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MillimeterHD Workflow Sensibilities
Aug 8, 2006 8:00 AM, By Michael Goldman
Even as a seemingly endless slew of alternatives and options are entering into digital workflow discussions, the rise of Sony’s HDCAM SR tape as a favored acquisition and mastering format continues unabated.
As reported in the upcoming issue of Millimeter, for instance, companies like PostWorks are incorporating SR tape into digital intermediate pipelines as an affordable, scanning format alternative to working in 2K color space. The notion there is to transfer movies to HDCAM-SR’s 4:4:4, log-based color space for the DI, while simultaneously converting imagery to standard 4:2:2 HDCAM tape and using special LUTs to enable 24p offline editing. PostWorks’ officials suggest this alternative, sitting between previous options of working either in 4:2:2 color space on D5 tape or having to move up to 2K, has garnered great interest from filmmakers on tight budgets.
And they aren’t alone. As first reported in Millimeter and HD Focus, Rob Legato, an Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor and second unit director, is continuing to hone and evolve the portable, SR-based, digital filmmaking pipeline he has been developing for a few years to reduce costs in producing visual effects and second-unit material for prominent directors. (Read more about Legato’s SR-based pipeline at http://digitalcontentproducer.com/e-newsletters/hd_focus_09_13_05/.) Legato is currently using this workflow approach simultaneously for Martin Scorsese on his upcoming The Departed and Robert DeNiro on his upcoming feature, The Good Shepherd, and continues to lobby hard for the notion that HDCAM-SR’s positive attributes make it a perfect format for portable, high-end feature film acquisition and post-production work.
Others, like director David Fincher, are attempting to leave videotape of any type behind for good, as recently reported in HD Focus. Fincher, as he made the upcoming film, Zodiac, preferred to record direct to D.MAG digital film magazines, partly because of the advantages of having random image access to 4:4:4 (1920/1080p) imagery recorded without any sort of compression. See the upcoming issue of Millimeter for more on Fincher’s workflow and philosophy on that project.
Legato suggests these types of distinctions are largely a matter of personal preference for filmmakers, in terms of the route they take to achieving their creative goals.
“The D.MAG is quite good, of course, but it is about as big as an SR deck, with quite a bit less storage and more expensive mags that have to be downloaded before they can be used in post,” Legato says. “The plus side is that it doesn’t have any compression [which is why it holds less data], and is ideal for bluescreen work. [HDCAM-SR], with its 10-bit, 4:4:4 capabilities and invisible compression, still remains, in my opinion, the best all-around solution as a portable mastering medium. The tape format [as a storage and organizational medium] saves filmmakers the extra expense of needing huge storage for mass quantities of dailies. The entire movie can be auto-assembled in a traditional way by shuttling tapes, and allows for literally last-minute changes by simply loading up a new EDL from any non-linear editing system. The hard disk storage alternative is to simply store approximately 90 to 180 hours of uncompressed HD at approximately 65 to 120 terabytes for a normal feature. An SR tape will hold the equivalent of three-quarters of a terabyte [760 gigs], and can be accessed by a non-linear editor [Avid, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro] in realtime. I prefer that level of post flexibility, and I am willing to give up an invisible uncompressed quality gained by other alternative systems.”
Still, Legato adds that “everybody has their own personal skew on this issue, and so far, no one is all correct or all wrong. Up until now, film has been uniformly embraced as the finest quality, most elegant multi-resolution recording format that money can buy. It probably still is, and will remain so for at least a few more years. The only downside is the fact that film still requires that one expensive extra step of mastering to some form of digital medium to take advantage of the widely embraced digital post process. So, in terms of all these new digital workflows, it largely remains simply a personal choice [for filmmakers] based on their own unique sensibilities, rather than which approach is technically better.”
