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Phil Holland Filming 100 Megapixel Large Format Aerials Over NewYork

Jarred Land

Jarred Land

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Great article by Phil

http://www.phfx.com/articles/Filming100MegapixelLargeFormatAerialsOverNewYork/


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Thanks Phil for sharing your amazing project.
The gimbal sticking out the front of the helicopter looks really big and heavy.
Was it hard for the helicopter pilot to fly?
cheers Richard
 
Thanks Jarred. This is a rather spectacular way to shoot aerials, especially for big screens.

Richard Williams said:
Thanks Phil for sharing your amazing project.
The gimbal sticking out the front of the helicopter looks really big and heavy.
Was it hard for the helicopter pilot to fly?
cheers Richard
Click to expand...

It is indeed big and heavy, but much link all other things, we counterbalance it. Chris our pilot was a ninja and I don't feel it was difficult to fly for any reason.


Peter Lyons Collister said:
Cool Phil!
Click to expand...

Thanks Peter.

The TL;DR version of all of this is the resulting image from our 3X Weapon 8K VV Monstro array produces an image plane of about 60x40mm netting a resolution of about 12x8K, approx. 100 megapixels. However, once you have that much captured detail and resolution you can do a lot in terms of image transformation. My goals were to make the images more "rectilinearly flavored", so I finished out to what would be called a DCI 12K extraction. What was exciting for me was Monstro was real new in my life around the time and it worked flawlessly in what I would describe as a rather technical to setup rig. The images for me are pretty mesmerizing.

We'll be shooting more of this sort of material shortly and I'll do my best to share a cut at some point. Maybe by spring, but I have to say, I've seen it scaled down to 8K on screens and it's just wonderful.

The gear shots are indeed awesome and tell the story of how crazy cool the rig is, but let me link to some of 4K grabs, click any of these and they'll open in a new window:














Remember, those are single frame extractions from DCI 12K footage that is close to the 645 220 film format shot at 48 frame per second.

Can't wait to shoot and share more!
 
Great stuff, Phil, as always!!!
 
That is a heck of a rig, and those 4k screen grabs are spectacularly clean, detailed, and colorful. Amazing stuff.
 
12K! Blows my mind the quality of these images and the craftsmanship behind them.

Even the accuracy of three different image sensors with three different lenses speaks volumes to the quality of these products.

Just brill Phil, thank you.
 
Amazing stuff Phil!
 
This was my theory on how these gorgeous videos were done...I will say, I was shocked and stoked I stumbled upon this post, especially to see you associated with it! My Apple TV is impatiently awaiting the completed works :wink:

Love your work, thanks for sharing & always inspiring!
 
I gotta see this material properly exhibited!!!

I gotta see this material properly exhibited!!!

David Mullen ASC said:
How are you avoiding the problem of a bent horizon when pointing three cameras at an angle, a problem that Cinerama had:
Birdge-2-400.jpg
Click to expand...

I would assume they are using a warp inversion map in post - but that's conjecture. Tell us all your secrets Phil, you don't share enough (sarcasm). Love this kind of stuff.

If only we knew somebody with a bunch of high rez projectors who could arrange a seriously insane large format demo at CineGear, perhaps someone who has a facility near the Paramount lot... Hmmm... (yes, more sarcasm, can't help myself).

Cheers - #19
 
First thing: holy shit, those shots are terrific. I don't like the soft edges of these lenses though, although you did say you had them wide open some of the time.

Are you actually pulling focus with these things, while filming? I wonder if that's worth the bother!

I suspect that correcting for the bent horizon is fairly simple geometry?
 
12K@48fps stitched from 3 VV cameras, down-sampled for 8K delivery. Amazing!
Phil, You da man!
What kind of computer horsepower are you using? Must be insane...
 
Would be interesting to see a frame from one of the cameras to se how much the gaining of stitching three cameras were. What was the main purpose? To get more fov without using a wider lens or getting details using more pixels?
 
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