Any theatrical film releases from the Z1 or FX1?

[Vlad Manning]

These HDV cams have been out the longest, so there should be some theatrical projects shot w/them by now that have been released as 35mm blow ups in theatres, no?

Other than the short docu-like commercials I've read that people have seen, what else from the Sonys have made it to the big screen?

[Yasser Kassana]

I posted something here.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=68140

It was a making of Honda UK TV ad, shot on the Z1 and blown up to 35mm, no cc, it looked excellent. Not filmic, colours looked saturated, but with a little of CC I bet it would look great. because the intention was a documentary not film, but it looked damn good. Grainless. Much motion stutter, because of low shuitter speed and 50i. But, from my first hand experience from someone who has seen DV blown up to film many times, this was pretty impressive.

Yes, to us videoraphers we would notice every tiny little of crap, but the public they don't care, if you blew up something that was shot really really well on the Z1 or Fx1, an audience wouldn't be distracted in my opinion.

[Ainslie Davies]

Have a look through these http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?fx1 and http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?z1

Most of these - http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?hdv - are FX1/Z1 too.

[Carlos E. Martinez]

Originally Posted by Ainslie Davies

Have a look through these http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?fx1 and http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?z1

Most of these - http://imdb.com/SearchTechnical?hdv - are FX1/Z1 too.

I went through that IMDb database and it's not clear, to me at least, which of those HDV videos were converted onto 35mm film. Am I missing something?

[Ainslie Davies]

It's hard to tell as sometimes details are left out. There are a couple that say they have been converted to 35mm, only one being a feature with a limited release in puerto rico. There are three that I know of going for a wide 35mm theatrical release; www.brokenarrowsthemovie.com ; www.lumieremedia.com/tomorrowistoday ; www.inasinglemoment.com (my feature, probably won't hit USA untill end of 07/early 08)

[Carlos E. Martinez]

Originally Posted by Ainslie Davies

(my feature, probably won't hit USA untill end of 07/early 08)

You shot in HDV with a Z1? Can you tell me a bit more about it?

[Carlos E. Martinez]

Sorry, I should have gone have a look at your site before asking my question.

My bet is you used a Canon H1 for "On a single moment". But some questions should be the same as for a Z1.

Did you make any tests for your HDV to 35mm transfer? Did you shoot at 50i?

What is the "editing chain" you are following after the HDV to get to your final output, be it HD or film?

[Ainslie Davies]

I just had a look through the site - www.inasinglemoment.com - as I thought it said Sony HDV somewhere but it does not. We are filming with Z1's and FX1's. We started filming with one FX1e at the start of this year, cutting our feature script into a short for a film festival. We originally wanted to continue on shooting but budget was the primary thing holding us back. We are going to start from scratch at the start of 2007 with a budget beteen $50-100,000 NZD (38-80,000 USD). We could switch to XLH1 or SI but we could be getting major investment through Sony and would stick to the FX1/Z1s. I want to see how far we can push these cameras.

We have been working with HiCon32 for the "perfect deinterlace" to 1080p and results are astounding with resolution spot on with the cameras at 1080i. Originally it was to go through DvFilm then to 35mm but there is a slight resolution loss. We have had no tests to 35mm yet but we have tested at 1080p/i on a cinema screen through digital projection.

Our current workflow is Camera 1080i50 > NLE 1080i50/25 > Edit / colour at 1080i - do slow motion shots recorded at 1/100th shutter to 1080p50 then into timeline at 25 - > Render out and conform to 1080 24p 1920x1080 square pixels (HiCon32 etc). We want to stay at 50i through as much post as we can to preserve quality for distribution options. 35mm out would have been done overseas but parkroad post (Peter Jackson's) should be able to do the job better (about $50-100k on top of budget).

Distribution was to be done by us ( www.duality-productions.com ) but we will be enlisting the help of the NZ film comission for this aspect only when the time comes.

Later on today or tomorrow I will be posting a thread with comparitive pictures on how to get the best image out of your FX1/Z1 using aperature from 1.6-11, ND's, PP settings and the 35mm film out settings sent to me to show what settings are best to get the highest resolution and most noise-free image.


____________________
www.inasinglemoment.com

[Heath McKnight]

Here's the biggest thing I can say...unless a filmmaker gets distribution, they usually stick with an HDCAM master. It's $30,000 +/- that they can pour into production vs. a film out.

Having said that, Jon Fordham recently shot a PSA with Oliver Platt and Stanley Tucci that's in theatres. Read about it here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67816

Also, VASST is having an interesting contest you should all check out:

http://vasst.com/contest.aspx?id=332...b-aaecdceab394

Hurry up, it expires June 30! (And don't shoot in CF30 or 30p or CF24.)

heath

[Yasser Kassana]

I'm actually more fascinated by hiCon32, with your experience would you say it's a good de-interlacer, how does it work without any noticeable resolution loss??

[Anthony Bristol]

Originally Posted by Yasser Kassana

I'm actually more fascinated by hiCon32, with your experience would you say it's a good de-interlacer, how does it work without any noticeable resolution loss??

I'm with you there Yasser. Ainslie, please tell!

To be honest it's not physically possible, as the data just isn't there, so some sort of uprezzing will be going on. All I can think of is the deinterlacing algorithm is more advanced than other methods, so the uprez is barely noticable. Either way it's an interesting development. fraunhofer have a pretty good reputation when it comes to codecs :)

[Anthony Bristol]

Ainslie,

I am having a play with HiCon32 and cant' get it to accept HDV clips from the Z1 due to the width of the clips, 1440 pixels. The program will only accept 480/576/1920 depending on what setting you use. How are you getting around this? cheers.

[Ainslie Davies]

You have to de-squeeze the HDV footage, meaning you have to change it from a 1440x1080 image with a 1.33 aspect ratio to a 1920x1080 image with a 1.0 aspect ratio. I did this in premiere by rendering it out into some uncompressed format that I could freely change the aspect ratio of. The rendering times on HiCon32 are obscene but it is worth it for film out. Obviously it can't make a perfect 1080p image but I would say that it would come out with higher resolution than a HVX200!