrating.
Any final words on DI?
Prieto: Some people say that it’s not real photography. To me, that’s equivalent to saying that using a color or grad filter on the camera is cheating as well. For me, it’s the same thought process as doing it in camera; it’s just doing it at a different moment. DI is just an extra tool that you’re using for cinematography. It’s one more step in the photography of the movie.
American Cinematographer: Yvan, you’ve worked with many top cinematographers. What do you think of Mr. Prieto?
Lucas: Rodrigo knows exactly what he wants. Usually I interpret what the cinematographer says and do my own little cuisine. But not with Rodrigo — he’ll call me on it and say, “Didn’t we say magenta, not red?” [Laughter.]
Just how big is Alexander?
Lucas: Huge. Last time we counted there were 3,300 shots. A normal film may involve from 500 to 2,000 shots. By the way, I was assisted in the grading by Isabelle Julien.
Rodrigo, why did you choose to go DI?
Prieto: We had a lot of day exteriors with many cameras and no control of when you shoot. It could be sunny, cloudy, you name it. Even in interiors, there were a lot of continuous Steadicam takes with 360-degree coverage, making it difficult to control contrast for every angle. So I let some things go on the set, knowing that I would be able to correct them later.
What do you like about DI?
Prieto: Beyond the windows and all these extra controls, I like the interactivity. For me, that’s the best thing about DI. Here in this suite, I can see the difference immediately between one and two points of yellow.
You don’t have to wait for tomorrow?
Prieto: Exactly, because by tomorrow my perception will have changed; I will have gone out to the street and I won’t notice the difference. I like to use DI for those very subtle changes. You might think digital grading is great for big manipulations of the image, but I think it’s best for the subtleties.
As a cinematographer, do you always want to use a DI?
Prieto: Not necessarily. I just finished a film with Ang Lee called Brokeback Mountain, and we won’t be using a DI because we don’t feel it’s necessary. It was a much more controlled shoot. The shooting style was stoic and simple, like the cowboy characters.
What kinds of corrections are you doing to Alexander?
Prieto: Most of the time we’ve been dealing with the primary color correction. I prefer that, because sometimes when you push things too much, it looks electronic.
Prieto and Lucas pause in their grading to watch a reel of “digital dailies,” a short 35mm positive with selected images. Digital dailies are used throughout the grading process to check how the DI will look on film.
There seems to be a slight difference between the same scene on the digital projector and on the digital dailies.
Prieto: The one thing you can’t see completely accurately on the digital projector is contrast. It lacks the blacks of the print. It’s sometimes difficult to tell whether the grading is correct until you see the digital dailies.
Lucas: We want deep blacks in projection, as with ENR. However, the contrast of the projected film is not created by the negative, but by the positive.
So you have to make a mental note that the image you see in DI will have more contrast on the print?
Prieto: That’s the most difficult thing about the process. The danger is pushing it too much. On 8 Mile I brightened stuff to see detail that was hard to see in the digital 1K projection during grading, but when I saw the print I found I didn’t need to because it was already there.
Lucas: That’s where you may get a surprise when you see digital dailies. The color match between film and the digital projection is very accurate, but it’s less so with the blacks. The contrast also has to do with the resolution of the digital projector. A 2K image will appear to be more brilliant than 1K because there’s more detail.
We look at an image with a subtle darkening around the edges, created by a soft-bordered Power Window at the center of the frame. The effect is similar to vignetting, a technical problem with some lenses that transmit more light in the center than on the edges.
Vignetting is usually considered a problem, but here you are actually adding vignetting to the image?
Prieto: Yes. We have sometimes put in vignetting with masks to enhance the sensation of darkness, while keeping the center of the frame the same density.
Prieto and Lucas grade Alexander’s Macedonian wedding. Lucas adds a mask to offset the soft shadow of the camera on the veiled bride’s face as the camera tracks out. Other shots have color changes.
What are you doing to the color in this sequence?
Prieto: The weather was very cloudy during the shoot, and we didn’t have enough exposure to use the chocolate filter I was using for that segment of the film, so we had to put it in afterwards.
Why use a filter at all, knowing that you could add a virtual filter in the grading?
Prieto: I wanted the filters to be incorporated into the image while Oliver was editing. I knew that if I didn’t use the filters, he might grow to like the image without a filter as he looked at the footage over and over. The same is true of bleach bypass. If you don’t do it on the negative, you can change your mind later.
Is it difficult to deal with bleach bypass in DI?
Prieto: Scanning the 35mm is very difficult. On 25th Hour we had to rescan several shots. The contrast is so great that sometimes the highlights were okay but we couldn’t darken it enough — we would darken but get no detail. So we had to rescan it and tilt the scale toward the darks.
Lucas: We’re using a Northlight to scan this film.
How are you grading the bleach bypass?
Prieto: Most of the time we’ve been adding saturation, like in the Indian palace, where the concept of the scene is the contrast of color as well as the contrast of light and dark. We used bleach bypass for the pure contrast, but we brought back the color with grading.
That’s a new approach to bleach bypass. With traditional film grading, bleach bypass has often been used to desaturate the image. Now, that is easily done in DI. What else do you like about bleach bypass?
Prieto: The grain comes alive. Perhaps the grain also becomes more apparent when you exaggerate contrast digitally, but I feel the grain structure is more organic when it’s integrated into the negative.
What print stock are you using?
Prieto: That’s a problem area. I find Kodak Vision Premier [2393] to be far superior to the 2383, particularly in terms of the blacks.
But it’s more expensive.
Prieto: Yes, it’s been a big issue on every movie that I’ve done a DI on; usually the studio doesn’t want to pay for a massive release on Premier. So I have to do a big negotiation, and sometimes I’m faced with doing some prints on 93 and the rest on another stock. I don’t know if a new stock should be created for DI or how else to resolve this issue, but it has become very frustrating.
Any final words on DI?
Prieto: Some people say that it’s not real photography. To me, that’s equivalent to saying that using a color or grad filter on the camera is cheating as well. For me, it’s the same thought process as doing it in camera; it’s just doing it at a different moment. DI is just an extra tool that you’re using for cinematography. It’s one more step in the photography of the movie.
Portraits en studio
Tournage en deux caméras, une mobile
et une fixe.
Lieu: Arena, Genève.
Sources: mélange HMI (converti en Tungstène) et Tungstène. Principalement pour des questions de budget.
Objectif: faire en sorte de garder un éclairage soigné sur les visages en gros plans tout en permettant à l'autre caméra de prendre beaucoup de recul. Problème: reculer les sources très loin des visages n'est pas flatteur pour les gros plans.
Lieu: Arena, Genève.
Sources: mélange HMI (converti en Tungstène) et Tungstène. Principalement pour des questions de budget.
Objectif: faire en sorte de garder un éclairage soigné sur les visages en gros plans tout en permettant à l'autre caméra de prendre beaucoup de recul. Problème: reculer les sources très loin des visages n'est pas flatteur pour les gros plans.
Solution: augmenter l'échelle des
éclairages. Alors qu'un petit cadre de 1m x 1m aurait suffi à
éclairer un visage en gros plan, il a fallu un cadre de 4m x 4m pour
maintenir cette qualité de lumière en plan
large.
Le studio vu de haut. L'écran vert est éclairé de loin (en haut à gauche de cette photo) pour que le dégradé de lumière soit imperceptible sur l'écran (les verts doivent être similaires pour permettre l'extraction). Le cadre 4x4 constitue la source principale, tandis que le côté sombre des visages est éclairé soit par une boule chinoise, soit en l'occurence par un réflecteur éclairé par un HMI (on voit ce réflecteur comme un rectangle noir au-dessus des rails).
Le choix esthétique le plus déterminant a été de choisir la direction de la source principale. La gauche a été préférée pour deux raisons:
- la caméra du gros plan étant placée à droite, les visages sont mieux modelés par une lumière provenant en léger contre-jour
- nous sommes habitués (par des siècles de peinture de portraits) à ce que la lumière provienne de la gauche et du haut des tableaux.
Les visages des intervenants ne sont pas montrés ici pour des raisons de confidentialité.
Diverses configurations de rails de travellings, les positions debout ou assises des intervenants ont exigé des réglages fins des sources, malgré leur taille relativement imposante.
Le studio vu de haut. L'écran vert est éclairé de loin (en haut à gauche de cette photo) pour que le dégradé de lumière soit imperceptible sur l'écran (les verts doivent être similaires pour permettre l'extraction). Le cadre 4x4 constitue la source principale, tandis que le côté sombre des visages est éclairé soit par une boule chinoise, soit en l'occurence par un réflecteur éclairé par un HMI (on voit ce réflecteur comme un rectangle noir au-dessus des rails).
Le choix esthétique le plus déterminant a été de choisir la direction de la source principale. La gauche a été préférée pour deux raisons:
- la caméra du gros plan étant placée à droite, les visages sont mieux modelés par une lumière provenant en léger contre-jour
- nous sommes habitués (par des siècles de peinture de portraits) à ce que la lumière provienne de la gauche et du haut des tableaux.
Les visages des intervenants ne sont pas montrés ici pour des raisons de confidentialité.
Diverses configurations de rails de travellings, les positions debout ou assises des intervenants ont exigé des réglages fins des sources, malgré leur taille relativement imposante.
La Limace - first shoot in the VIPER FilmStream 4:4:4 format
Fifteen children and a
slug
1:2,34 format
Will be scanned on anamorphic 35mm.
Directed by : Anthony Vouardoux & Tania Zambrano-Ovalle
Beeph Tech Productions
1:2,34 format
Will be scanned on anamorphic 35mm.
Directed by : Anthony Vouardoux & Tania Zambrano-Ovalle
Beeph Tech Productions
This format was chosen because while it maintains
topmost quality, it allows the directors to wait for the children to give their
best performances.
It will also accomodate heavy post-production manipulations without degrading the picture quality.
We shot this short film in three days, in october 2004, in the wonderful botanical garden of Lausanne, Switzerland.
This shoot was a first "crash test" for a real Viper FilmStream experience, far away from the studios or the labs.
All in all, it was a very interesting and very rewarding experience.
We used the camera on various rigs, and it behaved like a normal cine camera.
Roberto (from Digit One, Bologna, Italy) mastered the acquisition on an old Director's Friend.
The footage was then backuped on the brand new Matrix system.
To preserve the contrast ratio, normal film lighting rules were applied. But I tested the camera sensitivity to the limits.
We shot mainly with fixed focal lengths, but occasionally took out the Canon zoom to capture the children's attitudes with more flexibility.
The depth of field was really more than sufficient with the existing HD digiprimes. No need for a Pro35.
We will follow the post-production process with great expectations. Demain la Lune will handle the SFX and color grading.
From what we saw on HD monitors, this uncompressed digital format will look great on a film screen.
It will also accomodate heavy post-production manipulations without degrading the picture quality.
We shot this short film in three days, in october 2004, in the wonderful botanical garden of Lausanne, Switzerland.
This shoot was a first "crash test" for a real Viper FilmStream experience, far away from the studios or the labs.
All in all, it was a very interesting and very rewarding experience.
We used the camera on various rigs, and it behaved like a normal cine camera.
Roberto (from Digit One, Bologna, Italy) mastered the acquisition on an old Director's Friend.
The footage was then backuped on the brand new Matrix system.
To preserve the contrast ratio, normal film lighting rules were applied. But I tested the camera sensitivity to the limits.
We shot mainly with fixed focal lengths, but occasionally took out the Canon zoom to capture the children's attitudes with more flexibility.
The depth of field was really more than sufficient with the existing HD digiprimes. No need for a Pro35.
We will follow the post-production process with great expectations. Demain la Lune will handle the SFX and color grading.
From what we saw on HD monitors, this uncompressed digital format will look great on a film screen.
Les Voisins
Tournage avec deux DVX100 de
Panasonic
Premier segment d'un long-métrage en sept parties "Un monde discret".
Sources: principalement HMI et KinoFlos (tournage dans des décors réels avec très peu de courant disponible, d'où la nécessité d'utiliser des sources à haut rendement).
Premier segment d'un long-métrage en sept parties "Un monde discret".
Sources: principalement HMI et KinoFlos (tournage dans des décors réels avec très peu de courant disponible, d'où la nécessité d'utiliser des sources à haut rendement).
Utilisation fréquente de couleurs complémentaires.
Viper tests - September 2004
Keylights and tests around the Viper camera used in the FilmStream format. These tests will lead to a 1:1.85 35mm print.
Place: Fonction:Cinema, Geneva
Hardware & software:
- VIPER and Director's Friend - Digit One , Bologna, Italy
- 4:4:4 acquisition and mastering - Chrome Imaging , Geneva
- SFX - Demain La Lune - Geneva
- Lighting: Action Light, Geneva
- Grip - Luxan, Geneva
The Viper is said to have a 320 ASA/ISO sensitivity. In reality, it seems to be more around 250 ASA.
Raw pictures are shown in the typically uncompressed "Hulk look". A LUT (Look-Up Table) is needed to "understand" the picture as it will be displayed on a digital or movie theater screen.
Extreme contrasts can be handled by the FilmStream format. But the logic of the Director of Photography work remains the same as in film: maintaining the right contrast ratio, giving priority to feelings and emotions through light source placement, and finding the right exposure to ensure that the complete range of colors and lighting values are registered on the support.
Director's Friend is an old system. It was used to acquire the uncompressed footage for these tests.
The next tests will be conducted using the Matrix 4:4:4 post-production facility, by Chrome Imaging.
Two Brothers Color Grading
Dreujou observes that photochemical grading
takes roughly one week, during which the cinematographer attends projections,
gives notes to the color timer, and only comes back to see the next print.
Digitally grading Two Brothers took almost two months of Dreujou’s time;
the ability to stay on one shot and grade any area of the frame means that the
dialogue between cinematographer and timer is much more detailed than it has to
be in traditional
timing.
Jean-Marie Dreujou, AFC and colorist Yvan Lucas detail the digital intermediate on Two Brothers.
by Benjamin Bergery
Photos courtesy of Universal Studios and Éclair Laboratories
Music is playing softly in a big, darkened room. Seated in the penumbra, three men watch a tiger roar silently on an 8-foot screen. Colorist Yvan Lucas clicks a computer mouse and the image freezes. “A little cold?” asks director of photography Jean-Marie Dreujou, AFC. “I’ll add a couple points of yellow,” Lucas answers. He clicks the keyboard twice and the image warms up. “Looks better,” comments colorist Bruno Patin, who is sitting nearby.
Inside a digital-intermediate (DI) suite at Éclair Laboratories outside Paris, Dreujou is timing the high-definition video/35mm hybrid Two Brothers (see AC July ’04) with Lucas, assisted by Patin. Lucas is using Discreet’s Lustre to grade the digital image and a Barco DLP 50 projector to display it large-scale. Later, the graded digital file will be transferred to an intermediate film stock using an Arrilaser film recorder.
Dreujou’s cinematography credits include Last Trading Post in India, The Children of the Marais, Little Chinese Seamstress and The Man on the Train. He has been nominated twice for France’s Cesar, for The Whims of a River in 1996 and Girl on a Bridge (which was graded by Lucas). Two Brothers was his first HD project; he has since photographed two more.
Lucas is a pioneering color timer with 40 features to his credit, including Delicatessen, City of Lost Children and Seven (all shot by Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC), as well as Amélie (shot by Bruno Delbonnel, AFC).
About 50 films made in France last year, roughly one quarter of the national output, made use of the DI process, and Éclair has established itself as a leader in the field. Two Brothers presented some unique challenges in that it was shot mostly in HD; 35mm was used for about 15 percent of the picture.
Philippe Soeiro, creative director at Éclair, explains that the postproduction workflow for Two Brothers was designed to treat the project “as if it were shot entirely on film.” First, all of the 35mm and HD footage was transferred to a Discreet Smoke workstation. The HDCam image was converted from its native YUV video format to RGB, the computer standard.
Digital-effects supervisor Frederic Moreau notes that Two Brothers has almost 550 visual-effects shots, many combining HD, 35mm and computer-generated (CG) elements. To create uniformity between HD and film, the 35mm images were scaled down to the HD size of 1920x1080 pixels and then transferred to the HD depth of 8 bits per color. In addition, grain was removed from some of the film footage. Moreau explains that the effects sequences were composited and “pre-graded” before they were transferred to the Lustre for final grading.
Before use in the Lustre, all of the HD images were transferred from linear to 10-bit log format. Soeiro notes that this colorspace conversion was “one of the delicate steps” in the post process, and that the conversion look-up table (LUT) was fine-tuned to allow for more detail in the dark areas. He explains that the log format enables the cinematographer and colorist to work using film-style “printer points” when grading on the Lustre, whereas the linear format does not. Dreujou cautions that perhaps because of the conversions, the raw Lustre HD footage needed work before it resembled the images he had seen on the hi-def monitor during production.
Both Dreujou and Lucas were delighted to work with the same yellow, cyan and magenta points that are used in photochemical color timing. “My origins are in photochemistry,” notes Lucas. “I came to digital because I wanted to follow the evolution of the technology, but my heart still beats for photochemical treatments. I hope one day to combine digital and photochemical techniques to create a new look.”
Two Brothers’ final graded image file was transferred from the Lustre to the Arrilaser, where it was recorded onto Eastman 2242 intermediate film. The Arrilaser output six 15- to 20-minute reels that served as a “negative” for a traditional photochemical process that involved contact printing to an interpositive (IP) and internegative (IN), all on 2242. The release prints were then made on Kodak Vision 2383.
Soeiro explains that Two Brothers was graded using Lustre “proxy” images that had lower resolution than but identical color values to the HD originals. These smaller proxy images were sized to match the 1280-pixel width of the “1K” Barco DLP 50 projector. The proxy images were manipulated in real time on the Lustre, while the original HD images were conformed offline by a “render farm.”
DIs would not be possible if the projected digital images did not accurately represent the final result on film. Soeiro credits the 3-D Display LUTs that Éclair developed in-house for enabling great precision in mimicking the way the image will look on positive film stock. Whereas a “normal” (2-D) LUT transforms individual red, green or blue values from one colorspace to the other, a 3-D LUT establishes correspondences between actual colors defined by triads of red, green and blue. Notes Soerio, “With this method, you can decide, for example, that the oranges in the digital color space should be displaced more toward the red of the film color space, without displacing the other colors nearby. This kind of thing is impossible in 2-D LUTs, where each red, green or blue component is treated separately. Only 3-D LUTs enable you to make two colorspaces coincide perceptually.”
“What’s pleasant about the digital projector,” observes Dreujou, “is that it’s on a big scale, so you can more accurately adjust the volumes in the image. What’s unpleasant is that the image quality is soft because it lacks definition.” Although the digital-proxy projection was remarkably close to 35mm, Dreujou noticed some subtle differences in contrast and saturation. “We found we had to augment the contrast and saturation slightly in the digital image in order to get the desired result in film,” says the cinematographer. “Also, we ended up with something slightly too blue in digital projection to get what we wanted in film projection.” He adds that the film projection also revealed more detail in the blacks than the digital one did.
The time it takes to get film out of an Arrilaser marks a key difference between digital and traditional grading. At 1.5 to 2.5 seconds per frame, it takes 12-15 hours to record a 20-minute reel of film with the Arrilaser, whereas a traditional film reprint is done in real time. Because many film projects are competing for valuable Arrilaser time, Éclair has instituted the practice of “digital dailies,” two- to three-minute rolls of selected excerpts. These serve as a regular check of the film output of the grading process and are short enough so that it is practical to produce them every couple of days.
Dreujou notes that although digital dailies can alert filmmakers to potential problems, they can be downright frustrating. “You don’t have time to really get into a sequence,” he says. “It’s a way to check that everything is okay, but it goes too fast. Also, you’re often selecting the problem scenes because you want to check them, so most of what you see needs work. After a while, it can get pretty depressing.” After days of effort on Two Brothers, Dreujou remembers the moment when he finally saw an entire 20-minute reel output to film. “Seeing Reel 2 in its entirety was happiness! All of a sudden, I could breathe more freely. You don’t really see things until you get an entire reel, and then you can really enter into the film. However, you have to be sure of what you’ve done before you send a reel off to be recorded on film. You don’t want to have to re-record the entire reel!”
Adds Lucas, “In digital grading, you tend to work reel by reel, so you stay on one reel for a long time. When I finally see the entire film, I may want to tweak the reels so they match — one might be greener than another because we did it two weeks later, for example, so I may adjust the end of one reel and the beginning of another.” Lucas often does these final adjustments directly on 35mm with 35mm color timing.
In photochemical color timing, there are three controls, one each for the amount of red, green and blue light that will shine through the negative and onto the positive print. Changing all three printer lights together adjusts the density or brightness of the image. One look at the dozen buttons and complex menus of the Lustre makes it clear that there is more at work here than just three printer lights. “The tool has completely changed,” agrees Lucas, “but the way of working is the same because I can work on a machine that has the same color points and density points as with film. Now, however, there is a new parameter: contrast. I work at removing undesired variations in contrast between shots. Another big difference is that we can now work with zones inside the image, but inside each zone, we work the same way we do with film.”
Lucas defines the zones with roughly sketched polygon or oval “windows” and then varies the color, brightness or contrast values inside the window. These windows (also known as mattes) can be programmed to move within a shot, follow an actor, or, in this case, follow a tiger across the frame. Lucas notes that the control of saturation is another feature that distinguishes digital grading from film grading; although there are ways to desaturate the image photochemically, such as ENR, these are complicated processes.
The two tiger images shown on page 78 exemplify the hybrid nature of Two Brothers. The wider shot was filmed in HD, while the close-up was filmed in 35mm. Both shots contain virtual CGI elements: in the wide shot, some of the flames and smoke are virtual, and so is the circle of flames seen in the eyes in the close-up. Lucas explains, “Here, as elsewhere, we accentuated the color of the tiger’s fur. We added saturation overall and yellowed the image significantly, but kept the greens of the vegetation. This could have been done in classical timing because we didn’t use windows.
“In the day interior shown here,” he continues, “we redid the backlight. I brightened the shot and used a window to darken the people and the walls. For the image of the Buddhist woman praying, we added density and saturation to an image that was shot during the day to create more of a dusk feeling. In the interior, we used windows to brighten some shadows and warm up her face and the area behind the bamboo. We used windows in about one-third of the shots, including many effects shots. We typically used them to boost the green of the jungle and the color of the tiger’s fur — we had to match the color of 30 different tigers! We also used windows to bring down the HD skies.”
The greater capabilities of digital grading have made postproduction a more protracted process, and many cinematographers are concerned that productions are not allowing for a lengthy digital timing when they make deals with directors of photography. Dreujou observes that photochemical grading takes roughly one week, during which the cinematographer attends projections, gives notes to the color timer, and only comes back to see the next print. Digitally grading Two Brothers took almost two months of Dreujou’s time; the ability to stay on one shot and grade any area of the frame means that the dialogue between cinematographer and timer is much more detailed than it has to be in traditional timing. “If you truly want to leave your signature on the film, you have to organize your schedule so you can be available — even if it means turning down other films,” he says.
Digital grading is changing the nature of cinematography by creating a kind of “virtual cinematography,” whereby the cinematographer can use software in post to create virtual filters, flags or T-stop changes. “Because of these tools, I will sometimes live with certain problems during shooting because I know I will be able to fix them in post,” says Dreujou. “Say, for example, that the walls are too bright. It may be complicated to set up a bunch of flags, and it will take time to adjust them. I now know that I will be able to darken the walls very easily in post, so I may not take a half-hour to solve the problem on the set. However, if the cinematographer isn’t there to make that change in post, it won’t get done, and then the image won’t be what he or she wanted. In general, it’s dangerous to not be present during post.”
Dreujou adds that a cinematographer needs to have clear objectives in order to avoid getting lost in the endless possibilities of digital grading. “If you don’t go in with firm intentions, your image can end up all over the place. Now that I have more experience, I think a lot about the timing during the shoot. Usually, I want to reproduce what I have created on the set.”
Dreujou confesses that he now relies on virtual grad filters instead of putting the real thing in front of his lens. “I used to use a lot of grads, but now I use hardly any. It’s complicated to move a grad during a shot, but it’s very simple in post. I still use 85s and colored filters because I don’t want to deliver a neutral image. In some cases, it might be easier to not use filters during the shoot, but I’m deeply attached to the notion of giving an intention to the image on set. Time is precious in production, but as cinematographers, we’ve been asked to put a story in images, and we must do that from the very beginning until the very end.”
TECHNICAL SPECS
Format: 2.40:1 extraction from Super 35 and HD
HD capture: Sony HDW-F900 and HDW-F950, Digital Primos
Film capture: Arri 435, Primo lenses
Original elements: HDCam videotape and 35mm Kodak and Fuji negatives
Effects image format: 1920 x 1080 pixels, RGB, 8bit linear
Grading image format: 1920 x 1080 pixels, RGB, 10bit log
Tools used: Phillips Spirit DataCine
Discreet Smoke, Flame & Inferno,
Discreet Lustre, Éclair 3D Display LUT,
Barco DLP 50 projector,
Arrilaser Film Recorder
Intermediate Film: Eastman Kodak 2242
Printed on: Kodak Vision 2383
Dalsa va lancer sa caméra digitale 4K en novembre
Un court-métrage tourné avec la
caméra ORIGIN, The Glove, sera présenté le 10 septembre au
Toronto International Film Festival.
Digital has been acknowledged as the future of moviemaking. Not only does it provide immediate feedback it can give cinematographers more power, more possibilities, and more creative control to express their visions. But digital cameras have been hindered with limited resolving power, limited exposure latitude, and "videocam baggage." They just didn't perform to film standards.
More images in Press Kit
Until now. DALSA's Origin camera ushers in the future with 4K digital capture and unprecedented image quality. The first digital camera designed from the ground up for cinematography, Origin is also the only motion picture camera to offer digital performance truly worthy of the big screen. DALSA has worked closely with a group of industry veterans who truly understand the needs of the professional cinematographer to design a revolutionary system delivering unprecedented imaging power and unrivalled creative control.
DALSA's Origin has not grown from "videocam" roots. It uses standard 35mm cinematography lenses allowing cinematographers to create the depth of field and focus effects they want; it also uses an optical viewing system so operators can actually keep that focus and see the effects.
Origin's film-sized sensor is the best cinematography sensor in the world, offering four times the resolution of "Hi-Def." But more importantly, it provides all the exposure latitude of the best film stocks, with more than 12 stops of linear response.
Origin offers multiple output options for compatibility with with the industry's best digital postproduction tools and workflows, both existing 2K systems and evolving 4K infrastructures. With support from infrastructure leaders, our 4K format not only works for today, it represents an ideal archival-quality master that allows your original vision to move easily to whatever new postproduction or display standards emerge in the years to come.
The DALSA digital cinematography system is an epoch-making advance, giving cinematographers and directors of photography the power to stop worrying about technological limitations and focus on the art of cinematography.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the first live-action feature film produced entirely from blue-screen composites and CG animation
Some filmmakers wish to eschew practical
shooting altogether and build an entire cinematic world from virtual scratch.
That’s exactly what director Kerry Conran and cinematographer Eric Adkins
have done for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the first live-action
feature film produced entirely from blue-screen composites and CG
animation.
After ten months of preproduction in a Van Nuys warehouse, principal photography commenced with three Sony HDW-F900/3 CineAlta cameras shooting on a trio of giant blue-screen stages at England’s Elstree Studios (the largest comprising over 16,000 square feet with 50-foot ceilings).
After ten months of preproduction in a Van Nuys warehouse, principal photography commenced with three Sony HDW-F900/3 CineAlta cameras shooting on a trio of giant blue-screen stages at England’s Elstree Studios (the largest comprising over 16,000 square feet with 50-foot ceilings).
ICG spoke with Eric Adkins (DoP) over the phone about his pioneering project.
ICG: You have a background in special effects cinematography, from blending CGI in commercials and music videos to doing stop motion work in features (Mars Attacks) and television (The PJs). How did this prepare you for Sky Captain?
ADKINS: On The PJs, we had six directors, forty-seven 35mm Mitchell cameras and sixty miniature sets in a 50,000 square foot building. So it involved a lot of organizational skills—troubleshooting, scheduling and figuring out efficient ways of shooting things. But you tend to take on extra responsibilities because you don’t want your crew to be relighting the same stuff all the time. So The PJs was a great training project for this blue-screen work on Sky Captain. Producers can say, “Well, the blue screen has no sets; you can shoot anything you want.” But even though you don’t have the physical reference, you still have to present lighting continuities with an efficient shooting order. The producers would have loved to get through 47 shots a day; we were consistently getting around 37 per day, which is still a lot of shots. It’s very interesting when you can take something from another job that was so unusual, and bring it to this job, which is also unusual, and really make it work for you in ways that aren’t typical to your job title.
ICG: Ten months of preproduction is certainly atypical.
ADKINS: When you’re shooting entirely on blue-screen and there are no physical sets, the process of discovery is so intensive in the front end to meet the challenges of believability and tactile involvement. You have to visualize how the imaginary place would feel, as opposed to just look. I was employed for ten months ahead of time to figure out all these obstacles to help with the believability, to help with understanding each “location,” to give a feeling from one room to the other. It’s even more make-believe than normal filmmaking; you inherit nothing, you have to create absolutely everything.
The first thing I did was go out and do some Los Angeles-based reference shooting with a [Nikon D1-X digital] still camera, going on roofs, looking at old marquees—essentially location scouting. All of the background plates that were not archival photographs, matte paintings or CG animations, I shot with Darin Hollings, [Visual Effects Supervisor] with this digital camera and no crew. We brought help in for some places like Radio City Music Hall in New York, but that wasn’t a crew for lighting—it was more like, “Hey Moe, can you stand over there as a reference?”
Also, if we wanted higher resolution, all we had to do was take a grid of digital photographs that overlay each other and then stitch them together. Meaning I would take one shot with an ideal framing; then I would tilt up the camera like half the width of the viewfinder and take another picture, and then pan over half the width of the viewfinder and so on—essentially getting nine photographs to make a much bigger square. We couldn’t use too wide of a lens—if you went any wider than a 32mm, the distortion would make it hard to stitch them together naturally. But with this stitching, you’ve exponentially increased the resolution, so then you could actually create “moving” shots; pans and tilts and 2-D zooms on the background plates. We didn’t even have any motion background plates on this film.
ICG: What previsualization techniques did you use?
ADKINS: Well, originally we were planning a lot more 2D and 2-and-a-half-D shots, where we might have a still or archival photograph and layer it on top of a slight 3D model. We were also planning to shoot most of the story in a dry rehearsal on the Van Nuys stage, so we would have a sort of live animatic. But when Angelina Jolie was hired and the backgrounds changed to be seventy-five to eighty percent 3-D, Kerry decided he was going to previsualize absolutely everything. So we decided to do the animatic all digitally.
Steve Yamamoto, the animation supervisor, would go through all the shots inventing dimensional storyboards, asking my opinion and using me as a bouncing board before he took it to Kerry. If there were especially dynamic shots, he would bring them to my attention and say, ‘Do you like this better, or do you like this?’ It was kind of like working with a camera operator, where you’re using the talents of someone who understands the equipment really well, and you work with them as a tool.
At the same time, I would study those previsualizations like they were a set and anticipate how the actors might be blocked based on conversations with Kerry. Then from that, I could tell where windows or doors or practical lights might be in the set and add lighting input such as which direction I might key from. I used these keylight notes to help organize how we were going to shoot it.
It didn’t always work. For example, when we were doing tech rehearsals on a mock-up of Sky Captain’s cockpit, [the animatic] would have us sticking cameras in physically impossible places given which camera rig we needed to use, or given the fact that the lens is so many millimeters long. In that case we actually had to throw the previsualized CG shots of the cockpit away. So before we had to send the plane off in a storage bin to England, we got our stand-ins back in there and did shots in every conceivable direction, so that the editor could then cut them [into the animatic].
ICG: How did you translate these animatic camera angles into physical setups on the blue-screen stage?
ADKINS: On a normal film you’d have the art director’s floor plan, and you’d sketch in where all your cameras and lights are. What we could do on the computer is essentially ‘highjack’ all the virtual cameras from the shots in that animatic sequence, and import them into a top-view floor plan of the virtual “set.” Then we could see exactly what our camera placements were going to be, and I would sit down with our tracking people and have them separate the scene into “clumps” of forward and reverse angles. Once we had those clumps together and made sure that they all fit in the blue screen field, we would lock and rotate them all together in relative space so I could arrange them according to how it would be easiest to light. For example, if the key light was going to come from 3/4 back on the right side, I needed to position that “clump” where I would have access to enough space in the blue screen to light from that direction. But I wouldn’t want to be dragging lights out onto the blue screen for the reverse; what we would do then was just essentially rotate everything around on the virtual floor plan and shoot it the other way.
ICG: How did the blue-screen shooting affect your lens choice and camerawork?
ADKINS: We originally planned to use Zeiss’s new HD primes. But we discovered that the true nodal point of these primes was different somewhere out on each lens, and so with every physical lens change, we would have a different offset that we would have to calculate into the computer design as pre-visualised. To avoid confusion, we didn’t want to recalculate for a lens change on the stage floor. Since all line-ups for composite must be measured from the nodal point and not the focal plane, when measuring the cameras distance and height. So I said, “You know what? The [Fujinon 5-50mm T2.4] zoom lens isn’t the newest lens out there, but it seems to be very consistent nodally through out the range, and when you follow focus, it doesn’t breathe at all.” So we used those zooms for the whole show.
We were also discovering some very “anamorphic”-looking noise in the [camera’s] blue channel—if you were shooting film you would call it “grain”—which was stretched out and kind of had a halo to it. The blue channel is so noisy because it’s the last chip at the end of the prism and it’s working so much harder to sense the light through all those layers of glass. We set the camera’s gain control to -3Db—which is essentially making it work less hard to sense the light, the opposite of pushing a film stock—and all of a sudden the blue channel became normal looking. Which was great, but by doing that we lost another two-thirds of the light. So we found ourselves down to shooting at a 2.8. But some people shoot HD wide open anyway, to gain a little bit more of a 35mm look in terms of depth-of-field.
We never shot three cameras at the same time; the third camera was purely for pre-setting on another set to buy us time for relighting. We also knew we were going to do A-B type camera set ups, but there were times early on where we actually spent more time trying to make a setup work for both shots simultaneously than we would have if we just shot one after the other. So I had the idea to use that same amount of time to set up an A and B camera, but not always shoot an A and B camera. You could set up one camera that might actually be in the shot of the second camera, but because it was on a crane with a remote head, you could shoot that camera and then say, “OK, that’s done” and lift it out into the sky. Now you’re ready to shoot the next shot, which is already set up.
There was no motion control on this whole show. Instead we had this thing called a “camera orientation device” that Darin’s brother made for him in the welding shop. It looked like an antenna, and by mounting it on the camera, you could tell that it was tilting or panning so many degrees and how high it was off the ground. With a regular surveying laser pointer, they were able to ping every single spot on that targeting device, and we were able to track any moving shot on computer software back in post.
There was even one shot where we needed a very accurate matte, and we actually turned the HD camera sideways on the full-body shot of a guy standing there. You get all this extra edge detail that is much higher resolution than the vertical resolution. So you can actually use the horizontal resolution as the vertical in blue-screen, because there’s no up or down.
ICG: What other tools did you use to establish the look of the film?
ADKINS: I couldn’t soften the images traditionally, because it’s blue screen—you want them to be as crisp as possible. But I wanted a softer look on the faces; I didn’t want the sharp, harsh, highlight tones that a digital chip gives you. So I decided to shoot the whole film with a polarizing filter. When you’re side lighting and backlighting, it takes the harsh glare away, but doesn’t get rid of the source. It makes it more velvety, like some of these old silver nitrate prints from way back when. Of course, you also immediately lose almost two stops of light—on top of what you lose from shooting at -3Db—so you have to light things brighter. I tested it out to see if we had enough light, and it didn’t change anything technically that would have hurt pulling the keys.
ICG: How did your lighting differ from a traditionally shot film?
ADKINS: Some of the early press seemed to be saying, “You can practically light this all in the computer.” Well, I knew that wasn’t going to be the case and so did the director. At first it was thought maybe we could light flatter [than normal], but that was proven not to be true. We needed a much better, more realistic lighting solution because this was film noir: There’s a lot of back light and side light and silhouette. If you have someone walking in a scene, going in and out of light, it’s so difficult to recreate that realistically in a 2-D lighting session in the composite stage. If you put that task onto the compositor to recreate, it wouldn’t be afforded for the whole film.
At the same time, to get an ideal key, you want to light for your blue screen. You want it to be even and consistent, and therefore you base everything on that [exposure]. From the T-stop that you get, you’re only going to mess around with it plus or minus two thirds of a stop. And then if you can, turn the blue screen off so you can light the characters. That’s one of the best tips you can say to anyone lighting blue screen, because they can get so disoriented by it that they don’t even feel through the blue. Once you get it right, why don’t you turn it off? You already know your T-stop, so then just begin to light.
ICG: Did lighting for the blue screen pose any special challenges?
ADKINS: I knew that I wanted a larger radius base ramp, than most contractors like to build for reasons of amount of materials used. But if the ramp is too tight light gets amplified, like in a cylinder, which gives a horizontal highlight, behind the actors’ legs, in your blue screen.
You also have to consider the fact that you’re also lighting the blue screen floor that they’re standing on. It’d be easy if everything was a medium shot and you had a blue screen that everyone was standing in front of on a platform. But you have to take into consideration that the actors are walking on the same blue floor that they have to be keyed on, and you want it to match the wall behind them.
However, you don’t want the movie to just be technically lit to be good for key. There are times when you do have to sacrifice a perfect key pull for drama’s sake. You learn to rank things in terms of importance. For example, in one scene the characters were supposed to be walking through a mineshaft. That was some of the ugliest blue-screen floor lighting you can think of, but everything from their knees up was in a nice blue field and everything down lower was essentially unlit anyway, so it was essentially a silhouette and they could pull a key off of that. You want it as clean as possible, but if the action was good, moving on is a good thing to do. That’s what’s good about having a director who knows what he’s doing in the digital composite world.
ICG: Can you describe your lighting for one scene in particular?
ADKINS: There’s a scene set in Sky Captain’s office where Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow meet for the first time. We actually shot it a whole half a week early; it was supposed to be a rehearsal, but everybody was just ready to do it. This was my only opportunity to test with the real actors, without the pressures of actually having to live with it in the movie; I was taking more chances with the dark, noir-y look. I wanted to be able to put Jude Law’s face in complete blackness with a slight edge around the back of his head leaning against the door frame.
We specifically designed this intimate scene to be some of the first shots because it was a close confined space. It was less about the walls; it was more about the desk and the doorway. It felt like theatre to the actors. For this tight room I had a 9-Light with 8x8 full grid diffusion boxed in so it didn’t spill on the bluescreen. What I wanted it to do was also light a large cabinet behind him, which was essentially a “wall” reference. Between the practical doorframe and the big cabinet, there was a gap where you saw into the bluescreen background behind. If I was on a real set or a location, I’d be forced to use an unnaturally high-angled light or put a light near his feet to illuminate the cabinet.
But this way, since there was no real wall there, I just had to angle the cabinet into that 9-Light coming through the space between it and the doorframe. It nicely rendered this really soft glow, and it was totally convincing that it was supposedly coming from that window in the office door. So I was able to use the fact that we were shooting on a blue screen to enhance the scene.
Le Grand Bleu
Tournage de "statements" dans un studio
bleu.
Demain La Lune compose ces plans dans des décors très blancs, style "Men In Black".
Réalisateur: Boris Rabusseau
Production: Pascal Girardin pour Free Prod
VFX: Demain La Lune
Client: Procter & Gamble
Demain La Lune compose ces plans dans des décors très blancs, style "Men In Black".
Réalisateur: Boris Rabusseau
Production: Pascal Girardin pour Free Prod
VFX: Demain La Lune
Client: Procter & Gamble
Deux caméras (plan moyen et gros
plan).
Eclairage de face très diffus:
- deux Chimeras dont une avec une demi-hauteur de Cosmetic Highlight (gel Rosco)
- deux contre-jours pour détacher les cheveux du fond et amoindrir les reflets bleus sur les tempes des invités.
- softlights pour le Bluescreen
Le tissu noir est tendu sous l'invité pour éviter les réflections bleues provenant du sol.
Test pour les contre-jours. Le maquillage latéral du visage est déterminant.
A suivre dans quelques jours pour les résultats des incrustations.
Boris Rabusseau, réalisateur.
Eclairage de face très diffus:
- deux Chimeras dont une avec une demi-hauteur de Cosmetic Highlight (gel Rosco)
- deux contre-jours pour détacher les cheveux du fond et amoindrir les reflets bleus sur les tempes des invités.
- softlights pour le Bluescreen
Le tissu noir est tendu sous l'invité pour éviter les réflections bleues provenant du sol.
Test pour les contre-jours. Le maquillage latéral du visage est déterminant.
A suivre dans quelques jours pour les résultats des incrustations.
Boris Rabusseau, réalisateur.
Etalonnage
Exemple d'étalonnage secondaire
réalisé sur Final Cut Pro HD.
Ce lien vous mène directement à la page récemment ajoutée au Cours Lumière. Exemple pratique avec extraits en Quicktime.
5 clips Casablanca & Marrakesh
5 styles différents pour 5
interprètes.
Tournage Beta Digital
Sources HMI & KinoFlos
Objectif: contrer le soleil marocain trop contrasté pour la vidéo, tout en respectant les couleurs naturelles du pays:
Tournage Beta Digital
Sources HMI & KinoFlos
Objectif: contrer le soleil marocain trop contrasté pour la vidéo, tout en respectant les couleurs naturelles du pays:
Départ des studios Cinédina avec le matériel lumière de MPS.
Le soleil de midi est écrasant. Très mauvais pour les visages.
Installation d'une grande mama derrière le chanteur pour adoucir les contrastes lumineux entre lui et le fond.
J'ai fait peindre un poly (réflecteur) en couleur sable pour faire éclater le teint mat des visages marocains.
Une diff 216 toujours dans le but d'adoucir les contrastes, cette fois sur son visage.
Résultat vu depuis l'objectif.
Autre décor:
Le réflecteur sable suffit:
Par contre un autre décor est un peu terne au naturel:
Alors HMI avec CTS pour ajouter un peu de caractère:
Faux coucher de soleil.
Le dôme à l'arrière est en cours d'illumination, pour donner un contrepoint lumineux avec le premier plan.
Autre décor, on laisse "péter les blancs". Cette photo est trop sombre par rapport au résultat.
Ambiance de tournage. Plutôt relax, en fait.
Fin de soirée au studio. Ici, le rappeur Rabir éclairé au KinoFlo en douche, horizontal, perpendiculaire à l'axe optique.
Le lendemain, tournage sur une plage. Au loin, le pont arrière d'une énorme épave.
On a eu le coucher de soleil dans l'axe de l'épave. Totalement magique. Pas de photos :-((
Autre tournage sur 2 chariots (un pour l'éclairage du plafond et un pour le chanteur et la caméra) au Sheraton de Marrakesh.
Pour ce clip, j'ai demandé à la direction de l'hôtel de changer les 200 ampoules cassées des grands lustres du lobby. 4 heures de travail. Pendant ce temps, on a tourné au bord de la piscine:
Greg joint l'utile (tension d'une mama) à l'agréable.
Traitement croisé en film: tests
Quelques trucs pour ceux qui veulent tenter
l'expérience.
Source: In Camera, le magazine de Kodak Motion Pictures
Source: In Camera, le magazine de Kodak Motion Pictures
Daron Keet puts reversal to the
test
Los Angeles-based cinematographer Daron Keet remembers when negative film was for amateurs and reversal film was for professionals. He fondly recalls the days when, shooting stills with his Nikon F3, he would underexpose by 1/3 of a stop to hit the reversal film's "sweet spot". He says, "The rewards for exposing reversal film correctly were, and still are, worth the risk: unparalleled color saturation and sharpness."
Keet decided to explore the possibilities of today's reversal films by shooting a series of spec commercials. The initial spots would examine a range of processing options. Keet enlisted the help of John Sellars, a telecine colorist at High Technology Video Inc., Kathy Mazza of Kodak, and Keith Anderson at Yale Film & Video.
Keet shot tests with two rolls of Ektachrome 100D 5285 color reversal film. Both rolls were rated normally and were exposed using identical scenes and lighting conditions. One roll was sent to Yale Film & Video for the normal E-6 process, the other to FotoKem for ECN-2 cross-processing, a process during which reversal film is developed through a color negative process.
"After comparing the results, we preferred the footage processed using the normal E-6 process," says Keet. "The results were exactly as Kodak described, with saturated colors, neutral gray scale, accurate skin tones and very sharp, grain-free images. The cross-processed images featured colors that were intensely saturated and contrasty, with very little detail in the blacks. There was a noticeable increase in grain. The gray scale revealed color shifts and skin tones took on a green, blotchy look."
Keet notes that one solution to the green shift would be to use a CC30 magenta filter.
Sellars evaluated the images from a colorist's perspective. "I was impressed by the way the (Eastman Ektachrome 100D) 5285 film processed normally and handled fine detail highlights," he says. "When the film was exposed at no more than one-third of a stop over its rated EI, the highlights had an elegant sparkle and were superior to highlights in an equivalent speed negative stock. I believe this is due in part to the fact that more light is required to push through the dense highlights of the negative, thereby creating slightly more grain and noise."
"In the future, I would like to do two further tests," says Sellars. "One would be to shoot the same scene in color negative (Eastman EXR 100T) 5248 film, and the other would be to see how a print from a dupe negative of the 5285 looks on the telecine."
Keet applied what he learned to his photography of the first spec commercial, for a public service announcement for Alcoholics Anonymous. He plans to further explore the use of reversal stock for green screen compositing, underwater cinematography and latex and special effects makeup photography. The spots will be finished to high definition digital masters.
"As we explore the use of reversal film in commercial photography, we hope that others will enjoy the results of our endeavor," says Keet. "We're grateful to Jim Hardy and Robert Glassenberg of HTV, for their generous contribution of time and equipment."
Keet's further adventures with reversal film can be followed at his website, www.daronkeet.com.
Los Angeles-based cinematographer Daron Keet remembers when negative film was for amateurs and reversal film was for professionals. He fondly recalls the days when, shooting stills with his Nikon F3, he would underexpose by 1/3 of a stop to hit the reversal film's "sweet spot". He says, "The rewards for exposing reversal film correctly were, and still are, worth the risk: unparalleled color saturation and sharpness."
Keet decided to explore the possibilities of today's reversal films by shooting a series of spec commercials. The initial spots would examine a range of processing options. Keet enlisted the help of John Sellars, a telecine colorist at High Technology Video Inc., Kathy Mazza of Kodak, and Keith Anderson at Yale Film & Video.
Keet shot tests with two rolls of Ektachrome 100D 5285 color reversal film. Both rolls were rated normally and were exposed using identical scenes and lighting conditions. One roll was sent to Yale Film & Video for the normal E-6 process, the other to FotoKem for ECN-2 cross-processing, a process during which reversal film is developed through a color negative process.
"After comparing the results, we preferred the footage processed using the normal E-6 process," says Keet. "The results were exactly as Kodak described, with saturated colors, neutral gray scale, accurate skin tones and very sharp, grain-free images. The cross-processed images featured colors that were intensely saturated and contrasty, with very little detail in the blacks. There was a noticeable increase in grain. The gray scale revealed color shifts and skin tones took on a green, blotchy look."
Keet notes that one solution to the green shift would be to use a CC30 magenta filter.
Sellars evaluated the images from a colorist's perspective. "I was impressed by the way the (Eastman Ektachrome 100D) 5285 film processed normally and handled fine detail highlights," he says. "When the film was exposed at no more than one-third of a stop over its rated EI, the highlights had an elegant sparkle and were superior to highlights in an equivalent speed negative stock. I believe this is due in part to the fact that more light is required to push through the dense highlights of the negative, thereby creating slightly more grain and noise."
"In the future, I would like to do two further tests," says Sellars. "One would be to shoot the same scene in color negative (Eastman EXR 100T) 5248 film, and the other would be to see how a print from a dupe negative of the 5285 looks on the telecine."
Keet applied what he learned to his photography of the first spec commercial, for a public service announcement for Alcoholics Anonymous. He plans to further explore the use of reversal stock for green screen compositing, underwater cinematography and latex and special effects makeup photography. The spots will be finished to high definition digital masters.
"As we explore the use of reversal film in commercial photography, we hope that others will enjoy the results of our endeavor," says Keet. "We're grateful to Jim Hardy and Robert Glassenberg of HTV, for their generous contribution of time and equipment."
Keet's further adventures with reversal film can be followed at his website, www.daronkeet.com.
Le format FilmStream utilisé dans Collateral
60% de Collateral, le film de Michael Mann
avec Tom Cruise, a été tourné avec la VIPER de Thomson. Le film
comporte beaucoup d'extérieurs nuit, et cette caméra sensible qui
capte en 4:4:4 sans compression était le meilleur moyen de filmer avec les
lumières de la rue sans pour autant aboutir à des images "style
DV".
Extrait d'un article sur les aspects techniques du tournage.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
lien vers l'article original
Extrait d'un article sur les aspects techniques du tournage.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
lien vers l'article original
Michael Mann road-tests the Viper camera on his mixed-media opus
Revving up digital cinematography
By Carolyn Giardina
Pictured: Director Michael Mann with the Viper FilmStream digital camera on the set of "Collateral"
Leave it to Michael Mann to shake up the system. The Oscar-nominated director famous for gritty yet visually dazzling depictions of urban life and an uncompromising attitude toward his craft is now ushering digital filmmaking from the extreme reaches of science fiction and low-budget indie into the realm of high-profile studio thriller. The director has elected to use Thomson Grass Valley's Viper FilmStream camera for his upcoming "Collateral," the Tom Cruise-starrer financed by DreamWorks and Paramount, scheduled for an Aug. 6 release.
As the first director to road-test the Viper -- much anticipated as the first cinema camera capable of storing images as data, directly to a hard drive -- Mann's choices are worth noting in a creative community coming to grips with the practicalities and pitfalls of digital imaging.
The Viper isn't the only camera Mann is using to shoot the movie, which he describes as a "multimedia" effort. He's using the Sony CineAlta high-definition camera, as well as shooting film, but of the roughly 80% of the finished film Mann estimates he's captured digitally, about 80% originated from the Viper.
Mann says his choice was driven by the film's creative needs. The story -- of a veteran hit man (Cruise) who hijacks a cab and forces the driver (Jamie Foxx) to traverse the streets of Los Angeles, transporting him from job to job until the LAPD and the FBI begin to pursue the vehicle -- seems well-suited to electronic cameras.
"Everything is pretty much driven by story, and this whole picture takes place at night," the director says. "I wanted to see into the night. I wanted the night to be alive so that it becomes very three-dimensional. That's what I was trying to get," says Mann, kicking back at the Santa Monica offices that house his production company, Forward Pass.
"There was a quality to the Viper cam that I responded to," says Mann, who is no stranger to digital cameras, having employed high-definition video for the opening sequences of his 2001 biopic "Ali." In particular, he says, the Viper's color imaging worked well for this particular film. "It had to do with the sensitivity of reds and yellows and oranges. This was not only seeing deeply into the night, seeing what you see with the naked eye and something more than you can see with the naked eye, but also the color information. It had an aesthetic that I wanted."
The Viper operates in several modes. At the high end is FilmStream, which captures unprocessed imagery -- no color correction, no compression -- in the 4:4:4 RGB color space, the full color range of an electronic image signal. (While analog film still offers significantly greater color sensitivity than any electronic medium, 4:4:4 RGB is the highest level currently offered in the electronic realm. Film scanned into the digital domain for effects manipulation or what have you is scanned at 4:4:4 RGB. By way of comparison, broadcast HD operates in a 4:2:2 YUV environment, subsampling in blue and red. The Viper also offers 4:2:2 options.)
Though other high-end digital cameras, including the CineAlta, also shoot in 4:4:4 RGB, Thomson vp strategic marketing and business development Jeff Rosica says that what sets the Viper apart is the proprietary CCDs that capture the image as well as the way the data, once acquired, is distributed. The CCDs capture 12-bit linear image, which is then transmitted and stored at 10-bit log space. "Because it's logarithmic, it actually emulates the most important properties of a 12-bit linear signal," says Rosica. The signal is then transferred to a recording device via a dual-link serial HD connection.
Mann and his team began an extensive testing phase by recording material in FilmStream onto a DVS digital disk recorder. "The total capacity was 55 minutes, and it took 35 hours to download (to videotape for dailies)," Mann says. "So obviously that wasn't ready for feature film production."
Next, they tested S.two digital mags to store the uncompressed raw data. "So our storage went down to something that was physically manageable in a much more compact hard drive," Mann says. "But what it posed upon us was a long-term storage capacity of 330 terabytes, which is economically unfeasible with the current limits of the drive technology." (A terabyte of storage costs about $50,000.)
Mann then decided "to see what would happen if we put a mild compression on (the images)" and switched to Viper's VideoStream mode, which offers a 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB video, as opposed to data, signal and provides light image processing allowing for truer color reproduction in the field. "With FilmStream you're getting raw data. VideoStream functions more like a normal high-def camera, which allowed him to control the ASA," says "Collateral" associate producer Bryan Carroll.
Both modes lens in 2.37:1 widescreen without any loss of vertical resolution.
"We took it all the way to the equivalent of a release print, so it's not like we were looking at something on a monitor and taking it on faith," Mann says.
While employing the latest in digital imaging technologies, Mann took care to note that his storytelling fundamentals are essentially unchanged. "In our system, we impose on everybody the grammar and syntax that we are shooting film. All the disciplines apply, and that's very important on the floor during production. We are mixing a digital culture with a film culture, and it has to be film grammar."
That approach drove the design of a massive workflow system that brought together the material from the film camera, Viper, and the other camera system Mann employed, Sony's CineAlta F900 HD. The HDCAM footage essentially had to be handled as camera negative. Everything that was shot -- film and digital -- was digitized into Avids for postproduction, during which a digital color grading session will take place.
Mann cites Carroll as well as Thomson's Mark Chiolis, Laser Pacific's Leon Silverman and Terry Brown and Panavision's Nolan Murdock as integral to working out the bugs in the system.
Prior to filming, a team including Mann and A-camera operator Gary Jay, (who has worked with Mann since 1992's "The Last of the Mohicans") guided modifications to the Viper.
"The camera body itself wasn't ergonomic for use on a production," Mann says. "We wanted weights added to the rear of the camera to increase the mass and balance back there. We needed rods for the matte box and focus-bracket system because we do a lot of hand-holding. The control buttons needed covers because you could unbalance the camera and not know you did it. This is small stuff, but it's major when you just got done having a take that's brilliant, or you think that the actors were brilliant and it looks perfect, and you find out you switched it to FilmStream."
With his arsenal of camera technology, production began and Mann focused his attention on directing. Dion Beebe ("Chicago") came on board as director of photography.
As 27 pages of the "Collateral" screenplay take place in a car, mobility was a priority. There were some limitations as the Viper was cabled to its recording deck. Mann says that when he wanted complete mobility for handheld work, the crew used the CineAlta F900 (which is configured more like a camcorder, recording to either standard Sony HDCAM or SW tapes).
"The benefit is that there is a 55-minute tape, so in that sense there are fewer interruptions," Mann says. "(With film) if you are hand holding and you have a 400-foot mag in there, every three minutes and 45 seconds you are having to stop." (There are third-party developers working on Viper recording options, including a portable drive to enable cinematographers to work untethered.)
Creatively, he says, "there's no silver bullet in all of this. ... You have to know what you want, more so than film. In film, you can rely on certain conventional looks, almost like a perceptual preset about what you're used to having. Not so in video, it's a much broader spectrum so you have to know what you want.
"What I like about the Viper is it sees colors, it sees things, in a different way," Mann says. "People are reaching for more expressive ways to visualize and have emotional impact. That's what it all comes down to, the emotional impact to tell a story."
Clip Chehra-Z
Tournage en HD d'un clip marocain à
Genève.
Post-prod numérique HD: Boris Rabusseau (Demain la Lune) & Dan Tatut (Chrome Imaging)
Effets spéciaux: Marc Hermitte
Green Screen: Maunoir Images
Post-prod numérique HD: Boris Rabusseau (Demain la Lune) & Dan Tatut (Chrome Imaging)
Effets spéciaux: Marc Hermitte
Green Screen: Maunoir Images
Les éclairages du cyclo vert sont boostés avec du Green Moss pour saturer le vert.
Les contre-jours faciliteront l'extraction des cheveux très fins.
Un resto marocain de Genève (le Riad Fès) est transformé en studio. Pour ce plan, la lumière artificielle diffuse vient du sol, comme à travers des persiennes de harem, et un faux rayon de soleil ajoute un peu de vie.
Un gel bleu est tendu pour bleuter la pénombre d'un faux coucher de soleil.
Une ouverture dans le resto est transformée en fausse fenêtre donnant sur la rue. Détail d'une ambiance crépuscule.
Diffusions multiples sur le projecteur. Un filtre "cross" sur la caméra fait scintiller les pièces métalliques de la coiffe (effet non visible sur cette photo de contrôle).
Tournage en HD. La résolution des images est un régal.
Harry Potter film stock
Mérites comparés de quelques
émulsions choisies pas le chef op Michael
Seresin.
Extrait d'un article d'American Cinematographer, juin 2004.
Extrait d'un article d'American Cinematographer, juin 2004.
That goal involved thousands of considerations. One
of the first was film stock. Seresin had recently shot several pictures on
Kodak's EXR 500T 5298, which he calls "my favorite film stock ever." During
tests, the team ran it through the pipeline to a release print. (At that point,
Warner Bros. had not yet committed to a digital intermediate, but at press time
one was underway at a DI workstation set up in London by Warner's Advanced
Media Services department in collaboration with colorist Peter Doyle.) "The
concern was that it has a little patina," says Seresin. "Other people call it
grain, but I love that patina." By the end, however, Seresin agreed that a
finer grain was needed. "Literally within the space of a few days, Kodak phoned
up and told us about its new stock, Vision2 [500T] 5218," recalls Seresin. "I
was not a big fan of the previous Vision stocks, but 5218 was absolutely
brilliant. I loved its blacks." The new stock also integrated well with the
Vision 200T 5274 used by the model unit (which shot with an Arri 435 Advanced).
Stone tested both stocks and jumbled them up during one screening session.
"Seeing them intercut, you couldn't really tell them apart. But when you look
at specific things - the dressing on the set, for instance - I felt that the
grain was finer still on the 200," which he ultimately
chose.
Because 5218 also worked well with bluescreen, it was used on all effects work except for miniatures. This greatly facilitated the integration of elements. "One of the issues we had was that we were going to be mixing effects and non-effects elements on the same sets because of the digital environments," Guyett explains. "Vision2 is a very fine-grained stock, and it seemed to perform well under most conditions. We used it for just about everything. Straight away, it gave us some degree of consistency."
Because 5218 also worked well with bluescreen, it was used on all effects work except for miniatures. This greatly facilitated the integration of elements. "One of the issues we had was that we were going to be mixing effects and non-effects elements on the same sets because of the digital environments," Guyett explains. "Vision2 is a very fine-grained stock, and it seemed to perform well under most conditions. We used it for just about everything. Straight away, it gave us some degree of consistency."
Scans de Love Express: projections de tests
On constate une ligne blanche sur la gauche de
l'écran, et quelques autres défauts, dus en partie au blow-up en 35mm
avant scan.
Les industries suisses semblent encore jouer aux apprentis sorciers avec ces "nouvelles" technologies...
Les industries suisses semblent encore jouer aux apprentis sorciers avec ces "nouvelles" technologies...
Photo de l'écran de projection.
Blue screen pour Procter & Gamble
Personnages à inclure dans un environnement en
3D.
Format: digital
Lumière: naturelle, fortement corrigée
Lieu: toit d'un centre commercial, Genève.
Format: digital
Lumière: naturelle, fortement corrigée
Lieu: toit d'un centre commercial, Genève.
Défi: lutter contre une luminosité
très variable pour maintenir les contrastes et les valeurs
tonales.
Il faut également permettre aux personnages de se découper contre un fond bleu uni, même s'ils sont assis dessus, ce qui interdit les ombres portées sur le sol.
Installation du blue screen sous un ciel très gris.
Les toiles (Grid et Silk) sont parfaites pour créer un bleu uniforme (grid, blanc opaque) et maintenir quelques contrastes sur les personnages (silk, légèrement translucide). Les cadres 216 complètent le dispositif.
La preuve est faite que la DVX-100 de Panasonic (une très bonne mini-DV) n'est pas idéale pour restituer des couleurs primaires pures. Les bleus et rouges sont fortement compressés.
Il faut également permettre aux personnages de se découper contre un fond bleu uni, même s'ils sont assis dessus, ce qui interdit les ombres portées sur le sol.
Installation du blue screen sous un ciel très gris.
Les toiles (Grid et Silk) sont parfaites pour créer un bleu uniforme (grid, blanc opaque) et maintenir quelques contrastes sur les personnages (silk, légèrement translucide). Les cadres 216 complètent le dispositif.
La preuve est faite que la DVX-100 de Panasonic (une très bonne mini-DV) n'est pas idéale pour restituer des couleurs primaires pures. Les bleus et rouges sont fortement compressés.
Institutionnels Nespresso
Présentation de 3 nouvelles
machines.
Tournage: DVX-100 Panasonic.
Sources: tungstène, grands diffuseurs et réflecteurs, fibres optiques, miroirs.
Tournage: DVX-100 Panasonic.
Sources: tungstène, grands diffuseurs et réflecteurs, fibres optiques, miroirs.
Tourné presque intégralement en
tungstène. Chaque spot devait avoir un look distinct. Quelques reflets du
tournage.
Effet clair-obscur
Travelling installé pour survoler les capsules. Des fentes de lumière et un réflecteur "voyagent" avec la caméra, du coup les capsules rondes semblent pivoter avec les reflets tournants. Les couleurs de cette photo et de la suivante ne sont pas fidèles à celles du film.
Vue générale de l'installation
Autre dispositif pour un survol des tasses remplies de divers cafés.
Les machines métalliques sont plus jolies si elles reflètent de grandes surfaces blanches et noires.
Note: le petit miroir carré envoie une lumière très ponctuelle sur l'une des faces du verre. Ainsi un seul projecteur éclaire la gauche et la droite du verre (le projecteur est caché par la personne au premier plan).
Effet blanc, à profondeur de champ réduite.
Effet clair-obscur.
Effet clair-obscur
Travelling installé pour survoler les capsules. Des fentes de lumière et un réflecteur "voyagent" avec la caméra, du coup les capsules rondes semblent pivoter avec les reflets tournants. Les couleurs de cette photo et de la suivante ne sont pas fidèles à celles du film.
Vue générale de l'installation
Autre dispositif pour un survol des tasses remplies de divers cafés.
Les machines métalliques sont plus jolies si elles reflètent de grandes surfaces blanches et noires.
Note: le petit miroir carré envoie une lumière très ponctuelle sur l'une des faces du verre. Ainsi un seul projecteur éclaire la gauche et la droite du verre (le projecteur est caché par la personne au premier plan).
Effet blanc, à profondeur de champ réduite.
Effet clair-obscur.
Des Papillons sur la Lune
Un court de Cyril
Bron.
Format: Super-16mm
Pellicule: Kodak Vision2 500T
Caméra: Aaton Minima
Sources: exclusivement tungstène. Diffuseurs, réflecteurs et softbox: bricolage maison ;-)
Format: Super-16mm
Pellicule: Kodak Vision2 500T
Caméra: Aaton Minima
Sources: exclusivement tungstène. Diffuseurs, réflecteurs et softbox: bricolage maison ;-)
Principal défi: installer une atmosphère
vivante et poétique dans un abri
anti-nucléaire.
Ven. - Février 25, 2005
Digital Cinema: les salles en France
Etat février 2005
INDEPENDANTS
▪
PARIS - Cinéma Le Balzac http://www.cinemabalzac.com
GROUPE EUROPALACE
▪
PARIS - Gaumont Aquaboulevard
GROUPE KINEPOLIS
▪
LOMME - Kinepolis Lomme
GROUPE ADIRA
▪
LYON - Cinéma les 8 Nefs
▪
GRENOBLE - Cinéma Nef Chavant
Posted at 11:14 AM
Sam. - Février 19, 2005
LOVE EXPRESS en DVD
Vous pouvez enfin voir Love Express comme
il devait être projeté, c'est-à-dire après étalonnage
digital.
Les couleurs ont du peps, les contrastes ont des biscotaux. Bref, c'est la seule version digne d'être vue.
Les couleurs ont du peps, les contrastes ont des biscotaux. Bref, c'est la seule version digne d'être vue.
Le film est en vente dans les FNAC et autres
distributeurs de DVD.
Posted at 12:04 PM
Sam. - Septembre 11, 2004
56th Annual Primetime Emmy Nominees 2004
Results of the race: September
19
Outstanding Cinematography For A
Single-Camera
Series
Alias • Concious • ABC • Touchstone Television
Donald Thorin, Jr., Director of Photography
Carnivàle • Pick A Number • HBO • 3 Arts Entertainment in association with HBO Original Programming
Jeffrey Jur, A.S.C., Director of Photography
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation • XX • CBS • An Alliance Atlantis production in association with CBSP
Frank Byers, Director of Photography
The Sopranos • Irregular Around The Margins • HBO • Chase Films/Brad Grey Television in association with HBO Original Programming
Phil Abraham, Director of Photography
The West Wing • 7A WF 83429 • NBC • John Wells Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television Productions, Inc.
Thomas Del Ruth, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries Or Movie
American Family - Journey Of Dreams • Chapter 1: The Wedding • PBS • El Norte Productions and KCET/Hollywood in association with The Greenblatt Janolari Studio and Fox Television Studios
Reynaldo Villalobos, Director of Photography
And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself • HBO • A Mark Gordon Company and City Entertainment production in association with HBO Films
Peter James, A.C.S., A.S.C., Director of Photography
Angels In America • Part 2 - Perestroika • HBO • An Avenue Pictures production in association with HBO Films
Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C., B.S.C., Director of Photography
Iron Jawed Angels • HBO • A Spring Creek production in association with HBO Films
Robbie Greenberg, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Something The Lord Made • HBO • Cort/Madden Productions in association with HBO Films
Donald M. Morgan, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Outstanding Cinematography For Nonfiction Programming (Single Or Multi-Camera)
The Amazing Race • I Could Never Have Been Prepared For What I’m Looking At Right Now • CBS • Amazing Race Productions Inc. and Touchstone Television productions, LLC in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Television and WorldRace Productions, Inc.
Peter Wery, Lead Camera
The Apprentice • Wheeling & Dealing • NBC • Mark Burnett Productions
Matthew Sohn, Director of Photography
Mark Hryma, Director of Aerial Photography
Jockey • HBO • Q-Ball Productions in association with HBO Original Programming
Kate Davis, Cinematographer
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues • The Soul Of A Man • PBS • A Vulcan Productions/Reverse Angle production in association with Jigsaw Productions and Cappa Productions
Lisa Rinzler, Director of Photography
Survivor • Beg, Barter And Steal • CBS • SEG, Inc.
Mark “Ninja” Lynch, Director of Photography
Michael Murray, Director of Photography
Mark Hryma, Director of Aerial Photography
Derek Lovie, Director of Aerial Photography
Alias • Concious • ABC • Touchstone Television
Donald Thorin, Jr., Director of Photography
Carnivàle • Pick A Number • HBO • 3 Arts Entertainment in association with HBO Original Programming
Jeffrey Jur, A.S.C., Director of Photography
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation • XX • CBS • An Alliance Atlantis production in association with CBSP
Frank Byers, Director of Photography
The Sopranos • Irregular Around The Margins • HBO • Chase Films/Brad Grey Television in association with HBO Original Programming
Phil Abraham, Director of Photography
The West Wing • 7A WF 83429 • NBC • John Wells Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television Productions, Inc.
Thomas Del Ruth, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries Or Movie
American Family - Journey Of Dreams • Chapter 1: The Wedding • PBS • El Norte Productions and KCET/Hollywood in association with The Greenblatt Janolari Studio and Fox Television Studios
Reynaldo Villalobos, Director of Photography
And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself • HBO • A Mark Gordon Company and City Entertainment production in association with HBO Films
Peter James, A.C.S., A.S.C., Director of Photography
Angels In America • Part 2 - Perestroika • HBO • An Avenue Pictures production in association with HBO Films
Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C., B.S.C., Director of Photography
Iron Jawed Angels • HBO • A Spring Creek production in association with HBO Films
Robbie Greenberg, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Something The Lord Made • HBO • Cort/Madden Productions in association with HBO Films
Donald M. Morgan, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Outstanding Cinematography For Nonfiction Programming (Single Or Multi-Camera)
The Amazing Race • I Could Never Have Been Prepared For What I’m Looking At Right Now • CBS • Amazing Race Productions Inc. and Touchstone Television productions, LLC in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Television and WorldRace Productions, Inc.
Peter Wery, Lead Camera
The Apprentice • Wheeling & Dealing • NBC • Mark Burnett Productions
Matthew Sohn, Director of Photography
Mark Hryma, Director of Aerial Photography
Jockey • HBO • Q-Ball Productions in association with HBO Original Programming
Kate Davis, Cinematographer
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues • The Soul Of A Man • PBS • A Vulcan Productions/Reverse Angle production in association with Jigsaw Productions and Cappa Productions
Lisa Rinzler, Director of Photography
Survivor • Beg, Barter And Steal • CBS • SEG, Inc.
Mark “Ninja” Lynch, Director of Photography
Michael Murray, Director of Photography
Mark Hryma, Director of Aerial Photography
Derek Lovie, Director of Aerial Photography
Posted at 09:41 PM
Jeu. - Juin 10, 2004
De l'utilité du lighting log (mémorisation des éclairages d'un plan)
Tiré d'une interview de Michal Seresin
à propos d'Harry Potter
III.
D'autant plus important que les films actuels mêlent images de synthèse et prises de vues réelles. Les modèles de synthèse doivent être éclairés de la même manière que les acteurs.
D'autant plus important que les films actuels mêlent images de synthèse et prises de vues réelles. Les modèles de synthèse doivent être éclairés de la même manière que les acteurs.
Another essential tool was a comprehensive lighting log. "On this film," says Seresin, "we had one person, sometimes two, whose sole job was writing down every light and what it was doing. There's a plan, probably 500 pages of the most incredible drawings, of every setup, every light, every piece of diffusion, where it was on a dimmer, when a lighting change was done on a scene. It's almost a master class in exposure, lens and focus." The log was also a blueprint for the widely scattered photography units and CG animators.
Posted at 03:07 PM
Ven. - Mai 28, 2004
Van Helsing: Interview Allan Daviau
Abstract:
During their first meetings, Sommers, Ducsay and Daviau looked at many of the horror films from the 1930s while planning a visual grammar.
...It was obvious to Ducsay and Daviau that the visual effects shots and numerous scenes filmed in low key light made Van Helsing a candidate for finishing in a digital intermediate process.
...Daviau also used the black and white night backing while shooting tests for other scenes, because color is used in a restrained manner in Van Helsing with few exceptions.
...“The new film has a much finer grain structure (than other 500-speed emulsions) and an extended contrast range, which was good for both visual effects shots and scenes filmed in very low-key light.”
...Their tools included a Flying-Cam, a remote controlled helicopter that carries a 35mm motion picture camera, and a cable-cam, which was rigged to acquire point-of-view shots from the perspective of Dracula’s brides flying into a village, and for other dramatic sequences.
...“We decided to shoot this scene with the 5218 color negative, which is faster and has finer grain than the best black-and-white film,” Daviau says. “The lab printed dailies on a black-and-white film (5269) that Kodak makes for producing titles, using a technique that Beverly Wood (at Deluxe Labs) and Roger Deakins (ASC, BSC) developed for The Man Who Wasn’t There.
...Daviau says that Sommers wanted the energy of moving cameras almost all the time, including Steadicam shots and tracking with dollies, small cranes, 30 and 50 foot Technocranes usually with remote heads, and occasional Flying-Cam and cable-cam shots.
...Lighting for interior and night scenes was motivated by torchlight, oil lamps and cold, blue moonlight with only occasional splashes of color, including the elaborate vampires costume ball, which was filmed in an ancient cathedral.
...The snow-covered mountains in the background, clouds and vampires flying through the sky were all visual effects elements composited with live-action footage.
...“Many scenes included bats and other CG characters, as well as people who were filmed in front of a blue screen, maybe flying on a cable,” Daviau says.
...After principal photography was completed there was about two weeks of bluescreen work on a stage at the Hughes factory with different flying creatures, including leaping werewolves and wolf men, and Dracula’s brides on cables.
...He applied all of his knowledge to every shot he worked on. There are nuances in digital timing that you just can’t do any other way, but I’m not suggesting that we should shoot movies differently.
During their first meetings, Sommers, Ducsay and Daviau looked at many of the horror films from the 1930s while planning a visual grammar.
...It was obvious to Ducsay and Daviau that the visual effects shots and numerous scenes filmed in low key light made Van Helsing a candidate for finishing in a digital intermediate process.
...Daviau also used the black and white night backing while shooting tests for other scenes, because color is used in a restrained manner in Van Helsing with few exceptions.
...“The new film has a much finer grain structure (than other 500-speed emulsions) and an extended contrast range, which was good for both visual effects shots and scenes filmed in very low-key light.”
...Their tools included a Flying-Cam, a remote controlled helicopter that carries a 35mm motion picture camera, and a cable-cam, which was rigged to acquire point-of-view shots from the perspective of Dracula’s brides flying into a village, and for other dramatic sequences.
...“We decided to shoot this scene with the 5218 color negative, which is faster and has finer grain than the best black-and-white film,” Daviau says. “The lab printed dailies on a black-and-white film (5269) that Kodak makes for producing titles, using a technique that Beverly Wood (at Deluxe Labs) and Roger Deakins (ASC, BSC) developed for The Man Who Wasn’t There.
...Daviau says that Sommers wanted the energy of moving cameras almost all the time, including Steadicam shots and tracking with dollies, small cranes, 30 and 50 foot Technocranes usually with remote heads, and occasional Flying-Cam and cable-cam shots.
...Lighting for interior and night scenes was motivated by torchlight, oil lamps and cold, blue moonlight with only occasional splashes of color, including the elaborate vampires costume ball, which was filmed in an ancient cathedral.
...The snow-covered mountains in the background, clouds and vampires flying through the sky were all visual effects elements composited with live-action footage.
...“Many scenes included bats and other CG characters, as well as people who were filmed in front of a blue screen, maybe flying on a cable,” Daviau says.
...After principal photography was completed there was about two weeks of bluescreen work on a stage at the Hughes factory with different flying creatures, including leaping werewolves and wolf men, and Dracula’s brides on cables.
...He applied all of his knowledge to every shot he worked on. There are nuances in digital timing that you just can’t do any other way, but I’m not suggesting that we should shoot movies differently.
Just about two years ago, give or take a few months,
Allen Daviau, ASC received a telephone call from Sam Mercer. He asked if he was
interested in meeting Stephen Sommers, who scripted and planned to direct a
film featuring Dracula, other monsters and characters from the scary 1930s
movies produced by Universal Studios. The executive producer explained that the
story takes place during the late 19th century in Transylvania, where Gabriel
Van Helsing is on a mission to find and destroy Count Dracula. Along the way he
encounters Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Mr. Hyde and other movie monsters.
Daviau was intrigued. He was a fan of the 1930s Dracula, Frankenstein and other
horror movies when they aired on late night television during the 1950s and
60s.
“I’ve carried memories of those beautiful images, the mythology and the tremendous performances around in my head for decades,” Daviau says. “When Sam sent me the script, my first impression was that it was a brilliant homage to those 1930s films.”
It was a different type of project for Daviau who has earned Oscar nominations for Bugsy, Avalon, The Color Purple, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Empire of the Sun. His other memorable credits include The Falcon and the Snowman and Fearless.
Sommers has previously written and directed such thrillers as The Scorpion King, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. The last two of those films were edited by Bob Ducsay, one of the producers of Van Helsing. During his first meeting with Sommers and Ducsay, Daviau felt the bond of their shared passion for the story and genre.
The roots of Van Helsing trace back to a novel written by Irish author Abraham Stoker in 1897. His book was based on stories about a real Romanian prince named Vlad, who had a penchant for impaling his enemies and drinking their blood. Stoker’s book has inspired more than 200 films in a dozen languages with Dracula in the title.
“I still look at those 1930s films, including Dracula, shot by Karl Freund (ASC) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Karl Struss (ASC), with a sense of awe,” Daviau says.
In the original story, Van Helsing was an older, academic type of scientist. In Sommers’ screenplay, he is a young mercenary employed by the Vatican. Van Helsing is accompanied on his mission by a monk named Carl, who is a scientific whiz.
“There’s a joy in Steve’s script,” he says. “I could tell how much he enjoyed the classic horror films. He doesn’t mind kidding with the genre, but there is also a tremendous depth to the characters. They are people whom you can understand, and that helps to sweep the audience into the story. He always had some little things going on that inject some humor into the movie. He’s not after big laughs. It’s quite subtle.”
Hugh Jackman plays Van Helsing, David Wenham portrays the monk and Dracula is played by Richard Roxburgh, a noted Australian actor.
“One of the things I loved about his (Roxburgh’s) performance was that he wasn’t afraid to quote Bella Lugosi,” Daviau recounts. “I think that’s one of Van Helsing’s strengths. It’s a modern film that is true to the spirit of the classics.”
Kate Beckinsale portrays Anna Valerious, whose family spawned Dracula some 400 years earlier. No one in her family can pass through the gates of heaven until Dracula is eliminated. “She is very beautiful, and also a very strong character who is used to having her own way,” Daviau observes. “We want the audience to see her beautiful eyes. She doesn’t use her smile a lot. It has a devastating effect when she does.”
Other main roles include Will Kemp as the Wolf Man, Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein, Samuel West as Victor Frankenstein who created the monster bearing his name, and Kevin J. O’Connor as Igor, his hapless servant. Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca and Josie Maran play Dracula’s brides.
During their first meetings, Sommers, Ducsay and Daviau looked at many of the horror films from the 1930s while planning a visual grammar. They also conferred with production designer Allan Cameron, and created a palette consisting mainly of darkness and muted colors. “The only set that had color emphasis was the grand costume ball for the vampires,” Daviau says. “It’s golden in tone. Most other scenes are monochromatic.”
Hundreds of visual effects shots, with both CG and bluescreen elements, are woven into the fabric of the story. Daviau began collaborating with Scott Squires and Ben Snow, the visual effects supervisors from Industrial Light & Magic during preproduction. One of them was always present during live-action filming.
“They could look through the camera anytime,” Daviau says. “Sometimes they’d ask, is it possible to have more depth of field because they were going to composite a matte created by Richard Bluff in the background. If you’re going to shoot an effects picture, you’d better enjoy working with the effects people.”
While most of the visual effects came from ILM, Pacific Title and Art Studio, Illusion Arts and several other facilities also provided shots. It was obvious to Ducsay and Daviau that the visual effects shots and numerous scenes filmed in low key light made Van Helsing a candidate for finishing in a digital intermediate process. Sommers and the studio agreed to a test.
Daviau designed and shot the test footage, which was scanned and converted to digital files at EFILM in Los Angeles. Daviau timed and manipulated the images in conjunction with colorist Steve Scott. The outcome convinced everyone that there were sufficient advantages to justify the time and cost of finishing Van Helsing in a digital suite. Daviau committed to spending several months in postproduction.
“You have control over brightness, darkness, colors, contrast and the gamma anyplace in every frame,” Daviau says. “You can isolate a face, a bright spot on a wall or anything you choose, and manipulate that part of the image without changing anything else. Sometimes we darkened a wall in the background to draw attention to something brighter in the frame. It was a great tool for tying effects shots together with the live-action images, so every shot looks natural in the context of the story.”
Another early decision was made to frame Van Helsing in Academy aperture format (1.85:1 aspect ratio), in part to keep faith with the vertical framing of the 1930s films. It was an aesthetic decision also favored by Cameron. Daviau explains that the vertical frame is an integral part of the visual grammar. The architecture in the settings is dominated by vertical castles with high walls and towers. There are also important scenes where flying vampires and other creatures are seen from the perspective of villagers.
About half of the film was shot in and around Prague, which offered authentic locations for the Transylvanian settings, including castles, period streets and a cathedral that provided the setting for the costume ball. They also built sets on stages at Barrandov Studios, including a cave with shafts leading to the outside, and some castle interiors, and at Prague Studios where Cameron built a set utilizing a water tank.
Camera operators Paul Babin, SOC, and Tom Connole have worked regularly with Daviau since Fearless in 1993. The rest of the crew included operator Greg Schmidt, assistants Reggie Newkirk, Jimmy Jensen, Nick Shuster, Mark Santoni and Roger Wall, and film loader Tony Muller. Daviau was able to bring many of them to Prague. He also lauded Steadicam work by Craig Fikse when they were shooting in Los Angeles.
“It was very important for me to work with many people from my regular crew,” Daviau says. “There were many complex shots, often on a tight schedule, and Stephen (Sommers) likes to get his coverage on film with as few takes as possible.”
During scouting, it became obvious to Daviau that one of the challenges was creating the proper fire light effects in very large interior scenes. His gaffer, Larry Wallace, assembled a team that designed and built a torchlight using standard light bulbs, dipped in orange dye, which mimicked a CTO filter. It had a built-in flicker circuit that could be manipulated and a dimmer control compatible with both the 220-volt, 50-cycles electrical system used in Europe and the 120-volt, 60-cyceles electrical system used in the United States. Daviau combined the lamps with real torchlights in many scenes, including the costume ball, which was filmed in the cathedral.
Daviau notes that costumes designed by Gabriella Pescucci are true to the black, brown and grey tones and textures that were typical during the late 19th century.
“She designed a warm, black leather coat for Van Helsing, which had a luminous glow that is visible in scenes with a lot of contrast,” he says. “We used it throughout the picture with the exception of the costume ball. It’s a warm black with a gloss that glows. You can see it in very low key and dark scenes.”
Kodak introduced the first member of its new family of color negative films while Van Helsing was in preproduction. Kodak Vision 2 (5218) film is rated for a recommended exposure index of 500 in 3200 degree tungsten light. Daviau used the new film to shoot costume and makeup tests in combination with a black-and-white night backing.
He explains that Sommers envisioned shooting the opening scene in black and white. Daviau also used the black and white night backing while shooting tests for other scenes, because color is used in a restrained manner in Van Helsing with few exceptions.
“I remember getting the first print of a test I shot with Jennifer Wymore, who has perfect skin tones,” Daviau says. “The new film has a much finer grain structure (than other 500-speed emulsions) and an extended contrast range, which was good for both visual effects shots and scenes filmed in very low-key light.”
He decided to shoot the entire film with the new 5218 stock. Daviau chose to rate the negative for an exposure index of 400 most of the time because it gave him the printing light he wanted. Sometimes, mainly for effects shots, he rated it at E.I. 320.
“My green printing light at Technicolor Labs was 39 or 40 most of the time,” he says. “I based timing this film on printing on standard Kodak Vision stock, so we get the same contrast and desaturated look wherever it is projected.”
The package provided by Panavision, included Panaflex Platinum and XL cameras, and full sets of Primo prime and zoom lenses, along with an ARRI 435, which was mainly used for ramping slow-motion shots. The second unit led by Josh Bleibtreu was responsible for filming extensive footage, including establishing scenes and background elements for effects shots. Their tools included a Flying-Cam, a remote controlled helicopter that carries a 35mm motion picture camera, and a cable-cam, which was rigged to acquire point-of-view shots from the perspective of Dracula’s brides flying into a village, and for other dramatic sequences.
“Josh (Bleibtreu) is responsible for many of the finest images in this movie,” Daviau says. “The opening scene with those people who were storming the castle were all second unit filmed in the middle of the night. I’d tell him I wanted a shot to be gutsy with a lot of contrast and he would deliver. I can’t say enough good things about Josh. He brought an artful sensibility to some very challenging second unit work.”
Film dailies in Prague were provided by a lab operated by the studio. Daviau watched silent dailies in the mornings, both in Prague and Los Angeles. He viewed dailies again synched with sound in the afternoons along with Ducsay, and representatives of all departments, including costume and production design, in addition to members of his camera crew. Ducsay had transfers made for off-line digital editing.
“Film dailies were essential because they provided an accurate reference at a fixed gamma for exposure levels on our negative,” Daviau says. “We could see subtle details, including how makeup was working on Frankenstein and other characters. The dailies also provided an accurate reference for the visual effects team and for timing at EFILM.”
From the beginning, Sommers planned for the opening scene, which is about eight minutes in length, to be in black and white because he wanted it to feel like the 1930s films. In this scene, peasants are storming the castle with Dr. Frankenstein watching.
“We decided to shoot this scene with the 5218 color negative, which is faster and has finer grain than the best black-and-white film,” Daviau says. “The lab printed dailies on a black-and-white film (5269) that Kodak makes for producing titles, using a technique that Beverly Wood (at Deluxe Labs) and Roger Deakins (ASC, BSC) developed for The Man Who Wasn’t There. It gave us snappy, contrasty black-and-white images. The dailies also provided a visual reference when we digitized and converted the color images to black and white at EFILM.”
Daviau says that Sommers wanted the energy of moving cameras almost all the time, including Steadicam shots and tracking with dollies, small cranes, 30 and 50 foot Technocranes usually with remote heads, and occasional Flying-Cam and cable-cam shots. In one scene, the cable-cam captures Dracula’s brides making a surprise daylight assault on a village. It shows the audience the scene from the brides’ perspective as they fly towards the village. At one point, Van Helsing fires a missile at a flying vampire bride with a crossbow invented by the monk. The shot begins in front of the crossbow and it soars through the air, tracking the missile flying towards the vampire, getting closer and closer until it hits her.
“Each morning, we’d have a rehearsal and decisions were made very quickly about how each scene was going to be covered,” Daviau says. “We usually had A, B and sometimes C cameras rolling with different sized lenses from the same angle or plane. Steve knew what he wanted to accomplish, and it didn’t take a lot of setups. He’s very happy to do elaborate shots in one take.”
Lighting for interior and night scenes was motivated by torchlight, oil lamps and cold, blue moonlight with only occasional splashes of color, including the elaborate vampires costume ball, which was filmed in an ancient cathedral. Most of the costumes worn at the ball are black, but Valerious wore a red formal gown and Van Helsing and Carl also had bits of color in their outfits.
“The art department provided candle-shaped tubes that were filled with oil and provided a very bright flame which motivated the overall golden hue,” Daviau says. “We didn’t have to worry about candles burning down. We also used a tremendous amount of rock ‘n roll lighting trusses that you can raise and lower. You can mount equipment and have electricians walk on them when you don’t have a real green bed system. We had lights with gold gels every place we could hide them, including side altars and balconies. There was no way we could use flags, but we had cutters on the top of the wall. One of the advantages of the digital finish is that you can isolate and eliminate lights you can’t hide and anything else from shots.
“During my timing sessions with Steve Scott, we put a vignette over the top of all the walls in the cathedral, and darkened everything above the candelabras,” he explains. “We were backlighting character’s heads. There was no way to avoid getting some spill light on the floor. Steve solved that problem by darkening the floor around the actors.”
Cameron created a Transylvanian village about a 30 to 40 minute drive from Prague. Van Helsing arrives in time to see it being attacked by Dracula’s brides in broad daylight. The snow-covered mountains in the background, clouds and vampires flying through the sky were all visual effects elements composited with live-action footage.
Daviau also cites a close collaboration with assistant director Artist Robinson, who has frequently worked with Sommers. Weather was a factor. Daviau notes that when spring arrived, the foliage turned green, there were birds singing and the sun was out all day. There were scenes in the village that could best be shot at dawn and dusk. Robinson reserved the rest of the day for shooting interiors at practical locations and on stages.
“Each character has a motif or visual signature,” Daviau says. “The Frankenstein creature was wearing extraordinary makeup, so we didn’t want to get too much light on him, particularly in exteriors, where we used a lot of negative fill. We created stronger contrast on Dracula at all times with a hard key and very little fill. Jimmy Shelton, my key grip, was very aware of how to use negative fill to enhance shadows on characters.
“Hugh Jackman is a really handsome guy who can take all kinds of light,” notes Daviau. “That gave us a lot of flexibility. Kate Beckinsale is absolutely beautiful. She has long, dark hair, and liked the idea of letting it at least partially cover her face at times. Sometimes we had to fight to see both of her eyes. David Wenham (Carl) has a very adaptable face, which made our lives easier. We had a lot of makeup on Kevin O’Connor (Igor) and had to be careful not to show its texture.”
Daviau says that he mainly shot without optical diffusion except for close-ups of characters wearing heavy make-up. However, sometimes it wasn’t practical to go from a wide-shot to a close-up and then back to the wider angle. In those situations, he tended to shoot close-ups without diffusion. If necessary, Daviau did touch-ups to soften some faces during digital timing sessions. It’s not just the physical appearance of the actors, he stresses. It was also how emotions registered on the character’s face.
“Many scenes included bats and other CG characters, as well as people who were filmed in front of a blue screen, maybe flying on a cable,” Daviau says. “We used markers to show the actors on the set where to look and when, so their eyelines meshed with the positions of characters who were composited into scenes later. That was quite a challenge for the camera operators who performed admirably.”
About half of the film was shot in Los Angeles on stages built at the old Hughes aircraft manufacturing plant, and on a very large exterior lot at the old McDonnell Douglas factory in nearby Downey, California.
“A scene we filmed on that big lot in Downey was set in Dracula’s palace,” Daviau recalls. “It was a night scene with a huge bridge. We used an old-fashioned way of lighting that worked because the new stock enabled us to combine flame light with artificial, cold, blue moonlight. We used torches and other flames as sources, and moonlight came from a Beebe light at a far enough distance to turn the law of inverse square to our advantage.”
After principal photography was completed there was about two weeks of bluescreen work on a stage at the Hughes factory with different flying creatures, including leaping werewolves and wolf men, and Dracula’s brides on cables. Those elements were composited with live-action footage.
The film was scanned at 4K resolution at EFILM with pin registration used to lock each frame into place. Scott says that’s the minimum requirement for capturing the full dynamic range of tones, colors, contrast and textures captured on the negative.
“It avoids such artifacts as banding in both black and very bright areas, and aliasing that is noticeable at lower resolutions,” he says. “Allen and everyone else put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this film, and they weren’t about to make compromises.”
The 4K files were “rezzed” down to 2K to speed up the timing process. That limitation is imposed by the time it takes to move the digital images through the system. Timing is basically an interactive process. Daviau was seated in a small theater with Scott at the control console. Images were projected on a big screen at 1K resolution.
“You don’t get true blacks at 1K, so at first, we recorded some scenes out to film,” Daviau says. “As I learned to make that adjustment in my mind, we did it less frequently. Steve Scott has a background as an illustrator and a painter, and he worked in special effects. He applied all of his knowledge to every shot he worked on. There are nuances in digital timing that you just can’t do any other way, but I’m not suggesting that we should shoot movies differently. I believe your dailies should reflect what your intentions are every day. But, now you can decide to frame a high angle shot, where it isn’t possible or practical to flag light off a building in the background, knowing that you can darken it later.”
Scott points out, “This project was in constant evolution. We loaded up all the images, and dropped in effects shot as we got them. The preview print contained rough animatics and pre-visualizations. Allen was making subtle adjustments every step of the way. He was very concerned with removing any telltale sign of artificial light. He really dug into the negative and pulled details out sometimes in radical ways, but usually it was very subtle. He’d say, ‘It looks a little too dense,’ and I’d interpret that by taking a little blue out and adding a little yellow until we reached the sense of density that he was after. Allen also listened very carefully and always welcomed a well-considered suggestion.”
Scott continues, “He was particularly meticulous about the vampires ball. The scene is stunningly beautiful. We brought the light on top of the cathedral walls down and brightened the floor where they are dancing using very articulated mattes that take on exactly the right shape for articulating around columns. It was like apprenticing to a great artist by helping to put the finishing touches on a canvas. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do this without the guidance and direction of the cinematographer. It’s their vision.”
“I’ve carried memories of those beautiful images, the mythology and the tremendous performances around in my head for decades,” Daviau says. “When Sam sent me the script, my first impression was that it was a brilliant homage to those 1930s films.”
It was a different type of project for Daviau who has earned Oscar nominations for Bugsy, Avalon, The Color Purple, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Empire of the Sun. His other memorable credits include The Falcon and the Snowman and Fearless.
Sommers has previously written and directed such thrillers as The Scorpion King, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. The last two of those films were edited by Bob Ducsay, one of the producers of Van Helsing. During his first meeting with Sommers and Ducsay, Daviau felt the bond of their shared passion for the story and genre.
The roots of Van Helsing trace back to a novel written by Irish author Abraham Stoker in 1897. His book was based on stories about a real Romanian prince named Vlad, who had a penchant for impaling his enemies and drinking their blood. Stoker’s book has inspired more than 200 films in a dozen languages with Dracula in the title.
“I still look at those 1930s films, including Dracula, shot by Karl Freund (ASC) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Karl Struss (ASC), with a sense of awe,” Daviau says.
In the original story, Van Helsing was an older, academic type of scientist. In Sommers’ screenplay, he is a young mercenary employed by the Vatican. Van Helsing is accompanied on his mission by a monk named Carl, who is a scientific whiz.
“There’s a joy in Steve’s script,” he says. “I could tell how much he enjoyed the classic horror films. He doesn’t mind kidding with the genre, but there is also a tremendous depth to the characters. They are people whom you can understand, and that helps to sweep the audience into the story. He always had some little things going on that inject some humor into the movie. He’s not after big laughs. It’s quite subtle.”
Hugh Jackman plays Van Helsing, David Wenham portrays the monk and Dracula is played by Richard Roxburgh, a noted Australian actor.
“One of the things I loved about his (Roxburgh’s) performance was that he wasn’t afraid to quote Bella Lugosi,” Daviau recounts. “I think that’s one of Van Helsing’s strengths. It’s a modern film that is true to the spirit of the classics.”
Kate Beckinsale portrays Anna Valerious, whose family spawned Dracula some 400 years earlier. No one in her family can pass through the gates of heaven until Dracula is eliminated. “She is very beautiful, and also a very strong character who is used to having her own way,” Daviau observes. “We want the audience to see her beautiful eyes. She doesn’t use her smile a lot. It has a devastating effect when she does.”
Other main roles include Will Kemp as the Wolf Man, Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein, Samuel West as Victor Frankenstein who created the monster bearing his name, and Kevin J. O’Connor as Igor, his hapless servant. Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca and Josie Maran play Dracula’s brides.
During their first meetings, Sommers, Ducsay and Daviau looked at many of the horror films from the 1930s while planning a visual grammar. They also conferred with production designer Allan Cameron, and created a palette consisting mainly of darkness and muted colors. “The only set that had color emphasis was the grand costume ball for the vampires,” Daviau says. “It’s golden in tone. Most other scenes are monochromatic.”
Hundreds of visual effects shots, with both CG and bluescreen elements, are woven into the fabric of the story. Daviau began collaborating with Scott Squires and Ben Snow, the visual effects supervisors from Industrial Light & Magic during preproduction. One of them was always present during live-action filming.
“They could look through the camera anytime,” Daviau says. “Sometimes they’d ask, is it possible to have more depth of field because they were going to composite a matte created by Richard Bluff in the background. If you’re going to shoot an effects picture, you’d better enjoy working with the effects people.”
While most of the visual effects came from ILM, Pacific Title and Art Studio, Illusion Arts and several other facilities also provided shots. It was obvious to Ducsay and Daviau that the visual effects shots and numerous scenes filmed in low key light made Van Helsing a candidate for finishing in a digital intermediate process. Sommers and the studio agreed to a test.
Daviau designed and shot the test footage, which was scanned and converted to digital files at EFILM in Los Angeles. Daviau timed and manipulated the images in conjunction with colorist Steve Scott. The outcome convinced everyone that there were sufficient advantages to justify the time and cost of finishing Van Helsing in a digital suite. Daviau committed to spending several months in postproduction.
“You have control over brightness, darkness, colors, contrast and the gamma anyplace in every frame,” Daviau says. “You can isolate a face, a bright spot on a wall or anything you choose, and manipulate that part of the image without changing anything else. Sometimes we darkened a wall in the background to draw attention to something brighter in the frame. It was a great tool for tying effects shots together with the live-action images, so every shot looks natural in the context of the story.”
Another early decision was made to frame Van Helsing in Academy aperture format (1.85:1 aspect ratio), in part to keep faith with the vertical framing of the 1930s films. It was an aesthetic decision also favored by Cameron. Daviau explains that the vertical frame is an integral part of the visual grammar. The architecture in the settings is dominated by vertical castles with high walls and towers. There are also important scenes where flying vampires and other creatures are seen from the perspective of villagers.
About half of the film was shot in and around Prague, which offered authentic locations for the Transylvanian settings, including castles, period streets and a cathedral that provided the setting for the costume ball. They also built sets on stages at Barrandov Studios, including a cave with shafts leading to the outside, and some castle interiors, and at Prague Studios where Cameron built a set utilizing a water tank.
Camera operators Paul Babin, SOC, and Tom Connole have worked regularly with Daviau since Fearless in 1993. The rest of the crew included operator Greg Schmidt, assistants Reggie Newkirk, Jimmy Jensen, Nick Shuster, Mark Santoni and Roger Wall, and film loader Tony Muller. Daviau was able to bring many of them to Prague. He also lauded Steadicam work by Craig Fikse when they were shooting in Los Angeles.
“It was very important for me to work with many people from my regular crew,” Daviau says. “There were many complex shots, often on a tight schedule, and Stephen (Sommers) likes to get his coverage on film with as few takes as possible.”
During scouting, it became obvious to Daviau that one of the challenges was creating the proper fire light effects in very large interior scenes. His gaffer, Larry Wallace, assembled a team that designed and built a torchlight using standard light bulbs, dipped in orange dye, which mimicked a CTO filter. It had a built-in flicker circuit that could be manipulated and a dimmer control compatible with both the 220-volt, 50-cycles electrical system used in Europe and the 120-volt, 60-cyceles electrical system used in the United States. Daviau combined the lamps with real torchlights in many scenes, including the costume ball, which was filmed in the cathedral.
Daviau notes that costumes designed by Gabriella Pescucci are true to the black, brown and grey tones and textures that were typical during the late 19th century.
“She designed a warm, black leather coat for Van Helsing, which had a luminous glow that is visible in scenes with a lot of contrast,” he says. “We used it throughout the picture with the exception of the costume ball. It’s a warm black with a gloss that glows. You can see it in very low key and dark scenes.”
Kodak introduced the first member of its new family of color negative films while Van Helsing was in preproduction. Kodak Vision 2 (5218) film is rated for a recommended exposure index of 500 in 3200 degree tungsten light. Daviau used the new film to shoot costume and makeup tests in combination with a black-and-white night backing.
He explains that Sommers envisioned shooting the opening scene in black and white. Daviau also used the black and white night backing while shooting tests for other scenes, because color is used in a restrained manner in Van Helsing with few exceptions.
“I remember getting the first print of a test I shot with Jennifer Wymore, who has perfect skin tones,” Daviau says. “The new film has a much finer grain structure (than other 500-speed emulsions) and an extended contrast range, which was good for both visual effects shots and scenes filmed in very low-key light.”
He decided to shoot the entire film with the new 5218 stock. Daviau chose to rate the negative for an exposure index of 400 most of the time because it gave him the printing light he wanted. Sometimes, mainly for effects shots, he rated it at E.I. 320.
“My green printing light at Technicolor Labs was 39 or 40 most of the time,” he says. “I based timing this film on printing on standard Kodak Vision stock, so we get the same contrast and desaturated look wherever it is projected.”
The package provided by Panavision, included Panaflex Platinum and XL cameras, and full sets of Primo prime and zoom lenses, along with an ARRI 435, which was mainly used for ramping slow-motion shots. The second unit led by Josh Bleibtreu was responsible for filming extensive footage, including establishing scenes and background elements for effects shots. Their tools included a Flying-Cam, a remote controlled helicopter that carries a 35mm motion picture camera, and a cable-cam, which was rigged to acquire point-of-view shots from the perspective of Dracula’s brides flying into a village, and for other dramatic sequences.
“Josh (Bleibtreu) is responsible for many of the finest images in this movie,” Daviau says. “The opening scene with those people who were storming the castle were all second unit filmed in the middle of the night. I’d tell him I wanted a shot to be gutsy with a lot of contrast and he would deliver. I can’t say enough good things about Josh. He brought an artful sensibility to some very challenging second unit work.”
Film dailies in Prague were provided by a lab operated by the studio. Daviau watched silent dailies in the mornings, both in Prague and Los Angeles. He viewed dailies again synched with sound in the afternoons along with Ducsay, and representatives of all departments, including costume and production design, in addition to members of his camera crew. Ducsay had transfers made for off-line digital editing.
“Film dailies were essential because they provided an accurate reference at a fixed gamma for exposure levels on our negative,” Daviau says. “We could see subtle details, including how makeup was working on Frankenstein and other characters. The dailies also provided an accurate reference for the visual effects team and for timing at EFILM.”
From the beginning, Sommers planned for the opening scene, which is about eight minutes in length, to be in black and white because he wanted it to feel like the 1930s films. In this scene, peasants are storming the castle with Dr. Frankenstein watching.
“We decided to shoot this scene with the 5218 color negative, which is faster and has finer grain than the best black-and-white film,” Daviau says. “The lab printed dailies on a black-and-white film (5269) that Kodak makes for producing titles, using a technique that Beverly Wood (at Deluxe Labs) and Roger Deakins (ASC, BSC) developed for The Man Who Wasn’t There. It gave us snappy, contrasty black-and-white images. The dailies also provided a visual reference when we digitized and converted the color images to black and white at EFILM.”
Daviau says that Sommers wanted the energy of moving cameras almost all the time, including Steadicam shots and tracking with dollies, small cranes, 30 and 50 foot Technocranes usually with remote heads, and occasional Flying-Cam and cable-cam shots. In one scene, the cable-cam captures Dracula’s brides making a surprise daylight assault on a village. It shows the audience the scene from the brides’ perspective as they fly towards the village. At one point, Van Helsing fires a missile at a flying vampire bride with a crossbow invented by the monk. The shot begins in front of the crossbow and it soars through the air, tracking the missile flying towards the vampire, getting closer and closer until it hits her.
“Each morning, we’d have a rehearsal and decisions were made very quickly about how each scene was going to be covered,” Daviau says. “We usually had A, B and sometimes C cameras rolling with different sized lenses from the same angle or plane. Steve knew what he wanted to accomplish, and it didn’t take a lot of setups. He’s very happy to do elaborate shots in one take.”
Lighting for interior and night scenes was motivated by torchlight, oil lamps and cold, blue moonlight with only occasional splashes of color, including the elaborate vampires costume ball, which was filmed in an ancient cathedral. Most of the costumes worn at the ball are black, but Valerious wore a red formal gown and Van Helsing and Carl also had bits of color in their outfits.
“The art department provided candle-shaped tubes that were filled with oil and provided a very bright flame which motivated the overall golden hue,” Daviau says. “We didn’t have to worry about candles burning down. We also used a tremendous amount of rock ‘n roll lighting trusses that you can raise and lower. You can mount equipment and have electricians walk on them when you don’t have a real green bed system. We had lights with gold gels every place we could hide them, including side altars and balconies. There was no way we could use flags, but we had cutters on the top of the wall. One of the advantages of the digital finish is that you can isolate and eliminate lights you can’t hide and anything else from shots.
“During my timing sessions with Steve Scott, we put a vignette over the top of all the walls in the cathedral, and darkened everything above the candelabras,” he explains. “We were backlighting character’s heads. There was no way to avoid getting some spill light on the floor. Steve solved that problem by darkening the floor around the actors.”
Cameron created a Transylvanian village about a 30 to 40 minute drive from Prague. Van Helsing arrives in time to see it being attacked by Dracula’s brides in broad daylight. The snow-covered mountains in the background, clouds and vampires flying through the sky were all visual effects elements composited with live-action footage.
Daviau also cites a close collaboration with assistant director Artist Robinson, who has frequently worked with Sommers. Weather was a factor. Daviau notes that when spring arrived, the foliage turned green, there were birds singing and the sun was out all day. There were scenes in the village that could best be shot at dawn and dusk. Robinson reserved the rest of the day for shooting interiors at practical locations and on stages.
“Each character has a motif or visual signature,” Daviau says. “The Frankenstein creature was wearing extraordinary makeup, so we didn’t want to get too much light on him, particularly in exteriors, where we used a lot of negative fill. We created stronger contrast on Dracula at all times with a hard key and very little fill. Jimmy Shelton, my key grip, was very aware of how to use negative fill to enhance shadows on characters.
“Hugh Jackman is a really handsome guy who can take all kinds of light,” notes Daviau. “That gave us a lot of flexibility. Kate Beckinsale is absolutely beautiful. She has long, dark hair, and liked the idea of letting it at least partially cover her face at times. Sometimes we had to fight to see both of her eyes. David Wenham (Carl) has a very adaptable face, which made our lives easier. We had a lot of makeup on Kevin O’Connor (Igor) and had to be careful not to show its texture.”
Daviau says that he mainly shot without optical diffusion except for close-ups of characters wearing heavy make-up. However, sometimes it wasn’t practical to go from a wide-shot to a close-up and then back to the wider angle. In those situations, he tended to shoot close-ups without diffusion. If necessary, Daviau did touch-ups to soften some faces during digital timing sessions. It’s not just the physical appearance of the actors, he stresses. It was also how emotions registered on the character’s face.
“Many scenes included bats and other CG characters, as well as people who were filmed in front of a blue screen, maybe flying on a cable,” Daviau says. “We used markers to show the actors on the set where to look and when, so their eyelines meshed with the positions of characters who were composited into scenes later. That was quite a challenge for the camera operators who performed admirably.”
About half of the film was shot in Los Angeles on stages built at the old Hughes aircraft manufacturing plant, and on a very large exterior lot at the old McDonnell Douglas factory in nearby Downey, California.
“A scene we filmed on that big lot in Downey was set in Dracula’s palace,” Daviau recalls. “It was a night scene with a huge bridge. We used an old-fashioned way of lighting that worked because the new stock enabled us to combine flame light with artificial, cold, blue moonlight. We used torches and other flames as sources, and moonlight came from a Beebe light at a far enough distance to turn the law of inverse square to our advantage.”
After principal photography was completed there was about two weeks of bluescreen work on a stage at the Hughes factory with different flying creatures, including leaping werewolves and wolf men, and Dracula’s brides on cables. Those elements were composited with live-action footage.
The film was scanned at 4K resolution at EFILM with pin registration used to lock each frame into place. Scott says that’s the minimum requirement for capturing the full dynamic range of tones, colors, contrast and textures captured on the negative.
“It avoids such artifacts as banding in both black and very bright areas, and aliasing that is noticeable at lower resolutions,” he says. “Allen and everyone else put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this film, and they weren’t about to make compromises.”
The 4K files were “rezzed” down to 2K to speed up the timing process. That limitation is imposed by the time it takes to move the digital images through the system. Timing is basically an interactive process. Daviau was seated in a small theater with Scott at the control console. Images were projected on a big screen at 1K resolution.
“You don’t get true blacks at 1K, so at first, we recorded some scenes out to film,” Daviau says. “As I learned to make that adjustment in my mind, we did it less frequently. Steve Scott has a background as an illustrator and a painter, and he worked in special effects. He applied all of his knowledge to every shot he worked on. There are nuances in digital timing that you just can’t do any other way, but I’m not suggesting that we should shoot movies differently. I believe your dailies should reflect what your intentions are every day. But, now you can decide to frame a high angle shot, where it isn’t possible or practical to flag light off a building in the background, knowing that you can darken it later.”
Scott points out, “This project was in constant evolution. We loaded up all the images, and dropped in effects shot as we got them. The preview print contained rough animatics and pre-visualizations. Allen was making subtle adjustments every step of the way. He was very concerned with removing any telltale sign of artificial light. He really dug into the negative and pulled details out sometimes in radical ways, but usually it was very subtle. He’d say, ‘It looks a little too dense,’ and I’d interpret that by taking a little blue out and adding a little yellow until we reached the sense of density that he was after. Allen also listened very carefully and always welcomed a well-considered suggestion.”
Scott continues, “He was particularly meticulous about the vampires ball. The scene is stunningly beautiful. We brought the light on top of the cathedral walls down and brightened the floor where they are dancing using very articulated mattes that take on exactly the right shape for articulating around columns. It was like apprenticing to a great artist by helping to put the finishing touches on a canvas. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do this without the guidance and direction of the cinematographer. It’s their vision.”
Posted at 01:42 PM
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Published On: déc. 30, 2006 12:11 PM
Published On: déc. 30, 2006 12:11 PM