CineForm team with SI camera wins best Cinematography award. at DVinfo.net

David Newman · July 20th, 2006, 12:05 PM

We used a Silicon Imaging "mini" during last weekend's 48 Hour Film Project (http://48hourfilm.com/) in San Diego, and last night we were awarded the prize for Best Cinematography out of a pool of 44 films. And the judges only saw the SD version, so shooting D-Cinema for a DVD deliverable pays off!

See the full write-up on the shoot and download the movie from here : http://cineform.blogspot.com/2006/07...s-success.html

Jason Rodriguez · July 20th, 2006, 12:28 PM

Yeah baby . . . whooo! :)

BTW, for some brief perspective, "back in the day" (nine-months ago, it's amazing how time files in this industry!), your 48 hour project would have been over before you were done rendering out the uncompressed RAW files to a DPX sequence, not to mention the fact you would have needed to drag around a RAID or some other high-speed portable storage, and in the end be shuffling around 1TB of data between converted files, original RAW files, and depending on your editing configuration, low-res proxies for real-time editing! And please realize that you have to copy all those files around too, and if you went the low-res proxy route, had the amazing fun of doing a conform at the end.

I speak from experience, in that we at SI did a 5-minute project for Lauren Holton (you can see the dailies from the film on the SI website), and it was finally after a week later I had editing dailies to give them and ended up using around 1.3TB of storage . . . unfortunetly I didn't have that much on-hand (didn't realize everything was going to be so big), so I basically was doing a "bucket-brigade" from HDD to HDD to free up space for a night's worth of rendering. Ugly stuff. Think Andromeda's workflow, but a couple of orders of magnitude worse when you realize all the data rangling that has to go on.

Cineform RAW solves all of that. Real-time editing, instant playback and import into Premiere (right now), Final Cut (Q3), Quicktime, AVI, etc. Hopefully people noticed that David was shooting and editing that the same time . . . that will simply never happen shooting proprietary RAW formats in uncompressed.

So, while we're definitely not against uncompressed for certain situations such as taxing green-screens, etc., I think this 48-hour "test" was an awesome testimony to the fluidity of the Cineform RAW process . . . and it's a digital cinema revolution happening today, right here, right now, on films like "Spoon", "Burnin' Love", etc.

Yasser Kassana · July 20th, 2006, 02:05 PM

Well done guys, congratulations. I hope to see some more good things from SI and cineform.

Hideaki Anno · July 20th, 2006, 03:17 PM

Hello there, I've seen the short movie and I'm happy for you.
One strange thing that I've observed it's lack of latitude when Silicon is pointed to the sky, I've already observed this in other example shots (the little girl that goes to cemetery), I'm not expert but I found very strange considering the 4:4:4 method of acquiring.
I suppose this is produced by putting cheap lens on the camera.
It reminded the quality of cheap glass converters (a lot of shots has the left of the frame fading to black, anyone has noticed?).
For example I've seen a lot of videos made with Hvx200 (4:2:2) and the sky looks with vivid colors, but Silicon in this shots reminds me the 4:2:0 of Canon Xlh1 (also into the short of the little girl) , you can select with a mask with photoshop the sky, and you've one color as dominant.

Jason Rodriguez · July 20th, 2006, 06:47 PM

In both shots you're referencing, the girl in the cemetary and the blown-out shots of the sky in Burnin' Love, you're shooting towards the sun.

I don't know of any medium that can survive that sort of lattitude (from the sun . . . not even film). Remember, there is no fill light being applied in any of these shots to try and even out the contrast ratio.

Our camera has a practical shooting lattitude of 10+ f-stops. around 4.5-5 f-stops over middle grey, which is much more than the Canon, HVX200, etc. You're just seeing some very "raw" shooting with the camera that is being enabled by it's ability to handle extremes in contrast . . . so people are fill-lighting less . . . and blow-outs do not look so bad.

But again, shooting into the sun, or a back-lit person, there is nothing you can do . . . there is no video camera on the market, and not even film for that matter, that can really hold detail in a sun-bleached sky.

Joe Carney · July 20th, 2006, 07:01 PM

I thought that is what polarizers are for.

Jason Rodriguez · July 20th, 2006, 07:29 PM

True, but we don't have any that fit our c-mount lenses here . . . David was using a variety of lenses that required different filter thread mounts, so that would have required 3 or 4 different polarizers . . . again, there was only one "blown-out" shot of the sky, and that was with the setting sun backlighting the talent, and there's no digital or film camera on the market that can hold that sort of detail while keeping the foreground correctly exposed.

The SI-1920 can go up to 5 f-stops before clipping, but a sunlit sky like the above can be anywhere from 6 to 9 f-stops over middle grey, which would require us to have an overall lattitude of up to 16 "real-world" f-stops. Probably the only thing that would have gotten close in that situation would be a roll of 7218 or 5218 from Kodak.

David Newman · July 20th, 2006, 09:29 PM

Hey, we wanted the shot to look that way to depict the time of the evening. :) The vignetting is due to the sensor being larger than the image through of my (yes cheap) 16mm zoom, the super-16 lens did not do that.

Pete Tomov · July 22nd, 2006, 01:36 PM

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/6314/image2uc6.jpg
Is this the H1 shot?

David Newman · July 22nd, 2006, 01:45 PM

Nop. That was a heavily cropped 720p slowmo -- Canon can't shoot slow motion. We had a nasty dirty spec. on the lens so we zoomed in, as we had no time to fix it in AE or reshoot. The Canon shoot doesn't look bad, just different.

Pete Tomov · July 22nd, 2006, 02:14 PM

I know the Canon doesn't look that bad, I was judging by the chromatic aberration.

Hideaki Anno · July 22nd, 2006, 05:20 PM

Where is the Canon shot?

David Newman · July 22nd, 2006, 09:12 PM

The flash back where the toaster in put on the blender shelf, is the only scene that used the Canon.

Hideaki Anno · July 23rd, 2006, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Newman

The flash back where the toaster in put on the blender shelf, is the only scene that used the Canon.

Believe me, I was sure of that! :)

Wes Vasher · July 25th, 2006, 02:45 PM

This was fun to watch. The one thing that stuck out to me was this shot of the man and his wife sitting on the couch. She's in focus and he is soft. It almost seems like the DOF is so shallow that it can't keep them both in focus even though they are almost right next to each other. Am I seeing things?

http://www.vasher.com/junk/48hour1.jpg

Here's a full frame...
http://www.vasher.com/junk/48hour2.jpg

I love the expressions of the wife when they are talking to the event planner, really funny. And that blender sounds like the same voice that did the Killer Bean, if anyone knows what that is.

July 20th, 2006, 12:05 PM	#1
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	CineForm team with SI camera wins best Cinematography award. We used a Silicon Imaging "mini" during last weekend's 48 Hour Film Project (http://48hourfilm.com/) in San Diego, and last night we were awarded the prize for Best Cinematography out of a pool of 44 films. And the judges only saw the SD version, so shooting D-Cinema for a DVD deliverable pays off! See the full write-up on the shoot and download the movie from here : http://cineform.blogspot.com/2006/07...s-success.html __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

July 20th, 2006, 12:28 PM	#2
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Yeah baby . . . whooo! :) BTW, for some brief perspective, "back in the day" (nine-months ago, it's amazing how time files in this industry!), your 48 hour project would have been over before you were done rendering out the uncompressed RAW files to a DPX sequence, not to mention the fact you would have needed to drag around a RAID or some other high-speed portable storage, and in the end be shuffling around 1TB of data between converted files, original RAW files, and depending on your editing configuration, low-res proxies for real-time editing! And please realize that you have to copy all those files around too, and if you went the low-res proxy route, had the amazing fun of doing a conform at the end. I speak from experience, in that we at SI did a 5-minute project for Lauren Holton (you can see the dailies from the film on the SI website), and it was finally after a week later I had editing dailies to give them and ended up using around 1.3TB of storage . . . unfortunetly I didn't have that much on-hand (didn't realize everything was going to be so big), so I basically was doing a "bucket-brigade" from HDD to HDD to free up space for a night's worth of rendering. Ugly stuff. Think Andromeda's workflow, but a couple of orders of magnitude worse when you realize all the data rangling that has to go on. Cineform RAW solves all of that. Real-time editing, instant playback and import into Premiere (right now), Final Cut (Q3), Quicktime, AVI, etc. Hopefully people noticed that David was shooting and editing that the same time . . . that will simply never happen shooting proprietary RAW formats in uncompressed. So, while we're definitely not against uncompressed for certain situations such as taxing green-screens, etc., I think this 48-hour "test" was an awesome testimony to the fluidity of the Cineform RAW process . . . and it's a digital cinema revolution happening today, right here, right now, on films like "Spoon", "Burnin' Love", etc. Last edited by Jason Rodriguez; July 20th, 2006 at 01:04 PM.

July 20th, 2006, 07:01 PM	#6
Joe Carney Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Centreville Va Posts: 1,828	I thought that is what polarizers are for. __________________ Boycott Guinness, bring back the pint!!!

July 20th, 2006, 09:29 PM	#8
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	Hey, we wanted the shot to look that way to depict the time of the evening. :) The vignetting is due to the sensor being larger than the image through of my (yes cheap) 16mm zoom, the super-16 lens did not do that. __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

July 22nd, 2006, 01:45 PM	#10
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	Nop. That was a heavily cropped 720p slowmo -- Canon can't shoot slow motion. We had a nasty dirty spec. on the lens so we zoomed in, as we had no time to fix it in AE or reshoot. The Canon shoot doesn't look bad, just different. __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

July 20th, 2006, 02:05 PM	#3
Yasser Kassana Major Player Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: UK Posts: 223	Well done guys, congratulations. I hope to see some more good things from SI and cineform.

July 20th, 2006, 03:17 PM	#4
Hideaki Anno New Boot Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Japan Posts: 17	Hello there, I've seen the short movie and I'm happy for you. One strange thing that I've observed it's lack of latitude when Silicon is pointed to the sky, I've already observed this in other example shots (the little girl that goes to cemetery), I'm not expert but I found very strange considering the 4:4:4 method of acquiring. I suppose this is produced by putting cheap lens on the camera. It reminded the quality of cheap glass converters (a lot of shots has the left of the frame fading to black, anyone has noticed?). For example I've seen a lot of videos made with Hvx200 (4:2:2) and the sky looks with vivid colors, but Silicon in this shots reminds me the 4:2:0 of Canon Xlh1 (also into the short of the little girl) , you can select with a mask with photoshop the sky, and you've one color as dominant.

July 20th, 2006, 06:47 PM	#5
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	In both shots you're referencing, the girl in the cemetary and the blown-out shots of the sky in Burnin' Love, you're shooting towards the sun. I don't know of any medium that can survive that sort of lattitude (from the sun . . . not even film). Remember, there is no fill light being applied in any of these shots to try and even out the contrast ratio. Our camera has a practical shooting lattitude of 10+ f-stops. around 4.5-5 f-stops over middle grey, which is much more than the Canon, HVX200, etc. You're just seeing some very "raw" shooting with the camera that is being enabled by it's ability to handle extremes in contrast . . . so people are fill-lighting less . . . and blow-outs do not look so bad. But again, shooting into the sun, or a back-lit person, there is nothing you can do . . . there is no video camera on the market, and not even film for that matter, that can really hold detail in a sun-bleached sky.

July 20th, 2006, 07:29 PM	#7
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	True, but we don't have any that fit our c-mount lenses here . . . David was using a variety of lenses that required different filter thread mounts, so that would have required 3 or 4 different polarizers . . . again, there was only one "blown-out" shot of the sky, and that was with the setting sun backlighting the talent, and there's no digital or film camera on the market that can hold that sort of detail while keeping the foreground correctly exposed. The SI-1920 can go up to 5 f-stops before clipping, but a sunlit sky like the above can be anywhere from 6 to 9 f-stops over middle grey, which would require us to have an overall lattitude of up to 16 "real-world" f-stops. Probably the only thing that would have gotten close in that situation would be a roll of 7218 or 5218 from Kodak.

July 22nd, 2006, 01:36 PM	#9
Pete Tomov Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 106	http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/6314/image2uc6.jpg Is this the H1 shot?

July 22nd, 2006, 02:14 PM	#11
Pete Tomov Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 106	I know the Canon doesn't look that bad, I was judging by the chromatic aberration.

July 22nd, 2006, 05:20 PM	#12
Hideaki Anno New Boot Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Japan Posts: 17	Where is the Canon shot?

July 22nd, 2006, 09:12 PM	#13
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	The flash back where the toaster in put on the blender shelf, is the only scene that used the Canon. __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

July 25th, 2006, 02:45 PM	#15
Wes Vasher Major Player Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 440	Focus This was fun to watch. The one thing that stuck out to me was this shot of the man and his wife sitting on the couch. She's in focus and he is soft. It almost seems like the DOF is so shallow that it can't keep them both in focus even though they are almost right next to each other. Am I seeing things? http://www.vasher.com/junk/48hour1.jpg Here's a full frame... http://www.vasher.com/junk/48hour2.jpg I love the expressions of the wife when they are talking to the event planner, really funny. And that blender sounds like the same voice that did the Killer Bean, if anyone knows what that is.