Epic at the Olympics

[George Hupka]

Thought I'd post this after comments from a couple of Red users.... I think I may be the first person to shoot an Olympic opening ceremony on Epic!

RedOpening-1.jpg

I'm here in London shooting for Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, and we've built on what we did in Vancouver two years ago with Red One. I'm using a B4 adapter and a Fujinon 25x16.5mm lens to shoot 2K 16:9 footage for broadcast, mostly at 200fps (except in venues where the flicker made this untenable - I could never shoot swimming/diving at more than 100fps...)

I was very happy when the release version of Epic firmware incorporating the 2K 16:9 option came out just before I left for London - I hate going on a trip like this with Beta firmware on the camera :)

We do fast turn-around by using the Red Rocket's HD-SDI output directly to EVS and/or a Harris server, while backing up to XDCAM-HD discs (which is the standard ENG format for the network at the Games, so the footage can be accessed by anyone). It's definitely not a "normal" workflow, but we still get to do some basic colour-correction and that is a lifesaver when shooting under time pressure in venues with lighting that is completely out of my control!

We're part of the Special Features Unit so this footage is used for features, and also goes into the general pool for broadcast, particularly when we're shooting events like the Mens 100m final!

[Matt Gottshalk]

Very cool, would love to see some examples of the footage.

[Antonio Ribeiro]

Me too!

[George Hupka]

I suspect i won't be able to do that because of Olympic rights...

[Melih Engin Eskier]

That's great. You're really lucky. Will you not ever be able to show them or is there a chance after they're displayed? It's important to see because our eyes got used to what the TV provided. I heard under all that lighting the usual TV cameras shoot on higher shutter speed. May I ask what your setup was like?

[George Hupka]

For the opening ceremonies, I was shooting at 200fps with a 1/200th exposure at ISO3200 - I usually shoot high ISO and let my colorist adjust downward, at least I can see a great image in the VF and he can tweak to minimize noise (which at 2K is an issue!) I was at f/4 on the lens most of the time, and he was able to bring the ISO down a couple of notches most of the time :)

Only the opening and closing ceremonies used proper flicker-free lighting (even the LED panels did not flicker!) - at the Stadium in daylight I used a lot of 1/500 shutter which was great... But as soon as the lights came on, so would the flicker. The only shutter speed that successfully eliminated flicker in any of the indoor venues, or at the stadium in the evening, was 1/100 which limited me to 100fps for evening events. This is why the live Super Slo Mo cameras had such a hard time - I used to think they didn't understand shutter speeds, but I spent a long time trying to find a safe speed and couldn't - I think for the lighting, they were mixing multiple power sources which weren't in phase, because on some of my test clips at 200fps I can see the flicker changing speed, and for a few seconds it almost disappears, and then starts getting worse again. Kind of odd that in venues like that, where super slo-mo cameras are everywhere, no one seemed to consider the lighting.

Regular (non slo-mo) cameras were probably at 1/100 (180-degree) shutter, on most of the events having extra depth of field is not a bad thing, there are times when I would have loved the luxury of f/8!