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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 :)

EPIC-M Monochrome

Emery Wells said:
I'll give you all a hint... Todays Monochrome shoot will be on TV late Saturday Night... I wonder what big shows are on late Saturday Nights. :) I'll be grading the footage tomorrow in full 4K. Should be interesting to "grade" true B&W footage. On the one hand I feel like I won't have nearly as much control but hopefully the image is worth the sacrifice of control. Will post back with my experience.
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It's Saturday Night Live!!!
 
Emery Wells said:
I'll give you all a hint... Todays Monochrome shoot will be on TV late Saturday Night... I wonder what big shows are on late Saturday Nights. :) I'll be grading the footage tomorrow in full 4K. Should be interesting to "grade" true B&W footage. On the one hand I feel like I won't have nearly as much control but hopefully the image is worth the sacrifice of control. Will post back with my experience.
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Awesome!! Can't wait to see it. Great site and great work by the way!
 
Emery Wells said:
I'll give you all a hint... Todays Monochrome shoot will be on TV late Saturday Night... I wonder what big shows are on late Saturday Nights. :) I'll be grading the footage tomorrow in full 4K. Should be interesting to "grade" true B&W footage. On the one hand I feel like I won't have nearly as much control but hopefully the image is worth the sacrifice of control. Will post back with my experience.
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WHHHHHHHHATTTTTTTTTTTTTT
i dont have own a TV, so i guess ill have to catch it online somehow. or itll get posted on here eventually?
 
Emery Wells said:
I'll give you all a hint... Todays Monochrome shoot will be on TV late Saturday Night... I wonder what big shows are on late Saturday Nights. :) I'll be grading the footage tomorrow in full 4K. Should be interesting to "grade" true B&W footage. On the one hand I feel like I won't have nearly as much control but hopefully the image is worth the sacrifice of control. Will post back with my experience.
Click to expand...

We're stoked Emery is on this and I want to thank Jarred and the team for getting us the Monochrome in such short notice for a cool project and Sean R. for all his knowledge and help.

It's hard to describe the look of the sensor especially since we were using the Leica Summilux C's so it's 2 huge variables. The Leica's are the sharpest but creamiest lenses and put Master Primes in the pasture for character and emotion. The Monochrome sensor when side x side with a regular Epic is hard to see the difference (with color epic saturation down) until you start really digging in, lighting and adding color filters to change densities as you would with B&W film. Skin just lights up and the porcelain tones and subtle shades of grey are so emotive.

As we moved thru the day and our eyes adjusted and became more sensitive to what was coming off the sensor we just kept getting more and more surprised/pleased at how great the images looked.

More to come and we'll post when it's gonna air 'tomorrow" :)

Jason
 
@Emery SNL thing Looked good, but tons of Moire on "Brad"s shirt. Probably more of a broadcast problem. What were your delvererables to them?
 
Mike Prevette said:
@Emery SNL thing Looked good, but tons of Moire on "Brad"s shirt. Probably more of a broadcast problem. What were your delvererables to them?
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Yep, we had a pretty bad moire problem on the shirt. The Monochrome footage was transcoded in a beta build of RCX (full quality) to 1080p ProRes 444. Would have liked to grade from he R3D's but they are not supported in Scratch yet. If you view in 1080p the moire goes away but if you view it at any other scaling value you will it pop in. I didn't have time to mess with different scaling algorithms in RCX. SNL schedule is go go go and the Mono footage does not support Rockets yet so we only had time to do one transcoding pass. I can definitely tell you the 1080 ProRes 444 had no moire. Our delivery to NBC is 1080p ProRes HQ 23.98 but we are actually going to start delivering 4K ProRes 444 starting on the next show so that will be fun :)

The closeups are definitely where you can really see the Mono footage shine. The Diamond Bros are shooting more this weekend so it will be interesting to grade more footage under a variety of lighting conditions. *Note - Alex Buono was the DP on the Chanel Parody.

I think shooting with the Mono over the regular Epic is somewhat of a philosophical choice. As a colorist, I have much less control ove the image. When Im grading color footage for black and white, I like to be able to control my color densities. I can swing the hue around and make a skin tone lighter or darker. Obviously I can't do that with a mono image. Any detailed work where I would normally pull an an HSV key can't be done. That said, even with the mono image Im still able to separate out luminance ranges to add more local contrast to a midtone and such.

On the flip side, shooting with the mono should give you a superior B&W image but you are definitely more locked into how you shot it. All and all a good experience but would definitely like to play around with more footage with a more forgiving schedule.
 
Will post a high quality 1080p tomorrow when we get the spots up on our site.
 
I also have a personal project
Coming up I would love to shoot on monocrome. How expensive are rentals?
 
We just shot a ton of footage at night in Savannah, GA. Going thru it over the next few days when we get back from another out of town shoot tmw and will see what we can put up.
we didn't have the time for a ton of testing so we were run and gunning it with our Leica-R's. The images and tonal ranges are stunning in my opinion.

more soon...
 
Will Wernick said:
I also have a personal project
Coming up I would love to shoot on monocrome. How expensive are rentals?
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We expect to rent the body in the UK/Europe at around £850 / €1000
 
Emery Wells said:
Will post a high quality 1080p tomorrow when we get the spots up on our site.
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Could you also post a 1080p center 1:1 crop ?
I'd like to see the real thing.... tired of all the HD posts from 4K cameras ;)
Much appreciated !
 
I have some 1:1 comparison crops in front of me- nothing exciting content-wise, just the inside of a meeting room at RED Europe. I want to clear with RED before posting, as its not glamourous footage. What it IS however is absolute clarity that monochrome is a completely different beast. Smooth grain, pin sharpness and elegant graduation of tone. Mono converted X footage by comparison has the expected OLPF based softness, clumpier uglier grain and harsher transitions across luma gradients, never mind the lower sensitivity.
 
Les Dittert said:
Could you also post a 1080p center 1:1 crop ?
I'd like to see the real thing.... tired of all the HD posts from 4K cameras ;)
Much appreciated !
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Unfortunately I can only post the finished piece in 1080. Still waiting to get the final back from NBC.
 
Oh. If you can post the finished piece, then why would it not be OK to maybe post a still frame of it as well, at full resolution ?
( maybe the makeup does not look good with the ultra detail, or something ? If so , A still of non-people would do ? )
Thanks
 
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