Sean Cunningham

  They don't look "fine" they look distorted and it's just that some directors like that.  They do not, however, look like what you get when you use a lens designed explicitly for close-up or portrait style photography.  They are a choice (one would hope).   There isn't an equivalency here.  Using a wide angle lens for close-up is either a stylistic choice or a lazy/ignorant choice.  If you don't make a choice at all, the result falls to the later.  If you don't know why it's a choice, it falls to the later.  But there is no equivalency here.

5D isn't a "crop" format.  It uses a 36mm sensor and can't be compared to S35 in any way, which is 24.89mm and much smaller.  I don't know how you arrived at that statement.   I agree, polluting motion picture discussion with "crop factor" is bad, and wouldn't have happened except for the DSLR revolution and a bunch of stills guys used to such an imprecise, sloppy form of measurement.  But yes there has been a motion picture standard that's the equivalent to "full frame" 35mm and it's called VistaVision, or can be referred to as 8-perf 35mm.   It wasn't used for a full film (in the US) after the early 1960s I believe but ILM resurrected the format for shooting visual effects plates which kept the format alive clear up into the '00s as the standard for getting high resolution film for various visual effects processes.  So long as Technicolor and places like it are processing film they have the equipment and ability to handle the scanning and processing of VistaVision, eight-perf 35mm film.   Oh, here's a meaningful comparison graphic:     PS> and, please, nobody start polluting these discussions with those idiotic video engineer habits of describing rectangular shapes with diagonal measurements.  That's just retarded and always has been.

I guess it depends on what you're shooting. He's shooting in front of a client so it's safe to say he doesn't need cinematic results, just nice looking video. I've yet to see any GH3 footage that looks as good as (and by "good" my definition is not immediately like videocamera output) the best non-hacked GH2 footage I've seen. I think you're right, Panasonic somehow lost their recipe in the GH1 and GH2 sensors, similar to how Canon never really were able to repeat the secret sauce in the 5DmkII with anything else. Once the BM pocket version hits the streets the GH3 will be rendered pretty much irrelevant. Panasonic would need to price it like a GoPro to try and keep it in the game.

You shouldn't put anything between the anamorphic and your taking lens.  Filters go up front.

Softness in the horizontal plane of an image, and our visual system's ability to more or less borrow vertical resolution to maintain a pleasing, non-distracting image, has been exploited by video engineers since the dawn of...video.  Anamorphic techniques are one of the only exploits used for an enhancing, aesthetic gain versus a cheap, technical shortcut to saving bandwidth.

I need to get a different adapter than the cheeseball OM adapter I currently have, so I can do something with my 75-205mm Vivitar.  I didn't expect the long end to be even more limited.  Above f/4 mine, at 18mm, is quite sharp without the diopter and can focus quite close.   Gonna pick up a set of Hoya close-up diopters next.

  I know of all sorts of groups of two or more shooters who pooled their money to buy a RED.  They'll do that here too.  What's quite significant here as well is this rig is something like 3.5lbs and those CNC machined setups are not.  Operator fatigue is going to set in much quicker adapting other copter gimbals for use handheld...perhaps that's why we don't see copter gimbal rigs doing a lot of handheld work out there, like, has anyone really done that besides the MySpace mirror guy showing it is indeed possible?   Sub $1000 for something like this, as some have said here, is a pipe dream when non-powered, non-remote, nothing-but-some-metal-pipe-some-weights-and-a-cheese-plate can run you half this or even more than this.  You people make me laugh sometimes.  I really didn't expect this sort of reaction to your article man.  Oh well.

LOL, "fat one"

Any word on what this bad boy might cost? I'm hoping it's more RED territory than Alexa.

Yeah, anything around f/2.8 and above should have useable sharpness without any diopter.  I'd say regardless of focal length but never verified that telephoto worked the same as my wide-angles.  That's on a GH2.   Might be the way you're mounting it or possibly a defect in the adapter.  

No such thing as "milky washed out Alexa look".  You have either improper grading or flashed blacks done as a choice for your look, if the final footage is milky or washed out.  Similarly, early RED films made the camera look very bad because of widespread colorist failure working with LOG origination.  You could say the same for the Genesis.    

Basically, you need a set at least 140" for 4K to not be a waste, in a nominal home viewing environment of ~10'  and an even larger set if you sit further.    

I didn't start watching until the Season 3 opener (he references this as being a favorite of his in the article too) and was blown away by what they were doing on the show.  The content, stories and characters especially, but what he does with the camera is exceptional.     At the time, this show and Friday Night Lights were, IMO, the two best shot dramas on TV that didn't look like you were watching a TV show.  Every episode was a mini-movie.

    Also, when they win big, they win bigger than the majors, who have sometimes an order of magnitude more to recoup before the accountants go into overtime trying to prove the year's biggest blockbuster was a turkey that lost the studio money.   Hollywood still turns out the occasional, exceptional piece of work that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any artistic, independent narrative.  But that's something that happens under their noses and isn't by design, thanks to auteurs working within the system who have the rare ability to Jedi-Mind-Trick the banksters dressed as moguls and keep their films so cheap, on time and on budget the Studio just lets them do what they do.

  Pretty sure that was that dick Rich Thorn, when that tool was post production supervisor at FOX.  Or someone like him.

  Also, uprezzing in the editor looks to have duplicated pixels without filtering.  I agree with Andrew that this has an interesting aesthetic all its own but there are techniques and specialized software that would make it much harder to detect.  People see up-rezzed footage all the time and likely aren't even aware of half of it.

Q: As a cinematographer, are you approaching these last eight episodes in any different visual way than you have the previous four seasons?   A: Vince and I have always talked about a descent into darkness. And in terms of an overall palette it's really dark. It doesn't mean you don't see stuff. It means that there are a lot of blacks in the frame; it's contrast. One of the advantages of shooting a show for five or six years is that we know who these characters are. So I don't need to light their faces up all the time. If a bald head that's around six foot walks into a room, you know it's Walt. We all know who these people are, so it gives me a lot more freedom than I may otherwise have.     The article @ AMC...

  Large VFX facilities can't live off large VFX blockbusters, actually.  These are taken on for the prestige.  Large VFX blockbusters likely cost a VFX facility to be a part of.  Yeah, they're expensive, but not for the studios.   Success in the VFX business is breaking even.  You can extend this to success for a vendor in Hollywood is breaking even.  Historically the bigger facilities not subsidized by giant corporations or otherwise not bound to the same financial pressures as a standalone facility (ie. Sony Pictures Imageworks and ILM, companies with higher overhead than they bring in) have to keep their doors open by taking on work that's actually profitable.     Both R+H and Digital Domain, prior to recent problems, had their doors kept open by having a very active commercials division, with a separate staff from features.  DD would have shuttered its doors after Titanic, most likely, if it hadn't been for the profitability of its commercial division.  R+H as well was kept afloat by this business which allowed it to take on feature work.  Sony has tried repeatedly to get rid of Imageworks because it's a money sinkhole with no chance of being profitable.  Lucas too, once he started to ramp down his interest in making more films, packaged up ILM, moved it to the city and started looking for potential buyers, because even they are more overhead than they can be bringing in.   VFX for motion pictures has pretty much always been a bad business to be in if your idea was to generate revenue.  And so everyone is looking to create their own content.  Perhaps a trade organization will improve things but it's pretty clear that content ownership is the only way to actually do better than squeak by or luck out and have a good year in the black.

  No, you don't know what happened on this project.  You haven't even read this thread.  If you had you could have saved yourself some effort here to be relevant.  I'm the only one in this thread not engaging in pure speculation.   edit: and of course Leang likes your post because he thinks everyone else just reads about stuff other people do like him.

  On the one hand, I could see the bad blood effects being an aesthetic that works, if this were for an overall "grindhouse" style production.  The blood was very reminiscent of the look of similar effects from Machete, which looked to be a lot of "Action Essentials" quality stock footage.  That stuff can't be used for anything approaching "real" but used in a comic, campy way it can still work effectively.     The keying process for stock footage blood robs it of all its visceral impact and wetness, not to mention, nobody seems to CC it to not have some weird color shift and not be a muddy red-brown color, or orange, or dirty salmon.  When folks go further than stock, generally, with full-CG blood, they tend to make it too particular or too blobby.  They make it too opaque.  Liquid effects are very, very expensive and only a small minority of VFX professionals exercise the finesse and patience to do them well.   Anyway, I think The Punisher is an IP that is served well with this sort of paired down budget and style, using the non-realism to allow the filmmaker to push the violence into what would otherwise demand an NC-17.  They could be making three, or four, or eight of these for every one Spider-Man sequel I couldn't give a crap about.     Marvel, to date, has made the mistake of trying to be too slick with him.     PS> That Yoo-Hoo is at least one Vegany Violation for Jane ;)

I've had so many Western Digital drives go out on me I'll only buy Seagate.  Other people might have the opposite experience but I've never had a Seagate drive die on me yet.   Now where's some wood to knock on?

I still prefer Ray Stevenson as the Punisher, but I do like Thomas Jane and the fact that he wants to do it again bad enough to make this short happen, I'd be there with bells on if he returned for a third film.  Do it Marvel.  Just do it.

The doublet wins, for my money.  Glad I got one ;)

  No problem.  I had these saved for later reference and this thread jogged my memory.      I fully expect a lot of these to be the cheapest kind of brittle, injection molded plastic compared to the big boys but I'm always very gentle with my equipment so I'm not worried that I'd break one.  I still have almost all of the cell phones I've ever owned and none of them have ever been broken or cracked or even scuffed up from dropping on pavement, etc.   I'm extra careful because I get anxiety issues over nicks, scratches and scuffs on my stuff :(

  You really want to go there?  Because I'd be happy to point out what I think of Bendeyar, which, not your fault, you didn't shoot it.  Is it your fault it was graded like it was?  Your fault the editing is like it is?  Is it your fault the VFX are the way they are?  Is it your fault the trailer is cut the way it is?  Your fault the poster looks like it does?  What exactly was your total involvement in your movie, Leang?     Some of these issues seem to be improved in your "vampire" short but others leave me scratching my head why they'd persist after graduating from such a prestigeous film school.  I don't know anything about Columbia.  I know some film programs you might not actually get to make more than one film between enrollment and degree and so students have to actually learn how to make a movie after graduation.  I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt here.   The only irony here is that I've actually shot a feature, that looks like you're watching a movie, and not something from a video camera, and you have not.  Still, you continue to provoke me even when I've been generous to you more than once since we've locked horns.  Is it perfect?  No, and I'm the first one to say so.  It's my first time shooting anything of this length with this kind of pressure, first time picking up that camera.  Could you do the same?  That's yet to be seen.     You can talk shit all you want, JAFO.  Be prepared though, if you want to go there.  Your kung fu does not scare me.     edit: for the record, I shared main title credit with my lead gaffer, Homer, because I was that proud of what we did and his assistance in creating naturalistic interior lighting.  We didn't have enough lights to over-light but we both prefer the work of classic Cundey, Savides, Cronenweth Jr. and Escoffier to the slick, contrived conventional lighting techniques that, when attempted, put the stink of fail on low budget projects.