Life-like colours?

[Milan Spasic]

"Children of Men" and "1984" are considered science fiction and are pretty realistic-looking. "2001" has only become less realistic because today is 2010!

Let's add Solaris to the "realistic" list!

 

[Joseph Ward]

Only Graeme knows what is color.

 

[Paul Leeming]

A recipe for a hard sci-fi film by Henri T:
- good plot (?)
- good music (?)
- realistic
- ground-shaking image quality with unique styled cinematography (Red Epic?)
- minimalist dialogue
- minimalist comedy

Ooh, I think I'm writing just such a movie for you right now :wink5:

Will hopefully shoot it later this year (it's a short btw) on either Epic or Scarlet in 3D if possible.

Sorry for going a bit O/T.

Cheers,

Paul

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Yea, I have found that "Star Wars: A New Hope" has a less dramatic feeling without the music by John Williams.

A recipe for a hard sci-fi film by Henri T:
- good plot (?)
- good music (?)
- realistic
- ground-shaking image quality with unique styled cinematography (Red Epic?)
- minimalist dialogue
- minimalist comedy

I like stories like the Space Odyssey series (I have all the books: 2001, 2010, 2061, 3001), Back to the Future trilogy, Star Wars (all the films), Moon, the Terminator film series, and Contact.

I like the future depicted in the Back to the Future, Part II. I like the futuristic clothes and gadgets in that film.

No. You only need 3 things:

- Good story/concept
- Well fleshed-out characters we care about.
- Engaging drama, well acted.

The rest can be whatever. Minimalist dialogue? Why would this be a selling point for a screenplay!?

 

[Henri H]

The rest can be whatever. Minimalist dialogue? Why would this be a selling point for a screenplay!?

Have you seen Aki Kaurismäki's films? His trademark is characters that do not speak very much.

Have you seen "2001: A Space Odyssey"?
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/trivia:
"There is no dialogue in the first 25 minutes of the movie (ending when a stewardess speaks at 25:38), nor in the last 23 minutes (excluding end credits). With these two lengthy sections and other shorter ones, there are around 88 dialogue-free minutes in the movie."

 

[Henri H]

Ooh, I think I'm writing just such a movie for you right now :wink5:

Will hopefully shoot it later this year (it's a short btw) on either Epic or Scarlet in 3D if possible.

Sorry for going a bit O/T.

Cheers,

Paul

Sounds interesting. Good luck to your project! I would like to see it or hear about it in the near-future. :thumbup1:

 

[Henri H]

For what it's worth, this might be of interest to you ("New Digital Camera Sees Same Colors as Human Eye"):

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20091224/178841/

Thanks! I really hope that Red Epic has even better colour space and dynamic range than the previous model. I'm not saying that it is bad at the moment, but there is always room for improvements...

 

[Henri H]

I simply couldn’t resist to weigh in on this one.

My late father HARRY LANGE, was one of the principal production designers on 2001. There were many 100’s to 1000’s of alternate designs for everything for the movie. Even the monolith in some designs was not rectangular but a squat rounded looking crystal. My father used to work in future concepts at NASA, and was good friends with Arthur Clarke. So there were many designs that had the huge radiators for the ion propulsion engines for the dissipation of heat form the nuclear reactors. The discovery space craft when built as a large scale model had quite a few more structures on it that were later pulled off, simply because it looked too busy. If you look at all the alternate designs that were scientifically more correct for example from Arthur, they really looked plug ugly, and so in the end an esthetic compromise was made to have the ships look both believable and really cool/beautiful, rather than have something that is scientifically more accurate but bloody ugly. A lot of realism comes from purely meticulous work done by hand when building the scale models. For example the sphere of the discovery space ship was made from a six or eight foot diameter Perspex sphere. To get the correct drop shadows on the surfaces so things did not look flat, had another sphere of a slightly larger diameter, so that surface features could be cut out of the larger sphere and applied to the surface of the smaller sphere, so it does not look like stuff that’s just painted on. (This is only one example, but gives you the idea). Many engineering companies in the UK were pulled into to try and build stuff almost for real, in terms of surface finishes and rigid engineering, and with Stanley the camera could go anywhere so that everything had to be perfect to the last detail as a close up could come from anywhere on the entire set.

Ironically the original color stocks used on 2001 were very unstable and very quickly the colors had become very washed out and de-saturated. Since the movie has been digitally restored you get a sense of a much stronger palate (as originally intended), rather than the experience one would have had watching the movie ten years after its release.

Also ironically, I am working on 3d and stereo capture technologies that can in essence capture objects in 3d from the size of a mountain to a bug in exquisite detail and dynamic range for a very wide range of applications. One obvious one, being for digital capture of 1:1 built sets to miniatures. The CG models do not look computery or synthetic at all, the texture mapping is the most accurate on the planet. Some of the realism comes from the physical interplay of fine 3d surfaces with natural light which is completely captured, which is still very hard for conventional CG techniques to completely simulate with the time constraints of a conventional film production. I am hoping that the technologies that I/we are developing will enable a resurgence of physically built models over CG and usher in a new wave of super realistic and believable digital imagery.

For Stanley Kubrick, absolute “believability” was a number one priority from the start. However as much of a fan of the sets and technical work as I am, the screen play/storey does leave a lot to be desired. I think it was an excellent short storey by Arthur Clark, then taken a bit too far. As far as CG goes, I am a huge BSG (new Battle Star Gallactica) fan, as the storey and plot lines are wonderfully long and complex, (fantastic drama, some of the best writing I have seen in years), the storey is so good that you really don’t care about how good or bad the CG may seem or whether the dynamic ranges really match in the various composites; the storey , action and characters are so compelling you don’t give a "frak" about the CG, good or bad!

Cheers,
Eric

PS Henri H, one of the illustrations you cite in your link my father made a long time ago for the book "Conquering the Suns Empire" these design concepts have been around since the 1950's but for some reason no one wants to put very large and dorky radiator fins on their space craft (no matter how technically accurate they are), I kinda like them, but the genral public percieves them as being wings, and everybody knows you don't need wings in the vacuum of space, so in 2001 it was important to not have winged space craft as this would seem like something from the Disney movies made of Von Brauns "rocket Ship" concepts.

Thanks for this amazing story!

I still think that majority of films have so many scientific mistakes that wing-like heat radiators shouldn't scare the audience too much.

I think there should be lots of little details in a hard sci-fi film. :attention9ha:

 

[Stefan Christou]

Funny how no one has mentioned colour checker charts, grey cards for getting a white balance, IR and hot mirrors or light meters for proper exposure. These are all important practical tools for getting colour right. Just a thought

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

How to get life-like colours? Should there be four or more color channels in the camera? Now there are only red, green, and blue.

How can I shoot my film with the best available colours?

What colour spaces are used in film industry?
What differences are there between XvYCC and ProPhoto RGB? Which one is "better"?

Getting back to the root of your question...

To record "life like" colors I'd suggest shooting a really simple test on film. Go through the photochemical process if possible and see a print. A color chart with a face (to see skin tone) and then maybe an exterior with familiar colors (blue sky, foliage, etc).

There is so much that can go wrong in the world of digital workflow and unless you have a real grasp of how to manage this - which I am guessing you don't from your questions. There are so many things that can go wrong in the chain.

I think you will see how incredibly well film captures "real life" colors in a very natural way.

I am putting stylistic interpretation aside. I am making no judgement on whether capturing an image realistically is good/ bad or otherwise - just trying to get to the core of your question.

Kodak and Fuji have spent decades on just this - how to make film "read" tone and color in as realistic a way as possible.

 

[Felix K.]

A recipe for a hard sci-fi film by Henri T:
[...]
- ground-shaking image quality with unique styled cinematography (Red Epic?)
[...]

I always thought that ground-breaking image quality in the digital world was achieved with the Red One and other high-end professional cameras. The "unique styled" cinematography, as you call it, is something achieved by DoPs, camera operators, assistants, key grips, gaffers etc... it's a team effort under leadership of a photographer and/or director and/or producer, who all should have a vision about what they want to do differently.
Filmmaking has always been a team effort, more than in any other art form. So if you want to do all by yourself for yourself, it'll lack a lot on a lot of levels. Have fun though...

A deep-color resolution has existed for a long time in the celluloid world. So you're not really innovative there. Sorry, dude!

 

[Henri H]

A deep-color resolution has existed for a long time in the celluloid world. So you're not really innovative there. Sorry, dude!

I am just interested in making clever (?) fiction that does not look outdated, if you watch it in 2020.

Good that you mentioned resolution... What is the optimum resolution I should shoot the film? I think 4K may not be enough. 28K seems to be overkill as you can see:

I think UHDV (Super Hi-Vision / Ultra High Definition Video 7680 x 4320) is more than enough.

How about the frame rate? 24 fps is definitely not enough. I have heard that IMAX had 48 fps film system. Maybe 48 fps is enough for a modern sci-fi film?

 

[Kyle Mallory]

Henri, dude, you crack me up. I'm guessing you've got some seriously deep pockets with lots of money burning a big whole in them.

I'm going to restrain myself suffice it to say, that sci-fi is fiction, fiction is "not real". If you are interested in making "realistic films" you should just forget about the whole fiction genre. That said, you might consider really exploring your motivations for making movies.

If you are trying to tell a story (I'm sure 95% of all film fits this category) and convey a moral or theme (political or otherwise), then story and plot are the most important aspects you should consider. Cinematography, dialog/comedy (or lack thereof), accuracy of your fictional universe, etc, should all be secondary, and should be viewed as tools to help tell your story.

If your purpose of sci-fi filmmaking is to portray a particular vision of the future (which is what it sounds like you are trying to do), then I might suggest that you put your focus on engineering, theoretical physics, technological developments and (since you hate CG) set design (the realism of what you put in front of the camera), rather than the technology of the camera itself.

The camera (RED, Arri, SI, Panavision, digital, film, etc) will capture an image, pure and simple. The resolution and color gamut of the camera is likely more than sufficient to faithfully reproduce that scene exactly as your production designer can create it. The difference between 720p and 4k, or even 9k will make no difference on the "realism" of your sets, suffice it to say that higher resolutions will more likely show flaws in your sets, which will either destroy your "realism" or force you to put more effort into the realism of your sets... it's like being pulled into the vortex of a black hole; which begs the question, will you forever fall? or will you eventually spray out of a quasar on the farside of the universe?

 

[Henri H]

If your purpose of sci-fi filmmaking is to portray a particular vision of the future (which is what it sounds like you are trying to do), then I might suggest that you put your focus on engineering, theoretical physics, technological developments and (since you hate CG) set design (the realism of what you put in front of the camera), rather than the technology of the camera itself.

Actually, I am a (theoretical) physicist. I got my M.Sc. degree just a couple of weeks ago.

I think it is good to have (at least) a basic knowledge of cameras and cinematography even, if one is only a set designer, script writer, science advisor or director. That is why I'm asking questions. Physics is also about asking questions.

 

[Eric Lange]

Henry H...

I was going to post some fairly mind blowing topics/fertile ground for Scifi/speculative fiction. Now however I see that you have a Masters degree in Physics. Honestly dude go on and Do your PhD in Physics first. Then if you still feel like you want to make Scifi movies after that do that. I don’t need to tell you that there are some simply amazing things going on in Physics right now even on the practical and experimental level, from Bose Einstein Condensates to Quantum entanglement/Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and so on. My father worked on 2001, first three Star wars at EMI, Moonraker, plenty of war movies, Dark Crystal, other Henson projects and even a Python “meaning of life’. You could say, I grew up on many amazing film sets and so on. My father always VERY STRONGLY advised us (me and my brother) NOT to go into the film business (and for good reason) [Sorry if this seems a bit off message for the REDUSERNET]. The reason why my father got hired for 2001 (Stanley said I can hire illustrators like you ten a penny in New York, but you are the only one that has the experience of actually working in the field of future manned space flight and exploration [Marshal Space Flight Centre] and was friends with Arhur Clarke also (from NASA and various book projects).

I took my father’s advice, and did not go into the film industry. Later on I did a PhD at Cambridge University and had research fellowships at the Smithsonian and Getty and so on. The research I did on advanced real time rendering systems and stereo photogrammetry are now the basis of a whole new set and plank of technologies (US Patent Just issued a few days ago(Yeh!)) that will greatly accelerate 3d and stereoscopic rendering, and will bring a level visual realism that has not been reached before, especially for real time applications. This has obvious spin offs for VFX and video games. However this came about simply because I was researching intensively for many years to solve critical problems in completely different fields of application. So in a sense I am only able to contribute to this field because I made the conscious decision to not go into the film business and do something useful in the “real world” instead. There really are a lot difficulties and pitfalls with the film industry especially if you want peace of mind, a happy marriage and want to raise a family and have a stable income! (these are by no means trivial matters).

I put it to you, that if you can do something absolutely real, like as the physicist you are, discover or uncover a new piece of the universe that was hither to unknown, this is of far greater value than the “Flick business” and generally far more fantastic and magical than ANY Scifi movie. There are still plenty of PhD topics out there to be jumped on. Maybe take a leaf out of Arthur Clarke’s book, do it for real first, then later on if you feel the need to make movies do that. The contradiction to this would be if you are one of these people that have an unbelievable and burning desire to tell great stories, no matter what they are, and if that is the case, and you are interested in “realism”, then definitely cut your teeth on the documentary format (there are still so many amazing stories to be told from real life). I think there are many routes to the film industry but I really think one of the best routes is to be someone who can bring something from outside that is of intrinsic value that does not currently exist from within the industry itself (Jim Jannard's team and RED are an excellent example of this!). Really challenge yourself to see what you can do with real things first, amazing things really are possible.

Congratulations on your M.Sc in Physics, surely there are others that must be threatening to break your legs if you leave Physics to make movies right?

Cheers,
Eric

 

[Joel Kaye]

I think there are many routes to the film industry but I really think one of the best routes is to be someone who can bring something from outside that is of intrinsic value that does not currently exist from within the industry itself

Great piece of advice.

Of course it is possible for the bright screenwriter to interview masters in other other fields and incorporate "reality" into their scripts. Sadly it seems more set designers, costumers and prop people do good research than the storytellers do.

This ended up being a fun thread to read. Thanks everyone.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Have you seen Aki Kaurismäki's films? His trademark is characters that do not speak very much.

Have you seen "2001: A Space Odyssey"?
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/trivia:
"There is no dialogue in the first 25 minutes of the movie (ending when a stewardess speaks at 25:38), nor in the last 23 minutes (excluding end credits). With these two lengthy sections and other shorter ones, there are around 88 dialogue-free minutes in the movie."

Yes. So what? That was a daring choice in 1970-something, which BTW tanked with general audiences and lost loads of cash, and now you think that copying that is a selling point for your project in 2010? How is copying other people's 30+ year-old work a selling point for you?

The screenwriter and director made a choice related to the material here too. A good film works well in CONCERT with themes and story. Every story needs a new, considered approach.

 

[Henri H]

Henry H...
I was going to post some fairly mind blowing topics/fertile ground for Scifi/speculative fiction. Now however I see that you have a Masters degree in Physics. Honestly dude go on and Do your PhD in Physics first. Then if you still feel like you want to make Scifi movies after that do that.

Yes, I am working on it. Too bad things are not always so easy.

I don’t need to tell you that there are some simply amazing things going on in Physics right now even on the practical and experimental level, from Bose Einstein Condensates to Quantum entanglement/Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and so on. My father worked on 2001, first three Star wars at EMI, Moonraker, plenty of war movies, Dark Crystal, other Henson projects and even a Python “meaning of life’. You could say, I grew up on many amazing film sets and so on. My father always VERY STRONGLY advised us (me and my brother) NOT to go into the film business (and for good reason) [Sorry if this seems a bit off message for the REDUSERNET]. The reason why my father got hired for 2001 (Stanley said I can hire illustrators like you ten a penny in New York, but you are the only one that has the experience of actually working in the field of future manned space flight and exploration [Marshal Space Flight Centre] and was friends with Arhur Clarke also (from NASA and various book projects).

Sounds interesting. I guess nowadays they are not looking so specialized science advisors, because the level of physics in modern films is so bad...

I took my father’s advice, and did not go into the film industry. Later on I did a PhD at Cambridge University and had research fellowships at the Smithsonian and Getty and so on. The research I did on advanced real time rendering systems and stereo photogrammetry are now the basis of a whole new set and plank of technologies (US Patent Just issued a few days ago(Yeh!)) that will greatly accelerate 3d and stereoscopic rendering, and will bring a level visual realism that has not been reached before, especially for real time applications. This has obvious spin offs for VFX and video games. However this came about simply because I was researching intensively for many years to solve critical problems in completely different fields of application. So in a sense I am only able to contribute to this field because I made the conscious decision to not go into the film business and do something useful in the “real world” instead.

Congratulations on your patent and a PhD as well.

There really are a lot difficulties and pitfalls with the film industry especially if you want peace of mind, a happy marriage and want to raise a family and have a stable income! (these are by no means trivial matters).

Well, at least I don't have to raise a family. I'm not a type of dude that girls are drooling for. I'm more like the dudes in the Big Bang Theory.

If we are optimistic, me getting married or even getting a (first) kiss from a girl are years away...

I put it to you, that if you can do something absolutely real, like as the physicist you are, discover or uncover a new piece of the universe that was hither to unknown, this is of far greater value than the “Flick business” and generally far more fantastic and magical than ANY Scifi movie. There are still plenty of PhD topics out there to be jumped on. Maybe take a leaf out of Arthur Clarke’s book, do it for real first, then later on if you feel the need to make movies do that. The contradiction to this would be if you are one of these people that have an unbelievable and burning desire to tell great stories, no matter what they are, and if that is the case, and you are interested in “realism”, then definitely cut your teeth on the documentary format (there are still so many amazing stories to be told from real life). I think there are many routes to the film industry but I really think one of the best routes is to be someone who can bring something from outside that is of intrinsic value that does not currently exist from within the industry itself (Jim Jannard's team and RED are an excellent example of this!). Really challenge yourself to see what you can do with real things first, amazing things really are possible.

Yes, currently I'm interested in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics and cosmic ray air showers. Let's see, if I can go to the graduate school to study them (or something else)...

My film would have been about a SETI project of some sort. Yeah, I know: "Pretty innovative, NOT!"

Congratulations on your M.Sc in Physics, surely there are others that must be threatening to break your legs if you leave Physics to make movies right?

Thanks!

Well, I think that they are threatening to break my legs, if I try to go the graduate school, at the moment. Well, gotta keep trying.

 

[Eric Lange]

Yes. So what? That was a daring choice in 1970-something, which BTW tanked with general audiences and lost loads of cash, and now you think that copying that is a selling point for your project in 2010? How is copying other people's 30+ year-old work a selling point for you?

The screenwriter and director made a choice related to the material here too. A good film works well in CONCERT with themes and story. Every story needs a new, considered approach.

I said earlier I’m not a big fan of the script/storey as a movie, great short storey. And you are %100 spot on that the movie tanked; BUT, what is really impressive is that it is not something from the mid seventies, but the production actually started in earnest in 1966 and a lot of preparation was carried out earlier than that. So from a visual design point of view it is rather miraculous as the early designs started out as something that looked like something from the Jetsons, and on paper and several years of design work literally evolved everything on paper to what you finally see, a considerable achievement, because I can tell you that the earlier designs were pretty short of the mark compared to the final result. Once in a blue moon I do try to look at the movie, and it is still shocking how good some of the designs and sets still look in some of the sequences (even today).

Interestingly Fred Ordway who worked on the production, (another NASA guy and “futurist and space historian”) argued very strongly that there should be an accompanying narrative to the dawn of man sequences. A lot of stuff does get missed, and it is hard to visually derive from the movie exactly what’s going on unless you read the book first (especially for movie goers of the time). For example, the famous sequence of the bone being chucked up in the air, and then transitions to the orbiting space craft. The space craft in question is in fact an orbiting platform of nuclear missiles/flying bomb, which you wouldn’t know by just looking at it (so the ”joke”/allegory is lost). However, in the movie Mission to Mars which is essentially a thinly disguised re-make of 2001, but instead a 2001 demystified, they actually explain everything. However this really underscores the idea that 2001 really relies on a paranoid imagination being suplied by the viewer, for what is not explained or shown to engender a feeling of mystery and awe. When you explain these things explicitly in the movie as they did in Mission to Mars in an accessible way (as these are pretty simple concepts) then you are not going to get your “mystery and awe on”. 2001’s eventual success had more to do with the star gate sequences, as that was pretty much the best thing you could drop acid to at the time.

My favorite interpretation of 2001 is the one done in LEGO by Tony Mines and Tim Drage

Check it out I won’t give it away .

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O7nzjfaOMY


I think it’s always important to understand what has gone before, so that you can explore something new. This is why I was so impressed with the new Battle Star Gallactica, as the writing and characters and drama and IDEAS were so amazing. I think these days it’s really hard to compress complex cool and engaging ideas into 90 minutes (i.e. a movie), and I think the television serial format (in BSG’s case) proved that far more complex and subtle ideas could be explored, especially with long arching plot lines and further twists, turns, embellishments, red herrings and shock moments; this really changed my mind about the effectiveness of the TV serial format over movies for communicating amazing ideas and powerful drama.

Cheers,
Eric

 

[Henri H]

http://www.fujifilm.cz/cs/download/kinematografie/Reala_500D.pdf
http://www.fujifilmholdings.com/en/pdf/investors/annual_report/ff_ar_2000_001.pdf
http://www.fujifilm.com/products/consumer_film/color_negativefilms_35mm/superia_xtra400/
http://www.fujifilm.com/products/consumer_film/pdf/superia_xtra400_datasheet.pdf

Sony RGBE:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscf828/

Just a month later on July 16 Sony announced that they had developed a new four color RGBE color filter array (at the time we noted that it would be likely used on the new eight megapixel CCD but had no confirmation of this fact). Instead of the traditional RGB color filter array the new CFA is made up of Red, Green, Blue and Emerald (like Cyan) color filters. Sony claim that this expands the gamut of color which the sensor can capture and greatly improves color response.

Sharp RGBY:
http://dvice.com/archives/2010/01/how-does-1-tril.php

http://www.pcworld.com/article/186103/sharp_quadpixel_technology_promises_better_hdtv_color.html

Sharp announced a new line of Aquos HDTVs, the LE Series, that will add a yellow subpixel to the normal red, green and blue (RGB) colors used in TV pixels.

Sharp says the addition of that yellow color will allow new Sharp TV’s to produce more natural, more accurate images than any other TV. A typical RGB screen can display millions of colors, but the new Sharp display can handle trillions of colors. Sharp says it expects the new “RGBY” color scheme, which Sharp calls “QuadPixel technology, to become the standard for the whole HDTV industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z92GMgiu8jI