CANON D5 to 35mm test shoot - 27-APR 09 - 30 APR 09

CANON D5 to 35mm test shoot  - 27-APR 09 - 30 APR 09

I worked all this last week shooting tests in Los Angeles for an experienced feature film director with the Canon D5 Mk2 DSLR shooting HD video for transfer to 35mm film.  The director wants to shoot part or all of an upcoming indie feature using the camera, for various reasons, both economic and aesthetic.  Yesterday we saw the footage at a lab in Hollywood, and learned a lot about the advantages and disadvantages to using this camera for feature film production and long-length documentary where the final product is film.  The package is owned by a close friend, a director who has made many features, and it's been exciting to see the delight in his eyes when we look at the footage we are getting.  He understands CINEMA like Rodin understood bronze, and he is practically giggling like a schoolgirl every time we set up a shot with this extremely minimal package.  

some stills and video can be seen here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeandodge/sets/72157617523029177/show/

The DoP is J.C, from the EU,  who has shot dozens and dozens of international corporate ads, and plenty of indie features, European TV MOWs, etc and like me comes from a 35mm and 16mm film background but JC also has experience with other HD camera platforms, including the F900, aka the CineAlta, better known as "that thing they shot the new Star Wars with."  He has also shot cell phone commercials and other regional advertising spots already with the Canon D5 Mk2, but only with canon lenses in various auto-iris modes in 30p for broadcast in Europe.  

None of us are camcorder/DVX style film makers, but of course as professionals we've seen and worked with the DVX style equipment as mentors to students, or by having an EPK crew buttonhole us, etc. and occasionally shooting side projects of our own with hastily borrowed equipment.  Nor are we experts in Final Cut Pro, Avid, color correction suite work with Pango etc although once again we have all worked many times with this stuff in the capacity of director/DP/producer etc.  Sometimes I wish I had more experience with "video," but I've never liked it.  Digital cinematography however, is finally getting interesting.  

(More about our specific workflow below, but first I'll try to get to the good news/bad news first impressions stuff. ) 

The bottom line conclusions we reached are not surprising to those who have been following the tech blogs and user forums.  The camera makes nice pictures very easily but is not user-friendly for film makers hoping to finish on 35mm.  However, the low-light quality and easy form factor advantages  (plus minimal cost when compared to say, super 16mm or Red One production)  outweigh the temptation to completely write the thing off and wait for a professional version to emerge.  The camera is nearly fatally crippled by not having the ability to acquire media in 24p - it only shoots 30p and therefore prior to film out the footage must be compressed by some means into 24p.  This step lowers the quality - more on how and why and what to do about that later, or elsewhere - it just does, adding contrast and compromising color rendition, and remains the single most major hurdle to clear.  But what we learned  after our simple tests, in the screening room looking at film is that there is plenty of room to account for that crippling factor as is, and that additionally, by going to film many of the original HD related problems like aliasing and solarization are masked effectively enough for the jury.  

What am I saying?  I'm saying you can make a feature film with this camera and to a vast majority of viewers, even trained eyes it will look like it was shot on 35mm film if you do it right and are careful at each stage of the process, and don't mind standing on your head and reciting the greek alphabet backwards before starting to shoot each shot.  It won't be as good, and it won't win any awards probably either but you never know.  I'd give it a B-plus when I thought it was going to be a C-minus going in.  Hopefully that B-plus can be raised to an A minus soon, with advances on post workflow. 

Here's a bit about our workflow:

Camera

Canon D5 Mk2 DSLR

support / follow focus

Zacuto rods, baseplates follow focus, hand held grip

on board monitor

7" HD monitor  - 720 lines

lenses

Nikkor still camera lenses, manual focus Auto Indexed, circa 1968.  

20mm Nikkor Auto 1:3.5   No. 476940

24mm  Nikkor Auto 1:2.8  No.337571

28mm Nikkor  Auto 1:2  No.317324

35mm NIKKOR -N Auto 1:1.4 35mm Nippon Kogaku Japan No. 350150

50mm Nikkor Auto 1:1.2  No. 390746

85mm Nikkor Auto 1.1.4  No.  202947

105mm Nikkor Auto 1:1.2.5  No.  525188

135mm NIKKOR -Q Auto 1:2.8 135mm Nippon Kogaku Japan No.192131

180mm Nikkor Auto 1:2.8  No.  330918

filters

ND 3, ND 8

lighting package  (essentially none) 

daylight

household tungsten bulbs

christmas lights

mixed street lighting

car headlights

grip package

french flag

car window clamp with a tiny ball head

no bounce/ fill, etc

THE SHOOT

We pretty much shot what we saw, and went with the lighting we encountered in the real world as a baseline for what to transfer to film.  We only had a test budget to look at about 200 feet of film and decided on a philosophy of "let's see what it looks like straight out of the box, with no help along the way."  Helping us to make this decision was the fact that shortly after arriving from London on sunday night, the DP got a call for a paying gig he couldn't refuse - assignment in North Africa - Casablanca to be exact.  This moved up our original lab deadline by two days, and meant we had to shoot all of our tests on Day One, edit on Day Two and turn in the film by morning of Day Three.  Goodbye prep, so much for scouting, forget about the charts and MTF tables I brought.  Rev it up and Go.  

The bulk of the test shot was conducted in director's kitchen/ living room less than four paces from where the cardboard shipping containers were piled.  Both Josep and I arrived in Los Angeles less than 24 hours before shooting began.  I had read up on the Canon but never held one in my hands.  The airlines had lost Josep's luggage sunday night.  I had come in on Monday morning, which was my birthday, and stopped in for a quick beer at Che Jay on the beach in Dogtown as is my habit.  We were tired, we stank, and the gear was still covered in styrofoam peanuts and we'd had zero discussion about what would be best to film first, and how.  So naturally we started shooting right away.  

SCENE 101 DAY INT:  LIGHTING W PRACTICALS, BEAUTY SHOTS of ACTORS and MATCHING  

We shot a short dramatic scene in the kitchen with whomever was visiting the house at the moment.   Two young men talking, as one gets ready to cook some eggs.  Master shot, reverse shot, a crossing/ OTS shot then on to a couple of nice looking long lens close ups and a cutaway we didn't end up using.  The idea was to look at something with an unprejudiced eye that seemed like it was a piece of a movie, and to leave out all worries about what the tech involved.  Do we "buy it" as cinema or not?  

CONCLUSIONS

Here the results were obvious, once we screened the footage - many issues, but it looks "good enough to pass," and it can look a whole lot better if we continue to make progress with preparations and research, consultation, testing, etc.   Shot to shot matching, we can cut from take one of a close up to a reverse and then back to take two of a close up and the shots match, etc.  No one was 100% sure going in that even this simple part would work, so it was a great relief even to see the basics work out okay.  The camera can make a consistent look if you lock the shutter/ISO combo and control the iris manually.  (This is Chapter One of the "stand on your head and recite the greek alphabet" factor I mentioned earlier, as the camera has no manual controls and has to be tricked into shooting in a consistent fashion from shot to shot.)

So, yes, the footage matches, and the transfer seems fine as far as HD to film look is concerned.  Bad news is that the contrast added by going to film is not pleasing on top of the contrast that was added both by the camera's tendency to crush blacks and the added degradation inserted by the 24p-to-30p compression.  It looked like poorly processed negative  - greys went to black, no shadow detail in zones 1 and 2.  But we kind of knew that going in.  Hopefully, that can be dealt with soon as we experiment with different ways to get in and out of Final Cut Pro.  When playing back directly from the camera into a plasma HD screen thru the HDMI cable, it's much better, of course.  If the goal is to keep that look thru film out, we've got a long ways to go and may never get there.  But we have to get closer... and we should be able to.  This is just a first test for us.  

Our workflow with 30p-to-24p was good at all the motion stuff but not so good at the color rendition part.  This remains the biggest challenge.  Shooting 24p with this camera is going to be a dream of many...  it looks like with the right gear we can at least recover the crushed blacks prior to the 24p conversion, so that's half of that battle.  Keep praying for a firmware hack, film fans.  

SCENE 201 DAY FOR NIGHT, ALIASING and MOON LIGHT

Next, we drove out to a lake at sunset and shot some day-for-night shots of sunlight rippling across the water in a backlit east-facing-west setup, something that would affect the scheduling of the director's intended project.  It too looked good but there was aliasing (zebra stripes on what should be diagonal white lines, etc) visible on the handrail of a boat dock which we didn't like.  We were hoping to shoot the sunset shot as day-for-night and then eat dinner while it got fully dark and try some moonlit exteriors but sadly the phase of the moon was not anywhere near full.  Instead we ate Mexican food and played with the camera in the restaurant marveling at how well it shoots in typical lighting environments like this.  We rolled camera on some much gorgeous B-Roll everywhere we went that eventually we got tired of even reviewing it later.  Most of the time the camera makes great, great 30p HD video. (The challenges are elsewhere, and some are still unknown, like infared pollution issues and workflows in post, mostly relating to the crushed blacks and 30p-24p paths. more on that below)   

CONCLUSIONS

The day-for-night scene was a delight. The footage looked alright since it already had crushed blacks and the film grain smoothed out the aliasing on the handrail.  Encouraging.  Both the camera and the lens seems to have fairly smooth highlights that carried through all the compression stages just fine.  

SC 301   LOW LIGHT, BLACKS and extreme DoF issues - SHOOTING IN THE DARK

Having dumped the moon we headed to an edit bay to try some workflows we'd researched regarding changing 30p to 24, in preparation for transfer to film.   Along the way I shot a few shots in the car of the director lit only by the tail lights of passing cars, at 3200 ISO using the 50mm at f 1.2 - aka "WFO" - the lowest possible light level where the camera records an image with the fastest lens in the kit. What's amazing about the Canon D5 is that it doesn't add "gain" to shots like this.  Blacks are black, and nothing is grainy or poor quality.  If there is enough light to expose an image, the image looks good.  In this case we were picking the worst of the worst - red tungsten lighting that probably metered two stops under even the level we were shooting at, in a moving car, handheld with a lens at a focal length you wouldn't want to shoot handheld with in 35mm.  (I wish I had tried the same shot with the f 1.4 85mm, without the support rods and FF - I think I could pull it off.  The camera handles better in some situations without the HH &FF support, just as an SLR is easier to take on a roller coaster than an Arri SR would be.  

CONCLUSIONS

In 30p HD video, the shot begins with focus on the leading car, a huge semi with a lot of puppy lights and then pans while it racks to the side de of the passenger's face.  When the camera got to the passenger, I was still fishing for the proper focus - shooting without focus marks and operating myself - and so there was a moment when the only thing visible in frame was a blurred face-skip.  The camera did some very digital looking things as it struggled to make sense of the shot, but soon righted the look when it had sharp focus on the face.  This was a noticeable video artifact and seemingly rendered the shot unusable, interesting as it was.  30p to 24p conversions actually smoothed some of this out, but it was still an obvious digital shot.  

But, low and behold, the film grain smoothed out the 10-12 problem frames and made it look more like a varite' shot would look...  just a slow operator bringing a shot into focus.  As troublesome as the crushed blacks are in the D5 Mk2, they worked in our favor here again.  The shot looked like something out of Alien 3 instead.  Blacks STAY black in the camera and there was almost no gain visible.  The process passed with flying colors on this one...

Maybe not THIS extreme, but at the extreme low light end of shooting this camera is the world class leader at the moment.  This camera does things no other camera can do, period when it comes to low light cinema look shooting.  Amazing stuff and to really take advantage of this camera one would set the story entirely in a coal mine or some such...  Again, I think that there will be six feature docs at sundance next january that shoot using this camera.  

I'd hate to be a festival programmer in 2010.  There are going to be a lot of fairly good-looking films made by inexperienced storytellers.  

POST PRODUCTION, TAKE ONE

Hoping to save time, we had actually stopped by a college where the director moonlights as a lecturer on the way back from our dusk-day-for-night shot at the lake.   Unfortunately the school's equipment wasn't really up to snuff and so we had to wait until the morning to try the 30p-to-24p workflow we had researched.  We were hoping to use "Color" a part of Final Cut Pro to try to recover the crushed blacks everyone is struggling with, and still have time to shoot some additional tests in the morning before turning in media to the lab.  

scene 401  PANNING, DAY INTERIOR, SCREEN DOOR EFFECT AND DYNAMIC EXPOSURE CHANGES IN COLOR CORRECTION STAGE

In the morning we did a few day interior shots at noonish light to test both dynamic color correction and panning issues.  Just very slow panning shots of the living room facing large french doors with a 35mm f2.0lens, with the camera's ISO/shutter combination feature deliberately unlocked.  (For the test, this 35mm was our wide prime, since the wider ones were still in the shop for CLA and some milling related to rear area clearance issues. See below for more about wide lenses.)   The scene is static, a 90 degree pan of the room that is dark but backlit from bright ambient outside the wall of glass french doors.  The old f2-f22 split shot, a classic case of horrible lighting. 

We were looking for "judder" issues, instances where we have seen and heard that the compression of the camera causes a panning image to stutter and jump somewhat.  If you don't see the "judder" on the monitor as you are shooting, it doesn't seem to be there in playback... but this is not the end of this line of testing.  But FWIW, it looked okay in that department. Instead, what we found in our intentionally under lit and still harshly backlit-from blown out windows pan shot was that the camera doesn't like dull walls and neutral areas of the frame, especially underlit areas.  This is where the camera's native codec decides to hide all the compression.  Here we found solarization, and also the dreaded "Screen Door" effect in evidence.  Large blank areas take on the form of a slowly moving, dancing/floaty paint-by-numbers painting - that's what I mean by solarization.  (And by "dancing/floaty" I don't mean jello-cam - another issue altogether not a factor here) Screen Door effect has to do with the Bayer pattern of the CMOS sensor, and it's not pretty when it arrives.  It looks like hundreds of vertical bars of rust colored shit that doesn't move with the image.  Imagine you were looking thru the camera and the ground glass was streaked with rust drippings....  yuk.  It looks like gain, grain and a pain.  This was some of the worst footage we saw going in to color correction - it was rated unusable by the director, the DP, the editor and myself.   We did less than one hour of color correction in a full service suite and spent maybe ten minutes creating a moving dynamic change to cover the exposure change the camera performed when we finally panned off all the french windows and were shooting the interior wall.  The colorist also did what he could to hide the screen door effect by  applying some selective color filtration, similar to notching out a high pitched whine in a sound track.  

CONCLUSIONS

Interestingly enough, after going out to film both the screen door and the solarization were effectively masked by the film grain.  The shot was still an ugly shot, but it had a lot less problems that made it look digital.  Instead, it looked like a bad film shot, which was a great victory.  The dynamic (means it happens in shot) exposure change worked well, too and wasn't as noticeable as an iris pull would have been.  The Canon D5 is incapable of changing shutter speed manually, which is how one would correct a shot like this with a Panaflex camera if re-lighting was not possible for whatever reason. It does however have an auto function for doing exactly this, and if you disable the camera's ability to auto iris, it does the riding of exposure by changing a combination of both ISO and shutter speed, with obvious shifts visible in shot.  

WIDE LENSES  :  a note about wide lenses, older nikons and cinema

The widest we had at the time, since our 20mm, 24mm and 28mm Nikkors turned out to have a rear element protecting flange that needed to be milled off in order to clear not the mirror, but a small part of the internal housing surrounding the mirror.  These flanges also protect against stray light bouncing across the rear element in nikon bodies so we'll have to test those thoroughly when we get them back from the shop.  It's likely that these wider lenses of this generation of Nikkors will have issues when used for cine - they are not as good as the newer rectilinear lenses at correcting for barrel distortion, and limit your ability to pan without drawing attention to the flaw.  As still lenses, they are fine and can hide this effect, but as cine they are definitely sub-par.  We may end up shooting "twisted" canon glass at the wide end of our package, or possibly Leicas.  The testing continues....  

SCENE 501 POGO CAM, SHUTTER RATE and DAY EXTERIOR

Day two was set for  a meeting with the lab, some basic editing of clips, and getting the 30p material into 24p somehow.  While the director made breakfast and the DoP changed his flight back to London, I put the body only onto a still camera tripod, raised the post and spread the shortened legs slightly and made an impromptu "pogo cam" just to see what the weight was like.  I know people are using steadycam junior and other gimble-only stabilization gizmos with this camera and wanted to give it a try.  I'm curious if the weight could be kept to a minimum and still achieve wireless follow focus capability, so you could shoot without a spring-arm but still have the full focus capability.  But time was short as we were off to the lab right after breakfast.  

Feeling brave, and only having one victim handy I put a 50mm lens up to see if I could keep a moving actor in a pleasing single MCU on a shot that began on the upstairs deck and when down the staircase to the street.  Tough enough shot for even an experienced crew, but a simple test would tell me what I wanted to know.  I did one take, with predictable results but was at least able to wing it somewhat.  I had hoped to be able to rig the Zacuto monitor magic arm to the bottom of my monopod to use as both a counterweight and a monitor, making an impromptu sled but didn't have a standard "magic arm" handy.  Zacuto's arm is sized for support rods, not 58' baby spuds.  I figured that with a mafer and a baby spud I could have rigged a monopod into a facsimile steadycam sled easily.  For a gimbel one simply uses your hand.  Instead had to just set the frame with the camera's  on-board screen at the start of the shot and try to eyeball it by feel and experience instead.  For exposure I deliberately let the camera overcrank the shutter - it was probably around 1/100th a sec or 125th a sec from the looks of it later, maybe even 160th.  My actor walked towards camera and we kept a five foot interval as I descended the stairs forward, shooting essentially behind my back as a steadycam operator would - half turned at the waist but feet oriented forward for safety on the steps.   Once on the street level, I let him pass in profile as I bananna'd out to allow the old " cowboy walks off into the sunset" ending.   It was a one take wonder - as in, I wonder why we only did one take.... but again I was just playing around, and we had to leave for editing immediately after.  It proves the point to me that you can shoot with the rig without a spring arm if you want to get the right rig and rehearse it at least once before you shoot!  In hindsight I didn't do so bad, once I got halfway down the steps - keeping the actor in frame and not giving "max headroom."   I wanted to try a second take but there was no time, because right after that we all ran to the lab for a preliminary meeting.  In the car, we were talking about steadycam systems and such and so I showed the little clip I had just done to the DP and director as a way to illustrate an example, making apologies and excuses all the while for the shoddy test shot.  Imagine my horror when the DP and director both said - put that shot into the test folder!   In reality, it served as our day exterior shot and also as a test to see what the 30p to 24p would do with fast shutter speeds.  The steadycam part was superfluous, but now I knew I had to see it 40 feet tall at the Lab along with assorted producers, colorists and the like.  But we were in a hurry and under the gun to get some material to the lab, so c'est la guerre.   

CONCLUSIONS

Again, the film smoothed out some of the digital-ness but certainly not so much that it didn't look like Saving Private Ryan. My pogo cam skills looked good enough for the civilians to assume we knew what we were doing... so I didn't have to hide under the seat.  This camera will "fly'" but it remains to be seem what the best rig will be.  I'm hoping to do some more tests sans spring arm soon.  Of course the vest-and-arm gives you a lot more rest and stability, but like with so many other things this camera is showing us, less is often more.  Odd rigs like the ones that resemble steering wheels, etc need to be tested as well.  

more on the FOCUS ISSUES

I'd been shooting at f2.8 for most everything we tested, since that's what we like in film usually but the camera's full frame sensor is larger than a super 35mm negative.  Actually an f4 and maybe even a 4-5.6 split seems to be giving us the look we are used to in cine at f2.8.  That's good news for the focus puller.  The nikkors are a pain in the arse to pull focus on.  I think we'll end up with a set of focus rings calibrated one for each lens and trust those instead of trying to look at witness marks atop the camera.  Of course still camera lenses have witness marks on top, while cine lenses have the marks at 3 o'clock where the focus puller can see them easily.  

This is a huge area where camera prep has to be explored, refined and tested. Our 48hr scramble barely scratched the surface of this.  Shooting with Nikkors is not like shooting with Primos... but it is somewhat like shooting with Zeiss super speeds - the ergonomics are less than ideal, but the results ought to be good enough in skilled hands.  Only time will tell.  

SCENE 601   - CAR SHOT HOLDING DOF

After the lab consult the director also wanted to do one last test, which was a couple of simple car shots holding two actors in focus that would give us an idea of what deep focus looks like, and also a sense of the motion blur in a moving car - something that always varies from camera system to camera system even in film, due to the different shutter angles you encounter with different cameras.   It seems the Canon D5 camera shoots two frame rates we film makers can deal with - one is 1/50th of a second at 30p, and the other, more common is 1/30 a sec at 30p, which the camera defaults to at anything above 200 ISO.   Ideally, if it shot 1/60th at 30p that would give us a look of a 180 degree shutter,  but what we get, both 1/50th and 1/30 is not too much of a problem.  Motion blur is not excessively cheap looking in low light.  

In real world conditions either of those rates usually looks good, very much like we are used to seeing in film.  Again, we only had a 35mm lens to use, where a 20mm or a 24mm would probably have been better but what we shot looked good.  We did two "hostess tray" style shots looking across the actors from the window - one looking across the passenger and the other looking across the driver, each holding focus on both guys.  With the 35mm, we had to stop down all the way to f8 and the deep background was going to be in focus, not the desired effect for a shot like this.  

Just from playing with the thing in the car, we knew we were going to like the look but had some speculation regarding the overall look.  Video is notoriously easy to spot by the unwanted depth of field, where film almost always is employed in a manner to direct your eye towards only that which the director wants you to see - which will be what is best in focus, while the background is soft focus.  Here we had two compromises - one being not holding the f stop down, and two not having the exact shutter rate we thought would be best.  Would this be a situation where the camera was not right?  Inquiring minds need to know.  

We also threw in some tight checkered shirts and some silky scarves to check for Moire patterns or solarization that often appear with "problem" wardrobe.  

CONCLUSIONS

The good news is that when the car is moving, the action outside the window is blurred due to the speed of the car.  The camera is so light and small it's much easier to rig and less obstructive to place slightly outboard - no more, say, than an extended side view mirror.  This means for indie film productions we'll skip the process trailer and the hostess tray and the speedrail rigs and stick with small limpet mounts (suction cups) and magic arms, etc.  

The looks we get from shooting inside the car have all been great - you can drive at freeway speeds and it seems very natural. On film often 35mph looks like 65mph, esp hostess tray stuff (looking across profile on driver)  With this camera 40mph is 40mph, and 60 is 60.   If that's a good thing for dramatic scenes, maybe it's a loss for stunt driving scenes, but I don't  see that as a bad trade off, and there are ways to make it seem faster, I'd guess - long lenses, tight cuts, wide angles close to the tarmac, etc.  

Even the slightly slower shutter seemed to help mask the depth.  When the camera comes to a stop the background is sharp at f8 but it's likely you would cut around that by selecting another angle.  

On film it looked like it does in HD.  No worries there.    Also the wardrobe seemed fine.  In HD, we could see some solarization on the shadowed headrests behind the actors.  Film smoothed that out, but we made a note that these solarization issues come up in bland areas and are usually most visible in large blank spaces.  If I were to build a living room set, I'd choose wallpaper over paint...  

POST PRODUCTION, TAKE TWO

too tired to blog all this post tech stuff - not my area of expertise anyway - but the short version is this

On an apple computer running OSX,  with Final Cut Pro we edited down the clips and batch converted the footage from 30p to 24p and did not do any color correction in FCP.  We sued a method that uses cinetools, not compressor.  The conversion adds contrast and in addition, FCP is not getting all the color the camera is recording.  It looks like there are separate solutions in the works for both of those problems but we were not able to employ them in the time allotted, nor has anyone solved both color space and 30p-to-24p issues in combination.  

While the mac was rendering (slowly, it was old and borrowed) the director made cocktails for everyone and I used the camera in handheld mode to shoot some verite style footage in the kitchen with a 50mm lens and follow focus.  It's pretty easy to get cool stuff that way, and I had a blast shooting it.  Again, this camera wants to make documentaries.   I already prefer it over an Aaton super 16 in many ways.  

THE SCREENING

The lab is located on land that was once Gene Autrey's ranch - the first one, before he moved to Newhall next to William S. Hart.  The film building is now dwarfed by the adjoining digital building... but it was great to see a real live Kodak truck pull up to the loading dock and deliver pallets of 35mm film stock.  Our God's not dead, they say... but He was coughing up blood last night.  

As I mentioned above, there was a short and simple one hour color correction session done at the lab's digital suite prior to the film-out.  The files were then loaded into an Arri Laser recorder and burned onto Kodak Vision negative film stock.  The lab retains the negative for their files of test shots, but we took home the print in case we want to look at it again somewhere else.  I'm unsure what the negative emulsion numbers were, I need to check but the print stock is Kodak Vision 2383 Color Print Film, and we sat down to watch all 289 feet of it.  The colorist in the film lab gave it a one-light print treatment, and pulled some green out based on his own judgement.  

Then, the lights went dark, and the capitol pictures logo came up.... and we saw the first film out from the D5, as far as I know about anyway....  

It was so good we sat through it twice.  

Actually, the truth of the matter is that we pleased to see the process worked in any way, shape or form and most of it was not beautiful in any regard but neither was it shot that way. We shot to FIND problems and amplify them, in many regards.  We did learn something from each separate test.  Clearly the work that remains to be done has to be in the area of recovering the crushed blacks that are there in the camera - you can see them prior to bringing the footage into ANY non linear editing program.  Then, we need the best possible 30p to 24p conversion possible.  The motion part seems to be working, but the added contrast and resulting image degradation is the worst part.  

As for the rest, it seems like the problems are simply a new set of limitations that almost any system presents, and the advantages can easily outweigh the liabilities given the right project.  All cameras are a box with a hole in them, and all camera systems are a tool in a cinematographer's tool box.  CHoose the right tool for the job, use it well and you will like the results.  

BANNED by Jim! Hilarious...

So, dear readers I've just been banned from posting to RedUser.com by none other than the CEO Jim Jannard himself for either "excessive truthiness" or for touching a raw nerve somehow. Granted, it's his sandbox and he can do whatever he wants, so I'm neither shocked nor dismayed, just amused, and a bit surprised given his usual willingness to withstand criticism. The discussion revolved around two recent studio features CHE and KNOWING, that were both shot with his gizmo, the Red One camera. 

Look for the discussion to continue over at cinematography.com and for a longer explanation of what may be behind all this here in time, if I learn more. Right now I'm too busy daydreaming about how this might be a PR coup for my blog..... ha ha.

I was trying to be as kind and deferential as I could but the subject at hand was an important one - two big budget studio features had just been released, and both directors had chosen to shoot with a new and radical camera system that has a goal of emulating, and rivaling or bettering the imagery made by 35mm film.  Personally, I think his camera is on the verge of delivering the goods on that promise, and I say so often.  But it hasn't crossed the finish line just yet, and that's pretty much the consensus opinion across the industry at this point.   But I guess when it's your fortune on the line, you can get sensitive about such things.  

Here's the thread or at least a link to the end of it, as currently displayed. I better get a screen shot just in case.

What won't be evident as the discussion continues is that he simply barred me from further posts, and didn't bother to announce that fact to others. Clever way to win an argument... or at least get the last word.  

DSMC cinema

There is a new generation of digital still cameras that are capable of shooting HD video, and in very low light. The artistic implications are that we're approaching the promise of cinema verite's "the truth 24 times a second" manifesto, or even Dziga Vertov's vision of the all-seeing Kino Eye. Or at least some decent looking home movies.

Check out all or some of this 7 min short, called
Nom Tèw by Pierre Deschamps that was shot on the canon 5dmk2.... mostly daylight under a dark green jungle canopy. It's got plenty of flaws, and the real action doesn't start until 2 minutes in - feel free to skip ahead, there isn't really any plot, but this is an excellent example of the type of image making that is possible now with DSLRs enabled with video, or as RED ONE calls them, DMSCs, (digital motion/still camera) even though they haven't got one on the market yet. Two people made this film, with no lights. The camera is small and less intimidating to people, many of whom will assume isn't even capable of shooting video.

Tragically, this Canon won't shoot 24p, only 30p HD which means you wouldn't want to make a film-out from it but this sort of thing is certainly pointing the way for the future - very small, very non-intimidating cameras capturing life in natural light with great results in the right hands. Documentary film making just got a rocket-assist, I think and we're all in for some cool films by this time next year as people figure out the ways to use these things.

I found this NOM TEW video through a mention in an interview with the DP of the TV thriller show "24," who mentioned this forum in regards to his his lusting for the sort of small-footprint documentary image-making people are starting to do with the Canon D5 mk2. If you are interested in more of this sort of moving image-making, check out the community site for Canon D5 film makers

Supposedly there are more great clips and shorts being submitted; but this was the first one that jumped out at me after a cursory look on the site. It's more the possibility suggested than the specific example I am citing here... the original canon D5 short "Reverie" is a self-admitted faux perfume ad but it too blew a lot of minds last September when a NYC fashion photog got his hands on a prototype for 48 hours. This one really spotlights one of the camera's true strengths, it's low light capability - this is all shot with tiny lights and a crew of three.

Long technical post about digital cinema re: ADVENTURELAND

(editors note:)  Skip this post if you are not interested in reading some ruminations that begin with the specific technical details of feature film post production. I'm using ADVENTURELAND's production and post as a jumping off point to examine the current state of cinema production and some of the implications, scientific, economic and social that can be discerned from this examination.  This post relates to earlier ones, especially regarding the comparison I made between a 35mm screening and a Digital 4K presentation I saw shortly thereafter.  

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.

The Night They Drove ol' Pixie Down

Tuesday, April the seventh, 2009....  a date that will live in infamy?

Last night I saw ADVENTURELAND presented in digital projection with a Sony 4K projector and I witnessed the end of cinema as we know it.  A few days earlier I had seen the film projected in 35mm in a different theater and commented on the slight fuzzy look of the film. Last night, in digital world, these problems vanished. It really does look better, and even a hardcore skeptic such as myself has to admit it. The theater manager explained that the feature "film," (can we even say that anymore?) arrives at the theater on a Tuesday, in a heavily padded hard case in the form of a hard drive... even though they used to get the film prints on a Thursday and have to rush to build up the reels for the Friday openings. Presumably this is so the film (there I go again) can be tested - actually it would be the hard drive that is being tested.... but they hook up the cables and push a button and bingo, perfect movie presentation on screen - it looked perfect from the front row, too.  It was akin to seeing a "cadillac answer print" at Skywalker's main screening facility.  And it will never scratch or fade, assuming the tech stuff stays current.  The old saying "the projectionist gets final cut" just went out to pasture.  (As did the union projectionist.) 

Granted, there are some big and wide ranging issues to consider, which I'll try to touch upon below, but we've past the "this digital will all blow over" point now as far as exhibition goes.  Quality wise, this is a done deal, folks. 4K digital projection looks better than 35mm film projection, and Elvis has left the building. Long live the king, the king is dead.

What does all this mean? Well, it's complicated. There are many ways to approach this elephant...

Let's examine the tech in a separate posting... but for now just assume I've babbled on for four pages about ones and zeros and circles of confusion and analog this and digital that....

So then there is the issue of what this means for Kodak and Fuji, to take yet another hit on their revenue stream with considerably less release prints to strike... don't forget we've already lost Agfa -they no longer make film, period.

And then there is the issue of how this might effect film distibution - one is tempted to say "now they can show anything, including my sister's wedding video or my next indie feature" but when the projectors cost 150k, isn't that more likely to make theater owners clamor for SPIDERMAN 6 and SUPERMAN 8, etc?

Also one has to consider what "cinema" is or was: is it sitting quietly for two hours watching a dream, or is it sitting in a dark room with strangers that makes it cinematic?  With celluloid in the booth, you have to consider the fact that the shutter is closed for half the length of the film - we're in the dark, really although we don't register it with our eyes.  With 24p digital, we're back to "staring at a light bulb," as I sometimes call TV.  Lots to discuss here.  

But to wrap up this post, I'll return to my pet peeve - I just saw my horse in this race, 35mm film, get left in the dust by the rookie on the track, digital. And this was clearly a film that had enough of a budget to tell the story with - I swear there were two dozen electricians on this film, plus carpenters, greensmen, etc... The producers paid for quality work, both on set and in post and some portion of the process didn't deliver. The close ups as projected in 35mm were substandard... period.

Look at this production still of the lead actress to illustrate some of what I am talking about.

When I saw ADVENTURELAND in 35mm, it looked to me to be slightly worse than the resolution of this compressed production still, minus the "noise" in the shadow areas and obviously compressed highlights that are blown out. Pay attention to the lower eyelashes, which are slightly soft and don't show the contrast they could, or did when I viewed the asme scene in 4K digital projection. Granted, there are a couple of KEY close-up takes on Kristen Stewart that are soft because the focus puller missed his mark - these are not the shots I am referring to. I'm talking about the ones they got right.

What does all this mean? It means it costs a lot of money, and yet I didn't see the fruits of all that labor fully, or as well as I should have, until I saw it projected in 4D. To my eye, the film could have been given a straight photochemical finish and been presented in 35mm for what would have likely been a fraction of the post-pridcution cost, and when the big close up came in the (film-based) theater, I would have seen good detail on the actress' eyelashes instead of something milky and fuzzy. Instead I had to watch it go from film to digital to screen, in 4K to see what the film makers should have seen in work-printed dailies, if anyone still did that, so basically it's an issue of generational loss, or quality control, I'm not sure which..

More about all this soon.  This stuff really has me pondering the future. 

AMC goes digital with Sony 4K projectors

The beginning of the end of cinema as we knew it....

AMC cinema chain announced they are going to get rid of the 35mm projectors and go to all 4K Sony digital projectors...

Others will surely follow. I wonder what this will do to the price of a used 35mm projector? (Tim League at the Alamo drafthouse better sell his quick....)

Tonight I will see ADVENTURELAND on 4K projection, having just watched it in 35mm two nights ago. Expect a full report soon.

relevant details include:

"With 309 theatres and 4,628 screens, AMC will be the largest entertainment company equipped with 4K digital technology in North America."

"The AMC roll-out of Sony digital projection systems is planned to begin in the second calendar quarter of 2009 and continue across AMC's North American theatre circuit through 2012. Currently, AMC features Sony's digital projection systems in 11 theatres on 150 screens throughout the circuit; 29 of the current Sony-equipped screens feature 3D capabilities, with additional 3D screens planned as the AMC roll-out continues."

Oh, and Sony has announced its movie division and camera/post equipment divisions are hard at work on the conversion, too.

"Looking beyond theatrical projection, Scarcella said the motion picture industry is now working with studios and cinematographers to produce and release 4K features. Sony Pictures Entertainment recently announced they will make and release most of their filmed productions using 4K technology. Sony is currently developing a complete line of digital 4K cinematography production equipment, including systems for 4K acquisition, storage and post-production."

This is not a good day for Kodak, I'd say.

nerdy guys get hot, if blurry, gurls

ADVENTURELAND is a fine film and Greg Mottola should be proud.  It's teen anguish coming-of-age dramedy that strikes a fine balance of pathos and humor, and maintains a wandering tone that befits the end of the Reagan era lost-in-the-supermarket feel, that somehow strikes a chord today as we slip into another recession after eight years of failed leadership. 

Again we have a film that admits there is a class structure to America.  College age 20-somethings are shown working minimum wage jobs out of necessity, in a suburb where parents are failing to maintain their middle class homes.  

A "coming of age dramedy" and a naturalistic look at white boy life circa 1987, the film tries to share focus with a girl and a guy, but is mostly about the guy - with a useless english lit degree and a demoted father who pulls the plug in his hopes of a summer in europe.  

 

However, I have two bones to pick with the film: the sound mix and the final stages applied to the cinematography.  I'm not sure what the budget was, but it had to be more than ten million just from a cursory look at the credits.   The film was finished using a "digital intermediate," which means the whole film was transferred to a computer for color timing and tinting, etc and then back to film for the release prints.  It may have been employed for some specific purpose, such as if the film was shot in winter to give a summer look to brown leaves on trees, or some such but the end effect was to make all the best close-ups seem fuzzy and lower in contrast than they might have been.  

And, the bigger sin is that great songs like Bastards Of Young by the Replacements are mixed so low as to be almost invisible in the soundtrack.  Someone needs to be led out back and shot for burying tunes like this- and the sad part is they aren't really even "buried in the mix," they are just played quietly while nothing else is going on...  

Obviously I'm biased - this film is right up my alley and could be the story of my life so I'm hyper critical, but I am curious what others thought about this film.  It sort of poses the question, if DAZED AND CONFUSED were released today, would it be a hit or a miss?