8K Monsto and an aging actress

[Remington Chase]

I'f it's between a aging actress and a Monstro I'd take the Monstro.

 

[steve green]

After lots of research and great feedback here, I went with Zeiss 70-200 Compact zoom, Tiffen 1/4 Glimmer Glass, and a Briese Light 220. Couldn't be happier with the results. Thanks everyone for the input.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

Sorry not helping but was wondering, why is an Alexa easier to work with?

Seems like you did not get an answer yet huh? Let me try to answer your question in a meaningful way. I hope you were not trolling or being sarcastic with your inquiry. There are quite a few reasons behind this topic. Here is a couple of them.

In the industry there are perceptions of this camera is better than that camera etc. It goes back to the question "How easy to operate any camera by an average user/operator without getting too technical". When you look at most digital or digital cinema cameras, almost all of them comes with a bunch of dedicated buttons tailor-made to address almost all necessary commands and in some instances even simple menu's. Even in their main menu they rarely go deeper than one or two layers up/down. Whereas the RED folks built a camera with just 4 buttons on the brain. If you need more buttons, you have to shell out a lot of money to add a "sidekick" or a DSMC2 side handle etc. Instead of a whole lot of built-in buttons, RED depends on a camera mounted monitor with touch controls and fairly a complex menu system. And talk about the menu and the user interface (UI); even seasoned RED users sometimes get lost within the RED UI, when you are working under pressure and/or in adverse conditions. This could be considered overwhelming for some people. Movies are made by artists. Not as much by engineers, technicians and/or computer geeks. Most artists may not have a need or the desire to learn a complicated tech system just to tell their story.

Another reason was the end product out of the camera. ARRI and other manufacturers gave the end user easy to use industry standard "Pro-Res", .mov, avchd or files in the mp4 framework. Yes, they were compressed formats. But many did not care. They preferred a much simpler workflow.

I sometimes tell my students that other camera manufacturers build their cameras around a sensor and RED builds their sensor around a computer.

One could discuss this topic in detail. This thread may not be the appropriate venue for that.

 

[Marc Wielage]

On this upcoming shoot we've got a small intimate set but they'd still like the BG to be soft, so I'm thinking the Monsto is perfect, but I'm getting push back from the producers saying they absolutely don't want to shoot in 8K resolution for a 1080 release (TVC) because "well see every pore" in her skin.

I have done several major jobs in the last few years where there were fairly intricate "beauty passes" in Resolve done specifically for pores, pimples, scars, wrinkles, crow's feet, neck wrinkles, and other blemish issues. All this stuff has to be done by hand, but it's partially automated in terms of masks and tracking and all that stuff, so it doesn't have to take an inordinate amount of time. Even with comparatively young actors in their 20s, sometimes they have bad days and just need a little help. I think I did about 400 beauty fixes on Aaliyah in the 2002 film Queen of the Damned, and she was a beautiful 22-year-old woman. (16 years has passed and she's no longer with us, so I think the statute of limitations has passed.) Often multiple tracking masks for different parts of the face and body are necessary for best results -- it's not a "one size fits all" correction.

Even for non-famous people and non-celebrities, I sometimes will reach in and make an isolated correction just to diminish an obvious scar or facial problem just to make the person look their best in a close-up. It doesn't take that much time to do. I've wanted to create a T-shirt that said, "I look better with Skin Defocus," and it's true. (And maybe a tiny bit of Glow, too.) A little goes a long way.

The great thing about doing it in post is that we can confine the blur/mist effect entirely to skintone alone, and avoid affecting lips, teeth, hair, and other parts of the set. With a ProMist or whatever softening filter you use on the lens, it affects everything and can't be controlled. On the plus side, you see it right there on the day, and there are advantages to that. You can also make an argument that part of the "Alexa look" is the characteristic softness in highlights and the saturation roll-off, so if the clients like that look, maybe there's a way to approach it with filtration, soft lighting, and post.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Tell them that resolution is not sharpness. The more resolution you have, the less you have to make "it look" sharp.
More resolution gives you more natural skin nuances and a less artificial look. It's always easier to soften your picture by choosing filtration, lenses, ... if really needed.

The more resolution you have the more skin detail you see and it looks more realistic. Which is a problem in this case.

"Sharpness" is a folk's term with wide interpretation range and "resolution" techie fixation in "more=better" mentality. Neither tells anything about aesthetics and both are divorced from sense if not held together by context. Context here is the balance of acuity and purpose and higher acuity in some purposes doesn't help. Especially in cases where it moves focus from the meaning and essence to the surface. And that talk is cool to sell a camera but generally useless with the actress who's carrier depends on public perception and general appeal and self esteem.

Optical filtration is a different look than lower resolution acquisition and one doesn't replace the other.
The same goes for post pampering. Both of which, if used due to overkill of image detail, draw the the question why the chosen acquisition resolution in the first place.

 

[Marc Wielage]

The more resolution you have the more skin detail you see and it looks more realistic. Which is a problem in this case. "Sharpness" is a folks term with wide interpretation range and "resolution" techie fixation in "more=better" mentality and both loose sense out of context. Context is acuity and acuity doesn't always help.

Very true. Put simply, I have often heard from DPs, "for this actor, sharpness is not our friend." So we do our best to take the curse off the shot and come up with a flattering look that makes the actor look better, yet still totally real for story purposes.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I have done several major jobs in the last few years where there were fairly intricate "beauty passes" in Resolve done specifically for pores, pimples, scars, wrinkles, crow's feet, neck wrinkles, and other blemish issues. All this stuff has to be done by hand, but it's partially automated in terms of masks and tracking and all that stuff, so it doesn't have to take an inordinate amount of time. Even with comparatively young actors in their 20s, sometimes they have bad days and just need a little help. I think I did about 400 beauty fixes on Aaliyah in the 2002 film Queen of the Damned, and she was a beautiful 22-year-old woman. (16 years has passed and she's no longer with us, so I think the statute of limitations has passed.) Often multiple tracking masks for different parts of the face and body are necessary for best results -- it's not a "one size fits all" correction.

Hats off.

You can also make an argument that part of the "Alexa look" is the characteristic softness in highlights and the saturation roll-off, so if the clients like that look, maybe there's a way to approach it with filtration, soft lighting, and post.

Image generally feels "softer" due to lower acuity mostly predetermined by spatial resolution. In some factors it is actually "sharper" due to different, rougher texture, also predetermined by resolution. Filtration, light and post do not achieve the same effect. Specific signal shaping part defining organicity of digital camera's image response is possible to achieve and has been taken care of.

Past the point of HD and reaching film level of image detail, acquisition resolution became an acuity-related aesthetic choice.
Red made a very smart move with Gemini.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Use a vintage Cooke. My cooke 20-100 zoom definitely softens the skin while retaining sharpness. Gives it a cleaner, softer feel, a bit like silk.
The reason is because the coatings associated with skin tones have a slight halo, while the other coatings (which correspond in RGB to hair, eyebrows, blacks, etc.) do not, so they remain sharp.
Far more natural looking results than most filtration I see out there.
Most vedettes (aging stars from the past) definitely knew these lenses.

You got a great lens for a good price, pleased your still happy.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Tell them that no matter what filtration you use on set, Gaussian Blur is still available for $0 to perfectly match a 3k camera.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Tell them that no matter what filtration you use on set, Gaussian Blur is still available for $0 to perfectly match a 3k camera.

We tend to use frequency-dependent blurs, so it's not just a gaussian blur -- it's a very qualified blur (and sometimes a glow) confined to very specific parts of the face or body and nothing else. Fashion photography does tons of this stuff, so we're just using versions of this technique applied to moving images.

 

[C. Burkhart]

You got a great lens for a good price, pleased your still happy.

Yes I did. Thanks to you Stephen.
Best investment I have made in fact. Very grateful.

 

[Scot Yount]

After lots of research and great feedback here, I went with Zeiss 70-200 Compact zoom, Tiffen 1/4 Glimmer Glass, and a Briese Light 220. Couldn't be happier with the results. Thanks everyone for the input.

Steve, I know this thread is a bit old....but is there any chance you could post (if you have access to it) the final product from this shoot? Or maybe some BTS?

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

There's a few good post options (plugins, etc) in the Skin Softening / Retouch category. Some are quick and cheap, others are more elaborate. One of the easiest, although maybe not the absolute best option, is Magic Bullet Cosmo or other software of that kind with similar price tag. Older and vintage lenses help a lot too, but from what I've seen the heavy filtration affects the whole image quite apparently and do not really cut well with non-filtered shots, maybe one could get away with it when used for tight closeups only.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Know the pipeline

Know the pipeline

Tell them that resolution is not sharpness. The more resolution you have, the less you have to make "it look" sharp.
More resolution gives you more natural skin nuances and a less artificial look. It's always easier to soften your picture by choosing filtration, lenses, ... if really needed.

Spot on. To some degree I blame Sony's earliest HDCAM efforts that turned the sharpening up to 11 to "show off" HD - and spooking actors/agents about high resolution formats. The reality is that one can make native 1080/2K images that are anything but kind to aging actresses or 8K files that can be processed to look quite "smooth". Overriding all of that, in many cases, is being able to intercut with the rest of the scene.

Choosing a lens with less "bite" is a valid option and, like C. Burkhart, I like the older Cooke zooms for such situations. I also carry a 1/4 HBM (Hollywood Black Magic) filter to provide some attenuation of detail optically so the post processing isn't carrying so much of the load.

All that said, IMHO, lighting technique is still the most powerful tool at your disposal - especially if you are aware of what the wheelhouse of post processing is. Fix it in post is not a generic choice. Yes, virtually anything can be "fixed", but some issues can be quelled with minimal damage to the image as a whole - other issues, not so much. As a DP, I want to know enough about the post processing dynamics to know what I can realistically expect to be fixed without creating other issues, and what I really need to control on set. YMMV.

Cheers - #19

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

We tend to use frequency-dependent blurs, so it's not just a gaussian blur -- it's a very qualified blur (and sometimes a glow) confined to very specific parts of the face or body and nothing else. Fashion photography does tons of this stuff, so we're just using versions of this technique applied to moving images.

Haha, It's alLLLLliiivvee! #ZombieThread.

I just meant you can make an 8k camera into a perfect 3k camera, if that's all that they want, by applying a 4px gaussian blur.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Haha, It's alLLLLliiivvee! #ZombieThread. I just meant you can make an 8k camera into a perfect 3k camera, if that's all that they want, by applying a 4px gaussian blur.

No, not at all. We confine the defocus only to a very specific part of people's face, qualified very carefully with masks and secondaries, so everything else in the shot -- their hair, their eyes, their mouths, their teeth, their clothes, the background, any objects -- retains 100% of the original resolution. Only the specific parts of the "aging actor's" face (from the original thread subject) is affected. This is not an overall filter: it's a very special kind of color correction applied with scalpel-like precision applied only to the face. And it hinges on specific frequency content, so we control what threshold and sensitivity can be. All adjusted manually based on gut instinct and experience. There are unpublished tricks involved to get the most out of it, but I'll leave that for others to discover on their own.

I sometimes have to apply another tracking mask to the neck and upper body if those appear to sag or otherwise have blemishes or inconsistent skintone, and sometimes multiple masks on the face are necessary. I recently had to do this to a <fairly famous> actor in a 1990s film, and I did it just because they had had the reputation of being a fairly glamorous person back in the 1950s and 1960s. I felt, "well, let's maintain the illusion of this 70-ish actress looking extremely good for her age." She didn't look like she was 30 or 40, but you could buy her as an extremely well-preserved 60, maybe late 50s. Nothing else in the shot was changed: just her face skintone, and maybe a dash of eye lightening. All this stuff has to be done very subtly, so I tend to err on the side of "less is more" whenever possible.

 

[Björn Benckert]

High resolution and noise free image is always a better starting point. Flame 2020 is out today and got seriously good AI for face stuff. But even before that, all the matchbox tools like, reskin, dollface and motion warper makes it very possible to simply paint the face you want and render it on. Even relight it in 3D space if wanted. Quite a big step forward in this update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGf_1sGhg6Y


Edit wrong video... did not find the face ai stuff.


You can also argue that with monstro and fast glas you get more focus fall off. Even though I think thats possibly one of the things thats a little bit too easy to overdo with monstro, wide open high speed lens simply is a bit more than most asked for. Difficult to get both eyes in focus even when looking straight into camera

 

[C. Burkhart]

High resolution and noise free image is always a better starting point. Flame 2020 is out today and got seriously good AI for face stuff. But even before that, all the matchbox tools like, reskin, dollface and motion warper makes it very possible to simply paint the face you want and render it on. Even relight it in 3D space if wanted. Quite a big step forward in this update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGf_1sGhg6Y


Edit wrong video... did not find the face ai stuff.

Yeah, to be honest the face in that video (1:09) still has that same "plasticky" quality that we have seen a million times, which just screams digital retouch. It's the modern equivalent of the fuzzy frost filters of the 60's every time a beauty shot was needed.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Yeah, to be honest the face in that video (1:09) still has that same "plasticky" quality that we have seen a million times, which just screams digital retouch. It's the modern equivalent of the fuzzy frost filters of the 60's every time a beauty shot was needed.

Ok, the demos is not really to show the quality of things. Its usually overly done and not to taste.

Cant or should not point on girls and ladies that I pretty much redid the whole face for but but its simply more common than not doing it. Some want it to taste some yes want it well overcooked. But yes I painted around in Madonnas face some 20 years ago when I was a kid and excelled from there sort of speak. And a clean source with little or no noise is best with good makeup of ofcourse, but less makeup is better than shitty makeup. Soft light is of course good.
Soft filter might help in camera but only so and so far. And its actually better to digitally add the soft filter after the retouch as that helps to coverer up the work done. 8K is the absolute best bet for this kind of stuff, quite contrary what people think. Even prores 2k files from 8k is better than other source as it becomes so clean. So the point, we only do it for HD is not valid, you want a noise free sharp HD signal 8k capture is the best way to get there.

Shitty link and not the best video but was actually nominated for best VFX in MTV awards that year. Corn sadly won with a super slomo bullet video

Back then Kodak Cineon degrain and cinespeed was the new cool trick. Roling stones took that cinespeed corrupted motion estimate stuff and run in circles with it to a new level with their "like a rolling stone"

But yes frequency filtering with tracked on mask. basically allow you to remove wrinkles and spots without touching skin texture if you want.

 

[Simon_G]

Seems like you did not get an answer yet huh? Let me try to answer your question in a meaningful way. I hope you were not trolling or being sarcastic with your inquiry. There are quite a few reasons behind this topic. Here is a couple of them.

In the industry there are perceptions of this camera is better than that camera etc. It goes back to the question "How easy to operate any camera by an average user/operator without getting too technical". When you look at most digital or digital cinema cameras, almost all of them comes with a bunch of dedicated buttons tailor-made to address almost all necessary commands and in some instances even simple menu's. Even in their main menu they rarely go deeper than one or two layers up/down. Whereas the RED folks built a camera with just 4 buttons on the brain. If you need more buttons, you have to shell out a lot of money to add a "sidekick" or a DSMC2 side handle etc. Instead of a whole lot of built-in buttons, RED depends on a camera mounted monitor with touch controls and fairly a complex menu system. And talk about the menu and the user interface (UI); even seasoned RED users sometimes get lost within the RED UI, when you are working under pressure and/or in adverse conditions. This could be considered overwhelming for some people. Movies are made by artists. Not as much by engineers, technicians and/or computer geeks. Most artists may not have a need or the desire to learn a complicated tech system just to tell their story.

Another reason was the end product out of the camera. ARRI and other manufacturers gave the end user easy to use industry standard "Pro-Res", .mov, avchd or files in the mp4 framework. Yes, they were compressed formats. But many did not care. They preferred a much simpler workflow.

I sometimes tell my students that other camera manufacturers build their cameras around a sensor and RED builds their sensor around a computer.

One could discuss this topic in detail. This thread may not be the appropriate venue for that.

Thanks for the reply - no I am generally interested in the thinking here. Yeah it seems like the safer option it looks for post houses.

I am finding this with my footage out of the RED Neil, most times I am sharing that with other staff and they are asking me to grade and ProRes out instead of having an interest in learning to work with other formats. That's why I ask - I was curious what working with ARRI formats was like because I had not done that yet. I have been amazed at what I can do with RAW footage in a colour tweaking sense, other formats would just fall apart and so it was more about getting what you can in camera.

I think turn around has a huge part in this personally. I must be lucky to have the extra time to put care into the images.

Use a vintage Cooke. My cooke 20-100 zoom definitely softens the skin while retaining sharpness. Gives it a cleaner, softer feel, a bit like silk.
The reason is because the coatings associated with skin tones have a slight halo, while the other coatings (which correspond in RGB to hair, eyebrows, blacks, etc.) do not, so they remain sharp.
Far more natural looking results than most filtration I see out there.
Most vedettes (aging stars from the past) definitely knew these lenses.

This is exactly what I have done as well C. I do work with a lot of elderly academic folk who are new to presenting to camera and I have found this lens has been amazing at not being so harsh on the skin!

Are you using any filtration on top of this as well? I am currently trying to work out that area (should I get mist filters, etc) and ND filtering as well. It looks like I need to get a matte box with a huge ass rear. 144mm is massive. I did get some Kodak gels, but sort of not sure about the rear filter stuff.

Love to hear what you are using if any?