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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Filmout cost

ricopedra said:
Hey Jaime,

Thanks for a link like that.There are so many alternatives according to your purse and backing nowadays; it's still valid to mention these alternatives.

I've got a problem that I might be able to sneak in here, 'cause it has nothing to do with RED or film transfer, well in fact it's the opposite: I want to transfer a B+W 16mm film @~10-12minutes of footage, that hasn't been corrected yet, to some HD codec I can edit in. Quicktime's okay, as I work on a Mac. I've got the Neg and a work print. I've checked out places like BWFF in Toronto, with Dragon at the helm. He's great, but they only do SD transfers. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated....

Sorry for this here and now, but I know the talent pool residing here, and a thread off topic with this feels still too off topic for me.

Anyone know a posthouse that does this? Screening 16mm films nowadays seems quite difficult, to say the least.
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http://www.pro8mm.com/home.html
 
2K currently makes sense for most film-out work for economic reasons, but that's not the same thing as saying that it makes no difference whether you work in 2K or 4K. I see plenty of D.I.'s projected and I can tell a difference between 2K and 4K, and I think 2K is merely a current convenience for the most part, a compromise, not the ideal situation. Now for particular projects, a cinematographer or director may prefer the softer look of 2K but we shouldn't therefore make 2K the gold standard for D.I. work, we should be working towards a future where 4K is the standard.

Sure, if we could guarantee that our 2K film-outs will never go thru a degrading IP/IN step to make release prints, then 2K is less of a compromise. Most most movies still make IP's and IN's -- in fact, it is MORE likely if you are a smaller movie that still needs a couple of hundred or a thousand prints than if you're a big movie where you can afford making multiple original printing negatives from the digital master.

I've done three or four 35mm features that went through a 2K D.I. and am always a bit depressed by the quality loss compared to a contact print of my original camera negative. Particularly the ones I shot in anamorphic 35mm.

But 4K is four times the data, the time, and I've noticed over the years that the staunchest of defenders of the 2K standard are post supervisors and efx supervisors, and the staunchest advocates of 4K are cinematographers.
 
C.J. Thanks, I forgot about them since I left N.A.

Now economically, upgrading costs coin, but also makes millions for some bloated companies that provide hardware/SW in tiny incrimental upgrades. Only one company is willing to make a Superman bound, but this time he ain't wearing blue - are you, Mr. J?!

Cut the crap and hit the afterburners, 'cause he's wearing those gloves you can buy from the ASC site that guarantee you won't burn your fingers! :>)
 
Film out service along with Color managment consulting

Film out service along with Color managment consulting

Some time now we are offering film out service and consulting in color management for Color and other apps. I just received the first test footage from an Israelis feature shoot on RED. After an adventure of three months playing with various monitors, the client, finally made it and now he has a very good one that works with minimal decoupling error. My 3D LUT's (that we create for him) made him able to grade with WYSIWYG on his grading monitor that cost him (the monitor) just 1000$... So as we speak I see his 2K footage on my calibrated monitor and its extraordinary... I will print it and I will send him the print in same time before the end of August... (Its August on Athens, everyone is in vacations...) I suppose that he will come forward and tell his story about our service.

Our cost for 90minutes is the 1/3 of what David quote for CRT and camera negative and 20% less for Laser and inter negative... The big plus is that we transferring all the secret soup know how of color management along with custom LUT's build for your color grade session (that is, NOT GENERIC, depended on your viewing device preferences) and by that you save the 400$ - 500$ per hour by DIY in Color... for a 60 hours grading project thats 24K$ at least... To learn and be able to do it, takes some time thought, and is depended to individuals skills.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi Peter,

I tested a 6k down sized to 4K V 3K downsized to 2k scans of 35mm I had shot. In the cinema I could see the increased resoloution at the front middle & back row of the cinema. There is a clear difference it's just what you percive as good enough. The post house downplayed the advantage as they could not handle the data on a big project.

Stephen
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Stephen - how did we get from film-out (film recording) to film-in (film scanning)? In any case I can tell You have been using ARRISCAN... :)

The post houses do not "downplay" it (I have one myself) - the reality is that the clients will not pay for the true cost of 4K data management. And it is not double in case anyone wonders - think more like 5~8x more expensive then 2K. I am frequently faced with productions running out of their budgets before they even finish principal photography. Sure they would all want 4K DI, but how many are really ready to pay for it?

By the way (if You re-read my posts) I did suggested to do the DI in 4K for digital projection, I have only recommended to film out in 2K to 35 mm in case when only one generation process is expected (film-out to IN - copy to release print).
 
Here is the post I promised about the sound sync issue. This is written by Rick Shaw one of the producers of Wordz, and he did most of the post on the film.

The RED cam problem seems almost unexplainable, but the feeling was that I should have shot in 23.98 instead of 24fps. We ended up with some sort up strange pull-down issues. I shot in 24 to avoid those problems, but the internal process of editing and sound design -- each of those systems prefers fractional frame rates. We didn't notice the problem until the project went to Dolby. Once they created the Magneto Optical master, they couldn't get it to sync up properly. As a test, I had to make a telecine of the project, and use a digibeta tape as a source to sync to. Dolby then added an additional .1% pulldown, and actually used the digitbeta deck as a TC source. That seemed to do the trick, but no one there really understood why, we all just know that it worked. The Dolby files then went over to NT Audio, where they created a new optical neg since the first one was unusable. So, we ended up paying for two negs out of necessity.

Bruce Mazon at Dolby was a champ through the process and told me that "no good deed goes unpunished," a phrase that I have come to know very well.


Rick

 
Thanks Rick for sharing... It is indeed rather confusing having to shoot 23.98 TB (TimeBase) with 24 FPS frame rate for intended theatrical distribution. In a theory You would go blindly for the 24P TB... Anyone from the red-team care to elaborate?

:)
 
Shooting 23.98 vs. 24 has no affect on a film-out -- it's a 1:1, frame to frame, transfer and then it gets projected at 24 fps.

It's only an audio issue. And it stems from the fact that most post sound people traditionally have worked from NTSC dubs of the edit, so even if the movie was shot at 24 fps on film, the material is playing at 23.976 fps in NTSC once you remove the 3:2 pulldown (otherwise it's 59.94 fields per second.)

If the digital master is 23.98P, then there just has to be a step in making the audio printmaster where the sound is changed from 23.976 fps to 24 fps. It's a fairly common step since most 24P movies are actually shot at 23.98P.
 
This is great info. We are currently ion preproduction for as low budget feature. We are shooting on the Red One with the intention of theatrical dist. on 35mm. The film is a dramatic feature with much dialogue. Am I to understand that shooting at 2K will suffice and help keep our costs down? If so what are the comparative rates. And more importantly what would the ideal process be? I don't want to enter this scenario blindly and end up paying for unnecessary services.

Any and all advice is welcome.


Thx.
 
C.J.Harvaraj said:
thinking of filmout, is buying one of these a good idea?

http://www.lasergraphics.com/us/pages/producerplusfeatures.htm

http://www.lasergraphics.com/us/pages/producer2features.htm
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I would not even think about buying a film recorder. Let the Post house chase the technology phantom, you'll never be able to get ahead of it. The color management burden alone will drive you crazy. Besides, a film recorder is only one step in a closed-loop color management system. Unless you have some control at the lab level, you won't be able to predict results. You'll spend most of your time (read: money) dialing-in your system. I had an 8K Lasergraphics system 15 years ago and the R&D required to achieve quality results was pretty daunting. I love these machines, but there are simply too many variables to manage to be cost effective on a single project. Opening a DI facility? Go for it! Making one movie? You will regret it.

There is plenty of capacity in the DI/Post facility world for you to take advantage of competitive bidding. For all the fear and loathing that I hear about the Red camera from some Post houses, they haven't yet grasped that it is the best thing to happen to their sector of the industry in a long time. With the volume of cameras and the deluge of footage in R3D format, it will eventually act as a stabilizing force, keeping capital expenses in check and reducing the need to chase unprofitable formats.

Jim is doing everybody a huge favor just by the size of his market footprint and he's not gotten very many thank-you notes for it. If I owned a post house, I would take aggressive steps to be not only Red-Friendly, but Red-Centric. I would make it my mission in life to kill all the workflow whining. It is simply foolish to try and ignore Red's sales volume. No other company has demonstrated an serious interest in beating Jim. I wouldn't get into a pissing match with his wallet, especially if I had to answer to a board of directors and shareholders. It's the quickest way to get a golden parachute and regular tee-time during the week. I especially would not invest in anything that requires celluloid running through it to make money. All the other players in Digital Cinema are gonna wait and see how Mr. Jannard's experiment plays out and then they're gonna try and buy him out, IMHO.

Jim has told everybody at NAB this year that you do not need a release print in 2009, if you don't want one. Take that $50K and put it somewhere else, like in real estate, its a buyer's market right now.
 
Jeff Coatney said:
I would not even think about buying a film recorder. Let the Post house chase the technology phantom, you'll never be able to get ahead of it. The color management burden alone will drive you crazy. Besides, a film recorder is only one step in a closed-loop color management system. Unless you have some control at the lab level, you won't be able to predict results. You'll spend most of your time (read: money) dialing-in your system. I had an 8K Lasergraphics system 15 years ago and the R&D required to achieve quality results was pretty daunting. I love these machines, but there are simply too many variables to manage to be cost effective on a single project. Opening a DI facility? Go for it! Making one movie? You will regret it.

There is plenty of capacity in the DI/Post facility world for you to take advantage of competitive bidding. For all the fear and loathing that I hear about the Red camera from some Post houses, they haven't yet grasped that it is the best thing to happen to their sector of the industry in a long time. With the volume of cameras and the deluge of footage in R3D format, it will eventually act as a stabilizing force, keeping capital expenses in check and reducing the need to chase unprofitable formats.

Jim is doing everybody a huge favor just by the size of his market footprint and he's not gotten very many thank-you notes for it. If I owned a post house, I would take aggressive steps to be not only Red-Friendly, but Red-Centric. I would make it my mission in life to kill all the workflow whining. It is simply foolish to try and ignore Red's sales volume. No other company has demonstrated an serious interest in beating Jim. I wouldn't get into a pissing match with his wallet, especially if I had to answer to a board of directors and shareholders. It's the quickest way to get a golden parachute and regular tee-time during the week. I especially would not invest in anything that requires celluloid running through it to make money. All the other players in Digital Cinema are gonna wait and see how Mr. Jannard's experiment plays out and then they're gonna try and buy him out, IMHO.

Jim has told everybody at NAB this year that you do not need a release print in 2009, if you don't want one. Take that $50K and put it somewhere else, like in real estate, its a buyer's market right now.
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What fear and loathing are you hearing from post houses?

Digital has been in the post sector for almost 20 years now. I can't really see why post houses would have fear and loathing over Red.

While there are definitely some forerunners in the post sector that are really embracing Red, more should follow as the SDK makes it easier to other hardware/software companies to support Red.

What formats do you see as being unprofitable?

Many post houses have data centric workflows and probably conform the incoming format to whatever they are using in their workflow instead of chasing every single format.
 
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