Why 4K?

[Rob Ruffo]

Part of me stills hopes for a theatrical renaissance (not that it's dead though) with 4K and digital distribution.

I'm specially intrigued on how this will improve the distribution of art, foreign, indie and old films.

Because if doesn't, the only use of digital distribution (in my eyes) will be making the distribution of Harry Potter and Spider-Man less costly for the studios.

What interests me is being able to put up a Howard Hawks retrospective in your theater by simply going online and making a playlist of his films and pressing "play". Of course there would have to be a great system of making sure it's financially rewarding for all involved.

Watching Seven Samurai or Sergio Leone scanned at 4K in a movie theater should be pretty kick ass.

I don't see this happening in real life though, only in my cinematic wet dreams. :coolgleamA:

To be honest, I think piracy is one of the biggest challenges filmmakers will face in the coming years (perhaps even a bigger challenge than what TV was in the 50's and 60's). Hopefully digital distribution will play a part in putting a halt to that, at least partially.

But yeah, sorry to derail the thread. =p

I agree that would be awesome, and maybe not so far fetched - we can dream. But I think Piracy will be adressed in new ways by legislators soon. You cannot run an idea economy where people casually steal other people's creative work. There are easy ways to catch pirates, they just need to be legalized. For example if Google can block Chinese people from political content they can certainly block illegal torrent searches. Why don't they? Because there are no laws yet to require them to do so.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Well, that sort of starts to fall into those types of "interactive" cinema where the audience can choose where the story goes, in the sense that you are talking about cinema where the audience chooses what to look at, what to zoom in on, what angle to see the action from, etc.

While that may happen on an experimental basis -- and it's the basis of gaming -- it works against the basic act of storytelling, which is that the storyteller selects the tools and the technique that he feels best tells the story, and that story is an expression of his artistic vision based on the creative choices he makes.

So giving those creative choices (shot size, etc.) over to the audience sort of works to diminish the power and importance of the storyteller. One would assume that most audiences want to be told a story by someone better at storytelling than themselves, just as most people would want to buy a house built by someone who is better at designing and building houses than they are, or would want to go to a doctor who has more medical knowledge and skill than they do.

Yes. Its' why many story elements in games never quite work too - if you don't give yourself over to be led by a character, suspense and intrigue are never as powerful.

These interactive films are more party trick than anything else - good for theme parks, not real drama.

On that note a great book: "The Cult fo the Amateur". You can find it at Amazon.

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

One thing I've learned over the last 10 years or so, is that things can move very fast indeed. When things get connected to computers, they move faster than you'd expect. .....
Graeme

I think it was about 3 year after ProTools became "pro", that I saw the last multi track machine being used in a professional studio.

Of course some managed to hang on for quite some time.
"I will never touch a damn mouse in my life......" - famous last words....

Jochen

 

[Scott Crawley]

I think Rob, that we always get into trouble when we make sweeping generalizations as you seem to do with frequency. For example you posted that you had perceived French cinema as superior based on the relatively small number of exports that you had seen. Then, after you had consumed a wider breadth of French films you came to understand that there are great French films, and there are average French films, and there are still many others that you don't like. It was then that you realized there was nothing inherently better about French cinema in general. When you compare American cinema from decade to decade you appear to fall into the same trap. There are a small number of films from each decade that are commonly accepted as great, a larger number of average films and others that are not so good. It is just the nature of things. If you could show that there were substantially more exceptional films in one period compared to the others, taking overall volume into account, then you might be on to something.

The irony in your assertion is that for reasons of demand and the accessibility of filmaking equipment the number of annual productions has steadily increased. There is more product being made now than at any other period in time and there are far more average productions and turds being made than ever. One day when you are older, some kid might approach you with their own youthful logic and declare that based purely on the total number of turds produced that the 60's cinema is far superior to the 90's.

Personally I suspect the numbers are proportional, but I am no scholar on the subject. My hope is that our golden age is still ahead of us, and will be triggered by this new accessiblilty. My experience tells me that it will require more than tech and quantity to trigger such an explosion, but there also needs to be a uniquely human/cultural element present. Maybe it lies in cross culteral, global production facilitated by the net.

 

[Felix K.]

I think it was about 3 year after ProTools became "pro", that I saw the last multi track machine being used in a professional studio.

Of course some managed to hang on for quite some time.
"I will never touch a damn mouse in my life......" - famous last words....

Jochen

Oh I'm pretty sure that they haven't tossed away that Sony DASH PCM-3348 in the www.park-studios.de Too many songs unused/unsuccessful on these tapes Better to recycle than to compose... :bigear: :001_smile: ... I'm assuming...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

How does that make sense? It doesn't take that many days and then you've paid what it would have cost to buy it, but you have to give the gear back to the rental house.

Our cameras, our dolly, we've paid them off many times over now in saved rentals. A 10 K par, yes, that we will continue to rent, but every day stuff is cheaper to buy.

Because I'm not a DP or a rental house.

The difference between a FF35 Scarlet and a FF35 Epic is something like $18k. it makes more sense to me economically to save that $18k to put into more gear and only rent an Epic for days that I would need an epic brain: action, greenscreen etc. I doubt I would need 18 days of epic a year.

For commercial shoots the rental costs all get bundled and passed along to the client anyway so why should I invest my money in it? Like I said. I'm not a rental house, I don't want to deal with that sort of thing.

 

[Joe Carney]

I'm looking forward to shooting 3K with the 2/3" Scarlet. 3K should uprez to 4K fine and the longer depth of field will keep costs down for what I want to do. I can get the S35 brain later.

 

[Todd M.]

The irony in your assertion is that for reasons of demand and the accessibility of filmaking equipment the number of annual productions has steadily increased. There is more product being made now than at any other period in time and there are far more average productions and turds being made than ever. One day when you are older, some kid might approach you with their own youthful logic and declare that based purely on the total number of turds produced that the 60's cinema is far superior to the 90's.

Just to add some actual facts to this discussion, attached is a chart showing film production for the past 10 years (source: MPAA 2008 Theatrical Market Statistics). Total films produced has actually declined significantly. The MPAA is notoriously silent on how it creates these statistics so it is an imperfect metric, but probably the best metric available for the purposes of discussion. It would certainly be nice to have greater than a ten year span but if we are using "accessibility of filmmaking equipment" as part of our hypothesis here then this window of time certainly fits.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I'm looking forward to shooting 3K with the 2/3" Scarlet. 3K should uprez to 4K fine and the longer depth of field will keep costs down for what I want to do. I can get the S35 brain later.

No offense, but 3K Bayer is not going to upres to 4K RGB. 3K RAW is essentially 2K RGB.

 

[David Rasberry]

No offense, but 3K Bayer is not going to upres to 4K RGB. 3K RAW is essentially 2K RGB.

It will do much better at 4k than 2k from a 1080p camera as the optical resolution of a high quality deBayer will have about 1/3rd better vertical resolution, 1200 lines vs about 800 lines.

The other issue is that a 2k finish will look better on 4k projector with good scaling than on a 2k projector.

 

[Tom Lowe]

It will do much better at 4k than 2k from a 1080p camera as the optical resolution of a high quality deBayer will have about 1/3rd better vertical resolution, 1200 lines vs about 800 lines.

Keep in mind that many "1080p" cameras like Genesis are producing extremely clean 1080p from a massive oversampling in the first place. The Genesis sensor is 35mm (much bigger than Scarlet) 5.7K RGB stripe. So don't be so sure a 3K Bayer camera is gonna smoke it on a 4K upres. A lot of factors come into play.

My point is, 3K Bayer does not easily "scale up" to 4K RGB.

 

[David Rasberry]

Keep in mind that many "1080p" cameras like Genesis are producing extremely clean 1080p from a massive oversampling in the first place. The Genesis sensor is 35mm (much bigger than Scarlet) 5.7K RGB stripe. So don't be so sure a 3K Bayer camera is gonna smoke it on a 4K upres. A lot of factors come into play.

My point is, 3K Bayer does not easily "scale up" to 4K RGB.

The Nyquist limit for 1080p is still lower than 800 lines regardless of the source resolution it is scaled from. If you are scaling up from a 3k original RGB file it will retain more fine detail than an upscale from a 1080p RGB file. It may take more processing power to crunch it, but the end result will likely be better.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

This is all getting a bit "math-y"... It's hard to make sweeping statements about quality and ability to be shown at 4K, etc. without actually testing the cameras involved.

Remember that Sony HD and Genesis 1080P material have all been unrezzed and blown-up to IMAX, with varying success, so never say never in regards to the ability to be enlarged. Ultimately people don't go to see line resolution charts in a movie theater, so you never know what will seem acceptably sharp to their eyes, especially when not in direct comparison to some other format.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Just to add some actual facts to this discussion, attached is a chart showing film production for the past 10 years (source: MPAA 2008 Theatrical Market Statistics). Total films produced has actually declined significantly. The MPAA is notoriously silent on how it creates these statistics so it is an imperfect metric, but probably the best metric available for the purposes of discussion. It would certainly be nice to have greater than a ten year span but if we are using "accessibility of filmmaking equipment" as part of our hypothesis here then this window of time certainly fits.

Thanks for that. It is enlightening. However I think these numbers only represent commercially released films. I am speaking of all screened entertainment, from commercially released cinema to independently produced films that couldn't get distribution, from student films to the backyard auteur with a DV camera, a penchant for editing and a YouTube account... as well as all television and direct to DVD drama etc..

I can't begin to validate my position in any way, let alone as clearly as you have, but I have no doubt that there are far more people engaging in visual storytelling with moving pictures than ever before.

 

[Michael Hastings]

I'm looking forward to shooting 3K with the 2/3" Scarlet. 3K should uprez to 4K fine and the longer depth of field will keep costs down for what I want to do. I can get the S35 brain later.

An interesting side to this is that the competition to Scarlet may not be low priced vDSLRs with s35 sensors but other 4K and above 2/3" or even 1/2" sensor cameras, as there are many markets, like this poster's, where the greater DOF is a plus and there are well developed zoom lenses.

If we get 4K sports production it will probably be with 2/3" sensors and there really isn't much to prevent them from moving to 4K on 2/3". Smaller pixels, yes, but improvements in noise or sensitivity or whatever you want to call it have pretty much offset the loss in pixel size. 9 megapixel 1/2.7" sensors are already being used and that is .37" so a 2/3" sensor could have pixels twice as large. Seems like the same holds true for most of the 1/3" or 1/2" prosumer camcorders - really not much to hold them back from doing 4K if that becomes necessary.

 

[Bruce Allen]

I happen to think that the home viewing environment is a more critical viewing environment than the cinema - you sit in the same well placed seat, close to the screen and can see every imperfection, and pause the movie, or re-wind to review a section. TO me, that means you may actually need higher quality in the home than in the cinema.

Graeme

Totally agree! I just saw the trailers for Inception and Clash of the Titans back to back at a theatre (before Sherlock Holmes) - I worked on the titles for both (designed the Clash main title, helped out on the 3D work for the Inception city maze thing).

Inception titles were done at 4K and Titans was done at 2K. Didn't see any difference in sharpness as the projector slightly was out of focus. At home you probably would see the difference if you had a 4K screen.

HOWEVER, to me this is the order of importance to me as a consumer:

1. 3D (no question)
2. 48fps (would fix many remaining problems of 3D)
3. Higher res (3K or 4K)
4. Less / better compression

All of these together would REALLY do the trick too, of course!

Hope RedRay is being designed to handle all of these - just 4K is not enough.

Personally I'm buying a new TV this year - my first HDTV Probably it'll be one of those new Panasonic or LG 3D plasmas.

I really wouldn't bet on 4K beating 3D, personally. Combined would be great.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Gary Paul Walker]

Didn't see any difference in sharpness as the projector slightly was out of focus.

The cinema where I live has the worlds worst team of projectionists... I dont think they've had a single film projected in focus. Not to mention parts being projected on to the wall either side of the screen. I hope as cinemas upgrade to higher resolutions of projection, they spend time and money on training the staff who'll project the films

 

[David Rasberry]

An interesting side to this is that the competition to Scarlet may not be low priced vDSLRs with s35 sensors but other 4K and above 2/3" or even 1/2" sensor cameras, as there are many markets, like this poster's, where the greater DOF is a plus and there are well developed zoom lenses.

If we get 4K sports production it will probably be with 2/3" sensors and there really isn't much to prevent them from moving to 4K on 2/3". Smaller pixels, yes, but improvements in noise or sensitivity or whatever you want to call it have pretty much offset the loss in pixel size. 9 megapixel 1/2.7" sensors are already being used and that is .37" so a 2/3" sensor could have pixels twice as large. Seems like the same holds true for most of the 1/3" or 1/2" prosumer camcorders - really not much to hold them back from doing 4K if that becomes necessary.

I don't think you could find lenses that would resolve 4k on a 2/3" sensor. 3k would seem to be about the optimum resolution for that format to fully resolve 2k without aliasing issues.

 

[Gary Paul Walker]

Ultimately people don't go to see line resolution charts in a movie theater, so you never know what will seem acceptably sharp to their eyes, especially when not in direct comparison to some other format.

Sometimes its nice to know that a huge portion of a cinema-going audience are perhaps oblivious to the arguments of 1080p vs 2k vs 4k etc..
God know how it would ruin a film if instead of watching the film they were trying to assess the projection of it and mentally compare it to other resolutions. Its killing off Father Christmas!

 

[Michael Hastings]

I don't think you could find lenses that would resolve 4k on a 2/3" sensor. 3k would seem to be about the optimum resolution for that format to fully resolve 2k without aliasing issues.

I'm not so sure of that - the Canon HFS100s we use for some stereo3D uses the full 9 megapixel sensor for still photos. True it is only about a 1/3" sensor but you also have EX1s and such with ~2K half inch sensors for $5 or $6K with full 3 chip prism systems and 14x fujinon zooms. And RED has already shown 2/3" 3K mini lenses and 8x zoom at pretty low cost. So I suspect that if they made a similar prosumer type of camera with a single 4K 2/3" bayer chip they could make a short zoom lens that would handle it.

Of course that is predicated on whether they want to do it at all - but remember, prosumers and corporate people jumped on HD much quicker than either the broadcasters or cinema people did and if there is any kind of reasonable display device (and remember these people were paying $5 or $6K for a 42" plasma just a few years ago) they might just go for it.