20 million feet...

[Bobby Farokhzad]

Does anyone know what editing platform is being used for this film and is it being edited 48 fps natively? Was there support for 48 fps editing when this fim started production?

[Will Keir]

nice calcs!

Some calculations:

20,000,000 feet = 6,100,000 meter
1 frame = 0.019 meter at 4 perf (considering cinema scope 2.4 here, with 1:1.2 anamorphotics)
6,100,000 meter / 0.019 meter/frame = 321,052,632 frames
321,052,632 frames / (48 frames/second * 2 eyes/frame * 2 exposures/frame) =
321,052,632 frames / 192 frames/second = 1,672,149 seconds
1,672,149 seconds / 60 seconds/minute = 27869,15 minutes
27869,15 minutes / 60 minutes/hour = 464,49 hours
464,49 hours / 24 hours/day = 19,35 days

Wow...

1 frame = 5120x * 2132y pixels (assuming 2.4 cinema scope here) * 16 bits per color * RGB = 65,495,040 bytes per frame
321,052,632 frames * 65,495,040 bytes per frame = 21,027,354,974,945,280 bytes

Thats 21 peta 27 tera 354 giga 974 mega 945 thousand and 280 bytes when stored uncompressed...

OK, no one will do that. They will make selected takes, convert only footage they need, may rely on B44A 4:1 EXR compression. So we don't really now how large their storage requirement will really be (except they tell us).

Interesting would be which recording format they really use (RED compression settings) and how they proceeed from there:

Do they have hellfast playback using some custom made 6 rockets in a box stereo playback system?
We all heard of that being possible, but has anyone ever seen it?
Do they just transcode to a proxy format?
If yes, how and to which format?

We currently use a CineForm based workflow (using our Converter application with network transcoding) based on CineForm DPC (aka DPX-C) single frame sequences. We get usually about 25% larger than the original RED file, but with RGB not RAW from then on in post. So the real disk space amount of the used clip data and all forthcoming VFX layers will be dramatically smaller than the above scenario would imply.

Coming back to the equation in terms of disk price:

I guess they using something like the latest DataDirectNetworks SFA12K that puts around 6.7 Petabyte in just 2 * 19" Racks (comparably small!) and with a target speed of 40 GByte/s???
That system won't come in cheap as well, but surely cheaper than the film development - and reusable for some time.

Not to forget about the pile of LTO5 tapes to back this all up and safe it for a little time.

A real shame is that printing to film still gives you the longest living and most secure archive...

Cheers,
Axel

[Josh Beadle]

Some calculations:

20,000,000 feet = 6,100,000 meter
1 frame = 0.019 meter at 4 perf (considering cinema scope 2.4 here, with 1:1.2 anamorphotics)
6,100,000 meter / 0.019 meter/frame = 321,052,632 frames
321,052,632 frames / (48 frames/second * 2 eyes/frame * 2 exposures/frame) =
321,052,632 frames / 192 frames/second = 1,672,149 seconds
1,672,149 seconds / 60 seconds/minute = 27869,15 minutes
27869,15 minutes / 60 minutes/hour = 464,49 hours
464,49 hours / 24 hours/day = 19,35 days


Cheers,
Axel

So PJ is using maybe 2.5 hours out of the 46,449 hours of shot footage? So that's like throwing away like 99.99995% of what he shot. Wonder what Robert Rodriguez would say about this ; - )

[Bill Anderson]

So PJ is using maybe 2.5 hours out of the 46,449 hours of shot footage? So that's like throwing away like 99.99995% of what he shot. Wonder what Robert Rodriguez would say about this ; - )

Hey, that's quite a coincidence, I always end up throwing away 99.99995% of my footage too! ( :

[Elsie N]

But you've gotta love it when a man will go the extra miles (3,787 more or less) when shooting a movie.

[Peter Franzen]

Thats 21 peta 27 tera 354 giga 974 mega 945 thousand and 280 bytes when stored uncompressed...

OK, no one will do that. They will make selected takes, convert only footage they need, may rely on B44A 4:1 EXR compression. So we don't really now how large their storage requirement will really be (except they tell us).

It would be interesting to know what the studios are using for their archiving strategy when it comes to original uncompressed footage.

The big tape library systems from Oracle (StorageTek 8500), IBM (TS3500) and Spectra Logic (TS1140) can store hundreds of PB without breaking a sweat, and they can apparently scale up to Exabyte capacities in some cases.

22PB is certainly nothing to sneeze at and an enterprise-class tape library is a big thing to manage, but when you can cram 900PB into a single chassis it doesn't look all that crazy to keep a lot of the original footage around with near-line availability.

[Axel Mertes]

I think one of the main questions around this thread, implied or expressed in the original statement by Jim, is that with electronic shooting there is a saving factor over the original "analog film" approach, which in turn means you can shoot more footage for the same budget.

Is that wise?

While I can technically understand that they try shooting the same scenes from various perspectives and angles, possibly with convergence and without, with different interocular distances etc. to have "more options" in post and finally raise the bar quality wise in the output, it comes down to the point that these enormous efforts have a cost tag attached.

While I am surely a big fan of Peter Jacksons work, these numbers I wrote above simply shock me.

I believed that this movie was one of the best planned ones, given what I have seen from the behind the scenes movies.

We all have to believe that the original number presented (...the equivalent of 20 million feet of film...) is true - and I placed all my derived calculations quite openly and step by step, so someone might hint me to the point were I was more or less completely wrong (rounding errors given). I can't believe that working with that scale of shooting ratio is in any way leading to an "efficient" production workflow. Maybe (...hopefully...!!!) thats not the goal and they (PJ and his team) use it as a technical playground to explore the alternative options of 3D movie making, to learn and prepare for future projects as well. What an option!

I for one like for instance converged shooting much better than parallel. I get always told with parallel you can easier correct something in post. We shot quite a bunch of stuff in stop motion using our 3DS RAX rig in converged and it worked out of the box at any scale and with IMHO less eye strain or headaches. But maybe its just my own perspective to this, and there is a lot of discussion about it. I just know that big animation studios where apparently interested in converged shooting and our rig for very similar reasons. But thats a different debate, and I have no idea if considerations like this apply to drive such shooting ratios too.

Given the idea of having a scenes in all "formats" possible may make it easier in editing to design the 3D effect for the spectators - pure speculation, of course - just trying to explain the ratio to myself. But these giant numbers involve a cost that very quickly outperform any cost of a traditional film IMHO, because the producer might have given a rule for maximum desired/allowed shooting ratio. Good point is: A lot of money is going INTO the production then, not just talent or marketing. This is definetly good news for an industry, even when only those involved now benefit directly.

This shooting ratio is somewhere around 200+/-:1 I estimate, if I understand this right - which is really HUGE. I really don't want to the be the editor to go through all that stuff - what a pain... Especially what a pain to throw away so much good footage unused :) Or will we see the Hobbit re-released from different perspectives at some point? Who knows...?

However, I am neither in a position nor do I want to descredit the work they (PJ & team) are doing, just these numbers are somehow irritating and don't sound "efficient". Maybe (...hopefully...!!!) efficiency is not desired in the post workflow, as they have the hands full of money and can concentrate just on nothing else than the very very best results. Lucky them, lucky spectators afterwards (hopefully). Just too much away from my own producion reality to believe things like that really happen in this world :(

And yes, I am really interested to learn what technical approach they use to chrunch through all these assets, how they store them, how they render etc. etc.
Projects like this influence the development of our entire industry. Tools required need to be developed in case, this is giving birth to many "new" things we will see coming up possibly widespread in the next years (as for instance tools like Massive did after LOR).

Someone recently asked me how it comes that the VFX oscars went to a german, Frankfurt based company this year (just a feet walk away from mine)?
Well, they did obviosuly a very good job there (old fellows involved), had big luck to get the work contract and really delivered a spectaculous result.
But I do think it has also something to do with the globalized world economy (...to get the work contract...), which resulted in several huge US based companies disappearing over the last few years and VFX work being spread to "cheaper" countries in this regard, where "efficiency" plays a bigger role in the pipeline, which affects total budgets in turn. Why else do companies have subsidiaries in India etc. otherwise?
Germany is for sure a cheap country for high level VFX work... good and bad at the same time.

I wish I could believe they have been choosen from the production for being really the best team. I do think they offered the best price / performance value, that sounds more realistic to me (maybe that is an even higher honor). That, after all, is a good german tradition :) Oh, oups, this is the RED forum, well, strike that... words like these are not so likely spoken here :P I know. Except for glass.

Its a bit of the "we do it all uncompressed no-compromise" versus "the results justify even an efficient (maybe even compressed) workflow" approach in a way, as this is something I see happening all over, over here. Poeple need to get more efficient and accept compressed workflows when starting with real 4K workflows - budget wise. Economy, you know...

After all, dealing with that scale of data we calculated is "within reach" nowadays, if you have reasonable budgets.

For a german film possibly unthinkable at this point in time, for such a huge block buster release maybe a realistic scenario. What shall I say? We work on a 4K 90 minutes pure blue/green screen project right at this moment. Not that high profile, a nearly non-existing (I really wanted to avoid that following word) "budget", but - hey - we can do it - efficiently. So can you all around. Thats a perspective for independent movies!

Who of you really did a full post in 4K yet?
What about talking long form 4K...

I knew some people at CERN and they produce rougly a 1 Terabyte per second when running the LHC "camera". So storage and processing technology is simply there... And computers and storage get cheaper everyday, some day we will be there too :)


Just thinking really really loud.

Cheers,
Axel

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I don't make movies, but I have an opinion. And by George, I'm going to give it! BTW I have read all the comments (strangely enough a minority of people don't do that when responding to threads).

So basically you'd have to divide by 4 once you took into account the double frame-rate and dual cameras. But then I don't know any better. So anyway, it comes to 5 million feet of film in the old money. Not to bad, really. Still excessive for some tastes, but not abusive.

I don't care for 3D but I'm not against it. And I don't care for 48fps but I'm not against it either (because I haven't seen what it looks like, even though I suspect it will be like interlaced PAL/NTSC). And although I like both digital and film I prefer the latter. Which brings me to a point which was brought up in a previous comment: I might one day use a Scarlet for still photography despite my film bias. Shoot at 6-12fps and select the frames I want. Is that 'cheating'? No. The fact that I'd be shooting hundreds of frames is merely the result of the method.

But what I'd do - and what I'd also do if I were Jackson - is the delete the footage that I don't use. Yes, just delete it. I have no time for junk hanging around my hard drive, and I have no intention of maintaining data I have discarded. And hindsight is a luxury I don't want. Measure twice, cut once and throw away the detritus. I have a life.

If it were film I'd keep it only because it requires no maintenance and I love the medium. If if fades, too bad. I suppose I can give it to fans of the movie sometime in the future. It's the finished product which I will see as... my precious.

[Axel Mertes]

I think they might even shoot in HDR mode, so dividing by 8 is thinkable (thats what I did in above calculations, using 192 frames per second).

Anyhow, still a lot of footage to go through.

The delete button is just something many people aren't familiar with :) and which really hurts when starting archiving.
One reason I love to derive trimmed used clips (with some little head and tail if really desired) before going into post, because this "meltdown" makes projects so much more manageable.

You just need on being able to MAKE a decision.

Cheers,
Axel

[Josh Beadle]

@Axel
If anyone here could find a money guy to finance an unlimited budget project in New Zealand then who wouldn't take that deal??