Shoot It On Video
The Panavision/Sony 24P
Camera
An interview with Nolan Murdock, Vice
President of
Product Management, Panavision (Part 1)
by Michael Buday, Stephanie Argy and Steve
Cohen
Over the last several years, Panavision and Sony have been working together to modify Sony’s new 24-frame-per-second, high-definition video camera and optimize it for motion picture and television production. The camera was introduced a year ago and has been used on several shows, both features and episodic television. The most prominent picture to use it so far is 'Star Wars: Episode II', which recently completed principle photography, entirely in 24P video. To learn more about the camera, how it’s being accepted and what the future might look like, the Guild interviewed Nolan Murdock, Vice President of Panavision’s product management division.
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with the Panavision/Sony 24P Camera. Photo by Steve Cohen |
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It’s common knowledge now – at least we think it’s common knowledge – that Panavision bought about 100 of these Sony cameras. Is that true?
We’ve committed to 100. We’ve actually taken delivery of the first 50; probably by second quarter we’ll flesh out the rest of them.
Can you tell us a bit about what you have done to it to make it a Panavision camera? What kind of modifications have you performed?
Basically, we take the standard Sony camera and remove the front face plate, the bottom plate and the top plate, and replace those mechanical components, which includes a new lens lock. The camera
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episodic because the 24 frames makes it look and feel emotionally like film." |
Using the same CRT, though.
Using the same CRT.
You said unfortunately…
The finder has proven to be the least accepted part of the camera, coming from the film guys. The operators are used to seeing safe areas; in this camera you don’t get a lot of safe area. You get none, top to bottom. And it’s black and white. A lot of times, particularly in large crowd scenes, you’ll get direction, "See the guy in red? Focus on the guy in red." Of course, you can’t see red now. So the black and white finder is probably the biggest, shall we say, disappointment for the film guys coming over.
Are the lenses custom manufactured for this camera?
We actually have designed a complete new series of lenses called Digital Primos. The Digital Primos were designed specifically for the two-thirds-inch target. There are three zoom lenses – there’s a 9.5-to-105mm, a 6-to-27mm, and shortly a 25-to-112mm zoom. We also have a 5mm prime, and over the next four or five months we’ll introduce a 7mm, 10mm, 14mm, 20mm and 35mm prime, all custom designed for the two-thirds-inch target.
The existing lenses that might be used on a 35mm camera will not work on this camera because of the target issue?
Right.
How do these lens focal lengths correspond to those of a 35mm camera?
The focal length conversion is approximately 2-1/2 times. A 5mm digital prime is whatever 5 times 2-1/2 – about 12 or 13mm, in 35. If you’ve got a 24mm, 35 lens, you just divide that by 2-1/2; you get a digital prime of about 10mm or thereabouts.
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Photo by Steve Cohen |
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What about the issue of under-cranking or over-cranking the camera, which of course it really can’t do?
Can’t do, that’s right.
How much of an issue has that been for the people who are using it?
It hasn’t been a real big issue so far. As you are probably aware, you can do some of that in post, depending on how much under-cranking and over-cranking you want. We’ve actually done some experiments – I have not seen the footage yet, but it will be at Sundance – where we shot some material at 60I, and treated each field as a frame and they created slow motion out of 60I material. One of the biggest issues is removing the motion blur, so that they can do the interpolation between frames and then they go back and add motion blur. Because the camera can actually go to an equivalent 8-degree shutter angle, if you shoot something at a fairly narrow shutter speed, you eliminate a lot of the motion blur anyway. So when you turn that material over to the post houses, they have a nice, clean crisp image that they can interpolate out of and then go back and add the motion blur. So that’s actually something that a couple of guys have done, as well. The biggest issue is how you record something at high speed, particularly at variable frame rates. Because in film, you can do a lot of ramp shots, where you’re going from 12 frames to 36 frames or vice versa. How do you record that ramping? Those are things that are under discussion.
What shows have used the camera? We know Lucas, of course…
Right, 'Star Wars: Episode II'. We are doing two episodic television shows right now. We’re doing a multi-camera sitcom called Titus, and we’re doing 'Diagnosis Murder'. We have another multi-camera sitcom starting the first of February, that we’re going to do with Comedy Central – 'Family First'. We’ve done a lot of short films, 20-30-minute features. Probably the first thing – even before Lucas shot – we completed a full-length feature called 'Nicholas' with Steven Douglas Smith. And that material is out, and I believe is going to be shown at Sundance, along with this short we did called 'bigLove' [spelled as shown] which is in the Digidance side of Sundance. We have a couple of features starting shortly. We’re going to do an all-digital feature with Jersey Films called 'How High', which Francis Kenny is going to shoot.
Where does most of the interest come from? Is it coming from the studios, the independents, television, features?
Certainly, the episodic television people are very interested. We’ve done a lot of tests for people and are continuing to test. No one has really made a huge jump, other than the couple of shows that I’ve mentioned, but I think it’s only a matter of time. I think the biggest issue is, if you’re shooting an established show, a lot of people don’t want to change the look and the work process. I think that’s one thing that has kept some of the established shows from going. New shows, as they come along, I think will be more inclined to shoot high-definition. Having said that, obviously the two shows we’re doing were film conversions, 'Titus' and 'Diagnosis Murder'.
What about established cinematographers? I’ve run into a couple who were just adamant that they will not touch this – that this makes color timing available on set, and their job is over with, and they see it as a big threat. Have you gotten any of that feeling?
We have had that conversation with a few people. If you choose to shoot it like a real video camera, yes, you can do a lot of things with it on set. You can certainly manipulate gamma and black levels and those sorts of things. Obviously, the camera can do some nice things on its own, but you should do serious color correction in post. We encourage people to shoot the camera as if it were a 320 EI tungsten stock and pretty much leave it. We actually discourage using things like enhancement and sharpening, because those sorts of things can’t be undone later in post.
What about filtration?
You filter it just like you would film. Color correction filters, sepias, chocolates or corals are the same. Diffusion is a little different. Some of the diffusion filters look and work somewhat differently compared to film, particularly white ProMist. But getting back to the original question, we’ve had people come in with great hesitancies, and as we have talked through things and shown them material that’s come from the camera and how it actually works, a lot of those hesitancies have broken down.
How would you describe the difference in image quality?
The first thing you’re going to notice is a lack of grain, which can be very disquieting in some senses, particularly if you’re taking it to film. What we usually see is right out of a laser-film output and that material is really, really quiet. And because it’s only one generation out, there’s not a lot of movement either. When you take something that’s straight out of a laser printer and show it, the only grain is off the negative and the print, and there’s no film movement at all, it’s a different-looking picture. A lot of times you can’t tell why it looks different – it’s just sort of there. It’s not swimming around and it’s really quiet.
By "quiet" you mean the image is very stable?
Very steady. Not a lot of grain. Very little noise. And for episodic television, it’s just a matter of how much color correction you want to get into. This camera is suddenly very viable for episodic because the 24 frames makes it look and feel emotionally like film. You look at 'Rosanne' and 'Cosby' and 'Home Improvement' and compare that to 'Titus' or 'Diagnosis Murder' – they’re all video shows technically, but 'Diagnosis Murder' and 'Titus' don’t look like 'Cosby' or 'Home Improvement'.
Is some of that how it’s being lit, or is it really the frame rate?
I think a lot of it is frame rate, because again 'Roseanne' was a multi-camera sitcom. 'Titus' is a multi-camera sitcom. There’s a big difference in the way they look, yet they’re lit very similarly.
How much do you get involved with cinematographers who have to brave this format for the first time?
That’s pretty much my job right now – liaising between cinematographers, producers and production crew, with the camera, lenses, that sort of thing.
Aside from the technicalities of the camera, do they have to relearn the way they light the set?
Sort of. The camera’s response is more like reversal stock. So if someone has a lot of reversal stock experience, it works very nicely for them. They can quickly make that jump. One of the misconceptions is that you don’t need any light. The problem is, you don’t need as much light, but you need more artistic light. The camera does have certain issues with the way it handles over-exposure, but it’s very good in under-exposed situations and in dark shadow detail. So, if you have someone who is a real high-key-light kind of person, that person is going to find it much harder to work with than someone who has been lighting 'X-Files' or something that’s fairly dark and moody.
Are there ways around the over-exposure problems?
No, not really. There are certain things you can manipulate in the camera at the time of exposure to roll that over-exposure off, and obviously you can do some things in post, but once you blow it out…
…it’s not there. HD stock is considerably cheaper than film, so have filmmakers who’ve used the cameras taken a different approach to coverage? Do they do more takes, more shooting of rehearsals? Has there been any significant rise in shooting ratios?
All of that, actually. We’ve discovered that they do let the camera run, that they do shoot rehearsals a lot. We all know on a set when you yell, "Cut," even if it’s a really disciplined set, it’s a minute or two before you can get everybody settled back down. We’ve discovered that the directors are stepping out, talking to performers, stepping back in and going immediately to resets without cutting. The numbers of takes that they’re doing are probably not substantially greater. It’s just that they’re doing them as a big flow – instead of a lot of short takes. It’s changed the way they make that time up in the day. In other words, if you’re going to shoot 30 minutes worth of film in a day, you wind up shooting perhaps 40 minutes worth of tape that day.
What’s been the response of those who have used the camera? Has it been generally positive?
Very positive.
Are there any problems you’d be willing to discuss?
Sure. There are some ergonomic issues that have come up. The camera is very long, for instance, and it makes it difficult to get into certain tight corners and spaces. As we mentioned earlier, the viewfinder is ergonomically a problem for some operators. We’ve had some operators tell us, though, that after the first day or two they figured out how to make it work for them and it hasn’t been such a big deal. There are cables that most film sets are not used to seeing – timecode cables and genlock cables and audio cables. It has primarily been ergonomic issues – not performance issues or reliability issues. The camera has proven to be extremely reliable. Frankly, we haven’t had any serious problems in the 10 months we’ve had them, really pushing them hard. From a reliability standpoint, the camera is very good, and from a performance standpoint, once the operators and the cinematographers get past the initial learning curve, the camera has performed very well.
If we can go back to George Lucas and Star Wars, are you at liberty to discuss how he felt about the camera after he finished shooting? Was it a positive experience?
The response from them has been very positive. If you really wanted more than that, I’d have to defer to George Lucas and Rick McCallum. But their response has been very good.
Go to Interview Part 2
Go to EDL Manager 24P article.
Michael Buday is an offline and online editor
as well as a consultant to Sony Broadcast.
His HD online credits include 'Dane', 'Family Law',
'Judging Amy', 'James Brown Live at the House of Blues'
and 'Touched by an Angel'. He can be reached via email
She can be reached via email
the publisher of the Guild Magazine. He recently completed
'15 Minutes' for New Line. He can be reached via email
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine
Vol. 22, No. 1 - March/April 2001
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