Digital Video - November 2007 - (Page 38) Q& A focus pullers, and animals wouldn’t hit their marks even if they did! We also use tripods that are light and unstable by feature film standards because they need to be portable. By the end of the edit we would take the cut to a cinema every few days to see how things were holding up. Image quality aside, the sleights of hand that an editor can use to contrive continuity on a small screen will not always work on a big one, so these visits were invaluable. What kinds of digital-to-film tests did you conduct—and what was the final methodology that was used to bring Planet Earth images to film for exhibition? What release print stock, film recorders, labs, and up-rezzing strategies did you use? We sent a test reel of 30 shots out to four different Soho facility houses. They were given original materials—tape, neg or data files—and asked to present us with a print. Our colorist, Luke Rainey, supervised the grade from each facility to make sure it was as consistent as possible before the DI was burnt to film. It was a fascinating exercise, and results were very varied. In the end we conformed and graded on a Nucoda Film Master; our film emulation lookup tables were built by Rising Sun in Adelaide, Cinesite wrote out our film negatives and Deluxe did the processing and printing. RPS imaging provided additional noise reduction and sharpening at the DI stage for problem shots, and Digital Safari and M2 TV ran the conform and M2 also made our video deliverables. We also had some excellent freelancers. It was a tailored setup, which gave great results in the end despite a few teething troubles. “Our cameramen don’t have focus pullers,” Linfield says, “and animals wouldn’t hit their marks even if they did!” “FOR ME, THE BIGGEST SINGLE ADVANTAGE OF SHOOTING DIGITAL IS THE ABILITY TO REVIEW MATERIAL IN A REMOTE LOCATION— IT’S A BRILLIANT WAY OF INVOLVING SCIENTISTS AND ASSISTANTS.” After plenty of testing, the material was either upscaled in Shake using optical flow processing or in Nucoda Film Master using the ZOM filtering. Both proved excellent. The Nucoda’s ability to de-grain and sharpen within windows was a great weapon in matching footage of different sharpnesses and grain levels. How has the advent of HD digital capture opened up the subjects that can be tackled in nature documentaries? Digital capture has pros and cons for us, video cameras are not generally as rugged as film cameras and electronics are more susceptible to moisture and cold. Dynamic range is improving but is still a issue for wildlife filmmaking where we often have no ability to control of the contrast range of a scene. There are also no cameras that can shoot over 60fps that are practical in the majority of field situations, although this is changing. Finally, good HD cameras are still a little pricey to hire. The pros are huge, though. Electronic cameras offer longer run times than film cameras which is fantastic for us—every wildlife cameraman will have a story of an amazing moment that was missed because a film magazine ran out or because they were was being over-cautious due to a dwindling supply of stock. We can also shoot cleaner-looking images in low light. It isn’t actually true that HD video cameras are usually more sensitive than fast film stock, but they certainly look “cleaner.” Clean pictures are very important for modern digital broadcasting—noise and grain is the enemy of compression, and HD images need to be heavily compressed before transmission because of current limitations in bandwidth. For me, the biggest single advantage of shooting digital in natural history is the ability to review material in a remote location without having to send material to a lab for processing. This instant feedback is a brilliant way of involving scientists and assistants, and it allows you to keep in touch with how the shoot is going and re-focus efforts as it progresses. The future for digital capture is very exciting. Every aspect of digital capture is improving rapidly: resolution, maximum frame rate, sensitivity in low light, and so on. I am also hopeful that the next generation of cameras will offer onboard recording that is far less compressed, as this is still the Achilles’ heel of HD camcorders for natural history filmmaking. We have all gotten used to the ease with which film can be graded, and the current crop of portable HD cameras use compressed 8-bit tape formats that do not offer that luxury. How has the success of Planet Earth enabled you to pursue other projects? It has certainly made it easier to get funding for the “sequel,” which has the working title Frozen Planet. This will, we hope, be the ultimate portrait of the polar regions of our planet. Sadly, it may also be a “last chance to see” as these habitats are the most threatened by climate change. This will be another long and ambitious project, but we have already started the research and planning and can’t wait to get shooting. DV 38 dv november 2007 www.dv.com http://www.dv.com
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