Archive for the ‘Video Shooter (Book)’ Category

Barry Braverman leads eager students at a multi-day 3D workshop at Palomar College in June 2011.

It isn’t too often that I am able to offer a 3D camera workshop at a local community college. And this is a pity, for too often we teachers of the video storytelling craft are overly consumed with the name-brand schools, you know, the high-profile institutions that garner most of the headlines and prestige. You can blame the camera manufacturers for much of this; the prospect of significant sales in these wealthy institutions being foremost in their minds.

Still, we trainers are also partly to blame for not doing quite enough to better advertise our wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm. My June 3D workshops at Palomar College in San Marcos CA convinced me that 3D production can be just as relevant and motivational to students at more modest educational institutions. Without exception my Palomar students demonstrated the utmost willingness to take the risks necessary to excel in the new and exciting 3D arena.

To be clear we’re not necessarily talking about aspiring feature filmmakers here. Indeed I am convinced the future of 3D will be predominantly in the non-theatrical arena – in corporate, industrial, wedding and events, and education.
Thus the importance of 3D evangelists and instructors around the world to reach out to all students regardless of economic standing. The skills and confidence gained from the 3D workshop will serve them well, as the jobs and projects of the future will increasingly require an understanding of stereo principals for efficient image capture and post-production.

I welcome the opportunity to offer my knowledge and training to a wide cross section of students all over the world. As I write this I am en route to Tanzania to lead a camera workshop next week at the Zanzibar International Film Festival . While my students will no doubt learn a wide range of skills to enhance their visual storytelling I also know that I will receive far greater inspiration in return; these East African filmmakers and camera people serving up their own remarkable stories reflecting their unique experiences and insights.

http://www.ziff.or.tz/news/high-definition-workshop-barry-braverman-ziff

Many industry folks are currently lamenting the slow uptake of 3D by the general public. They look at the sluggish sales of 3D plasma TVs this past Christmas and conclude that 3D must be doomed in the home market.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is that the marketing in general of 3D  in general has been abominable, especially in the US. Is it any surprise that sales of 3D TVs are lagging when there is little to no quality programming to fill those screens?

Content is king. It’s why VHS and DVD succeeded in the home – and it’s why 3D will ultimately succeed for the same reason.

What the manufacturers should be doing is not so much pushing this 3D plasma or that 3D camera. What’s most critical now is to sow the seeds of new and vibrant 3D community, particularly among young filmmakers and energized content creators in our nation’s colleges and universities. It is in our nation’s schools and in the universities and film schools overseas where the real strides will be made as students apply their natural God-given enthusiasm to 3D and create of programs of grace and lasting beauty.

I’m seeing this first-hand in India, and there’s no reason the same effort at community-building couldn’t be happening in other  countries.

After this past year of missteps and poorly conceived marketing the major manufacturers are slowing waking up to the fact that 3D cannot be marketed as just another camera format or latest generation TV technology. This approach that worked so well for HD and the latest cameras like the Sony EX and Panasonic HVX will not work this time, as the past year has certainly proved the point.

Let’s build the 3D community first – in our schools, corporations and in our communities – and soon the public will follow. Then maybe – if the manufacturers play their SDHC cards right – a few sales of TVs, cameras and all the rest might follow after that. 🙂

I’m a firm believer that today’s shooters must possess a wide range of skills. In most markets the resident shooter must also edit, compress for the web, prepare DVDs, and de-noise sound tracks. Today the expectation is that every shooter is proficient in Photoshop, After Effects, and one of the major NLE platforms, like Final Cut Pro.

Students today who are likely to find ready employment after graduation should be able to handle anything that might arise on a modern production, by that I mean, he or she must be able to confidently troubleshoot a range of issues beyond the immediate camera and recording media. Such a person – a problem-solver – will always be valuable and in demand, and so it’s just smart for film and video instructors to adequately prepare their students for this troubleshooter role.

In most markets the era of specialization ended with the advent of DV in 1995, although, admittedly, we still need well-groomed technicians in technologies like 3D. For most folks the setup of a 3ality rig with two Reds converging on a mirror is a process fraught with peril. So yes, a specialist with specific 3D camera setup skills is currently very much in demand. Considering the market as a whole, however, most productions benefit most from a generalist, that man or woman versatile enough to assume a wide range of responsibilities from script to screen.

It stands to reason: one looks at the world and we expect to see objects in focus. Blurry backgrounds and soft focus may be all the craze with the DSLR crowd, but remember such narrowly focused scenes lack clear depth cues and will quickly disorient your viewers. With the advent of 3D, shooters must again embrace cameras and camcorders with smallish sensors; the 2/3-inch imager size appears to be ideal with optimal depth of field and dynamic range. And there’s one other thing: The new Panasonic 3DA1 which I’ve been discussing at length throughout Asia features a relatively modest 1/4-inch chip array (one 3 X MOS chipset for each eye). The camera is notable because the small sensor while offering exceptional depth of field also features remarkable low light performance. How can that be that a tiny 1/4-in sensor can offer such superb low light response  even at a lofty +24dB gain?

The overlaying of the left and right images produces a noise cancellation effect. Our brains effectively cannot see or process the noise under such circumstances and therefore disregards it. The result is very  little visible noise even at extremely low light levels.

I’ve been on the road nearly constantly of late, traveling through Australia and Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Vietnam and India. The response to my 3D camera workshops has been overwhelming with shooters and producers emerging from seemingly out of nowhere to grasp the 3D gold ring. This response while intense across Asia has been somewhat more tepid across North America and Europe and I wonder why. This may be simply attributable to the poor economy in the US and elsewhere, but I think it may be something more. The Asian market seems much more willing in general to embrace new technologies. The cinema in general here, especially in India is also much stronger, offering a ready and eager vehicle for 3D Bollywood grandeur and glitz.

Beyond feature film production I’m also seeing a surge of interest in 3D from travel and tourism concerns, museums, and even wedding and event producers who seem eager to offer 3D programming. This is in Asia. This trend while taking root now is nowhere so apparent in the USA and Europe, where the current DSLR fad and the allure of a narrow depth of field still appears strong.

In the last few years the notion of reduced depth of field has resonated loudly with shooters.  Many shooters opt for 35mm lens adapters or cameras with full- or nearly full-size imagers in order to exploit selective focus as a means to properly direct viewer’s attention inside the frame. The current craze for HDSLRs is an outgrowth of this thinking: that less depth of field is better.

Putting aside for the moment that the greatest film ever made, CITIZEN KANE, exploited maximum depth of field for spectacular effect, there is another reason to consider more depth of field and not less – 3D. In 3D audiences expect objects floating about an auditorium to be in (or mostly in) focus. When backgrounds are blurry or the object plane is not clearly defined, viewers will automatically place these objects at the screen plane, which may not be correct or even logical. Such disparities in logic can be a contributor to the dreaded 3D headache, and so must (usually) be avoided like a plague.

Consider that James Cameron in AVATAR could have used any camera he wanted, but he chose the Sony F950 with 2/3-inch CCD sensors. It turns out that 2/3-inch cameras for 3D applications offer the best compromise for dynamic range, low-light sensitivity and depth of field. That’s not to say that 3D cannot be shot with a RED. Of course it can – and it is. The real issue is the extra time and expense required to achieve the narrow stop and desired DOF, and this means lighting and grip – and lots of it.

It never ceases to amaze me. I’m a shooter born and raised and I love what I do. Then why am I spending so many hours these days inside Apple Final Cut Pro? Isn’t it enough we capture remarkable images and tell compelling visual stories? Do we have to edit, score and sound design our own movies too? It seems to the way of the industry these days as I put the finishing touches now on The Darjeeling Limited behind-the-scenes show for Criterion. Maybe it’s for the better that we shooters are increasingly allowed this much control. On the other hand I am not really an editor by trade. I get married to too many shots. I find myself way too close to my material. I NEED the distance that only a great editor and another set of eyes can provide. Too bad the current economic reality is precluding more and more a bona fide post-production specialist.

Confusion abounds in the land of 24p!  If you’re shooting at 720p24 with a Sony EX camera, you are recording native frames to the SXS card at a rate of 23.98 FPS. Importing this footage into the Final Cut Pro timeline will produce a 23.98 editing time basis consistent with an all-24 FPS workflow ideal for output to DVD and Blu-Ray. The 24p frame rate in the Sony EX is also ideal  for mixing native 24p footage from other cameras like the Panasonic HPX170 and HPX200 P2 models.

On the other if you intend to shoot 24p for broadcast or web applications  at 1080i60, you will likely prefer an editorial time basis of 59.94 fields or frames per second.  Recording the HD SDI output out of the EX1 or EX3 to the AJA Ki Pro or Kona capture card will also give you the option of adding “pull-down” to create a 59.94 FPS time basis in the NLE. While the 23.98 workflow is efficient, especially for output primarily to disc, the 59.94 setting provides best compatibility with the web and certain tape-based cameras like the original Panasonic Varicam and HDV variants on the market from Canon, JVC and others.

To avoid unnecessary rendering on the NLE timeline and a potentially severe loss of quality, make sure you’re right!

The fate of today’s accelerating 3D trend is an open question in my mind, and I am really hoping for guidance from  you on this one. On the one hand Panasonic (and others) will almost certainly be introducing simple and affordable 3D camcorders in the coming 18 months. The plastic mockup of Panasonic’s 12-bit AVC-Ultra camcorder based on the HPX170 model garnered many long covetous stares from NAB showgoers in 2009. The advent of 3D consumer plasma displays this year is surely another indicator that 3D is for real this time, and not just the province of the privileged few à la James Cameron’s Avatar. On the other hand there are so many technical and craft hurdles to overcome when shooting 3D, the complexity of processing the faux 3D images inside the brain lending itself to many unknown and unwelcome physiological effects beyond the well-recognized 3D Headache’ in audiences subject to unfused 3D imagery. Where are we going with this? Please tell me.

First day of the first month of the new decade. Time to think a little bit more perhaps about our priorities in life, our relationships with the important people in our lives, and to a lesser extent with our craft and careers.

Regardless of the current state of the economy, which is dismal for many of us, the changes in technology in cameras and image acquisition are rattling more than a few of our collective cages. Last Monday night on December 28 I presented my heretical thoughts to a ribald group of 110 shooters and presumably interested attendees at Birns & Sawyer in Hollywood CA. Sure we talked about the new gear and lenses as Doug Leighton from Panasonic and Joe Patton from Canon described their respective wares.

The real issue that seemed to dominate the collective discussion, however, had little to do with the physical tools of the trade but the reality of necessarily adapting to the transforming workplace. Many comments from the group expressed support for all things 3D, a notion apparently shaped by the current studios’ increased demand for 3D content. The crowd suggested that 3D capture could become the norm for many shooters in the coming year.

For general live-action titles I’m not sure 3D will ever become more than a minor niche player. One reason is the current requirement that audiences don specialized headgear which interferes with the immersive quality of the cinema.  In the future, halographic technology may very well obviate the need for intrusive glasses. But we’re not there yet.

Some members of the Hollywood group took exception with what they perceived as my anti-super high resolution bias; the feeling no doubt fueled by the less than flattering comments for higher and higher resolution capture devices like the RED One and Epic. My contention was and continues to be that the current Resolution Religion permeating our ranks is fundamentally flawed, when in fact what shooters ought to be demanding is Performance, Performance, Performance, and not Resolution, Resolution, Resolution, which is after all but one measure of a camera’s performance.

Low-light sensitivity, dynamic range, ergonomics, ruggedness of hardware, optics, and appropriateness for the story at hand, should be at the forefront of every shooter’s consciousness, and not merely the number of pixels that can be jammed into a poorly performing albeit cheap CMOS imager the size of a battleship.

Let’s continue in the new year to seek gear with superior performance that can help us garner greater employment and plum assignments. I don’t deny that very high resolution image capture can be advantageous in some applications. Just let us not make it the only point of discussion because it doesn’t serve us well either economically or in terms of our craft, which after all requires maximum versatility and performance in the current highly constrained business environment.