Storaro's interview in Filmmaker

[Sanjin Jukic]

The latest Storaro's interview in Filmmaker

STORARO TALKS SHOP
By Jamie Stuart
http://filmmakermagazine.com/webexclusives/2007/06/storaro-talks-shop-by-jamie-stuart.php

 

[Tom Lowe]

Nice interview. It's definitely an interesting issue, 2.35 vs 2:1 vs 16:9. In some ways I love 2.35 and am tempted to shoot features at that ratio, but other times 16:9 can really open up the sky when you are shooting outdoor landscapes with clouds and so on.

I got a kick out of this:

Storaro: Well, my dream is digital cinema, D-Cinema, at least in 4k 16-bit, 2:1 aspect ratio. Also, we should move to the European shooting frame of 25. We should discontinue shooting 24 because it doesn't work. The interlock between America (NTSC) and Europe (PAL) doesn't work. The pulldown doesn't really work, it's not a perfect balance between the two. In changing the algorithm, trying to do five-fields-plus-one we can easily do the 25 frames to the 30 frames. It will be much more linear and much more in synch. It would be a perfect 25, a perfect 30, not 29-whatever it is…

Filmmaker: 24p is usually 23.98, and NTSC is 29.97.

Storaro: That's ridiculous. That's my opinion.

haha.

thanks for the interview link, The Third Man.

 

[Robert Sanders]

Aspect ratios of today's motion pictures and HDTV are not going to change anytime soon.

I respect and admire Storaro deeply. His legacy will go down as one of the very best Cinematographers ever. His work on Dick Tracy and Tucker: The Man and His Dream are also amazing contributions to cinema.

But his Univisium crusade is absurd.

 

[Tom Lowe]

BTW, why is this guy shooting TV movies?

 

[Robert Sanders]

Some of the original content that HBO's been producing is feature quality. I realized recently I'd be completely satisfied with producing content for HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Sci-Fi and never producing anything for the big screen.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

I would like to make a suggestion to the RED Team that they could contact and invite Vittorio Storaro to test the RED ONE camera as soon as possible.
If that test could finish with a success that the Hollywood doors will be fast and easy a wide open to the RED projects.

 

[P Andersson]

"I wrote a long letter to Sony to explain this"

 

[Tom Lowe]

Besides, the fact that a lot of foreign films are produced or co-produced by TV networks (BBC, RAI, TVE, etc.) doesn't mean they will not see theatrical release all over the world. Many of these are award winning projects, too.

Just because a film may be made for TV does not mean it's not as good as one made for the movie theater.

After all, sooner or later, they all end up on the small screen any which way.

All good points, and I am not trying to bash TV movies at all, but we're talking about the cinematographer of Apocalypse Now for goodness sake.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

"I wrote a long letter to Sony to explain this"

As we all know well Sony is still a leader in digital acquisition. Now RED is taking a part of this cake. For sure Jim is having an ambition to take soon a leadership in a high-end digital production and presentation. Maybe then he could change the standards to 2:1 format and 25 fps digital acquisition. Sony already looks on a half dead dinosaur that would not be able to make any requested revolutionary move forward. Sony is already beaten by Apple with iPod and today with iPhone launch, also Microsoft is a strong competitor to PS3 with Xbox etc...not so easy life for Sony...

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

All good points, and I am not trying to bash TV movies at all, but we're talking about the cinematographer of Apocalypse Now for goodness sake.

Storaro also thinks digital.

Till today digital was equal TV or broadcast production.
Tomorrow digital means a lot of movie production for big theaters.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

There's nothing stopping you from shooting at 25 fps on the RED and framing for 2:1 if you wanted to. Afterall, Storaro is shooting 3-perf for his Univisium format, which has a native 1.78 : 1 negative. I don't know he's having special 2:1 gates installed or is just framing for 2:1 extraction, though I think the first.

"Dune" the miniseries was shot in 3-perf Univisium but the final broadcast and DVD were 16x9 (1.78) not 2:1 (I guess they ignored that part of Storaro's contract...) And the 16x9 image appears to be cropped on the sides, not opened-up vertically, judging from the way some scenes looked on the videotap in the behind-the-scenes stuff.

In fact, that's been the biggest problem with Univisium, the lack of consistency in how it's released by distributors, which sort of defeats the purpose if all it creates is a third aspect ratio or if it gets distributed in multiple aspect ratios. Storaro has had more luck getting some of his older movies not shot in 2:1 released in 2:1 on DVD than he has getting the movies he actually shot in 2:1 released that way on DVD.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

David's spot on right about being able to 2:1 25fps on RED. 25fps, as Storaro points out is much more sensible than 24fps or 23.98fps, and Europeans have often laughed at the pulldown nonesense that their USA counterparts have to go through, and all it's inherent problems. I dare not think how far behind editing software is compared to where it should be at because of the complexities of NTSC, 24p and the fractional 1001/1000 frame rates.

Graeme

 

[Tom Lowe]

Red should invite Storaro to shoot some tests. Tell him it's Univisium-friendly.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

David's spot on right about being able to 2:1 25fps on RED. 25fps, as Storaro points out is much more sensible than 24fps or 23.98fps, and Europeans have often laughed at the pulldown nonesense that their USA counterparts have to go through, and all it's inherent problems.

Unfortunately, now that U.S. HDTV broadcast has been standardized to 1080/60i or 720/60P, all the pulldown problems remain whether you shoot at 24 fps or 25 fps, and if we shoot at 30 fps to get rid of pulldown, then we create problems for Europe's 25/50 rates.

The truth is that we shouldn't have to deal with conversions anyway -- we should be able to transmit/broadcast native 24P or 25P or 30P or 50P or 60P or 72P, whatever we shot at, and let the display devices increase the refresh rate in whole numbers (2X, 3X, 4X, etc.) if necessary to get rid of flicker. Same approach could be applied to digital theatrical releases.

 

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

Why would 25fps be a big deal? I don't understand why you'd want that rather than 24. I get why it's inconvenient that video often shoots at 29.97fps and all that jazz but I don't understand Europe's standard at all. It is odd how there are so many different frame rates.

 

[donatello b]

"but I don't understand Europe's standard at all."

in general Europe is very easy ..25fps for video ... 25fps for film ...
looking at USA... 24fps film ..... 29.97 video .. 23.976 + pull down ..59.9? etc ..
so when we shoot RED we will have to choose between - 24fps , 23.98, 29.97, 30fps, 59.96, 60fps while over in Europe they shoot 25fps ...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Why would 25fps be a big deal? I don't understand why you'd want that rather than 24. I get why it's inconvenient that video often shoots at 29.97fps and all that jazz but I don't understand Europe's standard at all. It is odd how there are so many different frame rates.

It's because 24 fps is the worldwide movie projection rate starting with the sound era, but TV broadcast was standardized at 60 Hz in 60Hz countries and 50 Hz in 50 Hz countries.

So 50 Hz countries don't have to deal with pulldown issues for 24 fps and 25 fps material.

It's partly just a matter of luck that the 25 fps / 50i TV system for 50 Hz countries was a close match to the 24 fps rate used by cinema projection.

As to why we have a 60 Hz power system here, I guess blame Westinghouse...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency
QUOTE:
Though many theories exist, and quite a few entertaining urban legends, there is little certitude in the details of the history of 60 Hz vs. 50 Hz. What is known is that Westinghouse in the US decided on 60 Hz and AEG in Germany decided on 50 Hz, eventually leading to the world being mostly divided into two frequency camps. Frequencies much below 50 Hz gave noticeable flicker of arc or incandescent lighting. Westinghouse decided on 60 Hz before 1892 and AEG decided on 50 Hz by 1899. Tesla is believed to have had a key influence in the choice of 60 Hz by Westinghouse. Use of 60 Hz allowed induction motors to operate at the same speeds as standardized steam engines common in the late 19th century.

--
Frequency changers used to convert between 25 Hz and 60 Hz systems were awkward to design; a 60 Hz machine with 24 poles would turn at the same speed as a 25 Hz machine with 10 poles, making the machines large, slow-speed and expensive. A ratio of 60/30 would have simplified these designs, but the installed base at 25 Hz was too large to be economically opposed.

AEG's choice of 50 Hz is thought by some to relate to a more "metric-friendly" number than 60. It may also have been an intentional decision to be incompatible, although since so many frequencies were used it may not have been clear that any one value was desirable.

END QUOTE

Certainly from a European point of view, a standardized 25 fps rate for cinema makes sense.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Let's invite Vittorio Storaro to test RED

Let's invite Vittorio Storaro to test RED

There's nothing stopping you from shooting at 25 fps on the RED and framing for 2:1 if you wanted to.

Great!

David's spot on right about being able to 2:1 25fps on RED.

Wonderful!

Red should invite Storaro to shoot some tests. Tell him it's Univisium-friendly.

Agree.

--------------------------------------------

And besides all that Hz and FPS mess,

let's invite Vittorio Storaro to test RED.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, they missed the opportunity with HD to do two things. 1) standardise on the frame rates the majority of the world uses, and 2) to make all TVs and broadcast chains capable of using any of the old frame rates, as a fallback position for archive programming.

I mean, every video projector can do 24, 25, 30 and 60 rates. Digitial cinema should also be fps agnostic, rather than the 24 or nothing (yeah, 48, right) approach we have now.

Graeme

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

One more RED revolution.

One more RED revolution.

I see that RED could do a lot for the fps agnostic revolution.