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In VR you can make everyone scream
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First test of the new compacts
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ALL-SEEING EYE: With new sensor technology, cameras will soon see what we see. How then do you light?
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Welcome
If you follow the natural progression of improvement in camera sensors then their dynamic range will be touching the range of the human eye in only a few years; many believe that to be around 20 stops. The impact for other industries, such as lighting, will be huge. If your camera naturally sees what we see then how do you light as you have been doing? The camera will see all the subtleties of the shadows and the flavours of the highlights, so what is the role then of your lighting design? You may find that you will have to concentrate on using practicals as your main lighting source. At NAB we saw innovation in turning practical lighting into more sophisticated products with wider parameters based on LED lighting with companies such as Litegear. You will also be left with what is coming through the window as the main light source entering the room; then it’s a matter of how you construct that light outside those windows to replicate the real world. Frieder Hochheim, founder of Kino Flo, concludes our interview in this issue by saying, “It’s the kind of lights that recreate the real world that will become the more dominant instrument of choice”.
JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR JULY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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NEWS INTERVIEW FRIEDER HOCHHEIM
It’s 30 years since Frieder Hochheim changed movie lighting forever with his home-made fluorescent enclosures. Now he says lighting is in flux again WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES FRIEDER HOCHHEIM / KINO FLO n 1987 gaffer Frieder Hochheim and his best boy Gary Swink worked on the drunken Charles Bukowski biopic that was the movie Barfly with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. Both had been tinkering with at home with their lighting enclosure designs and in fact it was during this film that Kino Flo was born.
“You can see the very first iteration of our lighting system in these shots,” says Frieder. “The fixtures were made of foam core with lamps strapped to them. We hadn’t fully developed the wire hinge system to keep the doors in place.” What they were doing really did alter the lighting landscape of the industry at the time. This was the time
ABOVE 1987 film Barfly with Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke saw the first Kino Flo light fixtures. They were home-made foam cores with lamps attached.
of the first personal computers; there was no Internet or cell phones, but connections were happening anyway the old fashion way and, sometimes, by stealth. “We only marketed directly to the end user, the cinematographer. I found out years later when I was reading Steve Jobs’ book, that he was and [Bill] Gates were at Xerox picking
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FRIEDER HOCHHEIM NEWS INTERVIEW
up things. I had got connections there too, with a department that was developing high frequency electronic fluorescent ballast for copiers. “I worked my way passed the Xerox marketing fellows to the engineers and explained to them that I was this guy from Hollywood who had this idea that if I could operate a high frequency fluorescent tube I could probably run it at a greater distance that I could already, working with a magnetic ballast. They said: ‘Absolutely. In fact you can really jack up the current on these things.’ I said that the marketing guy had said they’d blow up; he said: ‘don’t listen to the marketing guy! We’ll send you a prototype.’ “It was a company called Magnetek that was working for Xerox that made a prototype,” continues Frieder. “When I hooked it up and threw 150 foot of cable on it, the damn thing worked. It was phenomenal. So I was there at the same time as Jobs finding my things.”
UP TO DATE The rest is history, at least regarding the rise of the Kino Flo lights that drove the industry. But we wanted to hear what Frieder thought of the massive changes in lighting that are happening now, especially the number of new lights using LEDs. “There’s a lot of new lighting technology coming out, whether it’s all great or not I’m not sure,” he begins. “If you were to ask a rental company, I think they would say there is a tremendous amount of chaos in the market because you have a lot of competing products from many new companies. Rental companies don’t know how good these new products are and how good their customer service is. So I sense a pushback from the rental market from a client perspective. “I think we are in the most dynamic and exciting period of motion picture production in our history when you consider that absolutely all aspects of production
and delivery are changing. It’s a whole new business model in fact. You’re not shipping cans of films around anymore; you’re streaming movies into theatres. Look at the cameras. There used to be two or three major manufacturers in the professional 35mm market. Now you’ve got upwards of 16 manufacturers who are concerning themselves with cinema cameras. “It’s an explosion of technology, which is rapidly evolving. This is the 21st century, the world of computers where everything changes within a year. With that comes high anxiety
ABOVE Mickey Rourke doing his best Charles Bukowski impression in Barfly, lit with the first Kino Flos.
THERE’S A LOT OF NEW LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY COMING OUT, WHETHER IT’S ALL GREAT OR NOT I’M NOT SURE JULY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Dysfunctional Family Values The RED VistaVision camera was pushed through development to be used on the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. DOP Henry Braham wanted a particular crispness and a colour for this strange family drama WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES MARVEL
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IRONICALLY AND UNUSUALLY NEARLY 85 % OF THE MOVIE IS SHOT ON ONE CAMERA
uardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is about humanity; it’s a family drama that just happens to be set in this fantastical space world. Fundamentally it’s about learning to be loved and family relationships. That might sound a bit like ‘Californian speak’, but if you view it that way you can let the emotions flow while the VFX amaze. We last spoke with DOP Henry Braham when he shot one of the first digital movies, Flyboys. He was looking for a camera that could help with the loading times of film. Panavision’s Genesis was a prototype camera, a bit like the RED VistaVision, but back then he didn’t think resolution was hugely important. “We chose to shoot Flyboys on the Panavision Genesis,” he says as he takes up the story. “That was driven by the visual idea for the movie and this one is kind of exactly the same. That’s what’s fascinating about moviemaking these days, you’re really free to do anything and you can be really ideas driven. I’m pretty sure that’s because the means of distribution and projection has changed. As long as there was film projection you went to the cinema and you had to project film. A lot of the way you made a movie was prescribed, even ten years ago you would start by saying ‘Well, is this an anamorphic movie, a spherical movie, are we going to shoot it on Kodak or Fuji?’ There are some small choices around the edges of that, but that pretty much guided the process of making a movie.
“Now because movies are projected digitally there are no rules about how you make a movie. You can shoot it on an iPhone – it makes no difference, the choices are down to the filmmaker. I think that sets filmmaking free. It enables you to really look forward. There are plenty of instances where you may want to shoot your movie on film but that’s a choice entirely driven by the nature of the material, creative choices and the process. “What’s interesting about Guardians is it’s the first ever major release to be shot on RED VistaVision 8K. But we came to that because it was entirely driven by the visual idea and by the process that director James Gunn wanted to use to make his movie,” he explains. “My role is to put the director’s personality on to the screen so watching how he works and listening to what is important to him is crucial. Through that process in the case of Guardians on one hand it was interesting shooting this in largeformat, 65mm digital, because it’s a very, rich, expansive movie. Visually it’s very complex and there’s a huge amount of detail in that. On the other hand it’s about truth and the way people are, so very early on in the process when we were talking about what the movie is about it became clear that what he really likes to do is to use his script as a springboard for developing performances. He wants to catch the spontaneity of those performances.”
ABOVE The RED VistaVision cameras used were developed in collaboration with Marvel and DOP Henry Braham.
BELOW The Stabileye in use.
MOVE THE VISTA Traditionally what directors might want to do is to shoot multiple cameras and set the cameras outside the area in order to allow the cast the freedom to work within it. That’s a completely valid way of doing it but not what this director was after. He wanted something much more connected and immersive than that. “That seemed very exciting to me,” says Henry. “It was almost like we wanted to shoot the movie handheld in a documentary style. As a scene would develop you might start at point A but might end up at point X, but in that process the camera had to keep up with whatever was happening. “On one hand it’s a very rich, very big scale movie and on the other hand, we wanted to make it like a documentary. So I went away to think about how to resolve these two things and to me the physicality of the camera was very important.
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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE CANON
The VR and AR industries are evolving in plain sight but if you want cinematic results you need a cinematic camera. VR specialists Radiant Images looked to the Canon EOS C300 Mark II camera to solve the problem adiant Images is based in Los Angeles and has always been known for invention. Not for them the straight road of using tried-and-tested production techniques. If they are challenged by impossible shots, they design their own solutions. In the past the company has been known as a solutions provider for 2D, then 3D and now ‘all the realities’. As CEO Michael Mansouri puts it: “We provide solutions for virtual reality, augmented reality and base reality.” Working with VR since 2008 has been a great and a frustrating experience for Radiant as camera technology has mostly been of the small sensor type when shooting 360 productions. But it has been associations with companies such as Canon that have brought the cinematic quality to the productions the company is now working on. “We met Canon as they were doing some experimentations in VR,” begins Michael, “and they wanted to talk with us about building a rig for their superb Canon EOS C300 Mark II camera. The reason we were really interested in this was because up until then virtual reality cameras
RIGHT Canon’s unmissable 360 tent at this year’s NAB. BELOW The Sense 9 VR rig can flip the camera’s sensor either way.
didn’t have the visual impact that you would get in traditional 2D cinema. We don’t see it as showing reality, we want to show things bigger than life! We want to capture things much grander and much richer than normal life. That’s what we want to celebrate in VR and the imagery that the C300 Mark II gives you takes us there. “Part of the challenge was looking to use cinema cameras such as the C300 Mark II inside a
unique VR rig. We designed a rig called Sense 9 and we think it’s the world’s most adaptive and precise solution for 360. Our approach is based on stereoscopic 3D and so you’re able to use nine C300 Mark IIs in there and very importantly make it easy to use wherever you are capturing 360 in the world.” The rig itself has got two circular plates that have 10˚ notches, so it goes from 0˚ all the way to 360˚. When it comes to setting up, you simply set your first C300 Mark II
WE MANAGED TO CAPTURE SOMETHING I HAD NEVER SEEN IN MY LIFE DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM JULY 2017
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CANON ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
WE WERE SUPER-IMPRESSED WITH THE QUALITY OF THIS CAMERA BECAUSE WE WERE ABLE TO CAPTURE THE WHOLE OF THIS REMARKABLE SCENE at zero, then the next one at 40˚, all the way around until you hit 360˚. That gets you six C300s Mark IIs on the same plane and also enables you to flip the Canon’s sensor either horizontally or portrait. So, if you want to get someone really close to camera and have them walk right up to the lens, you can flip the camera into portrait mode so you’re not cutting off their feet. At the back of the rig there is a patch panel, so when the C300 Mark IIs turn up at any movie set anywhere in the world they can be patched quickly into the production’s existing infrastructure. “We keep going back to the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L lens for our VR shooting because it’s the sharpest and most consistent lens you can use, and sits perfectly on the C300 Mark II.” After you have rigged your C300 Mark IIs in the horizontal mode you can place the other two. The first one is set to point straight up and number two is placed looking straight down, which gets rid of the tripod.
CANON’S NAB RED TENT In the run-up to this year’s NAB Convention in Las Vegas, Radiant and Canon worked together on a 360 film that was to show on Canon’s stand throughout the convention. You couldn’t miss where the film was being shown – it was the one that had a permanent queue outside it. Also it was housed in an extremely eyecatching geodesic dome in a deep shade of red. The content had to be visually dramatic and inspirational, and certainly not something that people had seen before. “I didn’t want to capture a typical sunrise and sunset, that’s been done many times before. What I’ve never seen in my life is moonrise and moonset. So we captured with our rig and the C300 Mark IIs a 360 experience with nothing other than the moon and the stars. We managed to capture something I had never seen in my life – the glow of the moon setting while at the same time we saw the glow of the sunrise. It was pure chance that we captured it and it only lasted for
45 seconds! The only way of telling that story was in 360, and we had it. “We were super-impressed with the quality of this camera,” says Michael, “because we were able to capture the whole of this remarkable scene: the stars, all of the low-light details such as the higher desert lit with moonlight. It looks like one of those Western movies where they would shoot day for night. We were blown away at what we had captured – it looked incredible. It’s not just its low-light capabilities, it’s got real dynamic range, which is exactly what we need in VR productions.”
TOP A still from Canon’s NAB 360 film with the moon setting and the sun rising. ABOVE Radiant Images’ Sense 9 VR rig with nine Canon EOS C300 Mark II cameras populating.
MORE INFORMATION: www.canon.co.uk JULY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL
When it’s pilot season at Amazon a bunch of dramas battle for the golden ticket of being ‘picked up’, but does the look help? WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES AMAZON VIDEO ritten and directed by Amy ShermanPalladino, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a fifties tale of a wife being dumped by her husband only to find her true vocation as a stand-up comedian. For LA-based DOP M. David Mullen ASC, the goal, as always, was to pick a look that would serve the story. “Early discussions centred around the challenge of recreating the New York of the 1950s. Amazon had just done another period series set in New York, Good Girls Revolt, but had shot it in Los Angeles. However, the production felt strongly that the real Manhattan landscape allowed plenty of visual opportunities to recreate the past while naturally providing textures that were unique to this city. “Production designer Bill Groom and his staff did a lot of historical research in terms of what the original Gaslight Café looked like, what the streets of Greenwich Village looked like, the Upper West Side and all that stuff,” says David. “The movie Inside Llewyn Davis came out three years before, which dealt with the same time period and similar settings such as the Gaslight Café so I looked at that as well as the reference material to see how they tackled it. However, the melancholy, cold
wintertime look of that movie wasn’t applicable to our story, which is more colourful and upbeat.” The Coen Brothers and DOP Bruno Delbonnel had created a very dark Gaslight Café interior for their movie, often with strong spotlight on the stage performances. “It was striking and dramatic, but I realised that for our story, since half the action involved the audience, not just the performers, I needed to add more light to the outer areas. We built the Gaslight inside a black box theatre space in the Lower East Side – for the rest of the series we are building it on a sound stage. Though in general I was aiming for a natural look for the lighting, since the Gaslight was inside a windowless room, there was no natural daylight. So all the lighting in there was artificial, theatrical. We had some practical lighting – a few table lamps and hanging fixtures – but being a club space it seemed correct to use theatrical stage lighting fixtures. Since the real Gaslight was in a basement space, we had a stairwell leading down to it that matched a stairwell coming from the street level. We used a street in the East Village because Greenwich Village has changed too much to be able to restore it to its 1950s appearance.
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THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL SHOOT STORY
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WE BUILT THE GASLIGHT INSIDE A BLACK BOX THEATRE SPACE IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE
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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE TOP-TEKS
If you wanted to know anything about the Canon professional videography range then the Top-Teks shooting day was the place to be with Canon Ambassador Simeon Quarrie ear shows are great but can be absolutely swamped with inquisitive people thirsty for knowledge. The Canon booths are always full of the latest kit and great advice, but if you miss the shows there is perhaps a better alternative. Last month at a well-attended event, videographer and educator Simeon Quarrie and major reseller Top-Teks brought together a varied audience from companies such as ITV, Oxfam and Silverback Productions to learn the art of shooting. Top-Teks are one of the leading suppliers of equipment to the
broadcast and film industry and with 28 years of expertise the company is at the forefront of new technologies. Top-Teks are also a Canon Authorised Dealer for both sales and service and worked closely with Canon to organise this event. Jane Lawson from Top-Teks commented on the idea behind the event: “We wanted to organise a different kind of event where people can learn theory, but also get practise.” The programme for the day emphasised ‘hands-on’ experience – and what great equipment there was for everyone to try out. Centre stage was the brand-new CN-E 18-80mm lens as well as the Canon EOS C300 Mark II and Canon EOS-1D X Mark II cameras and all the best lenses Canon has made for stills and cinema. ‘Grab a camera and a lens, take it apart and put it together again’ was the encouragement. The audience didn’t need to be asked twice.
ABOVE Simeon Quarrie took the audience through shooting and lighting techniques.
SIMEON QUARRIE The day started with Simeon analysing some of his fantastic work, from stills to full-on wedding videography. Picking apart how he achieved some of his extremely creative productions led him into a more practical demonstration. Simeon’s idea for the day was to present the theory, get hands-on with the kit, followed by shooting some sequences and finally by an edit. Highly knowledgeable staff from Top-Teks and Canon were there to
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INSISTENT THAT PLANNING, EVEN FOR THE SMALLEST OF SHOOTS, IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT RULES
help out, and it’s clear there are few other events at which you can so fully experience some of the best video equipment in the world. No question was deemed unanswerable, and Simeon took us from basic shooting principles to advanced advice on shooting Log C 2 and 3, and how to keep dynamic range working for you. He also used part of Top-Teks’ huge range of lighting to explain how you would light a scene with the minimum of heads, from the basics of colour to the intricacies of mixing tungsten and daylight sources for creative purposes. All the experiments were being filmed by a myriad of Canon cameras and lenses, with monitoring from Small HD and lighting from companies such as Fomex and Fiilex. SHOOT AND EDIT All the theory and practical demonstrations were building up to us shooting a structured idea. Simeon was insistent that planning, even for
the smallest of shoots, is one of the most important rules. A made-up interview scenario with a designer of hotel furnishings would happen in the hotel where we were. If there was time, Simeon would ingest the footage and build a quick edit. The shooting plan included why you might use a certain lens, what questions to ask, what angles we wanted including a slider shot, establishing shot, wides and close-ups. Action was called and this impromptu Top-Teks production began. The very best aspect of learning is doing, and everyone was involved and encouraged to take part and understand and explain why things were being done, and for what reason. All of the theory and planning had produced a sequence that not only looked great but cut together as he had promised it would. At the end of this great Top-Teks event, theory mixed with essential practise and all went home happy.
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ABOVE Canon and Top-Teks specialists were on hand to help Simeon Quarrie pass his advice on.
MORE INFORMATION: www.topteks.com 01895 82 5619 sales@topteks.com
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GEAR GROUP STORAGE
STORAGE SPACE
The Gear Group this month takes a look at your storage choices. Everyone knows that digital means you store more footage and that is as true for single storage as it is for networked attached devices. We appraise the newest and most interesting types and look for speed hikes, capacity blow-outs and even AI that might change the way you work DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM JULY 2017
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STORAGE GEAR GROUP
AKITIO THUNDER CODEX M SERIES GTECH G-RAID 3 QUAD MINI FLEXI DRIVE THUNDERBOLT 3 Akitio are a specialist storage company that we happened upon at the recent NAB Convention in Las Vegas. You could tell immediately that their products were high-end and when we heard that most of them were ex-GTechnology personnel it explained the feeling. Our US readers will be happy as Akitio are based in Brea, California. UK readers less so as of this moment the company doesn't have distribution in Britain, but you can buy their products from Amazon. com. Check the power supply though. Anyway, advert over as we spotlight one of their latest products – The Thunder 3 Quad Mini is unsurprisingly a smallish 4-bay storage enclosure designed to house up to four 2.5-inch drives. With Software RAID, four striped SSDs can reach data transfer speeds of up to 1375 MB per second while the Thunderbolt 3 interface provides sufficient bandwidth for additional 4K video signal streams and data transfers at the same time. (The transfer speeds for this benchmark were obtained using the AJA System Test tool with 4GB test files at 5K resolution.) All this speed is wrapped in an aluminum case providing very good heat dissipation, plus an extra large rear fan keeping your drives cool during long hours of operation. The Thunder3 Quad Mini supports power delivery over USB-C, providing 15W of power to laptops like the MacBook Pro (late 2016) that support charging from a 5V/3A power source The Thunderbolt 3 interface transfers speeds up to 40 Gbps. A second Thunderbolt 3 port supports Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), and DisplayPort devices. There is also a dedicated DisplayPort for an additional monitor to expand the workspace. It'll free up the second Thunderbolt 3 port for other Thunderbolt 3 (up to 5 daisy chained), USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), and DisplayPort devices.
You should know the name CODEX as this is the UK company that pioneered the digital data route from camera to post. Most of the big tent pole movies who shoot digitally will have a CODEX backed data pipeline from set to dailies to post. Usually the big rental companies carry the CODEX machinery or you can talk to them direct. But now they are going to sell direct with a new type of drive and associated system set to disrupt the norm. This is the M Series of drives which CODEX are calling 'A new concept for managing your data that bridges the gap between archive, near-line and online storage.' Simply put, it's a new type of LTO which has been the standard for archiving for years. Flexi drives have been designed to be just that, flexible. It's a new concept. The system has different parts depending on your thirst for storage. The Media Vault Library can scale to Petabytes with multiple Flexi Drives and Flexi Drive Ultras. The main part of the system are these Codex Flexi Drives, which are a highcapacity, secure, transportable storage solution. Each Flexi Drive has a capacity of 24 TB and quad data redundancy protection. Typical LTO file access in a tape robot is 1-4 minutes but with a Codex Flexi Drive it is only 0.008 seconds. They are also fully recoverable and rebuildable in any other enclosure and also compatible with the MVL-51000 or MVL52000 for Reed-Solomon Erasure Coded or ZFS disk formats. Other parts of the system include a controller with very fast performance of 10Gbit, 40Gbit Ethernet or 16Gbit Fibre Channel which can bring data online in seconds, no waiting as you do with LTO. There's also an expansion chassis, should you need it, with up to 14 x 24TB Flexi Drives. You can get up to five Expansion Chassis per Control Unit. It has 1.8 Petabytes total capacity.
G-RAID, it even sounds cool when you say it. At its base headline, the G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3 is a high-performance, dual Enterprise-class 7200RPM hard drive storage system featuring Thunderbolt 3. This is for serious users, the word Enterprise is the giveaway. You can also use it across Mac and Windows computers via a re-format for Win. But apart from that, this unit is a thing of beauty, an object of desire. I know, but look at it and picture it in your studio. You also get USB–C which supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 and HDMI connectivity to get you to other places. With removable drives, this ultra-fast, high-capacity storage solution is designed for the most demanding applications while probably easily* supporting multi-stream HD, 2K, 4K and HDR video workflows. (*We haven't reviewed it yet but hope to soon). Driving down through the pre-amble you get dual Thunderbolt 3 ports which gives you possible daisy chaining for up to five additional devices. The HDMI port will also support HDR and 4K/60p video pass through. All this and a five year limited warranty. Price wise if you look on the G-Tech site you can choose from 8TB at its minimum offer with Enterprise drives offering 500MB/s at $749.95 (at the time of going to press). Increase that to 12TB increases the price by $100; 16TB pushes that up to $1,099.95 and then tops out at 20TB which will cost you $1,549.95. You can also boost that up to 24TB but there doesn't seem to be a price for that on their site. Spare Enterprise drives are also available through their site from at prices from around $200 to around $550 for the Spare 6000. There's a certain irony that with of this gleaming tech on display in these pages of Gear Group, it's this quite simple iteration of Thunderbolt 3 that attracts the most. JULY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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MIXED REALITY IN UTERO
To trail the Alien: Covenant movie, the new VR division of MPC Film and Director Ridley Scott devised a two-minute-and-ten-second, highresolution 360˚ film from the perspective of a Neomorph WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES MPC FILM VR
e hope in the coming months to follow some of the highest profile VR or 360˚ productions that are currently being made. We’d like them to be as cinematic as possible but understand that if we also want full interactivity then a less than cinematic image might have to do. We know the growth of all kinds of VR is exponential and the industry is only now just finding its feet. The language is new; the techniques are being ironed out as we go but the future is extraordinary. In Utero is a near-two-minute 360˚ video of the birth of a Neomorph – a new type of Alien – and its immediate activities in a spaceship: guess what they are. VR is a newish department from MPC Film and Logan Brown is a head of VR and Immersive content; In Utero is
only their second project. “It’s a 360˚ immersive video experience, it’s not interactive but it’s 4K x 4K stereo,” he explains. “It’s from the perspective of a Neomorph being born and it was important to find a way to connect with the content of the actual film and at the same time provide a new perspective for people to experience the Alien world.” At the start you are still in the womb and post-birth you are experiencing what it’s like to be the hunter. But being this new form of entertainment, there is a certain care given to the viewer; you don’t want a queasy experience and you also want to adjust to this new world maybe slower than just jumping in. “In effect the film is one long VFX sequence broken down into 3,000 shots; even though it was one shot we ended up breaking it down,” Logan continues.
BELOW In Utero is
a pre-rendered VR project, in other words one long VFX sequence.
IT’S A 360˚ IMMERSIVE VIDEO EXPERIENCE, IT’S NOT INTERACTIVE BUT IT’S 4K X 4K STEREO “For us it was about leveraging the film assets and we were very lucky to have these 3D assets already created and approved. We were in production at the same time as the film was putting its final touches to the shots. You obviously have to use the finally approved version.” LOST IN TRANSLATION Logan found that there were certain things that don’t translate from the 2D to the 3D world; for instance, the animation doesn’t carry over. He explains: “When models are made they are optimised to be perfect for frame but when you get into that 360˚ environment then maybe there’s one side or the other of the asset, or the texture, that you want to improve the resolution or the detail on. Those are the things you need to take into account when you’re trying to leverage film assets for a 360˚ experience. “However, the benefits are that these are three-dimensional environments and objects that
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IN UTERO MIXED REALITY
are created for the film, just not optimised for the 360˚ experience. You start with an environment and you can either use Photogrammetry or you can just use photos as reference and create this kind of photorealistic environment. Then you can start to place your 3D characters, props and objects within that environment. Then you place a virtual camera in the scene from the perspective, in this case, of the Neomorph. You can then render that out. “The Neomorph in the film is moving all around, the character of Ledward (in whose body we are placed at the beginning of the scene) is violently shaking, but one of the most important aspects of VR is that we want to make the users’ comfort the primary concern. All those things – like the shaking and the movement – have to be muted a bit so it gives the impression of what’s going on but you don’t make the user feel sick. You have to find the balance of making the scene as it should be but also making it comfortable to watch. “The one thing in VR is that you never want to control the user’s head movement,” Logan continues. ‘So we may control their position in the environment, but we won’t make them look in one place or another. The body of the Neomorph will move through the scene. Although you control the head, we control where you are in the environment. We have to control the uneasiness in introducing the user to the movement. So for the first 45 seconds
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ABOVE The 360
video featured digital assets from the movie. RIGHT The viewer will play the part of the Neomorph.
it’s really a static scene. You can look around and explore and then when you start to move we’ve even slowed down the motion at a certain point just to make sure everyone knows what’s going on and they don’t start getting disorientated.” NEW WORLDS For people like Logan this new format is extremely challenging. You have to deal with workflows that haven’t been fully developed, find new ways of doing things and manage constant iterations that need to be learned from. You also have to give yourself time to make mistakes.
But how do you start planning for a VR project? “As with a lot of films, we use pre-vis and that’s a great starting point for us especially if MPC is involved in the pre-vis process for a film,” Logan explains. “It’s very easy to then take those lightweight assets and move them around and even render a build to a phone and check it out. To view it on the platform it will be designed for is really important as 2D storyboard will never give you a good understanding of what that user experience will be.” In Utero is a pre-rendered production so can reach the 4K JULY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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USER REVIEW SONY A6500
Less than a year after launching the A6300, Sony reveals an upgrade with the rapid A6500, aimed at the more professional user WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH
JUST EIGHT MONTHS AFTER THE A6300 HIT THE MARKET, SONY UNVEILED AN UPGRADED VERSION CALLED THE A6500
ony is definitely on to something with its A6000-series cameras. They say the original A6000 is the world’s bestselling interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera. Its successor, the A6300, has quickly achieved an almost cult-like following with serious filmmakers in the year since it was launched. It may not have hogged the limelight like Sony’s full-frame A7 series or its do-all FS5 and FS7 camcorders, but the A6300 has found a home in a lot of filmmakers’ bags as a very capable B camera. And if they make action films, the A6300 is close to being standard equipment. That’s because it’s very small and light, has a large APS-C size sensor, takes E-mount lenses and shoots 4K internally, as well as good quality HD up to 120fps. Not only that, it has one of the most advanced hybrid autofocus systems that really does work well for action. Plus all the features that filmmakers want, like S-log profiles, peaking and zebras, clean HDMI out and lots more. And if you use the camera for stills, too,
then its speedy and accurate phasedetection autofocus and fast frame rate mean it’s a great action camera. All for around £850/$1000 body only. It’s not perfect, though. There are rolling shutter issues, it can overheat if used for extended periods and there is no headphone socket, although there are workarounds for this. And stills photographers moan about the Raw files being lossy when compressed. So it came as quite a shock when, just eight months after the A6300 hit the market, Sony unveiled an upgraded version called the A6500 aimed at a more professional user – but at a significantly higher cost. And none of the issues mentioned above seem to have been tackled. Certainly the Raw compression and lack of headphone socket remain. A6300 IMPROVEMENTS The A6500 builds on the A6300 in several ways, such as improved weather sealing and slightly redesigned body, but still uses the heart of the older camera. The sensor is the same, the AF system hasn’t
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SONY A6500 USER REVIEW
changed, the frame rates are identical and the body is very similar and uses the same viewfinder. There’s an all-new touchscreen but the battery doesn’t last as long. What Sony has done is to make the camera more usable for a professional, using a new front-end LSI processing chip to speed things up. That means the buffer doesn’t fill up as fast, and you can review your work instantly, instead of waiting for it to write to the single SD card. Sony has also introduced its five-axis in-body image stabilisation which works very well, although it’s not quite as good as the Olympus system in the new OM-D E-M1 Mark II. And there have also been much-needed improvements to the menu system – although it’s still not the most user-friendly. Adding an S&F function for slow and fast motion – inherited from the pro-level FS7 – is a welcome change, as long as you understand that using it drops the bit rate. Confusingly, selecting 120fps – for NTSC only, as it’s 100fps for PAL – via the regular video menu keeps the bit
rate higher at 100Mbps. Shooting at the highest frame rates does mean the image is cropped slightly, too. The touchscreen is the biggest change and you can use it to select AF points by tapping on it – so you can do focus pulls. Or if you’re using the camera viewfinder, you can use your finger on the screen to change AF points. In use, the screen works well for focus pulls but is a bit laggy; disappointing if you’re used to the instant response of a smartphone. IMAGE QUALITY In terms of the quality of the footage, the 4K is excellent, with lots of detail, although it does still suffer from some rolling shutter. The HD quality is very good, thanks to the full pixel read-out across the sensor, but still not quite as good as some of its rivals. But it’s the ability of the camera to shoot 120fps HD video with really good AF tracking that sets it apart. The large Super35size sensor also means it’s excellent when light levels drop. It’s a great do-all camera in a very small package, especially for sports
and action filmmakers, and it makes one of the best B cameras. There are lots of reasons the A6300 is popular and the new A6500 still has all of them. The fast 120fps frame rate at full HD, very crisp 4K images, small form factor, S-log profiles, peaking and zebras made the Sony A6300 a winner. The A6500 has all this and more, such as fiveaxis stabilisation, weather sealing, improved menus, touchscreen and faster processing. But it hasn’t cured the A6300’s issues, like overheating, lack of headphone socket, rolling shutter and confusing menus. Also, lack of proper double thumb wheel controls like the A7 series. Where lots of this could be forgiven on the A6300 that now costs £850/$1000, it’s much less easy to forgive on a new camera that costs £1500/$1400. The A6500 is still an excellent camera that will win many fans because of what it is uniquely capable of doing, and is a definite step forward. Whether that justifies the extra cost is down to the needs of the user.
ABOVE It may look like a consumer stills camera but the A6500 is perfect for action filmmakers.
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4K CAMERA LISTINGS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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
Based on the ALEXA SXT Plus, the SXT W will replace 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
ARRI ALEXA SXT W 200FPS
> 14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
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
LATITUDE (STOPS)
+14
LENS MOUNT
PL
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x2160 uncompressed ARRIRAW
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)
6.9 with PL mount
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4K CAMERA LISTINGS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
ARRI AMIRA 200FPS
14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
2880x1620
ARRI ALEXA MINI CFAST
200FPS
New multicam feature being introduced offers dual 6G UHD-SDI support and improves the SDI output data rate to allow external 4K UHD recording at up to 60fps. Many multicamera productions prefer to record at 4K, even if the content will be down-converted.
14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
2880x1620
SxS
New features include more support for EF lenses including control of focus and iris, and the use of image stabilisers. Big interest to gimbal and drone operators. ARRI Master Grips support has also been extended, with 3-axis control of ENG lenses.
SPECIFICATION
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Single CMOS, 16:9 (1.78:1), 23.8x13.4mm – S35
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Single CMOS, 16:9 (1.78:1), 23.8x13.4mm – S35
FRAME RATES
Up to 200fps in ProRes
FRAME RATES
Up to 200fps in ProRes
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14
LENS MOUNT
PL, B4 mount w/ Hirose connector
LENS MOUNT
PL, EF, B4 w/ Hirose connector
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620, uncompressed ARRIRAW/1920x1080
DIGITAL SAMPLING
2880x1620, uncompressed ARRIRAW/1920x1080
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME
HD 1920x1080, 2K 2048x1152, 3.2K ProRes 3200x1800 4K UHD 3840x2160
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)
WEIGHT (KG)
4.1 with PL mount
WEIGHT (KG)
2.3 with Titanium PL mount
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
SXT 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
ARRI ALEXA 65 60FPS
> 14 STOPS
XPL MOUNT
5120x2880
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
Single CMOS 16:9 (1.78:1) 23.8x13.4mm – S35
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
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
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
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