TALKING FUTURE POST
INDUSTRY LEADERS DEBATE CHANGES P30
October 2019
£4.99
SMART GLASS
The new language lenses need to learn for post
FIRST USE Panasonic’s new S1H in action
ABBEY HABIT
Luscious looks take Downton to the movies
DRESSED TO KILL PEAKY BLINDERS GOES LARGE FORMAT ALSO EVOLVE WORKSTATION | CAMERA LISTINGS | WOMEN IN POST INSIDE THE CROWN SEASON 3 | BUILDING EDIT SUITES 2020
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40 BRIGHT PUBLISHING LTD, BRIGHT HOUSE, 82 HIGH STREET, SAWSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE CB22 3HJ UK EDITORIAL Editor Julian Mitchell 01223 492246 julianmitchell@bright-publishing.com Staff writer Chelsea Fearnley Contributors Adam Duckworth, Adam Garstone, Ash Connaughton, Phil Rhodes Chief sub editor Beth Fletcher Senior sub editor Siobhan Godwood Sub editor Felicity Evans Junior sub editor Elisha Young ADVERTISING Sales director Matt Snow 01223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com Sales manager Krishan Parmar 01223 499462 krishanparmar@bright-publishing.com Key accounts Nicki Mills 01223 499457 nickimills@bright-publishing.com DESIGN Design director Andy Jennings Designer Bruce Richardson Ad production Man-Wai Wong PUBLISHING Managing directors Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram @definitionmags Twitter @definitionmags Facebook @definitionmagazine
Want to build the ultimate edit suite? Check out our feature on page 40 Image: © LA Productions
WELCOME
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hat is post-production circa 2019? Shouldn’t we now see production as one huge technical wobbling jelly gradually setting as we approach TX or release? (But then there are always styrofoam coffee cups to cut out after the fact #GoT.) To understand the near- and long-term future of post-production, we have summoned up a virtual round table of people whose business is post in all its forms. We don’t promise to change the world with our discussion, but do hope we can turn over some stones to reveal a new way of thinking about things. To that end, we have also carried on our ‘Women in...’ series with this issue looking at, you guessed it, post. Pursuing the ‘post’ theme even more is a look at the design and installation of edit suites in lieu of some powerful new software, such as Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 16 with its new collaboration feature set – there have been several million downloads of this software, iterations unknown, so it’s the nearest thing we have to an NLE standard. If you can’t get enough of all things post, then look out for our article on extended data for post from ‘smart’ lenses.
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JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR
Definition is published monthly by Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridge CB22 3HJ. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of Bright Publishing Ltd. Definition is a registered trademark of Bright Publishing Ltd. The advertisements published in Definition that have been written, designed or produced by employees of Bright Publishing Ltd remain the copyright of Bright Publishing Ltd and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Prices quoted in sterling, euros and US dollars are street prices, without tax, where available or converted using the exchange rate on the day the magazine went to press.
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AN INFUSION OF ROYAL-TEA D R A M A | D OW N TO N A B B E Y
Downton is back, but this time it’s on the big screen and the royals are visiting. We talk to DOP Ben Smithard about how he made the already grand, grander WORDS CHELSE A FE ARNLE Y / PICTURES NBC UNIVERSAL
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t’s 1927 and both the downstairs and upstairs residents at Downton Abbey are in a state of full-blown panic. The morning post has brought news of a visit from King George V and Queen Mary. “A royal luncheon, a parade and a dinner,” exclaims Mrs Patmore about the decadent itinerary. “I’m going to have to sit down.” For six series of Downton Abbey, the TV series’ screenwriter and creator, Julian Fellowes, has intertwined the stories of more than a dozen fictional characters with real-life historical events. And it’s true that in 1912 the first Windsors took to Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire – where Downton is set – in what was thought to be the earliest charm offensive between the royals and general public. Not only does this parallel to history serve as a good premise for the film, it unifies the focus between the downstairs and upstairs residents because, despite their different obligations to the house, they’re all working to the same end: the royal visit has to be a success. DOP Ben Smithard explains, “The story is, in essence, rather simple: it’s people coming over for dinner. But in the twenties – in that society – it would have been the biggest event of the year, so it had to be perfect.”
ABOVE Favourite faces return: (from left) Lesley Nicol, Sophie McShera, Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan
Smithard had not worked on the series previously, but after shooting films like Belle and King Lear, he was, to say the least, fairly familiar with the period genre. “I hadn’t really watched the series and I was shooting another film when I got offered the job. So, at the end of each day, I would go home and watch two or three episodes a night. And within the space of six weeks, I had watched everything,” he recalls. While the series served as a good reference for the film, Smithard also drew upon paintings and photographs and upon
his own visual references from films that he had shot before. “It needed to be cinematic, which was quite difficult to achieve with the shoot taking place in the same locations used for TV, but the producers didn’t expect me to follow a line from the series, and I was pretty much given free rein to take it in the direction I wanted.” He continues: “I don’t know if it was ever referenced for TV, but Gosford Park – which is a film Fellowes had written before – was a big reference for me, because it perfectly encapsulates the dynamic
In that society it would have been the biggest event of the year, so it had to be perfect
1917
The year King George V and Queen Mary actually visited Highclere Castle
2.39:1
The aspect ratio the movie was shot in, unlike the TV series, which was shot in 16:9
IMAGES Michelle Dockery with director Michael Engler (centre) and DOP Ben Smithard; and above with Allen Leech. Right: Robert James-Collier
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I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H
picture canning
PEAK DRAMA DOP Si Bell joins the Shelby family and their empire of crime for Series 5 of Peaky Blinders WORDS PHIL RHODES / PICTURES BBC PICTURES
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eries 5 of Peaky Blinders opens with a man on horseback riding across open country under a sky of roiling cloud, a backdrop so striking that it’s easy to believe the shot is a composite. In fact, it’s the work of DOP Si Bell and his crew as they leveraged some of the miserable weather that occurred in September last year, right at the beginning of a six-episode production marathon that would take in all of northern England. It’s a familiar part of the world for Bell, whose career began at Northumbria University with an interest in directing, though he quickly refocused to camera. “We got to shoot on film,” he recalls. “They had 16mm cameras. I wanted to learn more
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about the camera side, and worked as a clapper loader on film shoots with some pretty good cinematographers.” After graduating in 2007, Bell entered the industry as a camera trainee, working under Sam McCurdy, BSC, Lol Crawley, BSC, and Philippe Rousselot, AFC, ASC. All the time, though, Bell was shooting his own material. “I was a loader and assistant for three years, but I was shooting on the side. I tried to shoot as much as I could in the early days. When I was on bigger dramas, I was trying to do short films on the weekend with kit loaned from Jamie at Picture Canning.” Bell moved on to shoot “a lot of short films, low-budget features and a couple of commercials”. He recalls: “I did a film called
Electricity that was at the BFI, which was well-received. That helped me get into the TV side of things.” Bell first encountered Peaky Blinders director, Anthony Byrne, on Ripper Street, which was “one of my first TV dramas”. Bell adds: “That was a big break. It was a big budget compared to what I was doing then.” For Bell, Peaky Blinders was a longheld ambition: “I was a big fan of the show, so I’d always wanted to do it. From a cinematography point of view, it’s very highly regarded.” Byrne, Bell says, had “always spoken” about wanting to do Peaky Blinders. “I’d always had chats that he was chasing it and he wanted to do it… When he was going
PEAKY BLINDERS | DRAMA
ABOVE Series DOP Si Bell kicks back on-set
We had 91 lighting plans and 91 different lighting set-ups. We did them on Shot Designer so everything was organised into it, I knew I was quite likely to get it.” Those initial conversations happened in the middle of 2018 and, when pre-production began, Bell took full advantage of a generous ten-week prep period. “It’s such a big thing to plan,” he says, mentioning particularly the delay between the recce and shoot. “There were so many locations that we recce’d in September and shot in January where we needed multiple machines, rigging and scaffolding to achieve what we wanted.” Getting all this right was a matter of meticulous planning. Bell reports: “We had 91 lighting plans and 91 different lighting set-ups. We did them on Shot Designer, so everything was organised: which machines, what lighting we had rigged. We used the art department plans, put our information into them and printed out a 91- page document with every single plan for the rigging crew so everything was completely clear – what needed to be done, which blackout tents, what rigging was needed. “It was a pretty detailed schedule in that sense; definitely the biggest lighting job I’d ever done.”
NETFLIX INVOLVEMENT Bell was under no pressure to use the same equipment as previous seasons – quite the opposite, in fact. “Netflix was more involved in this season. It wanted to shoot 4K and it didn’t want the Alexa, so we picked a new camera. We ended up on the Red Monstro, because we needed a 4K camera.” Creatively, too, Bell was given free reign. “It wasn’t like doing a normal ongoing series, the execs were very much ‘we want you to take control of it’. We wanted it to look like Peaky, but it was very much ‘bring your sort of take’ to it.”
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F U T U R E O F P O S T- P R O D U C T I O N | F E AT U R E
FUTURE POST
ALL THE BEST TECHNOLOGISTS QUESTION THE STATUS QUO, AND IN POST-PRODUCTION, THINGS HAVE TO EVOLVE TO MANAGE THE CURRENT TORRENT OF CONTENT W O R D S J U L I A N M I TC H E L L / C A R I C AT U R E S B R U C E R I C H A R D S O N
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WOMEN S P E C I A L | WO M E N I N P OS T
AS PART OF OUR SERIES PROFILING WOMEN IN THE FILM INDUSTRY, WE SHOWCASE THE FEMALES PAVING THE WAY IN POST-PRODUCTION W O R D S C H E L S E A F E A R N L E Y & L A R I S S A M O R I / P I C T U R E S VA R I O U S
SUSAN LAZARUS Job title: Freelance post producer Location: New York, USA Portfolio: imdb.com/name/nm0493841 Recent work: BlacKkKlansman, Inside Man, The Boxer, Only Lovers Left Alive Susan Lazarus studied art and photography at Stony Brook University and began her career as a stills photographer for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was inspired by the camerawork of experimental filmmaker, Ed Emshwiller, and approached him to work as his assistant. She explains: “I hoped to move into cinematography, but the road for women was extremely difficult at that time. So, I took an apprenticeship syncing dailies and became an assistant to the sound editor
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on a documentary. This opened my mind to the creative joys of sound and I was subsequently invited to become a producer on Image Before My Eyes, where I directed the shooting of the stills from which the film was based, and was the assistant editor and sound editor.” After joining the Motion Picture Editors Guild and working on large-scale features, such as Reds and The King of Comedy, Lazarus recognised the need for the equivalent of a line producer in post, to help finish films more effectively. “I approached independent producers with the idea, and became one of the first post-production supervisors in New York,” she recalls. “Early on, I worked with the wonderful editors Dede Allen, Thelma Schoonmaker, Claire Simpson, Suzanne Baron, Sarah Flack, Lisa Zeno Churgin and Kristina Boden, so I always felt the strong presence of women in post.” At this stage in her career, Lazarus has worked with many filmmakers who she is proud to support. She’s also been active in the preservation of films in which women have had a major creative role through New York Women in Film & Television. Her advice to women in post: “Learn your craft and keep up with technology. Nourish your sense of humour. Persist.”
MAXINE GERVAIS Job title: Supervising senior colourist Location: Los Angeles, USA Portfolio: technicolor.com/maxine-gervais Recent work: Messiah, The Ballad of Richard Jewell, Between Two Ferns, Night Hunter After graduating from Laval University in Quebec, Canada, with a degree in Fine Arts, Gervais found work in a production software company. She explains: “They trained me on the technical side of things and put me on the technical team. This was the first step into my colour journey.” Gervais later received a postgraduate certificate in Computer Technology for Cinema and Television and established an impressive career as a finishing artist. She recalls: “I worked for Discreet in Montreal,
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WOMEN IN POST | SPECIAL
then in London for the production of the Harry Potter film franchise. After that, I worked for Pacific Title and MPI, before landing here at Technicolor in Los Angeles.” Gervais has now worked on over 50 blockbusters and critically acclaimed feature films, receiving three Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) nominations for Outstanding Colour Grading for her work on The Book of Eli, Pacific Rim and Alpha, for which she made Hollywood history as the first woman to win this award. Gervais concludes: “I used to think that women – strong feminist women – would always stick up for each other and be as tight as the ‘boys club’, but that’s not really the case, so don’t count on that.” Her advice is: “It’s important to pay no attention to the stereotypes and just be yourself.”
ÉLODIE ICHTER Job title: Colourist at HARBOR Location: New York Portfolio: harborpicturecompany.com/ artist_post/elodie-ichter Recent work: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Okja, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Part 2
Ichter studied editing at École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle in Paris. In her last year of school, she discovered the process of colour timing and fell in love with the colouring process. She recalls: “After five years in Paris, I moved to London for a job as a DI editor at Deluxe. A year and a half later, an opportunity arose to work at EFILM in LA under a colour artist I had collaborated with in my final year of school.” That was ten years ago and, for the past year, Ichter’s experience has taken her to work as a colourist at HARBOR, where she has been focused on two big projects: The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. She notes: “For both films, I worked on the dailies as well as the finish, because it was important for the DOPs to establish a look early on. Not everyone can become a colourist, but with more women rising through the ranks, there’s a mix of ideas coming to the table. This is also happening with DOPs – when I’m told I’m working with a female DOP, I feel excited. It’s a different relationship; it’s women holding hands and working on something amazing together, which is still quite unique in this industry.” LEFT Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, a stunt double, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which Élodie Ichter worked on as a colourist
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F E AT U R E | S M A R T L E N S E S
SMART GLASS LENS DATA IS INCREASING IN USE FOR THE POST-PRODUCTION
INDUSTRY, BUT WHICH LENSES OFFER IT AND HOW MUCH DATA IS AVAILABLE?
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odern cinematography cameras record hundreds of megabytes of data every second. Adding a few more numbers to that payload is no great technical feat, but even so, it’s been nearly 20 years since the genesis of current lens metadata systems, and uptake is still patchy. Visual effects people, though, are increasingly keen to get their hands on lens information, and the technology seems poised for widespread adoption. Hendrik Voss is a product manager at Arri whose experience dates back to the original release of the WCU-4 lens control unit. He understands the caution within the industry. “Metadata is a buzzword,” he explains. “Some people feel scared when they hear the word metadata. Engineers and product managers say it’s so cool and useful, but in the end it depends on the people who use it.”
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WORDS PHIL RHODES
VFX houses have well-defined pipelines for their work and metadata must take its place in that model, according to Voss. “If you make a workflow for a movie and you imagine you have different cameras, or even different lenses, and you find that some lenses have metadata and some don’t – on some cameras you can capture lens data and some of them you can’t. Then you have gaps in your workflow.” Arri’s approach was born in the days of film, when encoders mounted on lenses or external electronics could be used to record lens data. Any lens could, therefore, become part of the fledgling Lens Data System (LDS), which was originally built to provide extra information for the focus puller. Applying that data to VFX work was a natural evolution, creating what Voss describes as “a camera system that helps Arri customers to work more efficiently”. He
adds: “They save time, and with time, save money.”
COOKE /i TECHNOLOGY The need for a single, standard approach is echoed again and again. Les Zellan of Cooke Optics was generous enough to put the company’s lens electronics on hold in 2001 and 2002, since Arri had developed the LDS system. “We always thought the world needed one system rather than seven,” he explains. Having originally developed the Cooke /i technology after 2000, Zellan eventually concluded the best way to encourage uniform adoption was to make the specification cheap and available. “We licence /i for a pound a year,” Zellan says. “That is very attractive to a lot of companies. Early on we made an agreement with Red. The first Red cameras were the first real /i cameras and then
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The Lens Data System was built to provide extra information for the focus puller – applying that data to VXF work was a natural evolution we’ve freely given it to all our competitors. We have a lot of /i tech partners that are implementing the system. I think what a lot of people are doing is sitting on the sidelines seeing if [VFX people] are saying, ‘this is the cat’s meow’.”
WHY WE NEED IT At first, camera people were reluctant to generate metadata VFX people might not use, while VFX people were reluctant to use metadata that might not be generated. Zellan calls it “a chicken and egg problem”.
LEFT A Cooke S7/i lens featuring /i technology
“When we introduced it back in 2001/2002, people asked: ‘I don’t even know what it is, what do I need it for?’ – now people know that they need it. I think we’re at critical mass now. We’ve put enough features into it that the VFX community is saying it can be useful,” he says. David Stump, ASC, is a visual effects supervisor and cinematographer with credits on world-famous productions reaching back to the mid-1980s. His interest in lens metadata goes beyond simple focus and focal length information, basic lens data that is handled by Cooke /i and Arri LDS. More advanced information, such as a description of how the lens vignettes and distorts the image, is supported in /i. Stump says: “If you had a [scene] where a CG character had to walk across a real table, you have to unravel what the lens is doing, even out the fall-off of the lens,
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U S E R R E V I E W | PA N A S O N I C LU M I X S1 H
PANASONIC LUMIX S1H P R I C E £ 3 5 9 9 / $ 3 9 9 7. 9 9
Panasonic has launched a full-frame 6K video camera. We take a look at the feature set and the footage W O R D S & P I C T U R E S A DA M D U C K W O R T H
ood things come to those who wait, goes the well-known phrase. And when it comes to full-frame mirrorless cameras aimed squarely at filmmakers, it seems to be true. Panasonic may not have got first-mover advantage like Sony, with its A7 series cameras so beloved of cinematographers, but instead has waited to make sure it
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got it right. In the meantime, Leica, Canon and Nikon have all launched their own mirrorless big-chip cameras, but the filmmaking spec has been less than impressive. Now Panasonic has taken what it learned from its GH5 and GH5S Micro Four Thirds filmmaking cameras and Varicam line-up of pro cinema cameras, and put as much of that tech as possible into
its new S1H. This new £3599 S1H aces everything else, with headline spec of 6K resolution, 4:2:2 10-bit internal recording, Dual Native ISO and V-Log like the Varicam models, anamorphic de-squeeze, the promise of Apple ProRes Raw very soon and all the tools filmmakers need, like proper waveforms. Possibly best of all is that there are no time restrictions on
BELOW The new Panasonic S1H has a lot to live up to following Panasonic’s GH5 and GH5S models
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PA N A S O N I C LU M I X S1 H | U S E R R E V I E W
“THE FOOTAGE IS SHARP, NATURAL, FULL OF COLOURS AND LACKS NASTY NOISE”
recording, either due to the camera being capped at sub-30 minutes for import tax reasons or because it might overheat – the curse of many other cameras. A USB-C socket means you can power it up, and hotswappable twin memory cards mean you can keep shooting.
PANASONIC’S HEAT MANAGEMENT To ensure unlimited recording time, getting rid of heat is the big issue. Panasonic has solved this by making it not only the chunkiest full-frame mirrorless camera on the market, but also fitting a silent fan and air-cooling ducts. It even managed to keep the weatherproofing of the sibling S1 and S1R models despite these additions. Many of the improvements over the more photobiased full-frame Panasonic S series cameras are just for filmmakers. Although it shares the same basic 24-megapixel sensor as the S1, Panasonic claims it’s engineered totally differently and the S1H omits the S1’s optical low-pass filter. This marginally reduces ultimate stills resolving power, but is far better at controlling moiré, which is more important for video use. We recently tested the S1 and said it was incredible for low-light performance. And although the footage from the S1H was only for a prototype sample, so the final production version may be different, it was clear to see it’s an even better performer when the ISO gets cranked up. It has a maximum ISO of 51,200 with Dual Native ISOs of 640 and 4000 for video use. At lower settings, its base is 640 and the quality is excellent. When the ISO creeps up, the sensor switches to
another circuit to provide a second base ISO of 4000. The Varicams do this, and it works incredibly well. Now this tech is on a mirrorless full-frame camera which, thanks to its larger sensor, is even better at low light.
DYNAMIC RANGE The sensor is claimed to have more than 14 stops of dynamic range, but we couldn’t check this as the camera was a prototype. But it certainly had lots of detail in shadows and highlights. The footage is incredibly sharp, natural, full of colours and definitely lacking in nasty noise. The S1H shoots at 6K/24p and 5.4K/30p in a 3:2 aspect ratio or 5.9K/30p in widescreen 16:9, which is the most obvious choice. It also records 10-bit 60p 4K/C4K HEVC video recording when used in Super 35 crop mode and 4:2:2 10-bit 4K/30p recording in H.264 captured from the full area of the sensor. There are
IMAGES Although the S1H shares the same sensor as the stills model, the S1, it has been engineered differently for video use
simple settings to enable HDR (High Dynamic Range) in HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma), too. We tried the camera in 6K, 5.9K, C4K, 4K and HD and the results were incredibly clean and very, very impressive. The footage we looked at was all recorded internally to the camera’s twin SD card slots. Colourist Dado Valentic took a critical look at the footage shot by the camera at ISO up to 1200 and was blown away by the lack of noise and resolving power. He is using footage from a prototype camera to grade a feature film and said the footage was easily good enough for a theatrical release.
OUTPUTS The camera can also output 4:2:2 10bit 60p 4K/C4K over HDMI, but we didn’t get to try that. Panasonic also announced the camera will soon be upgraded to enable Raw output for conversion to Apple ProRes Raw in Atomos monitor/recorders. Where the other S models use one SD card and one XQD, the S1H has dual recording to SD cards – both the same class, which allows 4:2:2 10-bit internal recording. As well as 6K internal recording at 24p, it also
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DRAMA KITS
S PEC IA LI ST O PI N I O N I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H
OUR VIEWING SCHEDULE HAS BEEN AMPED UP BY THE ARRIVAL OF SOME SERIOUSLY EPIC PERIOD DR AMAS IN RECENT YEARS, AND THE SONY VENICE IS BECOMING A MORE POPUL AR CHOICE TO SHOOT THEM ON. WHY IS THAT ? “When shooting period dramas, getting your coverage quickly is key, so having a camera that is fast to operate is a huge benefit. The VENICE has taken inspiration from previous digital cameras and now has a fantastic user interface that any operator will feel at home using. Pair that with its snappy menu system, and getting the camera prepped for the next take will be super-quick. “The form factor of the camera makes it quick and easy to move between set-ups, and the VENICE extension set or Rialto means that you can put the camera in some interesting positions and rigs. It doesn’t matter which rig you use it on – it could be stripped down with the Rialto on an Easyrig or it could be in a fully rigged studio set-up. The VENICE is designed to fit any bill.
“Unlike other cameras on the market, it has the ability to record in a range of formats, the most popular being full-frame 6K and 4K Super 35mm. You can also shoot anamorphic or spherical, and the VENICE will record and, most importantly, correctly monitor it due to the range of anamorphic formats and desqueezes. “The image that the VENICE produces has attracted a lot of filmmakers since it has excellent dynamic range, highlight roll-off and beautiful colour science. Colour accuracy is vital for period dramas because of how important costume and make-up design is to keeping the piece feeling authentic. Luckily, colour reproduction is something the VENICE excels at, even when pushing the camera to its exposure limits.”
J A K E R AT C L I F F E
TECHNICAL SPECIALIST
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