SPY IN THE WILD Meet the new robot family
THE JUNGLE BOOK
When a VFX OSCAR isn’t enough
REAL TIME AR
Instant rendering in live action
SIGMA CINE ZOOMS
They’re here and they’re great definitionmagazine.com
April 2017
SHOW ME SOMETHING NEW! New movement, new shots
BRING OUT THE LED
Catch up on the light revolution
The new billion pound production business sample cover.indd 2
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Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridgeshire CB22 3HJ UK
EDITORIAL EDITOR Julian Mitchell
01223 492246 julianmitchell@bright-publishing.com
CONTRIBUTORS Adam Duckworth, Adam Garstone SENIOR SUB EDITOR Lisa Clatworthy SUB EDITORS Catherine Brodie & Siobhan Godwood
ADVERTISING KEY ACCOUNTS Nicki Mills
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SALES DIRECTOR Matt Snow
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DUNKIRK: The 2016 £1.6 billion spend on film production in the UK included films like Dunkirk.
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PUBLISHING MANAGING DIRECTORS Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck
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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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Welcome
Last year 276 films and 83 high-end TV programmes qualified as British and earned the tax break that is currently operating in the UK, long may it continue. Some people basking in the increased amount of production are calling it a ‘gold rush’. The total budget for TV programmes in the UK alone is now touching £1 billion! Programmes made in the UK in 2016 include the second series of the hugely successful The Crown, the seventh series of Games of Thrones, Fortitude, The White Princess and the third series of Outlander. But there’s something else happening with potentially more of a social impact through industrial area regeneration. In Vancouver for instance abandoned industrial units are being turned in to film studios to deal with the huge increase in productions there. At one point last year there were 65 separate Netflix shoots happening simultaneously in the city. In the UK London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has appointed a team of consultants to produce a feasibility study for a planned major studio in Dagenham, East London.
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NEWS THE JUNGLE BOOK
We talked to lead VFX supervisor Rob Legato on how The Jungle Book won the OSCAR for Best VFX but how it could also have been nominated in other categories INTERVIEW JULIAN MITCHELL
hen we think of VFX we usually think of it as part of live action activity where you have some visual effects as an extra. The Jungle Book was the other way around. The film had a lot of VFX and only one real character. Lead Supervisor Rob Legato, “Usually visual effects are brought into a live action world, but in the case of The Jungle Book, live action was brought into a visual effects world. The aim, of course, was to make it not look like a visual effects film. “Visual effects tend to get short shrift as an art form because, if you do your job very well, you encompass all the cinematic parts within the label of visual effects. It is photographed, there are sets, there are set dressings, there are costumes, there is hair, there is make-up. “In The Jungle Book, all the various things that go into making a movie are
IN THE CASE OF THE JUNGLE BOOK, LIVE ACTION WAS BROUGHT INTO A VISUAL EFFECTS WORLD
IMAGES The boy playing Mowgli interacted with puppeteers who stood in for the animals.
under the umbrella of visual effects. So you have to bring in the ability to create a visual effect that feels as if it uses all the cinematic arts. “The Academy Awards have categories for all those cinematic arts, but only one category for visual special effects. In the case of The Jungle Book all those other categories were encompassed in the one movie, a visual effects movie. We don’t separate those categories out and say ‘it’s the visual effects set dressing’, or whatever. “One day that may change, and we hope our contribution to the future of
filmmaking is that we will forget visual effects are involved; visual effects will simply be in the vocabulary of making films in the future. “The way we set about making The Jungle Book was to use all the freedoms you have in the expensive process of making a movie: shooting a scene, shooting it from multiple angles, thinking how you will cut it all together. You have to bring all those to a visual effects film. “That is traditionally not done, because it is usually storyboarded and very carefully planned. You pre-decide
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THE JUNGLE BOOK NEWS
‘we are going to cut from this close-up to this wide shot’ and so on. “To cut a long story short, we previsualised the movie in advance. Every shot, every angle, every choice was cut together by the editor and director Jon Favreau and influenced by myself, cinematographer Bill Pope and Chris Glass, the art director, and all the other people who were plussing-out the show. Then we came up with a working template and we went on stage with it, shot for shot, angle for angle; that represented the best of the story and we acquired the material needed to put the shot together. “We did all our analogue, what-if scenario work in advance so that by the time we hit the stage we knew what the scene was going to be and then we plussed-out even that on the stage. We had the boy on the stage, and he interacted with puppeteers who stood in for the animals and changed the lines on a take-by-take basis to make him feel like it was fresh again; not a studied overwrought piece of material, but one that had a bit of ad-lib quality to make him feel like he was doing it for the first time. “All those things were done in advance and put together. It was a bit crude, and in years to come it will be less crude in terms of what the final product looks like. But it was enough to make all these decisions and all these creative contributions and when we went to MPC and Technicolor we were plussing-out every moment that we had plussed-out in an analogue way. “The Jungle Book could only have been done with this technology, but it embraced other technologies: what you can do on stage with a camera
IMAGES The Jungle Book has proved that you can produce a computer-generated sequence that looks like a location shoot.
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THE JUNGLE BOOK ACHIEVED SOME NOTORIETY FOR SHOWING THAT A VFX MOVIE COULD WORK where you work things out and shoot a few takes and then edit the material and extract the movie from all those various pieces. “So we had the material to play with and when we made our decisions they were well informed and we could start executing a very goodlooking movie, a very good story, and a very good performance film. That ultimately is what The Jungle Book is.” The Jungle Book was a ‘line in the sand’ moment for VFX movies but Rob
is enthused about what’s next. “The Jungle Book achieved some notoriety for showing that a VFX movie could work. Before Jungle Book people were very nervous about shooting almost an entire movie computer-generated on virtual sets, because no one had proved it could be done without it looking like a computer-generated movie. This means you can do a computergenerated sequence that will look exactly as if you went out on location. You can do it at any time with the comfort of not being in the elements. “I use the example of The Revenant. It’s a great movie but it was an arduous physical undertaking that most participants probably don’t want to repeat. It was very hard, very extreme work that yielded great realistic results but at a cost that makes such movies very few and far between. “Now we have proved we can produce something that fools the eye, which may mean we can make more of those very difficult movies; the ones that are vastly entertaining because they are different and raise the bar of how arduous the filming would have been. And yet the audience can’t tell the difference between something shot on location and something shot on a stage or on a back lot, in a comfortable location where you can go back and shoot a scene again. You don’t want APRIL 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY SPY IN THE WILD
Secret Cinema Spy in the Wild is the latest version of the ‘spy cam’ series of wildlife programmes that started almost 20 years ago WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES BBC/JOHN DOWNER PRODUCTIONS
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SPY IN THE WILD SHOOT STORY
py In The Wild is the acceptable face of voyeurism for the nation’s couch potatoes but perhaps the nation doesn’t realise that this animal version of The Truman Show has been beamed in to living rooms now for almost 20 years since Spy in the Den allowed us to witness, close and personal, the family drama of being an African lion. Back then the spy, or to be more succinct, boulder-cam was the means of being dropped in to the heart of the action. There weren’t many shots of it wheeling to and fro but who really wants to see that; you want to see what it sees. Now, with Spy in the Wild, the spies have become as important as the behaviour they’ve been designed to record. Now they elicit behaviour rather than just recording it. All moral questions arising from this apart, it makes for great television! Boulder-cam was invented out of desperation. When the Spy in the Den team started to film the lions they found that they spent most of their time lurking in the den and bushes so they could hear the cubs, but all the interesting behaviour was happening off-camera. On their next trip they had built the bouldercam and after an initial trepidatious inspection from a lioness, the pride seemed to leave it alone. They got the shots they wanted and a whole new world of natural history shooting was unleashed. SPIES LIKE US The spy genre has been a fantastic success. John Downer Productions, who came up with the original idea has gone on to spy on elephants, bears and penguins all using a stationery POV remote camera. It was when they took on the polar bears that there was an evolutionary step forward. Philip Dalton, a producer on Spy in the Wild recounts what happened next; “We had the blizzard-cam which was on skies, that was a fantastic device and it had a deployable snowball on the back so we could scoot that across at great speed in the direction of a polar bear in the distance then deploy these little snowball remotes. Then we had a floating iceberg camera which could go in between the ice floes and follow the bears while they were swimming and it had an underwater camera.” But it was a new penguin film that was a real turning point for the spy team. They wanted to get into the heart of a colony but unfortunately
ABOVE Producer
Rob Pilley gets Spy Baby Hippo into the optimum shooting position.
LEFT A real meerkat
has a good old sniff of his new denmate, Spy Meerkat.
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for the production team, penguin colonies are very dense and hard to penetrate. It was then they came up with the idea of a walking, robotic penguin that would take them in to the colonies’ centres. They teamed up with a robotic team in America and they made something based on a humanoid robot that was bipedal but modified to be a penguin. “We got some great model makers in the UK to make skin to go around it. It was a bit of a gamble and we didn’t think it would be entirely successful but it worked really well. We devised it so if it fell over it would get up again; even in high winds it could weight shift and lean in to the wind – and it was accepted by the rockhoppers’.” The penguin cam did go into the heart of the colony but perhaps it was its Japanese programmer who opened up a real advance by coding an emulation of the penguin’s behaviour so it could, amongst other behaviour, mimic their ritualistic call – which is more of a greeting – so further assimilating them into the colony. “That was an important part of it getting accepted by the penguins,” says Philip. “There was a wonderful scene where a male penguin starts to flirt with the robot, starting courtship behaviour. This was extraordinary as here we were, a robot communicating with a real penguin.“ The team were unstoppable after that breakthrough, creating all sorts of fishy robots, like a squid-cam for
WE HAD A FLOATING ICEBERG CAMERA WHICH COULD GO IN BETWEEN THE ICE FLOES APRIL 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE CANON
HEART OF GLASS
Canon lenses have been part of Ember Films’ creative director Jonathan Jones’ life since he first picked up a camera. There isn’t a project he works on that doesn’t feature them ight from the beginning it’s always been Canon.” Jonathan Jones speaks of Canon glass in an almost reverential tone. “Even when I was learning to focus; the way Canon lenses turn has been ingrained in me. On some other lenses; the barrel turns the other way so I’ve always struggled with that. I trained on Canon so the thought of going anywhere else isn’t an option, not just because of that focus detail but because the glass is so good. “It’s delivered, for us, some of the best images we have captured certainly in the natural history world.” Jonathan’s company Ember Films has won an Emmy for their work in
THIS PAGE Jonathan Jones and his company Ember Films have always used Canon lenses – and they don't plan on switching.
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CANON ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
IF YOU COULD ONLY USE ONE LENS YOU COULD DO A LOT WITH THE CN20 natural history but they make many other types of programming. “We’ve just shot this whole brand campaign using Canon CN7x17 17-120mm zooms. I chose those over any other lens because of their versatility; some of what we shot was off the shoulder, quite run-and-gun, and we needed something that was very lightweight and could optically deliver. The idea of the shoot was based on actuality, needing to capture people’s reaction in the moment, so no real chance of getting a take two. We had Ready Rigs built with the cameras and CN7 and it worked brilliantly. We wanted an option to push in to get the close-up and come back out to get the wide within an instant. The 17-120mm range was perfect for what we wanted. The lenses are so lightweight and cover 4K so tick all the boxes. “When we used to shoot Canon stills on film we bought a load of old FD lenses which was the mount before EF. We still use a lot of that FD glass now. Those old lenses are completely manual so for a lot of the high-speed work we do they are really fantastic; we never use autofocus for any of our work so the older glass is still worthy. But the great thing about Canon is right from the start the optical quality has been there so I can use a piece of glass which is perhaps
30 or 40 years old and it still delivers optically now in the 4K plus world. Then you have your Canon cine glass with their unique qualities; the K35 for instance which was used on Aliens, it has some very beautiful aesthetics. As we’re working across many genres like natural history, high-end branding and CGI walk-throughs – all in the same week – we can use all different types of lenses as we need the different aesthetics for different jobs. When we want something clinical we might use a certain range of glass; when we want something a bit more lifestyle and aspirational we might use glass that has a different look – the Canon range is there to cover all that. NATURAL HISTORY You could argue that the harshest testing ground for video kit is the natural history world. Here, the revelation of the larger, longer lenses
like the Canon CN20x50 50-1000mm lens, for example, have become the standard. Jonathan has followed the Canon long lens world from the original Planet Earth. “We would use the HJ40 lens back in the day, covering a 2/3in chip on a B4 mount. You compare that to the new Canon CN20x50 lens and the difference is really only the sensor it covers. The CN20 lens covers at least 4K but the weight for the form factor isn’t more than those covering a 2/3in chip. The lens answers those questions of fill-in focal lengths we had to look to. Canon did an amazing job to make this lens work and it was the lens that basically delivered Planet Earth II. It’s so versatile, we’re used to putting it and a camera on a tripod and bowl and walking with it, but if you were making a film and if you could only use one lens, you could do a lot with the CN20.” CANON EOS C300 MARK II “When we used the EOS C300 MkII we found the sensitivity and the ability to shoot in low light amazing. The picture quality is great and for on-speed sync work it’s just brilliant. For any interview situation it is the best; it’s so lightweight, the battery runs forever, the media also runs forever. It ticks all the boxes and the reliability is great. We go to freezing and super hot temperatures; we travelled to volcanoes – we’ve really put it through the mill. It just turns on and goes. If you’re doing sync work in documentaries it’s a brilliant workhorse and at a price point so good that you could have two of them, so you could cross shoot.”
THIS PAGE Jonathan puts his Canon equipment to the test in the harsh environments of the natural history world.
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RECORDING MEDIA IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG
KING OF THE CASTLE
When documentary maker Pieter de Vries shoots it’s usually in inhospitable environments. The media he chooses is the one he calls the ‘king of the castle’ PICTURES PIETER DE VRIES ver this series we’ve looked at the way SSD media has been so popular that even camera owners whose primary recording media isn’t SSD have found a way of using them. There is also a large and growing number of shooters who have circumvented camera manufacturers who don’t have SSD bays in their cameras by using popular new recording devices. These are usually monitors that record to all the well-known formats. There are a range of recording monitors that have SSD bays inherent in the design and bypass the recording side of the cameras. In this way you use your camera to
concentrate on the dynamic range of the sensor, twinned with the lens that you choose, and let the recording monitor record to the compression level that you select and the media, in this case SSDs. Users of this type of media benefit from the huge advantages that SSDs provide and also from the value of such convenient storage. The Samsung 850 Pro 2TB is the largest in the Samsung Pro range family giving long recordings and a lightning fast data transfer rate. With the new recorder/monitor you can shop for your own SSDs as the manufacturers don’t make you buy proprietary units that don’t
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IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG RECORDING MEDIA
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IN TERMS OF BATTERY POWER IN COLD CLIMATES, SSDS ARE MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT benefit from economies of scale. You can get advice as to which SSDs work best with their units. Samsung’s 850 Pro 1TB, 512GB and 256GB are all cleared for use for the recorders and are officially supported media. PIETER DE VRIES A well-known documentary maker and video trainer in Australia, Pieter de Vries uses his recorder/monitor for the majority of his shooting. He is also an SSD convert. “If you had a choice why wouldn’t you go for an SSD, especially when you’re spending so much money on equipment like cameras, monitoring and recording.” he asks. “It just doesn’t make sense to use anything less than SSDs. SSDs are the top of the pile, and in my opinion, there really isn’t anything better. Most of my mechanical hard drives have now been allocated to little jobs. The biggest advantage, and this overrides everything, is that transfer speeds and write speeds are fast, and this just saves time on location especially if you’re giving footage to producers or through the post-production chain. “I recently shot in Antarctica where we used mechanical drives because we had no time restraints. However we never replayed them, just recorded onto them and then didn’t touch them again, such is the vulnerability of a mechanical drive. You just don’t want to pick it up and run it. I also ended up using my SSDs in my recorder/monitor and the difference is clear, especially when you have such expensive gear. SSDs are so reliable and robust; you can’t underestimate the safe feeling you have when there are no moving parts. This equipment gets chucked around on luggage belts and generally when you’re shooting. It’s very comforting to know SSDs are safe in those situations.”
ABOVE Pieter using
ROBUST AND LONG-LASTING Pieter is, by his own admission, not a specialist natural history shooter,
SSDs for their reliability and the sense of security they give him.
his recorder/ monitor, which allows the use of SSDs like Samsung 850 Pro drives.
LEFT Pieter uses
but he is quite used to shooting in harsh climates like Antarctica. These environments are brutal on electronics and battery maintenance plays a huge part in keeping the shoot going. Again this is where no moving parts in an SSD is a great feature. “In terms of battery power in cold climates, SSDs are much more energy efficient because they are not mechanical. Simple things like their size is a huge advantage, especially when you carry a lot of them, and that makes a great deal of difference. I also love the life expectancy of an SSD and how they load faster into RAM. “The great things about SSDs just go on and on. At this stage of our trajectory they are just king of the castle. Once you use SSDs, mechanical drives seem like a clunky relic, really. It’s like putting a cassette into a digital Betacam machine. “The way I work with SSDs is to spread my risk over a number of drives. Because SSDs are so light it’s
just not a big imposition to take, say, 15 instead of five. I haven’t had a failure with SSDs but have with mechanical drives so it’s just a piece of mind thing. So I work with, say, one terabyte sizes with my projects even if I’m recording in a controlled situation like an indoor interview for instance.” Pieter is obviously very happy with his choice of media as it fits perfectly into his production life and will do for many years as he follows its evolution and increased efficiency.
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GEAR GROUP LED LIGHTING
In this month’s Gear Group we are looking at the evolution of solid state LED lighting. The lighting of high-profile movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was nearly 100% LED, leading the way for other perhaps less prodigious shoots. We have a selected view of some of the latest tech
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LED LIGHTING GEAR GROUP
ARRI CREAMSOURCE LIGHT & MOTION SKYPANEL S120 SKY STELLA PRO The highly acclaimed ARRI SkyPanel series of LED soft lights has seemingly slid into the TV and film production world without breaking sweat. ARRI’s timing couldn’t have been better as production crew were looking for lighter, more grabbable units with colour on board (if you use the ‘C’ versions) to reduce the gel time for adjusting as is/was normal. Now the range is growing, with the new SkyPanel S120-C joining the S60 and S30 family of products. The S120 is twice as long as the S60, but weirdly weighs nearly the same. Its larger light aperture makes a great soft light even better. Retaining the same features and colour tune-ability as its smaller counterparts, the S120 consumes less than 400W, yet it is slightly brighter than the S60-C and has an outstanding efficacy of 90 lumens per watt. A large surface area is a crucial feature of a good soft light. With an aperture of 1290x300mm (50.8x11.8in), the S120 outputs a beautifully soft, even beam of light that has a wide range of uses. The long aspect ratio wraps light around objects and is good for vertical lighting of people. In addition the S120 works well as an overhead light for large areas, with the increased dimensions meaning that fewer lights and less cables are required. Released alongside the S120 are all the accessories needed for sculpting and controlling the light. Among the S120 accessories are honeycombs, eggcrates, barndoors, diffusion panels, the SkyBender and a new fabric barndoor called the FlexDoor. This wide range of accessories makes the S120 more versatile and easier to control. SkyPanel C (colour) versions have the ability to adjust the correlated colour temperature anywhere between 2800 and 10,000K. Full plus and minus green correction can be achieved with a turn of a knob.
Outsight, the Australian company that makes the Creamsource lights, was one of the companies whose products lit Rogue One (Digital Sputnik was the other). But why did DOP Greig Fraser choose them? Well they now have higher output LEDs, better thermal management (increasingly important), better colour rendition, more useful form factors and better packaging of the LEDs into traditional form factors/ power classes. Oh and he loved the look of them. Easy really! The efficiency of their LEDs has also improved – for example, the Creamsource Sky at 1200W produces a similar output to that of a 5kW Tungsten Skylight. They have built their own proprietary technology every step of the way, from drivers and control circuitry through to thermal management, optical design and ergonomics. Also, their units are flicker free up to very high frame rates >1000 frames-persecond (this will definitely depend on the mode of operation and the shutter angle, of course). For the Creamsource panels, the unique selling point is their ability to work as a hard or soft source. This means that you can create a soft source from their fixtures pretty easily, but you can also use them from further away and in scenarios when you need extra punch – daylight exteriors, for example. The Creamsource Sky is the ideal studio space/sky lighting instrument, which can cross over into location work without modification. At 1200W, it’s no slouch, and apparently produces just as much light as a 5kW tungsten softlight. We have yet to confirm this. Its key features are the great colour quality (typical 95 CRI), its water resistance (IP 65), its silence (no fans!), the wide colour range (2200-15,000K) and accessories including skirts, snapbags and rigging options.
The Stella Pro range first came to our attention when we were looking for a light that would fit a drone. We had seen Digital Sputnik’s solution for this. This isn’t an easy thing to do and needs a certain amount of engineering, small and light enough unit and, of course, plenty of light power! The Pro 10,000c illuminates with a commanding 10,000 lumens and delivers 20,580 lux at one metre with available fresnel. At full power the diminutive Stella Pro 10,000c delivers the equivalent light output of HMI units four times its size. Powered from AC or DC, a digital screen reports power levels while an easy-grip magnetic control ring makes adjusting output potentially simple and repeatable. Consistent with all Stella Pro lights is the Chip on Board ‘COB’ array that promises to provide a smooth, evenly dispersed, 120° native beam with high CRI and TLCI ratings of 90+ and 93 respectively. Durability and all-conditions portability are something that Light & Motion see as hallmarks of the Stella Line. The 10,000c features IP54 water resistance to be fully capable for demanding broadcast outdoor shoots or providing powerful illumination for heavy payload drones, lighting sets or landscapes. Stella Pro 10,000c includes a 50° optic, barndoors, C-stand mount and power supply. KEY FEATURES • High Output COB ‘chip on board’ LED • Certified 90 CRI, TLCI 93, Daylight Balanced • FL-1 Standard Certified Lumen output • FL-1 Standard Certified 120° wide, smooth beam angle • Range of modifiers: press-on light modifiers including: 50° Focus Optic, 25° fresnel, GloBulb APRIL 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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UAVS INSPIRE 2
AIR FORCE
DJI’s Inspire 2 is finally in the hands of its users after the usual delays in supplying parts supply WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL ou know how it is with new experiences, you get used to them and then their specialness can fade. Just when drone cinematography had become a regular feature on anything from factual TV to feature films, people have started moaning about it. “I can see it’s a drone”; “why are drone shots used so much”; “yet another inconsequential drone shot” – all comments heard from walking around a local gear show in London, and two of them were from aerial cinematographers. Drones are great, but they’re not helicopters or gyros. For the most part you can spot one when it wobbles
onto your screen. Harsh, I know, but well known The Grand Tour drone DOP Lec Parks reckons that Inspire 2’s new gimbal will make it much more difficult to spot them. “The new one is much more finely tuned and for the most part eradicates the ‘drone wobble’. You’re then able to use lenses like the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 in more significant ways.” Lec is a user who has had to wait months for his new bird. When he ordered the two packages (there is a certain redundancy in top-tier drone work) he had to commit to ProRes and Cinema DNG licences. Now he has his Inspire 2 and you can buy those licences from the DJI website for much
ABOVE The Inspire 2 with its beautiful polycarbonate body and giveaway dual battery system.
less – there are certain downsides to being early adopters after all. But Lec is very pleased with his new drone, which arrived just before he was due to fly to Africa for the second series of a well-known carbased TV programme on Amazon. WHAT’S DIFFERENT? After doing some tests and a couple of jobs Lec more or less confirmed the pre-press hype. “It’s much more comprehensive, better made, has much more speed, internal processing for DNG, dual battery and best of all, it has ProRes on-board.” Just to break that down a bit, Inspire 2 is polycarbonate and so is
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INSPIRE 2 UAVS
lighter than its predecessor at just over 3kg with batteries but without gimbal and camera. The speed increase is significant and includes ascent and descent (if you’re brave enough). There is also some AI on board to deal with the anti-collision abilities but that’s something Lec will let somebody else to discover. “I turned it off, especially when it started to rain. At the moment I just don’t trust it. You can still see the graphic on the app screen which is similar to reversing cameras in a car.” Lec mentions the app a lot as all the drone’s parameters are managed from there, but he also mentions DJI’s parts supply problems. “DJI has a strange way of launching their products; I couldn’t get hold of all my options including dual batteries and SSD until before I was going out overseas to a huge shoot. But as soon as you start flying it you can tell it’s comprehensively different across the board. The first thing I wanted to test was the speed. With Inspire 1 I had a strange relationship with speed; sometimes you can get amazingly high-speed tracking shots – the one with Jeremy Clarkson on a jet ski in the Barbados Grand Tour episode was great, but another time it wouldn’t get anywhere near that speed. The Inspire 2 gives me a great ability to track cars, for instance, and keep on the shot or to track and then fly upwards at speed getting a great flyaway shot. You can also descend at speed, DJI recommend four metres per second but you can go up to nine; I’m not sure I’ll try that but four should make for very interesting shots.” PRORES! Lec had already realised that ProRes should not only save time in post but
ABOVE The Inspire 2 uses intelligent batteries which will self-heat in certain low temperatures.
BELOW The Inspire 2 gives users the ability to track cars and keep on a shot. It’s speed is more consistent and much quicker than its predecessor.
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YOU CAN SHOOT 120FPS IN HD, AND THAT COMBINED WITH THE NEW GIMBAL SHOULD RESULT IN LOTS OF DRONE SLOW MOTION a lot of money through not having to transcode DNG raw data. When using DNG you also had to use DJI’s own proprietary software which took a long time to churn through. Even though the Inspire 2 now has on-board processing, the option of DNG is much less enticing to users now that Apple ProRes is available. “The strange thing is the ProRes is only 4K; there doesn’t seem to be a less than 4K option which is a pain for people with limited storage. You can shoot 120fps in HD, and that combined with the new gimbal should result in lots of drone slow motion.
Recently I did a job and handed the production 120GB in ProRes, ‘Is that it?’ they asked.” Lec also thinks that at around £10,000 the Inspire 2 package will be the pro-choice for drones. “There are a lot of wish lists being ticked with the Inspire 2. The front-facing camera was an option for Inspire 1 but is now standard and great for a sole operator/ DOP just to confirm where they are. Other great features are the intelligent batteries which will start self-heating when the temperature hits a certain point. That’s really great for filming in the colder countries.”
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USER REVIEW CANON EOS C700
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
Canon has eyed the massive increase in high-end TV drama and film production and wants a slice of it. Welcome to the Canon EOS C700 WORDS ADAM GARSTONE PICTURES ADAM GARSTONE/CANON
BELOW The optional EVF, which also fits the
C300 Mark II, provides enough resolution for critical focusing.
anon’s product line has gone a bit odd. At the bottom of the price range is, of course, the EOS C100. Bizarrely, next, left languishing and overtaken by newer cameras, comes the EOS C500 – previously the flagship of the range. Then comes the C300 Mark II, and now there’s the new EOS C700. It’s tough at the top. The C700 is joining a group of very serious cameras – Sony’s F55, ARRI’s AMIRA, Panasonic’s VariCam 35, RED’s EPIC… The EOS C300 has been the most used camera in factual television for the last few years (vying with Sony’s FS7) but the requirements for such a high-end camera are different. Physically, the C700 is very different to its stablemates. The roughly cubic C100, C300 and C500
all require a rig of some kind to adapt them to the operator’s shoulder; they don’t work easily with a two- or threeperson camera crew. The C700 is a far more conventional shape. The body is solidly manufactured from a light alloy, with sturdy plastic fittings, and top and bottom plates well stocked with 1/4in and 3/8in threaded accessory mounts. The body is surprisingly light, given its size. The lens mount is Canon’s own EF, but rather than being a bayonet as you would expect, lenses attach using a rotating collar, very similar to ARRI’s PL mount. The flanges on the EF mount are a little harder to align than with PL, so mounting the lens is a little more fiddly, but the solidity of the new collared system is fantastic. Some EF lenses slop slightly with
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the bayonet mount, but those lenses mounted on the C700 are rock steady. There are three models of C700 to choose from, differing by lens mount and sensor. Our review model was fitted with the aforementioned EF mount and the 4.5K, Super 35 rolling shutter sensor. This is also available as a PL mount. The third option is PL mount only, and has a 4.5K, Super 35 sensor but with a global shutter (Canon’s excellent Dual Pixel autofocus system isn’t available in this version but is in the rolling shutter version). The rolling shutter also offers about one stop more dynamic range than the global – Canon says that it’s not exactly the same chip that’s in the C300, though the specifications are similar. Below the lens mount on the
CANON EOS C700 USER REVIEW
front of the camera is the first of three buttons that roll the camera, and a user assignable button that defaults to One Shot AF. TO HAND Unsurprisingly, the left-hand side of the camera has the operator’s controls. At the front you have another record button and a section for exposure control, with buttons for the built-in ND – two, four and six stops in standard setting, with a further eight and ten stops available if you enable it. Like the C300 Mark II, the extra stops bring another wheel into the optical path, so you need to refocus – hence their optional nature. Here you’ll also find a customisable thumb wheel. It defaults to controlling iris on suitable lenses
(there’s a Push Auto Iris button next to it too) but you can set it to control ISO as well. This is also a feature of the C300 MkII – and other Canon cameras. The controls are well laid out, have a great feel and are easy to use with (lightish) gloves on, and – though the defaults are very sensible – they are very customisable. Right behind the exposure control section is the assist section, with (assignable!) buttons enabling magnification, peaking, false colour and the on-screen waveform monitor. Again, the user menus give you a number of options for all these assist functions – even the waveform monitor can show lines, fields, RGB parade and so on. You can also control which outputs these assist functions appear on – HDMI,
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THE CONTROLS ARE WELL LAID OUT, HAVE A GREAT FEEL AND ARE EASY TO USE WITH (LIGHTISH) GLOVES APRIL 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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REVIEW OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 MARK II
OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 MARK II Can this diminutive camera hold its own in the filmmaking arena? With its unique sensor-based stabilisation it may do. WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH
lympus certainly isn’t the first name filmmakers think of when it comes to the diminutive Micro Four Thirds-sized cameras. Although the retro-styled OM-D range has been making huge waves in stills photography, for video users it’s been Panasonic, Blackmagic and DJI that have been pushing the boundaries of the Micro Four Thirds lens mount. But Olympus hopes that will start to change with its flagship OM-D E-M1 Mark II, its first 4K camera that has both UHD and DCI modes at up to 237Mbps plus 4:2:2 uncompressed output over HDMI. It also has filmmaking essentials like a fully articulated touchscreen, headphone socket, focus peaking and in-body stabilisation. As a stills camera, the OM-D is pushing boundaries, with a maximum frame rate of 18 framesper-second or 60fps with AF disabled, at shutter speeds up to 1/32,000sec. One of the biggest advancements for stills is even more important for video, and is something that first users of the camera are already raving about, and that’s its image stabilisation. It uses a system that combines in-body image stabilisation which counters the shakes by moving the sensor, along with digital stabilisation of the image – which is also done in-camera – and lens-based
image stabilisation with selected Olympus lenses. At the moment only the Olympus 12-100mm f/4 Pro and 300mm f/4 Pro use this new Olympus Sync IS system, though more will follow. Other Micro Four Thirds lenses have built-in image stabilisation but this doesn’t communicate with Olympus so it’s recommended that it’s turned off. One of the benefits of Micro Four Thirds is the huge number of third-party lenses and adapters that can be used. From ridiculously fast f/0.95 manual-focus primes to Canon lenses via adapters, lens choice is huge at all price points. But to make use of Olympus’s system, for any non-electronic lenses to work properly with the stabilisation system you need to set the focal length manually in the menu. The digital stabilisation performs a slight crop of the image so there is a slight loss of resolution, too. Both these small issues are soon forgotten once you start to use the camera handheld; you can get amazingly stable shots at pretty much every focal length. If you hold the camera carefully and make smooth movements, results can look like those of a gimbal-stabilised camera. Carefully hold it and it could be on a tripod. Move it slowly sideways and it could almost be on a slider; follow
ABOVE The OM-D E-M1 Mark II offers stable images without a tripod.
RIGHT The camera features lots of dials and buttons that are customisable.
your subject and it could almost be on a Steadicam. It’s that good. You have to let the camera settle down for a few seconds before you start filming for the image to stabilise, and when you move the camera there will be a small lag before the image being recorded catches up. If you move too quickly, you see a jerk in the images which can ruin the shot. And similarly, when using long telephoto lenses, if you move too quick – to keep up with an erratic moving subject, for example – then the image can make a sudden, unwanted shift. But once you learn how to get the best out of the system, it offers amazingly stable images. Add more
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OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 MARK II REVIEW
image stabilisation in post and the footage is incredible. Best of all, there is very little rolling shutter effect. For a filmmaker looking for a small camera that can be used fast without any rigs or stabilisation devices, the E-M1 Mark II has a clear leg up on its rivals. But a camera is more than just its stabilisation, and shooting at 4K it does not disappoint. In DCI Cinema 4K the image quality is excellent with virtually no false colour and lots of fine detail. At 1080p it’s less sharp, so it’s better to shoot in 4K and downsize to HD. The files are very clean up to ISO 3200 and usable to 6400. Unfortunately for shooting video the frame rates are severely limited. In 4K you’re limited to 30fps while in HD you get a still relatively pedestrian 60 frames. With 120fps almost becoming the norm for slow motion, it’s an omission that could be a deal-breaker for sports and action filmmakers. A second omission that could prove to be a sticking point is that there are no log profiles. Olympus offers its own flat profile but it isn’t very flat. When shooting, you can use the histogram to ensure your highlights or shadows aren’t clipped and you can also use the camera’s shadow and highlight control to flatten the image. But there is no zebra pattern option and the camera’s
warnings of over and underexposed areas are not available in video mode. The movie exposure modes force you into Auto ISO, but it’s not available in manual movie mode. For using manual focus, many of the electronically controlled lenses offer a remote feel, but there are lots of manual focus versions available and focus peaking helps. If you use the camera’s advanced autofocus, it can work very well. The touchscreen allows you to tap and rack focus, which is impressive. Focus tracking is good too, although you can’t alter the speed at which the camera attempts to refocus. Features like face detection and modes let the camera intelligently work out what to focus on, but these can be unpredictable. The camera body is rugged and weather-sealed with a decent hand grip. There are lots of customisable dials and buttons. The menus are very deep and often hard to understand at first, although most video controls are on one option screen. While shooting video, you use the touchscreen to open a new menu to change parameters like ISO. This works in a different way to changing ISO when shooting stills, so it can be confusing. Spend time getting used to the camera, and you’ll love what it can do.
WITH THE SENSOR-BASED STABILISATION, RESULTS CAN LOOK LIKE THOSE OF A GIMBALSTABILISED CAMERA
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4K CAMERA LISTINGS
DEFINITION’S 4K CAMERA LISTING As the professional video world moves towards 4K production and UHD broadcast we have the camera reference listing you need
At the pinnacle of the new Alexa SXT range is the Plus, featuring a quiet, adjustable mirror shutter and an optical viewfinder that provides a real-time, high contrast image with true colours. SPECIFICATION
ARRI ALEXA SXT PLUS 200FPS
14 STOPS
ARRI: 1917
PL MOUNT
In 1917, two enthusiastic teenagers, August Arnold and Robert Richter, founded a film technology firm in Munich, Germany.
2880x1620
SxS
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
16:9 or 4:3 sensor mode. 4:3 output only available for ARRIRAW and ProRes 2K recording
FRAME RATES
At 16:9 – 0.75–120fps/60fps max when recording 2K ProRes/speeds adjustable with 1/1000fps precision
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14
LENS MOUNT
PL
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x2160 uncompressed ARRIRAW
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME
Dual 14-bit A/Ds, with 16-bit processing, 12-bit ALEXA ARRIRAW, 10-bit HD SDI logC/Rec.709, SxS ProRes/SxS DNxHD/SXR CAPTURE DRIVES
WEIGHT (KG)
6.9
ARRI 100 YEARS
One of August Arnold and Robert Richter’s early projects; a rebuilt film projector complete with interesting chimney.
ARRI:2017
ARRI’s current executive board, Franz Kraus (left) and Dr Jorg Pohlman (right).
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ARRI ALEXA CLASSIC EV 120FPS
14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
2880x1620
SxS
Even with the new SXT models coming on stream this year, you can still buy or rent this model with the original great performing sensor.
SPECIFICATION
ARRI ALEXA SXT EV 120FPS
14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
2880x2160
SxS/SXR
The new range of ALEXAs gets the sensor from ALEXA, the electronics from the A65 and the colour management from AMIRA. In-camera rec is ProRes 4K UHD/CINE.
SPECIFICATION 16:9 or 4:3 sensor mode. 4:3 output only for ARRIRAW and ProRes 2K recording
FRAME RATES
0.75–120fps (120fps with paidfor update)
FRAME RATES
At 16:9 – 0.75-120fps/60fps max when recording 2K ProRes/speeds adjustable with 1/1000fps precision
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620 Uncompressed ARRIRAW/ 1920x1080
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620 Uncompressed ARRIRAW/ 1920x1080
Single CMOS 16:9 (1.78:1) 23.8x13.4mm – S35
ARRI AMIRA 14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
2880x1620
ARRI ALEXA MINI 200FPS
The AMIRA uses a new revision of the ALEXA Classic/XT image sensor and now comes in three prices: Classic, Advanced and Premium. For docs and now drama.
SPECIFICATION
60FPS
Single CMOS 16:9 (1.78:1) 23.8x13.4mm – S35
FRAME RATES
Up to 200fps in ProRes
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620 Uncompressed ARRIRAW/ 1920x1080
2880x1620
SxS
Single CMOS 16:9 (1.78:1) 23.8x13.4mm – S35
FRAME RATES
Up to 200fps in ProRes
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620 Uncompressed ARRIRAW/ 1920x1080
> 14 STOPS
XPL MOUNT
5120x2880
AJA CION SXR/XR
With a sensor larger than a 5-perf 65mm film frame, ALEXA 65 heralds the start of Digital IMAX. Now shooting as a main production camera.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
PL MOUNT
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
ARRI ALEXA 65 SxS
14 STOPS
35mm format film digital camera with lightweight and compact carbon body, 4:3/16:9 switchable active sensor area, built-in NDs and interchangeable lens mounts.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
200FPS
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4K CAMERA LISTINGS
120FPS
12 STOPS
PL MOUNT
4096x2160
SSD PAK
CION is a 4K/Ultra HD and 2K/HD production camera. Shoots direct to Apple ProRes 4444 at up to 4K 30fps, ProRes 422 at up to 4K 60fps or outputs AJA Raw.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
ARRI A3X CMOS sensor, 54.12x25.58mm active image area. Open Gate aspect ratio of 2.11:1 (6560x3100).
FRAME RATES
Capable of recording 20-60fps (open gate) using new SXR media. XR drives allow 27fps.
DIGITAL SAMPLING
1.78 crop mode (5-perf 65mm): 5120x2880. and 1.50:1 crop mode – 4320x2880
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
4K APS-C sized 22.5x11.9mm
FRAME RATES
23.98–120fps (AJA Raw via 3G-SDI for 120fps)
DIGITAL SAMPLING
4096x2160 Uncompressed ARRIRAW
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