Saw this film last night - go see it immediately!
Absolutely immersive like no other recent film. Each shot is beautiful - it finds the little moments in life.
Unbelievable. This film will be remembered for many years to come.
In the world of cinematography - the artist is a scientist. How you decide on optics, physics, lighting, lenses - its a unique mixture between scientific research and scientific experimentation and artistry. The phantom hi speed camera was a medical camera.
It an all be overwhelming - the endless pursuit of knowledge in the field. Ever advancing and changing.
Are all scientists then in many ways artists as well? Do they share the same desires with their expressionism and challenges?
And are atheletes in may ways artists as well - the effort they go through for perfection - the art of dribbling a ball and passing it at the right time to a teammate.
Some more artists, some more scientists.
After NAB 2012 and Jonathan Yi’s camera tests- what has interested me more is the Ikonoskop Acam Dii from Sweeden.
And look at this clip shot with the camera -
Pretty damn beautiful. Those skin tones are so lovely. Even more so than Red footage. And the image is clean and sharp and it really does feel like Super 16 Kodak Vision2 footage. Perhaps this is the transition I want for a lot of my shooting - it would feel more in line with the stuff I filmed with the Sony EX1 with the letus ultimate 35mm adapters in terms of skin tone vs what I am getting with the Sony F3 with s log - I have to do a test shoot to see.
But the problem is that it only has they say about 10 stops of latitude and the ISO is 200 - so there is pretty much no detail in the shadows - which is fine -and it looks absolutely beautiful and like Super 16mm but the more and more I look - the more I see footage with blown-out skies - and perhaps that’s the most important thing I love about S log and C log on the Sony F3 and the Arri Alexa - the sky is so wonderful to have in tact in the shot. Also, its nice to know that people can wear white shirts without blowing out. Seeing blown out white shirts reminds me of the early days of shooting video in standard def. Pretty funny to see it again.
And the lower ISO makes it harder to deal with more difficult lighting situations where you can’t bring in more powerful lighting sources.
And now the Digital Bolex comes along - and it seems amazing -it’s the same sensor as the Ikonoskop but at about a 1/3 of the price. However, it’s not out yet. I won’t know how good it is- until I see it in my hands, I should not consider it.
But what I like about it already, is that the creator, Joe, personally just replied to an email I sent. I sent an email to Ikonoskop about 3 days ago - no reply. In the end, good customer service especially with a specialty product can be one of the most important factors.
And then of course Black Magic just released “the Magic Cam” - Black Magic Digital Cinema Camera. And this camera does not have the magic Kodak sensor.
Out of all the images - (and can we trust the Digital Bolex images - in that they are shot with what seems like a camera that’s not identical to the final camera) - the Ikonoskop images at this point look the best. I feel it’s because like the above link - it is shot and edited by artists and filmmakers who really care about the look. Is it possible to achieve the same results with the Magic Cam and the Digital Bolex - I would assume potentially - especially since in essence it’s a version of “raw.” If it is shot and graded in the right hands.
Anyway the point is, if we wait for the dust to settle, we have now a new way of recording incredible amount of color information - Cinema DNG - a standard created by Adobe that hopefully as more and more of these cameras adapt to it, new ways of taking in the information and being able to get it into Avid and Final Cut and Resolve and Premiere will be possible, especially since Final Cut may not survive for that many more years as a professional editing program.
It’s all very exciting - what will happen in the next five months.
And with that, the new external recorders from the NAB event - the AJA Ki Pro Quad and the Convergent Design Gemini Raw - ways to potentially get to this higher image quality from existing cameras - but at fractions of the file sizes.
I’ll post some test photos soon but getting back to a more “filmic” look that I have had before - by really crushing the blacks - this helps.
I think with Slog and the Arri Log C - you can get into trying hard to not make the blacks dark and rich and saturated - but in many ways this feels more filmic to me.
What is filmic anyway?
Anyway, also sharpening footage really helps. 35mm resolves very fine details.
Rant ends.
“The older I get, the more angles become more and more mysterious to me” -
I think Jean-Luc Godard said that or Michael Chapman said that quoting him and I find that as well - when to move the camera, when not to as well with cinematography in three dimensional space.
The complex coordination between lighting, composition, and movement. The holy trinity of the visuals of the film world.
I just experimented with adding Gorilla Grain to the TNT piece on my website.
One thing missing with shooting digital is the grain and texture you get with film. I mean there are other weaknesses of shooting digital - mainly skintones and how naturally something feels sharp. As well as latitude issues. Well the whole science of film vs digital is quite fascinating.
But anyway I find it quite interesting.
The film look is in our collective visual dna I feel - 24fps, the grain, the pattern of the flicker - all this is kind of dreamlike - perhaps like looking at a fire.
I’ll continue to experiment.
Spot I DP’ed recently.
Great job to director Brennan Stasiewicz and producer Veronica Balta and exec producer Ari Kuschnir and gaffer Jarrod K (Kloiber) and assistant camera Andrew McMullen and especially the gfx team and the colorist Adam Mclelland! Everyone all together helped me look really good and the spot is really fantastic. You really are the sum of your parts. Thanks again guys.
Perhaps nearly as important as the camera you choose to shoot your project with is the lens choice.
Just got back from Sundance Film Festival - and I have been inspired a million times over. Perhaps my favorite film was Alice Rohrwacher’s feature debut “Corpo Celeste.” 35mm film. Just simply beautiful. Reminded me of Truffaut’s “500 Blows.”
The festival has forced me back to the drawing board to think of what I can bring to each project I shoot.
The number one question I get asked.
A hard question. But before you spend all you have on it, remember you’ll need a tripod, some lighting, lenses, perhaps monitor and more and more including extra cards and batteries and a laptop and harddisk space. Don’t forget the lenses can be expensive!
And so make sure you have enough for all this and then that’s when we can look and see what kind of camera you should get.
And when it’s time to buy, don’t forget Mr. Ebay. There is a lot of great stuff on there for cheap.
