Monstro Dailies projected

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Recently I shot 2 weeks of live action for the beginning and end of the new Paramount Spongebob movie. We shot at Melody Ranch where Deadwood and Westworld has filmed. Mainly the western street and then big scenes in the large saloon set there. Smokey, dark scenes along with a musical dance number.

I was treated last week at Technicolor's wonderful invitation to watch all the dailies on their largest projection room and screen. I shot Monstro 8K with the Cooke S7s.
I cannot begin to express how wonderful the combination was. Transcoded to 2K it was truly silky to the eyes.

If we only all could see dailies the way we used to in the film days.

Just wanted to share with you all.

Cheers,

Peter

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Congrats Peter, wish I could have joined that party! Old school dailies, offering a proper look at what you shot the previous day, is such a terrific point of reference for future choices. Do we need that feedback loop in the same way we did with film - perhaps not. That said, when you give an experienced and talented DP like Peter more information, it has to give him a better opportunity to dig into the subtleties of the process.

Cheers - #19

 

[Tom Gleeson]

OMG I can remember as a young AC the magic, excitement and even tension walking into a mini theatre to view the previous days film rushes projected. It is probably technically easier to view rushes on a large screen today but it rarely happens mostly due to budget and time restraints.
Congratulations Peter. Kick ass projection, Monstro, Cooke S7 and your talent would make a potent mix.

 

[Tim Morten]

Didn't that set just burn in the Woolsey fire? That footage may have been its final martini...

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

No the Melody Ranch did not burn. It was the other Western town that burned.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I really think viewing dailies, preferably roughly edited and graded on a large screen to be one of the best tools to improve while on longer projects. So many things to learn from the day before that can easily be adjusted for on the following days.

But so often everyone just want to go home and rest and dont take the time and do it.

Even if its just the DIT slapping it together and rendering out a prores file to view in the hotel room large 4k TV at night I find viewing such stuff really helps moving forward the day after. In this digital age I find it strange that this procedure is not used more. Its way easier now than it was back when rolling film so no real excuse not to do it.

 

[Eric Haase]

I'll never forget the feeling of watching projected dailies at 5 am at the lab while shooting my first 35mm feature. It was magic. There are a few things I miss about shooting film and this is one of them. It is still super important to WATCH DAILIES during the shooting of a narrative project....

 

[Michel Hafner]

I hope this ends up in 4K. All these 8K shoots for 2K masters. Silly.

 

[William Long]

+1 Dailies.
We had the film developed over night and would then view the rushes first thing the following morning around 5-6am.
I remember the editor had written a small sign saying: 'do NOT adjust the steenbeck, it is the cameraman!'.
Ahhh, good times! )

 

[M Most]

I hope this ends up in 4K. All these 8K shoots for 2K masters. Silly.

You wouldn't consider it silly if you were working on a picture with 2000 VFX shots and a tight release deadline.

 

[Michel Hafner]

You wouldn't consider it silly if you were working on a picture with 2000 VFX shots and a tight release deadline.

I still do. No need to degrade the whole film to 2K when you can do the non sfx shots in 4K and the easier sfx ones also or in 3K and the time consuming stuff in 2K, and upsample all < 4K to 4K for the final master. But that's too much to ask, apparently.

 

[M Most]

I still do. No need to degrade the whole film to 2K when you can do the non sfx shots in 4K and the easier sfx ones also or in 3K and the time consuming stuff in 2K, and upsample all < 4K to 4K for the final master. But that's too much to ask, apparently.

Apparently you're not aware that on a large tentpole picture, essentially EVERY shot in the movie is a VFX shot. And many, if not most of them, have many, many elements. Either they get made at 2K or they don't get done at all. That's simply today's technical reality.

And just to keep terminology correct, "sfx" in the mainstream industry means sound effects. Visual effects are VFX.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Until the public actually starts deciding which movie they are going to see based on image quality as a top priority...

I still think we will see 8K DCPs at some point in an effort to differentiate the theatrical experience from UHD/4K TV. That said, the people writing the checks are going to put it off as long as they can.

Cheers - #19

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

In this digital age I find it strange that this procedure is not used more. Its way easier now than it was back when rolling film so no real excuse not to do it.

Even in the case of VFX-heavy movies, you'd think that certain scenes at least would be previewed on a big screen. Perhaps experienced directors don't need to do this, but I am not a director, and I wouldn't know.

 

[M Most]

I still think we will see 8K DCPs at some point in an effort to differentiate the theatrical experience from UHD/4K TV. That said, the people writing the checks are going to put it off as long as they can.

Cheers - #19

It's already differentiated because it's a completely different experience. Large auditorium, huge screen, custom designed seats, extremely elaborate and high quality sound system, projection that's more perfect than it ever was on film, and consistency (thanks to DCPs and digital projection) that was never previously achieved. Not to mention the presence of a live audience. And the exclusivity of a brand new release. And all of these factors are present in almost all modern theaters, particularly those in cities.

Resolution is only a factor in the minds of those that frequent forums like Reduser. In the minds of civilians who actually go to the movies, it's irrelevant because essentially every movie released in theaters today looks great (unless it intentionally doesn't).

 

[Tom Gleeson]

At a tangent

At a tangent

Apparently you're not aware that on a large tentpole picture, essentially EVERY shot in the movie is a VFX shot. And many, if not most of them, have many, many elements. Either they get made at 2K or they don't get done at all. That's simply today's technical reality.

Mike,

I agree and I'm not sure everyone understands the sheer number of VFX shots and the multilayered. multi pass, processing intensive nature of many of the shots. As computer technology moves forward and with some amazingly powerful GPUs coming into the market how long do you think before a 4K finish becomes a commercial proposition? Is it a correct assumption that a 4K render will take four times longer than a 2K render?

 

[Marc Wielage]

I still do. No need to degrade the whole film to 2K when you can do the non sfx shots in 4K and the easier sfx ones also or in 3K and the time consuming stuff in 2K, and upsample all < 4K to 4K for the final master. But that's too much to ask, apparently.

I agree with Mike: if you have 2500 total shots in a 2.5-hour movie, and 2000 of those shots are VFX that have to be composited in 2K because of turnaround time, do you want the image to constantly shift back and forth between "4K sharp" and "2K uprez"? If they all share a common denominator, then you won't see the difference.

I won't name the colorist, but one person I know mentioned they were just finishing up a 4K home video pass of a famous sci-fi film, and I asked, "so how much of it is uprezzed?" and he laughed and said, "if we did a 4K end-to-end workflow on the entire thing, we'd still be working on it in December." And it was May.

So it's not just the 4K render times that go 4X slower... it's also dealing with files from different VFX vendors, doing backups, getting approvals, redoing pieces of shots, running them through color, doing multiple passes when creative people change their minds, doing final versions... it's a slow process even at 2K.

Bear in mind this gets even more difficult with 3D releases (plus there is still no means to project 4K 3D with dual streams of 4K in a mass-market release), and there's multiple versions for Imax, Dolby Vision, TV, and on and on and on. It's not atypical for a tentpole release to have more than a dozen (more like 2 dozen) different color-correction passes to compensate for different venues and formats. As it is, the post house has to book multiple rooms and multiple people working 24 hours a day to meet all the deadlines... and that's on 2K material.

 

[Michel Hafner]

I agree with Mike: if you have 2500 total shots in a 2.5-hour movie, and 2000 of those shots are VFX that have to be composited in 2K because of turnaround time, do you want the image to constantly shift back and forth between "4K sharp" and "2K uprez"? If they all share a common denominator, then you won't see the difference.

I won't name the colorist, but one person I know mentioned they were just finishing up a 4K home video pass of a famous sci-fi film, and I asked, "so how much of it is uprezzed?" and he laughed and said, "if we did a 4K end-to-end workflow on the entire thing, we'd still be working on it in December." And it was May.

So it's not just the 4K render times that go 4X slower... it's also dealing with files from different VFX vendors, doing backups, getting approvals, redoing pieces of shots, running them through color, doing multiple passes when creative people change their minds, doing final versions... it's a slow process even at 2K.

Bear in mind this gets even more difficult with 3D releases (plus there is still no means to project 4K 3D with dual streams of 4K in a mass-market release), and there's multiple versions for Imax, Dolby Vision, TV, and on and on and on. It's not atypical for a tentpole release to have more than a dozen (more like 2 dozen) different color-correction passes to compensate for different venues and formats. As it is, the post house has to book multiple rooms and multiple people working 24 hours a day to meet all the deadlines... and that's on 2K material.

Sounds like these processes need some serious rethinking and optimisation. Going from 2K to 4K about 20 years after 2K was introduced should simply not be so bothersome (complex special effects or not) considering that raw processing power and storage capacity per dollar have gone up tremendously since then. And still, some directors manage to go above 2K because they want to and it does not break the bank or limit the film to trivial special effects. Where there is a will there is a way. But most directors seem to prefer to stuff even more complexity into each visual effect than do it at higher resolution.

 

[Misha Engel]

It's how you use your budget. Justice League (2017) and Avengers: Infinity War(2018) both had a budget of around $300,000,000 according to IMDB.

VFX in Justice league was disturbingly bad, where in Infinity War, I wasn't disturbed by bad VFX(it might have been very good, haven't watched it that closely), both having Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format).

You can buy 4x the CPU power for the same money as 7/8 years ago (i7-3960x Q4/11 vs TR2970wx Q3/18) so that is not the reason.
Same is valid for GPU, storage, etc..

So it must be money spend and sticking to old habbits (and most likely a lot of other unnecessary reasons).

 

[M Most]

Judging by some of these comments, it's somehow strangely reassuring that many posters on RedUser clearly still live in an alternate universe in which everything is solely dependent on Moore's Law and computing power. And in which resolution is everything. And in which everything is "simple" and cheap. However, that is not the real world of large tentpole features, in which every shot of every picture goes through a myriad number of approval steps, and in which any of those involved can cause a shot to be redone. And in which movies have release dates that must be met, which means that shots that involve 600 elements and take upwards of 20 hours per frame to render (and that's just for the composite - and that's at 2K.....) must be approved and cut back in to the picture prior to the delivery. If one hasn't been involved with productions of that scale, it is next to impossible to really understand just how much is required to pull these things off.

The reason there is apparently little motivation for going to 4K for VFX deliveries is because there is little additional return for doing so. There is no evidence that Infinity War would have had larger box office than it did had the picture been finished at a higher resolution. Or that Wonder Woman would have been either better or more financially successful if it had been done 4K end to end. If you want that to change - for whatever your reason is - you need to demonstrate what exactly the studio would gain by doing that. Because at this point in time, it would lose a lot (like a timely release date). And gain almost nothing, because the only complaints about quality in these pictures are on Internet forums like RedUser. Joe Public has no problem with it.