Slim City?

... The soporific vibe isn't helped by the fact that "Sin City" has the muffled, airless quality of some movies loaded with computer-generated imagery. The film feels as if it takes place under glass...

-- Manohla Dargis, reviewing Sin City in the NYT.

the DV Aesthetic Responses

Responses to the DV Aesthetic Question:


Matt:

Simply put, Stu [and I'm not going to argue about it because I (a) have better things to do with my time and life and (b) have an assignment to do, which, by the way, is not the same thing as (a)] everything has an aesthetic. Some things have a more "beautiful" aesthetic than other things [whatever than means], but "aesthetic" isn't a synonym for "beauty," so I don't see what the trouble is. I'd much sooner shoot my short documentary fictions [Notes from the Arctic Circle, Mark and Katrina Go Boating] on DV than on film, and not for what you call the "pseudo-realism" look, which, as you say, is achievable with any format. I also choose to shoot them on one-chip cameras as opposed to three. Why? Because I like the one-chip's inability to handle certain colours and shades. I like the crisp-but-not-at-all-rich [i.e. not film] look, which you don't get to such an extreme, grating extent with Hi8 [which, if I may abstractly describe it in two words, is like long grass]. It is for this reason that I indeed take pleasure in the look of DV. Every format has its works of pleasure-giving -- if not "beautiful" -- aesthetic quality. And, even better, it's works of non-pleasure-giving aesthetic quality.

and Ghostboys (aka David's):

The principals of cinematography certainly do apply when using any format; ignoring them or (more pertinently) being unaware of them may in fact make your film look terrible and amateurish. But one should also take into consideration the medium being used, and use it to its fullest potential. Ellen Kuras, who shot Personal Velocity, has done some pretty boring work with DV, simply because she doesn't exploit it. It's not that her DV films look bad; it's just that they're rather boring. Compare her work to that of Anthony Dod Mantle - an extraordinary DP in any format, who became synonymous with DV thanks to his work with Von Trier and Vinterburg - who pushes DV to extremes that are exclusive to the format. julien-donkey boy, which is perhaps his most extreme project, is full of imagery that could be considered ugly - and yet, contextually, it is incredibly beautiful. And it's all imagery that one could not achieve on film, unless one is willing to go through extreme processing and a lot of hard work (basically, what Von Trier did on Breaking The Waves, in which he and Mantle tried to get the film stock to look as much like video as possible - by their next film, they just went ahead and shot DV).

Matt responded:

"Ellen Kuras, who shot Personal Velocity, has done some pretty boring work with DV, simply because she doesn't exploit it."

Ex-act-ly.

My comments to follow.

Extreme Cinema Verite in Iraq

Samizdat Video: Archiving the Iraq War. The L.A. Times has an amazing story, Extreme Cinema Verite, about combat videos made by soldiers in Iraq. The contrast between what's on the evening news, and what's on these videos is enormous —

By adding music, soldiers create their own cinéma vérité of the conflict. Although many are humorous or patriotic, others are gory. "It gets the point across. This isn't some jolly freakin' peacekeeping mission."


The Pentagon's control over the media in Iraq is perhaps in some sense an illustration of the tendency to fight the last war. Unlike Vietnam, CBS is under control, and there's a cheering section at Fox network that is the American analog of pre-glasnostPravda. But these little samizdat videos — made by individuals, passed from hand to hand, and containing facts the official media does not — tell certain truths about the war. This is the historical record in the making.

-- via Cinema Minima

the DV Aesthetic?

I'm exceedingly guilty of shooting it only for lack of film stock; in other words, shooting it as if it were film. Deadroom is both the worst and the best example of this: the worst, because we didn't take advantage of a single aesthetic opportunity the format provided - only the economic ones; the best, because we understood the technology enough that we were able to play within, or just barely outside of, the lines

-- David Lowery, comments on how he felt he didn't take 'advantage' of the 'DV aesthetic' when doing his dv-feature, Deadroom. Whatever the hell that means.

As I wrote on David' Blog (tidied up here though)

"shooting it [DV] as if it were film"

You say that like its a bad thing...

"Sorry guys, we are worried too much about composition and lighting and mise en scene and y'know, I really think we should just be more DV about the whole thing".

I mean, there are some obviously technical differences between DV and 35mm, particularly in stop latitude [which is probably the most important aspect], but the principles of good cinematography still apply.

Often, when I hear about people talking about the "DV Aesthetic" I think they're really just looking for an excuse to shoot shit cause, frankly, making stuff look good is a lot of hard work on ANY format.

I mean, honestly, when you talk about the dv aesthetic and its 'aesthetic opportunities' what are you really referring to? I tend to think of it as grainy, badly lit, handheld, pseudo-realism... but I don't think of that as an aesthetic opportunity, because its achievable with *any* format. But I'm willing to hear other opinions...

Matt, over at esoteric rabbit also raises the notion of the DV aesthetic.

Just what is this damn DV aesthetic every babbles on about?

Its something I'm very curious about, cause I honestly can't think of a situation where if I can afford to bump up to HD or film (or even to digibeta/pro50), where I'd chose to shoot on DV for aesthetic reasons. I may chose it for logistical reasons or creative reasons (working with actors, shooting long takes), but I don't think I'd ever shoot DV cause I like the fucking look of it... cause I don't! Even the Orphanage, which made their reputation by working with DV, shoot with higher end formats like the Viper now because they can afford it. They learnt how to make DV look good, but boy, wouldn't you just rather work with 10bit 4:4:4 log files? :)

Often the reason that film productions look great [and remember, not all of them do - and its because the ones that don't ignore this] are because of the attitude and skill brought to the production by the crew. With video, people what for things to happen; with film, you make it happen. A good crew shooting film is going to understand focal lengths and exposure and depth of field and composition and framing and lighting ratios and mise en scene and coverage. It looks good cause they know how to make stuff look good. Often people shooting DV don't even understand exposure, yet alone focal lengths. ("What's a 25mm?" The length of your penis? Mwahahaha") Hell, the Orphanage made DV look shit hot cause they seriously understand images.

Anyway, I don't view shooting on DV, HD or Film as any different. Here's a post I made over at 2-pop when discussing books on DV cinematography:

Everything you say is true. DV has a very short latitude, greater depth of field, a linear response curve, awful highlights, and less resolution.

The question is, do these aspects of DV CHANGE what the foundations of good image-making? No.

Do they change the foundations of photographic principles? No.

In that way, shooting on film and on DV are the same.

Once you understand the foundations of photography then you can apply them to ANY photographic tool. Thats why I think the great cinematography books are still applicable to DV - they teach you why good photography is good photography. Once you learn that, then you just need to learn how to apply it to a different tool.

Film DoPs have to light differently for different films stocks - 50D reversal vs. 500T negative handles VERY differently. Yet these guys don't run out and buy books on each individual film stock. They shoot tests, they talk to other DoPs, they learn the tool and how it handles, but they don't need to learn how to drive it again.

That said, there's lots of ways you can make DV better. IMNSHO, the problem with books which focus on how to make DV look good don't give you reasons or context as to why you should use those techniques. Understanding the 'why' is very important IMNSHO.

The DoP I work with still occasionally pulls out his light meter when shooting video just to check his fill to key ratios.

As for shooting DV with closeups... yes, thats true. The lack of resolution with DV does mean that closeups work better.... but if you shoot a whole movie with closeups, then why bother projecting it at all? Its just a bad TV soap. DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR THE STORY. Have the guts to say what you want how you want, regardless of whether its 'good' photography or not. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an AMAZING film in this regard. Pure guts.

... and hey, asking dumb questions is what its all about. I still ask dumb questions (not that I'm an old school old timer, just a guy with a big mouth).

Stu [that's me] tips for shooting DV:

- Expose for skin tones. Ultimately, skin tones are the hardest things to colour correct with DV. They will break up in terms of saturation and detail if you push them around. If you're shooting stuff with people in it, which is most of what we shoot, then they will be the focus of the frame... and other stuff can fall by the wayside.

- Lighting ratio. 1 stop above and 2 stop below is a good rule of thumb.

- I like shooting with some diffusion, usually black promists - but white promists are also good. They'll soften the sharpness of video (its too sharp imnsho), lower the contrast (helping you keep your latitude), and also help blow out your highlights a little more nicely.

- Learn how to grade like the boys on the Da Vinci do. All that a Da Vinci has on a FCP system is real time. If you're doing this for yourself, then time don't mean nothing.

- I always desaturate DV, cause I hate the chroma of it. I tend to crush the blacks a little and then push up my midtones. In AE, I'll draw an S-Curve.

- Shoot digital stills and grade them in photoshope for practice

- Depth of field is a function of focal length and f-stop. Pick an f-stop and STICK TO IT. I tend to shoot at F2. Use ND and control your lights to keep the exposure consistent, but never touch the aperture.

- Shoot with long lenses. Learn about focal length and how they impact visual relationships. Bruce Block's the visual story is very good on this point.

- Personally, I prefer soft light for video and film... but I really think it helps the highlight problems of video. Kino-flos and other fluroscent lights are your friends. Don't be afraid to diffuse them even more.

- ALWAYS keep an eye for great images... when you find em (in magazines, in commercials, in comics, on the TV, on billboards, in feature films) deconstruct them. work out WHY they affect the way they do. look for the detail, cause its the detail that matters.

- Oh, yeah.... production design is very very very important. Get a good art director and work with them to control the tones of a scene and costumes and props and everything. Gordon Willis said it best, when he said you gotta art direct everything like your shooting for black and white.

- Ignore everything I've said if it compromises the story.

Thats it thats far.

Good luck. Looking forward to hearing some other people's tips

Differing opinions are encouraged; post em here!

Update: Perhaps it IS the crappy pseudo realism of DV that people are after... but why DV? Why not Hi8 or Pixelvision [beautiful]? Or BetaSP?

Varicam vs the CineAlta thinking

Well, so much for 16mm. After running through the budget more closely with Alexis [the DoP], we're considering HD for the next clip.

Problem is that we're no longer students, so the awesome almost 50% discounts for stock+processing+telecine (the spt pipe) that you're used to receiving and budgeting around no longer apply. So either we halve the amount of film stock from 6 reels (2400) to 3 reels (1200 feet), which is a ratio of 10:1. Fine for a drama, harder for a music video cause there's just so many shots! NB: We'd still shoot the band on mini-DV. Its achievable, but it'd be tough. The potential lack of a split budget-wise also means that the whole production slows down cause the designer, DoP, director and operator all need to 'hotswap' the viewfinder.

So, we're thinking now about Cinealta vs Varicam, and getting some Digiprimes* or a Cinestyle zoom.

Advantage of Varicam is I've dealt with it before, so its not an unknown, and I like the Panasonic 'look'. Disadvantage is its only just HD in resolution - it records 960 pixels horizontally and stretches em out to 1280 [well, actually, its do with pixel aspect ratio, so its not really loosing resolution... but whatever]. The codec is also lossy. Sure, its 100megabits/s, but its 100megabits over 60 frame... so its effectively DV50 compression on a single frame, but one that is a third larger (ie 720P not 480P)

Advantage of CineAlta is higher resolution (1440x1080 to 1920x1080 after pixel aspect ratio thingoes taken into consideration) and (theoretically) less compression. IIRC is a 150megabit scheme and it only shoots a maximum of 30P... so get the less compression over the frame. Disadvantage is reduced colour space (3:1:1) and the lack of ability to bring it in at native HD Res. I don't have the money to build an uncompressed 1920x1080 HD setup... but I could capture it via HD-SDI and transcode it to DVCProHD which will be a generation loss (HDCAM compression to DVCPROHD compression).

I'm leaning to the Varicam on this basis... depends on what Lemac can do for me deal wise...

S16mm is start to look attractive again. Its a native 4:4:4 recording, subsampled to 4:2:2 (when it gets transferred to Digibeta) but its 10bit, not 8bit [depending on the telecine]. Of course, well all know film looks better - its just we're in a supertight budget situation, and cause we need lighting, that means other parts of the camera budget have to be decreased...

Update: I should point out that I have heard of people connecting their their Decklink HD Pro cards to the telecine to o get uncompressed 4:4:4 right without touching tape. Pretty genius... but I wonder how much more expensive it is to get scanned?

* Cause they're fast (T1.4 - aka a T2.8 35mm DoF), lightweight - this whole clip is handheld so weight is important - and, frankly, primes look hot.

Piracy doesn't hurt CD sales?

This was originally posted as a comment.

"Why? I believe it's because every study that has been done since Napster has shown that music sharing has no negative effects on music sales (CD or downloaded)."

-- Alan Wexelblat over at Copyfight in a comment [worth reading] on the revenge of Sapir-Whorf.

Except for the studies which show otherwise... like... e.g.

Peitz, Martin and Waelbroeck, Patrick, "The Effect of Internet Piracy on CD Sales: Cross-Section Evidence" (January 2004). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 1122.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=511763

There are others, but this is a convincing, decently researced and balanced paper...

... and even if you don't agree with the paper, it shows that there are non-RIAA funded studies which show that piracy hurts CD sales.

I'm all for the copyfight, but I think its dangerous to deny that copyright infringement isn't hurting CD sales. Other studies* show that the most significant factor** in the reason behind people pirating via P2P is because the music is free. What, you think is it cost money to use Kazaa or BitTorrent it would still be popular? Very hard to compete with free. Of course, people tend to cite other reasons for their behaviour, but thats the whole banality-of-evil thang: people are very good at finding justifications for their behaviour.


* Such as Gopal, Ram D., Sanders, G. Lawrence, Bhattacharjee, Sudip, Agrawal, Manish K and Wagner, Suzanne C, "A Behavioral Model of Digital Music Piracy" . Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Forthcoming http://ssrn.com/abstract=527344
** Such as convenience, 'clubs', ethical attitudes vis a vis the RIAA.

--

The real problem is that the issue isn't clear-cut but, like in most wars, both sides tend to pretend is. I mean, these days most peope I know just pirate TV shows. Why? Cause they're not being broadcast here (e.g. Wonderfalls; Deadwood***), or we're a year behind (Enterprise; Spooks; Arrested Development), or they get screwed around by the network channels (Arrested Development; Sopranos). If they like the show, they'll buy it on DVD (Firefly; Arrested Development; the Sopranos;

***Well, its on PayTV, but whatever...

---

UPDATE: This is my follow up comment to Dr Wex's reply:

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I should point out that while its 'hard to compete with free', it isn't impossible. A lot of my research (of other people's research really) has been on the economics of piracy. e.g. exploring the basic idea that people purchase legitimate goods when the cost* of doing so is less than the cost of piracy. The new economic models of the future content-industry must understand these costs and realise that things like DRM can actually make pirated goods more attractive.

(What, so if buy software X I have to worry about a frigging dongle, but if I pirate it, I just use the crack and don't have to care about losing the dongle??)

It as, as Dr Wex points out, Apple that has really understood this and pushed the whole 'we need to compete with the pirates' mentality.

OTH:

"That the Cartel haven't managed to emulate the bottled water people yet is only a testament to their unfitness to survive in a free market."

Well, there are plenty of things which are unfit to survive in a free market, but which we, nonetheless, decide to protect legally and economically. (This is more true in Austraila, where I'm based, but even things like education in the US).

In fact, the whole basis - as you sure know - for copyright is that 'expressive goods' ARE unfit to exist in a free market. I still believe in that idea - probably because I work in a content industry** - but feel that copyright protectionism has gone too far.


* In a broad sense, which includes (as Dr Wex also points out) convenience, privacy, bandwidth, legal penalities etc. etc.


** As Warren Ellis said, its usually the people who don't try to make a living from art that think that art should be free.

Corporate Communism

In markets which benefit from certain 'attributes' (e.g. economies of scale, barriers to entry) then corporate monopolisation is a natural evolution of the market. Adam Smith warned of these eventualities. Marx saw Communism as the natural *evolution* of capitalism and its inexorable implosion towards corporatisation. (Thrownin portfolio theory and you have a general recipe for centralisation) There's plenty of writing, both pre and post Keynesian which details these relationships. Its also historically accurate. Monopolies may have *originally* been granted to public corporations (we're talking C16th) but they only gained popularity as a form of business enterprise when the need to accumulate massive capital become pressing. Remember, if you want to make lots and lots of money, then competition is something you *don't* want.

-- me, via kuo5hin, about 11 months ago.

hehehe, I am a wanker.

HDV M2T Transport Streams

I've been hunting for m2t transport streams from the Z1P to download, so I can do a test workflow for a project I have coming up which we're shooting on the Z1P.

As its 'only' an interview, I don't really intend to convert all the footage to uncompressed 8bit HD (1920x1080) at a whopping 103.68 megs per sec. But I don't want to work with the Apple Intermediate codec either. So, its a choice between photo-jpeg and ProHD. Which is why i want the transport streams - so I can do a side by side analysis. Now, I tend to rate photo-jpeg pretty highly as a codec - and I much prefer it ProHD. I'm just a little concerned that the YUV to RGB conversions might be ugly and that the data rate might be too much for our needs... hence ProHD.

Anyway, I finally found a hole bunch of HDV samples over at Sony HDV Info.

Oh yeah, a guy called Nate shot a music video on the Z1P and graded it on a Da Vinci (they bumped to digibeta and posted as per digibeta). For the most part, it looks better than I thought it has any right to. Certainly makes me wonder about our approach to Light's Out, which looks to be shot MOSTLY on 16mm with the band stuff shot on DV. We have money, but its a pretty tight budget nonetheless.



Thanks for the guys!

[P.S. Arrested Development is an awesome awesome awesome show!]