Using RED for specific art video

[Georgy Arzamasov]

Dear friends, i came here for the advice... i am in charge for the production of the art group from Russia, making multichannel video installations. here you can see our previous works (but in singlechannel version).



http://vimeo.com/14968232


http://vimeo.com/49712613



those all were made in rather specific technique - animation out of photographs, which were taken 3fps and then morphed into each other forming the contiguous smooth motion. The photography provided high resolution (22 Mp), perfect image, big depth of field - as because of using flash lights which are much more powerful than steady lights (closed aperture) , exposure 1/125 sec, which gave perfect sharp image, which almost did not require any color/tone correction. And, the main thing about that, all compositional decisions were mostly taken on postproduction, as 22mpx gives good possibilities for enlargement. So, what you see as the final movie is basically the result of compositional work in post production period, so what you see in final frame is the result of compositional work in PP, but definitely not what was seen in the viewfinder of the cameraman. So after we left the studio, we had the kit of footage which was morphed&composed after into the frames with 3d backgrounds added. The motion of the characters thus came hypnotic and robotic, which partly formed the artistic language of the group. Of course, this technique had huge disadvantages as numerous postproduction hours for morphing, artifacts, and many others...


So this was important to know before proceeding to actually the questions.. For numerous reasons fro the next project we have to consider switching from animation to filmography, using RED camera. We have some rough estimates from producers and DoPs, but i felt that we spoke a bit different language with them, as normal filmography process is a bit different to the task we impose. We want to keep the the advantages we had with photocamera and flashlights process, such as crisp hi-res image, depth of focus of about 4m., as well as the profits, which RED gives - e.g. high-speed filming.


We need a green screen studio 10x20m with action field of about 5x5m. The basic question is about the lighting which means its rental costs: what set of lights we need to keep the aperture , which allows at least 2-3 m depth of focus at about 70mm focal distance (35mm camera) , and get the best out of lens. (what do you recommend btw) ISO? With photocamera there was no noise problem, and we sometimes used footage at 100-120% of its original resolution, and we'd love to expect from RED as well... We plan to do most of the shots in vertical aspect of the camera in order to gain more resolution in figure shots... For now main question is what light sources , how many and of kWts, inkl. for greenscreen background are to be used to achieve comparable image quality to our previous works as well as for high-speed filming? Daylight/tungsten?



i apologize for my inspecific/amateur questions here, but if the amounts/characteristics of the lights needed exceeds reasonable limits, that makes switching to filmography impossible... this rental company http://www.cinegate.de/cinelist/list.php?zu=1&katid=2& target= i use for rough estimations... thank you in advance for you profound opinions!




P.S. If all above sounds feasible, i would like to meet here DoPs-owners of Epic in Germany, particularly Berlin!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

70mm distance to subject is only about 2.5" -- even at 2.5 FEET at f/22 on a 32mm lens, you'd get less than 3 feet of depth of field, so I don't see how you are going to get 6 to 9 feet of depth of field. At 2.5 feet at f/45, you'd get almost 5 feet of DOF.

At 2.5 inches at f/64, you'd only have .2" DOF. See:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

 

[Georgy Arzamasov]

thanks for the input! but probably my text brought in misunderstanding. Here http://screencast.com/t/kdEHbMZpb are the lens/DOF conditions we primarly used for the shootings of previous projects. So we need something like that with RED.

Figure shots in that conditions with vertical position of frame gave us possibilities to pan the characters in the final frame.

My basic question was the lighting - if the amounts of it skyrocket , that makes change to RED from DSLR/flashlights impossible.

 

[Jason Comparetto]

Thanks David. I wonder if the OP meant 70mm is the lens he is using?

 

[Georgy Arzamasov]

Jason, 70 mm (and around) lenses were used with Canon Mark I in our previous shootings. I am reffering to that to describe the angle of view we basically need. thanks for posting in my thread!


found my mistake! corrected it in italic. not focus but focal! distance to subject (actor) was about 5-6 meters.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You'd need something like a 50mm on the Epic to match the view of the 70mm on a Canon 1Ds, so that makes your depth of field issues slightly easier -- if f/11 was good on the 70mm, you'd probably need to light a 50mm shot to an f/5.6-8.0 split on the Epic to get something similar.

If you can light your green screen studio with daylight fixtures (HMI's, daylight Kinos or Lumapanels, daylight LED's) you'd be better off for composite work, and to be safe, I'd maybe try to work in the 400-500 ISO range on the Epic for a cleaner key. But you should be able to get up to an f/5.8-8.0 split at 500 ISO in a studio with enough daylight fixtures.

 

[Georgy Arzamasov]

thanks again for the contribution!

yeah, tungsten is not the option for the digital...

thing is, at the moment for me it is important to understand what means enough lighting fixtures :

the action ground for the actors should be about 16x16 ft

let's say for my conditions are needed: 2-3 HMIs, 12-18 kWt each, same number of big Kinoflos which cost about 200 euro per day each+ some other less or more expensive lights+accessories - that makes rental budget really skyrocket... and thus changing to videography from still images sequences with flashlights impossible.

 

[Sergio Perez]

You'd need something like a 50mm on the Epic to match the view of the 70mm on a Canon 1Ds, so that makes your depth of field issues slightly easier -- if f/11 was good on the 70mm, you'd probably need to light a 50mm shot to an f/5.6-8.0 split on the Epic to get something similar.

If you can light your green screen studio with daylight fixtures (HMI's, daylight Kinos or Lumapanels, daylight LED's) you'd be better off for composite work, and to be safe, I'd maybe try to work in the 400-500 ISO range on the Epic for a cleaner key. But you should be able to get up to an f/5.8-8.0 split at 500 ISO in a studio with enough daylight fixtures.

David, I learn a LOT with every single one of your posts. Just like to share my gratitude for you being here and sharing with us. A big thank you and do keep posting!

 

[Georgy Arzamasov]

As the thread was goind down and down, i had nothing but to take a quick dive into self-education mostly with Set Lighting Technician’sHandbook. With http://calc.arri.de/calculator i found out, that 6 kWt ARRI fixture (as keylight) from the distance of 15 meters gives me the desired exposure value.

Based on that, and assuming other lighting fixtures on set , does it mean i can judge on the amounts and power of lights on set?

thanks again.