Nov 25, 1997 - Seleting the right camera for "Bullets Never Miss" is still not easy. back to what_format page
Which Camera?
Choosing the right movie camera for "Bullets Never Miss" will affect how the movie looks... and how we do the storyboards.For the last three months, I have been researching movie cameras and still have not found the right camera which is compatible with HDTV, DVD-Video, and 35mm projection film and is practical to work with.
"Bullets Never Miss" is an epic western so it needs to be projected on the wide screen. Therefore we must find a good format which can create a wide screen image for both film projection and video projection.
Anamorphic Compression
Before we start, we must understand anamorphic compression.With film, most formats are filmed normally and then cropped to the desired aspect ratio. Normally a lot of film is wasted by any aspect ration other than 4 by 3 because much of the film is masked (or hidden).
Only the extreme wide formats are film with lenses that squeeze the images sizeways. This side ways compression is called anamorphic compression. Only aspect ratios greater than 1.85 to 1 use anamorphic compression.
In contrast, all professional vide (CCIR601) is anamorphic. Normally 720 by about 480 pixels are compressed sideways for both narrow screen and wide screen. One way the video pixels are squeezed sideways and the other way the pixels are stretched sideways.
Also be aware that most videographers do not concider normal video to be anamorphic. They only call 16 by 9 video to be anamorphic. So for the rest of this report, we will call 4 by 3 images "normal" and 16 by 9 to be "anamorphic".
Apple vs. Microsoft
The Macintosh normally has only square pixels. Adobe Photoshop cannot on the Macintosh cannot handle anamorphic images correctly.
On the Windows PC, images normally are anamorphic but with the tall skinny pixels of the 4 by 3 aspect ratio. Some programs take this into concideration when rotating and compositing images but not professional images such as Photoshop.
Neither operating system can handle wide screen images correctly. And even if it could, there is no way that the operating system can tell Adobe Photoshop that one image is anamorphic and another is not. This is a problem!
So to film "Bullets Never Miss", we are limited to:
1. DV Camcorders
2. Super-16mm Film CamerasA few of the DV cameras can produce 16 by 9 images by doing anamorphic compression. The Japanese version of the VX-1000 can do anamorphic images.
New cameras such as the Sony DXC-D30WS are becoming available in the USA with the wide screen option of anamorphic 16 by 9 images in the normal 720 by 480 pixel images of DV.
Now comes the problems. If I have a matte painting and I want to combine it with DV wide screen images, how do I do that. I would have to convert the images (by resampling) to 853 by 480. That is a bit messy.
If I want to change the video so it looks like film using Broadcast Cinelook, it only works on images up to 742 wide. Alternatively, can I apply grain to an anamorphic image without it looking odd?
And if I have a 16 by 9 wide screen image that I want blown up to 35mm, is their any film lab which can convert the anamorphic DV images to a wide screen format?
For more information of editing with DV, see Editing DVC with FireWire.
3. Digital BetacamNeither Apple nor Microsoft have a way to store all the quality of film in a computer file format... either 16mm or 35mm.
Kodak uses a RGB 10-bit-per-color using a logrythmic scaled. Neither Windows nor the Macintosh can read this format. Even with John Knolls' Missing Link which converts the Kodak format into a Macintosh format (at lower resolution), it is just too awkward for most people to use.
Last time I talked to Peter Hoddie of the QuickTime Team, he was considering a 16-bit-per-color linear scale which stores the same information in a more convienient format but it would take up a lot more disk space.
Super 16
The Super-16mm format is the smallest film camera where the film can be converted to HDTV at full resolution which is 1920 by 1080 square pixels. Having a movie in HDTV resolution has some advantages. Once your movie is edited, it will (someday) be easily transferred to 35-mm motion picture film.
The disadvantage of these cameras is the weight. Light Super-16 cameras (Aaton) are extremely expensive to buy or rent. All other Super-16 weigh too much.
Lenses for Super-16 must be specially made for the wide-screen format so the cost of renting a Super-16mm camera with lenses can be more than for renting a 35mm motion picture camera.
Low-cost 16mm cameras are noisy but this is not be a problem with "Bullets Never Miss" since the movie has so little dialog that it can be done later with ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement) done with programs like Adobe Premiere using the methods of Robert Rodriguez.
Half HDTV
The problem with full HDTV resolution is it requires a lot of storage (disk space) specially since we are doing all the special effects inside the computer for "Bullets Never Miss". Therefore, a half HDTV resolution would be better. But neither full resolution nor half resolution can be done directly to a Macintosh or Windows PC.
Film Quality
The advantage of Super-16 is you get the quality of film. In tests, we found that the DV cameras do have a problem with flare in very bright lights. This is not a problem with film.
4. 35mm filmDigital Betacam has just enough resolution it can be converted to35mm film for projecting in theaters and still look good. The problem is Sony offers no way to get this resolution out of the camera into a Macintosh or Windows PC.
And as far as I know, they do not plan to. Soon Sony will offer a model which will connect to personal computers but it will not be the same resolution as the original Digital Betacam.
The ten minute movie "Mail Bonding" was projected in 35 mm film from Digital Betacam. Kodak's PR people said that Kodak would be demonstrating how Digital Betacam can be converted to film at NAB this year. But this is only for movies edited on Sony Digital Betacam editing equipment.
The resolution of Digital Betacam is 1038 by 504 which is not in the same pixel ratio as DV, HDTV, or film for a wide-screen movie. The normal way of getting an image out of Digital Betacam is to convert the image to CCIR 601 at only 720 by 486 pixels.
Digital Betacam cameras rent for over $600 per day which is roughly same as the rental on a 35mm motion picture camera though this varies greatly on the options and packages you rent.
For your information, Sony's DVW-700 Digital Betacam goes for around $80,000 new. Compare to the least expensive new, in-production 35mm camera, the Aaton 35-III, which goes for around $140,000 by the time you add mags, viewfinder, zoom lens, videotap, etc. to configure it as an equivalent to the betacam and the Moviecam Compact and Arri 535 are many times the cost of the Aaton 35-III camera.
Soon, Truevision will have a Targa SDX board which will be able to transfer data from Digital Betacam directly into a Windows computer. But... this is only 720 by 486 pixels (for D1), not the full 1038 by 504 pixels. The board will cost over $7,000 and if combined with the new MADRAS format converter from Truevision is $15,000..
Digital Betacam is a large camera but it can be easily moved while filming because it can rest on your shoulder unlike most film camera which are very awkward to move... except the Aaton.
So while Digital Betacam looks very promising, we will not use it for this movie if we can find a film alternative.
5. Regular 16mm35mm film is a universal format with each frame containing about 4,000 by 3,000 pixels of information. The major problem of 35mm cameras is the weight which is about 30 lbs. Since we will be filming outdoors, moving a 35mm film camera will be difficult at best. Dollies and cranes cost more than the movie camera.
Newer cameras are lighter than older cameras but a roll of 35mm film still weighs a lot.
Renting 35mm cameras is very difficult since you can only rent these cameras in about 6 cities in the USA. (Rental in Europe might be easier.) We are over 130 miles from San Francisco and over 50 miles from the nearest airport which handles freight from LA where movie cameras are cheaper to rent. Not good.
Using 35mm normally means that you can project the movie in a theater easily. However, "Bullets Never Miss" is almost all special effects which must all be done inside the computer. Therefore, this advantage of 35mm film is lost for this movie since it is not practicle to tranfer 35mm to the Macintosh at a resolution greater than CCIR 601.
Therefore, we will not be using 35mm film motion picture cameras.
ConclusionRegular 16mm motion picture cameras was my last choice because no one seems to take 16mm seriously. Only after I realized that this format has some hidden advantages did I become interested.
Still ... we might not use 16 mm film cameras because there is no where that you can rent a small, cheap 16 mm camera and because of the tremendous logistic hastles of using a rented camera over 3 hours from the nearest rental place.
On the good side, regular 16mm movie film has almost 1500 pixels of data across which is more than half the width of HDTV. (Note: Super-16 gets more resolution out of the same film stock by not having holes on one side of the film so the image can be larger.)
If the frames are cropped for the wide screen format and then digitally transferred at half HDTV format (960 by 540 pixels per frame), the images will still have compatibility with HDTV but will not have too much data that might overload our computers and yet it can be transferred back to 35 mm. Unfortunately, these images are apparently not compatible with Macintosh or Windows because neither can handle the greater color range of film. (10-bits per RGB color channels).
New 16mm cameras cost from $5,000 to $60,000.
Used 16mm cameras over 20 years old cost about $2,000 to $7,000 but they retain their value year after year... so an old 16mm camera will resell for the same price you paid for it. This makes used 16mm cameras a good investment (if you select a popular model).
Something like an Arriflex 16S or Arriflex 16M seems like a good camera to start with if you can use a set of 5.6 mm, 50 mm, and 75 mm lens. Also, one of our shots in the storyboard calls for a very long telephoto shot which is easy with regular 16mm cameras using an inexpensive 150 mm lens but that is an easy lense to find. Unfortunately, finding a 5.6 lens is not easy as it costs from $1,300 to $1,800/.
The problem is that not a single person in San Francisco can repair these old cameras. Anyone who knows how is dead or lives in the country.
Regular 16mm cameras are a little easier to use than the more expensive Super 16mm cameras but they are still heavy... so we will have to change some of our shots in the storyboard. I still do not know how Robert Rodriquez got the shots that he did from the Arriflex 16S camera.
The reason we move the camera is to separate the foreground from the background giving the image a 3D effect. Maybe we can find other ways to do this such as adding matte paintings which move (such as a cloudy sky created in MetaTools Bryce, masked in Adobe Photoshop, and composited with Adobe AfterEffects).
I wish we could use the Aaton Super 16 cameras or even the Ariflex 16S but the new wide screen DV cameras will be OK once the programs such as Photoshop can correctly composite wide sceen images.
Please e-mail Robert Purser with your comments.