Solving 3D Headaches

Solving 3D Headaches:
Matt Brennesholtz Helps
Negotiate A Challenging 3D Future
By
Neal Romanek

(as printed in April 2009 TVBEurope)
“I love watching 3D, it’s just that after 10 minutes I have a pounding headache.”

At tradeshows, exhibitions, screenings, even meet-ups of 3D devotees, one hears it over and over. At the Digital Television Group's Summit 2009 in March, an overview of Sky's plans for 3DTV was introduced with "Here's Chris Johns to tell us about eye strain."

There has been a mad rush to produce 3D content even though their may not be the viewership for it. Critics vocally wonder if the producers of 3D content are living in a fool's paradise, preparing for The Next Big Thing that may never come. The Beijing Olympics was touted as the "3D Olympics". 3D trials were to play in limited markets, primarily in Asia. The fact that few people have heard that Beijing was the “3D Olympics” may suggest how successful the experiment was.

Creating dynamic, believable and commercially viable 3D images is a challenge that has been around longer than most people suppose. 3D is usually associated with the 1950's and the spate of anaglyph-based 3D feature films - although the anaglyph technique had been used to create 3D images since the 1850's. The first stereoscopic motion picture patent was taken out in the 1890's and the first 3D camera rig was patented in 1900.

TVBEurope talked with 3D expert Matt Brennesholtz, a senior analyst at Insight Media who has worked in partnership with the 3D@Home Consortium. The 3D@Home Consortium was formed in 2008 to speed the commercialization of 3D into homes worldwide. It also attempts to facilitate the development of standards, roadmaps and education for the 3D industry. In 2007 Brennesholtz co-authored a 400-page report “3D Technology and Markets: A Study of All Aspects of Electronic 3D Systems, Applications and Markets”. This all encompassing document forecast the viability of 3D display technology in a vast array of markets into the next decade. Its scope included not just stereoscopic 3D displays, but a variety of autostereoscopic displays, and rotating image plane, vibrating membrane, and micropolarizer technologies.

Brennesholtz is an expert in display technologies, having been a lead projection system architect at Philips LCoS Microdisplay Systems. He has a masters of Engineering in Optics and Plasma Physics from Cornell University and has been granted 23 patents. Still, we asked question most on everyone's mind - why do we get a headache when we watch 3D?

"One of the fundamental problems with 3D displays," he explains, "is the problem of convergence and accommodation." Convergence is the ability of the eyes to stay trained on a point in space and allows you to focus on the text on a mobile phone three inches from your nose. Accommodation is the ability of the eye itself to focus in distance like a mini-camera.

Stereoscopic images rely on the brain's default setting of always making a single image out of the pair of images received by the eyes - as opposed to how chameleons do it. The perceived "space" between the two side-by-side images in a 3D show is compensated for by convergence with the eyes going from being parallel towards being crossed and back - just as they would in watching a live event.

The element that is challenging for the brain - and for some viewers - is the image in a 3D display is always exactly the same distance away, on the surface of the screen. The convergence of the eyes sends the message that objects are moving forward and backward in space, but the real image each eye is capturing stays put. The brain is trying to tackle two different ways of seeing at once, like a computer running two memory intensive applications at the same time. The fact that the eyes are making very few focus changes, doesn't mean that the brain is not revving like an engine every time it thinks something is moving toward it or away from it. Perhaps, like the trick of being able to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, the brain may get the hang of it with repeated viewing.

"There can be other human factor problems associated with bad 3D displays," Brennesholtz notes, "with certain types of encoding, for example, but this is a fundamental problem that really is inescapable in the 3D display world."

The most serious aggravation of the accommodation-convergence discrepancy is when the content creator puts images in the virtual space in front of the screen - the monster reaches out to camera, the enemy fires a hundred arrows at us, and the like. These are the effects that producers may push because they have greater visceral impact, but they are also the things that most bother the eyes. Brennesholtz says the solution is to place most 3D effects at the level of the screen or behind it.

Another significant issue, one to induce headaches in content creators rather than viewers, is that the content has to be created for the screen size and viewing distance of the intended audience. Analogous to needing different sound mixes for DVD, theatrical, and mobile device content, each 3D version of a programme must be mastered with its final destination in mind. Sound mixers have managed complex sets of presets for each intended format, it seems likely that 3D mastering will have to learn to do the same.

Although some roadblocks to the perfect 3D experience are exactly the same as they were in the 1950's, Brennesholtz points out that the sophistication of today's technology may overcome the others. "Some of the other problems that have been associated with 3D, like dimness or differences in brightness and color between the two images, can be overcome with proper display, screen and video signal design."

Brennesholtz underlines the consumers demand for a quality experience that is the principle factor in adoption of 3D. “The end user, whether he’s watching broadcast television or cable or blue ray or is sitting in the cinema, is not going to give up anything to get 3D. He’s not going to give up resolution. He’s not going to give up frame rate. He’s not going to accept flicker. He’s not going to accept headaches. Basically, he wants his 2D experience – which right now when you look at HDTV is really good – but with 3D.”

Questions about 3D are in no short supply. Approximately 10% of the population are unable to properly see 3D, and what kind of a strategy must be developed when such a large segment of the audience must automatically be discounted? Most people are unaware that many TV's are already "3D ready", but where is the extra bandwidth going to come from if 3D TV is going to become a reality? And finally, if eyeball convergence and focus are such core issues in 3D viewing, what happens to the 3D experience after the third beer?

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"After Hell" & The Paradise of Audio Drama

Having just launched the horror site, "All The Hells", how I could I not listen to an audio drama called "After Hell"?

"After Hell" a supernatural drama, a mix of police procedural and "28 Days Later"-style Armageddon story. It's enthusiastically presented and - the key to any good audio drama - uses an intelligent sound design to create spaces, describe scenes, illustrate scenes in detail.

I was sent one of the new CD copies from SciFind Ltd., UK based aggregator of all things scientifically fictional. I was sold on the concept, sight unseen - or sound unheard.

I love audio drama - as anyone who has heard my delightfully self-indulgent (yes, delightfully!) "Wretched Goo Of The Imagination" podcasts will tell you. One of my first forays into media production was the recording of a thrilling audio space adventure with my older brother. It was entitled "Face To Face With The Planet Scanodon!" and recorded in the living room of our Ohio apartment on glorious reel-to-reel tape. I wonder if

my parents still have that tape in storage somewhere.

And I have not grown up - have not "changed my principles", let's say - that sounds better - one iota since then. Here is the planet Scanodon at The Cyclopedia Of Worlds:

And, heck, here's a movie of the planet Scanodon at The Cyclopedia Of World's video channel, that you can watch till your eyes cross:

The quality of writing and production design may have improved since I was seven years old, but the subject matter...remarkably the same.

Writer-director Joe Medina at Ollin Productions has put together something he should be proud of with "After Hell". I think Orson Welles would agree with me, if he were animated and rotting next to me in some kind of horrific horror story way, that audio drama - radio drama, we used to call it - is it's own, self-contained media form. Audio drama, like music, engages the mind and imagination directly - and can - in partnership with our brains - describe atmospheres, textures, spaces, and all manner of impossible absurdities (see again, The Wretched Goo Of The Imagination) with ease. I love it. And will do more of it myself some day, when I finish these several dozen other projects.

Well done, to Ollin Productions and the entire "After Hell" crew. Keep up the good work. We want more. We need more.

Gearhouse Broadcast's HD-1: An Expanding Truck For Australia's Expanses

Gearhouse Broadcast’s HD-1: An Expanding Truck For Australia’s Wild Expanses
By
Neal Romanek

(as printed in Dec. 2008 TVBEurope)
Gearhouse Broadcast’s new HD OB truck, called HD-1, could very well be the biggest OB truck in Britain. There is no doubt, after it finishes its transoceanic voyage next year and arrives at its destination in Australia, it will be the biggest OB truck in Australia, and probably the Southern Hemisphere.

HD-1 will be used in Australia for Channel 7’s coverage of Australian Rules Football. Kevin Moorhouse, Technical Director of Gearhouse Broadcast, says that on the matches the vehicle will be operating at about 70% capacity. But he anticipates that with the vehicle’s 28 camera capability, it will soon become a one-truck solution for 95% of Channel 7’s onsite productions.

TVBEurope toured the vehicle as it was being systems integrated for its new Australian venture at the company’s European headquarters in Watford, UK. Gearhouse Broadcast’s trucks are coach-built by A Smith Great Bentley Ltd. HD-1’s project manager is John Fisher, who has been in the industry for over 40 years. HD-1 is the sixteenth truck John has built and he will start integrating number seventeen on behalf of Gearhouse Broadcast in the New Year.

Making their truck builds long-lasting and future-proofed is vital for the success of Gearhouse Broadcast’s integration business model. All in, to build and integrate HD-1 was a multi-million pound exercise. The chassis alone takes between 26 and 28 weeks to construct. All the cable in the truck runs down a single underfloor channel in the center, rather than in the expands, so that - stationary and supported by the chassis - there is negligible wear on the cable over time. Kevin Moorhouse says of Smith’s construction, “They build trucks like battleships. It costs around three quarters of a million pounds just to build the chassis, but we expect to get ten years out of that chassis.” In fact, the group’s first truck, Unit 1, built almost 20 years ago, has just been refurbished and is still operating.

Gearhouse Broadcast made the decision to have no video jackfields on any inputs or outputs of the router in their OB vans. Given the router’s size it would be impossible to overpatch the router if it failed on a production. Also, with HD signals, the addition of a jack field’s extra connections introduce losses into the signal path. Gearhouse trucks have back up Cross-Point cards and I/O cards in case of router failure. It is this simple stripping away of everything that is not essential, while retaining and augmenting the most vital features, that has resulted in steady improvement in each iteration of Gearhouse’s OB trucks. Solutions to the puzzle of cramming three dozen workers into a confined space loaded with sophisticated technology - technology which, literally, cannot afford to fail - are solved with a simplicity and elegance.

The HD-1 seats up to 38 people. The triple expand configuration allows for unprecedented floor area. Closed for transport the unit width is 2.5 metres and will be fully within regulations for travel on Australian roads. Deployed, the 16.5 metre long truck is an impressive 7,5 metres wide –with 40 kilometers of cable inside.

The HD-1’s Pro-Bel 576 X 576 Video Router was first employed at the Beijing Olympics. The company’s ability to swap components in and out from their own inventory allows for fine tuning of their budgets – and rates for their customers. When Gearhouse has already earned money on equipment from previous shows, they can then offer such “used” technology – in this case, three months old – at more flexible pricing, if need be.

The Production section at the center of HD-1 features a unique 3-level step area. An engineering necessity was, in this case, turned into an opportunity for design innovation. The fifth wheel of the Australian rig is higher than the British standard and so required more area beneath the floor to accommodate it. The resulting steps up, allowing space for the fifth wheel, also create a tiered production area with unrestricted line-of-sight for each one of its 16 positions.

The new Sony LMD monitors Gearhouse used at the Beijing Olympics proved themselves superior in quality and resolution. Accordingly the production area was fitted out with twenty-one 24” Sony LMD 2450’s and eight 17" Sony LMD 1750’s.

The Production area also features a fully specified Sony MVS 8400 4ME Vision Mixer, with 80 Inputs, 48 Outputs, and built-in DME.

The Vision & Engineering area, in addition to the Pro-Bel 576 X 576 Router, features 5 Sony HD Grade 1 Monitors, 24 HD/SDI External Remote Source inputs
5 HD down Converters, 10 Cross Converters, 10 Synchronisers, 4 SDI Aspect Ratio Converters and 3 HD Hex Splits.

The VTR section of the truck sports 12 six-channel EVS HD XT2’s with 4 Digital VTRs, as well as a Pro-Bel 576 X 576 HD/SDI and 256 X 256 AES Routers.

HD-1 has space for three audio engineers at a Calrec Sigma Audio Desk with Bluefin technology. The Calrec Sigma has 320 channel-processing paths, allowing up to 52 × 5.1 surround channels on one Bluefin signal processing card. The truck’s audio has 320 Channel Processing Paths, 128 AES Inputs & 128 Analogue Inputs, and 128 AES Outputs, & 112 Analogue Outputs, a Pro-Bel 256-256 AES Audio Router, and a Riedel 144 X 144 Talkback System. Also included are four Dolby E Encoders and six Dolby E Decoders.

While Gearhouse Broadcast is setting new benchmarks for OB systems integration in Australia, the company will also be flying in a new and better set of tools to Sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa-based satellite broadcaster Supersport has commissioned a flyaway kit from Gearhouse for domestic football matches. It will rival anything available in Sub Saharan Africa and top most kits available in the rest of the continent. André Venter is Head of Operations for Sub-Saharan Africa, a new position created at Supersport. He vetted several companies looking for an immediate – literally immediate – solution for 8 camera Supersports football broadcasting in Africa. The production infrastructure might vary widely from country to country and for Supersport to provide consistent, first-rate service, it would need a robust kit that could be moved and deployed quickly and easily - and they wanted it immediately. Gearhouse Broadcast was the only company who, when tasked with Supersport’s request for “immediately”, responded with “no problem”. It was able to supply a loan flyaway within a week, and then set about building the three permanent flyaways. André Ventre explained “We wanted to show the world that Africa is capable of producing high quality productions that are on a par with any broadcasters across the globe.”

The fly away kit will feature an 8-camera system made up of Sony BVP E30’s, a Sony 2.5 M/E DVS vision mixer, Teletest rack mount monitors, Harris Inscriber G1 graphics, 2 x 6 Channel SD EVS XT2, Pro-Bel router, Harris glue, RTS/Telex comms system, Yamaha DM2000K digital audio mixer, and Sachtler tripods. A wide variety of Canon lenses will go with the kit too.

Word is out across African broadcasting, and Supersport is ready to ask Gearhouse Broadcast for more. First-rate, reliable technology appearing at the right time and place has stimulated a demand for more of the same.

With the world-wide credit crisis on everybody’s mind, it is gratifying to see demand for Gearhouse’s services continuing to expand. Will the OB systems integration slice of the industry remain recession-proof? Managing Director Eamonn Dowdall says they have yet to feel the pinch and adds “When people cut down on the luxuries, their subscriptions to the premium football channels is one of the last to go.”

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Mogulus & the Post-YouTube Era

Mogulus and the Post-YouTube Era

By

Neal Romanek

(as originally printed in TVBEurope, Dec. 2008)

Internet video company Mogulus, headquartered in New York, has taken the next logical step past the on-demand model and brought no-cost 24/7 live streaming to producers. Live worldwide broadcast has at last become available to anyone with a web connection.

Ironically, live images were one of the very first “broadcast” features carried by the internet in the late 1990’s. The main handicap was that the frame rate might be four frames per minute – and require you to refresh your browser every time you wanted to see the next frame.

Mogulus and its competitors - principally Ustream.tv and Justin.tv – represent the next iteration of internet video, and Mogulus is keen on providing a service in which on-demand, linear and live streaming video are all in the same producer toolbox.

Max Haot, Mogulus co-founder and CEO, moved to London from his native Belgium in 1995. He is best known for founding the ICF Media Platform while at sports media giant, IMG Media. The ICF Media Platform was purchased by Verizon Business in 2005. In 2007 Haot founded Mogulus with Phil Worthington, a graduate of the Royal College of Art and Mogulus’s Chief Product Officer, IMG Media colleague Dayananda Nanjundappa, and Mark Kornfilt, the company’s Chief Architect. Dayananda Nanjundappa is Mogulus’s CTO and oversees the company’s second office in Bangalore.

Max Haot explains, “Most internet video platforms center around on-demand, based on the assumption that people want to watch what they want when they want. But with Mogulus our vision is to give our producers everything that a TV station can do.” “Everything” is the ability to create a live 24/7 channel that runs all the time. Currently, most of Mogulus channels are loop-based with a playlist cycle of programming repeating itself, but Mogulus content can also be schedule-based.

The Mogulus online studio features a text ticker and overlay of simple graphics or logos. A Mogulus channel can go live at any time, allowing multiple live cameras or a mix of prerecorded and live video content. Within the same player, producers have the option of offering an on-demand library of their clips as well.

“We provide the full turn-key service,” says Haot, “So a producer does not need to understand what a content delivery network is. All he needs to do is use our browser-based Studio. And then he can take our player widget and embed it on any webpage or social network.”

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Flying High with Wim Robberechts & Co.

"Flying High with Wim Robberechts & Co.: 

The Apex of Aerial Photography in Europe"

by Neal Romanek

When the trans-channel ferry, Herald Of Free Enterprise, capsized in March 1987, a Belgian photographer working with the BBC was handed the responsibility of organizing all aerial photography of the disaster. For search & rescue, forensic analysis, and breaking news for an anxious populace, it was essential to collect as much aerial footage as possible, and as quickly as possible. Young Wim Robberechts called every aerial camera crew in the United Kingdom and so entered a niche he would occupy for the next 20 years, and eventually come to dominate.

Wim Robberechts is owner of Wim Robberechts & Co., one of the top aerial photography equipment and services vendors in Europe, perhaps in the world. We spent a day with Robberechts and his company, based in a two-story building in the Diegem area on the outskirts of Brussels.

Aerial cinematography is like the shooting of complicated visual effects - substantial sums are spent for a few seconds of footage, a crack team operates sophisticated equipment under the microscopic gaze of panicked producers, and in the end the director takes all the credit.

In a recent example from Michael Palin's "New Europe" (2007), the ex-Python is seen through the window of a DC-3 and then slowly drifts away in a massive pull back that dwarfs both him and the plane. The shot was captured by one of Robberechts's young operators, Evert Cloetens Vandenbranden, using the Cineflex, which has become the gold standard for gyro-stabilized aerial camera mounts. It was the only shot Wim Robberechts & Co. did for the Palin series, yet it is likely to be one of the show's most memorable moments.

Robberechts is keenly aware of the delicate position his – often anonymous – crew occupies. "Our job is always to serve the client. And we are always asking ourselves how to serve the client better." Robberechts describes, without mentioning names, working with arrogant or difficult personalities, where the equipment and expertise of his company are not always put to best use. When asked how he responds to such clients, he answers by putting a finger to his lips. "If they do ask us 'What do you think?" we will tell them. Otherwise, we keep our mouths shut."


Wim Robberechts & Co. has long employed Wescam helicopter mounts, for years an industry workhorse, but the foundation of the company is its three Cineflexes. The Cineflex is a gyro stabilized HD camera unit that allows for rock-steady camera support on unstable or fast-moving platforms. It has been used extensively in feature films and news gathering and is a mainstay of sporting events. Viewers gasped at the recent spectacular HD aerial shots of Groupe SFP's Tour de France coverage - captured by a Cineflex from Wim Robberechts & Co. The upcoming Olympic games in China will feature Cineflex mounts from several countries. The BBC's "Planet Earth" (2006) was the first nature documentary to employ the Cineflex, stunning us not only with superb HD images, but intimate aerial views of wildlife which would not have been possible with previous systems.

Operated via joystick, the Cineflex consists of an HD camera system that sits in a 14.5  inch diameter ball turret in the nose of a helicopter. It is comprised of five rotating axes, three of which are gyro-stabilized, allowing use of extremely long lenses which would be impossible to keep stable in a standard mount. Compared to bulky 35mm film camera systems, the Cineflex is fairly lightweight at about 85 lbs. The convenience of shooting to HD allows an aerial crew to stay in the air and stay shooting for much longer. Few are the producers who would go back to using film on an aerial shoot after capturing to HD.

One thing Wim Robberechts has learned through his years in the aerial photography business is practicality, and perhaps there is also a kind of native Flemish prudence at work. He has been able to capitalize on challenges and thrive while seeing many of his contemporaries and competitors fall by the wayside. He has no plans whatsoever to own and operate his own helicopters. "It would be sexy to have our own helicopter as well, but then we become competitors with our friends." Relationships with pilots and helicopter operators have been honed over long years of working together. Robberechts recognizes that expanding into every single niche of the aerial photography business would end up erasing those existing networks and do the company more harm than good. He says, very simply, that the companies he has seen drop like flies around him almost always "have decided to spend more than they could bring in." This most basic tenet of business is understood by most business owners, but is actually practiced by a very few. Robberechts is one of those few.

Though Robberechts is himself a broadcast industry veteran, he deliberately employs a youthful team of technicians, some straight out of Belgium's top film school, to help keep his edge sharp. "Some of these directors, the ones with the half-shaved face and expensive sunglasses, they are not going to speak the same language as me."

Robberechts is invited to give regular lectures at the Brussels Film School and when there, he keeps an eye out for new talent. His years of experience have dictated a clear, hard-line set of criteria for potential applicants. "You must be able to speak at least three languages, and be willing to work for little money for two years. And say goodbye to any girlfriend or family life." The training is intensive and all done in-house. "For the first two years, it costs more money to train a new operator than he brings into the company." The commitment level must therefore be very high and Robberechts accepts nothing less than 100% commitment.

The beginning of a technician's training might involve little more than riding in the chase van during the filming of a bicycle race, and might culminate with a first aerial shoot of power lines commissioned by the local government. Young company technician Evert Cloetens, an employee still in the middle of a long and steep education, earned his first solo shoot at Torino, shooting the downhill skiing. The Cineflex was mounted on the CAMCAT remote control cable camera system. While another company's technician handled the CAMCAT, Evert, seated at controls beside the CAMCAT tech, captured the HD footage with the Cineflex. Evert is also an enthusiastic skydiver and skydiving camera operator, but, at present, Robberechts has no plans to add skydive photography to his rate sheet.

Operator Bas Vandenbranden came directly out of film school to join Wim Robberechts & Co. In addition to having the "right stuff", he had a passion for remote control model aircraft. Some of Bas's early years were spent rigging up timer-set Polaroid cameras to small balloons – then chasing the Polaroid photographs they it floated, leaf-like, back to earth. He has also just returned from shooting San Diego's Red Bull Air Race with the Cineflex.

Robberechts briefly expanded with the addition of a Paris office, but he quickly abandoned the foray. The current situation in Brussels was hard to improve upon. Brussels is, if you include English, a tri-lingual city. Its designation as the economic hub of Europe puts it at the financial and political center of things, and its geography allows rapid, easy access to Britain or anywhere in continental Europe via air or Belgium's straight, wide roads.

Technologies like the Cineflex demand a new way of employing aerial photography. It is no longer sufficient to show viewers high resolution images shot from a great height without also giving attention to aesthetics. With the dollar weak, Europeans are buying up the American-made Cineflex at a tremendous rate. As the technology becomes ubiquitous, the art of the aerial shot – its beauty, its dramatic context, its resonance – will come to the fore. Robberechts's crew are likely to exchange the designation "operator" for "artist".

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Sounds Of Nature: Part II

THE SOUNDS OF NATURE, PART II:
Sound Editing in Nature Docs: The Second Narrator

by
Neal Romanek

(as printed in the October 2007

edition of TVBEurope)

If the nature documentary is one of the most important genres in British broadcasting, could Kate Hopkins and her colleague, Tim Owens, be among British broadcasting's most important figures?

Hopkins and Owens have been sound designers on many groundbreaking wildlife documentaries, including the recent "Planet Earth" (2006), the BAFTA-winning "Blue Planet" (2001), and Sir David Attenborough's "The Life Of Mammals" (2002). Should anyone dare suggest that documentary is a less "creative" genre than narrative programming, a conversation with Kate Hopkins will set them straight.

Kate Hopkins and Tim Owens work out of their Bristol-based company, Wounded Buffalo. It takes them roughly three weeks to cut a 50-minute segment. Cutting sound on 50 minutes of "reality" TV would take a bare fraction of that time. In the case of the nature documentary, as much work – or more – must be done as on any narrative film of that length.

One of the great secrets of the nature doc, is that virtually all sound design is created in post. Sync sound, excepting commentary by Sir David Attenborough as he crouches next to a Bower Bird, is virtually never available. Wild tracks and atmospheres may be recorded at the location, but in most cases it falls to the sound editor to create the entire soundtrack from scratch.

The irony of designing sound for a high-quality nature documentary is that although the sound editor may be manufacturing the entire soundtrack herself, the final result must pass the kinds of rigorous tests of authenticity and accuracy that no other sound track must undergo. If a humpback whale song is cut into an underwater scene shot in Hawaiian waters, it must be the humpback's traditional Hawaiian Islands song, which is utterly distinct from the song the animal sings, say, off the coast of Alaska. Few would notice such a difference, or even care, but this is what distinguishes a film that entertains from one that educates, enlightens and captures the quintessence of life on earth.

The other invisible artists of the nature doc sound design are foley artists. All non-specific sound – rustles, footfalls on leaves, snow crunching under paws, crabs clattering over rocks – are done in foley sessions.

The stunning aerial shots of "Planet Earth" were shot using the Cineflex helicopter mount, which allowed stable close-ups to be shot from thousands of meters away. The real sound captured at the scene is merely the roar of the helicopter. But once the foley artists have had their crack at it, and those effects have been edited and mixed, an entire new level of information is brought to the fore. Even seemingly innocuous sound cues, a crunch here, a splash there, are profoundly powerful storytelling tools.

The core of the sound designers job is understanding the peculiar twist of the human brain when an action is accompanied by a simultaneous sound, the human brain makes the assumption that the action itself was the cause of the sound, and an action that creates a sound takes on greater importance than one that does not. Thus a simple bit of foley accentuating one movement or another, or subtly emphasizing the rustling of a stalking lion, literally leads our eye to very specific places on the screen at very specific moments. Watching the real scene unfold in nature, we would be very likely to miss little details of action, intent, cause, effect that are integral to the sound design. BBC nature docs have two narrators – Sir David Attenborough, and the sound effects themselves.

"Planet Earth" is a milestone in broadcasting, not only for being a start-to-finish HD production, but for its 5.1 surround sound. "We knew it was going to be that right from the beginning, which helps a lot. Within a 5.1 mix, you tend to hear more. You can spread things around much more. It's nice for atmospheres because you can have even more atmosphere in the surround, but still not lose the voice over in the middle. Most of the sound I've done has had the capability to be in 5.1. There were always enough layers there. But it's whether there's time in the mixing."

Bird songs represent a textbook instance where a lack of sync sound recorded while shooting presents a potential nightmare. A bird's song may be distinct not only to a particular species in a particular location, but to a particular bird performing one particular step in a mating ritual.

Hopkins notes, "The birds of paradise, for example, have calls which are very complicated. Even experts don't always know exactly which call is which. Sometimes if a producer likes something, sometimes the accuracy can drift a little bit because dramatically it works better." But more often than not, a researcher is called in with expertise in the appropriate area. "Tim did a scene with the capercaille, which is a bird notoriously difficult to lay sound for because it has such a complicated call. We had various people come in to check that it was right, and in the end it was absolutely fine. Bird calls are always the most difficult. One of the worst we had was trying to get a Mandarin duck calling her chicks. We put in the only recording that we had. It was the most awful recording. It was full of hiss, and at one point I thought, We just cannot put this in because it is so horrible. But it was accurate. And within the mix, between us and the mixer, we EQ'd it and put it through a lot of software. In the end it worked."

One of Hopkins most challenging shows - and perhaps most rewarding - was "Blue Planet".

Her ongoing collaboration with Tim Owens allows for a thematic unity throughout the series she works on. In the case of "Blue Planet" where whole sets of effects were being created, the clear and ongoing communication characteristic of their collaboration was essential to stay on course. To some degree, the creating of sound for "Blue Planet" was like building a sound track for a science fiction movie. Creating the effects in Earth's most unexplored regions yielded some daring choices.

"Obviously, most of 'Blue Planet' is underwater. It could have been just music and a general underwater track. But we decided, between the producers and the sound editors, that we were going to go for something different, because no one knows what you could actually hear underwater. There are some very natural sounds that you hear – humpback whales and shrimp clicking. But I added some much bigger noises – the fish going past – because it just adds to the strength of the images. And then there were some very tiny creatures too that I added some very strange, very designed noises. Whether it was real or not, I'm not sure that that mattered. It worked with the picture."

Those who have seen "Blue Planet" will understand how much certain sequences hinge on their sound effects. The truly frightening scene of tuna tearing into a bait ball, for example, gains extraordinary impact from the "sound" made by the attacking tuna as they rocket past. We don't for a moment forget the tuna is one of the fastest fish in the sea.

"If you have a huge bait ball swirling round and round and round, you just feel like you need to hear something. And I think that is what sound editing is all about – adding strength to the images. And you don't always want to have music going through it. You need to hear what you think you might hear if you really there."

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- click here to read "Sounds Of Nature, PART I" -

Sounds Of Nature: Part I

THE SOUNDS OF NATURE, PART I:
How BBC Natural History Producers Use Sound Design To Make 
The Real World Sound Real

by
Neal Romanek

(as printed in the September 2007 

edition of TVBEurope)

The BBC nature documentaries, most recently the HD-shot "Planet Earth" (2006), have invariably offered stunning image upon stunning image, showing us scenes few people in world have ever glimpsed before.

"Planet Earth" featured spectacular helicopter shots using the Cineflex camera mount that allowed an unparalleled intimacy. We raced along with wolves chasing down caribou – the terrified caribou huffing, the desperate footfalls trying to outrace each other. "The Blue Planet" (2001) showed us stunning scenes of hunting dolphins whooshing through the water like rockets. "The Private Life Of Plants" (1995) showed a creeping bramble in time lapse as it scraped and scrabbled its ruthless way to dominance.

In each of these sequences we were treated not only to visual wonders, but to the intimate soundscapes that accompanied them. Via the sounds it made, we could tell whether a subject was wet or dry, angry or tired, close or far, cautious or hell-bent.

So fans may be shocked to learn:

When the heart-pounding footage of the caribou chase was actually shot, the only sounds that could be heard were the roar of the helicopter and shouted communications among the camera crew, producer and pilot. And those mesmerizing sounds of the growing bramble? Of course, no one has ever heard the sound of a bramble growing, much less recorded it.

The truth is that, with the exception of those shots in which Sir David Attenborough addresses the camera crouched behind a bush, the great mass of a nature documentary soundtrack is deliberately and meticulously constructed in post-production. Atmospheres and sound effects may be gathered on location, but these are virtually never captured simultaneously with picture.

Some might find this disappointing, but upon closer study what is revealed is the incredible creative machinery that makes for a first-rate nature documentary, the apex of which is "Planet Earth", featuring a 5.1 surround mix as sophisticated, as that of any science fiction movie.

I spoke with veteran nature producer Huw Cordey about his approach to the sound design of the landmark shows he's worked ono, including "The Life Of Mammals" (2003), "Planet Earth", and most recently the BBC documentary about the South Seas. Cordey's work as a producer covers as wide a spectrum as any in the industry, going from spending days beneath the surface of the earth in one of the most spectacular caves in the world to making creative – at times purely artistic – decisions in the post-production process. In fact, it could be said that the sound editing stage is the most creative of the entire natural history cinematic process.

"You ignore sound at your peril," Cordey began, "It tends not to be noticed - unless it's bad, then everybody notices it. Often when I start talking about sound there's this huge sense of disappointment. Until they understand it, there's an initial feeling that you've broken the rules of documentary."

Of course, this exposes the nature of all documentaries, and raises again the eternal discussison of whether objectivity is ever possible once the camera starts running. It is the job of the nature documentary producer to make these aesthetic decisions virtually invisible, so that as little as possible comes between the viewer and the experience of really being there in the wild.

One of Cordey's great adventures on "Planet Earth" was the filming of the exceedingly rare wild Bactrian Camel in the icy wastes of the Gobi Desert. The extremely long lenses and camera stabilization equipment allowed intimate glimpses into the lives of these animals. Months of waiting produced only a few minutes of footage, but those few minutes were precious. Simultaneously recording the animals' sound was not even on the table.

But the final sequence is filled with the subtle grunts, snorts, and rumbles of the camels, which make a memorable sequence verge on the magical. These camel effects were recorded by the crew on a Mongolian breeding preserve. Their domesticated status allowed recordings up close and personal. Such sound effects can describe the visceral shape and flavour of a subject in a way that the image cannot quite match.

On "The Life Of Mammals", Cordey's crew was very lucky to capture footage of a babirusa, a wild pig of Indonesia armed with spectacular tusks. They were not able, However, to record sound of the animal. The BBC's massive sound libraries came to the rescue and the grunts and squeals of a real babirusa were located and employed in the final sequence. These babirusa effects had been originally been recorded in London Zoo in 1932.

It is a matter of pride on the BBC docs that the natural sounds, though not recorded in the same time and place as the images – or even in the same century –maintain impeccable scientific accuracy. Atmospheric tracks are collected at the location whenever possible, or – as is increasingly the case – existing library sound of the actual location is used. A jungle is never simply a jungle. If the original shoot took place in the Amazon, only atmospheric ambience and effects from the Amazon are employed.

This points out the superior longevity an audio library can have. It would be virtually impossible to cut in stock video or film footage into "Planet Earth", for example. Sound effects, on the other hand, in part because they contain less data are far more forgiving of post-production equalization or digital clean-up and can lend themselves to a wider variety of uses. In addition, they are not always inextricably bound to a specific time, place, or action.

Until about 2001, the BBC deployed dedicated sound recordists to the locations with the camera crews. They recorded atmospheres, effects, and the location narratives of Sir David Attenborough, and others, either boomed or fitted with a lavalier radio mic. The library of past sound recordings has become so vast, that sending a dedicated sound recordist on a shoot is not a priority, in the absence of an on-location presenter. Producers have sometimes taken up the slack and, in a pinch, acted as the shoot's location sound recordists. DAT's advent as the sound equipment of choice, replacing larger, heavier analog recorders, made it all the easier for a limited crew to manage the recording.

But the animal you are most likely to hear in any nature documentary is a human being. All the non-essential sounds, the creeping footsteps of a lion, the rustle and crunch of a lizard devouring a spider, are all done in foley sessions.

"In a project I worked on a long time ago, we had a shot where a monkey was tearing the husk off a a coconut. The foley artist used gaffer tape peeling off a camera case." The foley done on tentpole projects like "Planet Earth" is among the most sophisticated that foley artists can do. It requires skill and experience, and competent editing and mixing, to convincingly create the sound of a polar bear's feet in the snow with no other sounds available in the Arctic waste to mask any problem spots.

"We delivered 'Planet Earth' on 5.1 surround. I think one of the great developments for TV is better sound. Look at our television sets – fantastic picture, but usually with just a tinny little speaker next to it. It's always the weakest part. Why do people enjoy going out to see things on the big screen? Very often I think it's the sound that has you on the edge of your seat. 'Planet Earth' is all about a cinema-style experience and sound is used to enhance that experience."

- Click here to read 

"Sounds Of Nature, PART II: 

Sound Editing in Nature Docs - the Second Narrator -

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Wrapping the Future in MXF

Turner's Steve Fish: Wrapping the Future In MXF

by

Neal Romanek

(originally published in August 2007 issue 

of TVBEurope magazine)

Turner Broadcasting has built its formidable media presence, in part, on its ability to handle and manage its assets. The purchasing of the MGM library in 1986 marked just one of the company's pioneering leaps in repurposing already existing material. It should be no surprise then that Turner should today still be at the forefront of asset management for the 21st century in the person of Steve Fish, VP of Engineering at Turner Broadcasting Europe.

At the Henry Stewart Events DAM conference at the Portman Radisson SAS in London this past June, Mr. Fish delivered a presentation called "The MXF Driven End To End Tapeless Production Proof Of Concept At Turner Broadcasting", about the MXF (Material Exchange Format) asset management standard. Looking, in his glasses, very much like a Steven Spielberg ca. 1975, but unspooling information like a university physics professor, even those of us still grappling with understanding the format, left substantially enlightened.

Turner is not the only company committed to MXF in its media management. Recently Warner Bros. studios adopted media storage solutions supplied by HP which will allow the movie studio to operate entirely within a 4K video environment. The HP system employs a primitive version of MXF.

In brief, MXF is a set of standards hammered out over the past decade by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) that describes the parameters of a specific variety of digital wrapper. This envelope can contain a broad spectrum of audio, video, and metadata. The core of the format is called SMPTE 377M, but over 25 additional SMPTE documents both describe and prescribe the various intricacies of the format, all of which are available for download on the SMPTE site (www.smpte.org).

Advantages to the MXF format include its keeping only unique items in multiple versions. If, for example, an additional soundtrack is required for a foreign version of a show, only that new soundtrack need be created for the foreign version. Other types of asset management might require duplicate files for every single different version, which quickly balloons into a massive – potentially absurd - storage problem. MXF also provides a method of putting description metadata into header tracks. One or more may be used and each can be labeled uniquely. A key upside to MXF is its platform-agnostic simplicity and the its forward-thinking design intended to make it a adaptable to future sound and image formats.

The MXF, like many industry standards, a work in progress, adapting to industry changes over time. Some of the original research documents were written as far back as 1997, but the work on honing and streamlining the standard is ongoing. Steve Fish is candid about describing the limitations of MXF. In fact, it is vital that the limitations are openly discussed if better solutions are to be found, particularly as the MXF enters the current period of transition from mere standard to practical deployment.

For one, Fish noted that MXF is still too complex with too many options. He pointed to MPEG2 as an example to learn from. MPEG2, in the early days of its usage, also offered many options and parameter, but ultimately only a few of them were useful and user-friendly for the industry. Such an over-flexible system also makes manufacturers wary of implementing it. Already they are threading the needle in trying to provide the exact technologies their customers want. Having so many options to choose from raises the stakes too high. Also at least 79 specification sets still need to be fixed. SMPTE, like any responsible standards institution, operates with great care and diligence – but not great speed. The fixes will not be solved in the next year, nor would any sane person expect them to be.

Steve Fish emphasizes a lesson learned and practiced at Turner: "Don't try to change the whole world at once. Don't try to solve the entire workflow." Throughout the DAM Conference different versions of this same statement were repeated. In the 1990's many people had dreams of digital asset management systems that would allow a single person to control an entire production from end to end. Now that we have come back to reality a bit, virtually everyone agrees that not only is it impractical to have a single, universal solution for all data problems in all spheres of the industry, but that such a blanket solution is unwise.

Fish has stated that the goal of MXF is "the creation of a simple system with the potential to be as ubiquitous as tape." At this year's NAB Convention in Las Vegas, he oversaw a tech demonstration, of an entire MXF workflow, which surprised even him in how well it worked. True ubiquity of MXF may be some years away, but if the industry does adopt the standard, it will have done so at the end of a lengthy, exhaustive trial period.

Recommended for those wanting to know more are "The MXF Book" the standard text on the format as well as membership in the Advanced Media Workflow Association (www.amwa.tv).

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Paul Bamborough & Codex

Paul Bamborough & Codex:

The Man Who Developed Lightworks
Brings Us The iPod Of Professional Video Capture


by Neal Romanek

(as printed in TVBEurope, Europe's television technology business magazine)

I recently had the privilege of getting an hour with post-production pioneer Paul Bamborough at the Soho, London offices of Codex Digital.

Paul Bamborough was the key developer of the Lightworks editing system. Though Avid eventually became the industry standard, in a "Beta vs. VHS" style argument, some still maintain that Lightworks was the better system.

With a Sci-Tech Oscar on his mantle, Paul left the film and video hardware development business for good, leaving behind one "if". If Lightworks developer Delwyn Holroyd had a project in mind, Paul would back it. Holroyd was a key engineer at Lightworks and had developed the company's Newsworks product.

A few years ago, Delwyn left his job as a senior developer at 5D Solutions Ltd. and made the call.

The Project? Design a reliable digital recording system that really worked, across all formats, that was easy to use, and virtually indestructible inside and out. And also why not make it able to record and replay uncompressed 4K video at the touch of a button.

Multiple companies had accomplished any one or two of these goals, but the whole, unified package had yet to come about.

The fruit of their labors is Codex – a shock-mounted RAID-based portable digital recorder with a simple intuitive interface. The name "Codex" sounds high-tech, but the word literally refers to the earliest books, which during the centuries of the Roman Empire, replaced scrolls as the dominant mode of storing the written word.

It was a foregone conclusion to Paul and the Codex developers that hard disks would replace film and tape - sooner rather than later.

"People will shoot everything digitally," Paul said "And it's going to happen quicker than most people think, just in the way it happened in still photography. And when it does happen, I think it'll happen fairly quickly."

In fact, David Fincher shot the feature film "Zodiac" capturing all his footage to a JBOD digital recorder made by Codex competitor, S-Two.

There are echoes of the 1990's transition to non-linear editing systems – déjà vu for Paul. When he first introduced Lightworks to tape and film editors, everyone agreed that it was the future of post-production, and that it was coming down the pike quickly. Still, most editors or post-production companies were unwilling to take the plunge.

Technological adaptation often takes on a herd mentality, which can be smart strategy in an industry where millions of dollars are at stake. A herd provides safety. Decisions are made slowly, risk is diluted among a large number of participants. But when changes come, they are often sudden and absolute. It can become a matter of submitting to the change or getting trampled.

Paul said of those early days at Lightworks: "There was a six to nine month period in which we sold about five machines, but what we did during that period is kept talking to people and we trained a lot of young people who could absolutely see that digital editing was their future. Then quite suddenly people said 'maybe it's time to do this'. We went, overnight almost, from having sold 5 machines to selling 100."

Though Codex has been meticulously designed, piece by piece, from the ground up, the technology itself is not revolutionary. "It's putting a bunch of stuff together which, on its own, is fairly familiar. There's nothing particularly new in this, it's just very careful engineering of well-known things."

Inside, the Codex contains a fairly straightforward RAID 3, but it operates at one gigabyte per second bandwidth and is built to withstand extreme conditions of shock and temperature. "We can record just about anything built, and usually at considerably more than 24 frames a second. We can record them at 60 frames a second. We can record two cameras at once. We want to be able to handle whatever is thrown at us. We don't want to be the limiting factor."

I had seen Codex at work at the Axis Films HD camera tests in February, and told Paul that my initial impression was that the Codex box seemed like the iPod of digital disk recorders. The machine seemed simple, intuitive, slick.

"Making it slick is very non-trivial," Paul explained, "Delwyn is just about the best engineer we've worked with. He is very good at making certain things actually work. There's an awful lot of stuff out there that sort of works, but we're trying very, very hard to make what we do actually work in such a way that nobody has to mess with it."

Paul believes the iPod's development is not a bad analog for the Codex story:

"There were a lot of mp3 players around in the late nineties. And they were competing with each other to add more and more and more features, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. What you wanted was to play your music, and it was just this side of impossible to get any of those machines to do it. Then Apple comes along and says: 'Okay, we're just going to make THIS. It's much simpler, it only does one thing. And also we're going to make it simple to operate.' And everybody looked at it and said, 'Yeah! That's what we wanted!' It's not a bad thing to emulate – attempt to find what people actually want to do and make certain you do exactly that."

Once video is captured on Codex it is, literally, immediately ready for post-production. The recorder's ability to output uncompressed video, allows a production team to instantly see its footage in real time, which brings multiple advantages.

Paul illustrated with the story of a recent motion control shoot which recorded its footage to Codex. Several production decisions were made halfway through the shoot which called into question the usability of all the motion control footage previously shot. Faced with the nightmare of having to reshoot everything, it was remembered that a crew member had After Effects on his laptop. A cable from Codex to the laptop allowed a few test composites, at full resolution, and it was confirmed within 15 minutes that indeed the production could go forward. Shooting to any other medium would have demanded reshoots, for safety's sake. "You never need leave a set without knowing whether or not you got what you came to get."

But Codex has no hope of becoming an industry standard until producers, executives, and insurance companies are convinced. It looks as if Codex might be the hard disk recorder of choice for at least two major tent-pole feature films this year, so it is beginning to prove itself on studio lots. How it will work on a location shoot in India, or on the ski slopes of Alps, will be known before too long.

With the changeover to a completely digital workflow, if it isn't Codex that is going to the job, it will be another recorder like it. Though, in truth, even that isn't a certainty.

Paul says, "On the whole, in this new world, very few people know what they're doing. But even more interestingly, they know that they don't know. They will admit it."

Paul Bamborough may be one of the few exceptions to that very rule.

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Planet Earth: Old Planet, New Tech

"Old Planet, New Tech"

by Neal Romanek

(as printed in Videography, April 2007)

When you watch BBC-produced "Planet Earth" - an 11-part wildlife series making its US premiere March 25 on Discovery - you probably become very angry at the increasing use of CGI in nature documentaries.

Should someone somehow convince you that, in fact, no CGI was used in "Planet Earth", it's still going to be hard to swallow the absurd assertion that the series was shot in HD.

In the studio, the transition from film to video has been relatively smooth. Monitored soundstage conditions have helped HD along in its progress toward become the standard motion picture recording medium. But the wild unpredictable world of documentary filmmaking, where the authenticity and transparency of the image are of paramount importance gives HD technology the chance to really show its colors – or its flaws.

"Planet Earth" is another product of what must be one of the consistently great filmmaking entities of the last 30 years – the BBC documentary department, often in collaboration with Sir David Attenborough. From the beginning of Attenborough's tenure at the BBC in the 1970's, the BBC pushed the envelope of what the nature documentary could be. He demanded the best technology and technicians, providing the best footage and the best science available. In a sense, every documentary series the BBC has produced has been an attempt to outdo the last one.

Alastair Fothergill, executive producer of "Planet Earth", had been producing groundbreaking wildlife series with Attenborough since "The Trials of Life" in 1990. It was Fothergill who brought nature documentaries fully into the 21st century, by deciding to invest in equipment and techniques normally out of the budget range of nature films.

As a result, "Planet Earth" features extraordinary images of a type and quality previously only visible in the realm of big-budget commercials and features.

The workhorse camera of the series was the Panasonic VariCam HD, chosen because of its distinctly clean image and variable frame rate. The Sony HD Cam was also used in several instances. In a couple instances, where the loss of an HD camera would prove too great a risk for the continuation of the shoot - in the remote jungles of Guyana, for instance, and also a year-long Antarctic shoot – 35mm and Super 16mm cameras were used, because they were known quantities and parts could be easily replaced in the event of a breakdown. However the Panasonic VariCam endured enough environmental adversity in deserts, mountains, caves, oceans, and forests to prove itself to be admirably rugged and reliable.

Another advantage of shooting in HD was the simple, but priceless, ability to look at footage on a daily basis. Nature documentaries, relying heavily on shooting film, are also in the precarious position of never being certain of the footage quality until it returns from the lab. A great deal of time, money, and effort might be spent capturing a natural phenomenon likely to last only a couple days, only to discover a week later that it was all for naught. Looking at real "dailies" also aided in planning the next day's shoot.

The dilation and compression of time is a tour-de-force element of "Planet Earth". The series used, for the first time on a major wildlife program, digital cameras for time-lapse sequences. Digital still cameras captured images which were turned into QuickTime movies, and these were then rendered out to high definition images. The same benefit conferred by shooting real time HD footage was enjoyed in the time-lapse sequences. Progress on the time-lapse could easily be checked on a laptop, again reducing the chance of potential surprises when the footage was finally replayed at speed. Producer Huw Cordey, veteran of David Attenborough's "The Life of Mammals" series, shot jungle, desert and cave sequences on "Planet Earth" and used digital time-lapse extensively: "One of the biggest problems with doing a time-lapse, because you're not actually watching it in the time-scale that you're filming it, is you can't tell if it's any good or not until you've seen it. Shooting film, so many of these time-lapses would be N.G. The ability to look at it saves you a lot of time, and in the end you get better sequences and better shots."

Super 16 Arri SR2 cameras were used for high-speed shooting up to 150 fps, but "Planet Earth's" staggering super-slow motion scenes – including shots of the unique and terrifying great white attacks on seals off the coast of South Africa – used digital technology. These slow motion scenes were shot at up to 400 fps using a Photron camera. Photron has made cameras for a variety of high speed purposes, including industrial crash-testing, since the 1970's. The Photron camera used on "Planet Earth" is continuously running, recording to a hard drive, always maintaining a 2.5 second cache, so when the camera was activated, two-and-a-half seconds of footage previous to the "start" point has already been recorded. This allowed capture of the entirety of sudden and unpredictable moments which would have been a monumental challenge to shoot on film. "Planet Earth" was the first production to use the Photron system in the field, let alone out on the open ocean shooting great whites, or the deep jungle shooting flying frogs.

Another "Planet Earth" highlight is the series' stunning aerial footage, which employed the Cineflex camera stabilization system. Helicopter shots can defeat their own purpose on wildlife shoots, because the noise and motion of the helicopter frighten any wildlife the helicopter approaches. The Cineflex allowed the helicopter to shoot from a long way off with animals unaware they were being observed. The Cineflex has been used widely on feature films, commercials, and news. This is the first time it has been used in a documentary. Operated by via joystick, the system consists of a gyro stabilized camera system that sits in a 14.5 inch diameter ball turret in the nose of a helicopter. It is comprised of five rotating axes, three of which are gyro-stabilized. Its stability allows use of very long lenses which be impossible to keep stable in a standard mount. A 40x zoom lens was used for "Planet Earth".

The shooting of HD using the Cineflex brought other benefits too. Compared to bulky 35mm film camera systems, the Cineflex is fairly lightweight at about 85 lbs. In helicopter flight, even a slight weight difference can affect fuel consumption. The savings in weight allowed the aerial crew to stay up in longer, sometimes forthree hours at a time, changing tapes as necessary. A film camera system might necessitate landing after only 11 1/2 minutes - and that’s shooting a thousand foot magazine. As is often case, the simplest solutions prove the most valuable. The convenience factor of HD - not having to land to change film and the lighter system and the savings on time and fuel with the lighter system and not having to land to change film proved invaluable to the crew in terms of time, money, and ability to capture footage.

In addition to springing for technology, Fothergill went for the best crew. Michael Kelem has been the aerial D.P. on dozens of feature films including "Mission: Impossible" and "Black Hawk Down" as well as countless commercials. With over 40 years in the industry, "Planet Earth" was the first documentary he ever shot – as well as being the first production on which he had to please eight different director/producers.

The aerial photography crews consisted of three people: the segment director/producer, a helicopter pilot who was sourced at each location, and Michael Kelem. Working on a documentary brought its own set of creative challenges and also great rewards:

"For me, the shot reveals itself as I'm working. The idea comes to me in the moment and I have to be able to communicate that to the pilot on the spur of the moment and hope that he is able to see what I’m seeing and act upon it because you may only have one chance at it … We might use the topography to create a reveal or use something like a tree to give some foreground motion. Or with a really long zoom lens you can have the background spin wildly as you circle around a central point of focus. In essence, you create the shot as you see the action unfolding in front of you given the circumstances which you've just discovered. It's a challenging way to work but it teaches you to go with your instincts and to be open to all possibilities."

The series episodes, as presented by the Discovery Channel in the US, are slightly shorter than those that originally aired in the U.K. The original voiceover narration by Sir David Attenborough has been replaced in the US release with a voiceover by Oscar-nominated actress, Sigourney Weaver.

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Black Narcissus (1947)

I saw "Black Narcissus" (1947) last night at the Motion Picture Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater, the kick-off for a 100th birthday tribute (though he died at age 84) to British master director, Michael Powell. The tribute features a weekend of screenings of Powell's films.

An unexpected treat were video greetings from Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell's widow, Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's long-time editor. Expressing their regret that they couldn't attend in person - they are cutting "The Departed" - each gave a short tribute to Powell, Schoonmaker's concluding with obvious emotion. Schoonmaker met Michael Powell, in 1979, when Martin Scorsese invited his hero to New York during the cutting of "Raging Bull" (1980). "Raging Bull" won Schoonmaker the Oscar for Best Editing.

I have seen "Black Narcissus" dozens of times. I first saw it on a VHS tape my dad had made from a copy he borrowed from his local library. My dad sent me dozens of these pirated VHS's in the years after I left college and it kept me immersed in movies that I, being young and of narrow taste, might not go out of my way to see. Now I am older and have broader, deeper, wider taste and there are still many movies I should see but might not go out of my way to see.

There was a discussion before the film with cinematographer / Technicolor titan, Jack Cardiff, who is over 90 and has more energy and wit and good humor than I have - or could hope to. Film historian David Thomson moderated. Thomson was a friend of Michael Powell and responsible for setting the director up as Dartmouth's artist-in-residence in the 70's when Powell was suffering the obligatory British Genius Backlash, in which great British directors are forgotten for a decade or two before being praised to the skies again just before they die with everyone saying "Oh, I was always a fan of his. I'm surprised you've never heard of him. Have you seen 'Tales Of Hoffman'? Oh, you must. It is a masterpiece. It is exquisite. Yes, I'd like to think of him as my artistic spiritual godfather." Then you kick that person in the groin until they stop screaming.

After Sid Ganis, the new Academy President, gave a canned "Michael Powell, Michael Powell, Michael Powell" speech, Thomson got up to tell several moving stories about his acquaintanceship with the master, but he began his speech by mentioning - for the first time in the evening - Powell's partner, Emeric Pressburger. I was the first audience member out of the gate to applaud. The man next to me kicked me in the groin until I stopped screaming.

Because we in America love the myth of individual success, and we treasure, above all things, the integrity & triumph of the individual human ego, we tend to make a single genius responsible for the excellence we see. We chase, drooling, the top supermodel, the top grossing movie, the top sports team, the top serial killer. Everyone else is an "also-ran". But Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were partners on the Archers films. On over a dozen movies of the 40's and 50's the credit reads: "Written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger". We are inclined to forget that. We should not.

The first question Thomson asked Jack Cardiff was about the ins & outs of the Powell / Pressburger collaboration. Cardiff said they very much balanced each other with Michael Powell being the experimental, improvisational half of the partnership and Pressburger the down to earth, practical half. I was reminded of the David Lean / Robert Bolt collaborations. There the dividing line between director and writer was clearly drawn, but Lean was said to be the intuitive, emotional side of the partnership and Bolt the intellectual, theoretical side.

The screening was a digital projection of a digital restoration made from the "original" (I don't know if this means camera original) 3 black-and-white Technicolor strips (for a quickie tutorial on the Technicolor process go here) and was the best version I have seen of the film to date, better than the Academy Film Archive photo-chemical restoration of a few years ago which was fine, but occasionally murky. The clarity of the image was such that one or two of the process shots showed their seams in a way that might have been disguised by a traditional print.

What I most enjoyed about seeing "Black Narcissus" on a large screen with such clear and clean projection was not that it was even more visually stunning - although that is true - but that I could enjoy the subtleties of the performances which are difficult to see on even a big-screen tv. Slight movements of the eyes describe gigantic internal character movements. A mild tightening of the lips reveals blazing internal shame. I found myself grinning widely, delighted by Deborah Kerr's giddy girlish grin as she begins to remember the locked away passions of her past. Moments between characters seemed magnified too and the sexual tension in scenes was far more taut than many 21st century films. In fact, this time around seeing the movie, I was shocked at how filthy and sordid it all is - all that sex. Sex, sex, sex. It's all about the sex, that picture. Digusting. And so, so wonderful. And what could be more sexy than Deborah Kerr, as a nun, trying day and night not to think about sex - trying not to even think about thinking about sex? Even better, Deborah Kerr, as a nun, trying day and night not to think about sex, while trying to get juicy Jean Simmons (who plays a convincing South Asian) to stop thinking about sex? At the same time, "Black Narcissus" is a deeply spiritual film and tackles the irreconcilable clash between desire and devotion head on.

A new Criterion Collection "Black Narcissus" DVD came out a few years ago. I think it was made from the Academy restoration. I hope they reissue the film with this new, much better digital restoration.