Definition April 2018 - Sampler

LIQUID SPIRIT The Shape of Water

LOW-FI CHALLENGE Lighting Phantom Thread

ACTION PLAN

Rebooting Tomb Raider

UPWARD GROWTH Pioneers of Large-Format definitionmagazine.com

April 2018

£4.99

REVIEWS PANASONIC GH5S CAMERA NBC UNIVERSAL LIGHT BLADES SWIT CAMERA TRANSMITTER

NEW CAMERA ROLL CALL

Nine of the latest and the best new cameras

DOG DAYS Surviving Stop-Motion Cinematography

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02/03/2018 14:19

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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 Phil Rhodes, Adam Garstone, Adam Duckworth SENIOR SUB EDITOR Lisa Clatworthy SUB EDITORS Siobhan Godwood, Felicity Evans

ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Matt Snow

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SALES MANAGER Krishan Parmar

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THE S FACTOR

Panasonic’s camera engineers don’t like taking no for an answer. The GH5S is here to prove it.

ACCOUNT MANAGER Harriet Abbs

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KEY ACCOUNTS Nicki Mills

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DESIGN DESIGN DIRECTOR Andy Jennings DESIGN MANAGER Alan Gray DESIGNER Lucy Woolcomb AD PRODUCTION Man-Wai Wong

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

Customer and manufacturer working in perfect harmony. That’s what we all want: engineers vibing with customers, producing products that perfectly fit the bill. What would we all talk about if that was the case? Alas, trade shows are full of customers with their dream list in hand and complaints not far from their lips waiting for an unsuspecting marketing guy to dump on. So it is with great pleasure that I can convey a relationship between camera manufacturer and customer that we should all look to emulate.

Jon Shepley, who looks after all the minicams on The Grand Tour for Amazon Video, was looking for a new camera for Season 2. He looked at the new Panasonic GH5 as the GH4 had been (and still is) such a terrific workhorse for Season 1. But with the camera’s new stabilised sensor Jon found that, for his purposes, it didn’t work and he went back to the GH4.

Panasonic weren’t happy with this and challenged themselves to find an answer for such a high-profile customer, even glueing a sensor in place to see if that would work for him. It didn’t; but that didn’t stop the Panasonic engineers burning the midnight oil and flying over something completely new, something they had no product road map for. That was the GH5S with nearly everything Jon wanted – the rest is currently being worked on.

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In the reboot of the remake of the PlayStation game about Lara Croft, Oscar winner Alicia Vikander is the one to bulk up to face the cameras

IMAGE Alicia Vikander gets close to the ARRI ALEXA while doing some wing walking. ©2017 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES INC.

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ou may have played the game and even seen the original films with Angelina Jolie as the precocious fatherless daughter who grows up looking for answers about her missing dad. But Tomb Raider is the first digital version and this time Oscar winning actress Alicia Vikander dons the vest and looks for the tomb that holds the answers she seeks. Shot by DOP George Richmond with the ARRI ALEXA XT Plus camera and Panavision glass with CODEX recording.

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SHOOT STORY ISLE OF DOGS

Dogged There is a good reason stop-motion movies aren’t the norm. We talked with Isle Of Dogs DOP Tristan Oliver about surviving the experience WORDS PHIL RHODES PICTURES TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

Image Two years in the making and nothing to with the near ‘island’ in East London.

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ISLE OF DOGS SHOOT STORY

irector of Photography Tristan Oliver had, he says, “a fairly unconventional route into the industry. I was very much a performer in my early adult life. I wanted to be an actor and all that stuff. I had a small amount of success doing that, but it was whilst I was shooting a movie called Another Country that I became very, very interested in what the camera crew were doing.” Pursuing camera at film school, Oliver found himself amongst “a lucky group of people. We gelled as a group and one of the movies I shot as a graduation piece did very well on the student film circuit.”

Initially, Oliver was keen to move up in the conventional way, but “very quickly proved myself to be a wholly inadequate focus puller – which was a good thing, I think. If you are a good focus puller, people won’t let you do anything else as you’re too valuable!”

In 1988, Oliver made first contact with Aardman Animations, who would later produce the Wallace and Gromit TV and feature series as well as Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Early Man and many other stop-motion greats. “One sort of fateful day I rang Aardman,” he says, “who at that time were three blokes in a garage, because I knew someone there and I needed some lights for a pop promo. They said ‘what are you doing next week?’”

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YOU GO INTO A STOP-MOTION PROJECT KNOWING EVERY FRAME YOU ARE GOING TO SHOOT. IT’S UTTERLY POINTLESS SHOOTING COVERAGE OR MAKING IT UP “There was the kid in the corner of the room who was finishing off his graduation film,” Oliver recalls. “That was Nick [Park], who was making Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out. But they were mainly shooting commercials.” Oliver is keen to cite the influence of Aardman co-founder David Sproxton, who was “driving towards a cinematic approach to shooting stopmotion. All it was at that point was children’s TV stuff: flat, toplit, soft, no shadows, knock it out as fast as you can. He was frustrated with that... the camera department was trying not to make any concessions to the medium of animation.”

Since the 1980s and Aardman, Oliver had up to now directed photography on four

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stop-motion feature films: Chicken Run, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and ParaNorman. His fifth is Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, produced by Anderson’s American Empirical Pictures and Indian Paintbrush, which had also been involved in the Anderson-directed Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. Preproduction on Isle of Dogs began in October 2015, with camera tests about six months before principal photography. “Everything is built,” Oliver says. “It’s not a case of going to John Lewis and buying your crockery. There’s a lot of issues in paint, textures, will the materials they’re using for the faces take light properly... I’m usually involved pretty early.”

The film’s voice cast is an impressive ensemble including Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson and many others. This group spent only a few days recording the production dialogue, which was then edited into essentially a radio play to which the animators would work. “We can’t animate to scratch because the timing is wrong,” says Oliver, emphasising the importance of planning. “You go into a stopmotion project knowing every frame you are going to shoot. It is utterly pointless shooting coverage or making it up on the fly.”

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SHOOT STORY THE SHAPE OF WATER

In a highly technical digital movie some old Hollywood techniques carried the narrative WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES hen Guillermo del Toro, the director of The Shape Of Water, called DOP Dan Laustsen about a story that involved a mute cleaner’s relationship with a merman, Dan wasn’t alarmed: “I’ve got used to the storylines from Guillermo.” Dan had previous experiences of shooting movies with del Toro, including Crimson Peak which in comparison was a more run-ofthe-mill, ‘evil brother and sister cooped up in a bleeding, breathing and very haunted house’ type of story. “I’ve done three movies with Guillermo.

Firstly Mimic in 1996, and then we had a break for 20 years. Then he called me to do Crimson Peak, where he told me about the idea for The Shape Of Water. A working-class mute falling in love with a fish man. If someone else had told me about it, I would think he was mad. Guillermo’s world is always fantastic but then he added, ‘By the way, we have to shoot in black & white’.”

As most DOPs know, the challenge of shooting in black & white is a big ambition for many of them.

Unfortunately we now know it fell apart because they couldn’t find the money. “We went back to colour and I think this was a very clever decision because the colours became a big part of the movie.

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“We knew that we wanted to have a period looking movie and also wanted to have classic lighting. Single source lighting with deep shadows but still with some details and some sweetness in the highlights. In this world it would be greens, teal, steel blue. Sally Hawkins, who plays the mute, is such a strong character,she has to look like she has this glow coming from inside. She should never look like a beaten-down, working-class woman.

She should have this princess-like look from the beginning. This look should get stronger and stronger as the movie goes on and as she gets more and more powerful and falls more in love with the fish man.

“That was something we talked about when we were prepping the movie. So we decided to light her very classically, very old Hollywood. We wanted to go more 40s or 50s but when you’re shooting digitally you have to use more soft light.

In the old days those guys would use more hard light. I don’t think that works for colour in digital, it looks wrong. We tried to do a couple of tests like that and we didn’t like it. So we went back to this super-soft close-up design which was very directional so she had a dark side as well.”

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THE SHAPE OF WATER SHOOT STORY

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IMAGE Many of the underwater scenes borrowed old theatrical tricks to shoot them.

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FEATURE THE FORGIVEN

We speak to DOP William Wages and Director Roland Joffé about the look for this moment in time new movie WORDS PHIL RHODES PICTURES SABAN FILMS

SHOT DURING 2016 ON LOCATION IN CAPE TOWN’S POLLSMOOR PRISON, THE PRODUCTION BOASTS A CAST INCLUDING ERIC BANA AND FOREST WHITTAKER AS DESMOND TUTU

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illiam Wages, ASC, is a hugely experienced cinematographer with credits behind the camera stretching all the way back to 1979. As such, he is a rare example of the Hollywood moviemaker who has never lived in Los Angeles. “I never moved out there to Hollywood,” he chuckles. “I don’t keep it a secret – nobody asked, so I don’t tell them!”

William began shooting at the tender age of 16. He worked, he says, “a summer job at a machine shop and bought the Bolex and a 25mm lens... the only thing I didn’t have was film, that was the expensive part. A show came into Atlanta which was basically like MTV. They made videos of people dancing, typical stuff of the 70s. They said, ‘here’s three rolls of film. If we like it, we’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars’. I was at high school. My grades plummeted, but my filmmaking...”. History finishes the sentence.

PAYING THE WAGES Having worked on almost every type of production, William’s recent credits include several television series, including episodes of Burn Notice, Revolution, Containment and most recently Sun Records, on which

he met director Roland Joffé. William remembers the latter production as being “about the beginning of rock and roll in Sun Studio. Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, was the centre of the rock and roll universe in this converted garage in Memphis.” This production would turn out to be prophetic, based on William’s use of Panasonic’s Varicam series alongside their compact Lumix stills cameras, for use in tight spaces. William describes Roland, who immediately liked the combination of Varicam and Lumix, as being “as progressive a thinker as anyone I’ve ever been around.”

On Sun Records, Roland and William found themselves in such a state of creative agreement that much of the usual discussion could be short-circuited. “If we did a shot list, it was the same. I still did the prep but we didn’t compare notes any more because we were on the same page... and halfway through he told me about The Forgiven in South Africa.” William had worked in the country before, and “I know the ropes, so I jumped at the chance.” Even so, the production was immediately challenging. “The budget was still in flux. When we got there we had to decide what we could do.

My philosophy of making movies, and

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THE FORGIVEN FEATURE

Roland’s, is that you don’t look at what you don’t have, you look at what you have. You have a script, you have the actors and all this other stuff to make the movie. Don’t focus on what you don’t have.”

TRAVELLING LIGHT The Forgiven is based on Michael Ashton’s stage play The Archbishop and the Antichrist, which describes a fictional – or at least fictionalised – series of events in which Desmond Tutu, the titular archbishop, meets a death row inmate in a grim South African prison. Shot during 2016 on location in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison, the production boasts a cast including Eric Bana and Forest Whitaker as Desmond Tutu.

Pollsmoor is still a working prison, and only the intervention of the real Desmond Tutu made it practical to shoot there. Even then, the production was forced to move quickly and travel light in order to make such a sensitive location practical.

To this end, William combined the Varicam 35 with Fujinon’s cinema zoom lenses, particularly the Cabrio ZK4.7x19 19-90mm T2.9 and the Cabrio ZK3.5x85 85-300mm T2.9-4.0. “This lens and this camera combination are what allowed us

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to make the movie the way we did,” William continues. “In Paris I saw the movie for the first time in a really wonderful rental facility in a beautiful screening room. As fate would have it, I had to sit in the front row which is the worst seat in the house, where I could really see the flaws. But even sitting 15 feet from the gigantic screen it looked tremendous.”

Getting down to specifics, William tells us that, “With this camera, if we go indoors or outdoors, day or night, it doesn’t matter. I’m at ISO 5000. There’s a filter wheel in the camera so I can turn the 5000 into 400 if I need to, so I’m not at f/11.”

William made frequent use of this straightforward option to balance ND filtering against aperture in order to control depth-of-field. “If the A camera is at 25mm, the B camera may be at 150mm. If I shoot both at f/2.8 then it’s a completely different look.

With this camera, I can spin the filter wheel and give B camera an f/5.6 – so both the subjects’ eyes are in focus. I hate it when we’re saying ‘which eye do we want in focus?’. This camera allows that.”

William pursued a realistic image, keen to avoid betraying the reality of the location with overly manufactured photography. “What I said to Roland

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was that I feel my job is for nobody to know I was ever there,” he says. “I want it to be real. Brutally real, and not affected with perfect Hollywood-style lighting and all of that. That sounds like I didn’t do anything – in fact I worked harder. That Hollywood style three-point lighting is pretty easy to do, but to go into a place like this and make it feel natural when nothing was real, that’s a whole different story. I don’t want them to think about the camera. I want them to think about the mood and the atmosphere.”

Under the circumstances, William found himself spending a lot of time controlling the available light. “I light with the grips,” he says.

“I spend time blocking windows,

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ABOVE Forest

Whitaker as Desmond Tutu.

BELOW AND FAR LEFT The Forgiven

is shot on location in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor Prison.

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GEAR GROUP NEW CAMERAS

EXPOSING THE EXPOSERS The one sure thing in this world of digital cinematography is that there will always be new cameras. These are new ones you should know about

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NEW CAMERAS GEAR GROUP

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ARRI ALEXA LF

BLACKMAGIC URSA BROADCAST CANON EOS C200

The missing piece in the ARRI camera lineup has now been filled with the announcement of a true 4K camera, with a sensor that is slightly bigger than fullframe (commonly referred to as ‘largeformat’ cinematography). The German company now has cameras to cover 2K, 4K and 6K resolutions.

The new system, launched at the recent BSC Expo, includes an LF camera based on a large-format 4K version of the ALEXA sensor, and comprises the ALEXA LF camera, ARRI Signature Prime lenses, LPL lens mount and PL-to-LPL adapter.

It is also compatible with existing lenses, accessories and workflows.

The first ALEXA LF cameras will be shipped at the end of March 2018, and the initial set of four Signature Prime lenses (35mm, 47mm, 75mm and 125mm) will be shipped in early June. The remaining lenses will be available over the course of the year.

Featuring a sensor slightly bigger than full frame, ALEXA LF records native 4K with ARRI’s best overall image quality.

Filmmakers can explore a large-format aesthetic while retaining the natural colorimetry, pleasing skin tones and proven suitability for HDR and WCG workflows they are getting from the other ALEXA makes. Versatile recording formats, including efficient ProRes and uncompressed, unencrypted ARRI RAW up to 150fps, are also included.

“The larger ALEXA LF sensor has the same optimal pixel size as other ALEXAs, resulting in a 4448x3096 image,” says Marc Shipman-Mueller, ARRI Product Manager for Camera Systems. “This doesn’t just add definition, it creates a whole new look – one that is truly immersive, with a three-dimensional feel. The various recording formats and sensor modes make this look available to all productions and satisfy any possible deliverable requirement.”

Blackmagic Design kind of quietly announced their URSA Broadcast camera at the start of February. This is a professional broadcast camera designed for both studio programming and live production. It works with existing B4 broadcast HD lenses, can be used for both HD and Ultra HD production, features a 4K sensor, extended video dynamic range, traditional external controls and buttons, built-in optical ND filters, dual CFast and dual SD card recorders.

URSA Broadcast is like two cameras in one: a field camera for ENG and programming work; as well as a professional studio camera. The camera features traditional broadcast controls, all in a compact design that is ideal for fast-paced, fast-turnaround production work. The key is URSA Broadcast’s new extended video mode. That means customers might not have to colour correct images before going to air, making URSA Broadcast good for news, live sports, studio talk and game shows.

URSA Broadcast is also designed to work with the equipment and systems traditional broadcasters already have. For example, customers can use their existing B4 HD and Ultra HD lenses with URSA Broadcast. Unlike other broadcast cameras, URSA Broadcast records onto standard SD cards, UHS-II cards and CFast cards, and records 1080i or 2160p video into standard .mov files (with .mxf to be added in future updates). URSA Broadcast records using DNx145, DNx220X or ProRes, so video doesn’t need to be copied or transcoded.

This makes it fast to work with video from URSA Broadcast because it’s compatible with virtually all existing broadcast systems and editing software.

The B4 lens mount features highperformance optics with spherical aberration correction specifically designed to match the camera’s sensor. It also supports full electronic B4 lens control.

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Canon has now taken careful aim at the SONY FS7 with its new C200. It’s already cheaper than the FS7, at around £5800 plus VAT (and you can expect prices to come down as the market matures) and it has retained most of the best features of the C300 Mark II. The first thing you notice as you take the C200 from the box is that Canon certainly hasn’t skimped on engineering quality. The C200 feels every bit as solid as its bigger sister, with high-quality, highdensity plastics, and robust castings, hinges and machining. At the front of the camera, as you would expect, is the EF lens mount and a couple of assignable buttons, defaulting to Push Auto Iris and One Shot AF. The 4K, S35 sensor has the same features as you find in the C300 Mark II, with Dual Pixel autofocus a claimed 15 stops of dynamic range and a native ISO of 800. The camera is capable of recording H.264 wrapped in MP4 files at 150Mbps to SD cards, and a new version of Canon’s Raw (called RAW Light) to CFast cards.

The 12-bit RAW Light images are stunning. Where shadow detail disappears into compression mush with lesser CODECs, there is so much you can reveal in the shadows with Raw images, even at higher ISOs. On top of that, there is the creamy smoothness to the images that characterises the ‘C’ family of cameras, and Canon’s fantastic colour science – particularly evident in skin tones. With a good prime lens, the rich tonality combines with sparkling levels of detail – more than the MP4 CODEC manages to retain. The Raw files, of course, have no inherent noise reduction or sharpening, so they may need a tweak in the grade.

The C200 is going to be a very important camera for Canon. It is so close to being a C300 Mark II – in terms of build, features and image quality – but at an amazingly competitive price.

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FEATURE TROY: FALL OF A CITY

THE TEMPEST OF TROY The BBC does Homer’s Iliad with Technicolor’s triumvirate of technologies – grade, VFX and their new Pulse system

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TROY: FALL OF A CITY FEATURE

Definition: What was the plan for the grade; did you have any concerns?

What were the DOP’s aims, and how did you achieve them?

Kevin Horsewood: The grade on Troy started about six months prior to filming with chats about ‘looks’ with the first DOP Gustav Danielsson.

Gustav also wanted me to generate a LUT which he could use in South Africa and then I could use in the grade. The LUT I generated kept the warm tones and also protected the highlights and it also provided a nice curve to keep the detail in the shadows. With the camera tests we spent a day trying different looks; the grade needed to evoke natural light, sunlight and candlelight as it hopefully was in those times.

All the exteriors and interiors had a slight cyan push in the shadow areas, this was to break up the warm tones and give a wider spectrum of colours, which was also helped by the costumes and by set design.

By the time we had finished with the camera tests we were fairly confident about how the grade should look.

Def: How was the colour pipeline achieved? Are there differences between a TV pipeline and a movie one?

KH: Troy’s colour pipeline was based on an ACES workflow using a custom Technicolor DRT designed to provide plenty of detail in the shadows. The set-up was very similar to that of a

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DI project except working in Rec709 rather than P3. The ACES workflow makes it a straightforward process to create deliverables for different display devices.

Def: How did you deal with highcontrast conditions for shooting and dark night scenes lit by fire and candles? And what can you tell us about your minimalist lighting design with a concentration of natural light and light coming in through windows?

KH: When they shot Raw I had plenty of scope to pull what I needed from the shot; obviously with the high-contrast conditions a lot of fill was used by the DOP. On my part, for the majority of shots we reworked the light adding vignettes and shapes, changing the composition and colour temperature to keep a continuous flow of mood and light throughout the episodes. In a lot of scenes we tracked faces and eyes to protect the detail, then we could pull them out of the background while keeping the mood of the scene as Gustav had originally envisaged.

WITH THE CAMERA TESTS WE SPENT A DAY TRYING DIFFERENT LOOKS

PULSE Definition: How was the new Pulse service used for Troy?

Simon Dunne: All rushes from the entire Troy shoot were loaded into the Pulse system. The VFX team was then able to create its own turnover packs and submit them directly to Pulse, 24/7, choosing from a list of vendors to deliver VFX pulls to.

The Pulse team worked closely with the Technicolor DI team to nail down the pipeline for the show, with all of the VFX vendors working in an ACES Linear pipeline, ensuring that all images were of the very highest quality, for this 4K BBC/ Netflix delivery.

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Def: What are its advantages?

SD: The first thing that users love about the Pulse system is its simplicity. Simply upload your EDL or TAB file, choose who you want to deliver to and sit back whilst Pulse manages all of your VFX pulls. With automated emails to alert vendors when a job has been submitted, and another when it’s ready, the system manages all of the day-to-day admin, removing the need for staff to chase different departments for their part of the equivalent manual VFX pull.

All this extra time saved, not only in admin but also delivery of VFX pulls globally, allows creatives to do what they do best.

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FEATURE SUPER BOWL LII

NBC Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl LII used a crew of more than 500 employees, 106 cameras, 50 miles of cable, 14 mobile units, and a massive collection of additional tools and resources.

In addition to live coverage of the game, NBC Sports delivered six hours of pre-game coverage, and more than ten NBCSN and NBCUniversal shows from Minneapolis during Super Bowl week. NBC Sports Group alone presented 200+ hours of Super Bowl coverage during the week. To cap the whole week off the game was something of a classic.

Illustrated are some key metrics from NBC Sports Group’s coverage of Super Bowl LII.

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SUPER BOWL LII FEATURE

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LIGHTING PHANTOM THREAD

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PHANTOM THREAD LIGHTING

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LOW LIGHT THREADS

We talked with Mike Bauman, lighting cameraman and guru for Phantom Thread about seeking a lo-fi and low-contrast light design WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES FOCUS FEATURES

affer, lighting cameraman and lighting innovator Mike Bauman had worked as gaffer with director and cinematographer Paul Thomas Anderson on his previous two movies, The Master and Inherent Vice. For Phantom Thread, the director was intrigued by a number of British-inspired habits like the UK system of using an operator and a lighting cameraman, and also by the craft of director Stanley Kubrick’s films especially Barry Lyndon. “That was the film where Stanley used all these super-fast lenses and Paul was looking at it for inspiration of where to take this film,” says Mike. “We did a music video for Radiohead probably eight months before and followed that up with another music video and a short film, using techniques that we wanted to eventually use for the film. That’s how we started moving towards what we wanted.

“Other preparation included a lot of testing, at least six tests which were pretty extensive and especially involving a lot of texture; he wanted the film to have a lot of texture to it.

This was a big thing for him, he talked about how beautiful The Crown from Netflix looked but he talked about how it wasn’t the direction he wanted to go for the film. He wanted it much more lo-fi, so to speak, so we experimented and that’s the way we started pushing the movie. So we started testing a lot of smoke and low-con filter ideas, we spoke with Dan Sasaki at Panavision about his bespoke collection of lenses that Paul had been putting together with Dan for a while. We tested that kind of stuff for another way to get texture and stuff into it.” @DEFINITIONMAGAZINE |

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PREPARATION INCLUDED A LOT OF TESTING, AT LEAST SIX TESTS WHICH WERE PRETTY EXTENSIVE

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USER REVIEW THE GRAND PLAN

THE GRAND PLAN WITH PANASONIC GH5S Jon Shepley from CreoKinetics explains how the new Panasonic GH5S will change Season 3 of The Grand Tour

WORDS JON SHEPLEY PICTURES AMAZON VIDEO

had major feedback on the GH5 as it turned out that the camera was just not going to work for us. That feedback went to the engineers in Japan who were very good about it and actually wrecked one of their GH5s by glueing the sensor in position, one of our requests as the sensor stabilisation didn’t work for us. To no avail in the end unfortunately, so I drew a line under it and just assumed we would have to carry on using the GH4s which are still stunning cameras compared to most of the competition. I was called into Panasonic for a meeting around November last year. They said that they had something exciting to show me and presented me with the GH5S. It was pretty much everything on my wishlist from the GH5 in a new DEFINITION APRIL 2018

camera; it was everything we needed it to be to work for our particular shooting situation.

I think they realised that the market had split in two; there are people in the prosumer market who want an in-camera stabilised sensor because they’re using a lot of lightweight rigs. Then you have the professional side who are big users of the GH series cameras but don’t particularly want a stabilised sensor camera, particularly us, especially mounted to something like a vehicle. The GH5 camera is totally unworkable in this respect having a stabilised sensor. The problem is that quite often we get asked to put a stabilised head or a stabilised camera in a car. It’s one of those things that sounds like a really good idea as you’d

ABOVE Season 2 of The Grand Tour still used the Panasonic GH4 cameras.

think you’d get a nice smooth shot in a car. If you want a handheld feel to it then you could go down that route with a head or something like that. The problem is that when you’re shooting in a car, especially if you’re shooting the driver, the different parts of the car in the image, like the A pillar, the seats, the steering wheel, need to be completely solid in the frame otherwise it looks very odd.

You get this image that is just kind of wandering around. Because the body and lens is fixed it’s literally an image that is creeping around the frame adjusting for movements in the car which you can’t see so it’s actually destabilising the image. Anyone who is dealing with a fixed point of reference in the shot would suffer the same problem.

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THE GRAND PLAN USER REVIEW

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THE SENSOR IS FIXED LIKE THE ONE IN THE GH4 AND IS BRAND NEW, SOMETHING WE WEREN’T EXPECTING

WELCOME TO THE GH5S The GH5S is an exceptional camera for professional users. The sensor is fixed like the one in the GH4 and is brand new, something we weren’t expecting. I think they saw an opportunity to compete with Sony for the low-light capability.

When we’re shooting the in-car stuff for the show obviously the light conditions change dramatically over the day. Also when you’re shooting at night you have lights in the car to illuminate the presenter which is a safety concern really as it can be dazzling when you’re driving. We did change the position of the filming light so it’s almost directly above them, the area above the handbrake so it’s not in their eyeline, to make it as safe as possible. With this camera you can have the light on its absolute minimum setting and not only does it mean that you’ve got more than enough illumination for the presenter but it also lets you see what is going on outside. Normally you just lose everything out of the window; this way you see everything that is going by so if something is being referenced outside you can probably see it with a very sensitive camera like the GH5S. Also the spot metering has been improved. It’s a simple feature but one that I don’t think anyone else has. It’s the ability to move the spot meter which is fixed in the centre of the frame in most cameras; you can move it within 90% of the frame. The GH4 @DEFINITIONMAGAZINE |

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has it within 80% of the frame. So it’s much closer to the edge of the frame.

The timecode was a big thing that we were asking for from Panasonic.

On the GH4 we’ve always used an external timecode input into the microphone input in the camera. This wasn’t ideal and means that there’s an extra process in post-production: they take the audio and stripe the file with proper timecode to go into an edit suite. Now you have proper broadcast timecode embedded into the file and you can jam it through a regular BNC cable through their flash synch on the front of the camera.

I’m just talking to them about the functionality of how that works because at the moment you have to go through a few menu steps to jam the camera and then it generates the timecode locally on the camera. I’m keen for it to work in that mode but also in a mode where you can literally just feed it timecode as you would for a lot of broadcast cameras. You could have all three cameras on the same timecode and if it changes, it does on all the cameras live rather than having to re-jam. Chances are it won’t be able to hold a frame accurate synch between cameras with the current method they’re using. It makes such a difference in the edit in terms of time. The costs can quickly mount up because of the amount of footage we generate. Someone has to process all that data even if it’s not used, then they’ll go through it and decide APRIL 2018 DEFINITION

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4K CAMERA LISTINGS

DEFINITION’S 4K CAMERA LIST

We’ve decided to take the brakes off the list as far as capture resolution is concerned.

Now our starting point is 4K; after that the sky’s the limit

ARRI ALEXA LF 90FPS

14 + STOPS

LPL MOUNT

4448x3096

ARRI ALEXA MINI SxS / SXR

ARRI’s long awaited large format camera arrives with a package of camera, new lens mount and new Signature lenses. Expect plenty of use by Netflix. Sensor tech is still the ALEV-III technology with big photosites.

SPECIFICATION

200FPS

14 STOPS

PL MOUNT

2880x1620

SxS

New features include the EXT Sync function, which allows sensors and operational parameters of up to 15 ALEXA Minis to be synchronised to a master ALEXA Mini. Slaves can assume parameters like frame rate, shutter angle or ND setup of the master.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

CMOS, 36.70x25.54 mm - 4448x3096, ø 44.71 mm

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

CMOS, 16:9 (1.78:1), 23.8x13.4mm – S35

FRAME RATES

ARRIRAW: 0.75 - 90fps ProRes: 0.75 – 60fps

FRAME RATES

Up to 200fps in ProRes

LATITUDE (STOPS)

14+

LATITUDE (STOPS)

14

LENS MOUNT

LPL with PL-to-LPL adapter

LENS MOUNT

PL, EF, B4 w/ Hirose connector

EXPOSURE INDEX

EI 800

DIGITAL SAMPLING

2880x1620, uncompressed ARRIRAW/1920x1080

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

16 bit linear ALEXA Wide Gamut/Log C colour space.

Output colour spaces: Log C, Rec 709 or Rec 2020

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

3.2K: 3200x1800; 4K UHD: 3840x2160 (up-sampled from 3.2K); 4:3 2.8K: 2880x2160 (up to 2944x2160)

RECORDING RESOLUTIONS

Sensor modes – LF Open Gate 4448x3096; LF 16:9 3840x2160; LF 2.39:1 4448x1856

WEIGHT (KG)

2.3 (camera body with titanium PL lens mount)

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4K CAMERA LISTINGS

ARRI ALEXA SXT EV 120FPS

14 STOPS

PL MOUNT

2880x2160

ARRI ALEXA SXT W

SxS/SXR

SXT ALEXAs get the sensor from ALEXA, the electronics from the A65 and the colour management from AMIRA. In-camera rec is ProRes 4K UHD/CINE. A direct response to requests for cutting-edge digital capture with traditional elements of the film cameras.

SPECIFICATION

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120FPS

> 14 STOPS

PL MOUNT

2880x1620

SxS

Based on the ALEXA SXT Plus, the SXT W has replaced the SXT Plus and Studio models with an industrial version of the Amimon chipset for wireless transmission.

ARRI has ruggedised the W mainly for feature work.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

16:9 or 4:3 sensor mode. 4:3 output only for ARRIRAW and ProRes 2K recording

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

FRAME RATES

At 16:9 – 0.75–120fps/60fps max when recording 2K ProRes/speeds

LATITUDE (STOPS)

14+

LATITUDE (STOPS)

+14

LENS MOUNT

54 mm stainless steel LDS PL mount

LENS MOUNT

PL

DIGITAL SAMPLING

2880x2160 uncompressed ARRIRAW

DIGITAL SAMPLING

2880x1620, Uncompressed ARRIRAW/1920x1080

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

SxS PRO 64GB; SxS PRO+ 64GB; SxS PRO+ 128GB; LEXAR 3600x CFast 2.0 cards 256GB; XR Capture Drives 512GB; SXR Capture Drives 1TB & 2TB

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

16-bit linear internal image processing in full ALEXA Wide Gamut/Log C colour space. Target output colour spaces: Log C, Rec. 709 or Rec. 2020

WEIGHT (KG)

6.5 (SXT EV body with PL mount)

ARRI ALEXA 65 60FPS

> 14 STOPS

XPL MOUNT

5120x2880

ARRI AMIRA SXR/XR

With a sensor larger than a 5-perf 65mm film frame, ALEXA 65 heralded the start of large format. Now shooting as a main production camera for Netflix, Amazon and the rest. Only available exclusively through their global network of rental facilities.

SPECIFICATION

200FPS

14 STOPS

PL MOUNT

2880x1620

CFAST

Amira is now split up into standard, advanced and premium. Features include in-camera grading with preloaded 3D LUTs, as well as 200fps slow motion. From reportage and corporate films to TV drama and low-budget movies. Multicam mode too.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

ARRI A3X CMOS sensor, 54.12x25.58mm active image area. Open Gate aspect ratio of 2.11:1 (6560x3100)

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

Single CMOS, 16:9 (1.78:1), 28.17x18.3mm – 35 format

FRAME RATES

Capable of recording 20-60fps (open gate) using new SXR media. XR drives allow 27fps

FRAME RATES

Up to 200fps in ProRes

LATITUDE (STOPS)

14+

LATITUDE (STOPS)

14

LENS MOUNT

ARRI XPL mount with Lens Data System (LDS)

LENS MOUNT

PL, B4 mount w/ Hirose connector

DIGITAL SAMPLING

1.78 crop mode (5-perf 65mm): 5120x2880 and 1.50:1 crop mode – 4320x2880

DIGITAL SAMPLING

2880x1620, uncompressed ARRIRAW/1920x1080

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

Codex SXR Capture Drive 2000 GByte capacity Max. frame rate capability: 60 fps (Open Gate) Recording time: 43 minutes at 24 fps

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME

HD 1920x1080, 2K 2048x1152, 3.2K ProRes 3200x1800 4K UHD 3840x2160

WEIGHT (KG)

10.5

WEIGHT (KG)

4.1 (camera body with PL lens mount)

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APRIL 2018 DEFINITION