2K, 4K, Pixels and Resolution

This article in the Creative Cow magazine is essential reading. John Galt, of Panavision, speaks in plain language about pixels, resolution, 2K, 4K, Imax, frame rates v. pixel resolution and dynamic range. My eyes usually glaze over during these kinds of discussions but this is quite engaging (and comprehensible). Isn't it time to actually understand what a Bayer pattern is and what it means for image acquisition? Or, that you should be spending as much, or more, time thinking about your lenses as you do about the sensors?

Combine it with this blog post by Stu Maschwitz on lin, log and clipping and you'll be the smartest HD kid on your block. And it will make you more impervious to the marketing of camera companies. Seriously, it's important to demystify all of this stuff so you can use the tools to achieve what you want creatively, as opposed to being treated like a tool.

As an aside, last week I saw my first camera rental request posting on Craigslist that specifically asked for RED owners to not contact the poster anymore (my recollection is that they didn't want to deal with the workflow). It does makes me wonder what kind of ROI the average RED owner is getting. Maybe there are just a lot of them here in Los Angeles? I'd love to here some owner-operator stories (or secondhand anecdotes) about how they're doing financially with their cameras.

Adobe Customer Care Redux

O.K. There are probably only about 10 people out there who will care about this, but if this helps one lost soul out there trying to deal with Adobe Customer Care know that they aren't alone, it's worth it.

I wanted to follow-up on something that I had written about earlier, Adobe's inability to provide even basic customer service. Admittedly, I am only one individual who owns 7 or so (depending on how many products they've dropped or picked up again) Adobe/Macromedia licenses, but I guess Adobe will never know since they still haven't assimilated the Macromedia database (or apparently, their online store database) with their Adobe I.D./registration database. When I see the Adobe "evangelist" out there telling me how their ability to aggregate and search metadata is going to send me to media heaven, I can't help but snicker, thinking that they cannot even aggregate all their customer data into one coherent database.

Look deeply into my eyes and forget about the fact that we won't let you upgrade to a Master Collection license even though you own all the individual licenses.

So, what happened with my odyssey to obtain my post-announcement upgrade for Production Premium CS4? After a maze of online requests and phone calls, Adobe sent the upgrade to the wrong address TWICE. The final time shipping arrangements were made, I made the customer service rep. repeat the shipping address twice. I did get my upgrade, after I figured out that it was easier to deal with someone who I barely knew that lived in my old flat in San Francisco (where it was delivered, again) than to try to deal with Adobe. After some arrangements, the package was hand delivered to me in Los Angeles, via personal relationships, not metadata.

OK, mostly I just wanted an excuse to post the picture. Next post will deal with creative issues, promise.

The Digital Dilemma

I love to create images. Film, digital, paint, animation, they are all just different expressive tools. I am not a digital hater. Each tool has its place and use. That said, I keep meaning to mention the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences report, "The Digital Dilemma" which was published in November of 2007. Everyone who creates images should read it.

There are only two points that I'd like to make:

1. Anyone who says that shooting HD is cheaper than film has not taken into account the cost of archiving the material.

2. I suspect that there will be a time when many films created in the early digital film era (now) will be lost, as were films created during the early years of film. Both eras used media that were unstable for long-term storage.

Add data extinction to your post production checklist. The report is available for download here.

The Orphanage, no more?

Stu Maschwitz just announced on his blog that The Orphanage is "suspending operations." Never heard of them? Take a look at The Orphanage's and Stu's IMDB. These are the people you don't read about that increasingly help make films look awesome.

On top of that, he also created Magic Bullet software, which is a really nifty piece of post production "look building" software. I use it quite a bit when I am trying to brainstorm looks.

He also blogs prolifically about technical issues, low-budget filmmaking and whatever else crosses his mind.

The film world needs more innovators and restless minds like these, not less.

Molepar Love

I bought a couple of Molepars on Satan eBay. They arrived rusted and damaged. I should know better, the one camera angle that something isn't photographed from is the one angle that you really need to see. So, my OCD kicked in and I sanded them down and refurbished them. Fortunately, they were pretty cheap.

Molepars are one of those lights that I think everyone who owns any lights at all should have, especially low-budget filmmakers. They kick out one heck of a lot of light for a 1K (Par 64 globes) and are light, compact and incredibly flexible. Need to light up a building or trees at night? How about a fixture to give a decent-sized room your base exposure (by bouncing off the ceiling or a bounce)? They are great for any application where you just need a lot of light and want to plug into a household circuit (2 units per 20 amp circuit). The key to using them, as with any other fixture, is how you control the light. You can also use a variety of globes in them, from extra narrow to wide beam as well as daylight balanced dichroic.

They are also not expensive units. I have seen them new online for about $350/unit (without globes). And a rental will run about $14/day. They will also last a lifetime because they are made by Mole Richardson. The one unit I bought dates from the mid-1960's (number 493) and now looks/functions like new (and when I got it, it looked like it had been used as a rental for 40 years). The paint color is Mole Maroon and is available directly from Mole Richardson as an air dried spray paint. They also sell individual parts for all of their lamps at a reasonable cost.

Wannabe

In the last three issues of HD Video Pro magazine, they've tracked the progress of Adam Cultraro, as he directed his first low-budget feature (Corrado). It's an interesting enough article that follows him from pre-pro through post. However, at the end of the last article he gives some pointed opinions about wannabe filmmakers that struck a chord with me (mostly because film people are almost universally unwilling to give frank opinions in writing): "On a broad scale, don't give too much credence to people's opinions, because in this business, very few people want to see you succeed. If you read filmmaking blogs and threads, you will see that most people trying to make indie films are self-defeaters....The kinds of people who succeed in filmmaking are people who don't stand in their own way."


Online, I definitely see a lot of that self-defeating behavior happening, especially with equipment obsession. The "perfect" camera does not exist and, even if it did, it won't make your film more engaging, intelligent or beautiful any more than the most expensive hammer is going to make a more beautiful or functional building. Or, buying another piece of software. Or.... I also run into people who have really good projects, and have completely thought them through, but when it comes to putting the rubber to the road find a million little reasons to keep slowing it down or be diverted from actually starting to film. As far as other people not wanting you to succeed, I guess in one way it's not really that different from any other competitive field. However, narrative filmmaking does seem to be a special combination of collaboration and vicious competitiveness.

I guess this post is really reflecting my own state of mind right now. It's been a little while since I've completed any personal projects. I have a couple of substantial projects right now in which I have a lot of time invested that, for various reasons (some good and some not), may or may not happen. I am itching to just make something. Ultimately, managing and maintaining your focus seems to be the greatest skill that a filmmaker can have.

Lighting Illness

OK. It may sound insane, but I (quickly) lit our holiday family iChat sessions.

First, frontal lighting is hard to do with the iChat camera. The camera is typically right next to the wall and monitor. I did a quick bounce off the wall, above and behind the monitor. The iChat camera seems to balance towards daylight, so the image was looking a little orange with the tungsten light. I corrected this with a very slight CTB and plus green on the light. The slightly elevated light also helps hide my turkey neck. I put a sider up on the monitor so I could see the image accurately on it and a sider on the light itself so there wasn't any direct spill on our faces from the side.


Then, I lit the background with a small fresnel (with a little CTB again) and a homemade cookie, making a nice background pattern.


Then, I added a specular spotlight to highlight a photo on the wall, knocking it down a couple of stops with scrims (CTB again).


To finish it, I wanted a little subtle color in the background. I wrapped a bicycle LED light in diffusion and taped off the some of the lights, to get the right illumination level. This gag didn't work very well. A bright red object would've probably achieved a better effect.


Looking at the image now, I think I would probably bounce a light into some Roscoflex for a nice silvery rim on both of us (on our left side). That would really add some life to the whole image.

Happy holidays to everyone. I hope that you all get to spend your days doing the things you love in the upcoming year.