The Bourne Inspiration

In response to the subway short trend, Eric Escobar blogged about a scene in The Bourne Supremacy that he finds rebelliously inspirational. That struck a chord with me, as I too have a Bourne scene that inspires me. It’s the Waterloo Station scene in The Bourne Ultimatum.

In this scene, Bourne outwits CIA operatives while guiding a reporter to safety. It was shot in London’s busiest train station without disrupting thousands of commuters and travelers. That’s right, it’s the ultimate subway short!

What’s amazing about this scene is that it follows the DV Rebel rulebook to the letter. They used a minimal crew and natural light. When out among the general public, the only props we see are cell phones and a syringe. It’s only when the action moves to a stairwell that the guns come out. A sniper gets involved, and his footage too is shot separately from the actual station (a wee bit of greenscreen work connects the two). All of this is intercut with people in a room full of monitors. There’s nothing in this scene you couldn’t do yourself, without permits.

For The DV Rebel’s Guide my editors went to great effort to secure the rights to use the kitchen scene in La Femme Nikita as an example of an approachable DV Rebel action scene. But as the Bourne films show us, such scenes are abundant. For every Bond-style chase with flipping cars and helicopter shots, there’s a gritty, tense mano a mano battle that requires nothing more than hard work and great choreography.

I think this guy’s got a power window on his face.

And color correction. The Bourne sequels are great examples of the hidden gift to the DV Rebel that lurks in many a DVD—the supplemental materials feature deleted and alternate scenes prior to their DI color correction (see Color Makes the Movie). It’s easy to see how the vérité footage, often shot without immaculate control over lighting, becomes more cinematic and pointed thanks to the DI. Color correction adds style, but it also helps tell the story by subtly altering the lighting. Again, this is 100% Rebel-compatible—with readily available tools such as Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, Apple Color and Adobe After Effects (plus the DV Rebel Tools), you can often color-correct your way to high production value—and you’ll be in good company doing so.

A pre-DI shot from the deleted scenes

That same shot is in the film, color corrected

The Subway Short is the new Resolution Chart

Folks following me on Twitter and watching the comments here have noticed that I’m a bit obsessed with an offhanded comment made on the Rebel Café. In response to some technically sound but rather dry sample footage from the Ikonoskop A-cam dII, Gage replied:

I need to see a subway short.

After I cleaned the coffee off my keyboard, I contemplated the profundity of that statement. See, it wasn’t long ago that when a new camera showed up, we wanted to see test shots of Macbeth swatches and resolution charts. Or at least we thought we did. But lately, some crazy filmmakers have brought art to a technology fight, and they are kicking ass. There’s the D90 Subway test, and one shot with the RED One as well. And there’s Reverie, AKA The Bourne Zoolander (you know I love you Vincent). These aren’t really short films, they’re emotional trigger experiments. They’re camera tests designed to tickle our cinema bone rather than satisfy our slide-rules. They promise a cinematic feel rather than razor sharp 4K filmouts. We watch them on our computer screens and on our TVs. You know, where we watch everything.

For every piece of footage that seemingly proves that the Nikon D90 D-Movies are unusable, there’s at least one that shows how great the footage can look if you work within the camera’s limitations. Ditto the 5D MkII. Folks seem less interested in how a camera fares on a test bench than how it handles being serupticioulsy weidled in a no-photography zone. After Gage’s comment, the Ikonoskop guys actually posted a tiny clip that’s kinda like a subway short!

I told Gage I’d make t-shirts, and I did (all credit goes here). Proceeds go toward buying Gage a beer.

A month ago I wrote that “buttons and features and resolution charts just had their ass handed to them by sex apeal,” and now that movement has a mantra. So when a camera company comes at you with specs and megapixels and data rates, you know what to tell them.

I need to see a subway short.

On the other hand...

...by the time the Scarlet Bolex might become available, we might also have the above camera. Micro 4/3 format, interchangeable lenses and autofocus (probably), HD video and 12 megapixel stills (most likely), all for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 (pure conjecture, although the G1 is currently only $800 with a lens).

You'll have to weigh 3K raw vs. whatever compressed video format Panasonic chooses for the Lumix G (we usin' code names) of course. And there's always the chance that Panasonic will do something stupid to limit the G's professional use, like skipping 24p or hampering manual control. But more than any other camera company, Panasonic has shown the ability to overcome engineering inertia and do the important next thing. We have them to thank for consumer 24p—which we take for granted now, but was a monumental event that Canon and Sony were slow and reluctant to follow.

I for one can't wait to see the subway shorts.

Oh yeah, and:

UPDATE: Looks like the prototype LUMIX G has an AVHD badge on the back (thanks to dcloud for the link in the comments). That's good news, it's a post-friendly codec supported by many NLEs.

I may complain a lot...

…but this little guy looks pretty sweet.

This appears to be the fixed-lens Scarlet design. In this configuration it’s like a digital Bolex H16.

Remember that films shot on 16mm have won Academy Awards, and that 2/3” HD video cameras currently cost $14,000 and up.

So Jim Called...

As the comment count approached 100 on my last post, Jim Jannard sent me a note asking if he could explain some of the less obvious aspects of the new RED product line. It turns out that Jim has a complex, nuanced vision for how people will use these cameras, and he was eager to explain it to someone who might grok it.

Without trying to speak for Jim, his basic message was that he is indeed making the camera I'm asking for—just not at the price I was hoping for.

The secret lies in the format chart that he posted late last week, the one that details the various windowing options for the various brains. Jim's vision is that these windowing options represent not just a way for us to compromise field of view for frames-per-second, but in fact a way for filmmakers to design their own formats, project by project.

For example, on the Epic S35, one could design a project around PL-mount lenses that might porthole noticeably at the full 5K width, which is wider than Super 35. But window in to 4K and you're basically shooting with the RED One, except you've got better dynamic range and up to 115 fps.

On the Epic FF35, you could define exactly the 4K window with your vast sensor that would capture an Academy-sized image and shoot with anamorphic lenses. This would be different than the 4K window you'd shoot to for a 2:35 center crop with spherical PL-mount lenses. And the next day you could be shooting 6K using every millimeter of your Canon L-series.

When you look at it this way, Jim's building blocks offer a dizzying number of options, more even than was clear at first glance. It's a ton of rope, well more than enough to hang oneself (the post options just got officially redonkulous), but also pretty freaking cool. Owner-operators will be able to dial in custom crops that make the most of their glass, and play with the relationship between over-the-top resolution, FOV, and slow-mo capability. Jim called it "elbow room"—the excessive resolutions and slightly-bigger-than-standard gates are designed not to become new standards as much as to encompass a perpetual choice of existing ones.

This diagram is mine, not RED's, and is just guesswork and supposition and therefore probably completely wrong. Stop looking at it already!

Jim's perspective was that he had indeed offered the camera I want. The Epic S35, windowed to 4K, is a cinema-sized sensor that takes cinema and DLSR lenses and offers frame rates up to 115 fps.

It's also $28,000 without ports, batteries, or recording media.

To my way of thinking, the camera features most important to a filmmaker are sensor size, dynamic range, and maximum frame rate. Images should look good projected in a theater and on HD—anything more gets into specialty territory.

To me, the sweet spot that addresses all of these, that matches the film cameras that owner-operators prize for flexibility, would be a 3K super-35 sensor that went up to 72fps. My feeling is that within the panoply of RED's offerings, this sweet spot, were it to exist, aught to be at the affordable end of things. I know big chips cost exponentially more than small, and I do expect to pay for that size, but my size/cost-ometer has been irrevocably jangled by the Canon 5D MarkII—legitimately or not. Canon sells me a VistaVision sensor with LCD and electronics for $2500. I dared to hope that RED could sell me a sensor half that size with 1/4 the pixels for maybe twice as much—without LCD, battery, or recording mechanism.

Did RED miss a filmmaking sweet spot? Only if you, like me, hoped that part of "killing" DSLRs meant getting anywhere near their price range.

Jim certainly opened my eyes to a jaw-droppingly deep array of options and flexibility within his new range of cameras. When you start shopping for your RED brain, be thinking not as much about which format you'd like to shoot, but which brain encompasses the array of formats you may want to shoot. It's a deep, complex spectrum of possibilities that's not easy to encapsulate in marketing materials. I can see why Jim was eager to describe it in words.

So let me say for the record that I'm impressed, and I can't wait to rent the living hell out of these cameras.

But I had really been hoping to buy one.

And I may still. Don't poo-poo the 2/3 format. The wee Scarlet body will fit a ton of fast, wide lens options and will make for a sweet little package. Anyone who thinks that real filmmaking can't happen on an imager that size hasn't heard of Super16.

And the fixed-lens Scarlet has the potential to be a solid Rebel cam. I can't wait to learn more about it.

But as these cameras march toward reality, the competition is not standing still. DSLRs are only three simple steps away from being a viable option, and Panasonic, who have shown that they can overcome engineering inertia by creating consumer 24p, have that micro-4/3 HD rig in the works—a large(ish)-sensor, interchangeable-lens HD camera that is likely to be in the $1,000 range.

Regardless of what happens, we the filmmakers win (as if we aren't in hog heaven already). It's going to be an interesting year.