Now is that DVBugger, HDBugger or the very latest HD2Bugger? (So new, I'll bet you haven't even heard of HD2Bugger, have you?? ;-).

Andrew

Ideally, the format should be a creative decision.

Just like choosing different film stocks to get a different look, the format can also express something, it can in fact be part of the "story."

I prefer shooting clean, with the greatest dynamic range I can muster. That gives me more options to make creative choices in post. Still, I also have experience with shooting for a gritty look up front, when I feel like doing that.

The best HDV cameras today are amazing, and the new XDCAM-HD cameras are amazing at the next level up. The much poopooed 4:2:0 color sampling turns out to be very capable when paired with the latest digital signal processing, and the interframe compression doesn't fall apart as soon as there is movement in the picture, as was widely thought.

Life is good with all these choices, and even better if you get to truly know your camera inside out, to the point where it is an extension of your creative mind.

I see so many people with fancy cameras who are not remotely close to fully knowing how to use them. That to me, is very sad.

I got into film through photography, shooting all the photos for my first photo exhibition using a Kodak Instamatic 100, the very cheapest and simplest camera available in its day. It had two exposures, sunny and cloudy, and the latter exposure was also the setting for taking flash pictures (using "flash cubes"). This first exhibition got a jawdropping response, because it was just good storytelling (about British Mods in the 1960s). The fact that the photos were store-developed 4"x6" snapshots didn't matter. After I was encouraged to shoot more stuff, I encountered the limitations of this "format." Switching to an SLR gradually removed those limitations, as I learned to use this type of camera properly, and learned what I needed to know about different emulsion and developer combinations to choose what was right for each story.

Soon I was shooting Super 8, getting beautiful results with judicious choices.
Then coming up against the limitations..., and I got my film schooling shooting 16mm and larger crews to shoot drama and documentaries. Great fun (and expensive...).

Later, video in 1991 when I got Canon 's first try to make an XL1, the infamous LX100. Same everything except it was a one-chipper, and even though mine had a top 5% handpicked CCD, the footage really looked like jackass, and that's how I felt too as I paid off the credit card bill from my B&H purchase.

This soured me on video for a long time until I got first a Sony VX3 and then a Canon XL1. Finally I felt there was sufficient quality to get creative with video again, without feeling so tightly roped in by format limitations.

Later D5 provided a major step up from DV, and I embraced it as soon as there were alternatives to the $150,000 D5 tape decks.

Today I might have picked a Canon XH-A1 for example (now that's a really good deal for an excellent camera!), or an XL-H1 with interchangeable lenses (a good wideangle is hard to get otherwise).

All cameras/formats have limitations, the key is to not settle for whatever gets in your way creatively, whether that means a cell phone camera or a Panavision or a Viper or a RED.

looks like the last ten post are summing up the general ideal well---- ;-)

Farss, your comment about the web is a little off target, I think. Not that the web is perfect, but individuals debate formats because they have some facts + opinions that they disccuss / preach about. But discussing and judging Art / content usually starts a major pissing contest, even on simple examples. Egos are huge and "art" is an fluid subject and always will be in an open society. A simple example of the craziness of this issue is when DSE posted on another forum some examples of a new camera and got slammed over shooting style, content,..etc.... really over the top comments when everyone was asking for camera examples. We seen this behavior happening here, but not a lot.

About formats, Farss, did you get a chance to study "layering" encoding? Flash is a good starting point, tho, not a big fan for big projects using flash vs advanced encoding techniques.

Great thread!

I have a sudden urge to dig through my closet, dust off my old Super-8 camera and go shoot some silent 3-minute loads! I'm hoping to shoot an ecologist in the field for some B-roll for a doc I'm working on. S-8 might be just the ticket for that.... I see B&H still sells Super 8 stock....

I'm not for one second pissing on anything, not even YouTube. In fact YouTube is a good example of what I'm talking about. You want your content to look great on YouTube, well from what I've seen you need to carefully plan how you shoot, with the final delivery format in mind.
One of the best films I saw at the last Sydney Film Festival was the one that won the mobile phone category ($10K, not too shabby a prize!). If it'd been shot on anything other than a mobile phone it wouldn't have worked.
There's many instances where the very best camera isn't what you should use either, even if you had the budget for it. Not everyone is comfortable sitting in front of a big camera while a huge crew tramples around their house, sometimes no camera at all is the best way to capture the story, just a discrete audio recorder on the table that the 'talent' soon forgets about is the way to capture the essence of their story.

As I see it we're in the business of telling a story using moving images. If how that moving image looks doesn't matter then why bother with it at all, it's not like great stories haven't been told before the movies came along. How many posts have there been here from people asking for help rescuing thier footage cause it was over or under exposed, how much discussion has there been about deshaking and how much money and effort are some of us putting into getting that elusive shallow DOF. If the image doesn't matter why are they worrying about it. That doesn't mean that only 1080 or 2K or 4K is good enough to tell a story, all it means is we're all trying to get the best or most appropriate image to tell the story with. I'd love to work on a B&W silent movie shot with handcranked cameras, today delivering good B&W is quite a technical challenge.

Bob.

Nice reply Farss, I probably missed your point about Internet on your other post above. I totally agree with you about equipment and youtube. I remember your early post about the cellphone winning, content framed in a proper presentation format - an excellent example of unique ideal=equipment=editing=storytelling.

Seeing an announcement for the new Star Trek movie (Leonard Nimoy plays one of the Spocks...), I thought of the original TV series.

They shot on 35mm alright, but they couldn't afford a lot of sets. What to do? White walls everywhere, with different color lighting creating different sets...

And their props? It is worth a trip (trek?) to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC to see the tricorders and communicators they were using. Couldn't even have fooled a kid at 100 feeet away..., but they looked OK on the 35mm film of the day.

Everything about the original Star Trek series is laughable. Except the really good stories created by Gene Roddenberry. They transcend the basic presentation and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

There is also a new DVD collection out ("Captain's Log") with favorite episodes chosen by each of the captains of the Starship Enterprise, plus a few extra from each chosen by online poll.

but they looked OK on the 35mm film of the day

35mm was pretty much the same then as it is now. It's not that the props looked good on 35mm film-- generally they didn't-- it's that they looked good on the TELEVISIONS and broadcast standards of the times.

Fred

Er... what? 35mm has gotten better... better film stocks (less grain, more sensitive, more latitude) and better scanners/telecine ($2million Spirit anybody?).

>>>delivering good B&W is quite a technical challenge.<<<

Indeed, the technical difficulties faced down in making "Dr Plonk" (Rolf de Heer, 2007) make interesting reading.

I agree with the article to the extent that having something to say is more important that the specifics of the tools employed in the telling. However the unfortunate conclusion is that how you use the tools doesn't matter (accept, apparently, in audio). It is true that the greater the story or event the more forgiving the audience (e.g. amateur film of Kennedy's assassination), but all technical deficiencies tend to detract from the telling. Think of the good joke told badly (technical deficiency in presentation). Jim Feely recognises the essential need for good audio, so it's odd that he thinks that nothing else matters; he saw the deficit in his argument should his "audience" be "viewers". I am distracted by poor focus, shaky camera, inappropriate lighting, bad costuming and inappropriate settings, as well as deficient plot, bad acting and lousy directing. Your tools greatly influence how you tell a story. But all the great tools don't supplant ideas, as we see too well in the recent crop of CGI Hollywood stuff.
I support Bob on this. That "it doesn't matter" permeates YouTube and kills most attempts to tell any story.

In my area they are showing the Star Trek TV series on digital OTA SD weekly and so far the colors, saturation, and sharpness are really great. In fact they seem to be restored.
JJK

Got news for you JJK, you're absolutely right, they were restored.

Er... what? 35mm has gotten better... better film stocks (less grain, more sensitive, more latitude) and better scanners/telecine ($2million Spirit anybody?).

Right, like I said, it's pretty much the same. :-)

Sure there are the little improvements here and there, but most people, if not all, would be hard pressed to see any difference between something shot on good stock from the late 60's and stock today. I'm talking about something shot just like Star Trek. In other words, if someone time traveled some of today's stock back to 1967 and it was used on Star Trek, the show wouldn't look any different. Most of the improvements in stock have more to do with ease and cost of shooting (less grain at higher ASA, so less lights, faster setups, less heat, less equipment, less crew, so less money) than with the look per se.

Remember, I was replying to someone who implied that 35mm has gotten drastically better; that something was "good enough" for the 35mm of the late 60's but wouldn't be good enough for the 35mm of today.

And telecine improvements are irrelevant to that point, because the comment addressed 35mm, not 35mm on television. It was MY point that improvements in televisions and broadcast were more important than any improvements in stock (though yes, I forgot to mention drastic improvements in telecine tech).

Well 35mm was always way overkill for TV, especially NTSC. 16mm was more than adequate whatever stock was used.

Well 35mm was always way overkill for TV, especially NTSC. 16mm was more than adequate whatever stock was used.

Except for finding experienced DPs.
And getting limited DOF.
And getting a good scan.
And being able to shoot in available light without the picture getting attacked by a snowstorm of grain.

Other than that, absolutely OK. :O)

Today, with the latest film stocks, Super 16 has been held up as a way to save money for HDTV production. There are great cameras and great lenses now, to go with the latest and greatest emulsions. Too bad BBC refuses to accept the footage, and everyone else is likely to echo this.

Why? Because the grain in even S16 screws up the encoding to HDTV codecs. 35mm does vastly better, and that's fact, not opinion, according to the BBC.


Most of the improvements in stock have more to do with [...] less grain at higher ASA, [...] than with the look per se.

To me, the grain size and structure have a lot to do with the look of a particular film stock. Both of those are completely different in today's emulsions compared to what was available in the 1960s and 1970s.

Whoever believes 35mm film hasn't improved drastically, dramatically, and holy-moly-what-a-difference needs to go compare the best footage from the 1960s with similar scenes shot on today's emulsions.

At the same ASA is fine, as it doesn't matter how you slice it. There is no comparison. Even if you use "ye olde" Kodak 5218 (which is getting a bit long in the tooth), that was the first new emulsion that convinced me that film wasn't dying after all, and several improvements have been made since then.

Show them projected side by side if you want, using the same exhibition print stock. Get a DI from both and project them in D5-HD. Or show them in glorious NTSC if you want. It doesn't matter, the difference is still great.

The dynamic range has also improved, which also affects the look quite a bit (or to be exact, makes very different looks possible).

The difference is still not enough to make the props used in Star Trek look any more real or fake, and that's what the 35mm comment I made was referring to.

>>>
Except for finding experienced DPs.
And getting limited DOF.
And getting a good scan.
And being able to shoot in available light without the picture getting attacked by a snowstorm of grain.<<<

Well, that wasn't an issue of DOPs, or shooting in available light (or did your news crews shoot 35mm). I know the US guys have trouble with technology, but we used 16mm exclusively (even for showing your shows) and that met the superior demands of PAL.

I think the comments are true enough, but once it's telecined to SD NTSC do you think you'd notice that much difference in resolution. Sure the grain and possibly the latitude but I don't think 35mm was ever so bad that it was lower res than SD!

Even so though I think we were far more forgiving back in the Star Trek days, compared to some of the stuff that came before, it was still kind of cutting edge.

Looking at this from another angle though, I wonder how those original episodes would have held up today if they'd been recorded on videotape rather shot on 35mm. With 35mm there's still the option to rescan the film, if it was 2" videotape you might be lucky to get anything off the tapes today.

Bob.

I didn't realize that video tape degraded worse than film. But now that I think about it----
JJK

I didn't realize that video tape degraded worse than film.

50 yr. old film can still be restored.
50 yr. old videotape?
A snowball in hell stands a better chance of survival :-)

Mike

Digital videotape is very robust, Digital Betacam in particular.
However a lot of the early analogue tapes had serious issues with the formulation fo the binders (the gum that held the oxide to the base) and another problem seems to have been the base warping. Audio tapes also had problems.
The most reliable archiving format for film was / is a tri-separation. Simply 3 B&W reels, one for each color. This gets around the problem of the dyes fading.
Of course the other issue is having the gear to play the tapes. Several of my friends collect and keep working a variety of ancient VTRs for this reason. When it comes to film, it's no great mystery how to get the image back off the film, you only have to look at it to get the idea, even an alien from another galaxy should be able to figure it out.

How about an illegal alien working at a knock-off pirate studio restoring 35mm film? --- Turner productions -- I think.