FYI: Chiraq on Dragon

[Linda Barzini]

Spike Lee's new film Chiraq is being filmed with 2 Red Dragons. They are shooting 6k with a 5:1 compression using Arri Master Primes. Shooting well lit outdoor scenes at night, they set the color balance to 4500 with an ISO 800.

It was interesting to see how small the camera technology has gotten but all the support still needs to be large. The Red Dragon looked pretty small on a Super Technocrane 50.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Awesome! Do you what OLPF they are on? Skintone or LLO?

 

[Elsie N]

Spike Lee's new film Chiraq is being filmed with 2 Red Dragons. They are shooting 6k with a 5:1 compression using Arri Master Primes. Shooting well lit outdoor scenes at night, they set the color balance to 4500 with an ISO 800.

It was interesting to see how small the camera technology has gotten but all the support still needs to be large. The Red Dragon looked pretty small on a Super Technocrane 50.

Good to hear about these increasing Dragon choices by known Directors.

But I'm wondering how much of the support being utilized on productions like this one is due to past practice... and what amount could be trimmed without any penalty to the production.

On the one hand, it's good to keep hiring the support people... but on the other hand it is helpful to push the envelope of bare necessity to understand what "a camera" can save a production when budget is constrained.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Most directors and cinematographers care for color, DR and reliability and most of them didn't choose MX when comparing between it and other cameras like the Alexa. We all know that the colors weren't especially good on the MX so there's no surprise it didn't get chosen other than for heavy VFX work. With Dragon, the colors and DR compete or exceed that of Alexa so I guess it's a whole other game when testing between cameras before shooting. Among the first things that a director looks at on the camera tests is the face of the actor, if the skin tones and contrast of the face looks good, between the MX and Dragon it's like night and day.

 

[Linda Barzini]

Unfortunately, I didn't see what OLPF they were using.

The Super TechnoCrane 50 is a amazing. If you can afford to rent one, why not? But, most of the shots could easily be covered with a steadicam, dolly, or long jib. The one thing we keep hearing from the masters is that the high end tools just make production easier or are more reliable. If you know what you are doing, you can do about anything "Hollywood" if you are willing to put the time and energy into solving it.