CreativeCowMag Music Videos

8/14/2019 CreativeCowMag Music Videos

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Creative COWC R E A T I V E C O M M U N I T I E S O F T H E W O R L D

M A G A Z I N E

A LOOK INSIDE SOME OF THE INDUSTRYS MOST CREATIVE TEAMS

MORE SIGNAL, LESS NOISE CREATIVECOW.NET JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2008

THE MAGAZINE FOR MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN FILM, AUDIO, VIDEO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING AND DESIGN

Music VIDEOS Music Video Production

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J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8

CREATIVE COW MAGAZINEA CREATIVECOW.NET PUBLICATION

PUBLISHERS:Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER:Tim Wilson

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF:Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom

and Tim Wilson

[email protected]

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:Thomas Burstyn, Eki Halkka,

Stobe Harju, Nel Johnson,Laurie Pepper, Mark Wagoner,

David Roth Weiss, Aaron Zander

LAYOUT & DESIGN:Ron Lindeboom

MAGAZINE ADVERTISING:Ellen Parker

[email protected]

WEBSITE ADVERTISING:

Tim [email protected]

CONTACT US:[email protected]

(805) 239-5645 voice(805) 239-0712 ax

Creative COW Magazine is published bi-monthly byCreativeCOW.net (Creative Communities o the World) at125 Alydar Place, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 239-5645.Postage paid at Hanover, New Hampshire. U.S. subscrip-tion rates are ree to qualied subscribers. Creative COWis a registered trademark o CreativeCOW.net. All rightsare reserved. Magazine contents are copyright 2008 byCreative COW Magazine. All rights are reserved. Right oreprint is granted only to non-commercial educational

institutions such as high schools, colleges and universi-ties. No other grants are given.

The opinions o our writers do not always reect thoseo the publisher and while we make every eort to beas accurate as possible, we cannot and do not assumeresponsibility or damages due to errors or omissions.

LEGAL STATEMENT: All inormation in this magazine isoered without guarantee as to its accuracy and appli-cability in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney,business advisor, accountant or other proessional to dis-cuss your individual circumstances. Use o the inorma-tion in this magazine is not intended to replace proes-sional counsel. Use o this inormation is at your own riskand we assume no liability or its use.

Poets o the Fall: Carnival o RustA platinum selling bands new video. 200 shots in 18 hours.

Behind the Scenes rom behind OasisAn English icon comes home to play or the hometown ans

A Labor o Love: Art Pepper RememberedPreserving the legacy o Jazz Hall o Famer, Art Pepper

Finding the Heart o ARRIs D20 in Tin ManA sel-conessed lm snob leverages the efciencies o HD

P2 Digital Workows Using the Panasonic

HPX500 cameraSecrets o working with the all-digital HPX500 workow

COWs in the NewsBest o the year podcast, Oscar and Golden Globe nominees

RED: Early Workow FindingsA student lm at Brooks Institute puts RED through its paces

Authoring 5.1 in Apple Soundtrack ProA look at how Soundtrack and Compressor are used in 5.1

Avid Says No Booth or NAB 2008You wont nd Avid on the show foor in 2008

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Creative COWC R E A T I V E C O M M U N I T I E S O F T H E W O R L D

M A G A Z I N E

Creative COW Magazine4

THE MAGAZINE FOR MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING & DESIGN

InThis Issue:

Tim Wilsons Column ............................................ 8Ron Lindebooms column .................................. 46

MUSIC VIDEOSA LOOK AT SOME OF THE INDUSTRYS MOST CREATIVE TEAMS


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Each issue o the COW Magazine is obviously built around a single theme. So ar, the themes have included workow, business success, portable media, the

power o artistic passion, lm values, commercials, and now, music.Wed like to let you in on our inspiration: the concept album.We can argue some other time whether the concept album began with Lee Wiley

in the 1930s well let the eight songs she recorded on our 78s count as an album or Frank Sinatras Wee Small Hours. But theres no question which was the rst trulyimportantconcept album in popular music: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band byThe Beatles. (Though Ron will argue that in a perect world, the Small Faces OgdensNut Gone Flake would be right up there.)

Ron and I enjoy many other concept albums or their music, but Sgt. Pepper isthe one we keep coming back to or guidance as we work on each issue, the one wemeasure ourselves against. The concept part. Not the changing music, and arguablythe world, orever part.

The idea behind a concept album is simple enough: rather than standing alone, allthe songs on a concept album are linked thematically and musically to create a com-plete experience, telling parts o the same story in dierent ways, rom dierent per-spectives. Like books, concept albums present their story in chapters.

Many individual pieces, linked thematically to create a much larger whole. Thatswhat we do in the COW Magazine. You can see it at CreativeCow.net, too. Well over ahal million people providing many perspectives creates a rich experience indeed.

Not that CreativeCow.net is guided by the spirit o Sgt. Pepper. Just the magazine although in the end, the visions o both the site and the magazine are guided by thesame thing: COW members.

And one thing we know about COW members is that music has been an importantpart o their lives and their businesses or a long time using it in production, compos-ing it, playing it, shooting it, listening to it. The only problem is that its such a large parto our lives, with such a deep emotional connection, that it was hard to know where tobegin talking about it. Theres simply too much to say.

Ater much oundering, we decided to let this issue come together the way that allo them always have: we let the authors tell us what to do.

Thats why the COW Magazine takes the unusual approach it does new voicespoint us in new directions. Among this issues authors, eighthad never written or usbeore, and six o those had never written or anymagazine beore. Many arent writers.But they are people who are doing the work theyre talking about.

The W in COW stands or world, which you can see here: in addition to the US,this time authors also come rom Finland, Japan, New Zealand and the UK.

As The Beatles told us on Sgt. Pepper, its getting so much better all the time.Thanks to COW members, it really is.

PS. Youll notice a couple o articles or so in each o our magazines that dont have

anything to do with the ocus o our concept album. But they were too good to leave out.

Think o them as bonus tracks.

n



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Poets o the Fall were introduced to a worldwideaudience when their music was included in thehit video game Max Payne 2. Creative COW membersmay also remember them when the groups rst video,Lit, was the subject o episode #7 o the CreativeCOW podcast back in November o 2005. Since then,they have become one o Europes biggest bands.

Their second album, Carnival o Rust, debuted

at number one in their native Finland, and remains inthe top 40 nearly two years later. Their 58 city tour just

ended in Kanpur India, ater stops in Russia, Lithuania,

Germany, Estonia, and throughout Scandinavia.Needless to say, creating a video or the title track

o such a high-prole, platinum-selling album carried

a lot o pressure. It didnt help that the schedule al-lowed or only a single day o shooting, that the vid-

eos design called or over 200 shots -- and that there

was no room to compromise on production values.

They obviously were able to pull it o: Carnival oRust was voted best Finnish music video o all time by

the viewers o Musiikki-TV, earning more than 7 times

more votes than the runner-up.Having seen the video ourselves, we were struck

by its depth and richness. Film look is a phrase too

easily tossed around, and rightly associated primarilywith sotware gimmicks. But we know that these guys

did it the right way. And rom a post at CreativeCow.

net by Eki Halkka, we know that it originated on HDV.

Eki Halkka and Stobe HarjuHelsinki, Finland

Eki Halkka and Stobe Harju also worked together on videos or Poets o the Falls Lit and Lock-

ing up the Sun, among many others. To see more rom the making o Carnival o Rust, includ-

ing storyboards and the video itsel, visit http://library.creativecow.net/poetsotheall

A platinum-selling bands new video: 200 shots in 18 hours. Are you kidding?

DP / technical director Eki Halkka says, It was pretty insane. Heres why...


Along with Eki who also handled composit-

ing and color grading in the video we spoke withthe videos director, Stobe Harju, to nd out how they

achieved such a cinematic result, rom such a complex

visual design, in so little time.

Part 1: PreParation

Director Stobe Harju: The name Carnival o Rust ob-viously goes well with an amusement park, but the

meaning itsel is much deeper. Lie is like a huge carni-

val where we all have un or some time, and then sud-

denly it all ends.I wrote a cool treatment with some basic example

images o what I had in mind. There were some similari-ties in David Lynch movies and the HBO series Carni-

vale, or instance. But the look o the video was very

hard to explain in the beginning, so I dug up about 180

reerence photos.When the band bought the idea, we made a sto-

ryboard.

DP and Technical Director Eki Halkka: Stobe is orig-inally a graphic artist, and he always gives us very good

reerences to work rom. For Carnival o Rust, he made

concept art that set the mood or the whole thing. It

was a straight orward (thoughnot easy) process to translate that

to moving images.He also always makes very


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detailed storyboards, which help a lot. But I admit thatI tease him about his work going to waste. You know,

we could shoot with stick gure storyboards just as

well!Stobe: An amusement park is such a complex en-

vironment hat you could add almost anything to it.

We added ideas rom everybody, including personalobjects, like the tarot cards belonging to Marko, the

bands lead singer.So even though I had a clear vision in the begin-

ning, the specics came rom all the people working

on the project.

Marko had another idea long beore we even

started to write anything on paper. He wanted to

have a character that would be rightening, but alsosympathetic.

I chose a visual quote rom the Tom Hanks movie

Big, the Zoltar, the ortune teller. I also wanted toadd something that looked a bit like Marilyn Manson

style make-up mixed with old peeling paint.

The black tear at the end explains why the paint

on his ace is peeling. Hes the only character in thevideo who couldnt move even i he wanted to, and ev-

ery day, someone whose lie he has an eect on dies

a tragic character.

The song is about unpredictable ortunes, andbuilding the details o the production design this way

t the story very well.Once we had all o the ideas in place, we careully

built them into the storyboard. When we got to the set

we knew exactly what we would shoot, in what order,and what wed do i we ell behind. We didnt shoot

any extra shots outside the storyboard.

Eki: Exactly. We didnt shoot in chronological or-

der either, but rather tried to minimize the amount oset-up time between shots. We cut out each shot rom

the storyboard, and arranged them on a big card-

board sheet based on similarity.

Creative COW Magazine 9


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This was our bible, the only way we could do 200

shots in a single day although in the nal edit, there

are only maybe a hundred or so separate set-ups.

Part 2: the shoot

Eki: We used the Sony HVR-Z1 HDV camera, with a P+S

Technik Mini35 adapter and a set o ve prime lenses,rom wide angle to telephoto.

Stobe: We deliberately overused the short deptho eld to create a miniature eel or the amusementpark.

Eki: We shot interlaced at 25 ps, with the cam-

era set to as little contrast as possible, and very littlesharpening. I would actually have preerred no sharp-

ening, but that doesnt work because the Z1 is already

pretty sot.We didnt use the cameras built in Cinerame

mode because we get better quality by deinterlacing

in Ater Eects.But thats not what provides the lm look. Doing

lm-like stu with video has a lot o variables, all owhich have to be taken into account. The most im-portant variables involve what you put in ront o the

camera - how the shot is lit, composed and so on.

Stobe: The impression we created or the nished

video was the scale o an actual amusement park, ocourse huge -- but the studio was quite small: 27 x 40

eet (12 x 8 meters) or something like that.

We had a green screen on 3 sides, and a movableset that we could turn into any direction we wanted.

We then placed the elements we shot into a sotware

3D environment and animated the camera tracks.Eki: We just built that one set-up, with a program-

mable desk to control lighting. We had maybe hal adozen oods coming rom the let wall, giving a rath-er sot warm key light to the whole setup. There was a

row o rim lights with blue gel around the stage.

The bulk o the lighting work or each shot was

just balancing those three light groups. We just movedthe actors and the props so that they looked good on

the setup we already had. It was much aster this way.

We had a really small technical crew, basically justTeemu Konttinen on the lights and me on camera. O

course there were a lot o others making sure we had

something to shoot, but as ar as camera crew goes,that was it.

We didnt have tracks, just a studio tripod with

wheels. The oor was covered with uneven concrete

and dirt which were part o the set, so we had somesheets o plywood or an even surace to do camera

moves on.

There were no markings, but we practiced eachcamera move pretty careully. Theres no way to get a

truly steady, repeatable move without a motion con-

trol rig, so we didnt worry about that too much.

I it looked good, it was good.Stobe: When doing a very technical production

its most important to come up with simple ideas or

how to do the most complicated things.There was one shot that was part o a scene with

a roller coaster. I brieed Eki and the guys on how it

should look, with the most complex explanation Icould ever come up with.

It was so complicated that I asked how was it go-

ing to be done. Eki just nodded and told me that wasthe least o our worries.

Eki: Well, imagine the girl sitting on a chair, with

a gas mask and a giant lollipop. Theres two or three

colored lights blinking around her. Thats it.

Stobe: Just two ashing lights pointing towards

a barstool, the actress sitting on it waving back and

orth. I sat with my ace pressed against the monitor,trying to look like I was paying attention rather than

laughing as hard as I could!

Eki: It looked pretty ridiculous, and still the shot

ended up being one o my personal avorites in thevideo.

Part 3: the truth about ake camera moves

Stobe: It all boils down to efciency. We usually chose


continued on page 40


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Nel JohnsonManchester, England UKwww.studioskylab.com

Working with partner Nigel Collier, Nel Johnson and Studio Skylab have earned

awards rom Cream, NME, the British Video Association and BAFTA, or clients in-

cluding Sony, BBC, Nokia, Microsot, Universal and many more. Nel says, The ethos

behind Skylab is one o experimentation, discovery and enjoying what we do. Youll

nd him in the COWs Ater Eects and Trapcode orums, among others.

For Oasis, it was a big night. Scratch that. It was ahuge night. Oasis, the sel-proclaimed kings oBritpop, were to receive a lietime achievement awardat the 2007 Brit awards. The event was being broadcastlive to the nation, and my company had provided thelm that played on a huge screen behind the band as

they perormed the shows grand nale.Perhaps its only tting that a band like Oasis so

amously Mancunian should choose to work with aManchester-based agency. Theres denitely a North-South divide within the UK creative community, so itwas with a sense o Northern pride we had brought thejob home. There was no way we were going to let theband down.

Debuts & irsts

Prior to starting Studio Skylab, I was in London or veyears. The latter part was spent heading up the interac-tive division o Metropolis Studios, a recording complex

in West London. During that time I looked ater manymusic industry projects, including DVDs or Led Zeppe-lin, Moloko and Live Aid.

Oasis had recorded at the studio many times andhad become comortable with the complex. When theywere looking or a team to work on an upcoming inter-active DVD project, we were the natural rst choice ortheir director Dick Carruthers.

The DVD was to mark the 10th anniversary release

o the bands debut album, Dfly my, and Iwas responsible or the design o the disc.

It was a rst or DVD design in that the concept wasto make the disc a visual version o the original audiorelease. The menu itsel lasted the whole length o thealbum with each individual track representing a point o

navigation rom where you could access live tracks, pro-mos and rare ootage. That was my original concept andthe band approved.

The DVD was released in September 2004 andquickly went triple platinum. To my great delight, it re-ceived a BAFTA (the British Academy o Film and Televi-sion Arts) nomination or interactive design and won theNME award or best DVD, voted by the readers o thathighly inuential British music magazine.

Oasis liked our creative treatment so much that theyasked us to use the same graphical style or a Channel 4documentary, There We Were, Now Here We Are...:The Making O Oasis.

50 miLLion recorDs Later

In 2007 the people behind the prestigious Brit Awardsdecided to give Oasis a lietime achievement award. The band naturally turned to Dick Carruthers to pro-duce their segment o the show, a live set o ve tracks.Thanks in large part to our success with the Oasis DVDproject, Dick in turn came to me.

He commissioned Skylab to provide stage visualsor the shows nale or their massive hit Rock n Roll



15/48

Photo by David Fisher / Rex USA

Liam Gallagher o Oasis

at the Brit Awards 2007



16/48

Star. It was a challenge I was more than happy to acceptand was one o the highest prole jobs we had takensince my business partner Nigel Collier and I openedStudio Skylab in 2004.

The brie rom Dick was quite simple: he wantedsomething bold and eye-catching, but nothing that hada narrative or was deeply interpretive o the lyrical con-tent. I thought the punchiest way to go would be to il-

lustrate the words rock, roll, and star.Oasis had indicated they were at that time very in-

terested in pop art. This was ideal, as one o my avor-ite artists is Robert Indiana, an American pop artist. Hisstyle utilizes lots o at primary colors, stars, squares, cir-cles, bold, brash stencil letters and numbers. I thought itperectly suited the song.

The band approved the concept and with just vedays to go until the event itsel, the pressure was on. Welocked ourselves away, cranked up the music and wentnuts.

visuaL ounDations

I started o with a content-gathering exercise. The ideawas to collect textures and imagery that would helpcarry the concept in the appropriate style.

We went out and shot abstracts o gig posters, o-cusing on torn edges and the multiple overlaid graph-

ics ormed by the succession o posters let stuck to thewall underneath. These ormed a visual collage thatwould act as a backdrop or the scenes we were aboutto create.

We imported them into Ater Eects, then turnedthem into 3D objects. We dropped them back in z-depth,away rom the camera, to orm a distant backdrop.

Others we positioned at intervals between thecamera and the ar backdrop. To these we applied vari-ous modes o transparency so the whole eect was aninterplay o light and texture rom the camera view to

the ar distance.

PLaYinG o the musicaL cues

Random movement was applied to the cameras point ointerest using Trapcode SoundKeys, which was patchedto an audio le rom an earlier rehearsal session. Thisgave us a lovely parallax eect when all the layers weremoving within the comps, in time to the music.

That was the basis o various scenes that made upthe visuals or the song. But the animation wouldnt runin one long composition rom start to end because noone knew quite what speed the band would play.

Granted, we had the rehearsal audio but this couldonly ever be a guide. The problem or us was, i the bandplayed too ast or too slow, none o the visual elementswould work.

So we created chorus pieces, bridge pieces, andverse pieces, each with a 3 seconds tail. These would beall be triggered individually at the right cue points bythe lighting director during the perormance that night.

Knowing we had chorus and verse pieces to create,we set about tailoring each composition to suit eachpart o the track.

Chorus pieces ocused on the rock-roll-star theme,while verses pulled key lyrical phrases rom the song.Each was set as a graphic and placed within the 3Dspace o each comp.

These sequences were complemented by moreRobert Indiana-inspired graphics, many created using3D Stroke or animated hand-drawn stars and Echo-space or a lovely deep 3D repetition o star shapes.

We urther treated these to many trippy eectsand lters and plug-ins such as Pete Wardens Kaleido-

scope, one o his many ree AE plug-ins, and denitelythe best kaleidoscope eect out there.

There was a huge composition to make or the end,where the band goes into guitar solo overdrive with lotso eedback and vocal eects. Creating a tail out which

lasts almost as long as the song itsel was one o themore difcult parts o the project.

For the end, we made a composition eaturing allthe best bits rom the piece so ar and, to create an eye-popping nale, we applied the Sapphire Random Editplug-in, which basically chopped and changed 2 or 3rame edits, increasing in speed and erocity as the tailout progressed.

We applied a urther kaleidoscopic eect in FinalCut Pro with the SlitScan plug-in, which, to be honest, isone o those eects youd never normally have a use or.

As a last nishing touch, we topped and tailed thestart and end pieces with real television intererenceootage. This would serve as the intro and nal back-drop as the band exited the stage.

be there noW

By now we were ast approaching deadline and I waseeling even more pressure to complete the job, as mywie was due to give birth to our rst son any day.

The nal part o the job involved laying o all theparts to a FireWire drive, over 40GB o ootage, andsending it by courier down to London.



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The driver went down the night beore the liveshow, where Dick was completing nal preparation orthe perormance. Time was tight but we made it (just!).

We one nal hurdle to clear. Beore transmission,the lm was subjected to a strict technical preview to en-sure it could be saely broadcast. Thankully it passed.

So now that we had successully delivered the proj-ect all that was let was to sit back, Jack Daniels in hand

and enjoy the show.The anticipation on the night was immense. As the

band took to the stage, there was the excitement o see-ing our own work on a huge event like the Brits, coupledwith concern at what might have happened to the lmater it let our hands.

Then the amiliar strains o the tune began and Ican honestly say it was a career highlight or me. To seea band Ive known, loved and respected or over a de-cade, perorming to such a huge audience in ront owork my own company had created was a real kick.

DeLiverinGThe project was actually a standard-de piece. I remem-ber this surprising us because one would assume that

video displayed so large would require HD at least. Weinitially rendered lots o test pieces and encoded someH.264 previews or the client. Finally we rendered all ourpieces uncompressed.

We learned a lot on this project which weve ap-plied to other projects since.

The mistake a lot o budding stage visual designerswill make is that they will try and create a pop promo ora particular track, narrative and all, and thats really not

whats required. The key thing is K.I.S.S Keep It SimpleSweetie.

Obviously its easier to deliver a job i youve keptit simple, and ultimately the task is to support the per-ormers, not to try and outdo them. I call it animatedwallpaper, but in terms o screen visuals, simple equalsbold, equals eye catching.

As a company were still growing, but our successwith this lm proves my own personal belie that iyoure passionate about what you do and i youve gotthe motivation, you really can achieve anything.

n



18/48


Laurie PepperLos Angeles, Caliornia USA www.artpepper.net

Laurie Pepper runs her own record label, Widows Taste. Im introduc-

ing truly unreleased and unheard Art Pepper to people who love him and

want to hear him. Im introducing Art to people who thought they knew

what jazz was (incomprehensible bebop), so they can correct that awul

impression and ll their lives with soulul beauty. You can nd her in the

Cow orums or Final Cut Pro, Ater Efects, Trapcode, and Zaxwerks.

When, at age sixty, I started playing aroundwith iMovie, what beset me and pressed me

and pushed me and still keeps me going is love.My late husband, Art Pepper, was one o the great-

est jazz musicians o all time. Yes, I said it. Many critics

would agree and so would listeners who elected

him to the Down Beat magazine Jazz Hall o Fame.With him, I wrote his autobiography, Straight

Lie, published in 1979 and still in print. Not long

ater Art died, I began to hear rom lmmakers, pro-

ducers, studios, who wanted to make a movie o thatbook. I spent ten years getting acquainted with the

culture and practices o Hollywood, and came to the

conclusion that I loved Art too much to sell him out tothe people Id been talking to. I decided to orget the

whole thing.Then I began to wonder whether the movie I

wanted might best be made by me.

aDDinG uP the stories

Todd Haynes, when asked why he thought Bob Dylan

had been willing to let him make the movie, Im Not

There, using Dylans songs, answered, He read the

outline and probably saw that it wasnt reductive andthat it had humor

Thats all Id been looking or: a movie that didnt

A Labor ofLove

Preserving and expanding the legacyof Jazz Hall of Famer, Art Pepper


19/48


reduce Arts huge and endlessly ascinating personal-

ity to a shiny spangle o high concept.

I didnt want a movie that would be lugubrious,like Bird. Or simplistic like Ray, or Walk the Line.

I enjoyed those movies, but they just wouldnt do or

me, or Art. To do his story that way would eel like abetrayal.

Hollywood people had told me that to them Art

was a wild hipster like Jack Kerouac. Or they talkedabout the tragedy o his lie. Or how gritty his storywas.

But Art was a romantic.

There was nothing gritty about him: he neverlet the house unshaven; his ngernails were invari-

ably cleaner than mine.

He was a antasist.Hed been diagnosed early as a paranoid schizo-

phrenic.

He was an addict.He was a stand up guy.

He lived his lie in nightmares and love songs

and slapstick comedies: he was very sel-aware andcould laugh at his ate even as he whined about it.

As a musician, Art was a storyteller. Every song

he played was a chapter o the narrative he spun in

every perormance he gave until he died.He knew how everybody elt. They elt like he

did. When Art played his delight, it was our delight.

His grie and rustration, ours.His stories all made sense, because what they

added up to, every time, was beauty.

His lie and his music were one, and they were agit he gave us, making sense o our lives as he made

sense o his own.

What WeirD stu

Well, Hollywood people wouldnt sign a contract

promising to use Arts music in his movie. What i a

particular song was too expensive? Or poorly record-ed?

What i the Widow (me) decided to withhold

some music in return or some unreasonable demandon them? Like maybe a dierent star! A dierent di-

rector! A changed script! They couldnt aord to give

any power away.They asked me to trust them. I asked them why

they wouldnt trust me. The truth is, neither o us

could be trusted.

Who knows what weird stu they might havepulled? And then who knows what my subsequent

rage and horror might have driven me to do?

Have you read any stories about movies maderom books? Picture? The Devils Candy? Mon-

ster? They all end the same way. Fiasco, shame,

heartbreak.Sheila Graham said about her book, Beloved In-

del, describing her aair with F. Scott Fitzgerald, I

you want to sell your soul to the devil, sell your bookto the movies.

Scenes from Art PepperLauries highly stylized production evokes imageryreective o the beat period that was central to theearly heyday o modern jazz.


20/48

January / February 2008 Creative COW Magazine20Creative COW Magazine20

the PoWer o enthusiasm

I wasnt completely unprepared or lmmaking. Idcertainly seen a lot o movies. I did learn about mov-

ies, though, rom one o the most perceptive critics

ever. Pauline Kael and her husband ran two theatersin Berkeley when I was going to college there. In their

quarterly ier, she wrote a critical analysis o every lm

they showed, rom Bicycle Thieves to Potemkin.

Her little essays and the movies she chose gave usCal students ater-school classes in lm appreciation.

Kael talked about things like camera angles, lighting,music, color, editing, sub-texts and subtleties I never

would have noticed.

I later became a photographer and photo jour-

nalist. Then I married Art and started writing.Ater Art died, I worked or The Eagle Eye Film Co.

publishing a little magazine or lm and video editors,

Editing. I got to interview great editors. Dede Allencut The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, and one o my

all time avorites, Dog Day Aternoon. My hero Wal-

ter Murch edited The Godather and Apocalypse

Now, and he did the sound on The Conversation,another avorite and a classic.

Later, when my boyriend, whos a carpenter,went to the Island o Kauai to build homes as a vol-

unteer or Habitat or Humanity, I trailed along with

my little video camera, to document that project or

them.Then when I decided to make my own movie o

Straight Lie, I took a ten week lmmaking class at

UCLA. Then, my ormal education nished, I put outa casting call.

I had only the vaguest outline o a ormat and

no nal script at all. I wrote as I went along, shooting

with the same one-chip Panasonic Id used in Hawaii.I bought Final Cut Pro. I bought a bigger, aster Mac,

and then another, another camera, and a lot o drives.Yes, Im in debt.

I also borrowed cameras. And cameramen. Ac-

tors and lighting people helped me. Two gorgeous lo-

cations, a restored 1950s recording studio, and a re-tirement hotel that looks like an old hotel, were both

oered, gratis.

People will help you i they like the project. Well,Art Pepper intrigues people. And then, also, Emerson

said it, the I Ching says it: the power o enthusiasm

over people is incalculable.

Thats how I was able to borrow a 53 Cadillac ora scene rom a stranger driving down the street. I

blocked his path with my car, ran up to him in the rainand asked him, Do you like jazz? He did.

everY rame

While all this was going on, I saw the movie that con-rmed me in what I was doing and pushed me ur-

ther: Amelie. I loved how witty it was, how rich and

perect each rame o that movie was. I saw Amelie13 times in theaters as many times as I saw A Hard

Days Night when it came out.

I began, then, to think in terms o every rame. I

began to think in terms o Joseph Cornell boxes. He ar-

ranged odd, old objects and illustrations into scenesthat were surreal and nostalgic. I wanted to mimic

their mystery.

I was, o course, using Arts music.By the time Id decided to use his voice (captured

on a tape recorder during the endless interviews I did

back in the 70s or the book), Id also decided I want-

ed to try to see through his eyes, his heart, as well. Hetruly saw pain and power and magic, terror and loveli-

ness brimming out o everyone and every object.

A script has emerged as Ive worked, and I nowknow every scene in this movie and how the movie

will end.

enouGh to saY What You have to saY

Walter Murch said that too much condence can get

in the way o creativity. He talked about the salutarystate o I dont knowness.

He said, when youre asking, Can I do this or

not? little things that eel a kinship with you will ap-

pear. And out o those things something will growthat is really organically a part o what youre doing,

rather than something that youre imposing on it rom

outside.I realize that most people dont have the luxury

o spending six months on a ten-minute sequence, as

Ive done recently. I always give mysel permission toplay around and try all kinds o time-consuming, silly

things, going o on tangents.

Problems are caused and compounded by mylack o experience, lack o skill. And laziness: Oh, itll

be all right But it never is all right. Minor glitches

just seem to get bigger and more obvious every time

you see them. So you have to go back.A pro would be done by now. But I wouldnt know

how to describe to that pro what I wanted. I only rec-

ognize it when I see it.Ive spent a lot o money on sotware hoping it

would make me a better lmmaker. Some o that sot-

ware is invaluable. Some o it is beside the point, andsome is just too hard.

But Art used to say apropos o music that you

only need enough technique to say what you have tosay. So ar, its working out.

When I conceived it, I hoped that the amateurish-

ness o the work would not detract. I hoped it would

be charming, bearing witness, as it does, to the loveand determination with which Im making this movie.

Ill never qualiy as more than a beginner in digi-

tal media, but the reason Im talking about my journeyhere, is because I was asked to and elt honored to

be asked. And I want to express my gratitude to all

my teachers, because I gure some o them might bereading this. Theyre the people writing the tutorials

and asking and answering questions every day on the

orums.The COW is a wonderul community, and Im so

proud to be stumbling around in it.

n


21/48


22/48

January / February 2008 Creative COW Magazine2222

Thomas BurstynAotearoa, New Zealand

Those o us at the COW obviously werent theonly ones watching Sci Fis 6-hour miniseries

Tin Man last December. This modern retelling oThe Wizard o Oz brought the highest ratings in SciFi history, nearly 6.5 million people on the rst nightalone.

Tin Man was also nominated as the Best Madeor Television Film by the Broadcast Film Critics Asso-ciation, and Outstanding Visual Eects in a Broadcast

Movie by the Visual Eects Society.

Tin Mans Director o Photography was COWmember Thomas Burstyn, whose wie Barbara SumnerBurstyn wrote about their documentary shoot in In-dia or the COW Magazines Passion issue (May-June2007).

We asked the Emmy-nominated cinematogra-pher (The 4400) to tell us about his 65-day shoot,ollowed by his 7 weeks in post.

Given the richness o the visuals, we assumed it

was shot on with lm. No, not lm, he told us. It was

Finding

the Heartof the Arri D-20in Sci-Fis Tin ManWith HD, Thomas says he has the ability to nesse color, exposure and contrast in the color cor-

rection suite. I used to look down my nose at video but RAW 4:4:4 is more creative, efcient.

Creative COW Magazine

While compiling nearly 70 credits at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com), Thomas

Burstyn has been nominated or awards including the Emmy, American Society o Cinema-

tographers, and two Genie Awards. Recently, he won a third Genie and an award rom the

Canadian Society o Cinematographers. We are proud that both Thomas and his wie, doc-

umentary lmmaker Barbara Sumner Burstyn, are members o Creative COW.


23/48


originated on HD 4:4:4, with everything coming romthe mammoth and amazing Arriex D-20 camera.

In act, I dont think Ive shot a oot o lm in 5years. And I used to hate video! I looked down my noseat it. It was a news medium at best. It was vulgar. Now Icant remember what a piece o lm smells like.

When we asked to hear more about the produc-tion, including shooting with the D-20, he didnt hesi-tate. Id love to talk to you about my Tin Man experi-

ence, he said. It was amazing! Heres what he hadto say.

iLm anD 4:4:4

As a motion picture cinematographer, the only adjust-ments open to you are color balance warm, cold,magenta, green and exposure light, dark. Con-trast is set during principle photography with light-ing. Highlight and shadow relationships are done withlighting and exposure.

Working in HD, Ive become more efcient byshooting with the knowledge that I have the power tonesse color, exposure and contrast in the color cor-

rection suite.My methodology on Tin Man was to acquire

inormation in camera, 4:4:4 RAW in LOG mode. Thatgave us as large a palette as possible, saved or work-ing in the calm atmosphere o an air conditioned colorcorrection suite, and not in a dripping orest.

At rst I thought thats cheating, but then I real-ized its not. This is how the HD world should be set upto take ull advantage o its amazing potential.

Its a real change o pace and a workow adjust-ment or me, but it seems more creative, efcient. Itsthe only way we could have done something this com-plex and rich with our schedule and budget.

When the time came to put it all together, we hada lot o visitors in the daVinci suite, producers and cam-eramen who wanted a peek at what we were doing.They hadnt seen the camera working at that depth,with this kind o astidious attention to detail in post.

You get the eeling youre at the cutting edge othe technology, in a world where the rules are yet to beset. You get to gure it out as you go along.

choicesWhen you shoot lm, your look evolves through amarriage o camera, lenses, lm stock, and devel-opment processes. In the HD world the camera youchoose goes a long way towards setting that look. Itsthe equivalent o choosing the lm stock.

I like to become intimate with a lm stock, andlearn about its quirks and qualities as I shoot in dier-ent situations. So with every new camera, I explore itssignature.

A test with a stand-in and a color chart and a key,ll, backlight doesnt tell me anything. The rst realtest is the rst real shoot. We tested the Arri 65 days,

and then spent almost 7 weeks in the color suite. NowI eel like I know the camera.

There are a ew signatures in the Arri D-20 that arevery interesting. It has a wide gamma, a great subtly ocolor rendition and the neness o the image due to itslarge sensor approaches 35mm quality. Its a beautiulcamera.

But or me, the most compelling aspect o theD-20 sensor is the way it renders shadow areas. Theresa lot o detail and contrast, but the deeper the shadow,the more the color sensitivity alls o, resulting in abronze-y, desaturated darkness.

As an example, lets say you have a character

Tom and team prepare or a days shooting in the woods o British Columbia, Canada.


24/48


strongly side-lit with no ll. On the lit side, the coloris as expected. However on the shadow side, skin tonegives way to a silvery gray tone.

Im pretty sure the Arri technicians see this as aaw in the system, but or me its a unique signaturethat makes or compelling look.

I havent been able to test the Thomson Viper tothe same extent. That is, while I have much more pro-

duction experience with the Viper, I havent had thebig budget color correction experience as I did withthe Arri, so any judgment would be unair.

I will say that both cameras have a very good ton-al range, both have good color gamut, but I eel theArri beats out the Viper, in my opinion.

The other huge dierence in the Viper vs. Arridebate is the sensor size. Viper eels like 16mm, hasall the pluses and minuses o that ormat: lightweight,small envelope, easy setup.

The D-20 has the same het as a 35mm camera,is as bulky and heavy as a 35mm camera, but has theenormous advantage o the 35mm perspective and

yet, we made an average o 55 setups a day with theD-20, so you cant say the Arri is slow.

55 set-uPs a DaY

You know that saying? What do you want: ast, goodor cheap? Pick any two. We chose ast and good.

The way you make 55 setups a day is by notchanging the lights between shots. Pre-visualizationand pre-lighting are the cameramans most importanttime and motion tools.

Example: Our intrepid quartet arrive at an icepalace, and they come into this blue room. DG, theDorothy character played by Zooey Deschanel, is won-

dering why she remembers this place. She touches amirror, and as her memories begin to ood back, wesee her past take shape in the mirrors reection.

DG and her riends are lit by the memory as they

peer into her past. We then go into the mirror and playout several o her childhood scenes.

We had two days to do all those scenes on the bothsides o the mirror, including both lighting setups. Ikeyed the scene with our maxi brutes, gelled with LeeCold Blue #711 through a huge window whenever thewindow wasnt in rame.

When we shot against the window, most o those

lights were turned o. Since the set was very tall, anappropriately gelled 18K Chimera replaced the win-dow light.

We had to line up the angles on each side o themirror to look right when matted together. As much aswe possibly could, we gured out both setups beorewe began, then used a dimmer desk to make all thechanges.

A small Chimera and/or KinoFlo came and went asrequired. But bottom line, all the big lighting changeswere built into the original lighting pre-rig.

in-camera Looks

We also tried to do a number o eects in camera. TinMans director Nick Willing is a cameramans director.He has a great visual style, and an understanding o vi-sual processes.

He also came with a suitcase ull o his weird glasscollection, and hed just hold this piece or that in ronto the lens and wiggle it around. High tech meets rubberband tech.

For me one o the most beautiul examples o themarriage between camera and post was a number oscenes shot in the same place a dense rain orest withhanging ronds, leading to a cave. We were only thereor one day, and had to shoot dream, memory and pres-

ent day sequences in that time. There was dappled sunin the morning or about 4 hours beore it sotened, thendisappeared behind a mountain. The dappled sunlightmade the orest look more orbidding, so that was used

Tom Burstyn sets up a shot with Tin Mans Azkadellia played by Kathleen Robertson.


25/48

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or the wicked witchs approach. The sot light was orDG and her riends in the present.

The rest o the day we used the remaining light toshoot memories and dreams, which were then severelyaltered in post.

LiGhtinG

The big challenge working with the Arri D-20 was its lowISO. This may be a moot point as the camera we used

is now 2 generations old ,and the sensitivity has beenupped signicantly.

The rst thing to point out is that evaluating light-ing is dierent in HD than it is on lm. Video curves areunlike lm curves.

Since I use the zone system to nesse my lighting, Idiscovered that taking light readings in the conventionalway misleading.

When I made my initial tests or the Viper I oundthat i I wanted to use my light meter I had to breakdown my readings as ollows: Highlights placed at 125-250 ISO, midtones at 320-400, and shadows came in at500-640 ISO.

In the end I put my light meters away and devotedmysel to the waveorm monitor.

On Tin Man, Clairmont Camera supplied us with a4:4:4 card or the Leader waveorm monitor which gaveus accurate luminance readings.

We relied on accurate waveorms to tell us we hadwhat we needed, and not monitors because none othe monitors we tested could read the highlights andshadows the camera was capable o capturing.

So back to the low sensitivity o the D-20. Again thenumbers may sound misleading. I I took my value roma 18% gray card reading, I would think that the camera(in LOG F mode) was 125 ISO. True or the midtones, butit had much more sensitivity in the shadows, and the

highlights roll o pleasingly beore clipping.Still, the camera was not what you would call high

speed. Ater the rst week we sent all our inkies, pep-pers and tweenies back to the rental house. Our smallestlighting xture was a baby. I used more ll than I usuallydo.

There was one scene played with 5 characters in asmall room. The dressing room by the Mystic Man (theWizard character, played by Richard Dreyuss) was darkand moody.

Nick, the director asked i we could hold ocus onmore than one character at a time so I decided to lightthe set to a 5.6 stop. We ended up using 2 10Ks, 2 5Ks,

and a KinoFlo Wall o Lights to make the stop.To the eye, the scene looked bright and at, but the

end result was pleasing. A whole new world is emergingrom taking available light and tarting it up.


continued on page 42


27/48


28/48

P2 Digital Workowswith the Panasonic HPX500

Dont be araid o digital workows, says Mark. And dont be araid to spend money on the right camera.

Digital workows have been central to mywork or a long time now, starting with the

still photography side o my business.

I have a lm le with a mix o 8x10, 4x5, 120mm,

and 35mm lm, numbering in the area o at least250,000 pieces. This is in addition to our hundred

DVDs o archived images.

Our still photography projects started going digi-tal 6 years ago, shooting to cards and directly to the

computer, both on location and in the studio. For the

past 3 years, we havent shot any lm at all.

My rst video job came in 1987, when I was askedto produce and co-direct a point o sale video or Hanes

Hosiery: shooting 1-inch tape with an Ikegami camera.

Video now accounts or 75% my business, ocusedon product and corporate video, and video or non-

prot undraising, with the occasional small commer-

cial thrown in.In the last couple o months weve shot a large

project or a bank (this was a 15-day shoot), a 4-day

shoot or a gol community and some Hospital TV spotwork.

From the beginning, Ive never liked dealing with

tapes. O all the media we use to store our intellectual

property, theyre the hardest to deal with.The lm and the DVDs are reasonably well orga-

nized. Most o the best still images are now searchable

trough Aperture, while tapes sit in boxes or stacked indrawers.

My other issue is the capture process. I just dont

enjoy it as part o the work ow. Whether Im editing at

a post house or doing an edit at our studio, digitizinghas never been my avorite part o the job.

So when I really caught on to P2 cards, I jumped

at the idea o no tapes. We have a leg up on our com-ort moving to P2 because o our experience with stillwork. Im not saying that were the best workow en-

gineers. But weve moved, organized and delivered

tens o thousands o digital images, so we have a littleless trepidation.

the cameras

We had a Panasonic AG-HVX200, and needed a second

camera or some o our shoots. I considered a second

HVX, but when I thought about it, though, I went orthe AG-HPX500 instead. I bought it in October 2007,

and its obviously now our main camera.

Even though it cost roughly 4 times more than theHVX (around $5200, to the roughly $21,000 or our HPXkit), I liked it or the 2/3 inch chips and the eatures o

the larger camera, including uncompressed HD-SDI

out, extensive variable rame rate support, and inter-changeable lenses.

(We have the Fujinon XA17x7.68BRM, and plan to

test a Canon lens and some wide angle lenses soon).Weve rented a Varicam or some o our jobs in the

past, and I eel that we can now shoot jobs like that

with the HPX.Although the capture and le-handling are identi-

cal, and the menus are very similar, there are aspects o



29/48


Mark WagonerNorth Carolina USA

Marks client list includes Wachovia Bank, United Airlines, Wrangler Jeans Wear,

and Sara Lee. Hes also written nearly a dozen books about North Carolina, where

he lives with his wie, daughter and golden retriever. Ive been ortunate to work

or 30 years doing what I love, Mark says. You can nd Mark in the Cows HVX/

HPX P2 orum.

working with the HPX500 that

are dierent than the HVX200,

all part o working with a much

more sophisticated, more ul-ly-eatured camera.

Not to say that its hard

to learn. We had a jib operatoruse the HPX500 recently, and

he ound his way around it in

about 5 minutes.One big dierence to

note: the HPX500 has FOUR P2

slots, instead o the 2 with theHVX. Using our 16GB cards

(which are included in many

HPX packages) gives us over an

hour o 1080i or p. That meansnearly 3 hours o 720p/24 be-

ore we have to change a card

more than enough to over-come the objection o short

recording times or P2 media.

I youve used very highend digital still cameras by

this I mean medium ormat

backs that are or the mostpart shot direct to computer -- you might have seen

something similar to this, but otherwise, the ocus as-

sist on the HPX500 is like none youve seen beore.

Rather than give you a magnied window like theHVX200, the HPX500 gives you a graph (a histogram)

o the parts o the image that are in ocus. Its aster,

easier, and ar more accurate than making your bestguess looking at a viewnder. When the image is sharp,

it shows you a graph o the edge contrast, a very nice

way to work that youll quickly get comortable with.Not surprisingly, the image rom the HPX is clean-

er-looking. You can really see this in the bottom end.

We just did a 2 camera set up or a business an-nouncement the HVX was locked o and the HPX was

on a jib. The background was a dark cherry colored

paneling; the HVX image had noise in the dark areas o

the wood that just wasnt there on the HPX.The HPX is also 1.5 to 2 stops aster than the small-

er camera, giving it much more sensitivity in low light.

Yet on the high end, the HPX500 also holds the high-light edges better than the HVX: less blooming, less o

that overdriven look, and more detail in the brightest

highlights.

That said, we took our time A/B-ing the 2 cameras

both on set and in post to match the colors better than

the deaults alone provided, and ound that the oot-age rom the two cameras cut in nicely.

the WorkLoW

Whatever system you come up with, ollow it as closely

as you can.

Have a specic place on your person or in yourbag or shot and ready to shoot cards. Never hold a ull

card and a ready to shoot card at the same time.

Think through the process or getting the ootagedownloaded, and ollow that too. Ater a long shoot,

with a 5:30 AM call in ront o you, is not the time to

stop and re-think each step.

Our shooting process begins with the cards them-selves. Ater we set up and do any needed test or tech-

nical rehearsals, we ormat the cards well need.

While this is happening our production coordina-tor is setting up a computer with a card reader, we use

a Mac G4 laptop with a built in reader.

When a card is ull, an assistant pulls the cardand takes it to our production coordinator. She then


30/48

30

downloads the card or cards to 2 dierent drives. Wedont make one drive a copy o the other, but do two

downloads. The cards then come back to the camera

as needed.

We use a project older with a location and dateolder, and a older or each camera and a older or

each card. One card one older.

For the ride home we try to send the two drives

back in dierent cars. One then stays at the studio andone goes home with me. Now we have at least two cop-

ies o the ootage, in two dierent places.The drive that comes back to the studio gets

backed up to our server. These les stay in place while

the job is active. Its also the place the we connect orthe log and transer process in FCP.

I were passing the ootage on or someone else

to edit, the second drive is or them. We use a small

80 or 160 GB drive, and bill it as part o the job. I handdrives to clients all the time now, and ater they get

into the ow, theyre very happy with this.

Everybody winds up with the ootage they need,

already on a drive in a raction o the time it would havetaken to digitize. And we end up with a copy o the

ootage or us to use in our sample reel, or as stock.

no turninG back

We commit the money to buy equipment and train sta

to constantly reinvent Mark Wagoner Productions, andour role as a producer o visual content.

Thats one o the reasons were not araid o newtechnologies or workows. I was speaking at a photo

school recently, and I was asked how I had survivedover the years. My answer was along the lines that I like

being the rst to eat at a new restaurant.

Again, were an independent production com-pany, shooting almost exclusively not-or-broadcast

work. The HPX500 has added richness to our work,

with eatures that also make the work easier.And now that weve developed a P2 workow that

works or us and our clients, were not going back to

tape.n

Across the Universe nominated for bothGolden Globe and Oscar awardsAcross the Universe, nominated or a bevy o awards including theGolden Globes and the Academy Award, includes work done by PeteOConnell (right, who is part o Montreals Bar X Seven barxseven.com

team). Petes compositing tutorials online at CreativeCOW.net have beenamong our most popular and he has also been one o our magazines contributing editors, having written or ourFilm Values issue. By the time you read this, Across the Universe may have won, and will also be available in DVD andBlu-ray DVD, and or Sony PSP. Pete also did compositing work or Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium starring DustinHoman. As we write this, the two lms have grossed over $85 million worldwide. With all o that behind him, Pete iswrapping up his DVD or the Creative COW Master Series, on compositing in Ater Eects. Congratulations, Pete! Andcongratulations to everyone on the team at Bar X Seven!

Oscar is a registered trademark o the Academy o Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. All rights are reser ved. Golden Globe is a registered trademark o the Peoples Choice Awards.


THE REST OF EVEREST podcast named Best of 2007Filmmaker Jonathan Miller, host o the COWs podcasting orum and creator o TheRest o Everest podcast, has received the iTunes Stores distinction as one o the Best

Podcasts o 2007. This is the second year in a row that he has been given this honor. Theshow documents an expeditionto the peak o Mount Everest.O The Rest o Everest, Jonathansays, the raw, simply producedormula seems to work and

people really enjoy it. I was justtrying to be cheap so I could get something out every week.Its difcult or me to watch, being such a perectionist withmy paid projects. All o us at Creative COW headquartersappreciated this picture which he sent o him holdingCreative COW Magazine during the ascent o Mount Everest.Jonathan is a great help in the podcasting orum, where he isknown or his helpul answers and his gracious manner.


31/48

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We are some o the youngest people in theworld to be using RED. Im not sure, but we

might also be the rst student-run major production

to be using the RED camera.

The project were working on is through our

school, Brooks Institute, and ties into a major car com-pany launching a new model at the New York Auto

Show in May.We were lent one o the cars and asked to do

something interesting with it. Were doing a 5-6 min-

ute short that isnt narrative-based. Its not a straight

sales piece. Though it eatures the car, and has somesubtext about the car, it isnt an ad by any means.

The nal presentation needs to work at any size,

up to a 100 t. screen with some ungodly pixel ratio, sowe needed to work with a high-quality medium. Film

was an option, but adding the kind o heavy VFX post

we planned would have been ar out o the budget

o any grants we could have gotten, or any avors wecould have swung to do DI post or even a D5 master.

So the RED was a logical choice.

As ar as I know, were also the rst to use the RED

or extensive miniature work. Its mostly landscapesthat well be compositing the car into, but we really

wanted to test both the RED and our own limits. We

also wanted the production to put our own stamp onsomething in the world o RED.

WorkinG With raWThere are plenty o places around the COW to get the

details on what gets captured, and how, while youre

shooting with RED, but the big advantage rom the

start is the RAW ormat.The rst thing to understand is that RAW captures

everything the cameras sensor does, which leaves you

all kinds o options or output and post trickery.Say I shot at ISO 320, but I want to add a lot more

light in post. All I have to do is open up the .R3D le

(REDs version o RAW) and say Hey my ISO is 800now and bam! my ISO is changed.

RAW allows us to take a second look at what weve

shot, and basically do a one light beore we start the

Learning By Doing: Lessons in RED Camera Post

Aaron Zander

Ventura, Caliornia

Here in the early days o RED camera post workfows, Aaron Zander and riends arent just

students. Theyre teachers whose advice can guide you.

Aaron ZanderBrooks Institute, Ventura, Caliornia USA

Aaron hasnt graduated yet and is building edit suites or several post houses in the LA area. His

photography has also been published in several magazines and books. Even though he was in the

middle o posting this project, he turned this article around in a day. Aaron has written several tu-

torials or the COW, and is ound regularly in orums or Avid, AE, FCP, Cinematography and RED

among others.

RED:Early Workfow FindingsBrooks Institute students put RED ONE through the paces o a student production. Here are their fndings.

32 Creative COW Magazine


33/48

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When you rst work with RED ootage, the color

looks a bit odd though. When we downloaded the

ootage rom the CF card, it didnt look like it did onset, or with our monitors. The colors oten seems a

bit lackluster. I was initially worried that the greens

werent popping enough to key. I was very wrongthough, as the ootage keyed smoothly and evenly.

inishinG

In contrast to the RED 2K les coming out o RED, thetranscoded QuickTimes keyed very poorly even

when the movies were output to 2K. They required

a lot o nessing to get a reasonable key, and oten Iound mysel looking at stair-stepped edges.

RED QuickTimes are very compressed in compari-

son to the RED 2K 10-bit TIFFs. Since the individual 2Kles are lossless and very good quality and are uni-

versally understood by compositing applications

we chose to stay with them through the post process:motion tracking, pulling keys, adding CGI elements

rom LightWave and Maya, all output as 2K les.

Oddly, the only problems we had with them werein Final Cut Pro, which has trouble handling imagesequences. This is one o my biggest issues with FCP,

that it has no easy to handle these image sequences.

This is a huge aw, in my opinion.In theory, I can understand FCP not wanting to

process thousands o images on the timeline, but no

work: bump the exposure a bit, adjust the contrast,

etc. We know ull well that this will all be retimed, sowere just trying to get a clean image and enough data

to start compositing.

keYinG

Ive worked with 4K Cineon les that keyed so cleanly

I was sure Id never key something as perectly as that

again but the ease o keying this RED 2K and 4Kootage is amazing.

Ive used Primatte in Nuke, the Diamond and Dis-

creet keyers in Combustion, but Keylight inside AterEects kills them all, especially in our shots with con-

crete dust owing in ront o the screen.

All the keyers detect the green screen and removethe background, but they leave an alpha lled with

dust. Keylight is the only one that, on the initial pull,

leaves the dusts brown color but zero artiacts.

Id say its because AE is my bread and butter and Iknow it inside and out. This wouldnt be so i it werent

or the COW, as I learned the program through Aharon

Rabinowitzs COW tutorials and podcasts. Now I tutorand help teach the AE class here at Brooks Institute.

But the incredible speed o Keylight has nothing

to do with skill or experience. It s simply the astest keyIve ever pulled, with great keys in about 30 seconds!

Keys that preserved all the dust and other detail rom

the set.



34/48


other application Ive ever used has an issue with it.

Once we had our picture locked, we mixed in-house with our ProTools HD system. From there, nal

grading beore distribution, and then its debut at the

New York Auto Show.

concLusions about the cameraIve shot with DVX, HVX, HPX, FW900, Bolex, Arri andothers beore I came to RED and I think the RED is a

very good cross between standard HD and lm. Much

o it works the same way that other high-end HD cam-

eras do, and it eels like a lm camera, with ootagethat has many intrinsic values associated with shoot-

ing lm.

But i you cant shoot the same thing with aDVX200 and have it eel and look good, then stepping

up to 4K wont do anything other than make your aws

look that much worse.Then again, experimenting can help boost your

skills, and seeing your aws in 4K is certainly a goodway to learn.Should the aspiring shooter use the RED camera?

Well, i you can, grab it. Likewise, i youre a lm shoot-

er and you want to take a step onto the wild and crazy

HD rontier, this is great way to start.Either way, it wont make you a better DP.

the vieW rom haakon,

the Projects cinematoGraPher

A solid RED setup should run around $30,000 or the

system itsel and a good carbon ber tripod with uidhead.

I rent out a complete package with all kinds o ex-tras like a wireless ollow ocus, mattebox and lters,HD monitoring and more, and I spent less than $50,000

or everything, including camera #69.

Its more

than the base$17,500 price but

much less than

what some wouldhave you believe.

Except or

once using a Zeiss85mm t/1.3 lens,

all my shootingso ar is with theRED 18-50 mm

zoom. Ive been

blown away by

its perormance,and am greatly looking orward to the 50-150mm o-

ering.

As or light levels, I shot everything in the /3 - /4range with the camera rated at ASA320; I like minimiz-

ing that DOF as much as I can.

While operating, I use the RED LCD pretty exclu-sively. It has an onboard waveorm monitor which

helps to monitor exposure and its the best tool Ive

ound or judging accurate ocus.The LCD does exhibit some excessive banding and

noise characteristics which some have bashed it or

but these anomalies dont maniest themselves inthe ootage, so its a moot point to me.

We send a eed to video village through the HD-

SDI port to a 17 broadcast HD monitor as well, more

or the director and producers to monitor ootage.In an absolute pinch, you could easily operate the

camera eectively with just three people; an operator,

a puller, and a ootage management assistant han-dling downloads.

One o the most important and overlooked jobs

on a set by young or inexperienced crews is a ocuspuller. Youre dealing with true Super35mm depth o

eld with RED. You cant put an 85mm lens on it, shoot

wide open, and expect to nail ocus yoursel while youalso compose a shot.

Due to a limited budget, we have a crew o about20 or this project. I would preer another dedicated

individual in my camera department and two or threemore grips. But we roll with what weve got.

There are a ew things Id love to see in uture up-

grades/versions o RED. The one they really need toaddress is simultaneous hot video outputs or moni-

tors used by the director and the camera operator. Its

a real pain to constantly switch back and orth manu-ally so that both can see the rame.

I havent ully examined the dierences in lati-

tude rendition and highlight roll-o between RED andlm, but by eye I would say theyre extremely similar.

I would still love to see higher rame rates at the na-tive resolution o the camera and even better highlight

roll-o handling.Ill be nishing my ull RED vs. lm tests soon.

So ar, ater seeing them projected next to each other,

lm looks to me like RED ootage with grain. The REDstu is easily as sharp, retains that beautiul shallow

depth-o-eld, and is much cleaner.

I love lm. It has an entirely unique aesthetic thatcant be replicated by digital technologies. But RED is

proving that they dont have to.

The image quality, combined with the workowand nancial advantages o RED make it a slam dunk

or all kinds o people: rom those who have beenshooting big budget eatures or decades, to young in-

dependents who may never have shot a rame o lmat all.

Some will say that this is a bad thing, that a cam-

era like this being used by so many people is just goingto produce a lot o 4K crap. But there has always been

crap in every ormat!

Whats important is that the tools keep gettingbetter and the choices keep getting broader. Ultimate-

ly, this benets everyone.

We are denitely on the cusp o a new era.n

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