Behind the Orange Curtain

I felt that last night’s Oscar awards show was one of the best in many years.  However, there was one truly significant event that occurred last night that many people likely missed.  Slumdog Millionaire won best Cinematography for DP Anthony Dod Mantle’s work on the film.  What many don’t know is that the majority of the film was shot on a digital camera.

Slumdog Millionaire used the revolutionary Silicon Imaging’s SI-2K camera system extensively throughout the film.  Besides offering a look that was good enough to garner the Best Cinematography award, the camera’s flexibility allowed Mr. Mantle and director Danny Boyle to get many “hidden camera” style shots that still looked great on the big screen.  Last night represented a huge leap forward for digital cinema.

Look for an exciting announcement soon about this camera being available in Orange County through Gear Monkey.  If you don’t get Gear Monkey’s newsletter, sign up for it here at the bottom of Gear Monkey’s home page.  Trust me, if you are involved with making images, you will want to take a look at this camera. 

In the meantime, take a look at an entertaining commercial piece for T-Mobile that was also shot on the SI-2K.  Enjoy.

This week’s post deals with an extremely current and poignant topic – the economy.  But more specifically, the economy and how our businesses are being affected in the film, TV and advertising communities.  I don’t know of any business in our industry that has not been affected, many significantly, by the current, unprecedented crisis.  In the current economic environment, the phrase “runaway production” has become an understatement.   The production is gone and we will now have to battle to get it back.

Production in the Los Angeles area dropped to an all time low in 2008 as companies looked out of California for cheaper solutions.  It is, in fact, off fifty percent from the high in 1996.  I attended the National Association of Television Production Executives show in Las Vegas last week.  One of the sessions that I attended dealt with the challenge of shrinking budgets and skyrocketing production costs.  During the panel discussion Emiliano Calemzuk, president of Fox Television Studios, declared that they had solved the production cost problem – they are now saving almost 50% on their budgets by sending their productions to Europe!  I about fell out of my chair.

In order for production to start returning to California, those fine folks in Sacramento need to not only complete a realistic budget, but one that has substantial incentives to bring production back to the state.  Many other states have such incentives and they are significant.  For instance, by filming a feature in Connecticut instead of Los Angeles, producers could save $21 million dollars out of a 110 million dollar budget – a 19% savings.  What would you do if you were a producer?  While California’s government contemplates things like a 10% sales tax, I would be packing my bags.

For just one example of a state that cares about production and getting as much of it as as it can, look no further that the fine state of Michigan.  I have a friend who works in our industry out of Detroit.  He said the business there is booming.  Take a look at the following link about a motion picture production facility in Pontiac, Michigan.  Many other states are looking to get production work as well. 

What will we in California do to get it back?

While the causes of runaway production are many (unfriendly production environment, out of control union costs, difficult and costly permitting process, etc.), we will all have to work together to solve this problem.  It will be much, much harder to get the work back in the face of the new competition from other states and even other countries.  

On top of this, we are all dealing with the current madness brought on by the economic meltdown.  This is the most challenging time I have seen in my more than twenty years in business.  There is plenty of work out there, it is just a matter of reminding companies that they still need to market their products if they are going to survive and getting them to commit to spend.  We can do it, but we will have to work together and work a lot smarter to get our share of the work than ever before.

Let’s find a way to get it done.

Today’s entry will focus on a very “techie” topic; codecs, compression and frame rate.  At Post Factory we do a large amount of layoffs from client’s hard drives to broadcast tape formats like Digital Betacam, HDCAM and HDCAM-SR.  One of the ongoing discussions that we tend to have with clients is the compression/codec settings of their edited sequences and the frame rate of their project.  With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of video on the Internet, there has been a lot of confusion about what settings are best.  I would like to address a couple of flawed arguments that I have dealt with over the recent years regarding this topic.

1.  Ideally, try to keep the setting of your sequence the same as that of your original footage.  More specifically, pick the best codec to digitize in and don’t change it throughout the production process.  This can be (and might be someday) the subject of an entire blog entry.  I have talked to more than a few people that edit their entire program in the DVCAM codec, then copy that sequence into a new one that is set for Uncompressed 10-bit and bring it to us – unrendered – to be laid off.  They are convinced that somehow this will improve the quality of their show.  Let me lay this to bed once and for all – it won’t.  But it will take a whole bunch of time to render and likely look worse due to increased compression artifacts.

There aren’t that many of us left that can remember the days of good old composite A/B roll editing where you were very concerned about “generation loss”, the degradation of the signal that occurs when you make successive copies of a shot in order to achieve a dissolve or more complicated effect.  Back then everyone understood that the first generation is always the best.  It didn’t get any better during the process, only worse.  The 21^st century version of generational loss occurs every time you change compression settings and re-render and just like “back in the day” it doesn’t get any better than the original.

2.  There is a big difference between what you can do on a computer and what you can do on broadcast television.  The primary lesson here is don’t bring me a 525/23.98fps sequence and ask to have it laid off.  There is no tape format that will accept those settings.  Before you start editing your project, think about how it will be distributed and plan accordingly.  You can play a 525/23.98fps QuickTime movie on a computer, just not on broadcast TV.  If you are sending your final show or spot to a station or network to be broadcast, then choose from one of the following formats:

      525/29.97fps (Digital Betcam, Betacam SP, DVCAM, DVCPRO etc.)
      720/59.94fps (DVCPROHD or HDCAM-SR)
      1080/29.97fps – aka 59.94i (HDCAM or HDCAM-SR)
      1080/23.98fps (HDCAM or HDCAM-SR)

Stay with one of these setups and you will stay out of trouble.  You can always give us a call at Post Factory before you get started with a project.  We will be glad to talk to you about the best plan for your particular situation and distribution.  Happy editing.