A question for all you "future proofers" out there.

[Peter Osinski]

I know the benefits of RAW and 4k, why you shoot it, and how it affects your images. My question is about final output for those of you working in the commercial world.

I'm sure many of you do an online 4k edit and output a 4k master file that is compressed and scaled down for broadcast, but do you expect to ever show it in anything but that format? Commercials usually have a short life before they are never seen again and I was wondering if any of you think that the 'future proof" argument has a place in the commercial world or are the only benefits found in downscaling to perfect HD, increased DR, and framerates?

Do you expect 4k versions of your work to see the light of day?

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

probably not, maybe yes. since 4TB drives are below 300 usd
is there a reason not to shoot and finish in 4k?

 

[Mark Phelan]

Well, that's like asking why isn't 8mm good enough? At what level do you determine to save your best work so that it should be acceptable for possible future use? How do you determine what level of quality is acceptable to you? I'm not being flippant, these are real questions.

I have hours of VHS footage shot from years gone by that I would love to have at the 4K level now. But I can't, so I'm stuck with it. Lesson learned.

 

[Mark Toia]

I like to have hi res copies for myself... for when I get old and grey.
At the moment, it's not needed at all for TV commercials... and probably not for the next 5 years.
But shooting in 5k and mastering in 2k or 720 are two different things.
The advantages of being able to rack in and out or reframing of your 5k images is the best. And being albe to sell your TV images for print ad's is even beter.

Try to look forward 5 to 10 years, not 12 months....

 

[Craig Parkes]

In the broadcast TV world I know the pain of not future proofing, as it comes from our clients.

We do TV Titles, when SD was moving to HD but not yet there we tried to get clients to shoot on HD, we tried to get them to pay the added price for us to post in HD, and some would, some wouldn't.

Which means for those that wouldn't, now they are looking at new titles, which need to be HD, but they are perfectly happy with the old look and just want new deliverables. Which can't be provided, so they are looking at new options. That's generally been 3-4 years later.

The cost to you as a business of not having those new deliverables is that it creates an opportunity for the client to go somewhere else for the new work (effectively, you end up re pitching for work you have already done, and which the client feels like they have already paid for - which is a productivity and financial waste for both parties. For you mostly it's a risk that they'll just be sick of it and look for the cheapest solution, which if you are deemed as added value rather than as a core component of production, like titles often are, can see you cut out of the equation altogether.)

We also have had clients wanting to supply print materials to agencies/international distributors, sometimes years after delivery - now MOST of our work is graphics, so we can often accommodate that. But if it's a shoot element, we have the option to rent a Red/Scarlet/Epic or pull in a stills photographer - and shooting on RED often makes the most sense. In the world of TV Titles often the print elements they want are just variations on the title (photographers handle separate publicity stills of the talent etc often.) but having the title sequence elements shot at HD or worse SD (because some shows deliver in SD only still!) means that it creates real headaches when they want to use frames from the title for print. Shooting on RED, far less of a problem.

If you own your material then you are looking at an even bigger opportunity cost for not future proofing your work.

Thinking that the footage will only ever have one usage is assuming your client has planned for all eventualities. Historically we have found this not to be the case and clients try and cobble together solutions after the fact.

If you know you have the solution every time you go out to shoot, the advantage you have is confidence that you'll be able to make the client happy DESPITE their decision making/planning. If the cost of doing so isn't ridiculously higher than the cost of an alternative for the sort of work you do, then you can chalk that up that cost up to customer relations - you don't necessarily need for the client to pay the difference on the job if you know you can make it up later on enough jobs because you are future proofed.

Some people would look at that as a gamble, others would look at it as future proofing, others would simply call it service. Which it is really depends on your client base, your business model and your overall price point.

One thing that I think is becoming pretty obvious in the production world is this - once you strip away logistics, the cost to capture fantastic images suitable for repurpose is now far less significant than the cost of the talent involved to make those images at EVERY level, from web series to giant features the cost of labour far outstrips the cost of accessing the technology involved on the imaging side.

What you do with the tools out there will determine long term success, which includes client satisfaction, reliability, quality of work and personal entrepreneurship. If you can't figure out how to make more money with tools which capture 4K+ in the long term for your clients, then the only thing you have to fear about not having 4K capture is being unprepared for when your clients start demanding it down the track.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

As far as I know a very high percentage of the commercials I have worked on are done at 1080. For Alexa projects they are being shot at ProRes 444 Log-C which is of course 1080 and for RED they are shooting 4KHD, 5KHD, or perhaps full when needed. This gives them a lot of room in post to do what they need to do, but from what I understand it's almost always being edited in 1080. In terms of conform/grading it's hard to say. Resolve and others certainly have the ability to scale on the fly but I would doubt very many commercials are being viewed at 4K in the grading room. Really depends on workflow. Not everyone is going back to R3Ds, so what is brought in to grading suite might be 1080 DNxHD or ProRes. I know there are probably examples of an all 4K workflow for commercials where the final step was to step it down to 1080 or 720 for delivery but I know it's not the norm yet. I could be wrong about this but that's been my experience so far.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

All of the above, plus the benefits of oversampling and the increase in apparent resolution when you downscale to 1080 a 4k file cannot be overlooked.

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

I had a bit of a hard time convincing the producer of "Arrested Development" to conform the show with 4K HD r3ds. They wanted to transcode the dailies to Avid DNX 175 and just use that. I said what a waste.
Funny they were convinced because of the editorial storage needs of DNX 175. So we transcode to 36 and will do a full conform from the original r3ds.

It is the future

 

[Mark Phelan]

But shooting in 5k and mastering in 2k or 720 are two different things.
The advantages of being able to rack in and out or reframing of your 5k images is the best. And being albe to sell your TV images for print ad's is even beter.

Try to look forward 5 to 10 years, not 12 months....

What he said.

 

[Michael Dalton]

In the broadcast TV world I know the pain of not future proofing, as it comes from our clients.

We do TV Titles, when SD was moving to HD but not yet there we tried to get clients to shoot on HD, we tried to get them to pay the added price for us to post in HD, and some would, some wouldn't.

Which means for those that wouldn't, now they are looking at new titles, which need to be HD, but they are perfectly happy with the old look and just want new deliverables. Which can't be provided, so they are looking at new options. That's generally been 3-4 years later.

The cost to you as a business of not having those new deliverables is that it creates an opportunity for the client to go somewhere else for the new work (effectively, you end up re pitching for work you have already done, and which the client feels like they have already paid for - which is a productivity and financial waste for both parties. For you mostly it's a risk that they'll just be sick of it and look for the cheapest solution, which if you are deemed as added value rather than as a core component of production, like titles often are, can see you cut out of the equation altogether.)

We also have had clients wanting to supply print materials to agencies/international distributors, sometimes years after delivery - now MOST of our work is graphics, so we can often accommodate that. But if it's a shoot element, we have the option to rent a Red/Scarlet/Epic or pull in a stills photographer - and shooting on RED often makes the most sense. In the world of TV Titles often the print elements they want are just variations on the title (photographers handle separate publicity stills of the talent etc often.) but having the title sequence elements shot at HD or worse SD (because some shows deliver in SD only still!) means that it creates real headaches when they want to use frames from the title for print. Shooting on RED, far less of a problem.

If you own your material then you are looking at an even bigger opportunity cost for not future proofing your work.

Thinking that the footage will only ever have one usage is assuming your client has planned for all eventualities. Historically we have found this not to be the case and clients try and cobble together solutions after the fact.

If you know you have the solution every time you go out to shoot, the advantage you have is confidence that you'll be able to make the client happy DESPITE their decision making/planning. If the cost of doing so isn't ridiculously higher than the cost of an alternative for the sort of work you do, then you can chalk that up that cost up to customer relations - you don't necessarily need for the client to pay the difference on the job if you know you can make it up later on enough jobs because you are future proofed.

Some people would look at that as a gamble, others would look at it as future proofing, others would simply call it service. Which it is really depends on your client base, your business model and your overall price point.

One thing that I think is becoming pretty obvious in the production world is this - once you strip away logistics, the cost to capture fantastic images suitable for repurpose is now far less significant than the cost of the talent involved to make those images at EVERY level, from web series to giant features the cost of labour far outstrips the cost of accessing the technology involved on the imaging side.

What you do with the tools out there will determine long term success, which includes client satisfaction, reliability, quality of work and personal entrepreneurship. If you can't figure out how to make more money with tools which capture 4K+ in the long term for your clients, then the only thing you have to fear about not having 4K capture is being unprepared for when your clients start demanding it down the track.

Craig, I would have to say it comes down to money. Your constrained to your budget, and yes you can look to the future, but networks are not going to pay for it, so it is up to the producer to make an investment. In business, you need to make money, and at the end of the day you can't always spend your profit. Time is also factor, can I do a 4k work flow in the time I have? It's a huge difference in TV, especially documentaries moving from shooting prores, DNX to working with a RAW footage because you need to turn material around quickly. I'd love to cut in 4k, but it's a challenge. At least I am shooting so one day I can go back and match with 4k.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Craig, I would have to say it comes down to money. Your constrained to your budget, and yes you can look to the future, but networks are not going to pay for it, so it is up to the producer to make an investment. In business, you need to make money, and at the end of the day you can't always spend your profit. Time is also factor, can I do a 4k work flow in the time I have? It's a huge difference in TV, especially documentaries moving from shooting prores, DNX to working with a RAW footage because you need to turn material around quickly. I'd love to cut in 4k, but it's a challenge. At least I am shooting so one day I can go back and match with 4k.

Of course it comes down to money, it always does. And not just money, but cash-flow. It's not the expense of doing 4K versus HD versus SD, it's the expense NOW versus the future value.

I'm not suggesting episodic TV needs to be mastered in 4K if it's shot in 4K at the moment, that seems silly. My experience was speaking more to title sequences rather than the shooting format of the main show. And sometimes you have to save money now even though it's going to cost you more money later, because who knows if there WILL be a later.

The great thing about red is that the cost of acquisition is not too high. That's a massive advantage.

 

[Michael Dalton]

Of course it comes down to money, it always does. And not just money, but cash-flow. It's not the expense of doing 4K versus HD versus SD, it's the expense NOW versus the future value.

I'm not suggesting episodic TV needs to be mastered in 4K if it's shot in 4K at the moment, that seems silly. My experience was speaking more to title sequences rather than the shooting format of the main show. And sometimes you have to save money now even though it's going to cost you more money later, because who knows if there WILL be a later.

The great thing about red is that the cost of acquisition is not too high. That's a massive advantage.

would definitely agree with you here. I choose a graphic style that was mainly vector based, although I'm not doing 4k now, it's easy to re-render the project in in a 4k composition and the vector graphics will scale.

I think we are just before a major break through in real-time raw in editing. If we can just get a edit system that can handle the debater process. The files sizes of the r3d would make it prefferable to edit in over DNXHD or Proress. I know Adobe Premiere is the closest, but my hesitation is like FCP, will they continue to support legacy projects. The nice thing about Avid, I can go back to projects that are 4 years old and open them. FCP studio won't run on our computers in 4 years, and I don't want to hang on to legacy gear in the event I need to go back to projects. Where possible I convert the projects to Avid using Automated Duck.

 

[Andrew Burhoe]

I was in talks for hours one day with an editor for a commercial company. He told me whats the point of doing 4K? No one cares unless you are an independent filmmaker. That 4K won't and doesn't do anything. There are no editing platforms to handle 4K.

Well I do say this. 4K is a benefit in moving the progression of filmmaking regardless in what field to new levels. So why not work at the latest and push the boundries. Danny Boyle did it with 28 Day Later. Someone has to do it or we become stale bread.