Which sensor used in The Hobbit?

[H. Risu]

Peter Jackson used the RED Epic 5K camera to film all three films in The Hobbit franchise. Can someone in the know point me to any online resource that states exactly what sensor was on those RED Epic cameras that filmed The Hobbit? Should have been a popular topic but no data on the sensor name online.

Thanks!

 

[Bob Gundu]

It was the Mysterium MX.

 

[Marc Wielage]

You know, there's so much image processing, compositing, and color correction going on, it almost doesn't matter. Once the image is pushed beyond a certain point, you could almost shoot it on an iPhone and it wouldn't matter. It's the lighting and post for a movie at the level of The Hobbit that makes it as good as it is, not the pickup. The art direction, makeup, and costuming made a big difference as well. It's beautiful work, but the camera was not the be-all/end-all.

 

[David Peterson]

It was the Mysterium MX.

What major films were shot on the original M sensor?

 

[Bob Gundu]

What major films were shot on the original M sensor?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_shot_on_digital_video_prior_to_2015

 

[H. Risu]

You know, there's so much image processing, compositing, and color correction going on, it almost doesn't matter. Once the image is pushed beyond a certain point, you could almost shoot it on an iPhone and it wouldn't matter. It's the lighting and post for a movie at the level of The Hobbit that makes it as good as it is, not the pickup. The art direction, makeup, and costuming made a big difference as well. It's beautiful work, but the camera was not the be-all/end-all.

Could not have said it better. I was just curious about the sensor, that's all. Some folks think they can buy an Arri Alexa and become Spielberg or buy a lot of fancy film stock and become Tarantino (no pun intended).

 

[H. Risu]

Thanks Bob!

 

[Marc Wielage]

Could not have said it better. I was just curious about the sensor, that's all. Some folks think they can buy an Arri Alexa and become Spielberg or buy a lot of fancy film stock and become Tarantino (no pun intended).

That's very true. I wish it were that easy.

In the case of Spielberg and Tarantino, one key is that they lean on their longtime DPs (Janusz Kaminski and Bob Richardson, respectively), who are incredibly talented cinematographers who nail the lighting and exposure every time. I've done work for both of them and all the heavy lifting was already done in front of the lens. What we do afterwards is made that much easier because the captured image is already 80% of the way there. And that's regardless of camera.

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

That's very true. I wish it were that easy.

In the case of Spielberg and Tarantino, one key is that they lean on their longtime DPs (Janusz Kaminski and Bob Richardson, respectively), who are incredibly talented cinematographers who nail the lighting and exposure every time. I've done work for both of them and all the heavy lifting was already done in front of the lens. What we do afterwards is made that much easier because the captured image is already 80% of the way there. And that's regardless of camera.

All three Hobbit films were lensed by the late Andrew Lesnie who was an academy award winning cinematographer. Personally I thought that the Hobbit trilogy was one of the worst looking films shot on RED and it had very little to do with the high frame rate. As said before, I just think that it was way too processed.

 

[Björn Benckert]

You know, there's so much image processing, compositing, and color correction going on, it almost doesn't matter. Once the image is pushed beyond a certain point, you could almost shoot it on an iPhone and it wouldn't matter. It's the lighting and post for a movie at the level of The Hobbit that makes it as good as it is, not the pickup. The art direction, makeup, and costuming made a big difference as well. It's beautiful work, but the camera was not the be-all/end-all.

One thing though. VFX will look better if you dont shoot with your iPhone. MX is a really good camera if you shoot it within range of the DR and dont contaminate with IR etc. As a VFX / blue screen camera it is still really good.

 

[H. Risu]

That's very true. I wish it were that easy.

In the case of Spielberg and Tarantino, one key is that they lean on their longtime DPs (Janusz Kaminski and Bob Richardson, respectively), who are incredibly talented cinematographers who nail the lighting and exposure every time. I've done work for both of them and all the heavy lifting was already done in front of the lens. What we do afterwards is made that much easier because the captured image is already 80% of the way there. And that's regardless of camera.

Makes sense indeed.

Random question, ever heard of anyone who shot a no budget feature on RAW and color graded it using only 3D LUTS? Is this doable? I guess it is doable if there is no money (i.e. no budget feature). Your opinion?

 

[H. Risu]

One thing though. VFX will look better if you dont shoot with your iPhone. MX is a really good camera if you shoot it within range of the DR and dont contaminate with IR etc. As a VFX / blue screen camera it is still really good.

Thank you for your input. What is "IR"?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

One thing though. VFX will look better if you dont shoot with your iPhone.

Everything will look better if you don't shoot with a tiny sensor to an overly compressed mush.

Marc was just stressing that it's not about the camera but the skill and artistry of a Human to craft the image.

For the big screen I'd draw the line at S16 and a proper codec.

Random question, ever heard of anyone who shot a no budget feature on RAW and color graded it using only 3D LUTS?

Using only 3DLUTs is not color grading.

You need some creative decisions and judgement calls per shot/scene/camera/context and a pre-defined table of transformation values won't do that for you.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Makes sense indeed.

Random question, ever heard of anyone who shot a no budget feature on RAW and color graded it using only 3D LUTS? Is this doable? I guess it is doable if there is no money (i.e. no budget feature). Your opinion?

In the case of RED, sure you could process it through IPP2 and call it a day but if you want the image to look exactly the way you want to you’ll want to do a lot more than that. In fact, you could avoid LUTs altogether and just grade from the log image.

BTW, I just saw a doc called Harold & Lillian. Really revealed how important other departments are to the final image. Harold was responsible for some of the most iconic images in movie history and yet went uncredited a lot of times.

So yeah, camera only part of the equation.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

Makes sense indeed.

Random question, ever heard of anyone who shot a no budget feature on RAW and color graded it using only 3D LUTS? Is this doable? I guess it is doable if there is no money (i.e. no budget feature). Your opinion?

While it's theoretically possible if you find a LUT that wrangles the colors in a way you like, I would imagine you'd need to be even more of a stickler for lighting choices, then. You'd have to ensure absolute consistency shot to shot, lighting exactly for the look you want. You'd really have to "paint with light" and I feel like you'd make your AD upset if trying to get everything absolutely perfectly.

Grading is partially about color choices, yeah, but it's also the final polish and balancing to ensure the illusion of seamless-ness in a movie. Giving that up just to say you didn't grade your movie seems like much more pain than anything.

For example, I was watching the ASC clubhouse videos with Roger Deakins, he was talking about one scene in BR2049 where he bounced light off the side of a cabinet because they couldn't put any fixtures inside. He needed it powerful enough to bounce onto Ryan Gosling's face, so it got too hot on the face of the cabinet, which he brought down in color grading. Now, I don't know what other limitations there were for the scene, but the freedom of grading gave him the option to problem solve on set and come up with that lighting solution. If he couldn't grade it, he might be spending more time on set trying to achieve it a different way.

 

[H. Risu]

While it's theoretically possible if you find a LUT that wrangles the colors in a way you like, I would imagine you'd need to be even more of a stickler for lighting choices, then. You'd have to ensure absolute consistency shot to shot, lighting exactly for the look you want. You'd really have to "paint with light" and I feel like you'd make your AD upset if trying to get everything absolutely perfectly.

Grading is partially about color choices, yeah, but it's also the final polish and balancing to ensure the illusion of seamless-ness in a movie. Giving that up just to say you didn't grade your movie seems like much more pain than anything.

For example, I was watching the ASC clubhouse videos with Roger Deakins, he was talking about one scene in BR2049 where he bounced light off the side of a cabinet because they couldn't put any fixtures inside. He needed it powerful enough to bounce onto Ryan Gosling's face, so it got too hot on the face of the cabinet, which he brought down in color grading. Now, I don't know what other limitations there were for the scene, but the freedom of grading gave him the option to problem solve on set and come up with that lighting solution. If he couldn't grade it, he might be spending more time on set trying to achieve it a different way.

Thank you; quite interesting @ Roger Deakins.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Random question, ever heard of anyone who shot a no budget feature on RAW and color graded it using only 3D LUTS? Is this doable? I guess it is doable if there is no money (i.e. no budget feature). Your opinion?

Sit with a colorist during a session and you'll see why it's necessary to adjust every single shot -- and sometimes individual elements within the shot -- even on low-budget features. I've done three low-budget (under $500K) features so far this year, and I still spent 60-70 hours on each of them doing quite a bit of very tricky correction, like faces-only, backgrounds-only, multiple tracking power windows, keys, defocus, layers, all kinds of stuff. It's more a question of coming up with a deal where you can hire a colorist who can work with a reasonable budget.

3D LUTs are not a panacea, and they'll only take you part of the way. I generally just throw the LUT out the window and do it all from scratch, but there are some good people out there who find a way to make LUTs work for them. I just finished an F55 feature where I did actually use the stock technical LUT to normalize S-Log3 material, but I did some corrections before and after the LUT to smooth everything out. And again, there were a ton of tracking masks and all kinds of additional corrections piled on top of that. The LUT was maybe 20% of the final look at best.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I just finished an F55 feature where I did actually use the stock technical LUT to normalize S-Log3 material, but I did some corrections before and after the LUT to smooth everything out. And again, there were a ton of tracking masks and all kinds of additional corrections piled on top of that. The LUT was maybe 20% of the final look at best.

That stock LUT messed up the F55 material in numerous ways, gave you more problems which cannot be adequately compensated in post, made your life harder and limited what you can do with the footage. Next time you have a similar scenario get in touch.

 

[David Peterson]

Thank you for your input. What is "IR"?

IR = "Infra Red"

 

[Marc Wielage]

That stock LUT messed up the F55 material in numerous ways, gave you more problems which cannot be adequately compensated in post, made your life harder and limited what you can do with the footage. Next time you have a similar scenario get in touch.

I'll do that -- it was a real struggle. The final picture looked fine, but my conclusion is that you can't rate the camera at 1250 ISO. I think at best, it's more like 600-800. It can get very, very noisy, and the noise is still there just in the Raw, without any correction. We'll most likely do an NR pass at the end to clean it up, but it won't be fast.