Digital Video - November 2007 - (Page 37) DOCUMENTARIAN MARK LINFIELD ON HOW DIGITAL ADVANCES HELPED CAPTURE RARE WILDLIFE IMAGES FOR EARTH. DV: How did these two projects come about? Mark Linfield: Whereas Deep Blue—the [2003] theatrical release of Blue Planet—was only conceived after the [2001] TV series was completed, Planet Earth and the Earth movie were a joint venture from the outset and were filmed in parallel. The movie always had its own script, but where sequences were common to both movie and TV series, we upped the level of production to make sure we had images that would make the grade for the movie. We also shot material that we held back from the TV series and is exclusive to Earth. How was your editing different for the feature format? Television is perhaps a better place to wow people with extraordinary facts and soundbites, but in the cinema you have a captive audience for 90 minutes, which gives you an opportunity to develop more subtle, complex themes. The cinema also offers a far more intense viewing experience—the sheer scale of the images and soundscape has greater emotional power. In the movie we exploited this to develop more emotional themes, firstly the quests of our animal characters and secondly, the plight of our planet. The environmental theme is stronger for being in the cinema because the beauty of our planet is more effectively portrayed on the big screen, so it’s easier to understand what is at stake. The movie is certainly a very different experience from the TV series. The images captured by Panasonic’s VariCam are stunning on a small screen. How did they hold up for the big screen? We were very pleasantly surprised by how large the VariCam images could be taken. The camera is capable of a very naturallooking color palette, a very film-like distribution of tones, and good dynamic range and these make for great looking pictures in HD and SD—but 720p resolution is on the low side for a large screen, so initially, we were concerned. However there is a lot going on inside a modern video camera—you can’t just take the pixel count of the sensor and tell how detailed the images will be. You need to know whether anti-alias filters are applied (and if so, how aggressively), to what degree the image is subsampled and compressed before it goes to tape, and so on and so on. It turns out the per-pixel sharpness of the VariCam is relatively good, but these things can only really be determined by testing. The postproduction route is also very important. We went back to original camera tapes and recaptured the footage in the native DVCPRO codec and frame rate, converting them in Final Cut Pro, and cutting out the Panasonic frame rate converter box which we had used for the television series. The FRC box adds an extra cycle of compression, and removing it makes a noticeable difference on the big screen. The upscale paths were also carefully tested. We didn’t use any in-camera sharpening during the filming, but we did selectively sharpen parts of the composition during the grade. This was more effective than sharpening the whole picture, which would have given a more video-y look and enhanced noise. Having said the resolution of the VariCam surprised us, it was never going to match good 35mm film or a 1920x1080 camera recording uncompressed to disk. But you have to remember that in natural history we frequently film in less than ideal conditions, and this means that the camera is often not the limiting factor in resolving detail. A lot of subjects are filmed from distance through haze which really degrades the image; we may be also be shooting with zoom lenses at apertures or focal lengths that are far from optimal. In these situations, a sensor capable of resolving more detail will not necessarily give you a more detailed picture. Dynamic range, color imaging and noise performance are issues that effect the picture The production searches for an elusive snow leopard. quality even at SD, so you have to get these fundamentals right first. It’s surprising how quickly the eye will adapt to an image with a bit less detail but, in my view, you never really get used to burnt highlights, crushed shadows or “wrong” colors. One of the biggest challenges in posting the movie was to match so many different formats. There are nine different formats in Earth, and I think the viewing experience is remarkably seamless—which is something everyone involved in the postproduction process should be proud of. When 4K digital cinema becomes established, it will become harder to match cameras of different resolutions, but at 2K I feel we really pulled it off. The print is also a little more forgiving than digital projection. The better formats always rise to the top if you study the image closely, but the print is a bit of a leveler, and the movie looks very even on the run. Did image quality become an issue in the editing process? We certainly had to be more aware of the image quality during the editing of the movie than we had been on the TV series. Slight errors in focus are harder to tolerate on a big screen, so are wobbles, and our rushes inevitably contain more of both than the rushes from a typical feature film. Our cameramen don’t have www.dv.com dv november 2007 37 http://www.dv.com
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