GAME CHANGER CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL BROADCAST SEE PAGE 26 definitionmagazine.com
October 2017
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CELLULAR DAILIES Telcos’ production move
EMMY SPECIAL
Stranger Things and Transparent shoot stories
NEW FIGHT CLUB
Editing the action aesthetic
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GEMINI STAR
Litepanels’ new LED light
SONY X-OCN
The new non-Raw Raw format
VFX ON THE BOX
CGI’s journey into television
29/08/2017 17:10
03 EXTREME BROADCASTING: BT Sport’s live Champions League final ticked all the boxes for a TV extravaganza.
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26 Welcome
I never imagined that I would call the highly technical details of the broadcast of a live football match rock ’n’ roll, but the swagger of BT Sport in putting together this amazing broadcast event feels like it. BT Sport’s chief engineer Andy Beale’s 100-mile an hour telling of how they planned the event and his gentle one-upmanship against the BBC was great to witness. If there is anything like the Keith Richards of broadcasting, he is it. The Champions League final in Cardiff this year had everything. You had an HDR, UHD broadcast twinned with the usual HD airing. If that was the extent of the offering you would be impressed with the 84 cameras and 130 others behind the scenes. But BT Sport wasn’t going to stop there. There was a dedicated VR offering with 12 Nokia OZO cameras and an intelligent app that made sure you didn’t miss any of the action based on a jumbotron interface. You want more? Well how about a deal with Snapchat that would identify you were at the game and provide you with filters and overlays giving you extra information? Also extra programming like the Legends match in Cardiff Bay and also the recreation of some famous Champions League goals. All this and a free-to-air model. Respect!
JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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The long awaited sequel to Blade Runner is here but surely the real excitement is the possibility that this is the movie to earn lauded DOP Roger Deakins his first Oscar
ike It’s A Wonderful Life, the original Blade Runner movie was reviled by the critics but went on to become the iconic movie we all know. Blade Runner 2049 has a lot to live up to but has some advantages. First is the re-appearance of Harrison Ford but also we get the legendary DOP Roger Deakins and the trailers show some extremely edgy and colourful visuals. The movie will be his sixth movie in a row to be shot digitally with ARRI’s Alexa twinned with the Zeiss Master Primes (the odd one out is Hail Caesar, which was shot on film mainly because of the Cohen Brothers still debating on trying digital).
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© WARNER BROS
IMAGE On set with Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve and the ARRI Alexa XT. Left A still from the new movie.
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NEWS INTERVIEW
MADE BY DORITOS
It’s not often you find a tech company bankrolled by their winning Doritos Superbowl commercials but then Small HD tend to do things differently WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL any companies make ‘our story’ videos for their websites but none are as interesting as the one on smallhd.com. It tells the story of how they got started in the business but concentrates mostly on how they won the ‘Doritos Crash the Superbowl’ competition twice, worth a cool $600,000. The competition invites people to make funny videos with Doritos as their theme. The winnings made the difference between halting production after a loss of $15,000 through a fraudulent Chinese website and tooling up to start production; it’s quite a tale. It was through their own video productions that Small HD decided to turn to manufacturing small HD monitors. They were finding that there was nothing really on the market that suited their mostly DSLR indie filming. Again, watch the video for the full backstory but long story short, they started building more and more sophisticated products until two years ago when they accepted an acquisition approach from Vitec. We asked CEO Wes Phillips what had changed since the buyout. “We didn’t go nuts announcing what happened with Vitec as we
know people react differently to that kind of thing,” he says. “We wanted to make sure people got the same level of service as always. The biggest difference is the financial reporting side, which was totally foreign to us, as now we are part of a publicly traded company. At the start, Small HD was a passion project more than anything; we started making these monitors mainly for our own use. We realised some people might be interested in the same thing and we thought at least we would make our money back on development costs. “So far the relationship with Vitec has worked out well with the 500 Series launched around two years ago. This was the first of a huge number of monitors launched over the last two years based on effectively the same software platform. So it’s a very similar experience whether you’re using the smallest or the largest monitor.” The focus for Small HD was always monitors even though before the acquisition their R&D was playing around with a lot of different ideas. “There are a lot of rig companies who were up and coming, so that was very enticing for us. But the thought energy going in to that spread us
pretty thin so we made a conscious decision to focus exclusively on monitors. It may not have been the best business solution at the time but we had the ultimate desire to have the best monitor product out there rather than a mediocre product in several different categories. I think it has driven our competitors to do better as well.” MAKE IT FOR US A recent monitor product from Small HD has been the 5in Focus. This monitor harks back to the time when they were just filmmakers: it’s a product that they would have bought. For Wes and his partner Dale this was a very important launch as they feel as if they’re supporters of the indie market and wanted a monitor that people could grow with. “It has really high definition responsive waveform monitors in there and focus assist in there,” says Wes. “Things that the market might not even know what they’re used for. We’re going to educate them into
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
ABOVE New from the company is their 1703-P3 LCD reference display.
LEFT Small HD
monitor twinned with another Vitec acquisition, Teradek.
INTERVIEW NEWS
ABOVE Originally filmmakers, Small HD still enjoy making content including some bizarre product testing.
how to use those options or other exposure tools like false colour, for instance. “We like to parallel our interface approach with how Apple does things. They will bring a product to market and there will usually be one or two really cool things about it and that’s what they talk about. When you get the product you realise there are probably 25 or even 50 cool things about it that are all in the details. But they can’t really market all those things up front as you’d be overloaded with information, so for the Focus product the most obvious thing we could talk about really was the brightness. There aren’t many
PROVIDING A BRIGHT HIGH DEFINITION MONITOR FOR USE OUTDOORS ON A DSLR IS A HUGE PRACTICAL FEATURE
bright monitors at that price point so providing a bright high definition monitor for use outdoors on a DSLR is a huge practical feature. “It also does all these other things. You can load LUTs on to the monitor so if you’re shooting with a Sony mirrorless camera maybe you’re recording in SLog and you need to correct that back to Rec. 709 or you want to put a creative LUT on there, those are things that you can do that might require some education before you know how to do that.” To simplify their products Small HD has developed this way of swiping left or right which works a bit like Apple’s spaces, where you can have a different desktop basically. CONSUMER PANELS We wondered why Small HD decided to defy their name and start making larger monitors. “A lot of people were requesting just that from us. It is an area of the market that we are very unfamiliar with so we definitely took our time and have even made some
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mistakes on the way in. Now we have our new large monitor, the 1703-P3 which is a bright monitor which also has a really colour accurate display, a wide P3 gamut and a really wide viewing angle. Part of this is a learning process for us to be sure what the market wants, because in that larger space Sony is the dominant force. “It’s mainly because they own and control OLED panels, they make them themselves so it’s not something we can actually go and do as it’s very expensive to make panels from scratch. So we have to find other ways to be better and I think a lot of our software is better. Also the panels that we are finally putting in to our new products are comparable to OLED with the contrast ratios, viewing angles and those sorts of things. At the moment we are able to beat them from a brightness standpoint and that is becoming important for things like HDR. “The new panel is LCD and is manufactured by Panasonic. In our OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT AND EDIT STORY HOW TO EDIT FIGHT SCENES
Cut and Thrust
Editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir describes editing the new genre of movie fight scenes PICTURES FOCUS FEATURES LLC
Definition: How would you describe your editing style in Atomic Blonde? Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir: Atomic Blonde is a non-linear film so that’s probably the first thing to notice. Because of the complexity of the story I stuck true to continuity editing within each scene, until the beginning of the third act when everything starts to fall apart for the characters. I find it very important to avoid monotone and enhance production values to never edit too often between the same shots but rather linger on shots, unless it drives the story or enforces the characters on the screen. None of this changes the fact that emotion rules every edit. Def: What made Atomic Blonde’s action unique from others in DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
THE MOST AMBITIOUS SEQUENCE IS A TENMINUTE FIGHT THAT LOOKS LIKE ONE SHOT
ABOVE Emotion is
important in action sequences, says Atomic Blonde’s editor, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir.
the genre? How did the editing enhance this? ER: David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, who created production company 87eleven, are the ones pushing the limits of action, one movie at a time. On top of that David Leitch is a director who understands the importance of emotion in action sequences and is equipped to make them a part of the character’s arc. This particularly stands out in Atomic Blonde and makes it unique
in the genre. The editing enhances this by not standing in the way of it, paying attention to our sense of space and staying true to the choreography. Def: The film has many brutal, action-packed fight scenes which seem to be shot in one-take. How did you edit this footage? ER: At the end of the movie there is a one-take gunfight in Paris; it only needed retiming. It was shot at 96fps but as we chose to play it at variable speed, it was more complicated than it sounds – to find the right places to slow down or amp up. The most ambitious sequence is a ten-minute fight that looks like one shot. The shot covers four scenes in the script and took four days to shoot plus two days by a second unit. It contains just under 40 edits
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4K OPTICAL SUMMIT
4K demands a higher dimension of performance, and the expanded FUJINON 4K broadcast lens line-up meets the challenge
ith the push for more resolution and more contrast in television production, the area that’s most often thought about is the growing technology in cameras and monitors. As well as the drive for more pixels, we’re starting to demand better pixels, that can show us a wider range of contrast and colour. Redder reds, greener greens, bluer blues and more extremes of darkness and highlight bring improvements to TV pictures that are immediately obvious even to the untrained eye, but they affect every aspect of production technology. More pixels, brighter whites and darker blacks are certainly things that affect the sensors in cameras and the displays we use to view the result, but the first thing the picture hits is not the sensor. It’s the lens, and while existing HD lenses DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
represent a lot of technology, few were designed to satisfy the hunger for resolution represented by ultrahigh definition (UHD) cameras. At the same time, the soaring contrast of high dynamic range (HDR) is no use if the lens is filling up the richness of black shadows with flare and glow around light sources. Given all this, UHD and HDR between them make some stern demands of lenses, demands which have, to date, mainly been encountered in cinema production. Fujifilm’s PL-mount cinema lenses in the ZK range, for instance, including the popular ZK4.7x19 Cabrio Compact Cinema Zoom, have become respected filmmaking tools. Now, with the introduction of the UA range, there’s a similar option that’ll be familiar to the people who work on broadcast television productions.
THIS PAGE
Fujifilm’s UA lens series offers a new solution for broadcast filmmaking.
ABOUT THE RANGE Fujifilm’s UA series aims to solve the problems of UHD and HDR for broadcast work, deploying a variety of new techniques to provide the level of sharpness and contrast that’s required to make HDR look its best on modern UHD displays. The UA series breaks down into two parts. The 4K Plus Premier range is intended for the most demanding work. It includes an 80x9mm box lens with an enormous 9-720mm range for studio or field use, and two zooms for field production work, covering 13x4.5 and 22x8mm. The 4K Premier range includes two box lenses at 27x6.5mm and 107x8.4mm, the latter of which offers a maximum focal length of nearly 900mm and is ideal for work in the largest venues. The Premier range also include two portable zooms at 14x4.5 and 18x5.5mm, covering situations from
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sports to news to field production. Mated to popular 2/3” camera systems, the UA series creates a familiar combination of ergonomics and technical facilities. Crews used to the incredible pressure of working live, as well as the handling characteristics of traditional television production equipment, can work as they always have, safe in the knowledge that the lens won't compromise the pictures people increasingly expect to see on their huge, high-resolution and highcontrast TVs. SMALL SENSOR CHALLENGE Film has traditionally been capable of much more resolution and dynamic range than historical video, and lenses to satisfy the greater needs of film have long been produced. Broadcast cameras, by comparison, use comparatively
OVERCOMING THOSE HURDLES REQUIRES A GROUND-UP APPROACH
small sensors, smaller even than a 16mm film frame. Landing an image on an area that size has always been a demanding job, and a challenge complicated by the fact that there are three sensors. The optical machinery behind the lens that splits up the red, green and blue parts of the image adds even more complexity, placing the three sensors at different focal distances from the lens. It’s easier to make fast lenses when the back of the lens can be close to the sensors, so broadcast lenses require complex designs referred to as ‘retrofocal’. Bring UHD and HDR into the question, and the challenge only intensifies. PRECISION POLISHING Many of the issues facing lens designers in the UHD and HDR era are fairly familiar: sharpness, contrast, zoom and focus control.
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Overcoming those hurdles requires a ground-up approach, from the materials used to make lens elements, their shapes, and the electronics and mechanical parts which eventually drive them. The surfaces of lens elements are usually sections of a sphere, although some of them can have more complicated shapes. Creating those shapes requires an incredible degree of precision, something that’s even more difficult to get right where some box lenses may have elements the size of a dinner plate. Errors here reduce resolution, something we need to avoid in UHD production, and Fujinon refers to nano-level precision in the context of lens polishing. CHROMATIC ABERRATION All lenses have some degree of chromatic aberration, caused by OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL
We are the champions This year’s Champions League Final in Cardiff wasn’t just a great game: it also represented possibly the best live sports broadcast ever WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES BT SPORT / ACS
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL SHOOT STORY
T Sport will remain the exclusive UK home of all live UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League football until at least 2020/21. But it isn’t resting on its laurels and decided for last season’s main event, the final, to throw the technical kitchen sink at the production. Andy Beale, Chief Engineer of BT Sport describes how the business mixed cutting edge technology into its various feeds and what lines it had to cross to achieve its goals, both kinds. Like any major broadcaster and telco, BT Sport realises its in the content business and not the technology one. “It’s a story telling business,” says Andy, “and anything we do in technology has to open a book.” The BT Sport mantra editorially and technically is to be at the ‘heart of sport’, “We try and bring our audience as close to the heart of sport as we can: to bring the viewer closer to the action or the experience. “The Champion’s League Final is an immense event, it’s the biggest single one day sports event in the world, bigger than the Superbowl,” Andy continues. “It’s aired in over 200 countries and has a global live TV audience of 170-200 million. With catch-up and other distribution we’re talking around 350 million.” This year it was held in Cardiff and BT Sport was the host broadcaster. “As well as our cameras there were an additional 130 cameras from third party broadcasters either doing ENG in and around the compound or interviews with their own live bolt-ons,” says Andy. “The TV compound itself was enormous: it was actually the whole of Cardiff Arms park which is the adjacent Rugby stadium.” There were other events in and around the main match that also needed broadcasting, like the Legends match, where players who have won the event in the past play against each other. This was played down in Cardiff bay on a floating pitch. There were also family events like reproductions of some famous
ABOVE The 25 camera ‘specials’ included the beauty cams, ceremonies, teams out, bench, Railcams and managers.
THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL IS AN IMMENSE EVENT, IT’S THE BIGGEST SINGLE ONE DAY SPORTS EVENT IN THE WORLD
Champion League goals, also taking place down in the bay area. FREE TO AIR BT Sport decided to forgo their usual subscription model for the final and make the event free to air to some platforms. “It was such a big event we wanted to give it free, not just to our subscribers,” says Andy. “We wanted to get as many eyes on the programme as possible which, although detrimental to our subscription model, drives massive advertising value for us. Our standard now for all these types of production is 4k UHD and Dolby ATMOS but it also went out in HD and SD as well on our own TV platform. It went free-to-air on our showcase channel
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which is on Freeview, free-to-air on Virgin and free-to-air on Sky. Last year we were free-to-air on YouTube in HD but this year became the first live event that was in 4K as well. “We also had the BT Sport app which runs on Android and iOS with an embedded enhanced player as we call it. It had a whole raft of extra features to get people into the game; an interactive timeline where events would pop up as and when they happened, which you could click on and you can see multi-camera replays. You can also navigate the timeline so it’s great for catch-up. There was a huge amount of work on social media with all the major platforms involved. “New for this year we decided to do virtual reality. We wanted to OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY STRANGER THINGS
RIGHT Eleven faces one of the many horrors emanating from the Upside Down.
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STRANGER THINGS SHOOT STORY
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Stranger Returns Season two of the wildly popular Stranger Things is nearly upon us and we talk to the main DOP Tim Ives about mixing an eighties look with modern filmmaking techniques WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES NETFLIX OP Tim Ives has been nominated for an Emmy award for his cinematography on Stranger Things, season one, and more specifically for the eighth episode called ‘Upside Down’. The official award is a nomination for OUTSTANDING CINEMATOGRAPHY FOR A SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES (ONE HOUR). Those of you who have a Netflix subscription might know this great sci-fi adventure, which harks back to some classic films of the seventies and eighties such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Stranger Things manages to reference those movies without imitating them; the influence of Spielberg is all over the episodes – but with much reverence. From the start, Stranger Things was a RED camera shoot and the Dragon was the choice for season one, but come the planning for the new season Tim Ives looked for something new from the Californian camera company. “We had the RED Dragon in season one and then the Helium became available to us in the fall of last year. We tested it against the Dragon and other cameras, and
we just felt it gave us more opportunities for night time work than the Dragon did, so we switched it over but kept the same lenses, which are the Leica Summilux-C range. Last year we were 7K to 6K extraction and for this season we were looking at 8K to 7K extraction. “The new RED Helium made the look a little less muddy, it seemed a little clearer and little more filmic, and it also allowed me to shoot a very high ASAs – 1600 to 2000 – when I needed to. I do like lighting with practicals but when you’re on a city street with just street lights, 1600 or 2000 really goes a long way in capturing an image that looks quite natural. We do very slight filtering in camera – I can’t say which one but it softens it down a little bit and also blooms the lights as well. I wanted to find something subtle for the show that would work for night-time and for interiors. I have one little filter that takes the lights and creates a halation around them. We also use atmosphere or haze quite a bit in order to catch flash lights and extend highlights, that kind of thing. That’s one of the main looks of the show, I would say.”
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SHOOT STORY TRANSPARENT
It’s a family affair Only in the tight-knit world of shooting Amazon Studios’ Transparent does the DOP also get an associate producer’s credit as well as a turn as a director WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES AMAZON STUDIOS
RIGHT Jeffrey Tambor as Mort/Maura Pfefferman.
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TRANSPARENT SHOOT STORY
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AMAZON‘S TRANSPARENT IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANIMAL IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE n our journey around the new television producers otherwise known as the streamers (mostly Netflix and Amazon), it’s no surprise that content is still made in roughly the same way as it always was; it’s just there’s more of it now and technology, and technology pipelines, are increasingly being borrowed from the production disciplines of the movies. We’ve seen the shooting discipline in shows like House of Cards and Fargo (Definition July and August 2017) where strict rules apply for how you move the camera. We also found an inherent disdain of the telephoto lens. Amazon’s Transparent is a completely different animal in more ways than one. If you haven’t seen it then you’re not an Amazon Prime member, or maybe you’ve been put off by the various gender assignment story threads. The Pfefferman family is at the core of all these threads, led by the father, who is called Mort when we first meet him but later becomes Maura as he starts his gender reassignment transsexual journey. This award-winning series is also rooted in the Jewish experience, which adds another layer to the show’s storylines. DOP Jim Frohna has been with the series since it started and is now so essential to the production that the cast see him as one of their own. “Of course the show is literally about a family but from the beginning the creator, Jill Soloway was looking for a certain process that would encourage, or not hold back, the actors,” he says. “We started doing these workshops before each season working with this really amazing filmmaking, story, acting guru called Joan Scheckel.” She introduced her ‘feeling-based’ technique to Jill and Jim which was the basis of the acting and the capture of the acting. “From the start there were two things that were unique,” says Jim. “One was doing these workshops. It wasn’t about rehearsal but more like you OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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SHOOT STORY OKJA
Fear of Farming ‘Okja’ DIT Dan Skinner explains the Raw pipeline of this infamous Veggie Netflix movie WORDS DAVID HEURING PICTURES NETFLIX
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
OKJA SHOOT STORY
n 2013, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho wowed international audiences with Snowpiercer, his English-language debut. His followup, Okja, blends English and Korean dialogue and concerns a young girl who has raises a gentle giant and must now defend the creature from corporate greed, among other dangers. Bong enlisted Darius Khondji AFC, ASC to handle lighting and camera. The master cinematographer has worked with a roster of auteurs but reportedly was reticent of Netflix’s insistence on 4K digital. But with the collaboration of Panavision, Codex and DIT Dan Skinner – not to mention support provided by ARRI Rental for the ALEXA 65 cameras – Khondji made peace with the new medium without compromising. Skinner says that the ALEXA 65’s 6.5K oversample really shows, “Everyone really saw it. We used a 4K 50-inch monitor on the set, or in a vehicle near the set, and that’s where we were able to see the full quality. There’s really no comparison. So clean, and so sharp.” Panavision made adjustments to coatings and other attributes of their Primo 70 lenses to subtly mitigate the sharpness, and for certain shots this was augmented with slight diffusion. Skinner also adapted his workflow in subtle ways to give Khondji and Bong creative flexibility and control, even at remote locales. “The Panavision Primo 70 lenses don’t cover the full ALEXA 65 sensor, so I came up with a 7% reduction,” Skinner says. “We used just a bit more of the sensor and a bit more of the available shallow depth of field. To
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compensate for slight vignetting, we brightened the corners a tiny bit in post where needed. We still shot the full Open Gate 6.5K RAW.” SOUTH KOREA The 79-day shoot was mounted in South Korea, New York, and Vancouver. In spite of the significant visual effects component, the schedule generally stayed on practical locations. Skinner says that the days were planned meticulously and consisted mostly of faithfully shooting the storyboards. Coverage was minimal. The crew never shot more than 4TB in a day, and the total was roughly 276 TB. “When you shoot with three cameras and just keep them running all day, you’re talking 10TB plus a day,” says Skinner.
ABOVE Tilda
Swinton and An Seo Hyun (top), with director Bong Joon-ho.
LEFT The crew shot
roughly 276TB during the 79-day shoot.
In Korea, Skinner acquired a van and spent a week outfitting it with more than 3500lbs of gear shipped from the States. The result was a version of the Sprinter vans he owns and uses in the US. “It worked pretty well because I never once had to worry about resources or space,” he says. “We were set for every scenario. We had a smaller cart with a monitor and wireless, and I could be ready to go moments after arriving at a location. We never really had a problem with the Codex Vault 65 or the cameras.” Skinner tends to avoid the larger 2TB Codex Capture Drives, sticking with the 512 XR Capture Drives. “I like to keep it to a traditional, filmlike length, which forces a quick reload every ten minutes or so,” he
WE WERE SET FOR EVERY SCENARIO. I COULD BE READY TO GO MOMENTS AFTER ARRIVING OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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RECORDING MEDIA IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG
ALTERNATIVE RAID
Ember Films is an extremely busy Emmy Award-winning production company so when they get something that saves them time they pay attention cursory look at the way films are made in the modern filmmaking world would describe a situation where a camera records footage on to builtin media and then it’s transferred to some kind of editing station for cutting and treating. This is of course a very simplified version of events, especially when you consider the preponderance of backups, client copies and the hundreds of other reasons there are to divert that initially simple signal chain of events. Introduce the Samsung Portable SSD T3 1TB device in to this wellworn scenario and the creatives in an Emmy Award-winning production company such as Ember Films start finding ways to streamline their work – and by streamline we mean save time.
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OPPOSITE Ember
Films’ Creative Director Jonathan Jones working on drone footage.
MORE THAN A BACKUP Kyle Harper from Ember Films put the Samsung Portable SSD T3 to work immediately. “I’m a production support and camera assistant so I run the kit room but am also the principal camera assistant out on shoots,” he explains. “What immediately struck me about the drive was the amount you can fit on there and its physical size. We’ve had drives before that I’ve been a bit sceptical about taking out on shoots. The Samsung Portable SSD T3 is very robust, very nicely built and fits beautifully in my bag. “Mostly the way we’re using it is as a backup drive. When we’re on location we take with us about 6TB of RAID storage, which is great for backing everything up at the end of the day. But say you only want a certain sequence or scene backed up,
it’s really easy to bring the Samsung drive out and use it. Another thing that struck me about it is how superfast it is to transfer footage.” QUICK EDIT As we found in the last issue, editors have taken to the Samsung Portable SSD T3 to lengthen the time they can spend editing footage, which is something that Kyle also discovered. “I went out to Goodwood to do a corporate shoot that was mostly using small action cameras and they wanted me to edit a couple of those files,” he says. “I mentioned that they were all on the computer in the office, but I needed to do them on site. So I put them on the Samsung drive and it transferred all that footage really quickly. It ran seamlessly as I edited what I needed from the drive itself.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAMSUNG RECORDING MEDIA
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“Having something small and compact is changing the way that we do things and it’s so quick as well. “I’m a big fan of USB-C. It’s really tidy and you don’t have the problem of wondering whether it’s the right way up; that saves valuable time. As a camera assistant you have to find ways to do your job quicker and more efficiently because ultimately it affects how well you can do each task. With Samsung’s Portable SSD T3 you don’t have to worry pulling it out of a big Peli case; you just take it out of the side pocket, plug it in to a laptop and it’s ready for a backup.”
VERY ROBUST, VERY NICELY BUILT AND FITS BEAUTIFULLY IN MY BAG
CONFIDENCE MEDIA Ember Films also found another vital and unthought of use for the T3. They found that if they had editors or even clients on set, they could move certain scenes via the Samsung Portable SSD T3 on to their laptops to check they had the shot they wanted; drone shots for instance which are hard and expensive to recreate are perfect for this kind of confidence monitoring. “We can quickly back up a scene for editors and they can go over it. Literally you’re passing across this tiny drive and they can then make selects. A lot of our shoots are fast paced and very hectic but a little thing like that makes a big difference. “We have big RAID drives but to have something like this which is small and can transfer files that fast is game changing. Even using the T3s in the office for transferring files across, they are worth it. But it was as this new type of backup that the Samsung drive really changed things. Having it as a third backup allowed us to bring it on to set and not worry about powering up our large RAID drives. A client might want to know how the day’s shoot compared to the day before, now we can show them so easily with the Samsung Portable SSD T3 drive.” www.emberfilms.co.uk
MORE INFORMATION: www.samsung. com/uk/portablessd/all-portablessd/ OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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LIGHTING CRYSTAL MAZE
LIGHTING CRYSTAL MAZE REBOOT Classic TV show with the original zone idea needed complex lighting design for new sets
ased on the classic Crystal Maze format and filmed at Bristol’s The Bottle Yard on a custom-built set created by original series designer James Dillon, the aim of the design was to remain faithful to the feel of the iconic zones, while adding a contemporary look to update the show for a modern audience and enhance the show’s newly added areas. Talking about the show, lighting designer Gurdip Mahal commented: “The sheer scale of the show presented a number of challenges for the entire crew. With so many small studios and unique spaces, lighting the production was both new and exciting and presented a few difficulties which the crew were able to resolve.” Gurdip needed to light the whole show, create ‘looks’ for each
IMAGES Lighting for the Crystal Maze reboot had to be flexible, to shift between scenes and moods.
THE AIM OF THE DESIGN WAS TO REMAIN FAITHFUL TO THE FEEL OF THE ICONIC ZONES, WHILE ADDING A CONTEMPORARY LOOK DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
different zone and try to maintain a feel of the original show. The lighting specified for the show allowed the crew the flexibility to shift between scenes and to custom create specific moods for individual zones. A variety of automated fixtures including Martin MAC Viper Profile, Clay Paky Sharpy and GLP X4s allowed the addition of colour and movement. Also incorporated into the design was number of fresnels, which particularly useful in delivering the tungsten warmth of the ’90s original. The scale of the show was a huge challenge for all involved and required some key investment from lighting rental specialist Aurora. “With so many small studios and unique spaces,” explains Gurdip,
“it was something new and exciting, but also sometimes brought difficulties that the crew worked really hard to resolve.” Of particular note was the level of LED products that Aurora were able to make available. As a company recognised by the albert initiative, as a supplier that supports an environmentally sustainable future for the TV industry, Aurora always strives to offer low energy alternatives to traditional light sources. The Crystal Maze set was no exception, with a selection of Chroma-Q Space Force heads providing highly controllable, ambient illumination, whilst a mixture of TMB Solaris Flare, Philips SL Strip and Rosco Silk 210s added texture and effects throughout the set.
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REVIEW LITEPANELS GEMINI
LITEPANELS GEMINI 2X1 RGBWW Litepanels may be late to the saturated colour LED market but the new Gemini light could potentially service both video and stills markets WORDS AND PICTURES ADAM DUCKWORTH
IT’S IN THE LIGHT TECHNOLOGY THAT LITEPANELS HAS DONE ITS HOMEWORK
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
he new Litepanels Gemini 2x1 RGBWW has been designed from the ground up to be a true professional-quality LED light fixture that can handle the rigours of broadcast TV and film use. And it comes complete with all the advanced technology that high-end users expect from their lights. It’s relatively lightweight compared with its direct rivals, such as from the likes of ARRI, and can work on a variety of power sources such as V-mount batteries and mains. It’s fair to say Litepanel’s original 1x1 LED panel was one of the catalysts for change that turned the movie industry onto LEDs after years of total reliance on hot lights. The new Gemini soft panel is bigger and packs more features, combining
LITEPANELS GEMINI REVIEW
daylight, tungsten and red-green-blue LEDs so you can adjust the output to any colour you want. If you want bright red or blue for special effects, it delivers. You can dial in any colour you like using dials on the rear panel for hue, saturation and intensity. You can also set the light to replicate different precise gel colours. And you can store your settings in the light’s memory, or write all these to either a USB stick to load into other lights, or lights can be daisychained together so everything can be controlled from one unit. Plus, there’s remote control through both DMX formats, Wireless DMX or Bluetooth, which requires a plug-in dongle. Then all Litepanels lights can be controlled via a free dedicated app on Apple devices.
COLOUR But the reality is that most owners will be using the light in either daylight or tungsten settings for the majority of the time, and it’s in the light technology that Litepanels has done its homework. Instead of the typical two LEDs used in bicolour units, the Gemini uses a third RGB LED so you can finely adjust colour throughout the full, 360° colour wheel to match a broad range of ambient lighting. You can adjust the Gemini for any green or magenta shift (they often occur in domestic lighting on location). And the Gemini can be adjusted very low, down to just 1% output for subtle looks. In use as a pure video light, the new Gemini really delivers. It’s well built, with the unit itself and all
the control buttons and dials being rugged and easy to use. The input screen is relatively intuitive, and memory buttons allow you to access most of the regularly-used settings to keep things simple on set. In use, the light quality is soft and very even, giving a flattering look without any specular highlights if the panel is used up close. Colour temperatures are accurate, and skin tones look particularly natural. There’s no flicker and the fan, which comes on at high settings, is very quiet, although it can be manually turned off. It’s a very impressive bit of kit that, as a pure video light, has all the features and benefits of its rivals and in many cases surpasses them, but is lighter and costs less.
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ABOVE Litepanels Gemini 2x1 LEDs offer full spectrum daylight and tungsten lighting.
OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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4K CAMERA LISTINGS
RED SCARLET-W 5K 120FPS
16+ STOPS
PL MOUNT
5120x2700
RED RAVEN
RED MAGS
120FPS
16+ STOPS
EF MOUNT
4608x2160
RED MAGS
RED’s answer to the Blackmagic Design URSA Mini 4.6K camera with a 4.5K DRAGON sensor. Capable of capturing footage with REDCODE RAW in 4.5K full format (FF) at up to 120fps, or in 2K FF at 240fps.
SCARLET-W combines RED’s camera design by including integrated mounting points, interchangeable lens mounts with simultaneous REDCODE RAW and Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD recording formats, intelligent OLPF system and in-camera 3D LUT outputs.
SPECIFICATION
SPECIFICATION SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
RED DRAGON CMOS, 19.4 megapixels, 6144x3160, 30.7x15.8mm
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
RED DRAGON CMOS, 9.9 megapixels, 4608x2160
50fps at 5K full format (5120x2700), 60fps at 5K 2.4:1 (5120x2160). 120fps at 4K full format (4096x2160), 150fps at 4K 2.4:1 (4096x1728)
FRAME RATES
FRAME RATES
REDCODE RAW in 4.5K full format (at up to 120fps, or in 2K FF at 240fps)
LATITUDE (STOPS)
16+ (claimed)
LATITUDE (STOPS)
16.5+ stops
LENS MOUNT
EF
LENS MOUNT
PL
DIGITAL SAMPLING
4608x2160
DIGITAL SAMPLING
6144x3160
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT
8:1 REDCODE for 5K full format (5120x2700) at 24fps
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME
Captures options in both .R3D and Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD file formats. 4.5K 2.1:1 (4608x2160) and 24fps at 11:1 REDCODE: 52mins
WEIGHT (KG)
1.58
WEIGHT (KG)
1.58
RED WEAPON HELIUM 75FPS
16+ STOPS
PL/EF MOUNT
8192x4320
RED MAGS
The ultimate RED. Well, there is the VistaVision but this is the upgrade path. 8K WEAPON brain with the HELIUM sensor. $49,000 but there are part-ex deals.
RED EPIC 6K 100FPS
16+ STOPS
PL MOUNT
6144x3160
RED EPIC W RED MAGS
The existing ‘brain’ but with the DRAGON sensor inside. Many are looking to upgrade to the WEAPON but still a highly capable camera.
SPECIFICATION
SPECIFICATION SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
RED HELIUM, 35.4 megapixels, 8192x4320, 29.90x15.77mm
FRAME RATES
REDCODE – 60fps at 8K (8192x4320), 75fps at 8K 2.4:1 (8192x3456). PRORES – 422 HQ, 422 and 422 LT at 4K (4096x2160) up to 29.97fps
LATITUDE (STOPS)
16+
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM OCTOBER 2017
60FPS
16+ STOPS
PL/EF MOUNT
8192x4320
RED MAGS
The cheapest way to get in to 8K cinematography and if you’re an existing user you can upgrade to the DSMC2 body for simultaneous codec recording.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
RED DRAGON CMOS, 19.4 megapixels, 6144x3160, 30.7x15.8mm
FRAME RATES
75fps at 6K full format (6144x3160), 100fps at 6K 2.4:1 (6144x2592)
LATITUDE (STOPS)
16+
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
RED HELIUM, 35.4 megapixels, 8192x4320, 29.90x15.77mm
FRAME RATES
REDCODE – 30fps at 8K (8192x4320), 100fps at 6K 2.4:1 (6144x2592). PRORES – 422 HQ, 422 and 422 LT at 4K (4096x2160) up to 29.97fps
LATITUDE (STOPS)
16+
4K CAMERA LISTINGS
PANASONIC PURE 120FPS
14+ STOPS
PL MOUNT
4096x2160
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PANASONIC AU-EVA1
CODEX
60
The Panasonic VariCam PURE is co-developed with Codex to place their V-RAW recorder directly on the camera. What you get is a very compact, 4K Raw-only camera package for features and high-end drama.
SPECIFICATION
N/A
EF MOUNT
N/A
SD
A new 5.7K cinema camera positioned between the Panasonic Lumix GH5 4K mirrorless camera and the VariCam LT 4K cinema camera. Has the dual native ISO of the LT and 35. Also has V-Log and records to SD cards.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Super 35mm MOS sensor. Approx. 8.9 million pixels
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Super 35 5.7K - 5720x3016
FRAME RATES
4096x2160/59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 24p, 23.98p 3840x2160/59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 23.98p
FRAME RATES
59.94fps/50fps for 4K/UHD. Up to 120fps/100fps for 2K/Full HD. 240fps/200fps (cropped) for high-speed
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14+
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14 (claimed)
LENS MOUNT
PL
LENS MOUNT
EF
DIGITAL SAMPLING
4096x2160 (4K), 3840x2160 (UHD)
DIGITAL SAMPLING
Dual Native ISO of 800 & 2500
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME
With 2TB capture drive – 4K 12 bit/23.98 fps: 100 min With 2TB capture drive – 4K 10 bit/120 fps: 22 min With 2TB capture drive – UHD 12 bit/23.98 fps: 106 min
RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT AND TIME
4.2.2 10-bit – Video Codec up to 400 Mbps V-log & V-gamut. 5.7K Raw output (future update)
WEIGHT (KG)
5.15kg – V35C1 camera and V-RAW recorder modules
WEIGHT (KG)
1.2kg
PANASONIC VARICAM 35 120FPS
14 STOPS
PL MOUNT
4096x2160
P2 VARIED
Panasonic’s latest high-end VariCam with its de-coupled philosophy and famous dual native ISOs. 5000 ISO is a game changer for night shoots –no noise.
SPECIFICATION
PANASONIC VARICAM LT 60FPS
14 STOPS
EF/PL MOUNT
4096x2160
P2 VARIED
Panasonic’s latest VariCam for the drama market. Same sensor as the 35 but no more de-coupling. You can ‘easily’ change lens mount to PL.
SPECIFICATION
PANASONIC DVX200 120FPS
12 STOPS
4096x2160
SD VARIED
For indie filmmakers. A fast zoom lens (13x zoom lens from Leica Dicomar) with variable frame rates up to 120fps, 12 stops of DR, V-Log, NDs and 5-axis STAB.
SPECIFICATION
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Super35mm MOS, 8.9 megapixels
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Super35mm MOS, 8.9 megapixels
SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE
Four Thirds-type MOS 4096x2160
FRAME RATES
4096x2160 – 59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 24p, 23.98p 3840x2160 – 59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 23.98p
FRAME RATES
4096x2160 – 59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 24p, 23.98p 3840x2160 – 59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 23.98p
FRAME RATES
DCI 4K: 24p UHD 4K: 60p, 50p, 30p, 25p, 24p
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14
LATITUDE (STOPS)
14
LATITUDE (STOPS)
12
OCTOBER 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM