Social Network...

[M Most]

I would note the number of uncompressed effects shots [face replacements, sky replacements, etcetera] that certainly came into the "rolling post house" at stages before, during and after the DI. Michael will correct me if I'm wrong, but an uncompressed conform would've been possible on the same hardware with the same mindset.

There's a very big difference between supplying transcoded plates for the limited number of frames required for VFX, and storing and recovering all of the footage shot for a production in uncompressed form, especially with a director who has been known to have shooting ratios of 150:1 or more. When all of that footage is uncompressed, it's got to be stored and recovered somewhere, even when it's all stored on LTO carts. As for the material that went to the DI, my understanding (and I think I'm right this time) is that everything came over to the Pablo as uncompressed 2K frames, which were created by the assistant editor. That in itself is not that tough on storage (other than the copying time, of course), as a two hour movie would still be considerably less than 2TB total, especially with no handles.

Another plus to point out is the rapid changeover of the theater and hardware from "Fincher mode" into other projects. Not only could they all happen in the same sound stage... they could switch back and forth without compromise.

I don't quite understand that statement. What are you referring to?

 

[Chris Kenny]

Chris-
Agreed within the context of "file-based workflow" specifically. But the "groundbreaking" component to what ICG and some of the other articles are referring to is not about the way in which the files were treated for DI, rather the design of the DI itself.

You and I both agree that this type of file-based workflow isn't groundbreaking by today's standards (though some of the most modern post houses sadly still don't endorse files through-and-through). But the component to this DI that was groundbreaking was that we performed it without any sort of traditional post production infrastructure. We literally mobilized the entire DI workflow on a very complex film that traditionally would need to have been performed in a post house with a machine room, server room, SAN, overnight staff, vault, etc. Harnessing much of this type of technology is common on set - as thousands are doing backup, viewing, processing, even syncing on set. If the convenience of on-set, small, mobilized media manipulation is possible, what is stopping it from improving the filmmaking process in a similar way during digital intermediate?

I get that this stuff is groundbreaking for a well-funded project by a major director, but I have to say, we've built our entire business around the fact that it's possible to accomplish the same things traditional DI workflow accomplishes, without a lot of the traditional infrastructure. We did it because we didn't have a few million bucks lying around to drop on our facility (and the indie market we cater to wouldn't actually be able to afford our services if we had dropped that much), rather than explicitly to be more mobile, but the effect is largely the same, and indeed the key elements of our post operation could be made fully mobile with the addition of a couple of padded cases that could fit in the trunk of a Honda Civic.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that you guys certainly did something that's very new on a project of this scale, and that most traditional post people would probably consider impossible, but for those of us who are coming at this from more of an IT background, and have a really solid understanding of what today's digital tech makes possible, it's just not all that surprising. We now live in a world where you can fit 40 hours of 1080p24 ProRes LT on a $250 external hard drive you can practically buy at the corner store, and even a RAID large and fast enough to handle the 2K DPX files for an online conform can fit handily in a backpack. Our current online workflow (for projects without lots of VFX, anyway) uses trimmed R3D files (I know, not available until a couple of weeks ago), and once our scripts generate those trimmed files from an EDL, we can conform and grade a feature in 200 GB (i.e. about $20) worth of storage.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to downplay what you guys did at all -- I know (because I do it every day) that finding the sort of clever solutions to make these things work is hard, and requires a fair bit of creativity and a lot of careful experimentation.

I'm more making fun of the industry reaction, and how different it is from what we see on a day to day basis. When we try to sell people on this vision of how post can work, well... some of them get excited, but a fair number just take us less seriously than the shops with the rooms full of shiny rack-mounted toys. Do the same thing for a major director, on the other hand, and industry publications all call it "groundbreaking".

 

[Michael Cioni]

Chris-
You and I agree. It is totally an issue of industry recognition and response. There are a thousand indies a day that shoot, conform, and color their work from a myriad of cameras using desktop light iron solutions and that is where all the pioneering comes from (and on some level, that's where everyone starts). Getting Sony or Disney or Fox to sign off on the same workflow, well that's a bit trickier. But it's happening, and not a one of them doesn't prefer it when it's all said and done.
m

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

'Social Network' passes first Oscar voters test>>>

 

[Chris Barron]

I thought "The Social Network" looked amazing! It will be exciting to see if Jeff Cronenweth wins the first Oscar for an MX sensor!

 

[Dhruv Govil]

I must have passed over it, so forgive the question,
How did they manage the Tilt/Shift scene? From experience, I've found focusing on a tilt shift lens incredibly chalenging,and damn right impossible in motion.

Just saw the movie last night and have to say it's deffinitely in my top ten list now. Perfect.

 

[Zac C]

I must have passed over it, so forgive the question,
How did they manage the Tilt/Shift scene? From experience, I've found focusing on a tilt shift lens incredibly chalenging,and damn right impossible in motion.

Just saw the movie last night and have to say it's deffinitely in my top ten list now. Perfect.

were they doing any rack focusing? from what I remember it was all at a set focus mark, and people kept going in and out of the focus plane

 

[HyderBilgrami]

Cool !!

 

[David Kudell]

Saw this movie this weekend, and it was very well done. I can't help but be disappointed, though, that I was watching it in 2K, on a 4K Sony projector at the local AMC theater.

Social Network, to me, both demonstrates the great image quality of the Red, and at the same time, kind of fuels the "2K is good enough" camp's fire. When, in the end, the filmmakers choose to release in 2K, aren't they still settling for "good enough?" It seems to come down to "Will people pay extra for 4K image quality?" and the producers or studio heads, for the time being, are voting "No." Even when the projectors are already installed in some theaters...

Let's hope that progress is made and eventually 4K distribution comes along.

 

[andrewhake]

Got a chance to see this last night in AMC's flagship theatre in downtown Kansas City (for those who haven't been, all screens 4k, proper red leather stadium seating, with subs in each seat, and perfect sound all around) and I loved the look. Bravo to the people at Lightiron for the grade and finishing but my hat is really off to Angus Wall and the editing team, really enjoyed the way the film was cut.

Would be interesting to know which TS lens was used on the rowing sequence as well. I am guessing that is the first time TS has been uses on a red for a feature film? Actually it is pretty damn rare to see a TS lens used in a feature film at all, but it was well suited for the attitude of the scene.

Good stuff!

 

[Dhruv Govil]

were they doing any rack focusing? from what I remember it was all at a set focus mark, and people kept going in and out of the focus plane

Perhaps it was set focus. I don't really remember too well since the sequence was so mind blowing. Deffinitely going again to see it though.

Actually that goes for the entire movie, the visuals and story, coupled with trents awesome music.

 

[Neil Larson]

Great movie. Very well written and acted.

Was anyone else bothered by the incredibly fake looking "cold air breath vapor"?

 

[Timothy Eaton]

I saw Social Network last night. Best representation yet of how beautiful, elegant, and technically polished RED images can look. Jeff Cronenweth did a fantastic job working deep in the shadows and low light. I noticed two elements of the film's look that I think may give us a clue about why the RED team is working so diligently on motion and HDR. Any chance some of this is in response to Cronenweth's experience on SN?

There are motion artifacts that are slightly different (making it sometimes hard to focus one's eyes on anything in a panning shot for example) than the strobing we are used to in film. In the print I saw, they are quite pronounced in the rowing sequence, and probably the only place a non filmmaker would notice them. Second, I had the sense that Cronenweth spent a fair amount of time protecting highlights with window treatments, diffusion in lamp post lamps in the night campus scenes, etc. in a way that he might not have in a film shoot. This is simply using one's tools to the best advantage, but with film, its ability to roll off highlights subtly into white means that many of us shooting film over the years developed confidence in simply letting the highlights go when appropriate.

I believe the motion and DR work Jim and team are doing are the last pieces of the puzzle in giving digital image acquisition the subtle elegance of film capture, and in many other technical ways, exceeding it.

Marvelous Jim and team! I'm on the list for a Stage 2 Epic and can't wait.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Would be interesting to know which TS lens was used on the rowing sequence as well. I am guessing that is the first time TS has been uses on a red for a feature film? Actually it is pretty damn rare to see a TS lens used in a feature film at all, but it was well suited for the attitude of the scene.

Good stuff!

Apparently the tilt shift was done in post. They had to shoot those scenes in england and added the tilt shift effect to disguise the fact.

 

[jake blackstone]

Got a chance to see this last night in AMC's flagship theatre in downtown Kansas City (for those who haven't been, all screens 4k, proper red leather stadium seating, with subs in each seat, and perfect sound all around) and I loved the look. Bravo to the people at Lightiron for the grade and finishing but my hat is really off to Angus Wall and the editing team, really enjoyed the way the film was cut.

Would be interesting to know which TS lens was used on the rowing sequence as well. I am guessing that is the first time TS has been uses on a red for a feature film? Actually it is pretty damn rare to see a TS lens used in a feature film at all, but it was well suited for the attitude of the scene.

Good stuff!

Very impressive visual achievement. Probably, for the first time ever, I wasn't missing the film grain. Images looked sharper, than anything else I had seen produced on 35mm film. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed to see added post defocus. To me it looked pretty obvious, as they didn't even try to disguise the effect. It pretty much looked like tracked bezier masks...

 

[Steve Dent]

Saw this movie this weekend, and it was very well done. I can't help but be disappointed, though, that I was watching it in 2K, on a 4K Sony projector at the local AMC theater.

Social Network, to me, both demonstrates the great image quality of the Red, and at the same time, kind of fuels the "2K is good enough" camp's fire. When, in the end, the filmmakers choose to release in 2K, aren't they still settling for "good enough?" It seems to come down to "Will people pay extra for 4K image quality?" and the producers or studio heads, for the time being, are voting "No." Even when the projectors are already installed in some theaters...

Let's hope that progress is made and eventually 4K distribution comes along.

I think the first Red film released & distributed in 4K will probably have little to no visual effects.

Doing any comping or 3D animation in 4K c'est chiant as the French would say. Really time consuming and painful. It's not just the extra 4X processing time, or 4X storage, but also 4X the time in moving files around in an integrated DI/Effects workflow.

 

[Alex G. Cohn]

I saw the film the other night at the Arclight in Sherman Oaks.

The film was enthralling, and the resolution of the image was mostly great, though there were parts in some of the more dimly lit scenes where the character's faces in the shadows seemed to turn this murky brown-green color.

Would that be the projector? Did anybody else notice this?

Does anybody know any theaters in Los Angeles that are showing The Social Network in 4K?

 

[Eric Matthew]

Great movie. Very well written and acted.

Was anyone else bothered by the incredibly fake looking "cold air breath vapor"?

Holy smokes, bad fake breathing air.

 

[Michael Cioni]

Bezier Masks

Bezier Masks

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed to see added post defocus. To me it looked pretty obvious, as they didn't even try to disguise the effect. It pretty much looked like tracked bezier masks...

Jake-
If you're referring to the Henley boat regatta sequence, the extreme nature of the "tilt and shift" effect that was in the film was absolutely the desired look. Different, extreme, unique, sharp, soft...all of the above. In fact, that scene was made up of shots that were almost 100% composited - sometimes due to the desired look, sometimes due to location limitations, etc.

If you're referring to any other parts of the movie, there was absolutely no post defocusing whatsoever.

Timothy-
The boat Henley regatta had shots with a very narrow shutter angle, which is what created the high strobing effect. Again, this sequence is very different from the rest of the film, including the way in which the shutter was manipulated. No HDR methods are available in the RED One MX, so for this film, production relied on the MX sensor technology that's available to everyone. They shot 99% of the film at ASA500T on Master Primes @ T1.3.

This method of photography is fantastic because it makes color management very streamlined since there was only a single LUT for the entire feature. When a film can be photographed in this manner, it makes things very streamlined.
m

 

[Timothy Eaton]

Thanks for the info Michael. I thought the narrow shutter worked in parts of the Regatta sequence, but failed in others.

I think you can be rightly proud of Light Iron's work on this movie. The print I saw was quite rich, deep in shadow, very nicely lit by Jeff Cronenweth, and deftly handled in DI. To my eye, the best looking RED shot movie yet.

Perhaps most pleasing was that we got to see what RED can do when used to render a "realistic" look, as opposed to Book of Eli, for example, which I liked but was heavily manipulated.

I did feel that motion artifacts in some fast pans still looked different from the strobing we would normally see in film. Was the rest of the film, other than the Regatta, shot with a 180 degree shutter?