You're the only one at your party

There's an interesting phenomenon about movie-making that the general public is probably not aware of. The hand-wringing and heartache felt by the producers, directors, actors and other people involved in their film when no one sees their work. This is especially true for independents because of how hard it is to get distribution and get a movie out into the world.

Lets say that someone has made a short-film and they have a scheduled a screening at a local theater for their friends and family to see their latest masterpiece. The friends and family (unless they are immediate friends/family) are likely to perceive the whole affair as just going to see this "little" movie and have no concept of how many hours (likely several hundred hours or more for a short film) were put into the few minutes they are going to watch. Because of their lack of understanding of what goes into any movie, the significance of the screening for them is likely lost amongst their thoughts about what they're doing before or after they sit in their seat.

Too many times I've been a bystander viewing with horror a filmmaker who holds a public screening (sometimes where people actually have to [gasp] pay for their ticket) only to have a couple people show up to see their film. What went wrong?! Was the movie just not any good? That can't be the problem since no one has seen it yet, right? Most filmmakers spend so much of their time, energy, and thoughts on the actual making of the movie that they forget there's an even harder effort in front of them to market the movie.

The creme de la creme of festivals for most filmmakers in the US is Sundance. It opens next month in Park City, UT and I'm betting there's going to be more than one director or producer who's ready to cry when its over. Movies face overwhelming odds to even get into Sundance and there's always someone who assumes their entry guarantees them a capacity crowd to see their movie. Not only is this grossly naive, but the costs to attend festivals for the filmmakers is usually pretty high without them spending any money to market their movie at the festival. They usually don't get multiple shots at "getting it right" within their limited windows at each festival.

How or why would anyone want to attend a screening of their movie at a festival and be confronted with the horror of an empty theater? It takes significant effort to "get the word out" for any movie - whether at a festival, at a single engagement at an indie theater or a DVD party at some local venue. A very wise and experienced producer friend of mine once said to me, "no one is going to care about your movie more than you, and no one should be working harder to get people to see it than you."

I'm sad to say that I've recently seen a case in point of this very phenomenon for a director whom I would have thought would be treated with more respect by an actual distributor: Tom DiCillo. You may not recognize his name right away, but he wrote and directed one of my all-time favorite movies, "Living in Oblivion". His most recent film "Delirious" was distributed by Peace Arch Entertainment. I don't know exactly what went wrong here - his film premiered at Sundance 2007, garnered spectacular reviews, and seemed to be loved by most who saw it. It opened in New York and Los Angeles followed by short runs in several other cities (including Portland at Cinema 21), but only managed to gross a paltry $200,000. The whole distribution process and Tom's frustration with how it played out is documented on his blog at http://www.tomdicillo.com/blog. He was so frustrated that he e-mailed Roger Ebert to ask him his opinion of what went wrong. Ebert's kindly response was well thought out and details many things filmmakers should think about for their films.

In closing, the next time you're invited to attend a screening of someone's film, remember that it likely contains a piece of their heart and soul. Whether you decide to blow them off or make an appearance is obviously up to you. I would ask you though... for an event that might be as sentimentally important as a wedding, can you really afford to blow that off?!

A double-take for DoubleClick

I'm a pretty avid reader of all things news. Among the sites that I read on a regular basis are C|Net's news.com, CNN, Gizmodo, and Variety. There are many more that I check in on from time to time, but that's the cream of the crop for me. A blog post from Declan McCullagh caught my attention today.

From his prestigious post as a C|Net blogger he cried foul over this "Republican" (it was 12 out of 13 Republican committee members who signed it) drafted letter to their Subcommittee urging a more thorough review of the pending DoubleClick and Google merger. McCullagh poses the question of whether this is partisan retribution against Google because a lot of Google staffers are Democrats.

Whether this was a Democrat or Republican proposed idea, I say it's about time that the government got a little more involved in the investigation of these types of mega-mergers. I'm pretty sure that everyone has heard of Google, but not so many people know about DoubleClick or it's ad metric and tracking system. The entire idea of a search engine that records every search word ever entered and the unique tracking capability of a company like DoubleClick is frightening.

If the merger is approved and Google becomes one with DoubleClick, will you think twice about typing in your search at Google? You might know that Google records what you look for, and then they'll have the capability to combine that with other geographic and demographic information to more accurately identify you - or rather whoever uses your computer.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to hear Google's CEO Eric Schmidt speak to NAB attendees. He really impressed me as a thoughtful, extremely smart, and very articulate business leader. He's well aware of the simple fact that if Google were to piss off too many people, another search engine is just a mouse-click away for everyone. The question could be posed: Does anyone really know what search engine that they could or should use if Google's "do no harm" philosophy were to suddenly become "maximize all profits" and they began to use your private information in ways unthinkable today?

In the spirit of our effort with Toast (you have joined us at DrinkMePictures.com, right?) which is reliant on people joining and telling others about what we're doing - I'd like to encourage everyone to use this opportunity to call your Representative and let them know how you feel about the Google and Doubleclick merger. Don't know how you feel about it? Well Google it... oh wait... can you trust their results to give you the unbiased results you expect when it comes to information about them?

It should be noted that this very blog is hosted by Blogger.com which is a Google.com owned company. Right now, I think they are a good company, but it is a little scary to think of what they could be in 10 years. Our "democratic" voice will be heard by how we support them as a public company.

The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection is made up of the following Democratic members (as well as 13 other Republican members of Congress):

Bobby L. Rush, IL, Chairman
Jan Schakowsky, IL Vice Chair
G. K. Butterfield, NC
John Barrow, GA
Baron P Hill, IN
Edward J. Markey, MA
Rick Boucher, VA
Edolphus Towns, NY
Diana DeGette, CO
Charles A. Gonzalez, TX
Mike Ross, AR
Darlene Hooley, OR
Anthony D. Weiner, NY
Jim Matheson, UT
Charlie Melancon, LA
John D. Dingell, MI (Ex Officio)

The "N" Word is Making the Rounds

It happened so fast the other night when I went for a late-night omelette snack at the world famous Roxy cafe here in downtown Portland. There I was at almost 3am sitting at the counter waiting for my food amongst the zombie-fare of after-bar patrons all decked out in their Halloween garb. Behind me a group of four underage kids settled into their table when the noxiously intoxicated fellow sitting to my right took notice of their arrival.

I had been conjuring up a little smalltalk with this guy while I waited when he suddenly spins around and demands of one of the kids behind us, "what the hell are you staring at?" This quickly degenerated into him noticing and taking issue with one of them being black and also wearing a wig. As ridiculous as all this was, I couldn't believe my ears and the trash that was coming out of his mouth - in Portland, Oregon no less! He slung multiple bigoted insults, racial slurs, and threats at this poor kid until he finally stopped long enough and returned to the forward facing direction for me to ask him what he was thinking. His reply... "I just like to fight - and I'm really drunk." I should add that this guy was in his mid 20's and the kids were likely all under 18.

Moments later, one of the girls in the group of kids had a flash of brilliant thinking and brought this guy's behavior and ridiculous hate speech to the attention of Mikey - their waiter and patron saint. Without waivering for a moment, Mikey quickly replies to the guy next to me, "if you used any of those words, you're going to need leave here right now." Amazingly the guy didn't offer any further protests or insults and just walked out.

This incident was ironic to me because of the recent stupid racist comments by A&E's bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman. It is unbelievable that people are still this ignorant and biased today. What makes the story relevant to the world of film and employer/employee relationships everywhere is the great example Mikey provides of taking responsibility and having the self-confidence to act when necessary. The great part here is that I believe the Roxy's owner has given their staff the implicit charge to handle whatever may walk through the door. It's really fantastic to see it all work like it's supposed to.

Too often, companies remove all power from the people charged within their workforce to carry out their business and with the loss of power, employees respond by not taking ownership in their own work. How can anyone be expected to do their job if they're not given the respect and trust necessary for them to do the right thing without having to ask permission?

Hire great people, give them the most latitude possible while still requiring them to be accountable, and most of all - don't create policies that strip the power of decision and action from the skilled people you've entrusted to carry out your business. It seems like common sense, so why isn't this common any more?

Major props to Mikey for diffusing a bad situation and doing the right thing!

I'd love to hear your thoughts... comment or e-mail me.

It's happened - Red has shipped some cameras

When I returned from NAB, I wrote about the "Red One" camera and the SI-2K digital camera. Exactly 494 days from their original announcement of the "Red One" and "Mysterium" sensor, the folks at Red have shipped their first cameras to a few customers. The very first cameras shipped on August 31st, 2007. fxguide has some coverage of the haps with pictures. It is nothing short of astounding at how quickly Oakley's founder was able to engineer and produce a camera so remarkable in such a short period of time.

When any product is hyped as much as the Red camera, you never really know if it has any chance of living up to expectations. In order to meet their delivery date expectations, Red shipped the first cameras with only a portion of their final set of features enabled. Through free firmware updates over the coming months, they'll be able to bring the full list of features up to the specs they originally promised. The great thing about the company so far is that from outward appearances, they've been very transparent and forthcoming in dealing with their customers - even going so far as to ask for feedback about what features to keep in the camera.

So what are people saying about how the cameras perform? So far, a lot of people are practically falling over themselves to gush about how great the images are, and how fantastic the camera is. Score some points for the Red team. The only negatives I've seen relate to non-active features (such as no current functioning electronic viewfinder) and questions relating to overall dynamic range compared to Panavision's Genesis (which costs many times more - and is only available to RENT). Most of the good discussions are taking place on the Cinematographers Mailing List in the cml-2k-444 list (you need to be subscribed to read them).

It's probably a good time to point out that the workflow for a pure digital camera such as the Red One can be a pretty substantial departure from that of a video camera. The captured footage bears more of resemblance to the "RAW" mode stills of many digital SLR still cameras than the videotape of high-definition. Images have more color information and bits than can be displayed on any electronic display and so they have to be "adjusted" or managed using a Look-Up-Table (LUT) to be viewed properly. This is true both for what is seen on-set on monitors during production as well as before the footage can be used in post. It's very much like the telecine step for traditional film except it doesn't require a super-expensive suite of equipment to be transformed into something usable.

When a LUT is applied to footage, you are only seeing a representation of a selected set of the available information contained in the RAW image source. Much more akin to shooting on film, with RAW image acquisition, you have to be comfortable trusting in the expertise of the skilled technicians on set rather than the absolute certainty of knowing you're looking at what you're really getting. It can be freeing, but it also can be scary - depending on who's involved.

When digital cinematography started emerging with the first digital movie cameras, a new position was called for - the data wrangler / IT guy. Lots of productions are getting by without someone filling this role when shooting on a high-definition format such as HDCam. A Red One will be very difficult to operate without someone working on set to assist with the data/LUT management and display setup. The whole shoot could be severely compromised if the technician working to calibrate the displays and manage the data and LUTs doesn't have adequate experience.

With 50 cameras shipped from Red and in professional hands, they are still working through the bugs and enabling features as fast as they can. It's a good time here to talk about the lesser known SI-2K. Silicon Imaging's camera has been shipping since July '07. They continue to refine the workflow and interface for their camera and really have a great system.

Adding to their existing capabilities, SI announced at IBC that two of their SI-2k cameras can now be paired together to record stereo 3-D images. It's not clear what specific 3-D capabilities SI has instilled in their actual hardware or software. I can infer from their press release that their software will allow synchronized recording among multiple cameras, but do they have a mounting platform to physically put two SI-2k's with all the lenses and focus hardware in parallel - which would be required for 3-D?

The SI-2K and Red One continue to improve as they are bringing incredible capabilities into the hands of cash-strapped professionals. It's ironic that while these are superb tools at a price never imagine a decade ago, the complexity of working with them is increasing to that of tools costings many times more. To really push this new technology it's going to take a new breed of cinematographer who is willing to dig deeper into color management and digital issues than anything before.

The final question I've been wondering as a producer is what is a Red One or SI-2K going to cost in the near to medium timeframe? I've seen prices listed for a Red One for around $1k/day without lens. That would put a full usable camera package around $1,700 - $2,000/day. I'm expecting and hoping that as more cameras hit the market, the rental price drops to about half that. I have yet to see anyone renting an SI-2K - unfortunately. Does anyone reading this have access to one they'd want to rent? Comment or e-mail me...

The high cost of high-def discs

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Do consumers care? As important as this question may be - do the content creators really care? Without great content, no one is going to be compelled to buy into either format.

I've spent some time tracking down what it would take to actually author a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc, and was very surprised by how difficult (and expensive) it is. The first step is to take the high-definition video and have it encoded to a supported Blu-Ray or HD-DVD video and audio codec. Currently both formats support either MPEG-2, Windows Media VC-1, or H.264. That seems to be the easy part. Getting the encoded video into a flavor acceptable to the high-definition disc authoring software of your choice (whether for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) is an adventure in frustration. There are so many caveats and problems with the better codecs (VC-1 or H.264) and so few affordable authoring packages that you'll likely end up falling back to MPEG-2 which is not as efficient. The lower efficiency means reduced picture quality compared to VC-1 or H.264 at equivalent bit-rates. Many of the first studio-produced Blu-Ray titles were encoded in MPEG-2 because of the authoring/encoding difficulties involved.

Once you get through all of that hassle, it's time to actually burn a disc. If you are creating an HD-DVD it's going to be really difficult. There are NO HD-DVD burners on the market to allow you to burn a disc. This last January, Toshiba announced with much fanfare their model SD-H903A HD-DVD burning drive, but it has yet to see the light of day on a retail shelf. Is there a conspiracy by Hollywood studios who don't want consumers to get their hands on high-definition recordable devices? No. Blu-Ray BD-R burners are readily available and set-top Blu-Ray recorders are surely headed to US shores as early as next year [see below].

In the process of authoring a standard-definition DVD, it is usually necessary to produce at least one - if not several - "check discs" in order to test the physical disc in various consumer DVD players. Without the ability to burn HD-DVD-R check discs, you must physically replicate an HD-DVD just to test it.

Rebecca Masterson at Deluxe's DVD Authoring division in Burbank told me that they have simulation software they use to test titles, but in order to create a "check disc" they must do a limited replication run using their small "micro-plant". This process takes them approximately 24 hours in-house and can cost upwards of $3,000 PER DISC each time a check disc needs to be created. Compared to the ease and low-cost of using virtually ANY DVD-R burner to create a check-disc for a standard-definition DVD, this is a major barrier for everyone but the largest content creators (ie. studios).

Even though BD-R drives exist for Blu-Ray, that doesn't mean it's any easier testing Blu-Ray discs. Most set-top Blu-Ray players have their ability to play BD-R discs turned off. This is supposedly to prevent piracy, but it has the ugly side-effect of eliminating playback for legitimate discs that you might want to create. I'm told that the latest Playstation-3 firmware (v1.92) will now allow BD-R discs to be played in a PS-3.

Another hindrance for Blu-Ray is the lack of any professional authoring software. The only low-cost authoring software I'm aware of is the PC-only Ulead MovieFactory Plus and DVDit Pro HD by Sonic/Roxio ($499). There is also the new Vegas 8 from Sony Creative Software which will support some kind of direct Blu-Ray burning. None of these are what I would consider "professional". Beyond that, the lowest priced software is Sony's own Blu-Print which is a minimum of $50,000 per license or the industry-leading Sonic Scenarist which is around $100,000 per license.

Sony announced four new Blu-Ray recorders (available only in JAPAN initially) and it's certainly interesting to speculate why there still aren't any HD-DVD consumer recorders.

To sum up... it's difficult, expensive, and frustrating to try to author high-definition discs for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD at the moment.

Blu-Ray
Pros: BD-R burners are available today, set-top players are beginning to play BD-R discs.
Cons: Super expensive for true professional authoring software, VC-1 or H.264 encoded discs cannot be authored on low-cost software.

HD-DVD
Pros: Very good "professional" authoring is available in Apple's DVD Studio Pro.
Cons: ZERO HD-DVD burners available, difficult support for H.264 or VC-1 video

The high-def holy war

It's been a busy week for the companies behind the competing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats, and their various supporters. The business as usual of the past few months was interrupted on Monday morning when Paramount and DreamWorks Animation announced they are going to be exclusively supporting HD-DVD only for their high-definition releases. Then comes the news (Wall Street Journal / LA Weekly) that the HD-DVD group is paying Paramount and DreamWorks $50M and $100M respectively in promotional considerations and incentives for their decision to drop support for Blu-Ray. This leaves Sony/MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers as the backers of releases on Blu-Ray while HD-DVD will now exclusively add Paramount/DreamWorks to the lonely Universal Studios.

The early adopting consumers are all in a commenting tizzy on the blogs over what this will eventually mean for their beloved formats. Does this mean that HD-DVD has a chance after all? Will another studio like Warner Brothers be tempted by cash to drop their support of Blu-Ray?

Some people like to further speculate that if there isn't a clear "winner" between the two formats soon that the current crop of high-definition discs may go the way of SACD and DVDA. What?!? You've never heard of SACD or DVDA? That's because they died in the womb of their great "idea". These were supposed to be "super" high-fidelity audio discs which would give music lovers unparalleled sound quality. The problem was, very few people could actually hear the ultra-high frequencies and sound differences between the high-definition audio discs and normal audio CDs. Worse yet, most people were willing to have less quality for more convenience and less money (ie. free) in the form of downloadable MP3s. Not enough people cared about the quality to make a compelling reason to pay for all new CD players and buy new versions of the CDs they already owned.

There are many other differences in this format war than any previous ones of the past. SACD/DVDA never achieved any marked level of market penetration nor did they get enough labels on the bandwagon to release CDs to drive those sales. Not the case with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony sold a mere 18 million Betamax units globally in its entire 27-year span of existence starting in 1975 and ending in 2002 (US availability ceased in 1998). There are already over 4.5 million Blu-Ray equipped Playstation 3s sold and in consumer's homes.

The true "battle" for which format has dominance will start to take place this holiday season when Toshiba has their sub-$300 standalone HD-DVD player available. Sony is rumored to have a similarly priced Blu-Ray player in the works for the holidays as well. Past CE hits have told us that the sweet spot for most American consumers is in the under $200 price range. This level of pricing won't be achieved by either format until at least the 2008 holiday season.

Until then, I'll still be a content producer trying to find affordable ways to actually produce high-definition discs. Right now, that doesn't exist for either format.

There's worms in that Apple

Following my post about Microsoft's Windows Media Player, I thought it'd be a good time to bring up the frustration that Apple has been giving post-production professionals in the past 18 months. Sure, they've enabled people to edit P2 media on Final Cut Pro like no other system, but at the expense of being locked into an Apple Mac OS system for their media. While P2/MXF is platform independent, the first step to work with it in Final Cut Pro is to convert it to the Apple (only) proprietary DVCProHD codec.

In order to take the finished footage (that averages out to be less than 1GB/minute in DVCProHD) onto a PC platform, it must first be converted to another codec - presumably an uncompressed one so that further quality loss isn't introduced which results in files that are ~7GB/minute or more. What's even more irritating is the conversion to another codec introduces the very likely possibility that there will be a colorspace conversion or other change which will result in even more headaches.

Now Apple introduced another "Apple only" codec in ProRes 4:2:2 at this year's NAB. It gives SD-data rate for HD footage with nearly no visual loss. A dream come true for most editors trying to edit on a small system with no expensive dedicated RAID array. Too bad that dream becomes a nightmare when they want to give some footage to their After Effects guy who might just so happen to be using a PC - or when they need to create a Windows Media file in HD.

Hey Apple - just because I can't use footage created in FCP on a PC doesn't make me say, "hey, I better get myself another FCP system." Instead I'm thinking, "You f*!#ing bastards, you're making my life difficult for no reason." The ability or inability to use DVCProHD footage on a PC that was created on a Mac has no relationship whatsoever to the end business and financial results for Apple. They're simply being bastards for bastards sake - to say, "look how cool we are because we have this, and the PC doesn't."

Kudos to Apple for taking themselves from having no editing product to having the best selling editing platform on the planet and in the process creating a very profitable base of users to milk on every upgrade. Shame on Apple for sticking out their tongue at the rest of the industry now that they've arrived.

Just because Apple is viewed in a much more positive light than Microsoft,
that doesn't mean their end-goals or means to achieve world domination are any less evil than Microsoft's well documented abuses of their monopoly position. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard Apple mumbling Google's mantra of "do no harm".

Take iTunes as another example Apple's near-monopoly exclusion. Where are the indie films on the iTunes store? Or fair negotiations with those poor and defenseless record labels who are nearly bankrupt these days?

Windows Media Player - an open letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

After spending countless amounts of money creating Windows Media Audio/Video and creating several new(er) versions of Windows Media Player, how is it possible that your software still can't accomplish even basic tasks that Apple's Quicktime Player has been able to do for years? You petitioned SMPTE and managed to turn Windows Media Video into a standard known as VC-1, yet there aren't any obvious specifications for what computers can actually play back high-definition Windows Media without stutters and playback anomalies. No standards exist for what bitrates can be supported "safely" on desktop PCs.

Even basic functions that are taken for granted in Quicktime - such as jumping to a specific point in time in a media file, or scrubbing forwards/backwards are impossible within Windows Media Player.

If you are to be taken seriously for your efforts of advancing computer audio/video, you have to create a product worthy of any professional consideration. So far, Windows Media Player suffers from the same bloated syndrome that plagued the Windows OS back in Windows 3.xx days.

Please fix this at your earliest opportunity.

Best Wishes,
A frustrated Windows User (and media professional)

2k to 4k: There's something coming.

A few brave filmmakers have embarked on shooting their "film" using a memory camera such as the Panasonic P2 HVX-200 or the newer Silicon Imaging SI-2K, and they've tapped into the creative power that the new technology can bring while tasting the bitterness of Rolaids when their new toy does something unexpected. Welcome to today. No longer is it good enough to know where the record button is or how to adjust focus - filmmakers are also going to need to know how to manage data, build and use color lookup tables, pick lenses, and understand frame-rates and resolution.

I had been watching the Panasonic HVX-200 as a possibility for our next project, "Toast" to see if it would be the camera that we would end up using. It had a good high-definition video resolution and supported the all-important 24p film-like frame rate as well as some additional frame rates for slow-motion and accelerated motion effects. Best of all, it was affordable enough that any low-budget movie could just outright buy the camera - no rentals required. When the camera actually came out, reports of noisy low-light performance started to surface and a lot of people were not entirely comfortable shooting their movie to electronic memory which could be erased in seconds.

While these were not entirely devastating, other cameras have quickly come to market that diminish the low-cost and high-resolution attributes that made the HVX-200 so appealing to begin with. At the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB) in April of 2006, Red - an upstart company created by Oakley sunglasses founder Jim Jannard became the talk of the show by announcing they would be creating and selling a 4K (that's the resolution of the image sensor - roughly equivalent to a 12-mega pixel DSLR still) camera for under $20,000. Red had no actual camera at the show, and in fact only had computer renderings of what this camera might one day look like. Industry insiders have a word for this kind of announcement - vaporware. In spite of all that, the announcement was so revolutionary, Red took deposits and booked many pre-orders for the camera.

Around the same time as the Red announcement at NAB, Silicon Imaging started shipping prototype units of their high-definition camera which ultimately became known as the SI-2k. The Red and Silicon Imaging cameras are exciting to filmmakers because they are the first affordable cinema-resolution digital cameras that can directly utilize film-style lenses and optics. Affordable in this case means at a price that can be practically purchased. The comparable high-end high-definition cameras offered by Sony and Panasonic retail for $70,000 and up. Panavision has an all-digital cinema camera called the Genesis which is so expensive it isn't even available for purchase and rents for around $20,000 a week.

Two weeks prior to this year's NAB, Red was contacted by Peter Jackson (director of King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy) in New Zealand who expressed an interest in looking at the camera. Red's crew jumped at the chance and hopped on their plane (yes, they have their own Boeing jet) to meet Jackson in Wellington. When the Red crew arrived in Wellington, Jackson had planned a 2-day shoot of a World War I battle sequence with Red's only two prototype cameras - cutely named Boris and Natasha. Completed in under two weeks with a full music score and sound mix, the approximately 10-minute short was screened in 4K detail within a small "theater" enclosed in Red's booth. People were so hyped for the Red camera that some were willing to wait upwards of 3 hours in line to get their chance to see the short film and a couple prototype cameras.

In a humble booth off to the side, Silicon Imaging and Cineform were demonstrating the SI-2K camera. While Red still didn't even have a real fully working camera, SI's camera had been through many working refinements through actual use on productions over the past year. They were demonstrating a touch-screen LCD for control of the camera that was very slick. This was all part of "Silicon DVR" which divides the display into nine regions (imagine a tic-tac-toe pattern) which when touched in those places, brought up varying camera functions. SI has also partnered with professional color grading company IRIDAS to provide real-time non-destructive look-up tables (LUTs) for monitoring on set. There's a long demonstration video for how this works on SI's site. Basically it allows a Director of Photography to view footage during production with a color-correction applied while still recording the raw uncorrected footage. This kind of real-time full resolution on-set preview is not even possible with film - at all. It's one of the most exciting and immediate examples of where digital is becoming very powerful for filmmakers.

The data-rates necessary to record raw 2K or 4K imagery is extreme. With no compression, it would require approximately 350-400MBytes per second to record a 4K image at 24 frames per second. That's about 2/3 of the information contained on a standard audio CD recorded every second or around 21 Gigabytes of space for every minute of footage. To get around this massive need for raw data storage, both Red and Silicon Imaging put their raw footage through a wavelet-based compression codec.

Silicon Imaging is using Cineform's 2K RAW codec which crunches the information coming from the camera down to a much more manageable 20-30MB/second. The much smaller files still retain a "visually lossless" image. Because Cineform is a seperate company from SI and is focused exclusively on the image compression technology, it will hopefully mean wider industry support and adoption for post-production. Cineform is currently only officially supported on the PC with a Mac version in beta.

Red has opted to develop their own image compression codec which they have dubbed, Redcode RAW. The data rates for Red's codec I believe are comparable to that of Cineform, but it remains to be seen whether the image quality is as good at the same resolution as Cineform. They're also developing an application called Redcine that allows their Redcode RAW files to be converted into many industry acceptable file-types and formats. Apple announced native support for Redcode in Final Cut Pro at NAB, and has already shipped Final Cut Pro Studio 2.0 which contains that support.

Neither Cineform or Redcode are natively supported by the industry leading editing application - Avid. It means that in order to edit on an Avid, both types of footage will have to be rendered into a compatible format to import into Avid - a very time-consuming and tedious process.

As of today, Silicon Imaging's SI-2k camera still has not shipped a "production" model of the camera yet. They are slated to begin shipments at the end of this month or the first week in July. Shortly after NAB, Red announced an indefinite "engineering delay" on the progress of their camera and has yet to update the availability date for their "Red One" camera.

Because of their development lead and third-party support, Silicon Imaging's SI-2k is the likely candidate for us to shoot Toast. The cameras are somewhat less expensive, will probably be available in greater numbers for rental than Red One, and they have a lens/sensor only version of the camera called the "mini" which is very small.

Ultimately, we want to be able to capture the best image for the least money with the widest toolset available at the time we go into production. No final decisions will be made until we're officially in prep - a few weeks before production starts.

One thing is sure - with the latest crop of digital cameras, we will be able to shoot with cinema-style lenses, at a very high resolution for a better final movie than we could have delivered a year or two ago.

Stay tuned!

Digital cameras come of age

It seems like only yesterday that any "film" shot on a digital camera had to work extra hard to be taken seriously. At first it was a battle for a digitally produced movie to get the same respect as a celluloid film (DV or HD compared to 16mm or 35mm film). Enter George Lucas and changes to the post production industry triggered by an insatiable appetite for visual effects and an affinity for the new color correction/grading tools offered by digital.

The past 7 years have seen a gradual embrace and acceptance of high-definition video formats - even for studio films. Lucas' Star Wars 2 & 3, Michael Mann's Collateral, Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, Mel Gibson's Apocolypto, and most recently David Fincher's Zodiac were major benchmark "films" all utilizing high-definition video to create complete movies that were viewed in theaters across the country. Digital acquisition and production has come of age for Hollywood studios and become a viable option for everyone.

More change is now on the horizon. Inexpensive camera options have evolved from the introduction of the extremely low-cost Panasonic DVX-100 miniDV camcorder which offered the first true 24-frame progressive image. The DVX-100 first shipped in the fall of 2002 and it enabled filmmakers all over the world to work with film-like 24 frames-per-second image capture. There were other 24p cameras, like Sony's high-definition CineAlta HDW-F900, but Panasonic changed the landscape by making 24p affordable for everyone.

We shot Rebecca's first feature, "Coming Up Easy" in the spring of '03 on the DVX-100. It enabled us to acquire 24p images which looked great, but the post-process to keep the whole movie in a native 24p timeline was a nightmare. Most NLE (Non-Linear-Editor) applications only supported 30i (30-frames-per-second interlace) footage, and that made our beautiful 24p footage lose some of its film-rate feel. Several years and NLE application revisions later, and editing 24p is a breeze.

While the introduction of 24p workflows to the masses was groundbreaking, few miniDV produced features ever made it to the big screen. There are many reasons for this, but one factor is the limited resolution offered by miniDV compared to 35mm film or even high-definition video. Even though "digital" has been widely embraced - especially for film festival submissions - there remains a gigantic divide between what makes into theaters (and gets seen) and what independent filmmakers are producing.

The next change in low-cost cameras happened last year with the shipment of Panasonic's next-generation HVX-200. The high-definition HVX-200 has many of the innovative features of Panasonic's much more expensive Varicam, but with this camera they abandoned videotape in favor of solid-state memory recording known as P2. Recording directly to computer memory was a fairly controversial move. Many people have questioned the reliability, longevity, and quality of this kind of acquisition. With the new format, there were some additional hurdles to overcome in the workflow with the camera.

Again, the NLE applications adapted, and now most directly support P2 media. Cinema quality resolution was finally almost in reach of the average filmmaker.

The 2007 National Association of Broadcasters convention held in Las Vegas in April became witness to the crossing of that resolution/capability threshold with the realization of a couple of different camera system approaches from Red and Silicon Imaging.

Each of these systems builds on the idea of solid-state or very small hard-drive based recording from high-resolution cameras. They will enable filmmakers to make use of standard 16mm and 35mm lenses. Using these kinds of lenses lends a whole new toolset to the low-cost/high-quality digital acquisition that had been lacking for most independent filmmakers. Cinematic shallow depth of field which is very difficult to achieve with video lenses will be available to just about anyone working on ultra low-budget films.

Next up the pros and cons of Red One and the SI-2K cameras.

Where'd all the (Apple) hype go?

Apple's much anticipated "event" at the Venetian Hotel on the Sunday just prior to NAB gathered the usual Apple/Mac devotees in record numbers. I was told by one Apple employee that they had a waiting list of over 400 people who weren't even able to get in.

Their list of announcements were wrapped up in this summation: a new version of Final Cut Studio with a new color grading application simply named, "Color". FC Studio 2 will include a version step-up for every application in the suite as well as inclusion of the new "Color". The features of note (that I noticed anyway) of each app were:

Final Cut Pro 6: Can support multiple resolutions and frame rates on the same timeline and play out in realtime with no tedious rendering required. ProRes 4:2:2 - Apple's answer to Avid's DNxHD video codec. This codec allows high-definition video to be captured and compressed at standard definition data rates while maintaining a full raster image (1920 x 1080) within 4:2:2 color sampling and still keeping an impressive claimed visually lossless picture. Apple's own information shows that an hour of uncompressed HD video will consume a whopping 1TB of disk space, while the same hour of HD compressed in ProRes will eat a meager 160GB. This also opens up the door to no longer needing full-blown high-transfer-speed RAID arrays to edit in high quality HD on a desktop system. FCP is still lacking full-blown (or even decent) media management, and several Apple employees acknowledged to me that they are aware of this, and are working on it.

Motion 3: True 3D workspace. Previous versions of Motion worked in pseudo-2D/3D which meant that particles and other effects could not be manipulated in true X, Y, Z dimensions. A very powerful new feature within Motion also allows for templates to be created that can then be dropped into Final Cut and the individual elements edited directly within Final Cut. This would allow for example, an animated lower-third title to be created once and then dropped whenever needed onto the Final Cut Pro timeline. The actual text of that fully-animated text could then be edited simply by re-typing. Very powerful - now if there were just a good list of freelance Motion artists out there.

Soundtrack Pro 2: Vastly improved sound editing application. They took the familiar context-cursor controls from applications such as ProTools and Sony's Vegas. These allow editors to place the cursor at the end of a piece of audio and depending on where it is in relation to that audio, drag/extend the audio, create fades, or create crossfades. A new spectrum display allows for audio to be looked at in a whole new way and visually manipulated. Apple's demo showed a low-frequency bump (likely caused by someone touching the mic during production) which showed up visually and could be removed without effecting the dialogue happening at the very same time. A seemingly revolutionary new "conform" feature allows for an edited Soundtrack project to be conformed against picture changes made in Final Cut automatically. I haven't been following the feature set of ProTools close enough to know if they have something like this, but it's something many audio/picture editors have been wanting for years. Finally, they implemented full surround panning on all tracks.

Compressor 3: A re-written and completely rebuilt application according to Apple. They didn't really spend that much time demonstrating any specific new features, but it appears to be much more like Sorenson Squeeze or Cleaner in it's support for multiple target codecs/bitrates/etc. Now supports H.264 directly. One interesting feature of note - the ability to "automatically" detect other Compressor render capable/installed machines on the network and batch queue to them to speed up processor intensive renders.

DVD Studio Pro 4: Big disappointment here. Any new features are almost totally unknown to me. Apple spent no time talking about any new features, and I did ask - no BluRay support in this version. They still support creating HD-DVDs - I have no idea whether they support VC-1 or H.264 encoded video for those authored HD-DVDs.

Color: This has to be the biggest news for most users of the Final Cut Pro suite of applications, and really anyone else interested in a decent color correction/grading application at a low cost. Apple acquired a little-known company last October called "Silicon Color" which made a fairly high-end desktop color grading application called "Final Touch". Apple has now renamed that application to "Color" and included it in the FCP Suite. It brings fairly sophisticated color grading tools to the desktop at a price never seen before (essentially free as part of the FCP Studio). This includes primary color correction, 8 inside/outside secondaries, custom geometry for creating selection masks and a basic image tracker used to track the underlying image to apply masks to it. There are some other tools that are fairly unique to this product including a color display that shows color and luminance values in 3D space with the pixels showing up as spots around a 3D "pole".

Where do all of these features lead for Apple? They made a fairly big point in saying they now have 800,000 Final Cut Pro users worldwide. Doing quick math, at an upgrade cost of $499 per user, that's nearly $400M in potential revenue for Apple - just from their current users. Not bad for a software application that would have been considered a small vertical market just a few years ago.

NAB pre-amble

I recently attended the National Assocation of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, Nevada as well as the concurrently running Digital Cinema Summit. An awesome local post-production facility, Mission Control sponsored a good portion of my trip down, and I was on the lookout for a lot gear and things for several different people/agendas (including my own).

Prior to the show there had been a lot of hype surrounding an "unknown" announcement from Apple regarding their product line which everone assumed would include something about Final Cut Pro and perhaps DVD Studio Pro (version 4). They had announced their dual-quad processor machines (yes that's EIGHT CPUs in one box) just a few weeks earlier, so the speculation was that they would have some really kick-ass software that needed that spectacular horsepower.

Highest on my own priority was to check out the current state of digital cinema cameras such as the super-hyped "Red" camera from Oakley (the sunglasses) founder Jim Jannard and the underdog SI-2K from Silicon Imaging which incorporates the Cineform digital codec. Amongst the concerns for any new camera system is to asses the stability and level of maturity of the tools and workflow developed for the camera.

35mm film has been around for a LONG time, and is fairly well understood by most of the folks working with. Digital cameras on the otherhand are so new that even the pros are often confronted with vexxing questions about how they're going to proceed with the acquisition through post-process.

I wanted to find on-set monitoring solutions that included the ability to incorporate what are known as Lookup Tables (LUTs) so that quick color-grading "looks" can be applied while shooting on location. These would need to be non-destructive - meaning they would only effect our set monitoring and not the actual footage recorded to digital disk/ram. This is a fairly new market and so the list of companies providing solutions for this is very small.

Finally, I was interesting in seeing what options might be available from any and all companies for a digital grading or DI process for our movie as well. Currently in the Portland market, the only real "Color/Film Transfer room" is at Downstream which has a Spirit Datacine capable of a maximum of high-def resolution with an older DaVinci color correction system. I'm really looking for a product that can do a total digital data pipeline so that our footage can be shot in a raw digital format, transcoded to another codec for editing and then conformed using a high-end color room for final assembly and mastering. Ideally this would be done at 2K or 4K instead of just high-definition (which I'll elaborate on further when I recap the D-Cinema Summit).

This was my fourth or fifth time attending NAB, and probably my 20-something trip to Las Vegas. I've been to many conventions there over the years (including CES and the now defunct Comdex), so I guess you could say I'm a bit of a veteran there.

In the coming days, I'll be posting my observations about several of the products and companies that caught my eye and also recapping some of the more interesting tidbits from the 2007 Digital Cinema Summit.