Digital Video - November 2008 - (Page 28)

PRIME MOVER Q& A Devlin confers with Leverage star Timothy Hutton. got airplanes flying at full speed into the sun!” So I asked Panavision, “How would you feel if I strapped your camera on the wing of an airplane and flew really fast?” They said “Sure!” So we did it! We went out to a small airport outside of Los Angeles and we strapped the Genesis on the wings of planes and flew around in all different kinds of light, including right into the sun, and then I did it again with regular film cameras. We printed both out to film and I took it to Henry in England. We put it up at the Odeon Theater — the biggest theater in England — and I said, “Alright, you tell me which one is film.” And Henry didn’t know! So he said, “Alright, I gotta see this camera!” We got him a Genesis for a week and he played with it and he came back and said, “Dean, I’m never shooting film again!” How has that evolved into this production? You’re currently using the RED cameras on Leverage, not the Genesis. Actually, our pilot was shot by David Connell with the Genesis, and then we moved to the RED for the series. We’re using a combination of cameras on the show. The RED is our main camera, the second camera is the Sony PMWEX1 and the third is the Sony Z1U. We’d used the RED for the third Librarian project, and it’s just been great! It’s not just the technical thing of having more flexible material — which is awesome, because the image is much more flexible material than film — but it also changes the whole workflow; it changes the way you direct actors on set, it changes the way you shoot, it changes the way you post, it changes everything, physically and creatively. I’m doing things now so much earlier in the process than we ever used to do with film because I can! It changes how I think about the show. Just the ability to color correct my dailies, alone, is amazing. I always had to live with one-light dailies before, but now I can color correct with the DP at night, every night! It’s all so liberating. How did you decide on the combination between the Z1U, the EX1 and the RED? During Flyboys, I was in England at Double Negative waiting for an effects shot and, believe it or not, there was a copy of DV on the table. I picked it up and read about the V1U, the predecessor to the Z1U, and I was like, “Wow! I just shot with the highest-end HD, this is the lowest-end HD, but it’s still HD — I gotta see how this looks!” So I bought a V1U in England and used it for all the behind-thescenes and then came back to the States and bought the new Z1U MY NICKNAME IS “EAGLE EYE” BECAUSE I CAN FIND EVERY LITTLE TINY FLAW. and shot some test footage with that. I turned it into an uncompressed QT file and brought it to EFILM and had them film it out for me and then asked them to analyze the footage and tell me what they thought. They basically said it had the exact same quality as Super 16 film. That was amazing! The idea that you could have this little $3,000 camera that gives you Super 16 quality? It blew my mind. We then wound up shooting a [2008] movie for TNT called Blank Slate completely on the EX1, and that was a great experience. When we started on the third Librarian [shot by David Connell], I was actually seriously considering shooting it on the EX1. We used the F900 on the previous two, and when I did a greenscreen test with the EX1, it was very similar results to the F900, and in some regards it was better. Our DP [Ryan Little] was a bit worried about the EX1 purely for the lack of interchangeable lenses. With no wide-angle or telephoto attachments available, at the time, for the EX1, he was very concerned that we wouldn’t get the shots we had planned. He recommended the RED, which would work with regular film lenses. The RED was an exciting camera, but I had never played with it, so we met with Jim Jannard at RED and he walked us through the camera and let us play with it, and we got very excited! I knew, at that point, that it wasn’t anywhere near as rock-solid a cameras as the Genesis, but what it could do visually, the image quality, was really exciting. They were on build 13 at the time, which is nothing compared to now — on build 16. Through our tests, we fell in love with the RED and felt it would mix well with our C, D and E cameras, which would be all EX1s. At that time, the build 13 on the RED wasn’t good in low light, but the EX1s were great in low light, so that became our rule of thumb: we’d shoot with the EX1s in low light, but the rest of the show would be RED for the main A and B cameras. Combining the RED and the EX1 footage, are you shooting 1080 on the EX1 and 2K on the RED? No. Actually, we’re shooting 4K on the REDs and 1080 on the EX1s, but we’re turning all of the footage into ProRes 422 and cutting and delivering it in ProRes. Once you convert to ProRes, it basically all becomes 2K, so it all kind of evens out. There are some color space issues that you have to address in Color, but it’s not radical, so we’ve been able to blend them together remarkably well. How much footage are you generating by shooting multiple cameras and keeping everything? And how is that going into your workflow and creating storage issues? Well, again, I’m a big believer in ProRes. I think ProRes is the most underrated codec out there. I’ve done a lot of testing, short of going to film with it, and I really love it. We took outputs of the ProRes and projected it on the largest screens at 20th Century Fox, Sony and Paramount, and it holds up. It looks spot-on, and I’m a real stickler for the image. People who have worked for me in digital effects will tell you, my nickname is “Eagle Eye” because I can find every little tiny flaw — and I’m looking at our footage and I don’t see any flaws. I don’t see anything wrong with it! And if you feel that way about www.dv.com 28 dv november 2008 http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - November 2008

Digital Video - November 2008 Contents AG-HMC150 Camcorder I-Cuff Eyepiece Protector Instant Expert Avid Media Composer 3.0 DT-B9L 1DU Monitor Flolight LCD500 Dark Red Close-Up: Chop Shop Socky Prime Mover Tools & Technology: DV Expo Toolkit Click to Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - November 2008

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