Subtlety

[Rob Ruffo]

With all due respect, I honestly believe this was a combination of great lighting, great exposure, and great color correction -- not just the camera. I think talent at the level of Ridley Scott and Dariusz Wolski are going to get fantastic results with any camera they use. And I think CO3 colorist Stephen Nakamura had a lot to do with it as well.

I've believed for a long time that we're getting to the point where the differences between camera choices is very much like the differences between film stocks. I would no more say, "wow, such-and-such a film looks so great because they shot with Vision 320" or "it looks great because of that Fuji 500." To me, that does a disservice to the work of the cinematographer, because they had the greatest effect on the image -- not the camera or the pickup. Strictly my opinion.

I think the point is that no limits were imposed by the camera. That's all a camera or any gear can do - remove limitations from your creativity. They obviously do not supply the creativity. If the movie were shot on Betacam it would not look as good - this is obvious - but then there are subtler points in between that are still meaningful. You could not, for example, have gotten such exquisite color out of Redcolor 01, no matter how talented you were, and Laurence of Arabia would certainly be less spectacular if it had been shot on a 5D.

By the way, in pre-Red/Alexa days people would always point out Hollywood movies shot on 16 - because likely that's what they were using at least part of the time - 35 was/is EXPENSIVE - and it was inspiring to see that wondrous images could be achieved with it.

 

[Paul Ellington]

I have been working a lot with the PIX 240 and it works like a charm for DNX or PRORES. I would prefer a RED-Centric module and I am looking forward to it when it comes.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Red just need to ship a ProRes module and the Epic's out there will get more work.

Mmmm... maybe. It's easy enough to attach a pix or a black magic.

I spent all morning asking the production company guys last week why they had wanted to shoot Alexa on the shoot instead of RED and consistently the response was "it's an unreliable beta product that doesn't often work right." I tried to convince them otherwise. Just before lunch the touchscreen stopped responding... just after lunch... the epic completely died, wouldn't even start up and had to be replaced. Anecdotally they'll remember that experience long after RED announces a ProRes module.

 

[Marc Wielage]

In the past we as DPs were allowed to pick the camera, lenses and film stock UNLESS there was a financial reason for the studios. ( Often we would shoot Eastman as a camera stock and release prints would be Fuji. I would like to go back to being allowed to use the camera of my choice.

We're also in agreement on that, Peter. I shake my head when I see a DP being forced to use a camera they don't really want, or one that isn't their first choice. That decision should definitely be dictated by the cinematographer. From a dollars-and-cents point of view, I don't think the rental rate of Alexa or F65 or Red Epic is that much different, not judging by the LA rate cards I see. All the peripheral equipment -- lenses, mounts, cranes, monitors, etc. -- are all exactly the same.

I would say that the character of the image is different with different film stocks, and no amount of color correction can make them 100% identical in every way. But I don't think flesh tones per se are that baked-in for cameras -- I think this is generally something that can be tweaked in post.

Then again, I'm reminded of what Peter Jackson is doing on The Hobbit, where they amped up the saturation on the set because of concerns with colorimetry. I don't doubt that the pictures they're getting will be beautiful (judging by the advance clips), but you gotta wonder about their reasoning behind this. Apparently, this was a subtlety they couldn't fix any other way.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I think the point is that no limits were imposed by the camera. That's all a camera or any gear can do - remove limitations from your creativity. They obviously do not supply the creativity. If the movie were shot on Betacam it would not look as good - this is obvious - but then there are subtler points in between that are still meaningful.

Standard def is not part of this conversation. I'm specifically talking about pro cameras in the $20K+ price range, and I'd include Red One, Red Epic, F35, F65, Alexa, and so on. All of them can make great pictures. The Canon C500 would be at the very low end of that list. But in good hands, all of them could probably make acceptable, even great pictures.

You could not, for example, have gotten such exquisite color out of Redcolor 01, no matter how talented you were, and Laurence of Arabia would certainly be less spectacular if it had been shot on a 5D.

We got great pictures out of Raw images years ago. All we had to do was come up with a LUT that worked. We've been working with Raw images for decades... because that's what film negative is. I think Lawrence of Arabia looked great because of Freddie Young and David Lean, not because of the fact that it was shot on 65mm. It's the archers, not the arrows.

By the way, in pre-Red/Alexa days people would always point out Hollywood movies shot on 16 - because likely that's what they were using at least part of the time - 35 was/is EXPENSIVE - and it was inspiring to see that wondrous images could be achieved with it.

16mm was generally very rare for big-budget American studio projects, and always implied a level of "cheapness" on the part of the filmmakers, at least back in the 1960s and 1970s. There are some great and memorable films (especially documentaries) shot on 16mm -- Woodstock and Let It Be among them -- but in general, it wasn't used for dramatic Hollywood films. When it's been used in recent years, like Black Swan or Moonrise Kingdom, it's done as a stylistic thing, generally because they specifically like the grain and the depth of field.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Standard def is not part of this conversation. I'm specifically talking about pro cameras in the $20K+ price range, and I'd include Red One, Red Epic, F35, F65, Alexa, and so on. All of them can make great pictures. The Canon C500 would be at the very low end of that list. But in good hands, all of them could probably make acceptable, even great pictures.



We got great pictures out of Raw images years ago. All we had to do was come up with a LUT that worked. We've been working with Raw images for decades... because that's what film negative is. I think Lawrence of Arabia looked great because of Freddie Young and David Lean, not because of the fact that it was shot on 65mm. It's the archers, not the arrows.



16mm was generally very rare for big-budget American studio projects, and always implied a level of "cheapness" on the part of the filmmakers, at least back in the 1960s and 1970s. There are some great and memorable films (especially documentaries) shot on 16mm -- Woodstock and Let It Be among them -- but in general, it wasn't used for dramatic Hollywood films. When it's been used in recent years, like Black Swan or Moonrise Kingdom, it's done as a stylistic thing, generally because they specifically like the grain and the depth of field.

I know it was rare - all I'm saying is that in a sense nothing has changed. I also fully understand what stylistic choices are - I may not drop names or budgets like some here (I actually keep most of my work to myself if/when possible - I even often use a pseudonym in credits) , but I'm a working DP/director who has read almost every back issue of American Cinematographer - I'm at the 1950s now, working my way back. I think you missed my point completely.

I never saw "great images" until the color science improved. I saw some pretty bad colour rendition that even a $300 an hour colorist could help, yes, but not completely fix because the color info was simply not there, simply not properly fed out from the old Red SDK. I shoot beauty and fashion, things like the "Girlfriend Experience" I can't even sit through (I found it so ugly it actually made me feel ill - maybe that's the point but it's just not my thing) let alone use a reference on camera abilities. There really were not that many Red shows that looked all that great (for my tastes, which run way more toward glossy and not at all toward doco) until things improved under the SDK hood.

I now adore our Red cameras, but I was not completely satisfied with color until Redcolor 3 came out. Until that time we still sometimes rented Alexas. Now, no further need.