American Cinematographer - September 2012 - 88

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A woman (Katherine Randolph) navigates a Cadillac Eldorado through a metaphysical landscape in the short film Eldorado, which Curtis Clark, ASC
directed and shot using Sony’s F65 CineAlta camera.
I
ACES Enables Eldorado’s F65 Workflow
By David Heuring
In his roles as chairman of the ASC Technology Committee
and consultant to Sony, Curtis Clark, ASC has sought to influence
the evolution of digital motion-imaging technologies with the goal
of providing cinematographers with the most powerful and flexible
tools. At the same time, he works to ensure that changes in technology
don’t erode the cinematographer’s prerogatives as custodians
of the image. Clark’s latest endeavor toward those ends is Eldorado,
a 10-minute motion picture that was captured in 16-bit raw image
files, posted in 4K and finished as a DCP file for 4K projection.
Clark directed and photographed Eldorado with the first
production model of Sony’s F65 CineAlta camera. According to Sony
specs, the F65 uses an 8K 20-megapixel CMOS imaging sensor (with
18.7 megapixels in its active area) to produce a 4K 4096x2160
image-file output. The sensor is equivalent in size to a Super 35mm
film frame (24.7mm x 13.1mm), allowing the use of 35mm-format
lenses. It uses a Sony-designed color filter array that passes along 100
percent of the green information, 50 percent of the red and 50
percent of the blue; as a result, there is less interpolation than in
other cameras in order to reach 16-bit 4:4:4 RGB and retain an
unambiguous 4K spatial resolution.
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September 2012
The camera incorporates a number of improvements over the
prototype Clark used to shoot The Arrival (AC Aug. ’11). The most
important upgrade for Clark was the ability of the camera to output
16-bit linear raw files directly to SRMemory cards using an onboard
SR-R4 Memory Recorder. The new production model also features
software upgrades, enhanced frame-rate options and a mechanical
shutter that eliminates rolling-shutter artifacts.
“The purpose of Eldorado wasn’t just to demonstrate the
ability of the camera to create wide-dynamic-range images with
great color bit depth and high resolution,” Clark says, “but to do so
in an engaging narrative context that illustrates how those attributes
can more effectively tell a story.”
Eldorado depicts a woman (Katherine Randolph) surrounded
by the glossy commercial landscape of Las Vegas. She drives an
immaculate 1957 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, and the hypnotic
lights of Vegas seductively promise a certain kind of earthly escape.
Time-lapse cinematography transitions dawn to daylight, and the
woman is then seen driving through the otherworldly natural rock
formations in Nevada’s Valley of Fire. The painterly vistas stand in stark
contrast to the artificial world she has left behind, and they seem to
represent a more genuine and deep spirituality. Eventually, the
woman sees a rock formation that transforms into a face that she first
saw on a playing card back in a Las Vegas casino.
American Cinematographer
Photos by Carin Baer. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Sony Corp. and Sony Pictures Colorworks. Workflow diagram courtesy of Curtis Clark.

American Cinematographer - September 2012

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