American Cinematographer - November 2007 - (Page 35)

shots that allowed Kuepper to give the camera a “ghost’s-eye” POV. Shooting with the HVX200 allowed Kuepper to utilize Panasonic’s P2 system, bypassing tape entirely in favor of 4- and 8-gigabyte cards. “The P2 system is excellent,” he notes. “Before the card even leaves the camera, you can play back scenes and check them on the monitor.” The confidence this method provided was especially valuable given that Kuepper was also operating. “Before moving on, I could go back and make sure I hadn’t hit any lights, and that Allen nailed the focus, without clunky playback systems and without damaging any tape.” Kuepper and his crew worked out an efficient system for storing and backing up the material, which was recorded on four cards — “just barely enough,” he notes. “As soon as a card was full, it was handed off to our digital loader/on-set editor, Kellee Hiatt. It would then go into the P2 Store, a handy device Panasonic makes that immediately verifies and drops the clips onto an internal hard drive. The data was copied from the P2 Store to a Macbook Pro, where it was spot-checked and eyeballed in Final Cut Pro. Once the clip was verified as good, it was backed up to our on-set terabyte server, which itself was backed up at night.” Kuepper admits that this obsessive approach grew out of his own paranoia about the format. “But I sure slept well at night,” he adds. For postproduction, the files were taken to Plaster City Digital Post, where Michael Cioni, Tom Vice and their crew took native timelines from the Final Cut session and logarithmically uprezzed everything to 1080p. “The image looked absolutely beautiful on their 27foot screen,” exclaims Kuepper. “I saw no noticeable artifacting in the upscaled image.” He was also pleased with the process of grading with the “extremely fast and powerful” Final Touch, which he used to color-correct the movie with Ian Vertovec. The final cut was then taken to the Boxlight system at Hollywood Digital, where it was slightly tweaked for the final filmout and printed on Kodak Vision 2383. In the end, Kuepper was pleased with the results he got from the Panasonic system and Redrock adapter, in spite of the technology’s growing pains. Shooting digitally with the P2 cards also enabled the crew to have a bit of fun, as when the grips made ghost costumes and walked into the middle of a take in which the actors were discussing whether or not their house was haunted. “It caused a great laugh on set,” says Kuepper, “and it didn’t waste a bit of film!” I 35 http://www.k5600.com http://www.k5600.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2007

American Cinematographer - November 2007 Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Deconstructing Bob Dylan Honoring a Lost Friend Night Terrors Losing Control TV’s Top-Rated Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - November 2007

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