Digital Cinematography
Another convention report, my apologies! I haven’t thought that I would be on so many (= two) conventions in the field of digital film in such a short span of time. But attending the Digitale Cinematographie convention this Thursday in Munich was something way out of the ordinary because a little dream never dreamed came true: Seeing my work on the grandeur of a real IMAX theater silver screen.
I have to yell out a big thanks to the head of the video department at the FH Salzburg, Till Fuhrmeister right here in the beginning. Thanks to his good connections he managed to squeeze four of my class’ video productions into the screening at the Digitale Cinematografie. And it wasn’t just a “normal” screening on a standard video beamer in some cheesy seminar room, not it was a HDCAM tape screened onto a huge screen in a former IMAX theater. Impressive!
With Zorica “Zoki” Vilotic, director and co-director of two of the screened productions, I drove fairly early to Munich and arrived perfectly in time at the convention center. Till was already there as was Sebastian Prittwitz, classmate and director of “Zugzwang” with his cinematographer of choice, Kaspar Kaven. After getting our name tags and stocking up on various giveaways Zoki and I headed for the FH’s desk which was on the floor below ground level, riding the escalator felt a little like descending into a parking garage.
Between the countless and immeasurable expensive digital cameras there was a small tables with an iBook and two seats, representing the Fachhochschule Salzburg. While Till and Sebastian were gone getting registered at the front desk, something they totally forgot about, Zoki and I took seat and represented the FH which nobody was interested in.
Nobody? Well, that’s not quite correct: One man, a little out of breath, desperately looking for something, skimmed the stands reading the various FH majors such as orthoptics, forest products & timber constructions or midwifery, then took a glimpse at the FH logo. He turned to us and asked with hope in his voice
Zoki and I both pointed at the brightly lit cubicle on the other side of the floor with plasma screens and red carpet and replied uni sono
He smiled, thanked us and off he went. The FH-logo doesn’t look that much like the RED logo, though…
It turned 10:35, ten minutes to go for our grand premiere so Till packed his Notebook and we entered the IMAX theater, getting comfortable while students from the HFF Munich where talking about their previously shown film, shot of 35mm film stock.
Things that hurt
We remembered what Till told us after he came back from mastering our short films on HDCAM: They were all too grainy, they weren’t color graded well and they wouldn’t stand against real 35mm film in a theater. I should point out that none of our productions was natively shot in real 1920 by 1280 full HD:
Sebastian “Basti” Prittwitz’ short film Zugzwang, which had cashed in quite a lot of awards, was shot on HDV but it really did well competing with big movies shot on film. Basti was very lucky having Kaspar Kaven as a director of photography who lifted an above-average student film to an even higher level. The trailer carried a wide range of emotions and scenes, more like the trailer to a full length feature film.
We claimed that Jonny Hennebichler’s big commercial for Rado (which consisted solely of tricky chroma keying shots, multiplied to on countless layers in After Effecs) was shot in HDV. The truth is, that the crazy folks shot it in DV PAL! I don’t know how the managed to do it but it looked even better than HDV! And Andi Leitner’s music really gets close to you and grips your subconscience with a catchy melody.
Zoki’s Wii commercial was shot on DVCPRO HD, yes, but because of the format of half HD (1280 by 720) I cropped nearly every shot in the post production to this format, mostly because of the heavy motion stabilization that was necessary. For the presentation I had to blow up the whole thing to 1920 by 1080 and, hell, it was blurry! To compensate for the loss in detail I added some more grain to it, so that the noise was in fact the only thing that really was full HD. If asked about the terrible grain I would state that it was the artistic desicion of the director to achieve a 16mm look.
Only my matte painting was executed in full HD but in comparison it looked way too crisp. So to match the bluriness of the blown up live-action footage I had to blur the matte painting, which really hurt, until it blended together well. The additional grain I had to add hurt even more.
Motel 36 at YouTube.
The Instant 36 film festival opener, titled “Motel 36″, directed by Zoki and Peter “Pepe” Pflaum, on the other hand was shot and produced in full HD 1 and looked gorgeous on my screen during the post. For the film festival it had to be scaled down to PAL, even PAL 4:3 letterboxed which also hurt. The Digitale Cinematographie convention provided the one and only chance to show the trailer like it was meant to be presented: In a theater on a real big screen in its native resolution. I don’t have to add that I am really proud of how well it turned out and how well it conveyed the fifties film-noir look, do I?
Fun fact: Kerschy and Max (the guys I was in the Windshield team with) didn’t believe that we really shot the scenes but took them from some old movie. I think Max still isn’t convinced that we really shot it totally ourselves. Although it wasn’t meant to be one, I took that as a huge compliment for my skills in cinematography, editing and compositing. Thanks to you, all you doubters!
15 minutes of fame
Presenter Su Turhan announced the next fifteen minute block featuring projects from the FH Salzburg, asked Till down, who apologized for the bad visual quality of the upcoming shorts. Then the lights went out and my heart was pounding: There it was, the instant 36 trailer many of us had worked so long on on the real big screen with real good sound, followed by Rado (which was but a little blurry but posed otherwise no evidence of its DV heritage), then Wii and rounded off well by the Zugzwang trailer. Till was mistaken: Our projects didn’t look like the crappy pixely digital video we all were terrified of to anticipate.
Very polite applause as Till and the moderator asked us down for a couple of questions, like what format we shot on, whether we even think well of traditional film and so on. Then it was over and when leaving the theater all of us wore big smiles, talked too loud and too fast to eachother and were just so very happy that we had the onetime chance of seeing our works in such a magnificent way.
Ship of interns
The following hour we roamed around the exhibition space, collected giveaways, tried out cameras no one of us will ever be able to afford in the near future and talked about how shitty 3D looks in live broadcast.
a man with glasses said who came out of the presentation space of the cubicle of dvc. It was Jürgen Firsching, managing director. We chatted a bit about stereoscopy and compositing, that Nuke 5 is finally able to handle stereo footage and where I come from.
He mentioned some names, unfamiliar to me, what they did within the company and he gave me his card along with a DVD titled “The compositor’s Introduction to Nuke”. I already knew that the tasks at dve don’t interest me much but I told him that I will think about it nevertheless. And I am really happy about the DVD because the sooner I switch from After Effects to some real compositing tool the better. And Nuke has always been on my radar.
In fact, that was the day. To round it off I bought myself four comfy cotton t-shirts at American Apparel and a venti caramel macchiato at Starbucks. Then Zoki and I went back to Salzburg at around noon.
What I have learned today:
- That the FH logo looks a tiny little bit like the logo of the RED cam.
- That the best delivery format for a HDCAM mastering is providing a Targa image sequence with uncompressed audio in 48khz.
- That stereoscopy still poses a problem for live broadcast or sport — and especially for live sports casts.
- That conventions combine both the sophisticated nature of man (gaining wisdom) as well as the archaic (hunting down/collecting giveaways).
- That I am close to having a matching keychain for any of my hawaii shirts.
- Okay, I know, the Panasonic HVX 200, which I shot with, records only in squeezed 1440 x 1080, which isn’t “real” full HD, but the post production was ↩
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