Brilliant, biting, and like all good satire, way too fucking true.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
I heart Scrivener
I’m a fairly disorganized person by my nature. I’m easily distracted — though I’ve never been formally diagnosed, I’m fairly certain I have ADD. My thought patterns will often skip from one thing to the next, and sometimes it can be hard to focus in.
I personally think a little mental anarchy can be good for creativity. I think it allows you to make unique and interesting connections, to synthesize old ideas into new in surprising ways (sometimes surprising even to myself, for my part). But at the same time, it’s hard to sit down and actually put things together one after the other; worse yet, it’s sometimes hard for me to keep track of where I keep all my ideas.
I have dozens of spiral notebooks and idea journals with only a few pages written upon apiece. I keep trying to get in the habit of carrying a notepad with me for when inspiration strikes, but ultimately that only results in barely-used notepads being left all over the place. I have a lot of ideas that I want to help shepherd into fully-fledged stories, but often I’ll completely forget them until I stumble across a notebook during a move or a cleaning binge. (Such a discovery will usually result in the end of said binge, as I suddenly become involved with the idea again.) Or I’ll have a great idea for a story moment that I totally forget about, but later I come across it and wonder how it’s possible to forget it since it was the solution to a major story problem.
There’s also the matter of organization. Even once I’ve got all the ideas and I think the story is there somewhere, I have a lot of trouble putting the pieces together. Like the notebooks and journals, I can’t count how many stacks of index cards I’ve bought, thinking I’d write down scenes and pin them to a corkboard and shuffle them around until the goddamn thing made sense, just like the real writers do. (I’ve even bought a corkboard, still in near-mint condition.)
But I don’t like writing by hand. It’s too slow, too clumsy. I’ve been using computers since I was three years old (and happy 25th, Apple!), I type WAY faster than I can write by hand. Cursive never took and my attempts to write that way are sheer chaos. So I prefer to work at a keyboard.
I’ve tried lots of writing tools, the ones that do the digital index cards, the ones that are supposed to help you plot the whole damn thing and have it practically ready to print when you’re done, and when it comes to writing software — really, when it comes to any software — the best program is the one that gets the hell out of your way and facilitates what you want to do. To date, the only specialized writing software I’ve really found worthwhile beyond Microsoft Word (though I’m now using Pages, it’s essentially the same thing) has been Final Draft.
I’ve been a user since Version 3, and I just love FD. Its attempts to add fancy feature sets have been spotty. The “reports” it generates can be useful, but the included auxiliary program, Final Draft Tagger, is so buggy and unreliable as to render it totally useless. But the software’s raison d’être, which is to conform your writing to accepted industry screenplay format, is a workhorse that never lets me down.
More importantly, for me, it’s functionally transparent. I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to pull down a menu item, I don’t even have to use hotkeys. If I’m not typing words, I’m either using ENTER to move to the next line, or TAB to change the input type (from “Action” to “Character,” for example, or “dialogue” to “parenthetical”). I forget that the software is there, and I just write.
A few months ago, some folks on Twitter started raving about a program called Scrivener. I checked out the webpage and wasn’t really convinced. To me it looked like just another word processor with a few extra but largely unnecessary features. Between Word/Pages and Final Draft, I figured I had it covered. I wasn’t sure I saw the benefit of a lot of the features, especially a “full-screen mode,” the prominent advertisement of which I found somewhat inexplicable. But people kept taking up the recommendation, trying it out, and raving and recommending it themselves, so I figured I might as well check the thing out.
Even after downloading, I sat on the demo for several weeks before yet more people’s positive tweets compelled me to sit down and go through the software tutorial, which walks you through the feature set and gives you a sense of what Scrivener can do.
Immediately after I finished the tutorial, I paid my $40 to get the full license — I still had 29 more days of the demo1, but I knew it was $40 well-spent. That was two days ago, and now here I am, coming full circle to recommend it to my fellow (Mac-based) writers out there.
And here’s why.
Scrivener is, in fact, not a word processor. It is actually a database management tool disguised as a word processor. Within Scrivener you can create multiple discrete documents — different chapters of a novel, or scenes of a screenplay, or each one can be a character bio, or each one just a little doodle of an idea — and you can view them together or separately, create as many as you want for whatever uses you want, all organized into folders as part of a “Draft.”
You can also import reference material such as images, video and audio files, even web pages. Once imported, they're kept locally within the Scrivener (".scriv") file, which means you can take the .scriv to any computer with Scrivener installed, and all your content will be there. You can choose to associate the reference material with certain documents or drafts — for example, Anthony likes to use certain songs as inspiration for certain scenes in his writing, so he could have the songs directly accessible from the relevant document. Likewise you can associate documents with one another, so that you can connect, say, a character bio to a scene including that character, in a sort of interconnected pseudo-Wiki to help you keep track of all your thoughts.
This all exists and is easily manipulated within the Scrivener interface, but if you look under the hood, the .scriv file is really an archive file, like a .zip, and Scrivener is the UI to dynamically adding, rearranging, and viewing the content within the archive. It does the work of creating a file structure and all of that behind the scenes, making the creation, addition, or connecting of content dynamic and creative rather than a lot of “housekeeping.”
I love that. I love that I can just throw everything I’ve got at Scrivener, and although it may be a bunch of different documents, different resources, it’s considered a single file by Scrivener, one which I can easily move around and be sure I'm not losing any of my work. I can shuffle and rework at will without worrying if I’ve forgotten something or buggered the organization, as I would do if I were maintaining the file structure myself.
One way Scrivener uses this to its advantage is with the “snapshots” feature, a smaller-scale version of OSX’s “Time Machine” function. If you’ve got a document that you want to try something new with, but you don’t want to lose your old version, you just create a “snapshot,” and you can call up or restore any snapshot at any time. You can have an effectively unlimited number of snapshots because in truth, the software is just doing an incremental save, and putting the older versions somewhere safe within the database. But from the point of view of the user, you can be sure you’re always working with the latest version, with the older versions right within reach. No more confusion over which version of the document is the most up-to-date.
Also, the fullscreen mode is, indeed, fantastic. As I said, I’m easily distracted, and while I’m writing it’s all too easy for me to go clicking on the Safari icon and checking my e-mail instead of getting the words down, or opening any other program and finding any other excuse. There’s so much on my computer I can be doing, I feel like I should be doing more things at any given moment.
So I set the fullscreen preferences in Scrivener to display green text on an otherwise black screen. The toolbar is invisible, as is the mouse arrow (unless I move it), and my fully-loaded laptop suddenly becomes a simple, old-school word processor.2 The psychological value of the visual simplicity is hard to describe, but try it and see if you don’t notice a difference in how much writing you can get done that way. I’ve actually written this whole post in Scrivener’s fullscreen mode, and enjoyed the experience tremendously.3
I’m not going to go into a full blow-by-blow of how to use the app, because there’s a tutorial for that. If you’re serious about writing, it will be well worth your while to download the free demo, and take 30 minutes or so to work along with the provided tutorial file, to get a sense of what Scrivener can do. Even try the demo for the 30 days before you make up your mind. I would guess you would quickly see how the program is worth your $40. For me, it's exactly what I've always needed.
I personally think a little mental anarchy can be good for creativity. I think it allows you to make unique and interesting connections, to synthesize old ideas into new in surprising ways (sometimes surprising even to myself, for my part). But at the same time, it’s hard to sit down and actually put things together one after the other; worse yet, it’s sometimes hard for me to keep track of where I keep all my ideas.
I have dozens of spiral notebooks and idea journals with only a few pages written upon apiece. I keep trying to get in the habit of carrying a notepad with me for when inspiration strikes, but ultimately that only results in barely-used notepads being left all over the place. I have a lot of ideas that I want to help shepherd into fully-fledged stories, but often I’ll completely forget them until I stumble across a notebook during a move or a cleaning binge. (Such a discovery will usually result in the end of said binge, as I suddenly become involved with the idea again.) Or I’ll have a great idea for a story moment that I totally forget about, but later I come across it and wonder how it’s possible to forget it since it was the solution to a major story problem.
There’s also the matter of organization. Even once I’ve got all the ideas and I think the story is there somewhere, I have a lot of trouble putting the pieces together. Like the notebooks and journals, I can’t count how many stacks of index cards I’ve bought, thinking I’d write down scenes and pin them to a corkboard and shuffle them around until the goddamn thing made sense, just like the real writers do. (I’ve even bought a corkboard, still in near-mint condition.)
But I don’t like writing by hand. It’s too slow, too clumsy. I’ve been using computers since I was three years old (and happy 25th, Apple!), I type WAY faster than I can write by hand. Cursive never took and my attempts to write that way are sheer chaos. So I prefer to work at a keyboard.
I’ve tried lots of writing tools, the ones that do the digital index cards, the ones that are supposed to help you plot the whole damn thing and have it practically ready to print when you’re done, and when it comes to writing software — really, when it comes to any software — the best program is the one that gets the hell out of your way and facilitates what you want to do. To date, the only specialized writing software I’ve really found worthwhile beyond Microsoft Word (though I’m now using Pages, it’s essentially the same thing) has been Final Draft.
I’ve been a user since Version 3, and I just love FD. Its attempts to add fancy feature sets have been spotty. The “reports” it generates can be useful, but the included auxiliary program, Final Draft Tagger, is so buggy and unreliable as to render it totally useless. But the software’s raison d’être, which is to conform your writing to accepted industry screenplay format, is a workhorse that never lets me down.
More importantly, for me, it’s functionally transparent. I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to pull down a menu item, I don’t even have to use hotkeys. If I’m not typing words, I’m either using ENTER to move to the next line, or TAB to change the input type (from “Action” to “Character,” for example, or “dialogue” to “parenthetical”). I forget that the software is there, and I just write.
A few months ago, some folks on Twitter started raving about a program called Scrivener. I checked out the webpage and wasn’t really convinced. To me it looked like just another word processor with a few extra but largely unnecessary features. Between Word/Pages and Final Draft, I figured I had it covered. I wasn’t sure I saw the benefit of a lot of the features, especially a “full-screen mode,” the prominent advertisement of which I found somewhat inexplicable. But people kept taking up the recommendation, trying it out, and raving and recommending it themselves, so I figured I might as well check the thing out.
Even after downloading, I sat on the demo for several weeks before yet more people’s positive tweets compelled me to sit down and go through the software tutorial, which walks you through the feature set and gives you a sense of what Scrivener can do.
Immediately after I finished the tutorial, I paid my $40 to get the full license — I still had 29 more days of the demo1, but I knew it was $40 well-spent. That was two days ago, and now here I am, coming full circle to recommend it to my fellow (Mac-based) writers out there.
And here’s why.
Scrivener is, in fact, not a word processor. It is actually a database management tool disguised as a word processor. Within Scrivener you can create multiple discrete documents — different chapters of a novel, or scenes of a screenplay, or each one can be a character bio, or each one just a little doodle of an idea — and you can view them together or separately, create as many as you want for whatever uses you want, all organized into folders as part of a “Draft.”
You can also import reference material such as images, video and audio files, even web pages. Once imported, they're kept locally within the Scrivener (".scriv") file, which means you can take the .scriv to any computer with Scrivener installed, and all your content will be there. You can choose to associate the reference material with certain documents or drafts — for example, Anthony likes to use certain songs as inspiration for certain scenes in his writing, so he could have the songs directly accessible from the relevant document. Likewise you can associate documents with one another, so that you can connect, say, a character bio to a scene including that character, in a sort of interconnected pseudo-Wiki to help you keep track of all your thoughts.
This all exists and is easily manipulated within the Scrivener interface, but if you look under the hood, the .scriv file is really an archive file, like a .zip, and Scrivener is the UI to dynamically adding, rearranging, and viewing the content within the archive. It does the work of creating a file structure and all of that behind the scenes, making the creation, addition, or connecting of content dynamic and creative rather than a lot of “housekeeping.”
I love that. I love that I can just throw everything I’ve got at Scrivener, and although it may be a bunch of different documents, different resources, it’s considered a single file by Scrivener, one which I can easily move around and be sure I'm not losing any of my work. I can shuffle and rework at will without worrying if I’ve forgotten something or buggered the organization, as I would do if I were maintaining the file structure myself.
One way Scrivener uses this to its advantage is with the “snapshots” feature, a smaller-scale version of OSX’s “Time Machine” function. If you’ve got a document that you want to try something new with, but you don’t want to lose your old version, you just create a “snapshot,” and you can call up or restore any snapshot at any time. You can have an effectively unlimited number of snapshots because in truth, the software is just doing an incremental save, and putting the older versions somewhere safe within the database. But from the point of view of the user, you can be sure you’re always working with the latest version, with the older versions right within reach. No more confusion over which version of the document is the most up-to-date.
Also, the fullscreen mode is, indeed, fantastic. As I said, I’m easily distracted, and while I’m writing it’s all too easy for me to go clicking on the Safari icon and checking my e-mail instead of getting the words down, or opening any other program and finding any other excuse. There’s so much on my computer I can be doing, I feel like I should be doing more things at any given moment.
So I set the fullscreen preferences in Scrivener to display green text on an otherwise black screen. The toolbar is invisible, as is the mouse arrow (unless I move it), and my fully-loaded laptop suddenly becomes a simple, old-school word processor.2 The psychological value of the visual simplicity is hard to describe, but try it and see if you don’t notice a difference in how much writing you can get done that way. I’ve actually written this whole post in Scrivener’s fullscreen mode, and enjoyed the experience tremendously.3
I’m not going to go into a full blow-by-blow of how to use the app, because there’s a tutorial for that. If you’re serious about writing, it will be well worth your while to download the free demo, and take 30 minutes or so to work along with the provided tutorial file, to get a sense of what Scrivener can do. Even try the demo for the 30 days before you make up your mind. I would guess you would quickly see how the program is worth your $40. For me, it's exactly what I've always needed.
- I discovered afterward that Scrivener's 30-day demo is "30 days of using the program." A day only counts toward the limit if you fire up the program on that day, rather than it counting 30 calendar days from first use. So if you only used Scrivener every other day, the demo lasts 60 calendar days, etc. So no need to worry about firing it up to have a play if you "won't have time" afterward -- unlike other software, the demo works around your schedule. And for the record, yes. I still would have bought the license on day 2 even if I had known.↩
- Fullscreen mode also has a “typewriter style” carriage return, in which the line of text you are currently editing is always in the middle of your screen, as opposed to most word processors where you write your way down to the bottom of the screen and stay there. It sounds like a small thing, but as with fullscreen mode in general, it’s surprising how much you appreciate it once you start rocking and rolling.↩
- There is another program which is just a word processor in fullscreen mode, called WriteRoom. WriteRoom's default scheme is the green on black, which is what compelled me to set up Scrivener the same way. If you just want the "distraction free" writing without all the other features of Scrivener, WriteRoom will get you there, although considering the pricing (WriteRoom goes for $24.95), I feel like the extra $15 for Scrivener is worth it. They're from different developers, as far as I can tell, so it's not as simple as upgrading if you change your mind.↩
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
What Just Happened...Redux
New RED announcements have come down the pipe, but first a brief update.
I have been incredibly busy, as usual. "Hella" busy, as I believe the kids are saying these days. NaNoWriMo didn't happen this year, again, because it seems like November is one of my busiest months.
Several projects that seemed to be languishing in development suddenly picked up new momentum, and I've been working on a new script of which I enjoy the idea and want to see how well I can execute it. Prioritizing these projects -- as well as juggling the ever-present Sandrima Rising -- is very difficult, especially for a relatively disorganized person like myself. The first thing I will do when I get money is hire an assistant. Not because I want to feel important, but because I seriously need someone else to keep track of my schedule for me. I'm hopeless with it.
Even though only two weeks have gone by since my last post, it's already been enough time for RED to announce that "everything had changed again," and gave a date to unveil these new announcements, December 3. The November 13 announcements, Jim Jannard assured us, were "insignificant" relative to the new announcements.
This declaration was greeted with more groans and rolled eyes than anything, I think. I tweeted a comment that's gotten some air-time in several podcasts, that "RED is the first company to have proven themselves legitimate only to then turn themselves into a vaporware company." It's all well and good that RED continues to innovate and add value to their product line, but if they don't BUILD anything then it's all academic.
It's only just December 3, but the announcements actually came out yesterday afternoon (it was Dec. 3 somewhere).
And did these announcements knock our socks off and render that long, impassioned blowjob I gave the modular DSMC system "insignificant"?
Well, no. Not really. They announced some updated specs to the current product line, and added a new upgrade path just for the true believers (i.e. RED ONE owners) in the crowd...but that was it. Don't get me wrong, the news was good, I like the new specs, and I like the new upgrade path, but this was not an announcement that needed its own pre-announcement.
Jannard and the RED team acted surprised when they weren't fellated anew by the worshipful throngs who had gathered to hear their new decrees. And it's because today's announcements weren't such a big deal that they warranted a week and a half's hype of the "it's coming" variety. My suggestion to RED: if you've got an announcement to make, make it. If you're not ready to make it, hold off. But unless you're going to do a live keynote a la Apple, stick a fork in the whole "announcing when you will make an announcement" thing (and even then, save that for NAB and/or IBC).
You've got people patrolling RedUser 24/7 as it is -- just announce something without forewarning, I promise you it will spread almost as fast. And the excitement and appreciation will be greater, because the hoi polloi won't have had weeks or months to get emotionally attached to what they think you're going to offer, only to be disappointed.
I think RED has made a great camera and, if they follow through on their promises, will make even greater ones. But if they continue drinking their own Kool-Aid as much as they are, there won't be much left for their fans.
As for the updated specs, the pre-DSMC Scarlet has more or less made a comeback. You can get a ready-to-shoot camera with a fixed lens, shooting 3K RAW footage, for just under $4000. Not quite the "3K for $3K" mantra from NAB (though they do offer the camera and lens combo for that, so they will still be able to use the slogan), but still not only an HVX-killer, but a market-segment killer. Pretty much every camera in the $3000-$10,000 range will be wiped out by the coming of Scarlet, which will offer higher resolution and higher quality than cameras even twice its price. It'll shoot up to 120fps and generally be pretty awesome.
The Full-Frame 35 Scarlet brain has dropped in price, from $12K to $9,750; the FF35 Epic likewise dropped from $35K to $33K. Instead of Redcode 42, the S35 and FF35 Scarlets now record Redcode 80 and 100, respectively. Still unclear what those numbers mean, but hey, there's MORE of them. That's got to be good, right?1
The new spec sheet basically delineates all of the available internal shooting modes -- resolution, aspect ratio, framerate, etc. -- of each brain. And 350fps at 2K is damned impressive, I have to say. But that's something you rent for anyway.
Of everything, most significant was the announcement of the Epic X package. Basically, the Epic X package takes an Epic S35 brain, packages it with everything you need to make it a functional camera system (CF, battery, and I/O modules), gives it a slightly higher-quality data rate (Redcode 250 instead of 225), and prices it the same as the Epic S35 brain alone -- $28,000. With the RED ONE full trade-in value, that's a springboard to the next generation for $10,000.
In the big pond, that's a steal.
Tempting though the package is, however, my next move as a RED owner will be dictated by the price of the accessories.
An Epic brain -- even an Epic X -- is more than I see myself needing as a general rule. I won't need the higher framerates since I don't generally go for slow motion, I won't need the higher data rates because frankly Redcode 36 is brilliant already, I won't need an anamorphic mode because I can't afford to shoot anamorphic. And if I CAN afford to shoot anamorphic, I can no doubt afford to rent an Epic.
It'd be NICE to have all those things at the flick of a switch and turn of a dial, but consider: if I'm already sanguine with raising another $10K to rise to the next level, then if the accessories necessary to make the "brains" into useful camera equipment cost $5K or so per-camera, we could get TWO Scarlet S35s for less than the price of ONE Epic X. Did somebody say stereoscopic?2
Like I said, it all depends on how much the accessories go for; and even given that, I inherited something of a gadget fetish from my dad, and having something that is "latest and greatest," "limited edition," AND "heavily discounted just for me" might be too much to resist if I can afford to not resist it.
It's more than six months until their target date, likely more than a year until their real date, so I'll have plenty of time to mull it over. And they'll have plenty of time to change it yet again.
I have been incredibly busy, as usual. "Hella" busy, as I believe the kids are saying these days. NaNoWriMo didn't happen this year, again, because it seems like November is one of my busiest months.
Several projects that seemed to be languishing in development suddenly picked up new momentum, and I've been working on a new script of which I enjoy the idea and want to see how well I can execute it. Prioritizing these projects -- as well as juggling the ever-present Sandrima Rising -- is very difficult, especially for a relatively disorganized person like myself. The first thing I will do when I get money is hire an assistant. Not because I want to feel important, but because I seriously need someone else to keep track of my schedule for me. I'm hopeless with it.
Even though only two weeks have gone by since my last post, it's already been enough time for RED to announce that "everything had changed again," and gave a date to unveil these new announcements, December 3. The November 13 announcements, Jim Jannard assured us, were "insignificant" relative to the new announcements.
This declaration was greeted with more groans and rolled eyes than anything, I think. I tweeted a comment that's gotten some air-time in several podcasts, that "RED is the first company to have proven themselves legitimate only to then turn themselves into a vaporware company." It's all well and good that RED continues to innovate and add value to their product line, but if they don't BUILD anything then it's all academic.
It's only just December 3, but the announcements actually came out yesterday afternoon (it was Dec. 3 somewhere).
And did these announcements knock our socks off and render that long, impassioned blowjob I gave the modular DSMC system "insignificant"?
Well, no. Not really. They announced some updated specs to the current product line, and added a new upgrade path just for the true believers (i.e. RED ONE owners) in the crowd...but that was it. Don't get me wrong, the news was good, I like the new specs, and I like the new upgrade path, but this was not an announcement that needed its own pre-announcement.
Jannard and the RED team acted surprised when they weren't fellated anew by the worshipful throngs who had gathered to hear their new decrees. And it's because today's announcements weren't such a big deal that they warranted a week and a half's hype of the "it's coming" variety. My suggestion to RED: if you've got an announcement to make, make it. If you're not ready to make it, hold off. But unless you're going to do a live keynote a la Apple, stick a fork in the whole "announcing when you will make an announcement" thing (and even then, save that for NAB and/or IBC).
You've got people patrolling RedUser 24/7 as it is -- just announce something without forewarning, I promise you it will spread almost as fast. And the excitement and appreciation will be greater, because the hoi polloi won't have had weeks or months to get emotionally attached to what they think you're going to offer, only to be disappointed.
I think RED has made a great camera and, if they follow through on their promises, will make even greater ones. But if they continue drinking their own Kool-Aid as much as they are, there won't be much left for their fans.
As for the updated specs, the pre-DSMC Scarlet has more or less made a comeback. You can get a ready-to-shoot camera with a fixed lens, shooting 3K RAW footage, for just under $4000. Not quite the "3K for $3K" mantra from NAB (though they do offer the camera and lens combo for that, so they will still be able to use the slogan), but still not only an HVX-killer, but a market-segment killer. Pretty much every camera in the $3000-$10,000 range will be wiped out by the coming of Scarlet, which will offer higher resolution and higher quality than cameras even twice its price. It'll shoot up to 120fps and generally be pretty awesome.
The Full-Frame 35 Scarlet brain has dropped in price, from $12K to $9,750; the FF35 Epic likewise dropped from $35K to $33K. Instead of Redcode 42, the S35 and FF35 Scarlets now record Redcode 80 and 100, respectively. Still unclear what those numbers mean, but hey, there's MORE of them. That's got to be good, right?1
The new spec sheet basically delineates all of the available internal shooting modes -- resolution, aspect ratio, framerate, etc. -- of each brain. And 350fps at 2K is damned impressive, I have to say. But that's something you rent for anyway.
Of everything, most significant was the announcement of the Epic X package. Basically, the Epic X package takes an Epic S35 brain, packages it with everything you need to make it a functional camera system (CF, battery, and I/O modules), gives it a slightly higher-quality data rate (Redcode 250 instead of 225), and prices it the same as the Epic S35 brain alone -- $28,000. With the RED ONE full trade-in value, that's a springboard to the next generation for $10,000.
In the big pond, that's a steal.
Tempting though the package is, however, my next move as a RED owner will be dictated by the price of the accessories.
An Epic brain -- even an Epic X -- is more than I see myself needing as a general rule. I won't need the higher framerates since I don't generally go for slow motion, I won't need the higher data rates because frankly Redcode 36 is brilliant already, I won't need an anamorphic mode because I can't afford to shoot anamorphic. And if I CAN afford to shoot anamorphic, I can no doubt afford to rent an Epic.
It'd be NICE to have all those things at the flick of a switch and turn of a dial, but consider: if I'm already sanguine with raising another $10K to rise to the next level, then if the accessories necessary to make the "brains" into useful camera equipment cost $5K or so per-camera, we could get TWO Scarlet S35s for less than the price of ONE Epic X. Did somebody say stereoscopic?2
Like I said, it all depends on how much the accessories go for; and even given that, I inherited something of a gadget fetish from my dad, and having something that is "latest and greatest," "limited edition," AND "heavily discounted just for me" might be too much to resist if I can afford to not resist it.
It's more than six months until their target date, likely more than a year until their real date, so I'll have plenty of time to mull it over. And they'll have plenty of time to change it yet again.
- Though the numbers may not directly correlate to filesize anymore, I think it's a safe bet that Redcode 80, 100, and up will take up significantly more space than Redcode 36. We're just going to have to put our faith in Moore's Law on this one and hope that affordable digital storage keeps pace. ↩
- I know the RED ONE full-value trade-in doesn't apply to the Scarlet brains, but I've thought of a way to make it work.↩
Thursday, November 13, 2008
What Just Happened: The Big RED Announcement
So remember my post earlier this year about how the RED camera was an awesome digital filmmaking revolution?
And remember how their NAB announcements further "changed the game"?
RED's latest announcement just bitchslapped all previous products and announcements and told them to go make it a sandwich.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, a brief timeline.
How We Got Here
At NAB 08, two new cameras were announced in the RED product line. The 3K "Scarlet" -- originally touted as a "professional pocket camera" -- and the 5K "Epic," called the "flagship of the RED family." There's been a flurry of discussion about both cameras ever since on the RED community site RedUser. Scarlet discussion, in fact, was so significant that it wound up spawning off its own dedicated discussion board, ScarletUser.
On both sites, requests for features -- both "reasonable" and "unreasonable" -- were made by the community, changes and revisions made by RED, and while not everyone was thrilled by every aspect of either camera, the forums were buzzing all through the spring and summer.
Then, in September 2008, several announcements came in quick succession from Jim Jannard -- founder of RED and wacky billionaire extraordinaire -- on the RedUser forum.
The first, posted on September 8, announced a "DSLR-killer" that was tentatively called a DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera). Speculation as to what this could mean -- and in particular, where the DSMC sat in relation to the Scarlet, specification-wise -- immediately erupted. Scarlet had a 2/3" sensor, after all, whereas to even play in the DSLR sandbox the DSMC would have to be a 35mm sensor, to say nothing of the planned "fixed lens" on Scarlet, when the DSMC would need to be swappable. So it sounded like the DSMC would pretty much trounce Scarlet spec-wise; but if it were more expensive than Scarlet's speculated $3K price point, it would be too expensive to be much of a competitor, let alone a "killer," of the DSLR market.
I personally was already confused by what seemed to me to be significant market overlap between the Epic and the Red One -- now RED seemed to be stepping on their own toes again. It just didn't make much sense.
Three days later, on September 11, Jannard posted a message stating simply that "Epic...has changed." Eleven days after that, on ScarletUser, Jannard announced that Scarlet, similarly, was "not the same," and that everything we "knew" about Scarlet should be wiped from our memories. He later made the same "clean slate" statement regarding Epic. Renders and spec pages of both products were pulled from the RED company website, replaced with temporary images stating that they were "Currently Undergoing Change."
When it was pointed out that no mention had been made of where the DSMC sat in these plans, Jim gave the cryptic answer, "What's a DSMC?"
Based on all that, it was assumed by many in the RED-aware community, myself included, that RED had realized that Epic needed to be more distinct from Red One and were re-tooling it, and likewise had absorbed the DSMC into a revised Scarlet concept.
Finally, Jim announced that all would be made clear on November 13th. Why that date? Who knows. But the RED community -- and really, much of the digital filmmaking community -- has been looking toward the day with some degree of anticipation or other.
So now the day is here. And as of 1:41 AM, all has indeed been made clear.
What Just Happened
The most significant element of the announcement, as it turns out, is the DSMC. If the concept started life as a distinct, stand-alone product, it has since evolved into the over-arching philosophy for the foreseeable future of RED's product line.
Standard practice for electronics manufacturers is to build a full-featured device -- in this case a camera. The commonly understood drawback being that the device is obsolete nearly the moment you buy it. Technological advancement has created an improvement in the sensor, or the processing, or the monitoring, even an improvement in form factor -- whatever it is, it will require that the manufacturer create a completely new device, and you must buy it again.
This also tends to mean that updated devices come every 12-18 months, since manufacturers don't want to constantly be revising their product line. So they wait for a "backlog" of improvements to build up, enough that they can justify creating a new product and you, the buyer, can justify ponying up the dough again.
The DSMC model does things differently.
RED's plan moving forward is to produce not cameras, but components of cameras, which can be configured and re-configured almost infinitely1. You can buy one set of components and be able to make a still camera, a movie camera, a shoulder-mounted camera, and even a 3D rig. You are not locked in to the configuration that they think is most "optimized" for the most situations. You decide.
On top of that, because the camera is modular in every way, including the sensor (which I'll get to in a second), you also don't have to wait for technological advances to reach critical mass before upgrading to the latest and greatest. If a better LCD monitor comes out, you can buy that and integrate it into your configurations without losing the investment on the rest of the components. A lot of the non-electronic components -- the grips, the shoulder-pads, the mounting rods -- will rarely or never need an "upgrade," so it's senseless to buy all those bits anew when the electronics are improved. Thanks to the modular DSMC system, you no longer have to.
The concept, like all revolutionary ideas, is forehead-slappingly obvious once someone comes out and does it. And to be fair, it's not a completely new concept -- to RED. This is essentially what the Red One was intended to be, but they couldn't quite make it happen.
But hey, the camera makes pretty pictures and if it was a necessary step to take on the path to developing the DSMC system, then I am happy to forgive.
As I said, the system is totally modular, and that includes the sensor. Not only was DSMC not absorbed into Scarlet, but as it turns out, both Scarlet and Epic were absorbed into the DSMC philosophy.
One of the issues that restricted the intended modularity of the Red One was the fact that some parts were easier to upgrade than others. For example, the camera can only record 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. This is not a restriction of the sensor, which can be upgraded and swapped out relatively easily (by trained technicians), but of the camera's internal motherboard which processes the imagery, which cannot be upgraded.
So when it comes to the DSMC, rather than simply selling swappable sensors and wishing the users best of luck, RED will package the sensors with the necessary electronics to record, encode, and control the imagery from those specific sensors, and swappable lens mounts. They call these modules "Brains," and like the other elements they are fully swappable modules. So instead of Scarlet and Epic being individual cameras, they are two lines of Brain modules, and they break down like this.
Scarlet
Scarlet Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:
Epic
Fair warning: if you understand even some of what I'm saying here, the specs of the Epic Brains may explode yours.
Epic Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:
I complained last time that they shouldn't be calling a camera Epic unless it basically shoots 65mm/IMAX format -- and they've answered that. Not only that, but they threw in one more format, one that makes IMAX its bitch.
Red One's 4K is already four times bigger than your 1080p HDTV. How big is 28K compared to that? Stu Maschwitz did a comparison on his Prolost blog.
If that's still too abstract, lay a 14-story office building on its side in your mind. That's roughly the fucking native resolution of 28K.4
It's basically a digital, motion-capable version of this camera. The obvious question arises: Why in the hell would you port such a camera format to the digital realm at all, much less at such blasphemous resolutions?
The best I can figure is that this is RED's way of telling me and people like me -- folks that thought we were hot shit calling for RED to step up to the IMAX plate after getting moist at a Dark Knight screening, folks that said that we knew what was "epic," we had seen "epic," and 5K Super-35, good sir, was not "epic" -- that we may feel free to shut our goddamned sissy mouths, and mince our dainty way out of RED Epic's sight.
So What Does All This Mean?
I remember being taught in science class that every cell of your body eventually dies, and is replaced by a new cell. Eventually this happens to every cell in your body, so that after a certain period of time -- as I recall it was a cycle of seven years -- your body is comprised of entirely new cells. After seven years, there is no cell in your body that was there seven years ago. They have all been replaced. But "you" are still "you."
Metaphysical implications aside, this is basically what the DSMC philosophy will mean to the RED camera, starting when it is implemented in (tentatively) Spring/Summer '09. You only have to buy "one camera," and from that point on it is only the components that change. And by the end of it you may have a completely different camera than the one you started with, but your investment and upgrading is spread out over the life of the camera, and you hardly notice.
Even better, with rental solutions you can upgrade your camera temporarily as needed. Say you invest in a package with a 5K Scarlet Brain, as it's most cost-effective, but you decide you want to shoot slow-motion at higher frame-rates than 30 fps. Outside a DSMC model, you would have to rent an entire camera package -- whether it be a Phantom or other high-speed camera, or even an old-style Epic -- the format and image quality and resolution may not match, they may not cut together, and it may bugger the whole pipeline.
But with swappable Brains, you can shoot with the 5K Scarlet, then if you want to shoot high-speed you rent a 5K Epic Brain for a day and swap it in for the high-speed shots. It's all REDCODE, it's all Super-35, all 5K with the same compression type (though quite a bit less on the Epic) and same lenses, and you never even have to change the accessory configuration.
And if (when), down the line, higher framerates or data rates or resolutions become a possibility, you can just rent or buy those new modules, and keep on shooting like nothing's changed.
The example I gave above is, basically, what I plan to do. When the DSMC system becomes available, I will sell my Red One + accessories and use the money to purchase a DSMC package with a 5K Scarlet brain -- I don't know how much those accessories will cost, but more than likely, it will probably be cheaper out the door than my current RED package. I will rent an Epic 5K brain for high-speed shooting, and otherwise be happy with a camera that completely out-specs a camera with which I am already quite happy.
The Editblog has dubbed today "REDmas," and though it's meant to be a bit of a nudge in the ribs at the TOTAL fanboyism and anticipation leading up to this day, I think it is still somewhat appropriate. Especially since, for me, the day is still not over.
Our friends at fxguide/Red Centre have asked me to attend a private RED event on their behalf this evening, where we will be able to talk to the RED peeps, ask some questions, and hopefully get some pictures and even maybe get our hands on some prototypes. Keep your eye on fxguide for the story, and if there's any new insight that impacts what I've said here, I'll do an update post here too.
Finally, the obligatory disclaimer: for all the excitement and profanity this talk has brought out of me, these are currently just plans and specs and CAD renders. None of this actually exists and it's possible that none of it ever will, whether by RED not following through or just changing their minds -- as they've already done once. But they did follow through on the Red One, so they've earned some faith from me.
And remember how their NAB announcements further "changed the game"?
RED's latest announcement just bitchslapped all previous products and announcements and told them to go make it a sandwich.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, a brief timeline.
How We Got Here
At NAB 08, two new cameras were announced in the RED product line. The 3K "Scarlet" -- originally touted as a "professional pocket camera" -- and the 5K "Epic," called the "flagship of the RED family." There's been a flurry of discussion about both cameras ever since on the RED community site RedUser. Scarlet discussion, in fact, was so significant that it wound up spawning off its own dedicated discussion board, ScarletUser.
On both sites, requests for features -- both "reasonable" and "unreasonable" -- were made by the community, changes and revisions made by RED, and while not everyone was thrilled by every aspect of either camera, the forums were buzzing all through the spring and summer.
Then, in September 2008, several announcements came in quick succession from Jim Jannard -- founder of RED and wacky billionaire extraordinaire -- on the RedUser forum.
The first, posted on September 8, announced a "DSLR-killer" that was tentatively called a DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera). Speculation as to what this could mean -- and in particular, where the DSMC sat in relation to the Scarlet, specification-wise -- immediately erupted. Scarlet had a 2/3" sensor, after all, whereas to even play in the DSLR sandbox the DSMC would have to be a 35mm sensor, to say nothing of the planned "fixed lens" on Scarlet, when the DSMC would need to be swappable. So it sounded like the DSMC would pretty much trounce Scarlet spec-wise; but if it were more expensive than Scarlet's speculated $3K price point, it would be too expensive to be much of a competitor, let alone a "killer," of the DSLR market.
I personally was already confused by what seemed to me to be significant market overlap between the Epic and the Red One -- now RED seemed to be stepping on their own toes again. It just didn't make much sense.
Three days later, on September 11, Jannard posted a message stating simply that "Epic...has changed." Eleven days after that, on ScarletUser, Jannard announced that Scarlet, similarly, was "not the same," and that everything we "knew" about Scarlet should be wiped from our memories. He later made the same "clean slate" statement regarding Epic. Renders and spec pages of both products were pulled from the RED company website, replaced with temporary images stating that they were "Currently Undergoing Change."
When it was pointed out that no mention had been made of where the DSMC sat in these plans, Jim gave the cryptic answer, "What's a DSMC?"
Based on all that, it was assumed by many in the RED-aware community, myself included, that RED had realized that Epic needed to be more distinct from Red One and were re-tooling it, and likewise had absorbed the DSMC into a revised Scarlet concept.
Finally, Jim announced that all would be made clear on November 13th. Why that date? Who knows. But the RED community -- and really, much of the digital filmmaking community -- has been looking toward the day with some degree of anticipation or other.
So now the day is here. And as of 1:41 AM, all has indeed been made clear.
What Just Happened
The most significant element of the announcement, as it turns out, is the DSMC. If the concept started life as a distinct, stand-alone product, it has since evolved into the over-arching philosophy for the foreseeable future of RED's product line.
Standard practice for electronics manufacturers is to build a full-featured device -- in this case a camera. The commonly understood drawback being that the device is obsolete nearly the moment you buy it. Technological advancement has created an improvement in the sensor, or the processing, or the monitoring, even an improvement in form factor -- whatever it is, it will require that the manufacturer create a completely new device, and you must buy it again.
This also tends to mean that updated devices come every 12-18 months, since manufacturers don't want to constantly be revising their product line. So they wait for a "backlog" of improvements to build up, enough that they can justify creating a new product and you, the buyer, can justify ponying up the dough again.
The DSMC model does things differently.
RED's plan moving forward is to produce not cameras, but components of cameras, which can be configured and re-configured almost infinitely1. You can buy one set of components and be able to make a still camera, a movie camera, a shoulder-mounted camera, and even a 3D rig. You are not locked in to the configuration that they think is most "optimized" for the most situations. You decide.
On top of that, because the camera is modular in every way, including the sensor (which I'll get to in a second), you also don't have to wait for technological advances to reach critical mass before upgrading to the latest and greatest. If a better LCD monitor comes out, you can buy that and integrate it into your configurations without losing the investment on the rest of the components. A lot of the non-electronic components -- the grips, the shoulder-pads, the mounting rods -- will rarely or never need an "upgrade," so it's senseless to buy all those bits anew when the electronics are improved. Thanks to the modular DSMC system, you no longer have to.
The concept, like all revolutionary ideas, is forehead-slappingly obvious once someone comes out and does it. And to be fair, it's not a completely new concept -- to RED. This is essentially what the Red One was intended to be, but they couldn't quite make it happen.
But hey, the camera makes pretty pictures and if it was a necessary step to take on the path to developing the DSMC system, then I am happy to forgive.
As I said, the system is totally modular, and that includes the sensor. Not only was DSMC not absorbed into Scarlet, but as it turns out, both Scarlet and Epic were absorbed into the DSMC philosophy.
One of the issues that restricted the intended modularity of the Red One was the fact that some parts were easier to upgrade than others. For example, the camera can only record 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. This is not a restriction of the sensor, which can be upgraded and swapped out relatively easily (by trained technicians), but of the camera's internal motherboard which processes the imagery, which cannot be upgraded.
So when it comes to the DSMC, rather than simply selling swappable sensors and wishing the users best of luck, RED will package the sensors with the necessary electronics to record, encode, and control the imagery from those specific sensors, and swappable lens mounts. They call these modules "Brains," and like the other elements they are fully swappable modules. So instead of Scarlet and Epic being individual cameras, they are two lines of Brain modules, and they break down like this.
Scarlet
Scarlet Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:
All Scarlet Brains will record a data-rate of 42 MB/sec (compared to Red One's 36 MB/sec).2/3" Mysterium-X Sensor,2 3K resolution, 1-120 fps recording, $2,5003 Super-35 Mysterium-X Sensor, 5K resolution, 1-30 fps recording, $7,000 Full-Frame 35 Monstro Sensor, 6K resolution, 1-30 fps recording, $12,000
Epic
Fair warning: if you understand even some of what I'm saying here, the specs of the Epic Brains may explode yours.
Epic Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:
These Epic Brains will record a data-rate of 225 MB/sec -- that's a 625% increase in data rate, and hopefully therefore quality, over Red One.Super-35 Mysterium-X Sensor, 5K resolution, 1-100 fps recording, $28,000 Full-Frame 35 Monstro Sensor, 6K resolution, 1-100 fps recording, $35,000 Medium-Format 645 (basically IMAX) Monstro Sensor, 9K resolution, 1-50 fps recording, $45,000
I complained last time that they shouldn't be calling a camera Epic unless it basically shoots 65mm/IMAX format -- and they've answered that. Not only that, but they threw in one more format, one that makes IMAX its bitch.
Yes, you fucking heard me right. I said 28K. And it'll record at a computer-pulverizing 500 MB/sec.Technorama 617 Monstro Sensor, 28K resolution, 1-25 fps, $55,000
Red One's 4K is already four times bigger than your 1080p HDTV. How big is 28K compared to that? Stu Maschwitz did a comparison on his Prolost blog.
If that's still too abstract, lay a 14-story office building on its side in your mind. That's roughly the fucking native resolution of 28K.4
It's basically a digital, motion-capable version of this camera. The obvious question arises: Why in the hell would you port such a camera format to the digital realm at all, much less at such blasphemous resolutions?
The best I can figure is that this is RED's way of telling me and people like me -- folks that thought we were hot shit calling for RED to step up to the IMAX plate after getting moist at a Dark Knight screening, folks that said that we knew what was "epic," we had seen "epic," and 5K Super-35, good sir, was not "epic" -- that we may feel free to shut our goddamned sissy mouths, and mince our dainty way out of RED Epic's sight.
So What Does All This Mean?
I remember being taught in science class that every cell of your body eventually dies, and is replaced by a new cell. Eventually this happens to every cell in your body, so that after a certain period of time -- as I recall it was a cycle of seven years -- your body is comprised of entirely new cells. After seven years, there is no cell in your body that was there seven years ago. They have all been replaced. But "you" are still "you."
Metaphysical implications aside, this is basically what the DSMC philosophy will mean to the RED camera, starting when it is implemented in (tentatively) Spring/Summer '09. You only have to buy "one camera," and from that point on it is only the components that change. And by the end of it you may have a completely different camera than the one you started with, but your investment and upgrading is spread out over the life of the camera, and you hardly notice.
Even better, with rental solutions you can upgrade your camera temporarily as needed. Say you invest in a package with a 5K Scarlet Brain, as it's most cost-effective, but you decide you want to shoot slow-motion at higher frame-rates than 30 fps. Outside a DSMC model, you would have to rent an entire camera package -- whether it be a Phantom or other high-speed camera, or even an old-style Epic -- the format and image quality and resolution may not match, they may not cut together, and it may bugger the whole pipeline.
But with swappable Brains, you can shoot with the 5K Scarlet, then if you want to shoot high-speed you rent a 5K Epic Brain for a day and swap it in for the high-speed shots. It's all REDCODE, it's all Super-35, all 5K with the same compression type (though quite a bit less on the Epic) and same lenses, and you never even have to change the accessory configuration.
And if (when), down the line, higher framerates or data rates or resolutions become a possibility, you can just rent or buy those new modules, and keep on shooting like nothing's changed.
The example I gave above is, basically, what I plan to do. When the DSMC system becomes available, I will sell my Red One + accessories and use the money to purchase a DSMC package with a 5K Scarlet brain -- I don't know how much those accessories will cost, but more than likely, it will probably be cheaper out the door than my current RED package. I will rent an Epic 5K brain for high-speed shooting, and otherwise be happy with a camera that completely out-specs a camera with which I am already quite happy.
The Editblog has dubbed today "REDmas," and though it's meant to be a bit of a nudge in the ribs at the TOTAL fanboyism and anticipation leading up to this day, I think it is still somewhat appropriate. Especially since, for me, the day is still not over.
Our friends at fxguide/Red Centre have asked me to attend a private RED event on their behalf this evening, where we will be able to talk to the RED peeps, ask some questions, and hopefully get some pictures and even maybe get our hands on some prototypes. Keep your eye on fxguide for the story, and if there's any new insight that impacts what I've said here, I'll do an update post here too.
Finally, the obligatory disclaimer: for all the excitement and profanity this talk has brought out of me, these are currently just plans and specs and CAD renders. None of this actually exists and it's possible that none of it ever will, whether by RED not following through or just changing their minds -- as they've already done once. But they did follow through on the Red One, so they've earned some faith from me.
- Their marketing material claims 2,251,799,813,685,248 possible configurations based on the planned accessories; don't ask me how they got that number, they may have just made it up, but even if they did, it still makes the point pretty strongly.↩
- RED's first sensor was, and is, the Mysterium. Mysterium-X is the second generation, with improved dynamic range (11+ stops to Mysterium's 10+). Monstro is the third generation, with both improved dynamic range (13+ stops) and improved bit depth (16 bits to Mysterium and Mysterium-X's 12 bits).↩
- There is, at this time, still a plan to have a self-contained Scarlet with an included, fixed lens with this same "Brain" config, pricing TBD.↩
- Sorry if the cursing is a little more excessive than usual, but seriously. Fuck.↩
Monday, June 09, 2008
Thoughts on the new iPhone: Moore's Law in Action
As we have been hearing and anticipating for the last six months (if not more), Apple has been developing and is finally ready to release their 3G iPhone, with GPS.
Last year I bought an 8GB, first-generation iPhone the day they were released. It cost me $599, although they later dropped the price and gave me $100 in Apple Buxx1 for being an early adopter. 8GB was as big as they came, and the EDGE network was sort of like dial-up speed-wise.
Today they announced their 16GB iPhone, with 3G (technically almost 3 times faster than EDGE, though we'll see what happens when a half-billion iPhone users are all checking Twitter at the same time), true GPS (none of this cell-tower triangulation ghetto-ness), and a $299 price tag -- as they say, twice the speed, twice the storage, half the price.
This follows perfectly with Moore's Law and, as such, I'm perfectly sanguine with it. As a matter of fact I think this is a little faster -- Moore's Law, depending on the version, is either 18 months to two years -- but the point is the same. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I bought the first gen iPhone. I knew that I was spending way more money than if I waited a year, for fewer features than if I waited a year.
But my iPhone has been so valuable to me over the last year, I would have made the same choice knowing what I know. The ability to load videos on the phone has been huge for me, both as a filmmaker and a film watcher. The touch screen was, as expected, a revelation, and the ability to check the web anywhere, at any time, has changed everything. Sure, it was slow, but it was available where it wasn't before.
I would not part with my iPhone for the world, and with the new generation coming in at half the price, it feels more like a bonus than a slight. I was prepared to pay what I consider "full price" for it, and now I'm paying half that.
Keep it up, Apple. I'm happy with it as it is and it will only get better.
Last year I bought an 8GB, first-generation iPhone the day they were released. It cost me $599, although they later dropped the price and gave me $100 in Apple Buxx1 for being an early adopter. 8GB was as big as they came, and the EDGE network was sort of like dial-up speed-wise.
Today they announced their 16GB iPhone, with 3G (technically almost 3 times faster than EDGE, though we'll see what happens when a half-billion iPhone users are all checking Twitter at the same time), true GPS (none of this cell-tower triangulation ghetto-ness), and a $299 price tag -- as they say, twice the speed, twice the storage, half the price.
This follows perfectly with Moore's Law and, as such, I'm perfectly sanguine with it. As a matter of fact I think this is a little faster -- Moore's Law, depending on the version, is either 18 months to two years -- but the point is the same. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I bought the first gen iPhone. I knew that I was spending way more money than if I waited a year, for fewer features than if I waited a year.
But my iPhone has been so valuable to me over the last year, I would have made the same choice knowing what I know. The ability to load videos on the phone has been huge for me, both as a filmmaker and a film watcher. The touch screen was, as expected, a revelation, and the ability to check the web anywhere, at any time, has changed everything. Sure, it was slow, but it was available where it wasn't before.
I would not part with my iPhone for the world, and with the new generation coming in at half the price, it feels more like a bonus than a slight. I was prepared to pay what I consider "full price" for it, and now I'm paying half that.
Keep it up, Apple. I'm happy with it as it is and it will only get better.
- That's not really what they called it, but they should have. Fire your marketing, Apple. What have they done for YOU besides brought you back from the brink of obsolescence and bankruptcy to take back a significant share in both the professional and consumer computer and electronics markets? I said besides that.↩
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Tripod Man
I was going to blog about 3D/Stereoscopic filmmaking today, but I'll save that for later, and instead share an anecdote that happened to me yesterday.
Having gotten an uber-loan for my RED, I'm in the process of actually spending all this money on the equipment that I borrowed the money for in the first place. And let me tell something to all the folks in the "DV Rebel" tier that I'm springboarding from: these ain't your momma's tripods.
I come from a place where cameras weigh, like, 5 pounds on the outside, and you can buy a Bogen tripod and get decent results with it. Though admittedly most of the time you end up going handheld anyway, because you want to move the camera and you can't afford a dolly/jib.
The RED camera body is 10lbs, and that's just the body. By the time you add batteries, rails, lens, mattebox, follow focus, EVF, monitor, and drives, you could be looking at upwards of 40lbs for the camera, at about $1K per pound. You're not going to pop that onto a $300 still-camera tripod and hope it holds.
I also want the camera to get some play in the rental market, and an unspoken evaluation of one's "package" seems to be the quality of your "sticks" (the innuendo is lost on neither of us). But the fact is, if you want professionals to take your camera rental package seriously, you've gotta have serious camera support.
I found a place that has a bundle package specifically designed for owners of the RED camera, based on feedback from RED owners on what they're glad they bought and what they wished they hadn't. The package was under a discounted rate as a bundle, so not only did I happen to get a package which contained EVERYTHING I was already planning to buy, at a discounted rate, but they also threw in carrying cases for the equipment. It's like the carrying cases cost me negative money, because I saved a couple thousand off what I planned to buy and got them on top of it all.1
I'm buying the O'Connor Ultimate 2060HD Fluid Head with 150mm Ball Mount, on the O'Connor Cine HD aluminum tripod sticks, also with ball mount. Apparently at this level of equipment, you buy the tripod head separately from the tripod legs. The tripod head can then be taken off the sticks and thrown on a dolly, jib, crane, "hi-hat", etc. as necessary.
There are two kinds of mounts.2 There are ball mounts, which allow you to rotate the bottom of the tripod and level it on potentially uneven surfaces, and there are Mitchell mounts, which are solid, flat connections that expect a level surface. And it's regarding this choice of mounts that I wanted to tell a little story.
I was at the reseller and putting the package together, and another customer there and I started making conversation. He had been a focus puller for 13 years before making the move to DP, and he asked what kind of mount I was getting on my tripod. I told him I was getting the ball mount, then admitted that I had no idea what the pros and cons were in either direction.
There are two ways someone can respond to that. The amateur version is to roll your eyes and start off with "You DON'T KNOW..." and then launch into a condescending explanation, while all the while giving off an air that you're doing me a favor digging into these totally basic depths of your knowledge.
The professional version is to explain the facts based on one's experience, with a view towards helping someone else understand the same things you do.
This guy was a professional. He spent a good fifteen minutes weighing the pros and cons of the two different tripod mounts for me. He was ultimately a Mitchell man, and said that most of the rented equipment that you'll find on a film set, such as cranes and dollies, will come with Mitchell mounts. So for interoperability and speed of use, he was all about Mitchell. He even went so far as to inquire into whether or not I would have the option to swap the mount, or if my ball mount could be adapted to a Mitchell.3
Two things about the guy struck me. Well, really one, but it manifested in two ways.
First of all, the guy was a focus puller for 13 years. Think about that. For 13 years his main job was to stand next to a film camera and make sure the shot was in focus. And make no mistake, that is a crucial job on a movie set, and requires a hell of a lot of technical know-how and skill, but it's hardly glamorous -- even by the already unglamorous standards of below-the-line film labor. Now, the focus puller is also known as the 1st AC, a more hoity-toity title, but also a more appropriate one, as he is essentially in charge of keeping the camera loaded, clean, and running. The fact that he was a 1st AC for 13 years, and willing to downplay it by saying "focus puller" instead, tells me that what we've got is a man who just loves being in the movies.
Likewise, his passion for tripod mounts was both amusing and moving. Again, here's a guy who cares so much about something that is both incredibly important (for what we do), and incredibly obscure. A guy who just loves being a part of the art and business of movies, and loves sharing what he knows with others.
I love meeting people like that.
Having gotten an uber-loan for my RED, I'm in the process of actually spending all this money on the equipment that I borrowed the money for in the first place. And let me tell something to all the folks in the "DV Rebel" tier that I'm springboarding from: these ain't your momma's tripods.
I come from a place where cameras weigh, like, 5 pounds on the outside, and you can buy a Bogen tripod and get decent results with it. Though admittedly most of the time you end up going handheld anyway, because you want to move the camera and you can't afford a dolly/jib.
The RED camera body is 10lbs, and that's just the body. By the time you add batteries, rails, lens, mattebox, follow focus, EVF, monitor, and drives, you could be looking at upwards of 40lbs for the camera, at about $1K per pound. You're not going to pop that onto a $300 still-camera tripod and hope it holds.
I also want the camera to get some play in the rental market, and an unspoken evaluation of one's "package" seems to be the quality of your "sticks" (the innuendo is lost on neither of us). But the fact is, if you want professionals to take your camera rental package seriously, you've gotta have serious camera support.
I found a place that has a bundle package specifically designed for owners of the RED camera, based on feedback from RED owners on what they're glad they bought and what they wished they hadn't. The package was under a discounted rate as a bundle, so not only did I happen to get a package which contained EVERYTHING I was already planning to buy, at a discounted rate, but they also threw in carrying cases for the equipment. It's like the carrying cases cost me negative money, because I saved a couple thousand off what I planned to buy and got them on top of it all.1
I'm buying the O'Connor Ultimate 2060HD Fluid Head with 150mm Ball Mount, on the O'Connor Cine HD aluminum tripod sticks, also with ball mount. Apparently at this level of equipment, you buy the tripod head separately from the tripod legs. The tripod head can then be taken off the sticks and thrown on a dolly, jib, crane, "hi-hat", etc. as necessary.
There are two kinds of mounts.2 There are ball mounts, which allow you to rotate the bottom of the tripod and level it on potentially uneven surfaces, and there are Mitchell mounts, which are solid, flat connections that expect a level surface. And it's regarding this choice of mounts that I wanted to tell a little story.
I was at the reseller and putting the package together, and another customer there and I started making conversation. He had been a focus puller for 13 years before making the move to DP, and he asked what kind of mount I was getting on my tripod. I told him I was getting the ball mount, then admitted that I had no idea what the pros and cons were in either direction.
There are two ways someone can respond to that. The amateur version is to roll your eyes and start off with "You DON'T KNOW..." and then launch into a condescending explanation, while all the while giving off an air that you're doing me a favor digging into these totally basic depths of your knowledge.
The professional version is to explain the facts based on one's experience, with a view towards helping someone else understand the same things you do.
This guy was a professional. He spent a good fifteen minutes weighing the pros and cons of the two different tripod mounts for me. He was ultimately a Mitchell man, and said that most of the rented equipment that you'll find on a film set, such as cranes and dollies, will come with Mitchell mounts. So for interoperability and speed of use, he was all about Mitchell. He even went so far as to inquire into whether or not I would have the option to swap the mount, or if my ball mount could be adapted to a Mitchell.3
Two things about the guy struck me. Well, really one, but it manifested in two ways.
First of all, the guy was a focus puller for 13 years. Think about that. For 13 years his main job was to stand next to a film camera and make sure the shot was in focus. And make no mistake, that is a crucial job on a movie set, and requires a hell of a lot of technical know-how and skill, but it's hardly glamorous -- even by the already unglamorous standards of below-the-line film labor. Now, the focus puller is also known as the 1st AC, a more hoity-toity title, but also a more appropriate one, as he is essentially in charge of keeping the camera loaded, clean, and running. The fact that he was a 1st AC for 13 years, and willing to downplay it by saying "focus puller" instead, tells me that what we've got is a man who just loves being in the movies.
Likewise, his passion for tripod mounts was both amusing and moving. Again, here's a guy who cares so much about something that is both incredibly important (for what we do), and incredibly obscure. A guy who just loves being a part of the art and business of movies, and loves sharing what he knows with others.
I love meeting people like that.
- I won't quote the price here, but the company was Abel Cine Tech. If you're a RED owner or plan to be one soon, call them for bundle pricing and availability. It's still in the many-thousands-of-dollars range, but it's pro equipment for a discounted rate, and the cheapest I found anywhere.↩
- "Package", "sticks", "mounts", yes. Freud would have a lot to say about tripod terminology. ↩
- As it turns out, the O'Connor 2060HD comes with a Mitchell mount, to which the ball mount attaches. In purchasing the ball mount version, I am effectively purchasing both, which is the best of both worlds.↩
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
NAB Rundown
NAB is still going on out in Vegas, but I'm home in L.A. as of 3 A.M. this morning. Which was probably a mistake -- the big Final Cut Pro User Group Super Meet is happening tonight and I would have liked to go -- but I couldn't justify another $100 night out of town when I've got so much to get done.
But people have been asking my thoughts on some of the big announcements at NAB:
Scarlet: RED's new 3K, "pocket" camera. Fixed lens, 2/3" sensor, REDCODE RAW to flash media, up to 120fps recording with 180fps possible in "burst" mode.
This is not only an HVX-killer, it's an everything-in-this-market-segment-and-the-one-above-it killer. Assuming the increased dynamic range that's being rumored with the new Mysterium X sensor, the only thing keeping this camera (which RED says will retail for under $3,000: "3K under $3K") from destroying a huge chunk of the high-end camera market -- including the Sony F23 and Viper FilmStream -- will be the fixed lens.
Will we have a use for it? At that price, with those specs, no one with even a semi-serious interest in filmmaking/shooting can afford not to have it. It's not the RED ONE, it's not going to get 35mm depth of field, but it's a massive step up from the HVX at HALF the price.
I'm aware that Panasonic has come out with two new solid-state cameras, as replacements for the DVX and the HVX. HD, heavily compressed (the HVX replacement DVCPRO HD, the DVX replacement the MPEG-2-based AVCHD), proprietary P2 card format, 1/3" sensors, tops out at 60fps recording, and that only in 720p mode, and even the cheaper one costs more than Scarlet. They might as well pack up and go home. And don't get me wrong, I love Panasonic to death. They made 24p happen in the prosumer market. But Scarlet fucks them raw.
Likewise Sony, with their announcement of the EX3. HD resolution, 1/2" sensor, solid state recording. Lame, lame, same as Scarlet. The only thing the EX3 has that Scarlet doesn't is the option for interchangeable lenses. But is that worth the $10,000 difference in price to most lo/no-budget shooters? I didn't think so.
Epic: 5K, Super35 format. Up to 100fps at full-frame 5K resolution.
This one makes less sense to me than Scarlet does, and even with RED's exceedingly generous and, I have a feeling, unprecedented upgrade path -- buy a RED ONE now for $17,500, and trade it in towards the cost of an Epic next year at full, non-depreciated cash value as long as it still "works" -- the $40K price tag makes it unlikely too many people will jump on that ship.
Based on the limited specs released so far, the Epic will boast the new Mysterium X sensor, meaning greater dynamic range, higher possible framerates, and higher possible bit rates. The thing is, Jim Jannard (founder/owner of RED) has stated that around the same time that Epic/Scarlet start shipping, R1 owners will receive a sensor upgrade as well. I'm sure the upgrade won't be free, probably a couple thousand, but it will put a Mysterium X in your R1 -- gaining you the dynamic range, frame rates, and bit rates, presumably.
So what's Epic for, at that point? 5K recording? Call me unimaginative, but I don't see what use 5K is when we don't even have reasonable workflows for 4K yet, and most films shot on 35mm even today only scan/master in 2K.
Epic, as far as is known right now, is a camera with a 40% reduction in weight and a relatively unnecessary 40% boost in resolution from the flagship R1. Not that both of those things aren't great, BUT, when you factor in that even with a full-value R1 trade in, and subtracting the money you'd pay anyway for an R1 sensor upgrade, you're still looking at another $19,000 or so to pick up an Epic, I really don't think anything I've seen, thus far, would be worth that, when you could grab another R1 body for the same price.
I personally think it would make more sense if Epic were a 65mm equivalent camera instead of Super35. For one thing, it's the format that a lot of the old school epics were actually shot on. Films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Ten Commandments1, 2001, and Ben-Hur. If you've ever been on a movie-ride like the recently closed Back to the Future at Universal Studios, or 3D "spectaculars" like T2-3D: Battle Across Time (also at Universal), you've seen imagery shot on the 65mm format.2
It's also basically the format of IMAX production, and in that may be facing a resurgence. Christopher Nolan was so impressed by the IMAX presentation of Batman Begins, scaled-up digitally with high-quality algorithms, that he committed to actually shoot chunks of its sequel, The Dark Knight, directly to the IMAX format.
Unlike a mere boost to 5K, an affordable Digital65 camera genuinely creates a whole new market tier, AND a good reason for the additional resolution boost. What they announced at NAB is really just RED TWO, and not a camera I would personally call "Epic".
In terms of price, while compared to the RED ONE I don't think that the small tech advances justify a more-than-doubling of the body price, when put into perspective it's still a steal for $40K. The Sony F35, Sony's Super35 response to RED, retails for $350,000, and it's still only an HD chip with HD output. And you'd never see them offering full-cash-value trade-ins -- or any trade-ins at all -- to owners of their F900 series cameras (which retailed at around $150,000). So can you really complain about RED's business model or pricing structure? No. It's still a steal anyway you slice it.
But does upgrading to the Epic from my RED ONE make a lot of sense to me? Not from where I'm standing right now.
Stereoscopic (3D) Filmmaking: Stereoscopic (aka stereo, aka 3D) production and post-production was a concept that had surprising prevalence on the show floor. It seemed like every booth had one product geared toward stereo -- projector systems, display systems, dual-channel color correctors, etc.
I'm going to do another post on the resurgence of 3D, but I wanted to mention that the people who produce product for this industry are not all looking at it as a gimmick. Many of them are starting to see it as a big, big deal.
Vegas: Just a quick note on Vegas. I spent most of the time in the city either on the show floor, at parties in the evenings, or in my hotel room. I was amused by the notion that I should be in Vegas and completely fail to do anything Vegas-y. And I kind of liked having the freedom to do that, to go to Vegas and not feel compelled to "Do Vegas". Plus I saved a lot of money that way.
Anyway, glad to be back, getting back into the swing of things.
But people have been asking my thoughts on some of the big announcements at NAB:
Scarlet: RED's new 3K, "pocket" camera. Fixed lens, 2/3" sensor, REDCODE RAW to flash media, up to 120fps recording with 180fps possible in "burst" mode.
This is not only an HVX-killer, it's an everything-in-this-market-segment-and-the-one-above-it killer. Assuming the increased dynamic range that's being rumored with the new Mysterium X sensor, the only thing keeping this camera (which RED says will retail for under $3,000: "3K under $3K") from destroying a huge chunk of the high-end camera market -- including the Sony F23 and Viper FilmStream -- will be the fixed lens.
Will we have a use for it? At that price, with those specs, no one with even a semi-serious interest in filmmaking/shooting can afford not to have it. It's not the RED ONE, it's not going to get 35mm depth of field, but it's a massive step up from the HVX at HALF the price.
I'm aware that Panasonic has come out with two new solid-state cameras, as replacements for the DVX and the HVX. HD, heavily compressed (the HVX replacement DVCPRO HD, the DVX replacement the MPEG-2-based AVCHD), proprietary P2 card format, 1/3" sensors, tops out at 60fps recording, and that only in 720p mode, and even the cheaper one costs more than Scarlet. They might as well pack up and go home. And don't get me wrong, I love Panasonic to death. They made 24p happen in the prosumer market. But Scarlet fucks them raw.
Likewise Sony, with their announcement of the EX3. HD resolution, 1/2" sensor, solid state recording. Lame, lame, same as Scarlet. The only thing the EX3 has that Scarlet doesn't is the option for interchangeable lenses. But is that worth the $10,000 difference in price to most lo/no-budget shooters? I didn't think so.
Epic: 5K, Super35 format. Up to 100fps at full-frame 5K resolution.
This one makes less sense to me than Scarlet does, and even with RED's exceedingly generous and, I have a feeling, unprecedented upgrade path -- buy a RED ONE now for $17,500, and trade it in towards the cost of an Epic next year at full, non-depreciated cash value as long as it still "works" -- the $40K price tag makes it unlikely too many people will jump on that ship.
Based on the limited specs released so far, the Epic will boast the new Mysterium X sensor, meaning greater dynamic range, higher possible framerates, and higher possible bit rates. The thing is, Jim Jannard (founder/owner of RED) has stated that around the same time that Epic/Scarlet start shipping, R1 owners will receive a sensor upgrade as well. I'm sure the upgrade won't be free, probably a couple thousand, but it will put a Mysterium X in your R1 -- gaining you the dynamic range, frame rates, and bit rates, presumably.
So what's Epic for, at that point? 5K recording? Call me unimaginative, but I don't see what use 5K is when we don't even have reasonable workflows for 4K yet, and most films shot on 35mm even today only scan/master in 2K.
Epic, as far as is known right now, is a camera with a 40% reduction in weight and a relatively unnecessary 40% boost in resolution from the flagship R1. Not that both of those things aren't great, BUT, when you factor in that even with a full-value R1 trade in, and subtracting the money you'd pay anyway for an R1 sensor upgrade, you're still looking at another $19,000 or so to pick up an Epic, I really don't think anything I've seen, thus far, would be worth that, when you could grab another R1 body for the same price.
I personally think it would make more sense if Epic were a 65mm equivalent camera instead of Super35. For one thing, it's the format that a lot of the old school epics were actually shot on. Films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Ten Commandments1, 2001, and Ben-Hur. If you've ever been on a movie-ride like the recently closed Back to the Future at Universal Studios, or 3D "spectaculars" like T2-3D: Battle Across Time (also at Universal), you've seen imagery shot on the 65mm format.2
It's also basically the format of IMAX production, and in that may be facing a resurgence. Christopher Nolan was so impressed by the IMAX presentation of Batman Begins, scaled-up digitally with high-quality algorithms, that he committed to actually shoot chunks of its sequel, The Dark Knight, directly to the IMAX format.
Unlike a mere boost to 5K, an affordable Digital65 camera genuinely creates a whole new market tier, AND a good reason for the additional resolution boost. What they announced at NAB is really just RED TWO, and not a camera I would personally call "Epic".
In terms of price, while compared to the RED ONE I don't think that the small tech advances justify a more-than-doubling of the body price, when put into perspective it's still a steal for $40K. The Sony F35, Sony's Super35 response to RED, retails for $350,000, and it's still only an HD chip with HD output. And you'd never see them offering full-cash-value trade-ins -- or any trade-ins at all -- to owners of their F900 series cameras (which retailed at around $150,000). So can you really complain about RED's business model or pricing structure? No. It's still a steal anyway you slice it.
But does upgrading to the Epic from my RED ONE make a lot of sense to me? Not from where I'm standing right now.
Stereoscopic (3D) Filmmaking: Stereoscopic (aka stereo, aka 3D) production and post-production was a concept that had surprising prevalence on the show floor. It seemed like every booth had one product geared toward stereo -- projector systems, display systems, dual-channel color correctors, etc.
I'm going to do another post on the resurgence of 3D, but I wanted to mention that the people who produce product for this industry are not all looking at it as a gimmick. Many of them are starting to see it as a big, big deal.
Vegas: Just a quick note on Vegas. I spent most of the time in the city either on the show floor, at parties in the evenings, or in my hotel room. I was amused by the notion that I should be in Vegas and completely fail to do anything Vegas-y. And I kind of liked having the freedom to do that, to go to Vegas and not feel compelled to "Do Vegas". Plus I saved a lot of money that way.
Anyway, glad to be back, getting back into the swing of things.
- Ten Commandments was technically shot on Vistavision, which is 35mm film run sideways through the camera so that the image prints on the same surface as would normally print two 35mm frames, for a 70mm widescreen frame. Vistavision never caught on as a capture/display format, but found new life in the special effects industry. Before computers, composites had to be made optically, and at each stage any grain or noise from the source would be added on top of the grain in the printed film. Vistavision had smaller grain proportional to the size of the image, so it could go through more optical generations with less of a quality hit. Even with digital compositing now being the standard, big movies like Spiderman 2 and The Matrix still sometimes shoot FX plates on 65mm/Vistavision for the quality boost. ↩
- Anyone remember the original 3D spectacular, Captain E-O? Also 65mm.↩
Friday, April 11, 2008
My Technology > Yours
So, as those following me on Twitter ( [dead-eyed shell of a man] JOIN US [/shell] ) will already know, I have just today been approved for a loan in the amount of approximately $55,000 in order to purchase my RED ONE digital cinema camera.
Two things about this:
1) Fucking
2) Sweet.
How do I feel right now? Some gut-churning combination of "euphoric" and "terrified". I've never had a responsibility for that much money at a go in my entire life. My biggest debt -- the one that took me five years to pay off -- was $10,000. This is five times that, and my repayment term is three years. There's a lot of pressure to make a success of this, but hopefully I find that I thrive that way.
Anyway, got a script to finish and then I've got three days in Vegas for NAB. Won't be blogging, will be Twittering.
Two things about this:
1) Fucking
2) Sweet.
How do I feel right now? Some gut-churning combination of "euphoric" and "terrified". I've never had a responsibility for that much money at a go in my entire life. My biggest debt -- the one that took me five years to pay off -- was $10,000. This is five times that, and my repayment term is three years. There's a lot of pressure to make a success of this, but hopefully I find that I thrive that way.
Anyway, got a script to finish and then I've got three days in Vegas for NAB. Won't be blogging, will be Twittering.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Fucking Twitter
Alright, I gave in and got a Twitter account because I'm a connectivity whore.
What is Twitter? It's like blog-lite. Any time anything I think even remotely interesting goes down, I can post an update to Twitter and you can see it. As they say on the site:
As I understand it, either Facebook or Friendster has a similar function available. So it's like Facebook-lite, too. It would seem that there is a Facebook client for Twitter, through which your Twitter updates, and those of your friends, can be followed directly from your Facebook page.
Why did I get a Twitter account? Besides the aforementioned whoredom, it struck me this evening, when I came home a good five hours later than I expected to, that perhaps my roommates might be interested in keeping up with where I am and what I'm doing.
But I imagine when I do something interesting -- such as going to NAB next week, or when I'm on location of a production -- occasional updates might be notable.
You can find my page at twitter.com/DorkmanScott. If you're already a Twitter member, let's "follow" each other. And if you're not, come hop on the bandwagon.
What is Twitter? It's like blog-lite. Any time anything I think even remotely interesting goes down, I can post an update to Twitter and you can see it. As they say on the site:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Why did I get a Twitter account? Besides the aforementioned whoredom, it struck me this evening, when I came home a good five hours later than I expected to, that perhaps my roommates might be interested in keeping up with where I am and what I'm doing.
But I imagine when I do something interesting -- such as going to NAB next week, or when I'm on location of a production -- occasional updates might be notable.
You can find my page at twitter.com/DorkmanScott. If you're already a Twitter member, let's "follow" each other. And if you're not, come hop on the bandwagon.
Friday, March 14, 2008
WTF is the BFD about the RED?
Over the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about the RED camera. But what is it, and why is it so buzz-worthy?
For almost ten years now, digital technology has been heralded as making art possible on a low budget. Not only filmmaking, but also music, animation, and even photography and still art. The term is the "digital revolution", and it's the technology that makes it possible to make a feature film without having millions of dollars.
But the digital technology has had its limitations.
Standard feature films are shot on 35mm film stock. In the digital age, film is usually scanned into a computer for editing and visual effects work, but the film itself is an analog medium. Its resolution is technically infinite, as you can magnify it more and more and always discover more detail; the limitation becomes the size of the "grain" on the image. Film is usually scanned at 2K resolution, which is just slightly larger than the largest standard high definition resolution of 1920x1080, although visual-effects-heavy films will often scan at 4K, and in rare instances even 8K. But the finishing and final output that is "printed" back to film is usually 2K.
Film has a wide "dynamic range", or "latitude", meaning that it can record detail in both the dark and the light areas of the image across a wide range of brightness. I've heard between 14-17 stops of dynamic range can be captured on film; I don't know for sure, but it's high.
Video, on the other hand, even newer digital video, is not quite so hot. Until the recent creation of HD camcorders, most camcorders have been standard-definition -- 720x480 in NTSC countries, like the USA, and 720x576 in PAL countries, like much of Europe. For the non-numerically inclined, if the resolution of a typical film scan is the size of a postcard, standard definition video is the size of the stamp.
High definition recording has improved the issue of visual resolution, more or less, but many of the problems inherent to video persist.
Whatever the resolution of the image, the dynamic range is very limited in video. To film's ~15 stops of latitude, video offers about 3. That means that it cannot record a wide range of brightness across an image and you must make a choice as to what is more important.
If you want to keep detail in the brighter areas of an image, you need to "stop down" the exposure so that the details are not lost. But that means that the less-bright areas of the image will become extremely dark, and details in the dark parts may all simply be lost and become black. Digital cameras can also be "noisy", meaning they will have random color/brightness fluctuations at a per-pixel level, that is more visible in dark areas and becomes extremely visible if those areas are artificially brightened.
If you expose to keep the shadow detail, then the bright parts of the image will "blow out" and become a mass of pure, flat white. So what you often must do when shooting video is light everything very bright, so even the shadows aren't too dark, expose for the bright areas of frame, and then enhance the tonal range of the image in editing.
Consumer-level video also has reduced color sampling. I could get caught up writing LOOOOONG posts on different color schemes that could make your head spin, but suffice it to say that in video, every pixel has its own unique brightness value, but may not have its own color value recorded, and instead will be interpolated or averaged together from surrounding pixels.1 Film does not have this reduced color sampling; every pixel gets its own brightness AND color value (in technical terms this is referred to as 4:4:4 color).
Another, larger disconnect between a digital camera and a film camera is the size of the imaging plane. As mentioned above, most high-budget "Hollywood" films these days shoot on 35mm film, which is 35mm measured diagonally across each frame.
Instead of a film frame, a digital camera has a digital sensor. Your standard home video camcorder -- even an HD one -- has a sensor 1/3" in size. Converting between measurement standards, that's about 8.4mm. Even the high-end super-professional Sony F-950 camera, on which they shot the last two Star Wars films, only has a 2/3" (16.8mm) sensor, and only records HD resolution.
If you've ever taking a photography course, you may be familiar with the pinhole camera. Simply (and probably somewhat incorrectly) put, the smaller the area that light has to pass through and strike, the fewer light rays you have to deal with, and the easier it is to focus the image sharply.
So you know how film has that cool look where some parts of the image are in focus and the background will be out of focus? And how video seems to have everything in focus pretty much all the time? That's why: video is recording onto a smaller imaging surface than film, getting less of the scene in frame and having a deeper depth of field ("field" referring to "the space in front of the camera within which an object will appear to be in focus").
So video loses to film -- and loses hard -- in terms of resolution, dynamic range, color sampling, and imaging plane.
Enter RED.
The RED camera records a 4K image (four times the size of the largest HD standard resolution2) with 11.7 measured stops of dynamic range (and they're working with the camera/sensor firmware to improve it) with pixel-to-pixel color accuracy, with an imaging plane the same size as 35mm film (technically Super35). It uses standard 35mm lenses like you'd find at any motion picture rental supplier, and it's a fully-digital system.
Now, the RED isn't QUITE the only system out there with these capabilities. Panavision created the Genesis, on which such films as Superman Returns, Apocalypto, Superbad, and The Other Boleyn Girl were shot. The Genesis also has a Super35 sensor and can also use standard cinema lenses, and records a 1920x1080 HD image.
Arri, another film camera supplier, came out with the D20, a 2K camera with a 35mm sensor and lens use, and ~10 stops of latitude.
The Dalsa Origin is also a 4K camera, also with a 35mm sensor and 35mm standard lens use, with supposedly more than 12 stops of latitude.
So given that it's not the only fish in the sea, what's the big fuckin' deal when it comes to RED?
In a word, accessibility.
The three cameras listed above are rental-only cameras, all renting for around $3000/day, not including lenses. The Dalsa's "base package" is $5000. They are relatively inaccessible to most low-budget filmmakers, who can buy a Panasonic HVX-200 for the same price as a two-day rental of the Genesis.
RED, on the other hand, is available for purchase direct from the manufacturer. The base rate, the price for the body of a RED camera, is $17,500.
That may still sound like a lot, but it's less than a week's rental of the Dalsa camera.
The comparison is somewhat unfair, given that that price is JUST for the RED body -- no accessories, no batteries, nothing -- but it still remains that you can get a fully decked-out RED system for $50,000 out the door, which is less than you'd spend renting any of the other systems for just one month. The RED is modular and upgradeable, meaning that the investment in the purchase does not depreciate as quickly, and is certainly much more worthwhile for the serious filmmaker than renting cameras for every project.
It's also a much cheaper rental, as a result. If you decide that buying isn't for you, current market rate for a RED system -- body, batteries, accessories, recording media, and usually even a heavy-duty tripod -- is just under $1000/day. That's a third of the cost of any of the competitors.
Speaking of recording media, the other cameras have their own proprietary recording devices -- either massive RAIDs to which the camera must remain tethered, or expensive portable units that you can rent extra.
And while the RED does offer a large-capacity RED Drive, it can be attached to the camera for portable operation. More than that, the camera is capable of recording to high-transfer CompactFlash cards. The same kind you can buy at a photography store. A non-proprietary format.3
So whereas a roll of film would normally be several hundred dollars, plus processing, and only useful once, you can buy a CF card, or even the drive, and use it again and again with a pure digital stream.
Another thing to consider: 4K resolution data is a lot of data. It's difficult to deal with a 4K stream (something like a data rate of 400 Mbps) without having a really high-end, custom configured system. But RED uses a very clever wavelet technology, REDCODE, to fit all that data into a stream of 27 MB/s. That's pretty much the same as HD, which means most off-the-shelf computers today, particularly Apple, can work with it natively.
I reserved a RED about 18 months ago and was just recently informed that my number is up for purchase. It may take me a while to get it, but I'm working on figuring out some loan options here, and once I do get it I may be posting/gushing about it a great deal more, so it was important to talk about why this camera is SO AWESOME.
For more information on RED, check out the official site, the official discussion forums (fora?), and the tech blogs HDforIndies, Indie4K and ProLost.
For almost ten years now, digital technology has been heralded as making art possible on a low budget. Not only filmmaking, but also music, animation, and even photography and still art. The term is the "digital revolution", and it's the technology that makes it possible to make a feature film without having millions of dollars.
But the digital technology has had its limitations.
Standard feature films are shot on 35mm film stock. In the digital age, film is usually scanned into a computer for editing and visual effects work, but the film itself is an analog medium. Its resolution is technically infinite, as you can magnify it more and more and always discover more detail; the limitation becomes the size of the "grain" on the image. Film is usually scanned at 2K resolution, which is just slightly larger than the largest standard high definition resolution of 1920x1080, although visual-effects-heavy films will often scan at 4K, and in rare instances even 8K. But the finishing and final output that is "printed" back to film is usually 2K.
Film has a wide "dynamic range", or "latitude", meaning that it can record detail in both the dark and the light areas of the image across a wide range of brightness. I've heard between 14-17 stops of dynamic range can be captured on film; I don't know for sure, but it's high.
Video, on the other hand, even newer digital video, is not quite so hot. Until the recent creation of HD camcorders, most camcorders have been standard-definition -- 720x480 in NTSC countries, like the USA, and 720x576 in PAL countries, like much of Europe. For the non-numerically inclined, if the resolution of a typical film scan is the size of a postcard, standard definition video is the size of the stamp.
High definition recording has improved the issue of visual resolution, more or less, but many of the problems inherent to video persist.
Whatever the resolution of the image, the dynamic range is very limited in video. To film's ~15 stops of latitude, video offers about 3. That means that it cannot record a wide range of brightness across an image and you must make a choice as to what is more important.
If you want to keep detail in the brighter areas of an image, you need to "stop down" the exposure so that the details are not lost. But that means that the less-bright areas of the image will become extremely dark, and details in the dark parts may all simply be lost and become black. Digital cameras can also be "noisy", meaning they will have random color/brightness fluctuations at a per-pixel level, that is more visible in dark areas and becomes extremely visible if those areas are artificially brightened.
If you expose to keep the shadow detail, then the bright parts of the image will "blow out" and become a mass of pure, flat white. So what you often must do when shooting video is light everything very bright, so even the shadows aren't too dark, expose for the bright areas of frame, and then enhance the tonal range of the image in editing.
Consumer-level video also has reduced color sampling. I could get caught up writing LOOOOONG posts on different color schemes that could make your head spin, but suffice it to say that in video, every pixel has its own unique brightness value, but may not have its own color value recorded, and instead will be interpolated or averaged together from surrounding pixels.1 Film does not have this reduced color sampling; every pixel gets its own brightness AND color value (in technical terms this is referred to as 4:4:4 color).
Another, larger disconnect between a digital camera and a film camera is the size of the imaging plane. As mentioned above, most high-budget "Hollywood" films these days shoot on 35mm film, which is 35mm measured diagonally across each frame.
Instead of a film frame, a digital camera has a digital sensor. Your standard home video camcorder -- even an HD one -- has a sensor 1/3" in size. Converting between measurement standards, that's about 8.4mm. Even the high-end super-professional Sony F-950 camera, on which they shot the last two Star Wars films, only has a 2/3" (16.8mm) sensor, and only records HD resolution.
If you've ever taking a photography course, you may be familiar with the pinhole camera. Simply (and probably somewhat incorrectly) put, the smaller the area that light has to pass through and strike, the fewer light rays you have to deal with, and the easier it is to focus the image sharply.
So you know how film has that cool look where some parts of the image are in focus and the background will be out of focus? And how video seems to have everything in focus pretty much all the time? That's why: video is recording onto a smaller imaging surface than film, getting less of the scene in frame and having a deeper depth of field ("field" referring to "the space in front of the camera within which an object will appear to be in focus").
So video loses to film -- and loses hard -- in terms of resolution, dynamic range, color sampling, and imaging plane.
Enter RED.
The RED camera records a 4K image (four times the size of the largest HD standard resolution2) with 11.7 measured stops of dynamic range (and they're working with the camera/sensor firmware to improve it) with pixel-to-pixel color accuracy, with an imaging plane the same size as 35mm film (technically Super35). It uses standard 35mm lenses like you'd find at any motion picture rental supplier, and it's a fully-digital system.
Now, the RED isn't QUITE the only system out there with these capabilities. Panavision created the Genesis, on which such films as Superman Returns, Apocalypto, Superbad, and The Other Boleyn Girl were shot. The Genesis also has a Super35 sensor and can also use standard cinema lenses, and records a 1920x1080 HD image.
Arri, another film camera supplier, came out with the D20, a 2K camera with a 35mm sensor and lens use, and ~10 stops of latitude.
The Dalsa Origin is also a 4K camera, also with a 35mm sensor and 35mm standard lens use, with supposedly more than 12 stops of latitude.
So given that it's not the only fish in the sea, what's the big fuckin' deal when it comes to RED?
In a word, accessibility.
The three cameras listed above are rental-only cameras, all renting for around $3000/day, not including lenses. The Dalsa's "base package" is $5000. They are relatively inaccessible to most low-budget filmmakers, who can buy a Panasonic HVX-200 for the same price as a two-day rental of the Genesis.
RED, on the other hand, is available for purchase direct from the manufacturer. The base rate, the price for the body of a RED camera, is $17,500.
That may still sound like a lot, but it's less than a week's rental of the Dalsa camera.
The comparison is somewhat unfair, given that that price is JUST for the RED body -- no accessories, no batteries, nothing -- but it still remains that you can get a fully decked-out RED system for $50,000 out the door, which is less than you'd spend renting any of the other systems for just one month. The RED is modular and upgradeable, meaning that the investment in the purchase does not depreciate as quickly, and is certainly much more worthwhile for the serious filmmaker than renting cameras for every project.
It's also a much cheaper rental, as a result. If you decide that buying isn't for you, current market rate for a RED system -- body, batteries, accessories, recording media, and usually even a heavy-duty tripod -- is just under $1000/day. That's a third of the cost of any of the competitors.
Speaking of recording media, the other cameras have their own proprietary recording devices -- either massive RAIDs to which the camera must remain tethered, or expensive portable units that you can rent extra.
And while the RED does offer a large-capacity RED Drive, it can be attached to the camera for portable operation. More than that, the camera is capable of recording to high-transfer CompactFlash cards. The same kind you can buy at a photography store. A non-proprietary format.3
So whereas a roll of film would normally be several hundred dollars, plus processing, and only useful once, you can buy a CF card, or even the drive, and use it again and again with a pure digital stream.
Another thing to consider: 4K resolution data is a lot of data. It's difficult to deal with a 4K stream (something like a data rate of 400 Mbps) without having a really high-end, custom configured system. But RED uses a very clever wavelet technology, REDCODE, to fit all that data into a stream of 27 MB/s. That's pretty much the same as HD, which means most off-the-shelf computers today, particularly Apple, can work with it natively.
I reserved a RED about 18 months ago and was just recently informed that my number is up for purchase. It may take me a while to get it, but I'm working on figuring out some loan options here, and once I do get it I may be posting/gushing about it a great deal more, so it was important to talk about why this camera is SO AWESOME.
For more information on RED, check out the official site, the official discussion forums (fora?), and the tech blogs HDforIndies, Indie4K and ProLost.
- This is why, if you've ever tried to pull a greenscreen key off of DV, it looks like stairsteppy dogshit. The edges are not strongly-defined in the color channel, but are instead a gradient between the green and whatever color your foreground is. The keyer is actually doing a good job of separating the image via color, it's just that your color information isn't good. The edges look good because the brightness information is all there, and the way the eye processes images fools it into reading it as a sharp-edged color image. On DV, keying on the brightness, aka luminance, info is the way to go. If you care to learn more about the what and wherefores of color sampling, you can read up here.↩
- The RED utilizes a Bayer pattern sensor, which requires complex algorithms to interpret the available color data. Some have said that this limits the actual resolution of the camera, and indeed shooting some resolution charts has shown that the camera can't QUITE resolve a 4K level of detail. But it's close-enough-for-government-work to call it a 4K camera.↩
- Red does sell their own branded CF cards and doesn't "guarantee" cards that you buy yourself, but as long as your cards match the proper specs, you can technically buy generic media for a high-end system. And that's a big deal. ↩
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wii Would Like To Play
When news started leaking about a new Nintendo console, it was codenamed "Revolution". I liked the ring of "Nintendo Revolution", and I was excited about many of the features that were being kicked around as possibilities -- like the ability to buy legacy games online and play them on the console.
Then they made the official announcement...and they called it the Wii. And I thought that was the dumbest name I had ever heard. It's not even a word! I proclaimed that, regardless of its official name, I was going to continue calling it the Revolution.
Well, that didn't even last a month. Revolution is harder to say, and harder to type, so I gave in and went with Wii. Admittedly the name has grown on me. The tagline (see post title) is clever and so is the "the two 'i's are people -- it's about playing together!" design thing. Plus the Wii has been out for two years, and laughing at the name is passe.
So, we had our XBOX 360. We got a PS3 around Christmas. The only console we needed to complete our Next-Gen collection was a Wii -- and EVERYWHERE was sold out.
Brian got a bunch of gift cards to Target for Christmas -- literally just enough for a Wii. So since Christmas, we (by which I mean Katie) have been calling Target at 8 AM to see if they got any shipments. At first it was just Sunday mornings at the local Target. Then it was every morning at the local Target (apparently they get daily shipments). Then it was every morning at every Target within 20 miles. It was getting to the point that the calling took an hour of her day and she was starting to seriously demand some money for the gig. Having worked in retail myself, I'm sure that the Target employees didn't enjoy it any more than we did.
On Friday we had a cock-block (I tried to come up with an amusing equivalent that started and rhymed with "Wii" but I couldn't do it): our local Target had a Wii in stock! I raced out there and got there five minutes after the store opened -- and discovered that they had only had one, and some woman had been there AT OPENING and snagged it. That put a damper on the whole day.
Then yesterday, Saturday, Brian and I are both awakened by Katie, who frantically informs us that a Target in Culver City has 20 Wiis in stock, and the guy said if we get there in the next hour we have a shot at getting one.
So we all rush down to Culver City (a 40 minute drive) and come back, at last, triumphant owners of a Nintendo Wii. We spent the rest of the day playing Super Mario Galaxy. Fun game so far, although all of Mario's grunts and exclamations make it sound like whatever drugs he takes to get to the Mushroom Kingdom (I guess I just answered my own question) are starting to take a toll on his sanity.
I was also excited about being able to play Super Mario World. Even though I had a Super NES, the SNES did not come packaged with Mario World and I never wound up getting a copy. I played it a little bit at my cousins' house, but they wouldn't let me play for long because watching someone play is boring and they wanted to go hit wasp nests with sticks. So I'm finally getting to play it.
My In Bruges review is forthcoming -- short version, go see the flick!
Then they made the official announcement...and they called it the Wii. And I thought that was the dumbest name I had ever heard. It's not even a word! I proclaimed that, regardless of its official name, I was going to continue calling it the Revolution.
Well, that didn't even last a month. Revolution is harder to say, and harder to type, so I gave in and went with Wii. Admittedly the name has grown on me. The tagline (see post title) is clever and so is the "the two 'i's are people -- it's about playing together!" design thing. Plus the Wii has been out for two years, and laughing at the name is passe.
So, we had our XBOX 360. We got a PS3 around Christmas. The only console we needed to complete our Next-Gen collection was a Wii -- and EVERYWHERE was sold out.
Brian got a bunch of gift cards to Target for Christmas -- literally just enough for a Wii. So since Christmas, we (by which I mean Katie) have been calling Target at 8 AM to see if they got any shipments. At first it was just Sunday mornings at the local Target. Then it was every morning at the local Target (apparently they get daily shipments). Then it was every morning at every Target within 20 miles. It was getting to the point that the calling took an hour of her day and she was starting to seriously demand some money for the gig. Having worked in retail myself, I'm sure that the Target employees didn't enjoy it any more than we did.
On Friday we had a cock-block (I tried to come up with an amusing equivalent that started and rhymed with "Wii" but I couldn't do it): our local Target had a Wii in stock! I raced out there and got there five minutes after the store opened -- and discovered that they had only had one, and some woman had been there AT OPENING and snagged it. That put a damper on the whole day.
Then yesterday, Saturday, Brian and I are both awakened by Katie, who frantically informs us that a Target in Culver City has 20 Wiis in stock, and the guy said if we get there in the next hour we have a shot at getting one.
So we all rush down to Culver City (a 40 minute drive) and come back, at last, triumphant owners of a Nintendo Wii. We spent the rest of the day playing Super Mario Galaxy. Fun game so far, although all of Mario's grunts and exclamations make it sound like whatever drugs he takes to get to the Mushroom Kingdom (I guess I just answered my own question) are starting to take a toll on his sanity.
I was also excited about being able to play Super Mario World. Even though I had a Super NES, the SNES did not come packaged with Mario World and I never wound up getting a copy. I played it a little bit at my cousins' house, but they wouldn't let me play for long because watching someone play is boring and they wanted to go hit wasp nests with sticks. So I'm finally getting to play it.
My In Bruges review is forthcoming -- short version, go see the flick!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
For Real This Time: Cloverfield Review
In the 9 years since The Blair Witch Project, I've talked to a lot of people who hated the movie. They didn't get what the hype was about, they thought it was boring and not scary at all.
My question to them is always "Did you see it in theatres?" Their answer is always "No."
I don't mean to get all David Lynch on your ass, but if you didn't see The Blair Witch Project in theatres, you didn't really see The Blair Witch Project. There's a huge difference between watching a movie on your dinky television set, in the comfort of your living room, with your roommate or significant other making popcorn in the kitchen, knowing you could pause the movie or turn up the lights at any time, and watching it on a big screen, in a dark theatre, surrounded by strangers, with the experience totally out of your control. At home you're really only half-paying attention1; in the theatre you're totally enveloped.
So I'm going to say: if you don't see Cloverfield in theatres, you'll never see Cloverfield properly.
Now, I've wanted to see someone take the Blair Witch found footage/documentary horror ball and run with it for almost ten years. I wrote a couple of outlines for those kinds of films -- one of a group of people on a camping trip that gets caught up in an alien abduction/invasion, one of a group of college "ghost hunters" that get in over their head in a real haunted house -- but Cloverfield takes it to the epic level straight out of the gate.
Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield's marketing campaign was primarily viral.2 The "found footage" aesthetic lent itself well to the post-YouTube world; this is, in many ways, a YouTube monster movie. But unlike Blair Witch (a movie which some people I meet still believe was real), Cloverfield never attempted to pass itself off as real footage from a real event. Instead, it is an "IF this were to happen, here's how it would go down" hypothetical, with enough verisimilitude to make O.J. Simpson proud.
One thing I love about Cloverfield, just from a conceptual standpoint, is that there's another movie taking place off-screen. Somewhere else is the movie where the retired army guy is pulled back into service to stop the creature that has attacked his city, and he's throwing out one-liners the whole ride. Somewhere else the scientist and/or the hacker are figuring out where this thing came from and (maybe) how to bring it down. Somewhere else the President is facing the tough calls of sending the military into Manhattan and, sir, a localized nuclear strike may be our only chance of containment but we have to act NOW. But we don't see any of that. And that's okay, because we've seen that movie. Cloverfield is the movie we haven't seen, the one that turns the body count into characters we connect with.
Because let's face it: when you go to see a monster movie, you're kind of rooting for the monster. It's almost a given that the humans are going to win, so you're really just looking to see the monster wreak as much havoc as it can before that happens. That means you want to see the really gruesome, brutal kills; you want to see the damn STAKES get raised.
But while that other movie I mentioned will show the President grimacing as he watches someone die brutally in a military video or whatever, Cloverfield makes you one of the victims, watching your friends die and hearing your other friends scream and mourn as it happens. Cloverfield makes you a part of the event.
My first impression of Cloverfield was that some parts were pretty predictable. For example, there's a scene in a dark tunnel where you can only see about five feet in any direction from the camera. They hear a sound -- what was that? All the rats are running away from it. Oh hold on, the camera has night vision. Let me, the main character, step in front of the camera to turn it on.
If you don't see where this is going, you're one of the lucky ones and you should skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers. For the rest of us, we know that as soon as the night vision comes on, we're going to get a VERY clear look at what's making that sound, because it'll be right behind the main character, and it will wait until it's sure you've seen it clearly before it attacks. And so it goes.
Now, I initially faulted Cloverfield slightly for this, but I asked myself: how would I have handled that moment differently? And to be honest, I probably wouldn't have. It's highly effective and after the attack sequence the entire audience applauded spontaneously because it was a damn good piece of immersive filmmaking. So maybe it was only "predictable" because it's exactly what I would have done.3
At any rate, it doesn't really matter that you can see what's coming a mile away based on the tropes of horror and monster movies (in no case, ever, is loss of blood the only thing you need to worry about if a monster bites you). The point is not what is happening, the point is that it's happening, essentially, to you, and you're powerless against it. The film is not afraid to kill its characters, and when it does, it often happens in the blink of an eye, in a moment so chaotic that you, like the characters, have no chance to even really process what just happened until some time later. I've had nightmares like Cloverfield, that played out in similar ways. The filmmakers did a great job of tapping into that.
The characters themselves are generally well-realized. Most of them are Dawson's Creek stereotypes of some kind or another, but their performances are solid. A lot of the film sounds improvised -- which, in a movie of this scale, seems unlikely, so it's a testament to the actors that they make everything they say believable and genuine in the moment. My favorite character by far is the cameraman, the person through whose point of view we experience most of the film, appropriately named Hud.
Hud is the main character's best friend, and he's the kind of guy everyone knows -- kind of dumb, a little bit too literal about things sometimes, but fiercely loyal to his friends. He'd never be the leader, but he'd follow them anywhere, and he does as he's told which makes him the perfect cameraman.
You never question why on earth this guy is still running the camera, because at the beginning of the movie he's told to record the events of the night, and we all know this kind of guy well enough to know that that's exactly what he's going to do, no matter what, until the battery dies or he does. He's also the comic relief character, and giving that kind of personality to the camera is an inspired choice.
As the monster goes, I will say that you do see it. Personally I thought it might be cooler to never actually get a clear look at it, but the movie puts the characters in the middle of everything4, and so you do see the monster quite up-close and personal. But what it is, where it comes from, what it wants are never explained.
Ultimately, this movie is a character drama in a monster-movie world. They used a device that the events of the movie are being recorded over another tape from a much different time in the characters' lives, and the occasional "timecode break" drops us into that other footage. The juxtaposition is powerful, and I really like that the filmmakers took advantage of their "found footage" structure to tell a story more intimate than the monster attack. I know a lot of people will hate it, but I thought it was great.
What it comes down to, though, is that you need to see this movie in theatres, with other people around you, if you're going to have any chance of appreciating it fully. This is the kind of movie that you can't just watch, you have to experience it.
My question to them is always "Did you see it in theatres?" Their answer is always "No."
I don't mean to get all David Lynch on your ass, but if you didn't see The Blair Witch Project in theatres, you didn't really see The Blair Witch Project. There's a huge difference between watching a movie on your dinky television set, in the comfort of your living room, with your roommate or significant other making popcorn in the kitchen, knowing you could pause the movie or turn up the lights at any time, and watching it on a big screen, in a dark theatre, surrounded by strangers, with the experience totally out of your control. At home you're really only half-paying attention1; in the theatre you're totally enveloped.
So I'm going to say: if you don't see Cloverfield in theatres, you'll never see Cloverfield properly.
Now, I've wanted to see someone take the Blair Witch found footage/documentary horror ball and run with it for almost ten years. I wrote a couple of outlines for those kinds of films -- one of a group of people on a camping trip that gets caught up in an alien abduction/invasion, one of a group of college "ghost hunters" that get in over their head in a real haunted house -- but Cloverfield takes it to the epic level straight out of the gate.
Like Blair Witch, Cloverfield's marketing campaign was primarily viral.2 The "found footage" aesthetic lent itself well to the post-YouTube world; this is, in many ways, a YouTube monster movie. But unlike Blair Witch (a movie which some people I meet still believe was real), Cloverfield never attempted to pass itself off as real footage from a real event. Instead, it is an "IF this were to happen, here's how it would go down" hypothetical, with enough verisimilitude to make O.J. Simpson proud.
One thing I love about Cloverfield, just from a conceptual standpoint, is that there's another movie taking place off-screen. Somewhere else is the movie where the retired army guy is pulled back into service to stop the creature that has attacked his city, and he's throwing out one-liners the whole ride. Somewhere else the scientist and/or the hacker are figuring out where this thing came from and (maybe) how to bring it down. Somewhere else the President is facing the tough calls of sending the military into Manhattan and, sir, a localized nuclear strike may be our only chance of containment but we have to act NOW. But we don't see any of that. And that's okay, because we've seen that movie. Cloverfield is the movie we haven't seen, the one that turns the body count into characters we connect with.
Because let's face it: when you go to see a monster movie, you're kind of rooting for the monster. It's almost a given that the humans are going to win, so you're really just looking to see the monster wreak as much havoc as it can before that happens. That means you want to see the really gruesome, brutal kills; you want to see the damn STAKES get raised.
But while that other movie I mentioned will show the President grimacing as he watches someone die brutally in a military video or whatever, Cloverfield makes you one of the victims, watching your friends die and hearing your other friends scream and mourn as it happens. Cloverfield makes you a part of the event.
My first impression of Cloverfield was that some parts were pretty predictable. For example, there's a scene in a dark tunnel where you can only see about five feet in any direction from the camera. They hear a sound -- what was that? All the rats are running away from it. Oh hold on, the camera has night vision. Let me, the main character, step in front of the camera to turn it on.
If you don't see where this is going, you're one of the lucky ones and you should skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers. For the rest of us, we know that as soon as the night vision comes on, we're going to get a VERY clear look at what's making that sound, because it'll be right behind the main character, and it will wait until it's sure you've seen it clearly before it attacks. And so it goes.
Now, I initially faulted Cloverfield slightly for this, but I asked myself: how would I have handled that moment differently? And to be honest, I probably wouldn't have. It's highly effective and after the attack sequence the entire audience applauded spontaneously because it was a damn good piece of immersive filmmaking. So maybe it was only "predictable" because it's exactly what I would have done.3
At any rate, it doesn't really matter that you can see what's coming a mile away based on the tropes of horror and monster movies (in no case, ever, is loss of blood the only thing you need to worry about if a monster bites you). The point is not what is happening, the point is that it's happening, essentially, to you, and you're powerless against it. The film is not afraid to kill its characters, and when it does, it often happens in the blink of an eye, in a moment so chaotic that you, like the characters, have no chance to even really process what just happened until some time later. I've had nightmares like Cloverfield, that played out in similar ways. The filmmakers did a great job of tapping into that.
The characters themselves are generally well-realized. Most of them are Dawson's Creek stereotypes of some kind or another, but their performances are solid. A lot of the film sounds improvised -- which, in a movie of this scale, seems unlikely, so it's a testament to the actors that they make everything they say believable and genuine in the moment. My favorite character by far is the cameraman, the person through whose point of view we experience most of the film, appropriately named Hud.
Hud is the main character's best friend, and he's the kind of guy everyone knows -- kind of dumb, a little bit too literal about things sometimes, but fiercely loyal to his friends. He'd never be the leader, but he'd follow them anywhere, and he does as he's told which makes him the perfect cameraman.
You never question why on earth this guy is still running the camera, because at the beginning of the movie he's told to record the events of the night, and we all know this kind of guy well enough to know that that's exactly what he's going to do, no matter what, until the battery dies or he does. He's also the comic relief character, and giving that kind of personality to the camera is an inspired choice.
As the monster goes, I will say that you do see it. Personally I thought it might be cooler to never actually get a clear look at it, but the movie puts the characters in the middle of everything4, and so you do see the monster quite up-close and personal. But what it is, where it comes from, what it wants are never explained.
Ultimately, this movie is a character drama in a monster-movie world. They used a device that the events of the movie are being recorded over another tape from a much different time in the characters' lives, and the occasional "timecode break" drops us into that other footage. The juxtaposition is powerful, and I really like that the filmmakers took advantage of their "found footage" structure to tell a story more intimate than the monster attack. I know a lot of people will hate it, but I thought it was great.
What it comes down to, though, is that you need to see this movie in theatres, with other people around you, if you're going to have any chance of appreciating it fully. This is the kind of movie that you can't just watch, you have to experience it.
- I know a lot of people who didn't get the ending because the set-up was so subtle and they missed it; if you saw the set-up, the ending was amazing.↩
- Blair Witch, of course, practically invented the viral marketing campaign singlehandedly.↩
- Although John Rogers makes a great point: if a thousand rats are running away from something, you don't stop to find out what it is, you outrun those fucking rats. I probably would have handled THAT differently.↩
- Admittedly it does sometimes stretch the limit of the suspension of disbelief, that they should have such poor luck as to always be right where something significant happens, when it happens. ↩
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Get your learn on...
For those of you who may have made a New Year's resolution to learn something new, allow me to pimp my latest intellectual ride:
fxphd is a website that hold 10-week "terms", during which you sign up for three courses and take one class a week in each course, consisting of a video about 30-60 minutes in length. There are many different "Tracks". I signed up because they started a production track featuring the RED camera, and I really only wanted the one course but you have to do a minimum of three. So I took a Shake course and a Color course.
I have to say, it's the best value I think I've ever gotten from a training course. I did the whole nine with the college degree and all, 18 years of school from preschool to postgrad, and I've never been so interested in "going to class" as I am with fxphd.
They have the production track, as I mentioned, and they have a motion graphics track, a design track, and many software-specific courses. It's just a great resource and they are very passionate about making sure everyone gets the most out of their courses.
I've signed up for the new term and there's a bunch of very exciting classes that I'm going to have trouble choosing between. If you do sign up, make sure you put my username (DorkmanScott) as a referral. If you do, I get an extra class, and that makes choosing easier.
Next week is "Week 1", you can sign up any time until Week 6 for the term. It's not pocket money for most normal people ($330 for the basic tuition), but it's cheaper than a semester in a trade school and if you're serious about learning post-production skills it's totally worth your while.
fxphd is a website that hold 10-week "terms", during which you sign up for three courses and take one class a week in each course, consisting of a video about 30-60 minutes in length. There are many different "Tracks". I signed up because they started a production track featuring the RED camera, and I really only wanted the one course but you have to do a minimum of three. So I took a Shake course and a Color course.
I have to say, it's the best value I think I've ever gotten from a training course. I did the whole nine with the college degree and all, 18 years of school from preschool to postgrad, and I've never been so interested in "going to class" as I am with fxphd.
They have the production track, as I mentioned, and they have a motion graphics track, a design track, and many software-specific courses. It's just a great resource and they are very passionate about making sure everyone gets the most out of their courses.
I've signed up for the new term and there's a bunch of very exciting classes that I'm going to have trouble choosing between. If you do sign up, make sure you put my username (DorkmanScott) as a referral. If you do, I get an extra class, and that makes choosing easier.
Next week is "Week 1", you can sign up any time until Week 6 for the term. It's not pocket money for most normal people ($330 for the basic tuition), but it's cheaper than a semester in a trade school and if you're serious about learning post-production skills it's totally worth your while.
Monday, December 17, 2007
With great power...
So, sorry for not posting much of substance lately. Holidays and all. I will be back on track with some theoretical/ranting posts after Christmas (although I may take the opportunity to do a little rant re: political correctness and Christmas/Xmas/Holidays).
Meanwhile, now that humans have begun harnessing the power of the genome, we can finally give such marvelous novelty gifts as glow-in-the-dark cats.
Now, according to the article, the scientists did have a rational reason for doing that -- it's a much easier pitch to the lay-public when they can SEE the effect science has had with their own eyes, as opposed to "see these bands on the chromosomes under the electron microscope? We moved those. Science!" So making living creatures who are genetically (and benignly) altered clones is a great way to make a point: We know what we're doing, we have an unprecedented level of control.
But that's also, of course, potentially a bad thing. Even though I'm not sure I have a lot of ethical objections to manipulating the genome, there are basic logical ones: how do we know that the adjustments we make will be benign? Natural selection creates an equilibrium; unfit mutations do not survive or produce less offspring and thus the gene pool balances out. But what if, through artificial selection, we introduce a mutation that we think is good but turns out to be bad, and the usual equilibrium process winds up wiping out the new mutation, which by artificial means comprised an entire generation of a population?
Bad times.
And even if there's nothing but good that could be expected from this, I expect people to miss the point entirely. Either by getting up in arms about the existence of glow-in-the-dark cats (without understanding their implications), or worse yet, by WANTING a glow-in-the-dark cat or other designer pet (likewise).
Although it is good fodder if I ever get around to writing a sci-fi social satire.
Meanwhile, now that humans have begun harnessing the power of the genome, we can finally give such marvelous novelty gifts as glow-in-the-dark cats.
Now, according to the article, the scientists did have a rational reason for doing that -- it's a much easier pitch to the lay-public when they can SEE the effect science has had with their own eyes, as opposed to "see these bands on the chromosomes under the electron microscope? We moved those. Science!" So making living creatures who are genetically (and benignly) altered clones is a great way to make a point: We know what we're doing, we have an unprecedented level of control.
But that's also, of course, potentially a bad thing. Even though I'm not sure I have a lot of ethical objections to manipulating the genome, there are basic logical ones: how do we know that the adjustments we make will be benign? Natural selection creates an equilibrium; unfit mutations do not survive or produce less offspring and thus the gene pool balances out. But what if, through artificial selection, we introduce a mutation that we think is good but turns out to be bad, and the usual equilibrium process winds up wiping out the new mutation, which by artificial means comprised an entire generation of a population?
Bad times.
And even if there's nothing but good that could be expected from this, I expect people to miss the point entirely. Either by getting up in arms about the existence of glow-in-the-dark cats (without understanding their implications), or worse yet, by WANTING a glow-in-the-dark cat or other designer pet (likewise).
Although it is good fodder if I ever get around to writing a sci-fi social satire.
Friday, December 14, 2007
The Closer We Get, Part 2
Same guy, same principles, new application. Someone give him a grant already.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The closer we get...
...the more it seems like this should have been how we interacted with computers from the beginning.
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