Note that there's "HDTV" and there's "modified HDTV." I've done plenty of shows (as has Mike Most) where we actually had a sort of "pseudo-log" 10-bit image captured in 1080 HD, which was then brought down and color-corrected for Rec709 colorspace, essentially a custom LUT. The Martin Scorcese concert documentary Shine a Light was done this way to HDCam-SR, I think over 300 hours of footage. It made it all the way to film out, DCPs, even Imax, and no one cared or noticed.Originally Posted by Bruce Allen
So it can be done. I do agree with your other points, that R3D isn't always the best solution, especially for a film with massive changes, or a TV series on a very tight schedule.
I'd like to know how Light Iron is handling Criminal Minds. That's a tough show that pushes the envelope in terms of exposure, plus they shoot a lot of footage. I think R3D can work under certain conditions, but again -- comparing it to old school film log -- there was zero industry standards in terms of what a one-light film scan was. ILM, Technicolor, eFilm, Company 3, Imageworks, Digital Domain... nobody used the same standard. The same piece of film sent to all six places will be different. The same Red footage debayered by different people using different software will look different.
As long as the essential pieces of the image are there, any good colorist can still make reasonable pictures, even great pictures. It's for this reason that the most important advice I always give to my clients is, "test the workflow first" just to make sure the system you have in place will function. I think there's about ten different log settings that will pretty much work, but my preference is for something that's essentially balanced and not biased towards one color channel, and nothing's blown-out.
ACES is a great system for the future, and I think it goes a long way towards solving the problems posed by the original CDL (color decision list) from almost 10 years ago. It's not quite there yet. The other problem is the number of different formats thrown into productions; now that we have the Canon C300 to deal with (followed soon by the C500), there will be undoubtedly be new wrinkles of log-format files -- some indiscriminatly mixed with Red files. It's not unusual to deal with Rec709 footage, log footage, crushed footage, and blown-out footage, all within the same project, sometimes even within the same scene. From where I sit, the problem is getting worse, not better.
