Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/851458
www.postmagazine.com 32 POST JULY 2017 direct or accidentally distract what the audience is able to or should see. If the characters are squinting into the light to try to discover their nemesis, perhaps the audience should be, also. Riding, as in ad- justing image exposure for scene bright- ness, and over longer moving camera shots may become more frequent. To avoid the cliché cited by Shakespeare, where the audience is treated to the visual equivalence of "over acting" with light and shadow, visual treatment may need to be reined back, to more sensibly or more subtly match into the layers of dynamic range in light or exposure. Based on the men- toring of cinematographer associates to me over many years, I think most would agree that extreme highlights do not have to mean extreme colors (after all, we typically didn't or couldn't get that in film), nor mean an out of control nor out of context color palate. Textures can be muted or rich, they just have to be justi- fied, not overwhelming unless central to the moment, and most likely, layered in color and tone. If you think bringing up William Shakespeare's writings of about 1601, in context to today's latest technologies for delivering high dynamic range is a stretch, think again. There is a technology company actively involved in those latest developments that was founded in the late 1600's. As a concluding thought, older wisdom suggested keeping images looking natural so the audience believes what they are looking at. With today's technologies, cameras can see into the dark, and create images that can appear to be over saturated to unnatural extent. What may matter the most is that the audience continues to believe what they are looking at, provided there is enough reason presented to make that famous "suspension of disbelief" that elevated still photography back in the days of the Nickelodeon hand cranked viewers to the many art forms motion picture photography can take today. 4K HDR AND DIGITAL GARDEN BUILDS 8K HDR DIT SYSTEM AROUND BLACKMAGIC DESIGN FREMONT, CA — A number of Blackmagic Design (www.blackmagicdesign.com) products, including multiple Teranex Expresses, Teranex Minis and ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, were used by Tokyo's Digital Garden to create a new 8K HDR video. This video, created for one of Digital Garden's global technology clients, contains many high speed shots, and was acquired using three 4K cameras. The footage was then stitched into a single 8K, 7680 x 2160 video. On set, Digital Garden needed to monitor in HDR 4K60P and mix camera output in real time to handle instant stitching. To complete this, Digital Garden built a DIT system around a number of Blackmagic products, which included a variety of Teranex products for conver- sions, HyperDeck Mini 12G for recording, ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K switchers, Smart Videohub 20x20 and Videohub Smart Control for routing and Ultra Studio 4K for capture and playback. Davinci Resolve was also used for on-set HDR color correction. The production took three days, including test shoot- ing, so the challenge was how to carry it out effectively. The products that were chosen to be at the core of the DIT system were Blackmagic's Videohub router and ATEM 2M/E Broadcast Studio 4K video switcher. "As shooting involved three cameras that sat next to each other, it caused parallax problems. To control dis- tortion from parallax, we had to carefully monitor HDR range, focusing and the quality of the stitching, which is why we built the DIT system," says Shinichi Futagami, lead technical manager at Digital Garden. Each camera's 1080 60P output was sent to a Smart Videohub and was then up-converted to 4K60P via three Teranex Express. The up-converted image was then sent to the ATEM 2M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, which was used for monitoring in HDR 4K60P. The video from the cameras was then composited into one video temporarily to check stitched images on set. The stitched video was then output to two consumer 4K TVs for the client to monitor, and a 4K master monitor for HDR monitoring. To send the feed to these monitors, two Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI 12G and a Teranex Mini SDI to Quad 12G were used. The HyperDeck Studio 12G was also used to record the stitched image so that they could show it anytime to clients when requested on -set. "To get the most of the beautiful HDR image, we needed to use a full range of what the camera can cap- ture," continues Futagami. "Having a colorist on-set and decide the tone for this project as close as to final grade, we could do more accurate exposure control, throw- ing unwanted black and getting the most of details in highlight. So we graded on-set with DaVinci Resolve to carefully check how the tone of the picture should be." The camera outputs from the Videohub were cap- tured on-set for use in post production in conjunction with three UltraStudio 4Ks to capture QuickTime files. The captured QuickTime files could then be accessed through a network. The footage was composited with VFX software for rough stitching for post processing and then edited offline, which was all done on -set. The final piece had to be in HDR, and Digital Garden used DaVinci Resolve for HDR grading. "The color management feature in Resolve allowed us to simplify the HDR workflow," added Futagami. "I also found that Resolve could handle the RAW footage from the camera used for this project very neutrally, bringing the beautiful and correct color to the shots."