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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 :)

frustrating meeting with Post houses

K. cromwell said:
That's side... I feel that people will only go with what best suites them rather than growing and learning a system that in many ways is better.
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Hm... People should go with what best suits them. That creates confidence and thus better images.

So... what suits which production, that's another story... :)
 
Justin Johnson said:
Bob,

We have worked on 3 or 4 films now with Alexa footage.. it does look beautiful.. However, in regards to pulling keys, we routinely ask for the raw files and convert them ourselves to 1080p to avoid edge issues. Productions usually choose to de-bayer to larger resolutions because in screenings it looks sharper. Any green screens or blue screens will suffer from aliasing and sharpening effects on edges. Do some comparison tests if you have a chance.

For anyone wondering.. the reason for these issues derives from the fact that most bayer pattern sensors resolve to an "actual resolution" smaller than the stated resolution of the sensor.

I have not yet noticed these sharpening and aliasing issues with RED footage yet.. I assume its because the de-bayer algorithms are more advanced? ...
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Yes, we tend to avoid aliasing issues by design. The issue you state with Bayer CFA sensors is actually more a factor of the proper optical low pass filtering you need to avoid aliasing on any sensor configuration. With other configurations, they generally allow more aliasing through than we do.

Graeme
 
Nuke and Shake's Log curve is correct. RLF is the proper way of doing things. LogC is an obnoxious and stupid in my opinion. Yes you can download a LUT off of ARRI's page ... but you HAVE to download a LUT off of arri's page which is dumb.

RED should never ever ever change their procedure to conform to whatever Adobe is doing. Adobe is wrong 99% of the time.
 
I heard back from Autodesk:

"Yes, the Flame (and Smoke) LUT-Editor does a standard log-to-lin.
Importing 10-bit log Cineon in Flame's LUT Editor and using the LogtoLin LUT shows the following default value:
Ref Black: 95
Ref White: 685
Gamma: 0.6"

Hope that helps!

Gavin, agreed.

Graeme
 
Bob Gundu said:
Well, unfortunately the Alexa won out because of what I felt were misconceptions. I believe these guys were looking for the path of least resistance which means more money for them. They made the claim of the Alexa looks so much more filmic, more latitude, less noise, less cost of storage, blah blah blah. Talked to the colourist and he loves working on the Alexa footage because it's so easy....
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Man, that's bizarre. At the four or five Post houses I've collaborated with in LA in the last 10 years (mostly Technicolor/Hollywood), we tell the client and DP to make the choice of camera. We don't care, as long as it looks good. We tell them, "shoot whatever you like, but let's do some tests first and make sure the workflow is solid."

Red One, Alexa, Epic, Scarlet, old Sony, new Sony, Canon, even film... in the end, it doesn't matter as long as the filmmakers know what they're doing, they understand the limitations, the lighting is decent, and there's good communication between the DP, the sound department, the post department, and the facility. Choice of camera is not that big a deal. There can be complications, like timecode issues, exposure issues, 3D problems, and so on, but those are not camera-specific.

No post house should ever bad-mouth a camera. To me, all that does is make the client think, "well, the next time I use that camera, I sure won't come here."
 
Marc Wielage said:
Man, that's bizarre. At the four or five Post houses I've collaborated with in LA in the last 10 years (mostly Technicolor/Hollywood), we tell the client and DP to make the choice of camera. We don't care, as long as it looks good. We tell them, "shoot whatever you like, but let's do some tests first and make sure the workflow is solid."

Red One, Alexa, Epic, Scarlet, old Sony, new Sony, Canon, even film... in the end, it doesn't matter as long as the filmmakers know what they're doing, they understand the limitations, the lighting is decent, and there's good communication between the DP, the sound department, the post department, and the facility. Choice of camera is not that big a deal. There can be complications, like timecode issues, exposure issues, 3D problems, and so on, but those are not camera-specific.

No post house should ever bad-mouth a camera. To me, all that does is make the client think, "well, the next time I use that camera, I sure won't come here."
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At last someone reasonable ;-)
 
Kristin Stewart said:
At last someone reasonable ;-)
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You're the first person who's said there! Seriously, who wants to chase away business? 90% of the job of post people is: make the client happy. As a colorist, I believe job #1 is: give the client what they want. Making beautiful pictures is not the most important part of the job. Giving the client the faith to trust you, and to make sure they know that the post house is there to get their project to the finish line... that's that the post house is for. Not presenting roadblocks or problems.

The only time I can recall where we'd roll our eyes and go, "oh, god help us," was in the very early days of Final Cut Pro. In those cases, the EDL's were a huge mess, and we were often dealing with very inexperienced people who didn't know how to clean lists, organize their material, name their reel numbers and correctly and all that. In those cases, all we did was say, "be warned we've had some issues with FCP. We will have to charge you in the event there are list management issues, changes, or other data-related problems." But we never told them "do not use this program."

And eventually, FCP was fine and has been rock-solid. We had all kinds of issues with Red in the first year the camera came out; now, it's like any other format. Not a big deal. You roll with the punches and keep going. Clients want solutions, not arguments or hostility. Get it done on time, get it done at a specific budget, give them what they want. Very straightforward.
 
Well, unfortunately the Alexa won out because of what I felt were misconceptions. I believe these guys were looking for the path of least resistance which means more money for them.
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As an early adopter of HD I learnt that whilst we may have a new faster cheaper cog to put into the machine, it has to interact smoothly at all levels, including financially, for all those with a vested interest in the process.

RED would have been adopted more quickly by post houses, if it had given the post house guys a bone for them to make a few quid on, for instance releasing a RED CF player with HDSDI out, at same time as the REDone.

Identify and champion post houses who have a vested interest in Red or enough spare mental capacity to adopt it.

Sony did not help introduction of HDcam or SR formats by pitching prices of their studio players so high. But when a post house did invest in a $100k they tended to support acquisition using that format!

Misinformation is frustrating especially to those passionate about their kit, a well prepared simple to understand presentation is important, but you are still at the mercy of a well timed pithy one liner by some ba£$%rd with a vested interest in not using particular kit.



Mike Brennan
 
Michael Brennan said:
Sony did not help introduction of HDcam or SR formats by pitching prices of their studio players so high. But when a post house did invest in a $100k they tended to support acquisition using that format!
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I remember very well when we suddenly (within 3 months) switched almost entirely from Panasonic D5 to HDCam-SR, within about a 3-month period. I was told that Sony approached several major studios and networks and said, "if you act now, we have a special offer on blank tape that will cost X dollars per minute." The price was considerably cheaper than D5.

Suddenly, by the next TV season, pretty much every show we did was all being done on HDCam and/or HDCam-SR. The D5 decks slowly went into mothball-land.

And within 5 years after that, everything became completely file-based (except for final delivery). Revolutions happen, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but they do happen. And the only post houses that will survive are the ones that can deal with the revolutions and listen to their clients.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Ah, you want a view LUT..... Working on that for you.

AE Linear light is a bit funky for sure :-)

Graeme
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Sorry to revive this older thread, but does anyone know if this LUT was made available? If yes, would appreciate a pointer to the location. Thank you.
 
Marc Wielage;[quote said:
No post house should ever bad-mouth a camera. To me, all that does is make the client think, "well, the next time I use that camera, I sure won't come here."
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Only words that should ever come from a post house with regard to camera is "excellent... We will do great work for you"
 
Post houses have a saying, garbage in, garbage out.

Many times I have seen shooters walk into my shop with material that was underexposed, shooting at 6400ISO, with the expectation that we will sort it all out for them. There is some misconception that because it is raw, all bad shooting can be fixed in post. If it's shot poorly, it will look like it was shot poorly, no matter what camera you've shot it in.

It might be some good advice to keep an open mind when talking to a post house, instead of assuming anything. We are professionals too and it doesn't serve us well at all to not do the best job possibly, since our name goes on it too.

Or, do it yourself.
 
Colin Hubick said:
Post houses have a saying, garbage in, garbage out.

Many times I have seen shooters walk into my shop with material that was underexposed, shooting at 6400ISO, with the expectation that we will sort it all out for them. There is some misconception that because it is raw, all bad shooting can be fixed in post. If it's shot poorly, it will look like it was shot poorly, no matter what camera you've shot it in.

It might be some good advice to keep an open mind when talking to a post house, instead of assuming anything. We are professionals too and it doesn't serve us well at all to not do the best job possibly, since our name goes on it too.

Or, do it yourself.
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I certainly agree with the sentiment. Unfortunately, it's about to get much, much worse. Thanks to the upcoming cameras with greatly expanded dynamic range, i fully expect people mistake that for a license to not to worry anymore about good exposure and artistic lighting. Hey, now everything can really be fixed in post, right? Even now I get clients immediately asking for 10 windows to fix something, that should had been done on the set. It is usually a music video crowd. And it's always the same, the lower the budget, the less experience, the less quality of produced material and ALWAYS much more demands. That's why I usually turn down the music video work...
 
jake blackstone said:
I certainly agree with the sentiment. Unfortunately, it's about to get much, much worse. Thanks to the upcoming cameras with greatly expanded dynamic range, i fully expect people mistake that for a license to not to worry anymore about good exposure and artistic lighting.
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I pray you're wrong, but I fear you're right.
 
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