Thanks (farss) ;- )

http://www.cuttingedge.com.au/html/ser_digital_inter.htm

http://www.cuttingedge.com.au/downloads/digital_intermediate.jpg

Some seem to love DIs, others hate the very idea but it is getting wider acceptance. I think it's till more expensive than the traditional way unless the movie is CGI intensive.
The telecines to work at that resolution cost big time and the work is not done in realtime either, think around 1 second per frame or more. And add massive disk arrays to hold that amount of data. And you cannot just print it to tape either.

Now that I've been doing digital video editing for a little while, I have a hard time watching television / movies and not thinking, every ten minutes, "I wonder how they did that..."

And when I watch something with fx that I'm sure was shot and edited completely without computers (especially older stuff), I often think, "How on EARTH did they do that??" As farss says, film editing has been around a heck of a lot longer than digital video editing.

And I still wonder why only MR LUCAS uses HD-Video techniques

I believe Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" was shot in HD. If not HD, it was at least digial.

Rob

I know I'll be an old man some day saying " Back when I was a kid, they used film and real sets and the actors weren't just on some blue screen for 4 months....."

George has turned into a stage director... sad to see the Star Wars universe go completely digital..... HD.. have no qualms about that and the diversity.. however compare LOTR to the recent Star Wars trilogy and you'll see how complete digital sets pale in comparison to practical sets with cg additions.

[ I believe Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" was shot in HD. If not HD, it was at least digial.]


Jah also a recent james cameron project "Ghosts of the Abyss" was shot in HD for IMAX. http://www.hd24.com/3d_hd.htm

But I still wonder, how do they show these movies on theaters? print it back on Film ??

Vighnesh

Wow - someone wants to know this? Cooool.

The basic way you edit film is that you place the physical film print onto and editing block and you cut the film on the frame. You then take another shot and place it next to the one you just cut and place special tape on it.

And that, as I said, is the very basic way. There are various tools that allow you to cut film - upright, flatbed or even the really 'old school' way of using rewinds and a little viewer. Super 8 and 8 mm was normally postive, there was no negative. 16mm varied. 35 and up almost always is negative. In all cases the "camera original" is brought to a lab and processed. If it is is negative a workprint must be made. it is the workprint that is actually "edited" . The editing process is much the same - you look for the best shots and matching shots and start editing.

This post coul;d be really long but I am trying to make it simple so i am leaving out many steps. Negative cutting for example is a whole other step that needs to be done. THis is done via edge numbers - something that can be direclty cross referenced int he video world by SMPE time code. The concept of now mixing both formats and you enter the world of doing matchbacks. people always ask why on earth one needs time code anymore and this is why - you have your negative telecined and put off to tape with both a window burn and with edge numbers. You "offline" using that video and you spit out and EDL when you have a locked picture. That EDL is put into matchback software and it translates those SMPTE TC cuts to film negative edge numbers. Or the much longer way to frame by frame the video cut and manually write down each edge number.

Marking a workprint for effetcs is another issue - you take a grease pencil and mark things such as dissolves and fades. Labs have certian "standard" prices and lengths sop tyou mark off the frames you would want used. ANy effect cost more because of the stpes involved - however fades are pretty "easy" because the lab just cloese and open the appature when making the print. Dissolves and such require more work because your get into A and B rolls. Compoisting requires another whole route.

And for now I will stop. But I am more than happy to answer any questions on the topic if you have more. :)

HI (filmy) thanks for taking time to answer.
I am really interested, on the whole "Digitalising fase" so adding animation and stuff. but specialy on how they show these movies, especially HD shootings, like from Lucas, do they put this back on Film?, that would mean that it still is not "non-quality loss"

Vighnesh

Short answer is film recorders. However more and more you are seeing digital projectors coming into play, the concept being there will be no need for "film" from production to post to final product - DVD's being made from digital masters as well a "release prints" being screened in digital theatres.

Lucas was one of the first to really utilize the whole digital post production side of things. Most everyone was cutting film or using the then new "Video dailies/Video workprints" concept and most of us stood in awe and wonder that Lucas was having dailies burned onto laser disk. Output was still traditional with any of these methods - cut film would go to a negative cut and release prints were made. (Clearly another part of this whole Lucas thing is his "need" to keep going back into the Star Wars films and adding things and/or changing things. Good or bad? Would be like taking some of thos eold classic films and saying "We can now add blood and gore to this shower scene!")

For sure the digital side of film making is here to stay and it is way more affordable than it used to be. A friend of mine who does work on films on the effects side of thing had this idea to do a film with all the effects pure cgi. This was maybe 13 or so years ago. He could not sell the idea anywhere because at that time most cgi stuff looked like - well, computerized. Now this is not the case.

Film scanners are not at a price point where most people can just go out and get one at Frys or Wal-Mart so this part of the process is still a higer end process. On the other hand the cost of dumping out a mini-dv master and having a film print made from it is relativly cheap. The quality issue than comes into play. What is film-rez quality? Depends on who you talk to. ..but mini-dv is not what effects houses work with. For example one of the new products introduce at NAB is the IMAGER XE that scans 4096 pixels across and offers 2k downsamling or a full 4k res as well. They promise that in the "near future" there will be a 10K option, which enables 8K oversampling to create a high image quality 4K master. The parent compnay has been in the business for a long time - their other film scanners have been used on Lord of the Rings and Spiderman to name just a few. If you want to read a bit more about the Imager XE here is the website:

Just a quick note, traditional film editing of using a workprint and a moviola/flatbed for the bulk of 35mm motion picture films -- went out long, long time ago. Feature film editors have been using Avid for quite awhile now, cutting non linear and later comforming the negative,

I interviewed editor Anne V. Coates at her home several years ago in Los Angeles, she edited Lawrence of Arabia, The Elephant Man, Ragtime and most recently Unfaithful and Out of Sight. She's worked with everyone from David Lean to Steven Spielberg and she commented on the fact that the reason a lot of editors turned to NLE and especially Avid was the ease of cutting multiple variations/versions of a scene to present to a director. With a workprint this is not only expensive, costly, time consuming (another print would have to be struck) -- but also a nightmare for logging and cataloging (keeping trims, etc).

Anyhow, I think if you showed any top feature film editor today a moviola/flatbed and gave them a workprint to cut, they wouldn't know what to do with it.

It would be great to see Vegas making an inroad in the area of feature films the way Final Cut is doing. Someone with more knowledge of the process, might describe the comforming back to motion picture film from a NLE and what tools the NLE would require to do so.

MB

Ok, I got the "film recorders" IMAGER converting film to video part.

But still bringing the HD-video to theaters and projecting the movie is not clear. ..

For example the Star wars EP3 Lucas project has no film involved right?
everything is processed in HD 'Video'.
So say that the final project is renderd into a HD Video Tape or something.
How would they project this movie on theaters?? will Lucas personally
install HD-Video Projectors on theaters world wide??;-))

Or will the HD-video be converted onto film?
( Thats no problem because every film-theater has a Film projector).

Thanks,
Vighnesh.

>>>I think if you showed any top feature film editor today a moviola/flatbed and gave them a workprint to cut, they wouldn't know what to do with it.<<<

Maybe if they are "top" editors under the age of, say, 20 - 25. If they never touched real film and cut real film they must have worked in TV news between maybe 1980's and after. LOL! Ok, sorry - but really NLE has really come into play over the last 10 -15 years. On the high end side, yes there was AVID. However I was still cutting film and doing my sound editing on 35 mag when the commercial company next door was buying a $25,000 "portable" Avid system to do offline editing with. It wasn't until 5 years after that that "video dailies" really came into play for features that would be answer printed and screened in a theatre. We were one of the very first to use a new company that had developed new software that would match film edge numbers to SMPTE TC. Most of mainstream and "big name" Hollywood was turing its nose up at the idea. This was happening around the same time the "lower cost" NLE's were coming out to do offline editing. Matter of fact I cut on a D/Vision, outputted an EDL and that was used to conform the negative to the video workprint I had dumped out from the PC in "VHS Quality". This was the same time that Disney bought a full line of Amgias to do animation on. Yeah a hell of a lot has changed since than but really the cutting film and cutting negative is not 100% dead. Film labs still exist for a reason and so do negative cutters.

I will agree that cutting on video or on a computer is a lot easier than hanging scenes in a trim bin and tossing all those frames and half frame or "sproket frames" in a box. Multiple versions of the same scene, or full film, is also much easier. But, again, DVDs and "directors cuts" are still a new item as far as using one to help sell the other. That is why I think the people who go out and restore films like "Lawrence of Arabia" should be looked at almost like "gods" because they have to track down all these elements and "restore" them for todays market. BUT - before someone puts words into my mouth I think the process of restoring a faded, spliced and dirty negative is a *LOT* different than what Lucas is doing with adding *new* scenes to old films. Much akin to coloring old B&W films and TV shows.

As far as logging goes - someone still needs to log films raw footage. This in itself is not dead, however because people who shoot on Mini-DV can use "Scene detection" many feel they really don't have to log. THey hit hit play on the deck and record on the software and walkaway. Is it easier? Well duh! yes...but to me it makes editors lazy. it also makes directors and acotrs lazy as well. Used to be if it was good for camera and good for the director is was "Circle it" Now it is "just roll camera on everyhting, it is only tape" As an editor I can only say this - I would much rather have 3 or less of a cirlced take than have to sit through minutes and hours of footage of rehersals, half speed run throughs, gaffers on cameras adjusting things and on and on. I still truley like to live by "time is money" and the age old concept of "making a film is like opening a huge water faucet, except the water is not water - it is 100 dollar bills. From the time you say 'action' to the time you say 'it's a wrap' that faucet is wide open"

It would be nice if 'someone' would install HD projection, or video projection in general, at theatres world wide. But I don't see that happening any time soon..at least not for "free".

I feel that if Lucus wants people to see the film there will have to be prints, as in actual film prints, made from the HD master. The recent concert/PPV events such as the Prince concert kick off, have shown that the idea can work - except not en masse yet. From what I am understanding some of the bigger theatre chains, due in part to the succes of the Prince concert, are going to offer off night HD "events". When they want to fill seats on a Tuesday or Thursday they will offer concerts and such in the same manner. And from what the tech types have been saying the Prince concert wasn't really true HD in the theatres either...so there is a real cost facotr involved. So to answer the question of how the upcoming Star Wars film(s) would be screend in a theatre in HD - for most I would think it might be as a limited run or as a PPV type 'event'. I know a DP friend of mine who was one of the few to see the last Star Wars film projected digitally - and he was a bit freaked out over the "pure" and "clean" look of it all. No dirt, no dust, no scratches, no projector lamp miscoloring...it was sort of hard to tell if he liked it or hated it.

Also something here with all of this digital talk has to be keep in mind - film is universal. HD and video theatres are not. In some places films, actual 35mm prints, are still run across town from one theatre to another on bikes. More importantly there are reels of films - one theatre might be showing the film at say 2 pm and another across town might be showing it at 4 pm. The messenger grabs the first few reels and hopes on a bike and darts over to the other theatre. And this goes on - back and forth. If a reel breaks it can cause the other theatre to have a forced intermission. Point here is that anyone who has a film they want people all over to see - in a theatre - still needs to think about prints being made.

only a few theaters used digital projection to show sw II .. most still used film ..

the frame images are scanned back to film ... for example we have both 70mm and 35mm film printers which take frames stored from a frame server and are laser printed to a neg ..

both the scanning (which is NOT a telecine) and the print back require a pretty large investment in hardware -- specially for 70mm ..

but a D-Cinema digital projection system retrofit for a theater is not cheap either ...
non the less we use both digital projection and film , currently still more film systems .. all film in large format but as the size comes down , digital projection is slowly taking over (in our installations and retrofits and such) ..

Ok, I have also heard of a whole theory that in the future (in coming 10 years or so) movies will be transferred via satellite 'Digitally' and projected also digitally, well I guess this transition will take more than 10 years then huh?

I also can imagine that the transition from grany films to clear digital footage wil be a 'bit getting use to'

Thanks,
Vighnesh.

>>>Ok, I have also heard of a whole theory that in the future (in coming 10 years or so) movies will be transferred via satellite 'Digitally' and projected also digitally, well I guess this transition will take more than 10 years then huh?<<<

See my above response to the projection question.

And also transferring the HD video via satellite, brings lots of hijacking
risk. unless encoded in a specific key code or something.....

Vighnesh.

filmy, You have mentiond "On the other hand the cost of dumping out a mini-dv master and having a film print made from it is relativly cheap."

What kind of price are we taliking about?, because I have heard that printing from DV-to 16 mm film could cost 2$/Frame.

I am asking this, because I am struggling of "big screen projection" problem.
I often project my movies on a big hall, but the pixels starts to show after a size boundary.
Because I cant go above PAL DV Standard (720x576; 25,000 fps).

But would converting the video to film make a difference in quality?

( except that I could run it on some film projectors)

Then I would ofcourse also want the audio to be printed on the film. (DD 5.1 )

DVFilm does features for about $300 a minute to 35mm or about 200 per minute to16mm. You get a print and the negative.

They also do HD to film but the cost is more.

Cost for just a silent print is less as well.

There are other places - there was a place in New Mexico I think that used to do mini-dv to 35mm for about $5,000 based on a 90 minute film.

There is a place in California that is supposed to be decent - number is (818) 956-1185.

QUlaity issue is relative - sh** in and sh** out is a comman expression and to many people anything shot on video is sh** . Thusly I say it is relative. The good thing about DVFilm is they used to offer you a free sample - send them like 30 second and they will do a film transfer for you. This may have changed however. The other thing you could try is projectiong with a line doubler or even an upconvertor. Here is an upconvertor - . It does not have firewire in however. Somewhere in this forum I asked about it and Spot said he had used it and was pretty good, not true HD but still really good.

>>>I think if you showed any top feature film editor today a moviola/flatbed
>>>and gave them a workprint to cut, they wouldn't know what to do with it.

>>Maybe if they are "top" editors under the age of, say, 20 - 25. If they never touched real >>film and cut real film they must have worked in TV news between maybe 1980's and after. LOL!

Dude, read carefully -- I said "feature film editors".

Two years ago I interviewed editors, Anne V. Coates, Dede Allen, William Goldenberg ("Ali"), Joe Hutshing ("JFK") and I spent an afternoon with Stephen Mirrione who cuts for Steven Soderbergh and edited "21 Grams" (he was working on "A Dangerous Mind" at the time and Clooney was there). Coates and Allen are editing legends, I was so happy they consented to be interviewed (Dede Allen was suggested to me by director Norman Jewison, I knew very little about her, wow what a carreer).

I asked all these top editos, specifically about NLE compared to traditional film editing because that was the story I was working on. After the learning curve of going non linear when it first came out, and of course there was much resistance -- none of them would ever go back to traditional cutting. Coppola was working with non linear way back, wasn't he? I mean, it's been around in various ways for a long time, then Avid really took over.

All I was saying is that for these editors trained in feature films and now fully versed with Avid, going back would be another learning curve. Also, remember, a lot of feature film editors became editors by apprenticing under a senior editor. For example, William Goldenberg who edited "Seabiscuit" "Ali" and "The Insider" was an apprentice editor under Dede Allen on "The Breakfast Club". A lot of them didn't cut TV news or docs or even work on 16mm believe it or not. BTW, in the old days, traditional film editing required many more hats, so there were more opportunities (you know logging, organizing trims, finding trims). Non linear has reduced the number of assistants required.

I was making a point to the original poster, not knowing how knowledgeable he was, that for quite some time, feature filmmaking is cut on Avid (now even with Final Cut) and the negative is conformed later. We don't cut with splicers anymore.

Also from personal experience. I mean I've edited on moviolas/flatbeds being a film school grad, worked extensively in 16mm so I've cut lots of film and even negative cut three short films I made (what a pain, total respect for neg cutters, in the old days making index cards out of the workprint then going to the shot negative with cement splicers and keeping the neg free of dirt and scratches, yikes). But, if you were now to give me a trim bin, a flatbed, a one light print, a grease pencil and a tape splicer -- after working with Avid, Vegas and Premiere Pro -- well, you get my drift!



MB

UpConverter is a great idea filmy!

Do you think that I must get other projector? if so which one do you suggest?

I got the one below:

Video projector Philips c-Smart:
[Projector specs: Lamp: Type:
120W UHP
Life: 6000 hours
Display: Type:
0.9" PolySi LCD (3)
Native: 800x600 Pixels
Maximum: 1280x1024 Pixels
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 (SVGA)]

Vighnesh.

I've done a lot of video projection in cinemas from DV.
First you need a GOOD projector with the right lens, if you're showing 16:9 you need an anamophic lens. The kit I had used much the same lenses as the projectors.
Next you need around 2000 lumens of light, more is better but really pushes the price up, remember a lot of projectors are designed for more ambient light than you have in a cinema.
Next most important things is getting as good a signal into the projector as you can, at least S-Video, component if you can. Better projectors now will take DVI or even SDI but that might be overkill if you're coming off DV25.
Next I'd worry about more resolution. Obviously nothing can recreate what isn't there and most projectors do a good job of hiding the scan lines, the higher res ones I think upscale internally.
And most importantly have video with GOOD audio and feed it into the cinema's system. Crappy audio through a cinema sound system sounds really horrid, the audience will forgive the 'video' on the screen but crappy sound will get their butts of the seats real quick. This is the cheapest thing to fix.
As to the video quality, well maybe it's just me, I;m happy if it's video that looks like video, I'd rather watch that than video printed to 35mm. it doesn't get any better, in fact it just gets worse, sure it maybe doesn't LOOK like video anymore, it just looks like really bad film. So all I'm saying here is stay true to the medium you've worked with, I've seen it done the other way (a lot!), 35mm transferred to video and then that shown in a cinema. The DV shot on a TRV900 looked WAY better.

Bob.