VES and ASC Team up for Image Quality

The Visual Effects Society (VES) Technology Committee & American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) held a session this past Tuesday in Hollywood called Image Quality Considerations for Cinematography and Visual Effects. This was a standing room only event at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater, Eric Roth (head of the VES) said in his opening remarks that over 100 people called VES looking to confirm after the event was already full. Scheduled to appear were the Cinematographers from Iron Man, Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Dark Knight as well as the Visual Effects Supervisor from Benjamin Button.

What follows is not meant to be a detailed recap of the evening, rather to give you a flavor of the event and some of the important issues raised.


Image Science

The evening began with Dr. Hans Kiening, head of R&D and Quality Control for Arri, giving an abbreviated version of a very detailed powerpoint talk about Sharpness, Resolution, Dynamic Range… he showed testing methods and explained MTF, Nyquist, densitometers, and lots more. It was a great talk full of numbers, charts and humor that I can sum up with one quote from the talk:

“At the moment 35mm film with a 6k scan is the only way of capturing images to survive a 4k workflow and projection.”

There were direct shots taken at the RED camera, in fact all digital cinematography was demonstrated to be inferior, and the talk ended showing 16mm film split screen to noise reduced 16mm film. This split screen was used to prove a point about Dynamic Range vs. Grain and the perception of image quality, but considering the intense quality focus of the talk I found it ironic that it ended on, and that the only images shown were denoised 16mm film.

The talk was excellent and summarized the state of the art from a pure technological point of view. I could not help recalling a talk at another conference a few years back where after some intense technical discussion about film vs. digital a panelist asked for a show of hands from the audience of how many were still shooting film for their personal stills, the answer (almost none) put the preceding purist discussion in some context.

The Panel

The panel was put together and moderated by Ray Feeney (RFX) and was supposed to be a panel of five participants, but two were unable to attend:

Claudio Miranda – DP “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Matthew Libatique, ASC – DP “Iron Man”
Eric Barba, VFX Supervisor – “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Wally Pfister, ASC – DP “The Dark Knight” (unable to attend)
Anthony Dod Mantle, BSC – DP “Slumdog Millionaire” (unable to attend)

Ray Feeney, Claudio Miranda, Matthew Libatique, Eric Barba
Ray Feeney, Claudio Miranda, Matthew Libatique, Eric Barba

Ray started by giving us the premise he used to put together the panel… that the decision of what imaging system should be used should be a decision between the Cinematographer and the Visual Effects Supervisor, but that does not always happen. He chose these panelists and films because these projects “worked” and were diverse in their choices. Benjamin Button was shot on Viper and F23 (when the Viper proved too noisy for some soft audio recording in the hospital scenes) as well as some film (the war scenes), Iron Man was 35mm film, The Dark Knight was 35mm and IMAX, Slumdog Millionaire was a mix of film and the Silicon Image SI2K with the sensor mounted in a small configuration (like an SLR) with the guts in a dry ice cooled backpack to allow a low profile for shooting in areas where a large camera would hinder shooting.

Ray offered that “shooting digital does not save any money but it does move the costs into someone else’s budget” and that current practices don’t let film “be all that it can be” in a typical motion picture release. He also suggested that image quality does matter if theatrical presentation is to survive. I found this an interesting comment as we see more and more younger people less tied to cinema or even home theatre, growing up watching content on laptops or even iPods or mobile phones.

In talking about the use of the SI2K on Slumdog, Ray described the camera as the run and gun camera of choice currently and that the unique circumstances of Slumdog made it the perfect choice. He compared it to the 1969 film “Easy Rider” where handheld camerawork provided a unique point of view and went as far as to call it the “Easy Rider” of this era. He went on to talk about the RED camera and compared it to shooting reversal film – before electronic cameras were available to shoot news the CP16 film camera was king and reversal film was used to shoot positive images to get on the air quickly. Reversal film did not offer the quality of negative film but it’s availability changed many parts of the game, including coverage of the Vietnam War. The implication was that RED fits in this category, it may not offer the full quality of film but it is changing some areas of the business.

“Film for television is dead” all new TV shows are now being forced to shoot on digital solutions (apparently this has to do with the fact that TV shows shooting electronically move from SAG to AFTRA jurisdiction, and with SAG still unsettled the shows are moving to assure they can keep shooting). On the feature film side business practices are impacting the Cinematographer and VFX supervisors ability to make “correct choices” and the comment was made that individually our ability to influence these choices is limited. Matthew Libatique (DP, Iron Man) mentioned that he pushed for 35mm film for the film, but that he is not the only person involved in that decision anymore. That is why the VES and ASC are trying to identify more ways to work together and this panel was a good example of combining knowledge and experience with the goal of making better images.

Workflow trouble

One area that became clear as the conversation evolved was that DI and the workflow from image capture to release is not one workflow. Everyone faced problems with reference images, color pipeline and even simple things like getting any budget to have prints made to check what was shot (VES member Ray McIntyre said from the audience that he has not seen a reference print in 3 years). Claudio Miranda (DP, Benjamin Button) started the film by having identical laptops for himself and director David Fincher… Claudio would create a look each night with a DPX frame from the shoot that he would color correct and share with David on a secure web site. Even this became a problem and by the time they got to DI he had to resort to creating multiple physical printed books to show his intent to everyone involved – it was the only way he could be sure of what people were seeing. They also had an initial problem with a LUT in the DI workflow where what they were seeing from the camera and in dailies at Digital Domain was not achievable in the DI. This took a very long time to sort out. The fact that a major feature film with such high tech players involved found itself resorting to printed books should be a sign of how much work we as an industry have to do.

A question from the crowd about falling in love with color from the Dailies brought attention back to the fact that every film and every facility seems to be re-inventing workflow – there is no set workflow. Matthew Libatique even made the comment that he finds himself talking less about lights these days and more about workflow issues. He also offered that the DP does not normally get paid for the DI process (and Claudio mentioned the Buttons DI was three months long.)

Another audience question was about the viability of doing 4k DI – the opinion was that it is technically possible, but no one wants to pay for it. Many of the players in this industry recall the move to High Definition where facilities essentially shouldered the substantial cost of upgrading without passing along the higher costs to clients. With 4k taking as much as four times the storage and requiring even more hardware to achieve real time results, no one is able to do this work at the same price as 2k.

Wrap Up

The industry is facing many serious issues and that collaborative events like this are so important to get people talking. There are a lot of changes happening relatively quickly on several fronts: technical, financial and social.

On the technical side we have new camera options – while purists may stand firmly in the 35mm film only camp, it cannot be ignored that two of the films nominated for cinematography Oscars this year were shot substantially or partially digitally, including the winner. It is clear however that we do not have our collective act together when it comes to getting the best quality from these sources, monitoring it accurately along the way and preserving quality through the post and DI process.

The financial pressures are clear to everyone and are in some cases stripping creative and technical choices from those best equipped to make them. One could imagine a scenario where the theater going experience becomes an exception rather than the rule, a high cost/high quality experience like going to the Symphony. The studios are looking to stereoscopic to provide higher revenue and an experience that is best seen in a controlled environment, but even that has run into financial difficulties as digital projection deployment has not been as rapid as predicted (by about half) due to the high cost and economic crisis. There is a case this weekend where the stereo animated film “Coraline” must clear out of many theaters to make room for a stereo Jonas Brothers project. At the end of the day the studios are content creators looking to make money from those efforts, they are not married to a means of distribution – they are married to profits.

On the social side, one premise of this event was that image quality is a way to keep people in the theaters but I have to add a personal experience to this. I saw The Dark Knight the first time on the back of an airline seat, with Chinese subtitles (it was only channel that worked). I found the movie compelling enough that I quickly was able to tune out the subtitles and the image quality did not interfere with my enjoyment of the film. I later saw the film in IMAX projection and while I certainly enjoyed the night and day jump in image quality I also found myself having to remind myself that the image had expanded to IMAX because again I found myself drawn into the film. My point is as much as image quality is important and we as an industry absolutely have to continue to strive for the best possible product – content is and will always be king, IMAX or stereo does not make a bad film better. My generation grew up on the theatre experience, but the current generation is being born with an iPod touch in their crib, how this will affect viewing habits and business models in the future will be interesting to watch.

This event was one of many to come I am sure, it was clear that the need for our crafts to work closely together is extremely important. Special thanks to the VES, ASC, Susan Zwerman, Eric Roth, Ray Feeney, Dr. Kiening, Arri and all the panel members for bringing everyone together.

The event was videotaped, assumedly for future access by VES and ASC members.

Please add your comments to this, especially if you were in attendance.

7 thoughts on “VES and ASC Team up for Image Quality”

  1. Great article! I just love the time were’re in right now. All the new technology and new cameras and new everything is just exciting!
    You said in our article that the thing was videotaped. Do you think it will be available for the public any time soon?

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  4. Jeff H. and fxguide’ers
    Great article. Sorry I missed the event. Great recap! Thanks for the time and effort!
    best, Jeff O.

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