4K at the Grove

[Evin Grant]

For those of you in LA the Grove's movie theaters now have 4K digital projectors, just saw Ocean's 13 and it looked great, although very grainy.
Looks like Red is coming just in time.

[Brandon Rice]

Sweet! I like seeing movies there. Are they ALL 4K projectors now?

[Keith Nealy]

I saw it in film and it was very grainy. Also, I could'nt believe the amount of judder during fast camera pans. The image was bearly watchable until the pan slowed down. And there were a lot of those pans. What we, as audiences have learned to live with as "The Film Look" is amazing.

I think RED will help clean up the images (not the judder) a lot and let us program in the look we want in post with total control.

Audio engineers for music have known this for years. When recording, keep the signal clean and add effects in post. If you record the effects in the original - you're stuck with them baked in.

I've been working with video projection since it was invented and can't wait for 4K projectors in all theaters. Finally, dustfree, clean prints with no gateweave or negative scratches.

Hallelujah!

[JD Holloway]

Need some of those babies in Toronto.
I'm a little concerned it might not happen because of the 3D revolution that seems to be coming.

[Michael Ragen]

I can't wait to see some 4k stuff up in Seattle. I like the feeling of 24p, partially because I feel the cinematic "mirror" doesn't need to feel completely "real", and that "real" feeling can hurt some things. Of course 60p is optimal for many things. The last movie I saw with horrible judder in the theater was Little Children. The movie looked beautiful, except for the quick pans past the football players faces before the game began. I almost had a seizure.

[Michael Schrengohst]

Theatres will have to do digital to stay up with the 3D revolution.
Not every film will be shot in 3D but if theatres want to stay up
with the competition and book the blockbusters they will have
to go digital. Which would bode well for Indie producers as
the critical mass of theatres goes digital the lock on distribution
will loosen up and allow smaller digital films a larger auidence.

[Keith Nealy]

one can only hope...

[Alexander Nikishin]

deadmike, I've always wondered what your avatar was?

[Don Woods]

Nice I might be down that way I'll have to check it out

[Tom Lowe]

The Ocean films don't seem like ideal candidates for 4K, since a lot of grain is part of the style, isn't it?

I'd like to see something really clean shot on 35 transfered to 4K and projected at 4K.

[Bruce Allen]

Believe it or not, we did the teaser graphics at 4K too. I have some DPX files for some shots but probably can't answer too many questions without getting permission first...

EDIT: although I have to say... if 4K isn't essential for Ocean's, why on earth is do people on reduser seem to think that a 4k finishing process is essential for indie filims? But I've harped on that point long enough in other threads...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Ace]

The Ocean films don't seem like ideal candidates for 4K, since a lot of grain is part of the style, isn't it?

I'd like to see something really clean shot on 35 transfered to 4K and projected at 4K.

At a 4K scan from film, I think nothing is going to be "clean". At that res, grain is represented almost 1:1. This is why I think when coming from film, 2K seems to be the best finishing option.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't think you can say that softer but less grainy is always preferable to sharper but grainier. Just depends on the project. Not being able to resolve the grain 1:1 means you are throwing away high frequency detail too.

Look at the samples here:
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mag/video_digital_cinemas_special/index.html

Obviously Soderberg's insistence on 4K D.I.'s for his Ocean movies means that he wants to preserve the grain structure in his push-processed photography, so it's deliberate. "Jarhead" was scanned at 4K for similar reasons -- Roger Deakins wanted to preserve the look of the partial silver retention process that his negative went through.

But I agree that for a small indie movie shot on film, 2K D.I.'s are usually fine and look great, may even help hide a few of the flaws that result from the lower budget. But in the case of the RED camera, I can see capturing in 4K RAW REDCODE, even if you do a later reduction to 2K, being a good idea -- there are benefits to oversampling.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I saw it in film and it was very grainy. Also, I could'nt believe the amount of judder during fast camera pans. The image was bearly watchable until the pan slowed down. And there were a lot of those pans. What we, as audiences have learned to live with as "The Film Look" is amazing.

I think RED will help clean up the images (not the judder) a lot and let us program in the look we want in post with total control.

Audio engineers for music have known this for years. When recording, keep the signal clean and add effects in post. If you record the effects in the original - you're stuck with them baked in.

I've been working with video projection since it was invented and can't wait for 4K projectors in all theaters. Finally, dustfree, clean prints with no gateweave or negative scratches.

Hallelujah!

Yeah we learned this the hard way on a project where our inexperienced (but thought he was a genius) DP was trying to add "the film look" in during shooting, and what we ended up with was a lot of grainy shots that looked nothing like, well, anything!

[Jason Murphy]

Ocean's 13: Grainy, sure, but gotta love the blacks on those Vision Premier prints. Definitely want to see more of that happening.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't think there is a right or wrong way in this regards, creating a look in front of the lens and in camera, versus creating it in post.

There is something to be said for committing yourself to a strong look at the moment of photography, rather than shooting safe middle-of-the-road stuff that can be manipulated anyway you want in post. Half the time, people get used to the safe look while editing, so when time comes to do the final color-correction, they get cold feet and don't create the look they originally talked about.

It's the same thing regarding coverage of a scene -- you learn a lot about designing a sequence with a particular cutting plan and not giving yourself too much leeway in post to cut it differently.

When you make bold choices while shooting a movie and make a mistake, you learn something in the process, but if you make safe choices with lots of escape plans, you never really learn what doesn't work because you have so many options in post.

Of course, the responsible thing to do is to play it safe, but all I'm saying is that you'll learn faster (and perhaps more deeply) if you go out there and start making some mistakes due to being creative.

Of course, in Jonathan's case, it just sounds like a case where the DP picked a style that he should have tested and gotten approved before continuing it, so the question is, if he was boosting the gain or underexposing video for a faux "film look" (I'm assuming you were shooting video -- if you were shooting film, why would you need to try to get a film look? It already has it) then why didn't anyone object earlier? Like on the first shot? I assume you had a monitor to watch what the camera was shooting.

[Michael Ragen]

Alexander,

My avatar is a photo I took of the Guitar Helmet. It's an instrument that my friend Andrew and I built for our two person ambient noise project, Some Terrible Music. I'm the guy wearing it in the photo. Here is an old article about it: http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/06/slightly-alarming-helmet-guitar.html

Unfortunately at the moment the Guitar Helmet is out of commission and needs some re-soldering and Some Terrible Music has been on hold since last Thanksgiving (Shooting too much). I've always wanted to use it as a prop in something.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I don't think there is a right or wrong way in this regards, creating a look in front of the lens and in camera, versus creating it in post.

There is something to be said for committing yourself to a strong look at the moment of photography, rather than shooting safe middle-of-the-road stuff that can be manipulated anyway you want in post. Half the time, people get used to the safe look while editing, so when time comes to do the final color-correction, they get cold feet and don't create the look they originally talked about.

It's the same thing regarding coverage of a scene -- you learn a lot about designing a sequence with a particular cutting plan and not giving yourself too much leeway in post to cut it differently.

When you make bold choices while shooting a movie and make a mistake, you learn something in the process, but if you make safe choices with lots of escape plans, you never really learn what doesn't work because you have so many options in post.

Of course, the responsible thing to do is to play it safe, but all I'm saying is that you'll learn faster (and perhaps more deeply) if you go out there and start making some mistakes due to being creative.

Of course, in Jonathan's case, it just sounds like a case where the DP picked a style that he should have tested and gotten approved before continuing it, so the question is, if he was boosting the gain or underexposing video for a faux "film look" (I'm assuming you were shooting video -- if you were shooting film, why would you need to try to get a film look? It already has it) then why didn't anyone object earlier? Like on the first shot? I assume you had a monitor to watch what the camera was shooting.

Basically, it was about a twelve-minute short, none of us (that being me, the writer-director, David, the producer, or Brendan, our editor) knew that much about using this camera because it was the first time we had done so, but our DP, let's call him just M, claimed to know exactly what he was doing (he's 19, lol), and that he's done this all of the time, no problem, etc. To be fair, he had some very good shots in the short, some great rack focuses, good angles, and good recommendations, but he really wasn't understanding the limitations of the technology. For instance, you absolutely *cannot* throw the background out of focus using an HDV camera like this with no cine lenses when the background is just three feet away from the actor! It's not possible. I know that now, Brendan and I both thought that then, but weren't confident enough to tell anyone else what they were doing, especially a guy who claims he knows a lot about cameras, being a DP, etc. and we claimed to know very little to nothing.

Also there was no monitor, it was a total run-and-gun shoot. No permits, no anything. At one point we were in a cemetary in Burbank I think it was and the security kept passing every five minutes, this was the key scene of the short, very important, and we basically had to all pretend like we were just visiting dead relatives or something. It was pretty bad. We didn't even use a tripod on those shoots. Most of them were stable enough and looked good, a few were too shaky and we corrected them in post just fine.

David's attitude was simple on this project, and I think it was a good one -- let everyone do their jobs, if they make mistakes, we learn from their mistakes. In other words, if the project suffers because someone doesn't know what they're doing, that's ok, we're all beginning filmmakers and we'll probably learn more from mistakes than anything else. I know I wasn't perfect as a director, I made mistakes, but my mistakes were less noticeable than the grainy look of the picture (I think he was messing with the gain, yeah, but I can't remember), just because they were more in how the film shoot was orchestrated (I was basically 1st A.D. here too) than how it looked. In any case, we all learned, and M didn't work with us again on the next project. None of us cared for his ego, for one, and second he didn't get along with Brendan at all, so he lied and told another group member that Brendan said he did a bad job on the production sound, which wasn't true, nobody said that, the production sound was very good, but we recorded outside in a windy area with heavy traffic twice and had to do ADR on those scenes. It wasn't his fault, there just wasn't any way to get sound from those locations that was very good. If anything that is David and I's fault for picking locations that had noise issues, another thing we learned from.

Actually, I mean I know what you're saying David, but one of the mistakes we made on the first short was not enough coverage. We had plenty of coverage of a few scenes, not nearly enough of others, and in the end it resulted in not having enough material in post to put together the best work. I would argue on our second project we had too much coverage, I mean we shot 50 minutes of tape for our first short, which was 12 minutes long, and we shot 45 minutes of tape for our second short, which was just 5 minutes long. At this rate the third one should be just right! ;)

[David Mullen ASC]

More coverage is generally nice, especially for a beginner trying to make something work in the editing room... but imagine if you made a bunch of short films where you only shot exactly what you thought you needed or wanted? You learn a lot from the mistakes you'd make in coverage, and you'd learn when you didn't need more coverage afterall.

At some point, you always run into a situation on a shoot where you don't have time to get "proper" coverage, so it's good to really know editing and exactly how little you can get away with while still being able to cut the scene. You learn that through experience, seeing how your scenes cut together.

There is always a fear of making mistakes, but if you never make mistakes, it probably means you aren't trying hard enough. The greatest artists emerge when they are given the freedom to make mistakes rather than play it safe.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

Well, that's true, and sometimes you just don't have time to get proper coverage of everything. I think you can save a lot of time on set just by preparing more thoroughly before you shoot it. Like the reverse-engineering approach to filmmaking, basically. If I planned an entire short from the beginning using storyboards and thought over exactly how I wanted everything, I could probably film it really quickly relatively speaking, compared to doing every angle of every scene, etc., just so in the editing room I can make decisions later. That's kind of the lazy approach in a way, lol.

[David Mullen ASC]

I could probably film it really quickly relatively speaking, compared to doing every angle of every scene, etc., just so in the editing room I can make decisions later. That's kind of the lazy approach in a way, lol.

Well, perhaps mentally lazy -- it sure isn't easy to shoot a lot of coverage...

I will say, though, that some of my favorite directors were known for shooting a lot of footage -- Kubrick, Wyler, Stevens, though Kubrick and Wyler didn't necessarily shoot a lot of angles, more just a lot of takes.

It does require budget and time though to be that indulgent. Kubrick's philosophy was to not be forced into making choices until the last possible moment, just in case something better came along. He wanted a lot of options at every stage in prep, production, and post, hence the long shoots and long posts. He wore everyone out in the process too. But it was a system that worked for him, though it is not necessarily condusive to low-budget filmmaking always. A better indie model is probably the b-movie film noir directors who only shot exactly what they needed and moved on. "Pithy" directing.

[Eric MacIver]

From the press release I read, there's only one 4k projector at The Grove. I saw two movies there this past weekend and neither appeared to be digital projectors.

That being said, I'm still elated to have even one 4k projector there. Of those of you that saw the 4k projection, do you remember which theater number it was?

[Evin Grant]

Theater 4.

[Eric MacIver]

Theater 4.

Thanks! That's easy to remember....

[Tom Lowe]

Does anyone know what upcoming releases in 4K are coming to the Grove or other LA 4K theaters?

[upper and lower]

who needs sharpness all the time?