HD For Indies

First off, this is Bad News for the moment until something else can be done:

The camera test that I've been planning for months is postponed, and the venue at SXSW to screen it has been cancelled.

For those who were planning to come and see it, I'm sincerely sorry. I wanted to see it too.

It all boils down to this - the venue at SXSW is no longer available. It was all planned and booked, then Something Changed, there was a conflict, and that location was no longer available, and since this happened so late in the game, no alternative was available or viable either. SXSW staff hated that this happened, but they have tough decisions to make about what is best for the Conference and Film Festival.

The reason why THAT cancelled the shoot is this:

1.) At least half the benefit of the test is seeing it up on a full-on 1080p projector on a theatrical screen - that way, there's no BS about "Well, on the Big Screen, if you were seeing it for REAL, those artifacts...." blah blah blah, or "Well, if the projector had enough pixels, or enough lumens, or didn't artifact from scaling..." blah blah nerdy digital blah. Now there is no such venue available.

2.) For me, a good part of the draw was about seeing it for myself on that kind of a screen.

3.) But a bigger reason for me to spend the weeks necessary to plan, shoot, post produce, analyze, prepare and present the findings was to do it in front of (hopefully) hundreds of filmmakers, some of whom would want to hire me to consult or post supervise or whatever on their projects. Without that audience lined up, and with everything else on my plate (and there's tons you folks aren't hearing about), it was Too Much to do right now.

4.) So I'll either pitch in with Chris Hurd and his crew on the shoot they are trying to line up, or I'll do mine separately at some later date. So it isn't terminally cancelled, it is just rescheduled for some later unknown date. I need to have a longer conversation with the folks doing the other shoot to see if our goals are compatible, dunno. If they'll have me, I'll most likely be helping out with the other shoot whether I do my own separate one or not.

SXSW folks were sorry that it came to this, the official response from SXSW in full:

Every year SXSW puts a lot of planning into action on panels, speakers, demonstration, films, bands etc. For any number of reasons a lot of this doesn't come to fruition. This is one of the events we were working on that we were not able to pull off. But it was one of many, each not realized for different reasons. Probably most years more things fall though than the ones that happen. The nature of the Conference and Festival business is you have to plan for far more than could be presented if they all happened because they are not all going to happen.

Unofficially, I've had several long talks with SXSW staff about this. Their heart is in the right place, they see the benefit of this, but there were tradeoffs to be made, and the presentation fell by the wayside as they tried to balance out what was best for the overall SXSW experience and what they could make happen. And I respect that choice, I'm just unhappy with that choice, as this would have been my big PR event at South By. So I have virtually no presence at SXSW this year.

In lieu of the big hour presentation, I'm now on the Digital Intermediates panel on Tuesday from 1-2 pm in 13B in the Austin Convention Center. Yes, I'm really going to be there, even though it doesn't say so in the printed manual or the online stuff. Gotta have a badge to get in, $300.

OK, time to get positive:

SO, IN LIGHT OF THE FACT THAT SXSW ISN'T GOING TO BE A VENUE FOR THIS (AT LEAST THIS YEAR), where can I take this?

I wanted to do it in Austin, my hometown, at my hometown film festival where I can just drive over with a G5, a disk array, three chords and the truth to play out my uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 dreams and revelations, but that isn't happening this year. So where can I go? Anybody know somebody at other film festivals or HD events where I could screen the results of this now test-to-be? Comment or drop me a line if you have a serious lead.

The deal is this:

1.) Shoot with the following cameras
-Sony F900
-Panasonic Varicam
These are the high end current cameras, the Gold Standard of HD for indie filmmaking - until new stuff supplants them.

They'd be shown against these:
-JVC GY-HD100U
-Panasonic HVX200
-Sony HVR-Z1U
-Canon XL H1

-and, if possible, get the new Sony XDCAM HD (which I haven't reported on yet and I'm way late, apologies, in depth coverage coming). And if the Andromeda guys can come down, all the better

2.) Record in the following way:

-all cameras, all the time - side by side, all shooting same subject material. There are arguments to be made that you should swap out cameras on the same sticks and shoot one at a time, that there will be angular differences on highlights and such. This is true. But it takes 6 times longer, and a subject in motion will pass through a variety of angles and yield enough info to make this a meaningful test

-all cameras to shoot 24p, or the closest they can get to it. Since we know that the pseudo-24p of the Sony and the 24F mode of the Canon aren't as sharp as true 24p, those modes will be briefly used but 50i for deinterlacing and conforming to 24p will also be explored with the best desktop tools for the task (which is another big chunk of R&D after the test)

-all cameras to record to their native capturing format, AS WELL AS to uncompressed to disk via either HD-SDI or component analog to HD-SDI converters. This for ALL cameras, for ALL footage, not just some brief tests with each camera. This is the ONLY way to look at a given scene and compare cameras one to another shooting the same actors in the same motions, and recording formats one to another.

3.) Post shoot processing and comparisons

-all footage to be captured at 24p OR 24p to be extracted from the pulldown OR processed from 50i, depending on the camera and acquisition methodology

-all footage to be uprezzed to 1080p23.976 progressive on a 10 bit uncompressed timeline using best desktop practices (including a proprietary process we just used on a project that was picked over a Teranex or a Quantel eQ)

-all footage thus processed and/or uprezzed to be compared on broadcast HD CRT and 1920x1080 LCD for detail and motion rendering. Ideally, some critical eyes on it on an 1080p res HD projector would be cool, too, but I don't have one of those handy.

-some of the tests will be for "best in camera" results, others for "best for color correction" results. We'll grade those shots on our Final Touch HD rig and discuss what worked and what didn't, and what the limits were of each format for post processing

4.) The Showing

-this was what was supposed to happen at SXSW, but now the door is open for other festivals or events

-Projection on a major festival grade HD 1080p projector - I'm not hunting for a Sony 4K here (which would be nice!), but a full-on Barco or TI like you'd see at Sundance, SXSW, etc.

-ideally, 200+ filmmakers (and not students, or hope-to-be's...I'll be honest and say I'm doing this in part to find some clients and make it worth the massive effort)

-so what it would take at this point - an event willing to fly me and my gear out for the festival. I'm looking to screen it from the computer, since that is the only uncompressed source I have access to. HDCAM? NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I'm trying to work with best possible SOURCE material, with filmout in mind as well as festival HD projection. Acquisition format HAS to be better than distribution format to give you the flexibility to work with the footage in post. The presentation will include both raw source and corrected materials, and the point is to see the difference, not mush'em all to the same standard.

OK, end of rant. Anybody game out there?

I'm thinking I'll reach out to a few film festivals and some select individuals to see if they're interested.

-mike