Film quality

[Craig Seeman]

It’s like asking what’s the best pizza. Everyone will name something different.

Better to ask what they like in their filmlook settings and why.

Film itself has many looks/stocks etc.

[Clint Fleckenstein]

A lot of people are ripping Mann’s choice of shooting HD instead of film pretty hard. Going to be a while until digital is widely accepted by the “sit on the internet and hurl insults” crowd.

Cf

[David C jones]

The Most recent American Cinematographer magazine’s cover article is Public Enemies. It talks about the use of the Sony F23 & EX1.

No real details on the settings they used on the EX1, but they do talk about why they went with digital: they didn’t want what we call a “period” look, they wanted a more realistic look like what you get with digital.

Check it out here https://www.theasc.com/magazine_dynamic/July2009/PublicEnemies/page1.php

Dave J

[Michael Slowe]

I have just been working with a feature film unit in London doing the ‘making of’ film. I was using an EX1 but the main film was shot on an EX3 but with 35 mm lenses through a device known as Movie Tube. As many will know Movie Tube comes in various guises, some with a spinning ground glass screen, others with the screen static. The footage I’ve seen so far looks great and is film like in that the hard video edge is softened. I suspect that any feature unit using the EX 3 will use devices like these to give the much sought after ‘film look’.

Michael Slowe

[Will Griffith]

>>I recently read that 30P and -3db gave the most film like quality.

I’m not sure what either one of those has with “film like quality”.

FIlm can be shot at 30, but most are used to the 24fps look, so If that
is what you are going for then HQ 24p is what you want to shoot with.

-3db is just how much video noise you see. Increasing the sensitivity brightens
the picture but ads more noise. This can actually be a little reminiscent of 16mm film,
but not sure what you are getting at here. -3db is good to use no matter what you are
shooting and will provide a cleaner picture.

The adapters are a whole other discussion which you can find about 50 million sites and
message boards on to research.

Make sure and experiment with the many Picture Profiles floating around the internet.
There are some with some film-like gamma settings which have a nice look to them.

[Steve Wargo]

[Clint Fleckenstein] “”sit on the internet and hurl insults” crowd.”

Keyboard commandos. What a joke. They’re all movie “watchers”. Hell, my dead grandma was a movie “watcher” and look where she’s at.

I have seen about a million crappy movies shot on film and nobody ever bitched because they were shot on film.

Michael Mann happens to like a deep depth of field so he chooses to shoot HD because the lenses allow him to produce the image that he wants to produce. It’s not like he chose HD to save money and ended up with a deep dof because of it. Myself, I’m think that way too many director and shooters have discovered and now overuse shallow dof to the point that it all looks the same, same, same, same, same. Shallow dof should be used sparingly, not on every flippin shot in a movie. If every shot is like that, it’s not special anymore. It becomes the same old thing. GAG ME.

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD .

[Jay Gladwell]

“A lot of people are ripping Mann’s choice of shooting HD instead of film…”

One can’t help but wonder, of those doing the ripping, how many of them have made major motion pictures?

I’m in total agreement with Steve’s comments. There was a time, not too long ago, when directors and DPs did everything in their power to extend the depth of field in their pictures.

[William Mims]

When I started this thread it was based on decades of ‘Hollywood’ experience in film, and later in the nineties, trying to get video to look more like film. It never worked. It was not about d.o.f., it was about how video captures light. For example, shooting a street lamp at night was a dead give away that it was video, not film. In those days major distributors would have nothing to do with a video shot feature. Snobs or just the fact the technology was just not there yet, I don’t know. My original question in this thread was about how to set the EX3’s settings so that when the finished project is transferred to film for projection in a theater it looks normal. (Normal meaning the audience does not know the difference)
Those settings involve three-two pull down, how the blacks look in the background, etc. I do not have time, nor living in Wisconsin instead of L.A. am I able to shoot tests, run to the film lab and screen the results to see if I’ve got it right. Since Public Enemies was shot in Wisconsin, I hope I run across info on what settings they used so that inter-cutting EX1 with the rest of their footage was seamless. I think this forum is made up of shooters, editors, producers and therefore has a collective mass of knowledge. For that reason, your input is valuable. You know what works and what doesn’t.
The media outlets today are amazing. Not like the eighties when I tried to ‘break into’ Hollywood. Now you can sell your project to a huge number of outlets. The stuff I have seen on Sundance Channel for example, would never have sold in the past. There is a monster that Hollywood can no longer feed with their bloated film production costs, now with equipment like the EX3 and others, we can get our ideas out there to be seen.
What am I saying? I’m saying dust off that script you wrote and start shooting! You just may surprise yourself with what you can do with that idea in the back of your head that you thought would make a good movie. Guess what? It will, so do it. In the meantime let’s share info anywhere we can find it so we build a set of rules on all the settings needed to insure those fat snobs in major studios can’t see the difference between our video and their $150K Arri 35mm film camera’s product.
Shakesphere said: The play is the thing… That means it’s not the equipment you use, it’s the story you tell that is important to your audience.

Mims

[Craig Seeman]

I’m glad you posted the term “film look” as means to you. That’s critical. The problem with “film look” is that it means different things to different people.

24fps
progressive frames
film grain
shallow depth of field
latitude
gamma curve
color processing and/or development
characteristics unique to specific stocks
detail

and I’m sure there are many more. One’s creative control or desire to mimic certain aspects are truly “personal.”

[William Mims] “For example, shooting a street lamp at night was a dead give away that it was video, not film”

This is where more description would help. It can be latitude, gamma, how CCD (or CMOS) handles it vs film as a gathering method . . . or all the above and more. The very content and shooting technique may move one to one solution or another.

Examples
Video does not have the latitude film has. Sometimes creative use of gamma or knee on how the light rolls off can “fake” it a bit though.
CCD might show “streaks” on such bright light source.
CMOS might show rolling shutter on very fast pans or rough hand held work although wouldn’t show the streaks CCD might have.

[Michael Palmer]

If I where going to make a film with my EX3 I would want a good DoF adapter system with good lens and I would want to record beyond the 35 Mbps that the EX3 is limited to. I would beg, borrow or steal the Convergent Design Nano Flash recorder. This will insure that you are getting the absolute best image quality possible from this EX camera. Even if you only use the 100 Mbps you will see a huge difference in image quality. The Nano ships recording up to 220 Mbps all i-frame and a little bird told me it won’t be long before it records even higher (300) or possibly uncompressed. The only worry I have with the EX camera is if I had a scene with flashing lights and I would want the new XD Cam 800 for the 3 CCD sensors for those scenes.

I totally agree these cameras have empowered more people to create there thoughts.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer