I think this post ended up a bit like one of those two page spreads in HARPERS where they show a gizmo or item and then various paragraphs are branched off with arrows to discuss technical, social and economic implications. Only this is much longer... It's mostly dry, and also unfinished... okay you were warned.
Last weekend, I saw a 35mm spherical (that means not anamorphic) lens projection of a feature film named ADVENTURELAND lensed aka shot in 35mm and finished in the following manner....
Production Format: 35mm.
Camera: Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL
Lenses: 17.5:75 Primo Zoom; 24:275 Primo zoom, and Primo Primes.
Film Stock: Fuji 35 mm (Fuji Eterna 250D 8563, Eterna 500T 8573)
Editing System: Avid Media Composer version 11.2.7 at Post Factory.
Color Correction: Scanned by Postworks on a Spirit 4K and a Northlight 2 scanner, conformed on an Quantel iQ, color-corrected for D Cinema and film-out on a Pandora Pogle by colorist John Crowley and recorded on ARRILaser film recorders. In addition to opticals and effects done in iQ. VFX were done by Ben Murray at Postworks in 2K on an Avid Symphony DS/Nitris.
I screened the film once in 35mm (1:1.85 aspect ratio) and then again with "4k digital projection" two days later, and was struck by the difference in quality -but mostly distressed that the film-projected version had close up shots that seemed to suffer a loss in quality beyond what I was used to seeing in a theater, so the comparison seemed almost unfair - a great digital version vs a substandard film version - an unfair fight but a fight nonetheless with a clear winner and loser who may be soon asked to retire for good.
Where is the blame, and what does this all mean in big-picture terms? Let's dig and see if we can learn a thing or two. Please feel free to correct me if I make mistakes but I think I can shed at least some light on all of this, if not draw a firm conclusion if we take all this apart step by step.
Camera: Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL
Lenses: 17.5:75 Primo Zoom; 24:275 Primo zoom, and Primo Primes.
This tells us they shot the movie on film, in the traditional manner using top flight film cameras and lenses, which happen to be made in the USA - Panavision is the dominant camera rental company that arose from the ashes in the 1950s and 1960s, when studios sold their assets such as their entire camera departments into private hands.
Primo lenses are rated at T1.9, which is quite "fast," ie, good in low light, and partially based on the designs originated for the Leica 35mm still cameras. Emphasis was on optimum definition and close "matching," both color and contrast but also with many of the ergonomic and physical properties of the lens sets as close as possible across a wide focal length range. In other words, they are great, and a 21mm Primo has the same front element size, markings, etc and takes a very similar picture color-wise and contrast-wise as an 85mm Primo. They produce nice "bokeh," or fuzzy circles in out of focus highlights - look for the tell-tale soft christmas light effects in the background of big close ups in romantic scenes... in anamorphic movies these circles are oval shaped, since the image is squeezed.
Panavision is developing digital cinema cameras, most notably in conjunction with Sony, which debuted for all practical purposes with George Lucas' second round of Star Wars films. They looked bad, and old George had to do some reshoots when a zoom lens got mis-alligned in Tunisia. They are getting better tho and the upside is that they do good work now and have been picked by top directors in a few selected projects that audiences didn't reject. In other words,commercially, they make the grade. Aesthetically and as a workflow solution the jury is still out, as it is with all digital cinema cameras still. Some like it, most reject it in aggregate for studio feature ilm production. The downside for Panavision is that they partnered with Sony, who stuck with tape as a recording medium too long, in many people's opinion. It took them much longer to start recording to hard drives and flash type solid state media and in the interim other systems gained ground in market share and reputation.
The good news is that Panavison started as a lens company and they may well stay in business as one. They still enjoy worldwide industry standard standing, and are responding as well as can be expected for the juggernaut that they are. They also have a different business model than most other camera systems, in that they are rental only. "Everyone" loves their lenses and if the box they fit upon has to change from from to digital they are still in the game.
ADVENTURELAND was shot with film cameras, industry benchmark and all, however so why are we worried about their toy cameras? Panavision's digital arm is not yet the tail that wags the dog by a long shot -but the future is coming, and one system has yet to dominate the market and competition is fierce. Iif history is any guide, this could be a winner-takes-all ball game. So Panavision's future could conceivably rest on whether or not the digital cameras they develop are good, or deemed second-rate by reputation. Marketing alone is a factor in consensus opinion as well since most don't understand the technical details and aesthetics are subjective. A lot may be riding on this and scrutiny is high. Again however the jury is still out.
The competition for a digital capture camera that can knock film clearly off the pedestal includes products in rapid development and continual upgrade from Panasonic, Dalsa, Arriflex and even spunky garage startups like the Red One - but that's a separate discussion. Suffice to say they are on their toes about all this stuff and a day of reckoning is coming. Rumor has it that this year all the television pilots except three will be shot with digital cameras. Flagship broadcast shows like ER and 24 have switched to the Red One camera system. "The future looks so bright we gotta wear shades." Yikes.
Film Stock: Fuji 35 mm (Fuji Eterna 250D 8563, Eterna 500T 8573)
Fuji film stock is one of two companies left manufacturing 35mm film in any decent quantities. Agfa, the third giant fell by the wayside in 2005 when they stopped making film. Kodak of course is the other remaining film maker. It's not clear yet how long these two giants will remain in the celluloid business. Both see the writing on the wall and have for some time, and are trying frantically to develop sidelines such as printers and digital cameras, optics, etc. The fact that they are going to lose a giant part of their business, making release prints for movie theaters and film for amateur and pro still camera in the next two to five years has to be hurting them, big time. It's unsure how the breakdown will occur but the end may be nigh. Sadly, their products are at an all time technical high - the film looks better than ever.
Film is still the hands down number one means of capturing images in the studio feature film world, but indie production has swung heavily towards digital (16mm as a means for shooting feature films has lost out heavily to digital, even though the quality is often much less), as has many many forms of photography that once relied solely on film: print/advertising/fashion/news/sports/live event television, mediums which heavily favored a digital environment already, since you don't need to look at a magazine or TV screen with 350 of your friends and neighbors sitting next to you.. As mentioned above, this year television's pilot season will go almost 100% digital, partially as a result of the SAG union's situation with the producers. AFTRA, the competing actor union signed a deal while SAG is still holding out. As I understand it, AFTRA agreements were originally hammered out back in the sitcom and variety days when shows were shot on video with a three camera stage setup, but somehow this has bled over into contactual points that make it beneficial to say a show is still video when it is shot with digital cinema cameras as opposed to film. Go figure. The WGA strike alone cost a reputed 3 billion in lost revenue in the Los Angeles area alone. SAG has yet to come to an agreement, and actors are working without a contract in place currently. All this means the winds of change are in the air and none of it is in film's favor at the moment. Film has only one small thing going for it currently, quality as a capture medium in motion picture imaging and the proven workflow that is firmly established in the industry. (it used to be everything, now it only retains the top of the pyramid... what's holding it up, one has to wonder.) And it remains to be seen how long that can last, given that it all rests on two companies whose former major/founding divisions are in deep shit financially, Fuji and Kodak.
Editing System: Avid Media Composer version 11.2.7 at Post Factory.
Editing of feature films is now almost all done on computers, which also means film "rushes" or "dailies" are no longer printed to film for review by the director and cinematographer, etc. Advances in lab tech and financial and time pressures have forced movie producers into workflows where the original negative is scanned into a digital medium and often never handled again, except of course in the case of a straight photochemical finish of a release print. Nowadays however many films, like ADVENTURELAND opt for a "Digital Intermediate" stage where all the color correction and fine tuning of shot matching (making the individual shots within a given scene match, lighting and contrast wise) is done in a digital studio as the orignal camera negative film is scanned at a high resolution. This was done originally as a visual effects step for special shots only but O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU (2000) began the trend of making an entire movie a "film-out" from a digital source. Upside to movie makers: incredible control over the color palette and overall look of a film, akin to what can be done with television commercials and the like that didn't have to worry about reproducing on a film projector what could be done by scanning a negative. Downside to Kodak and Fuji: no more sales of workprint, mag stock, optical work stock and other editing expenses.
The AVID system is the pro standard but is being seriously challenged by Final Cut Pro, an Apple product that favored indie budgets at first, but now has fought its way up to a near 50% market share for non linear editing system work. These systems have all but replaced the Steenbeck and Moviola, mechanical machines editors used for decades to cut film on film.
Color Correction: Scanned by Postworks on a Spirit 4K and a Northlight 2 scanner, conformed on an Quantel iQ, color-corrected for D Cinema and film-out on a Pandora Pogle by colorist John Crowley and recorded on ARRILaser film recorders.
Deep breath: re scanning. The original camera negative is run through a machine without a pull-down mechanism, very carefully so as to not damage it. A Zenon light bulb shines through the film neg and prisms separate the colors into red, blue and green which is then recorded onto a separate sensor - this is the moment we go from analog to digital world, the old to the new, chemical to electronic, alchemy to science, magic to ones and zeros. 4K refers to the amount of pixels in the array, and this is up by a factor of four from the previous standard of 2K, which is approximately where High Definition television is currently operating. The Northlight scanner is new, and operates at 8K currently for the purposes of oversampling, which makes for better quality when the material is manipulated at 4K resolution for a 4K output. This means the Northlight is capable of making 8K sized files but was only used on selected scenes and then only for the purpose of creating 4K files. Possibly this was used for a few VFX shots.. we don't know.
good news: Kodak owns part of the Spirit machines
bad news: Northlight may take over, and Spirits already have competition from Arri, originally a german camera company but now a multi-division entity that currently owns the lions share of digital-back-to-fim market with their Arri laser film recorders. Spirit was developed by Grass Valley, which has changed hands recently, from a California startup to ownership by a German investment group.
re: conforming
Quantel iQ = fast computer platform, something that gets the data where it needs to go in a hurry, using RAIDS which are redundantly backed up hard-drives, something the visual and graphics arts worlds are becoming quite familiar with. many new digital cinema methods leave the user with a so called "asset-less" entity, as in "where the f*ck is my movie?" It's only there as a string of ones and zeros on a hard drive someplace, and you can't lock it up like a negative in a vault and say you own it until so and so pays you for it. Instead, like an MP3 suddenly it's up for grabs, in theory to anyone who has networked access to it on the one hand, and available to no one potentially in the near future if whatever system it was created on ceases to be made or adapted from. Previously if you wanted to make a new print of say, THE GOLD RUSH by Charlie Chaplin the process wasn't that different from making a new print of STAR WARS. You strung up the negative and put some fresh film up against it, shining a light through both layers much like making a contact print in your college journalism photo 101 class.
"color-corrected for D Cinema and film-out on a Pandora Pogle by colorist John Crowley"
D cinema is the media on the format that gets sent to the theater - essentially a name for digital presentation. Film-out means the recording of the digital picture back to 35mm film, for use in the 35mm projector in a traditional theater. Most every DCP or "digital cinema print" is a finished 2K file, regardless of how much work was done at 4K. Go figure. SPIDERMAN 3 was finished and presented in 4K when it came out, rather famously but this was an exception. Most theaters that "went digital" did so with 2K projectors until recently.
A 4K digital projector like the one I watched ADVENTURELAND on cost the theater owner an insane amount of money; up to $150,000 and more to convert each screening room. Studios are making deals to help theater owners finance these changes but compare the cost yourself: A 35mm platter projector system can be had for $50,000 new and expect to remain in service for 30 years. Most computer based tech becomes obsolete in five years time. The AMC theater chain made a deal with Sony, who owns the tech and a movie studio to replace all it's movie projectors beginning this summer and finishing by 2012. The 4K projectors are already a couple of years old in tech terms, having been introduced this time in 2007.
Upside: if the tech got an better then 4K, you probably wouldn't be able to tell. The stuff looks incredible, flawless in most regards.
Downside: who know how heavily leveraged all these various corporations are, and how interdependent they have become in todays global economy? What if there is a break in the puzzle somewhere that starts a chain reaction?
film out = getting the digital picture back onto a roll of film to project, duh.
Pandora Pogle = a color correcting workstation that works with the Spirit, this one dating all the way back to O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU times and before.
John Crowley = color guru, worked on JUNE BUG and OLD JOY, 18 years in the business, an expert now at DI work.
"In addition to opticals and effects done in iQ. VFX were done by Ben Murray at Postworks in 2K on an Avid Symphony DS/Nitris."
Opticals include dissolves, fades to black and end credits, etc. VFX = visual effects, as opposed to "special effects," which are done mechanically and on set, like smoke machines and explosions. In the case of ADVENTURELAND, it's not immediately clear what visual effects would be needed but it could have been things line compositing moving roller coasters into the background of scenes like the one where the protagonist and the second female, the "hot girl" Lisa P. sit on a rooftop at night smoking a joint while a roller coaster runs in the background, or possibly adding fireworks to a closeup of the lead actress, etc. Nothing too spectacular, and it was done at the lower (used to be industry standard) rate of 2K, and "in-house" at the same facility where the Digital Intermediate, the main product, was produced.
Avid Symphony DS/Nitris = a breakout box that works to combine visual effects aka "CGI stuff" with the edited film. Runs on Windows XP, like the AVID does. Released in 1998, now on version 10.1.1
Now note carefully what we still don't know: what was the resolution of the film out? Was it 2K or 4K? ARRI laser has at least three generations of machines, only one of which is capable of a 4K film out recording. Given that these stats were most likely compiled by the sales and marketing guy at PostWorks NYC, it's doubtful it was 4K, but we don't know for certain.
Here's is what we do know: the 35mm print looked worse than the 4K projection, especially in the tight shots. This is distressing to me, since I have seen workprint of scenes lensed with Primo primes that look as good or possibly better than the digital, given that it is a subjective decision when it comes to color and contrast and the overall viewing experience. So somewhere along the chain, the film based process broke down. Possibly it was the record-out, if only done at 2K. Or it could be that the generational loss from camera neg to DI to film out introduced a problem that was cumulative somehow... I'm just guessing at this point. Or it could be that a DI of any resolution just isn't a contact print and will always introduce a bit of fuzz when trying to replicate a low light, portrait lensed wide aperture/shallow DoF shot. The DP could have "pushed the envelope" a bit too far and it is he that should be blamed. But I doubt it.
As I said earlier, there are no conclusions to be drawn and this post ends where it began. Please feel free to add your thoughts.
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