DEFINITION - The future of video production today - November 2019

THE CROWN SERIES 3 IS HERE

NEW LOOK FOR A NEW ROYAL FAMILY P12

November 2019

£4.99

CAMERA ROLL

We investigate the latest full-frame cameras

LIGHTHOUSE

The brightest new LED lights on the market

HFR RETURNS

High frame rate movies return with Gemini Man

IT IS BEAUTIFUL CHAPTER TWO GETS A FLAWLESS FINISH

ALSO FILM IN 30 SECONDS | CAMERA LISTINGS | NEW LEXAR SSD INSIDE RESOLVE 16 REVIEW | CAMERA TO CLOUD COMING SOON

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21/10/2019 17:05

W E LC O M E

BRIGHT PUBLISHING LTD, BRIGHT HOUSE, 82 HIGH STREET, SAWSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE CB22 3HJ UK EDITORIAL Editor Julian Mitchell 01223 492246 julianmitchell@bright-publishing.com Staff writer Chelsea Fearnley Contributors Adam Duckworth, Adam Garstone, Phil Rhodes Chief sub editor Beth Fletcher Senior sub editor Siobhan Godwood Sub editor Felicity Evans Junior sub editor Elisha Young ADVERTISING Sales director Matt Snow 01223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com Sales manager Krishan Parmar 01223 499462 krishanparmar@bright-publishing.com Key accounts Nicki Mills 01223 499457 nickimills@bright-publishing.com DESIGN Design director Andy Jennings Designer Bruce Richardson Ad production Man-Wai Wong PUBLISHING Managing directors Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram @definitionmags Twitter @definitionmags Facebook @definitionmagazine MEDIA PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS OF

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Director Ang Lee and star Will Smith on the set of 3D 120fps 4K movie Gemini Man

WELCOME

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ushing the technical envelope in cinema can be mightily frustrating: with HFR movie Gemini Man it’s a case of ‘this is what you could see – but you can’t yet’. But Ang Lee has now softened the message and is proselytising that 4K 3D 120fps is the ‘thick negative’ from which all other formats are derived from. But unfortunately the thick negative is the one that would convince HFR doubters that it forms part of cinema’s future.

The good news is that the thick neg looks as good as it did three years ago in the doomed Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk movie; and this time with Gemini Man, it had to contend with the comping in of a digital asset – a ‘youthified’ Will Smith – and a huge amount of action, including a superb bike chase through the streets of Cartagena. This is a great scene in full HFR and still good in 60fps, which is what Paramount’s marketing people are calling 3D plus.

Frustrating too is when people ask other people what true 4K 3D 120fps looks like; apart from ‘amazing’, there are no words that will do. Directors Ang Lee and James Cameron seem to be the torchbearers for this new technology but production as a whole has to keep up. When you shoot 120fps there is nowhere to hide: and that includes the acting.

JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR

Definition is published monthly by Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridge CB22 3HJ. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of Bright Publishing Ltd. Definition is a registered trademark of Bright Publishing Ltd. The advertisements published in Definition that have been written, designed or produced by employees of Bright Publishing Ltd remain the copyright of Bright Publishing Ltd and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Prices quoted in sterling, euros and US dollars are street prices, without tax, where available or converted using the exchange rate on the day the magazine went to press.

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D R A M A | T H E C R OW N

PASSING THE

CROWN DOP Adriano Goldman dissects the new look for Series 3 of the royal drama, now led by the Oscar-winning Olivia Colman WORDS CHELSE A FE ARNLE Y / PICTURES NETFLIX

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he Crown Series 3 will continue the first two series’ delicate blending of private and public events with a sensational new cast and narrative.

It will cover the years from 1964 to 1976 – the era of sex, drugs and Camilla Parker Bowles – and document the early blossoming relationship between her and Prince Charles, as well as what was known as a particularly bleak period for the British people, characterised by strikes, power cuts and IRA bombings.

DOP Adriano Goldman, who has already started shooting Series 4 of the Netflix series, references the evolution of the show and says it’s getting grittier. “If you think back to Seasons 1 and 2, there was always a parallel in the story between what’s happening with the royals at the palace and what’s happening with the prime minister at Downing Street. This is still the case for Season 3, but it’s pacier somehow, there are more scenes, more sets and I remember speaking to the production designer Martin

Childs, who said he had created almost 400 sets just for the new season.”

This progression of the storyline meant that Goldman was more cautious about changing his shooting style to match the period. He explains: “Visually, the show is already going to change. I knew this from the first moment I read the script; there’s modern architecture, costumes and furniture, and because we’re following different characters, we’re going to be moving outside of familiar locations and exploring new ones. Of course, we knew we had to make some changes, to evolve the look and present something fresher, but we weren’t going to go handheld or start questioning all our style rules. It still needed to look like The Crown.”

The Crown’s style rules hail from Series 1 and originated from the initial director Stephen Daldry. They drive everything Goldman shoots and were developed for visual consistency, because the series has several DOPs working on it.

We knew we had to make some changes, to evolve the look and present something fresher

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“These rules change only ever so slightly for Season 3. We used to be physically close to the actors for close-up shots using a 50mm lens, but gradually – and this is actually more perceptible in Season 4 – we’ve been stepping away from the actors and lensing up. It feels more voyeuristic, like we’re watching in, and that adds to the increased grittiness of the show,” explains Goldman. “From a technological perspective, the lenses also had to change. We had previously been using Cooke Panchros from the fifties and now we’re using Zeiss Super Speeds from the late sixties and seventies. They’re still vintage lenses, but they’re less glossy and more suited to the period in which Season 3 is set.”

The lenses were tested before shooting to ensure colour and density accuracy across the sets. He explains: “Of all the Zeiss Super Speeds available on the market, each of them ages differently, and we had to find four sets that produced an identical image. We needed at least four sets: two sets per unit, and eventually four sets per unit when double banking – this is something that happened quite frequently on The Crown. We started with a single unit, then a second unit came in to provide additional material. Then there would be a whole other unit working with another director and DOP on other episodes.

“We didn’t test the body, because we chose to stay with the Sony F55. The

IMAGES The Queen with her beloved corgis (left), and the decorated war hero Prince Philip (above)

decision to keep the same camera we had used for the previous two seasons derived from comfort; knowing that Netflix was pleased with the workflow and overall quality of the production. Though – and this might sound a little contradictory – we did switch to the Sony Venice for Season 4. It’s a much more modern toy and it

gives me more speed and more quality as a whole. I can also still shoot in 4K, so there’s consistency there.”

Goldman continues: “If I advanced to 5K, I would need to find other lenses capable of covering that sensor size, and there’s also no real reason to shoot in more than 4K right now.”

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DRAMA | IT CHAPTER 2

WANNA PLAY? It Chapter Two is beautiful to look at, but how did DOP Checco Varese develop the film’s horror aesthetic beyond the hit 2017 reboot?

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DRAMA | IT CHAPTER 2 some kind of supernatural feeling is that the skies are darker and greener instead of pure blue,” says Varese. “In our version, we kept that feeling and a very fundamentalist or pragmatic honouring of the first movie, so when the audience sees it, it takes them back to the first experience.”

He explains: “The whole premise was that we should believe we are watching something shot in conjunction with the first movie. But, 27 years later, we could introduce a new look – it was a free-for-all.

That’s what we attempted, and I think we succeeded, not in copying, but honouring the work of my predecessor Chung-hoon Chung. When we flash forward or back to the contemporary part, it is a totally different feeling and technique.”

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hat is it with scary clowns? As we approach Halloween, the thought of seeing Pennywise the clown from Stephen King’s It books (and the subsequent miniseries and films) has seen one trick-or-treat event in Detroit banning them for this year’s scare fest. The 2016 sightings of the It clowns across the US persuaded some locals residents they were living the terror from the film as the clowns chased and generally terrified children, even luring them into woods. Pennywise is now the most searched for Halloween costume.

So, old Pennywise became the horror figure he always wanted to be and gave director Andy Muschietti a huge horror hit in 2017 with It – the film grossed over $700 million worldwide.

No surprise, then, that It Chapter Two was quickly green-lit and produced with a nine-month shoot last year, again directed

by Muschietti, but this time shot by Checco Varese; most famous for Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Amazon Video’s version of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.

Film reviews can hurt film crews, but they can also compliment them – and It Chapter Two’s critics have largely praised the look of the film – something Varese appreciates. “It’s great to get a comment from anyone, because it’s a lot of work. If someone acknowledges what we do, it’s great,” he says.

“The first movie takes place 27 years before Chapter Two,” he explains. “Chapter one dealt with the Losers’ Club – the group of kids featured in the movie. Because it was kids and in summer (even though Pennywise was attacking them), the movie was more playful and joyous. It has a patina of young kids in the summer months, even though it was a scary movie and deals with the fears and tragedies of young people.

“It Chapter Two was a combination of the fears of the younger people, but also the fears of the adults. Those adult fears are related to their experiences of life and so are deeper and rooted in their trauma. The whole concept was to make it darker and more violent. Those fears produce a more claustrophobic and darker environment.”

Andy Muschietti, the director, masterfully planned the first film around the summer, with plenty of warm colours and greenery. “The only thing that reveals

DARKER AND MORE VIOLENT The critics have been less generous with their praise for the movie as a whole. But how did Varese and the director settle on the aesthetics for this film?

FAR RIGHT Checco Varese discusses a shot with director Andy Muschietti and Bill Hader, who plays Richie Tozier

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ANAMORPHIC, BUT NOT There were subtle technical differences between the two movies. For one, the first film was shot with anamorphic lenses.

Director Muschietti wanted to retain the anamorphic feeling for the second film, but wanted to go spherical. Varese points out: “Anamorphic lenses have wonderful elements to them, with elongated figures and controlled astigmatism – the out-offocus background is a little different than in the spherical world. Andy [Muschietti] wanted to have a different experience for shooting, yet maintain the anamorphic look, so we used a new set of lenses from Hawk called MiniHawks. They preserved the astigmatism and bokeh of the anamorphic in a very wonderful way. We used two sets of lenses, one for the past and one for the present.”

In It Chapter Two, the look of the past is more filled with light – more joyful and playful, whereas the present is darker and the contrast level is higher. “For instance, in the first few scenes with Beverley in her apartment: she wakes up in the middle of the night to a phone call and doesn’t turn on any lights. It’s raining outside and there is a little glow on the windows and we see, in a very silhouetted way, her packing and

IT CHAPTER 2 | DRAMA

You have to embrace the darkness and be happy with it. It’s always more difficult to pretend it’s dark and yet be able to see

then her husband arguing with her. You almost don’t see their faces, but only their silhouettes caught against the windows.

That was a very specific and deliberate decision not to see them – or to see very little of them,” Varese explains.

ABOVE DOP Checco Varese at work, and a still of the Losers’ Club all grown up

2.5

The number of hours it took to apply Bill Skarsgård’s clown make-up

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How much longer It Chapter Two is than the first film (in minutes)

EMBRACE THE DARKNESS As new, more low-light friendly sensors emerge and cinematic lighting becomes more of a modelling technique than a revealing one, as Varese says, you have to embrace the darkness.

He clarifies: “You have to embrace it and be happy with it. It’s always more difficult to pretend it’s dark and yet be able to see; you have to bathe the environment with a little bit of light even though the characters may have a torch, for instance.

So, all of a sudden, you may have five or six guys who have flashlights, but you have to pretend for the audience they can’t see in the darkness. You need to see, as an audience, what they’re not seeing, because the scares are related to that. It’s a very fine balance, but a deliberate fine balance that requires a lot of trial and error.”

For Varese, finding this balance is a combination of all the usual lighting techniques, and relies on the set. He wanted to create a claustrophobic atmosphere,

which is something felt rather than seen.

You can feel it in a wide, open space, but that requires a lighting plan, as Varese explains. “You can have a big light, but expose only for the highlights, so everything else becomes dark, or you can have a cluster of little lights that light corners and surfaces.

It has a lot to do with a brilliant production design and a great art department. You go on-set and ask to make this shiny or that reflective, so it reflects the window, but it doesn’t add light to it; you only see a lot of reflective surfaces. All that helps you make it feel darker without being dark. Darkness is about the amount of light you don’t have, not the amount of light you do.”

A good example of this is the scene where James McAvoy’s character goes into a house of mirrors. It’s very well-lit, but the mirrors give you a sense of darkness, because you can’t see anything beyond them and, as an audience, you know a mirror is very thin glass, “so anything can happen behind it”, adds Varese. “It’s what you don’t see that makes it scary. That’s a lot of the fun and the trickery of filmmaking.”

GEAR UP It Chapter Two was shot on the Arri Alexa, with four in the first unit, of which two were SXT (the more comprehensively equipped

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DRAMA | GEMINI MAN

Not only has Gemini Man produced the first plausible virtual human, it has also resurrected the HFR experiment. But what’s different this time?

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THE FAST FRAME GAME

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DRAMA | GEMINI MAN

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here were some motivational words for the crew on the set of Gemini Man, encouraging everyone to keep on keeping on with the technical innovation. The words were a version of JFK’s speech he used to galvanise America’s space race back in the 1962: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Welcome to an Ang Lee film, where the technical envelope truly is pushed.

Not only has Gemini Man brought back the experiment of high frame rates, but also introduced a fully digital young Will Smith – his face, anyway – which has been put front and centre in to the 3D action and, at last, this avatar is worth the cost of admission on its own. He looks great and believable, finally avoiding the dreaded eternity of the uncanny valley.

GOODBYE BILLY LYNN But for this article we are revisiting HFR, a highly controversial cinema technique, one that has already been championed by some A-list directors like Lee, Peter Jackson and James Cameron. Around three years ago HFR withered (as we thought) into the shadows of cinema’s greatest technical follies. Ang Lee’s 2016 movie Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk had a long title, but unfortunately a short life in the public eye.

The HFR technical story was immense and featured groundbreaking techniques like frame blending and a 120fps 4K stereo capture. Perhaps the biggest misstep was that there were hardly any cinemas that could play back the movie as it was shot.

Definition was lucky enough to watch the 120fps 4K, but only 12 minutes of it – we enthused about it at the time, but

There were hardly any cinemas that could play back the movie as it was shot in 120fps

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understood that, as a public performance, not many people would watch it this way.

Three years ago we described the experience in the following way: “So we saw it. Twelve minutes of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk in glorious 4K, 120fps 3D. The feeling was amazingly intense, especially for the battle scenes. Seeing everything doesn’t explain what 120 frames gives you, but one scene brought it home to me. An American soldier is firing his heavy machine gun at the enemy. While he is shooting, the vibration going through his body gives him an aura of dust surrounding his body shape.

That is a new reality for me. You definitely felt like you could reach out and enter the scene, just walk right in there.”

The movie had a limited release as a 24fps movie, but soon disappeared from view after getting a mauling from the critics. Apparently wartime PTSD in vivid hyperreality wasn’t flavour of the month at the time. Now, you can buy a 60fps 3D Blu-ray, however and the comments on IMAGES Behind-thescenes shots and stills from Gemini Man. © 2019 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved. Photo credit: Ben Rothstein

the Amazon webpage are full of praise for the look of the movie. There was plenty of blame for the demise of the movie put at the door of the distributors for their lack of marketing, but eventually the technical crew had to admit defeat and put HFR on the shelf marked ‘revisit this sometime’ and got back to ‘normal’ 24fps moviemaking.

DOUBLE TROUBLE Of course, technology marches on and if it’s not working for you now, then just wait a while and it’ll come around. Presumably this is what Lee, technical supervisor whiz kid Ben Gervais and stereographer Demetri Portelli have done with Gemini Man, because 120fps, 4K 3D is back! As is the public’s and critics’ mistrust of it, but let’s not worry about that and just applaud the effort. Portelli explains the technical difference between now and three years ago: “Last time when we were doing Billy Lynn, we were finishing it without a lab as we had built our own facility. Then it was ‘hopefully this will work’. When we were heading towards deadlines and distribution it was very nerve-racking. Billy Lynn was the proof of concept and it needed to happen, it was also a little bit sad what happened, as there was very little courage to actually release it in 3D.” He continues: “With this project, Gemini Man, Paramount Pictures has been amazing by supporting the technology and the filmmaker and rolling out the film internationally as a high frame rate movie. They haven’t released the film as a 24fps movie for the audience, which is a wonderful success for us and a statement of confidence for HFR.” At the same time, HFR has still been seen as a work in progress – mainly because seeing the full 120fps film is very difficult.

“I live in Canada and there is nowhere here to see the 120fps version,” admits Portelli.

“All we can do is carry on advocating for more people to see the movie as Ang [Lee] meant it to be seen.”

Cinemas need double laser projection to have a chance to show 120fps HFR. Dolby cinemas have that, but there aren’t that many of them around. It seems, then, that we’re in the same situation as three years ago; the filmmakers pleading with the public to seek out a 120fps version, then the almost inevitable disappointment at a fruitless search for a suitable cinema is followed by not going to see any version of the film, because of the let-down.

Portelli explains: “Ang said we had to careful with this film not to be so ‘tech head’ about seeing the 120fps version. You don’t have to and our message this time is: we have shot the thickest negative and the best possible amount of data that we can. That process allows us to deliver these other versions. If you want the 120fps, we give Dolby a very nice 2K version, and then we make a great 60fps version for the rest of the world. The 60fps really works and Paramount are branding it ‘3D Plus’. IMAX is 60fps as well, but its laser projection is at least bright, which tends to be good for 3D.”

PRODUCTION FOR GEMINI MAN For Billy Lynn, the production used Sony’s now old F65 cameras, which were unwieldy at the best of times. This time, they went back to using the Arri Alexa M – a favourite camera of director James Cameron for his 3D exploits.

“The M was gutted and modified as we needed to do 4K 120fps,” Portelli recalls.

“The Alexa Mini doesn’t do that – we’d only get 60fps out of it, which is a shame because of its light carbon-fibre body. However, the M cameras allowed us to do quite a bit of Steadicam, as we had to be mobile. Gemini Man was quite a travel job. This was an action film, so you have to move the camera to achieve the visual aesthetic.

“The feeling has been that you can’t do handheld 3D as that will induce motion sickness, but we moved the hell out of this camera. We built wire pulley systems so we could leave them hanging in the centre of

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LIGHT HOUSE

IBC WAS A HOTBED OF NEW LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY, SOME ON BOOTHS AND SOME HIDING BEHIND THE SCENES. HERE ARE A FEW OF THE HIGHLIGHTS WORDS PHIL RHODES

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he biggest single-source LED movie light currently made is rated at around 3KW. The biggest HMIs are 24KW. That means that LED has some way to go before it can completely replace the gear that’s been in use for decades.

575W HMIs are the smallest common type and perhaps something of a watershed: once LED has started to compete at that level, the technology will really be coming of age. Matching 575W HMI, however, would require something not much less than a 575W LED, and a 575W singleemitter LED hard light has long been a tough thing to make. Even so, looking at some representative specimens from IBC2019, it’s clear that the race to do that is well underway.

ARRI ORBITER The entrance to IBC’s Hall 12 this year was guarded by Arri’s Orbiter. The company has a lot of experience in LED hard light, having been early to offer a range of Fresnels, though the Orbiter is more complex – perhaps an attempt to create a light that’s all things to all people. The promotional material mentions “sheer output” as a feature, and while the power level is more

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or less similar to an L10 Fresnel at around 500W, with the efficient, open-faced reflectors, the Orbiter should liberate more photons overall. Like anything at this power level, the Orbiter is just about usable away from a mains socket, requiring 48V input from a big floor-standing block battery.

With a more cynical eye, it’s also a light with the sort of interchangeable optical components – reflectors, diffusers and so on – that have been available from other manufacturers for a while, though not with full colour mixing and not at this power level (though see the upcoming Hive Super Hornet). Speaking of colour, among the controls is an option to select by CIE xy coordinate, a welcome option found mainly at the high end, which should make it easier to colour match different lights.

The reflectors closely approximate a PAR and, like any PAR, the beam is not as clean as that from a Fresnel. It does seem a little cleaner than an HMI-based PAR, possibly because the hexagonal LED array is a more consistently illuminated source. There are also projection (profile or ellipsoidal) adapters, dome and panel diffusers. It will do more or less anything, though we don’t yet know what it’ll cost.

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RIGHT The Arri Orbiter is a highpower LED with a wide choice of components

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It’s hard to tell whether LED will eventually scale up big enough to replace absolutely every other competing technology APUTURE LS 600D

Someone with simpler desires might be tempted by Aputure’s announcement of a 600W light, the 600D. Again, there’s no price, and best guesses put release any time before NAB next year.

The key feature is that all of those 600 watts are dedicated to making daylight, and the output is prodigious. In fact, some of Aputure’s existing Bowens S-type accessories aren’t qualified for use on the 600D, on the basis that the blast of light is so ferocious, it might melt plastic parts. The

world isn’t used to LEDs that can so easily set fire to the curtains.

One accessory that is compatible, being made entirely from metal and glass, is Aputure’s existing spotlight mount.

In combination with the 600D, it should create a really attractive alternative to the widely admired Jo-Leko combination of a K5600 Joker-Bug HMI with an ETC Source Four lens tube. The difference is that even the less-capable 400W Jo-Leko kit costs US$3490, and we can reasonably hope that the 600D will be less than that.

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THE FULLER

FIGURE AS LARGER FORMAT CAMERAS ARE RELEASED WE LOOK AT THE STATE OF FULL-FRAME CINEMATOGRAPHY – ESPECIALLY AFTER THE RECENT IBC CONVENTION PRODUCT LAUNCHES WORDS PHIL RHODES

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hrough most of the 2000s, changes in cameras have been prompted largely by the desire to properly replace 35mm negative. Now, the push for resolution, dynamic range and colour to match the capability of a century of narrative filmmaking is largely a won war. Many cameras go significantly beyond what film could ever do, or at least, they go beyond what 35mm cinema could do. Now, in late 2019, digital camera manufacturers aren’t so much reaching for Super35, they’re reaching for Imax. Partly that’s because distributors are trying to future-proof their material with 4K origination, but it’s also because the most immediate way to create a camera with bigger numbers is to put a bigger sensor in it.

ARRI LF MINI Arri declared an interest in this field early with the Alexa 65. Announced all the way back in 2014, it was immediately an attractive prospect: Alexa pictures at 6K resolution. Practically, though, the size, weight and power consumption raised eyebrows even among crews used to the conventional Alexa, which wasn’t particularly small, light nor power-frugal to begin with. LF was an achievement in that

IMAGES DOP Michael Seresin with an Alexa Mini LF at IBC 2019

Many cameras go beyond what film could ever do – or at least beyond what 35mm cinema could

it packed a lot more pixels into a chassis barely larger than a conventional Alexa. By that time, though, the Alexa Mini (launched in early 2015) had become popular.

Alexa LF Mini was announced in March this year and Arri tells us that ‘current prototypes’ are a comparatively featherweight 2.6kg and roughly equal in size to an Alexa Mini. Power consumption is a relatively restrained 65W and the camera will record 4.5K up to 60fps, and HD up to 90fps. Both the Mini and conventional Alexa LF sacrifice the 6K resolution of the Alexa 65, compromising with a stilladmirable 4.5K. The benefit is compatibility with lenses designed for a sensor roughly the size of a stills negative – Alexa 65, and 65mm film, both demand lenses with medium-format coverage.

In some ways, ‘large-format’ is something of a misnomer since it more generally refers to stills formats significantly larger than a 35mm stills frame. Still, if the LF Mini is designed to offer a nocompromise 4.5K Alexa for fussy, over-thetop broadcasters, and without requiring a wagon train full of support gear, it is a success. CVP list the body for £41,360, plus VAT.

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U S E R R E V I E W | R E S O LV E 1 6

PRICE £978/$995

We look at the latest iteration of DaVinci Resolve and Blackmagic Design’s new dedicated keyboard hardware W O R D S A DA M G A R S TO N E / P I C T U R E S B L AC K M AG I C

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lackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve is well named, it seems.

It was already a capable grading tool when Blackmagic purchased DaVinci way back when, and they have developed and added to the software at a prodigious rate. It is a cliche that it’s become the Swiss Army knife of post-production, though Blackmagic has recognised that it’s quite possible to spend several minutes turning the thing over and over in your hands, bewildered by all the attachments, looking for the gizmo that gets Boy Scouts out of horses’ hooves.

Resolve 16 attempts to find a solution to that issue – at least as far as editing goes. Many editors simply need to cut their programmes together quickly, from news and current affairs to YouTube programming. For these people, Blackmagic has added a Cut page to Resolve, along with a new Editor Keyboard – the latter, perhaps perversely, giving the new generation of YouTubers the kind of interface familiar to those of us old enough to remember edit controllers like Sony’s BVE 9000. More on the keyboard later.

The ethos of the Cut page is that it allows you to grab your media, review it, assemble, trim and re-edit,

“THE CUT PAGE ALLOWS YOU TO GRAB YOUR MEDIA, REVIEW IT, TRIM AND RE-EDIT” and then output the finished product all from a single page, with tools optimised for speed over complexity.

Of course, the timeline you are hacking in the Cut page is mirrored in the Edit page, so you could still assemble quickly in the former and finish in the latter, even if you have a more relaxed edit schedule.

CUT PAGE The Cut page consists of three main panels. Upper left is usually your Media Pool window, though it can also show Transitions, Titles and Effects. The upper right panel is a single viewer, and the lower part of the screen is the Timeline.

The Timeline is split into two parts – a traditional ‘zoomed in’ view of the area you are currently working on, and an overview, showing the whole of the timeline in one. This arrangement means that you no longer have to zoom in and out all the time – indeed there are no zoom controls active in the timeline (which confused the bejeebus out of me before I realised how it works).

You can even drag a clip from the magnified region and drop it into place in the overview timeline. It’s

LEFT Version 16 of Resolve introduces the new dedicated keyboard

not that accurate, but it’s fast – and that is the point here. If you want to spend ten minutes agonising over a frame or two, then you should be in the Edit page.

There is a massive, outstanding and totally brilliant feature of the Cut page. My first task – on traditional NLEs – is to create (or ‘cause the edit assistant to create’) a sequence with all the clips in a bin in timecode order. For historical reasons I call this a KEM roll (KEM edit machines were used back in the days of film).

You can use this ‘KEM roll’ to quickly skim through the contents of a bin and even cut straight from it into the timeline.

The Cut page has a ‘Source Tape’ – essentially an invisible sequence of all the clips in a bin that behaves in exactly the same way as my KEM roll, but with added benefits. If you reorder the clips in the bin – perhaps by clip name instead of timecode – then the KEM roll re-orders, too. You can jump to an exact timecode by typing in the numerical value: great if you are assembling an interview from the timecode in a transcript, for instance. This feature alone, for me, justifies the existence of

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