By
Neal Romanek
(as printed in the July 2009 edition of TVBEurope)
Tanna Volcano in Vanuatu, South Pacific
“South Pacific” (2009) is the latest attempt by the BBC documentary team to break all previous records. The six-part series is [...] ]]>
By
Neal Romanek
(as printed in the July 2009
edition of TVBEurope)
Tanna Volcano in Vanuatu, South Pacific
“South Pacific” (2009) is the latest attempt by the BBC documentary team to break all previous records. The six-part series is the first to present a thorough study of a part of the world that is still relatively unexplored.
TVBEurope spoke with veteran BBC producer Huw Cordey about the production of the series. Cordey has been involved in many of the BBC’s landmark wildlife shows. He was a segment producer on “Planet Earth” (2006) and “The Life of Mammals” (2002), but “South Pacific” is his first time as producer of an entire series.
The remit of the series, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, was potentially as wide-reaching as the location itself. Even as broad in scope as “Planet Earth” is, it is still a definable location, but before beginning production on the series, the very definition of “South Pacific” was open to debate. “The most obvious definition,” Cordey says, “is everything in the Pacific that’s south of the equator. But that was too narrow for the series because we wanted to look at it in terms of the cultural and natural history aspects, and these things don’t always respect invisible lines like the boundary of the equator. Covering Hawaii, which is well above the equator, was entirely appropriate. It was colonized by Polynesians from the south and the animal and plant species that arrived there were carried by the same natural forces that populated the rest of the islands.”
With so many locations to choose from, literally tens of thousands of islands, over such a vast area – all the seven continents could be put inside the Pacific Ocean with room to spare – production planning had to be meticulous. Islands large enough and flat enough to feature a grass airstrip were reached by plane, but a lot of crew and equipment travel was exclusively by boat.
The series also had the challenge that very little scientific work has been done on most of the islands. Scientists simply have not gotten around to fully exploring the Solomon Islands or the island of Vanuatu.
Huw Cordey is extraordinarily well travelled. His father worked for Shell and Cordey had been all over the world long before he began his career with the BBC documentary team, yet even he was stunned by how remote the locations were. “A great portion of our locations I had never even heard of.”
The first episode of the series features the idyllic island community of Anuta. Half a square mile in area, with no harbour, and surrounded by reefs and fast current, Anuta Island is accessible only by a carefully piloted boat. From a remote port in the Solomon Islands, it took the production’s yacht – owned and piloted by the team’s cameraman – five days to get to Anuta. Cordey and his crew were dropped off, and with no place at Anuta to anchor, the yacht had to sail away to a nearby port – 75 miles away. The “South Pacific” crew were the first visitors to Anuta in two years. The previous visitors were the crew of the BBC programme “Tribe”. Cordey and his crew had an experience usually thought of as belonging to another century: “The Anutans had gotten wind of our coming only a day before our arrival because they have a VHF radio on the island which they use to communicate with a few Anutans living on the Solomon Islands.”
Filming an Oceanic Whitetip Shark, Hawaii
Surprising television audiences is never easy today, especially when the BBC has set such consistently high bars for itself. “When you’re talking about landmark television, you generally have to do two things. You either have to improve upon sequences that have been done before – either with technology or by showing better animal behaviour. Or you surprise people with something completely new. In some ways it was easy to surprise the audience because so much of it was unfamiliar.”
Varicams were used throughout the series – including the underwater sequences – with four kits shared between the crews of the six episodes. A relatively small number of cameramen were employed to cover the entire series. Having a smaller pool of photographers was more cost effective, and simplified production in not having to reinvent the wheel every time a new cameraman was introduced to the production.
“South Pacific” features all the technical sophistication of its BBC antecedents – and more. The Cineflex camera stabilization mount was used on helicopter shots, the same technology famously employed on “Planet Earth”. Cineflex mounts were rigged onto the helicopters of the obliging Chilean navy, for flights over Easter Island, a Chilean protectorate. The series features the first ever HD aerial shots of Easter Island and its foreboding statues.
Of course, the series features technical innovations used for the first time on nature TV shoots. Even before the series premiere, much buzz had been generated by online video of surfing legend Dylan Longbottom riding waves in super slow motion off the island of Pohnpei. The shots also feature the first slow motion footage showing the details and vortices of massive waves as they form and break. The images are both hypnotising and breathtaking.
Cameraman Bali Strickland with TyphoonHD4
This super slow motion footage was captured by the TyphoonHD4 camera. Like the Photron camera used on “Planet Earth” to shoot South Africa’s breaching great white sharks, the TyphoonHD4 records continuously to a hard drive cache, at extreme shutter speeds. The TyphoonHD4 is able to retain full HD resolution up to 1000fps. Its light sensitivity – essential for underwater shooting – was what made it Cordey’s choice.
Dr. Rudolf Diesel, the German mind behind the system, was asked to designed a waterproof housing for the camera’s first foray under the sea. The unit would be making its debut in big surf, with a reef two meters below, and would need to be manageable by a single, swimming operator. Diesel, both an engineer and an expert in marine biology, was literally adjusting the camera housing until minutes before shooting.
Bali Strickland, a 29 year old Australian who has shot some of the world’s greatest surfers and greatest surfing footage, operated the TyphoonHD4. In partnership with Dylan Longbottom, he wrestled twelve foot waves and the massive camera housing, and managed to capture some of the series’ signature shots.
Even Strickland, however, was apprehensive about the job. “There was very little room for maneuver,” Cordey explains. “Bali Strickland had to use all his skill to keep himself safe, and the camera too. He said to us right from the start, ‘Look, if I get in danger, I’m sorry, but I’m letting the camera go.’” To confirm just how treacherous the shoot was, Longbottom, who some call the best surfer in the world, moments after getting one of the shots, was pushed into the reef by a wave. He managed to get the surface, almost knocked out, with blood pouring out of one ear.
Rudy Diesel has developed a second generation housing for the TyphoonHD which weighs in at 11kg – as opposed to the series’ 20kg prototype. The “South Pacific” camera was also only able to capture two 2.5-second shots at 500 fps before it had to be returned to the boat, opened, and the footage downloaded. The latest iteration of the system allows almost as much recording time as batteries will allow.
One of the great messages of the series is that life is determined and will always find a way to flourish. Cordey points out “Every single one of those thousands of islands. has been colonized by something. In the South Pacific there is no such thing as a deserted island.”
Kennedy Island, Solomon Islands
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]]>(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 [...] ]]>
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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]]>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.
Well done, to Ollin Productions and the entire “After Hell” crew. Keep up the good work. We want more. We need more.
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]]>(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 [...] ]]>
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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]]>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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]]>by Neal Romanek
(as printed in March 2008 TVBEurope)
Last year, Axis Films co-sponsored a set of HD camera tests, in which a battery of digital cameras, from the Viper FilmStream to prosumer HD camcorders were meticulously run through their paces [...] ]]>
Axis Films’ 3D Technology Showcase at Shepperton
by Neal Romanek
(as printed in March 2008 TVBEurope)
Last year, Axis Films co-sponsored a set of HD camera tests, in which a battery of digital cameras, from the Viper FilmStream to prosumer HD camcorders were meticulously run through their paces and tested against each other and workhorse film cameras. The last weekend in January, Axis hosted another illuminating symposium, this time on the 3D production and exhibition technology.
Axis was joined by The 3D Firm, Can Communicate, Inition and Quantel. Over 200 guests attended the two-day event, which offered a demo and ongoing workshop on the latest in 3D capture, post-production, and exhibition technologies, with particular emphasis on broadcast application.
It is difficult to open any publication about the media industry without reading or hearing someone extolling, or damning, the economic and aesthetic attributes of 3D exhibition. The showcase at Shepperton gave industry technicians and producers an opportunity to look beyond the hype and get some real facts.
First of all, if you want to sound like you know your stuff – and who does not in our industry? – avoid saying “3D”. Say instead, “stereoscopic”. The terms are interchangeable, but “stereoscopic” video is the accurate description of the medium. As with stereophonic audio, the effect relies on only two sources of information – left eye and right eye. The stereoscopic effect encourages the brain into believing it is observing objects existing in a 3D space, in the same way that a two-speaker audio system encourages the brain to believe it is hearing sounds from a multitude of sources – when it fact there are only two. The “3D” name is better suited to marketing and advertising, “stereoscopic” for the real production process.
Stereoscopic post-production has been revolutionized in the digital age. Quantel’s Pablo was on show at the Axis demo, dazzling attendees with its deftness in handling 3D editing and post. The Quantel system, used extensively in many phases of post-production, requires very little reconfiguring to manipulate stereoscopic data. Given the saturation of visual effects and compositing content throughout the industry, most post-production workstations are ready to handle stereoscopic moving images. In fact, most of 3D production and post-production is fairly unremarkable. To say it is the same as conventional production, but with one more camera, would not be too far afield.
A downside to 3D film production in past decades has been the simple mechanical challenge of getting film elements to register cleanly. Not only did negative in the camera have to register properly in order to produce the elements for a clean 3D image, but then diverse film projectors in diverse theatres had to project the two film elements in sync with precise calibration of the overlap of the two images. Digital technology now allows perfect synchronization and overlap of stereoscopic elements, which can be exhibited perpetually with the zero degradation in quality. This advance in production, and the greater standardization of exhibition parameters necessitated by digital technologies, have further opened up the opportunities for stereoscopic broadcast.
Many projection facilities have projection equipment that can accommodate 3D content, though the number of stereoscopic theatrical releases is relatively few. If 3D is to become a widely distributed feature of broadcast, wide-screen 3D releases will not provide any great percentage of the content. Sp where would a regular supply of 3D content come from?
There is a surprisingly large amount of 3D content hidden in plain sight. Shown at the Axis demonstration were 3D colour newsreels of young Elizabeth I – an example of the unique treasures hidden away in archives, some of which have remained virtually unviewed for decades. As Turner leveraged its MGM archive into one of the great cable movie channels, TCM, there are vast 3D libraries ready to be digitized for broadcast. Digital post technologies allow easy, on-the-fly cleanup of these film originals. The Quantel at the Axis presentation showed off the ease with which negative dust and scratches were erased from the digital elements of the Queen Elizabeth footage.
Today’s effects-rich media, in which even the most humble productions feature some 3D graphics or compositing work – in title sequences, at least – is another untapped gold-mine of stereoscopic content. The great open secret of 3D programming is that every frame that comes out of a 3D graphics program is ready for immediate adaptation to stereoscopic motion pictures. It already exists as a 3D image within the computer and with the term “rendering time” becoming an anachronism, outputting the POV of a second virtual camera can be done, almost literally, at no extra cost.
Also, the conversion of 2D productions to 3D is a rapidly developing specialty. At its most basic, the process uses simple, familiar compositing technologies. From the 2D footage, a background plate, and other elements of characters or foreground are created. Multiple layers of these can be manipulated along the z-axis like cardboard cut-outs in a diorama. On the other end of the spectrum are more sophisticated technologies which calculate entire, detailed 3D spaces out of existing 2D footage, which are beyond the scope of this article – for the time being.
As with most broadcast technologies which showcase visual spectacle – HD programming springs to mind – new 3D content tends to be confined to sporting events, stage performances, and nature programs. The 3D family melodrama has yet to be made. These spectacle types of entertainments are designed to directly engage a viewer on a visceral level, and the stereoscopic experience – like the HD, 5.1 surround experience – has the potential to augment that. Another, more subtle element is that these types of content emphasize the documentation of a real event – generally one in which the audience maintains a static point of view. 3D presentations can often mimic the experience of watching something from a single point of view, the illusion sometimes being interrupted when the camera begins to move. If stereoscopic production and post are not handled skillfully, a moving camera can irritate the viewer rather than enhance the 3D effect.
The elephant in the room regarding the new revolution in 3D push is: “Is it really a new revolution? Or is it the same old thing one more time?” The truth is, at least one journalist – though fascinated and inspired by the technology – left the Axis 3D presentation with stinging eyes and a headache.
Stereoscopic photography was developed in the 1840′s, on the heels of the photographic technique itself, and its basic principle has remained virtually unchanged. Much press has stated that we are poised on the edge of a paradigm shift in which 3D presentation will be ubiquitous or, some would even argue, the norm. But stereoscopic theatrical exhibition was vigorously promoted in the 1950′s and despite continuing improvements in the technology, did not take hold as many hoped it would. Is this the old saw of repeatedly performing the same actions, but expecting them to produce different results?
Despite IMAX and other big screen 3D venues, the new outlet for 3D content might well be HD broadcast. 3D LCD monitors, including the Planar StereoMirror professional display were exhibited at the Axis demo, but for consumers to trade in their HD monitors – which themselves required months of nervous window shopping and saving – for 3D monitors will require a saturation level of 3D content which, at this juncture, would seem decades away. Time-tested technologies using conventional monitors, which can be viewed with special glasses will be the standard 3D exhibition for the foreseeable future. The 3D Holy Grail of “no special glasses” – beyond a few specialty venues – will not be adopted by home viewers.
The Beijing Olympics may well be the trial by fire for 3D broadcast. The games will feature a channel dedicated to stereoscopic coverage of events. East Asia has remained at the forefront of 3D broadcast content, and it will be vital for European producers to study the behaviour of East Asian audiences and the strategies of their broadcasters. The Beijing “3D Olympics” will also be a laboratory for a dedicated 3D production workflow and 3D troubleshooting and problem solving in multiple settings.
One shocking fact presented at the Axis Films workshop might be enough to rock the foundation of every 3D business plan in the works. Roughly 8% of the population cannot see stereoscopic video. This is due to a range of factors, including partial blindness or amblyopia (“lazy eye”), focus difficulties. Whether or not a broadcast revolution can be built on a technology which immediately excludes 8% of its audience remains to be seen.
Neal Romanek is a screenwriter and journalist living in London. He attended USC’s Cinema-TV Production program and writes for a diverse collection of entertainment media publications in Europe and the USA. His official website is: http://www.nealromanek.com
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]]>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.
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.
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.
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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]]>It really is a long walk from Shepperton rail station to the Shepperton studio lot. And a dangerous one too, apparently (see above street sign).
I went out there on Saturday morning to [...] ]]>
It really is a long walk from Shepperton rail station to the Shepperton studio lot. And a dangerous one too, apparently (see above street sign).
I went out there on Saturday morning to see Axis Films’ 3D production / post / exhibition demonstrations.
What I learned about 3D:
- If you want to sound like the Smartest Guy In The Room, you say “stereoscopic”, not “3D”.
- 8% of the population, for various reasons, are unable to properly apprehend stereoscopic movies.
- Stereoscopic movies are really neat.
- Stereoscopic movies give me a headache.
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]]>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 [...] ]]>
Sound Editing in Nature Docs: The Second Narrator
by
Neal Romanek
(as printed in the October 2007
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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]]>byNeal 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 [...] ]]>
How BBC Natural History Producers Use Sound Design To Make
The Real World Sound Real
by
Neal Romanek
(as printed in the September 2007
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.”
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]]>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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Burbank, September 28, 2007 – Two classic films, John Ford’s DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939) and the film noir LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) were recently restored by DTS Digital Images utilizing the company’s proprietary Lowry Process (PDF). The films will premiere at the 45th New York Film Festival on October 12. The facility, a division of DTS Digital Cinema, provided full, 2K restoration services on both films. The movies are part of the festival’s retrospective program “In Glorious Technicolor: Martin Scorsese Presents,” sponsored by American Express and The Film Foundation. Scorsese will introduce the films and discuss the importance of preservation prior to the screenings.
“These classic films are an important part of our motion picture history and culture,” says Schawn Belston, vice president of film preservation at 20th Century Fox. “The restoration and preservation of these films was a collaborative effort by Fox, the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. DTS Digital Images restored these and other classic films in our library using the most advanced image processing technology available today. We’re very pleased and excited to see these Hollywood classics projected at the festival.”
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK and LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN were both produced in three-strip Technicolor format. DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK was directed by John Ford with Bert Glennon, ASC and Ray Rennahan, ASC sharing the cinematography credit. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN was directed by John Stahl. Leon Shamroy, ASC earned an Oscar for Best Color Cinematography for his work on the film.
“DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK presented some of the most difficult types of restoration challenges,” says Mike Inchalik, vice president, Strategy and Marketing, DTS Digital Images. “We were dealing with film elements that were several generations removed from the original. Because of significant fading of the CRIs (color reversal intermediates) in particular, most of the color information from the blue layer of the original camera negative was gone. There were also tricky issues to resolve, including misregistration, flicker, color breathing and grain build-up and image softening that results from the creation of second and third generation film preservation elements.”
Since the original three-strip negatives were no longer available, DTS Digital Images worked from color reversal protection copies and black-and-white YCM separations to reconstruct the films. Those elements were scanned and converted to digital files using IMAGICA film scanners that are specially designed to gently handle older, shrunken films. The images were then restored using the Lowry Process embedded in proprietary DTS software.
“The Lowry Process incorporates some very powerful imaging algorithms that have been fine-tuned over the course of more than 200 major feature film restorations performed over the past eight years,” explains Inchalik. “We’ve put a great deal of energy into inventing the right tools and putting enough computing power behind them.”
Inchalik notes that the original three-strip negatives had shrunk at different rates. As a result, there was significant misregistration photographed into the color reversal copies.
“There’s quite a science to digitally recombining those records and adjusting for the various rates of shrinkage to create a perfectly recombined registered image,” adds Inchalik.
In both restorations, DTS delivered a new negative, a digital archive, and a new HD master for serving home video markets that are all true to the restored films. The prints that will screen at the New York Film Festival were made from these new negatives.
“Restoring classics like DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK and LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN is a tremendous responsibility that we take very seriously,” says Inchalik. “The breathtaking rate of technological change helps us recover and recreate the amazing experience of seeing these cinematic treasures as they were originally meant to be seen, and that’s exciting. Using the Lowry Process, we have also prepared the films for today’s high-definition home viewing environments, and for whatever formats the future brings as well.”
The Preservation Screening Program was created by American Express and The Film Foundation to screen motion pictures that have been preserved/ restored with funding from the Foundation. The goals are to connect today’s moviegoers with film art and culture from the past, and to highlight the importance of film preservation.
The 45th New York Film Festival runs September 28 through October 14 at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and sponsored by Sardinia Region Tourism and The New York Times, features showcases, music documentaries and retrospective films. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com/nyff.
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