Post Magazine

September 2011

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/47583

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 30 of 51

New Hat uses the Truelight system from Filmlight to bring this patchwork of various cameras together, seamlessly. By simulating the film-out process,Truelight compensates for variables and ensures true, reliable colors on any display. La- fuente, who helped design the studio's "datacentric" workflow, reports,"We are still seeing 5D and 7D footage, but it seems to have tapered off a little bit. Ever since the Arri Alexa came out, people seem to be shifting over to it." Let's check out the details of the Alexa and other current digital offerings. ARRI ALEXA Stephan Ukas-Bradley, manager of digital production at Arri (www.arridigital. com), is not surprised that many DPs are shooting with the Alexa.The path of de- velopment has been quite swift for a camera system of this caliber. Arri debuted the camera at IBC in 2009 as a concept and formally released it as part of their lineup at NAB 2010.The Alexa outputs HDSDI uncompressed or a 12-bit Arri RAW file.The latter requires an additional step to process the color information. The camera also supports a variety of flavors of ProRes, including ProRes Proxy, LT, 422, 42H2, and even support for the 444 ProRes codec.This allows shooters to record using Sony SxS cards, and then without transcoding, start the edit process.The camera can also record to the cards while outputting uncompressed HD or Arri RAW, allowing you to have the ProRes recording directly into the ed- itorial media or have instant dailies or create and EDL. According to Ukas-Bradley,"A lot of thought went into the Arri Imaging Tech- nology (AIT) to have a balance of very sharp and crisp images and at the same time be smooth and filmic."The Alexa rolls off the highlights very naturally like a film camera.That, along with how the Alexa renders skin tones, has received high praise from colorists and post pros.The Alexa has a wide exposure lat- itude of 14 stops over the entire EI range.According to Ukas-Bradley, this phenomenal imaging resulted in 85 percent of the television pi- lots from the 2011 season being shot on Alexa, including Pan Am and The Playboy Club. Feature films have also em- braced the Alexa. It's being used by Robert Richardson, ASC, for the Scorsese-helmed feature Hugo, set to be released this fall, and on the just-released Spy Kids 4 from Robert Rodriguez. At IBC 2011, Arri will be debuting two additional versions: The Alexa Studio will sport an optical viewfinder, reducing power consumption.The compact Alexa M has a modular design for 3D stereo shoots, re- mote helicopters or squeezing into tight spaces. Both the Alexa Studio and Alexa M will have the same sensor as the full version, including the same dynamic range and low signal-to- noise ratio. A piece of Alexa's new 4.0 software is called "Look Manage- ment."This is a software interface that allows shooters to take files from the camera and put them into a laptop on-set and manipulate them to create custom looks. You can then apply those looks to the monitor and viewfinder, or to the footage directly. Looking forward, Arri is developing dynamic links,which would allow those looks to be applied in realtime. RED EPIC Ted Schilowitz, or just "Ted from Red," was right in the middle of the very first Reducation summer camp when we caught up with him.The camp, (hosted partly at Red Studios Hollywood) teaches kids from 9 to 14 how to pro- duce movies using Red cameras. It was a perfect time to talk to him since his stu- dents were in the editing phase of production, and they were editing footage they shot with the Red Epic, natively, using Adobe Premiere CS5.5. Ever enthusiastic, Schilowitz immediately started running down the list of upcoming films using the Red Epic (www.red.com), including The Hobbit, which is using 50 Epics; the new Spider-Man movie, which is using over 20 cameras; Underworld IV is employing eight Epics; and the list goes on and on. "These are not little movies, these are the www.postmagazine.com September 2011 • Post 29 biggest movies of next year that are shooting with Red Epics," he declares. According to Schilowitz, the RAW files are the core of the Red camera sys- tem. He likens it to having a free and instant telecine anywhere throughout the process. "In terms of the DI and finishing world, every major DI provider in the world is fully supporting Red files, both Red One and Epic," he says, adding that systems out in the post world (including Baselight, DaVinci,SGO Mistika, Quantel Pablo and Autodesk Lustre) use the Red Rocket card."It's not like the early days," he says."Nowadays, if anybody is saying,'We dropped off files, but we'll get them in a couple of days,' it means those producers are not paying very close attention to what's happened, because everything has fundamentally changed." The Epic will allow the shooter to dial in image styles into the camera itself knowing the RAW file or digital negative is still there."The DPs on the set have very sophisticated controls, so they can dial in the looks they want, and those looks are then imprinted on the metadata of the file itself," reports Schilowitz. Red has always maintained a tight partnership with the leading editorial pro- grams."Initially it was Apple, and its Final Cut Pro (7), who fully supported the cam- era using R3Ds to QuickTime proxies that are pointers to the R3Ds.The new Final Cut 10 supports files up to 4K, so you can transcode Red into 4K ProRes." Adobe has also made it possible to edit Red files natively without any transcod- ing."Adobe has been a perfect partner for us,"says Schilowitz."They are one of the companies leading the charge on this RAW workload concept and how to best adapt to it from a motion standpoint.They are essentially the guys who invented that RAW workflow for stills. Now you have that same ability to manipulate the RAW files from the Red inside Premiere CS5.5. "Adobe's mentality is much like ours in terms of how they think post produc- tion should be.You're working with the native files, your not exploding these files into much bigger files for finishing, which is kind of the old school way to do it." Avid also allows users to work natively with Red files via its AMA technology. The Epic: Red has been working with those making editing systems and color grading products to help ensure an easy post workflow.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Post Magazine - September 2011