Back in December & January, I volunteered to work on a rather historic shoot being produced in conjunction with Revelations Entertainment, the Producers Guild of America, and the American Society of Cinematographers.
As the PGA has finally started to release publicity about it being a part of their 2009 “Produced By” conference, now is a great time to finally release some of the behind-the-scenes photos from the production.
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| 2009 PGA-ASC Camera Assessment Series |
The link above is to a Picasa Album of the pics – though I’ve not yet had time to caption them – I’ll try to over the next few weeks.
The shoot itself was really quite interesting, and we assessed both the physical production and the image capture performances of eight cinema cameras. The cameras were selected based upon their common ability to capture 4:4:4 10 bit images, and deliver 4:4:4 10-bit DPX files for DI and film outs. (which is the reason a number of other excellent cameras, such as the Sony PWM-EX3 were left out – it can “only” record 4:2:2).
The cameras in the test included:
- Arri 435 film camera (various Kodak film stocks, but primarily 5217)
- Arri D21 digital camera
- Panavision Genesis digital camera (based on the same sensor as the Sony F35)
- Panasonic 3700 digital camera
- RED One digital camera
- Sony F23 digital camera
- Sony F35 digital camera
- Thomson Viper
Some cameras were tethered to decks, some had their own on board storage, some used tape. The full results of the test, as covered by ASC members from the whitepaper perspective, and from the production and narrative side by nine field teams of documentary filmmakers (which I produced, along with PGA member Michael Shores), will be presented this summer, and then be archived in the libraries of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the American Society of Cinematographers, and the Producers Guild of America.
We took each camera from delivering 10 bit DPX files, (and conversions from native capture files such as with RED RAW) to Laser Pacific for both one-light and fully-windowed Digital Intermediate passes, which are then being finaled as DCP (digital cinema packages) and as filmed out negatives.
The results of the tests really showed that producers and DP’s alike face a growing need to consider not only the aesthetics and the budget of their shows, but the workflows in production and post production in terms of extra time transcoding or managing data.
Anyone interested in the results should really check out the upcoming conference, and I hope that eventually the PGA and ASC will make the documentary (for which we shot over 100 hours of footage) and the white papers accessible online.
8 Responses to “2009 Camera Assessment Series”
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Where do I get more info on this? When is the Assessment coming out?
As noted, the Producers Guild is doing a presentation of the results at the “Produced By” conference next month in Los Angeles.
After that, the white papers and the full documentary will likely be kept at the libraries of AMPAS, PGA, and ASC by the end of this year.
Since it’s an all-volunteer effort, putting all the data together is a very, very slow process.
There is a plan to produce a Blu-Ray disc of the CAS material. There is quite a bit of controversy regarding "letting the disc out in the open" More people should speak up and encourage the release of the Blu-Ray in order that Producers, Directors and DP's far and wide have an opportunity to view the results and thereby make more informed decisions. Of course a "Terms of Use" agreement could and should be part of the Blu-Ray release
I saw this at the Produced by conference and thought it was awesome. Objective, clear, and concise. As a director, my eyes were opened to the possibities and capabilities, particularly with the Panavision Genesis. As others have noted on this blog, why the presentation would be kept 'secret' and not available for wide release – even on YouTube – is beyond me.
That aside though, I commend and thank all involved in the creation of the Camera Assessment series.
The CAS Blu-ray has been completed and is available from dvdinternational.com (search “camera assessment series”).
The Camera Assessment Series was done to provide a reference library to help professional cinematographers figure out what camera they want to use for their particular project’s needs. For CAS we only shot cameras readily supported and available that were reasonable candidates for studio feature-grade production. We required all camera to feed into a 10-bit DPX post pipeline, which is most widely used in the industry at this time.
The only “controversy” about the Blu-ray was that cinema productions will be at least 10-bit DPX and P3 color space (film and better/newer cameras more in both cases). Those results can only be adequately seen in a digital cinema presentation in a theater. Compared to digital cinema, Blu-ray is limited in bit depth (8 bit), color gamut (Rec. 709), and compression. Additionally, most often Blu-rays will be seen on poorly set-up monitors in poor viewing environments.
The Blu-ray should be thought of as a good sketch of the CAS results, and as an indication of what each camera might provide when shot for cinema and fed into a high quality Blu-ray pipeline.
A production’s cinematographer and post supervisor are the best people to evaluate camera selection and are ideally brought onto the production at the earliest possible point. Or if a production needs information/assistance beyond what is contained on the Blu-ray, I can help producers or directors at earlier stages of their planning process.
-David Reisner
Secretary, ASC Technology Committee and ASC-PGA Camera Assessment Series subcommittee
Test Design, ASC-DCI Standard Evaluation Material (StEM)
Consultant, Image Quality and Digital Cinema
I have check dvdinternational.com recently and the blu-ray is marked as “not for sale”. As anyone been able to get a copy yet? or is the blu-ray not out yet? I am outside america otherwise I would have check ASC. thanks
Unfortunately, there is a rights clearance issue with the Blu Ray release. I don’t know if this will ever be released. Hopefully it can be found online someday…
Hey Nat, I checked around, and a few places seem to have torrents of test up. Poke around the net a bit, you might find one.