4K Finishing Folly

[Bruce Allen]

I was at a good cinema recently, where I saw two trailers that I had worked on, back to back. Only later did I remember that for one we did the graphics at 4K, while for the other, the graphics were at 2K.

This sparked off some thoughts...

When watching Master and Commander did you think:
a) Wow, it's going to win a best Cinematography Oscar
b) This is so soft! I wish they'd taken time and money away from the grading and sky replacement work and spent it on going to 4K instead

When you saw Amelie did you think:
a) Wow, such intense golds and greens! And she looks so good with those wide angle lenses
b) Typical French, only working at 2K and worrying about aesthetics instead of tech specs. What were they thinking?

Trailers are finished on everything from 4K to 2K to D5 / HDCAM. I've done many trailers that went through roughly 5 stages of compression before being printed to film. But they were for projection in small art-house theaters so nobody saw the difference. The clients were just happy that we'd saved them enough money on the online for them to have a budget to do a proper sound mix.

Any thoughts on this? To me, 4k RAW acquisition is great. But a 4K finish is stupid pain... unless it's specifically to impress a tech-spec-crazy investor / buyer.

Why not just finish at 2K and if by some crazy chance someone offers you a ton of money for theatrical distribution on screens actually big enough to show the difference... then you can go back and do 4K all the way through.

Why is everyone obsessing about 4K for finishing so much? It's so expensive and time consuming to do right now. On the post side, I'd suggest stopping trying to hack together a system that can online 4K... and instead just put something together that can do HD / 2K reliably and quickly. In a few years' time, ONCE you get that big distribution deal on the basis of the wonderful stuff you've shown at HD / 2K res, then you will be able to put together a 4K system quickly and easier because computers will be faster and cheaper. Also it won't be like you're spending money on a pipe dream of making a feature film in the future. It'll be because you've shot a great film that people love at 2K and want to pay you money to see it finished at 4K.

For my 2c, I think 4K finishing in 2007 is way out in the "stupid" side of the bang-for-the-buck curve. Nearly everyone would be better served by shooting RedCode 4K RAW but immediately going to 2K in RedCine or via some kind of proxy method, except for specific cases where you need to blow up shots. And then once you've finished blowing up shots, etc, do your finishing at 2K.

Anyone disagree?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Brainstorm]

Bruce, I think you've offered a smart and informed opinion.

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks! I also realized it was very long-winded. Summary:

1. 2K was good enough for Amelie and Master And Commander and most trailers
2. Shoot 4K RAW, finish 2K / HD
3. In a few years, 4K will be cheaper and easier to do on computers
4. In the meantime, only go 4K if someone is paying you to do it (eg a distributor saw your 2K-finished movie at a festival, loved it and now wants to distribute it on big screens where you can actually see the 2K/4K difference)

Bruce

[Kristin Stewart]

Bruce,

Your opinion is very interesting, as usually everyone's obsessed about 4K without taking care of the actual most usual way of discovering a movie : TV (from DVD or network).

I completly agree, except for the "Amelie" thing : "Typical French"... you know, for French artists (I'm not one of them, I'm just a French girl, but I have a good address book !), Amelie isn't French at all, on the contrary it's more an American view of France full of cliches... Typical French cinema is cinema by André Téchiné, Jean-Luc Godard, François Ozon, Patrice Chéraud, etc... And French technicians are amongst the best (yeah, I'm not fair !)... look at Philippe Rousselot, Darius Kondhji, etc...

Kristin (just kidding)

[Clayton Harper]

Bruce,

I am 100% in agreement with you. I can do uncompressed 1080p on my FCP set-up but I have no way to author it to something that plays back nicely on my HDTV in my livingroom.

For now and for most users, 4K resolution is overkill but later who knows? That's exactly the point with RED, it wants to be future-proof.

My one wish though is that somehow in the future you could carry over your home-based color-corrections from your NLE to a higher res workflow at a post house. I think it will take some wide adoption in the use of universal LUTS across all kinds of displays.

[Poi Boy]

Totally agree Bruce.
-A

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks Kristin... now that I consider it, I think you are very right about Amelie!

[Simon Blackledge]

I think "Amelie" was stunning. 4K is very high-end/buzzword. I'd be very happy editing grading very fast at 2k.

[Christian Berg]

Yes 4K is a buzzword mostly because people who want Digital cinema to be better than film has to crush all critizism about digital with high resulotion. Of course 2K looks good and I totally agree that finishing in 2K will do just fine for most of us. But soon we will have the 4K editing as standard and when it goes as easy as editing DV the barrier will be gone, and the "buzzword".

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce,
I am 100% in agreement with you.

Thanks!

My one wish though is that somehow in the future you could carry over your home-based color-corrections from your NLE to a higher res workflow at a post house. I think it will take some wide adoption in the use of universal LUTS across all kinds of displays.

That would be great - it will take a while though because not all 3D LUTs are equal. So, all of the players will need to go to a higher-precision / more-control-points LUT at the same time... We also need a unversal language for power windows! Also, plugins. That's kinda do-able now - eg if you edit on Avid Xpress, and finish on a fire / DS / Symphony and your hard work keyframing Sapphire plug-ins seems to make it across. Similarly I've heard you can go FCP -> Quantel if you use Automatic Duck.

Still, I totally agree, it's too painful. That's another reason why I am going to wait it out - hopefully soon either you'll have more interoperability of desktop and finishing apps, or you'll be able to finish more easily on desktop systems.

Bruce