Janusz Kaminski: "..I don't have respect for digital media just yet."

[M Most]

I'm finding quite a few projects these days are being shot on a bunch of different cameras, due to budgetary and/or logistical issues. I did a fairly decent-sized cable network show a few weeks back that was shot on Red One, EOS-5D, and Sony EXCam. It was a bitch-and-a-half to get them all to match.....

Try working on the television show "The River." On any given day - not even any given episode - they used Alexa, XDCam EX, Canons of various types, NX Cam, SI 2K, GoPro, and at least 3 or 4 others. In one day. With each one supplying close to 2 hours of footage. Much of it with no slates. Of course, they still wanted to see the dailies at 9AM the next morning, even though they were shooting in Hawaii and cutting in L.A....

Unfortunately, sometimes there are political problems where the DP is "disinvited" to the color-correction sessions.....And I know of some major cases where the DP supervised the initial color, and then the director came in, threw it all out, and started over.....

That's true, and I find myself a bit conflicted about it. On the one hand, if each craft necessary to create a finished piece is left to do their best work, the finished result is usually more than the sum of its parts. And while as a colorist (and a member of both the camera and editors guilds) I really enjoy and welcome the participation of and collaboration with the cinematographer, and feel that the picture always benefits from that, I also feel that there ultimately needs to be one creative vision that's served by all of the crafts. In television, the vision is almost always that of the executive producer/show runner. In features, it's almost always the director, at least while that director still has the studio's or the financial backer's confidence. If there are decisions to be made, the final word must be in the hands of the ultimate authority, regardless of how it may hurt others' feelings or trample on what they might consider their good work. As in all "team sports" - and filmmaking, to me, is sometimes very analogous to a team sport - there needs to be a head coach or captain, someone who has the overall vision and whom everyone else works to serve. Collaboration is great when it's invited and welcome, but there are times when that won't be the case. And unless you're the director or show runner, you learn to live with it, regardless of the size of your ego.

[Scott Crawley]

I also feel that there ultimately needs to be one creative vision that's served by all of the crafts. In television, the vision is almost always that of the executive producer/show runner. In features, it's almost always the director, at least while that director still has the studio's or the financial backer's confidence.

That's the key right there, the final decision should best serve all of the crafts. Based upon the amount of crap I see on television I have to wonder if the majority of television Producers have any appreciation of photography at all. It used to be just the errant auto-focus shots that led me to wonder, but now that we have the wonder of DSLR's in productions we also see a lot more hunting for focus... Not that it serves the story at all.

Feature film isn't safe either. While the feature program itself isn't often plagued by these problems, it is abundant in many of the bonus features. Those are beginning to look of lesser quality than even television. I can't remember the last time I saw a shot in a television show where the fields were inverted, but recently I have seen it in the bonus features of no less than two major studio BluRays, and an equal number of independent documentary features as well. I fear we have reached a new low in terms of technical quality and it seems to be forever sinking. The finger of responsibility seems to be pointing squarely at Producers.

If you are an executive at a distribution company, you have to know that the more diverse your sources of programming, the more rigorous your QC needs to be. From my armchair this point seems lost. I really don't know what to make of it, but it does make one all the more reticent to just let the work go to where any number of ill trained techs might stomp all over it.

[Alwyn Kumst]

All the above comments sum it up nicely. It's not the tools it is the talent.

In the days of film I dictated my tools and stocks. Now I sit in an interview and listen to a director telling me we are shooting on 'this camera' because X's movie looked fantastic. Yes sir mr X had 90 days for his movie and you have 12? The camera is not going to give you the same look. You don't tell the painter which brushes to use. The good news will be in time when Mr. Kaminski too will shoot on a digital format and produce something amazing and come to appreciate that you can transfer your skills. Surround yourself with the right team who are still willing to work for the Cinematographer. We all come around eventually.

[Arseni Tomkevich]

As producer and guru computer scientist. I have this love and hate relationship with technology. I am very technical but my love for technology eventually becomes the bottleneck of my creativity.

I was able to shot and edit film when I was 10. I understood the process and had little to worry about. I could do it all by myself.

I am pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do that with my digital camera now, in fact, any digital camera.

[Filip Orlandic]

Film color rendering and especially its gentle rolloff of highlights are still look much better than any kind of digital acquisition.

To confim this just watch and compare the latest movies shot both on the latest film stocks and cine digital camera systems.

Maybe try out with Apple movie trailers about the nominees from the 84th Academy Awards (Oscars)

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/awards/

Sanjin,

I have seen four 35mm and one alexa feature this weekend on the same cinema screen and I could see that Drive was really awful in skin tones and highlights.
Nothing beats 35mm in skin tones, highlights and look.


FEATURES:

War Horse
The Tree of Life
The Skin I Live In
Carnage

Drive


BTW, TGWTDT has really good skin tones which look like 35mm in many moments!

[Cüneyt Kaya]

drive looked fantastic inmho.
it had so much style!

Sanjin,

I have seen four 35mm and one alexa feature this weekend on the same cinema screen and I could see that Drive was really awful in skin tones and highlights.
Nothing beats 35mm in skin tones, highlights and look.


FEATURES:

War Horse
The Tree of Life
The Skin I Live In
Carnage

Drive


BTW, TGWTDT has really good skin tones which look like 35mm in many moments!

[Filip Orlandic]

drive looked fantastic inmho.
it had so much style!

Kaya,

The style and cinematography are remarkable in Drive. I've just seen a huge difference in skin tones comparing to the 35mm features.

[Rob Castiglione]

I have to agree that film still utterly shatters digital for the beauty and sublety of its skin tones and the richness and depth of the colour it can capture. One of my favourite examples of this is "The Yards" which just looks phenomenal. Will digital every get there or is it inherent to the technology and something we will have to live with?

[Marc Wielage]

Try working on the television show "The River." On any given day - not even any given episode - they used Alexa, XDCam EX, Canons of various types, NX Cam, SI 2K, GoPro, and at least 3 or 4 others. In one day.

Yeah, but at least a show like that is supposed to be dark, grungy, and mysterious, and some of it's surveillance footage, some of it's "found footage," and not that much of it is supposed to be live and dramatic. You can get away with it in that situation.

The problem is when an inexperienced director or producer uses mismatched cameras and wants to know why they look so different. "But it all looked fine on the Avid!" Sure, on a 24" screen at low-res, I don't doubt it.

There seems to be an 3-way inverse relationship between budgets, ignorance, and expectations. Low budgets = great ignorance X high expectations, which makes no sense.

In television, the vision is almost always that of the executive producer/show runner. In features, it's almost always the director, at least while that director still has the studio's or the financial backer's confidence.

True. And yet, I've had shows where the director did come in for X hours to "supervise." The moment he left, the producer would turn to me and say, "OK, throw out everything he just asked for, and let's go back to where we were before he walked in the door." What're you gonna do? Ultimately, the producer is the client, especially if he or she is there every single week to supervise, and the director just does the one episode. Pilots, of course, are different, and in those cases, my experience is that the director does control the look about 75% of the time.

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

Will digital every get there or is it inherent to the technology and something we will have to live with?

Give the guys at Red couple years more and watch what's gonna happen. Film is obviously considered the gold standard in any serious digital camera company, but digital will get there sooner or later. Lots of images from EPIC that I see already, have very pleasing skin tones, especially in a daylight and when graded (and in some cases lit) properly. At least for me last couple things left are the extended native DR (w/o using HDRx) and a bit better "filmic" color reproduction. As for the global shutter thing, there are 3rd party workarounds already, and I'm sure it only will get better. The "HDRx +3" pictures I see from EPIC and Scarlet are very attractive images to my non-pro eye, I can just imagine when the native DR will get that good. At that point you'd be able to capture all the details in shadows and highlights and then either leave it as it is "in all it's cold digital glory" or play with "the shoulder" and soft rolloff any way you want in post to get that filmic feel (almost like the way they grade and carefully manipulate scanned 35mm negs for years now).