HD For Indies

Had a brief phone conversation with David Stump (interrupting his morning coffee, sorry Dave!) - he's the ASC DP that shot some test footage with Red's Mysterium the other day at Red's Orange County facility.

My notes on that conversation:

UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED - David was kind enough to correct & augment my flubbed notes, so a few things have changed since originally posted, his valuable time much appreciated. (end update)

-he said he'll post some frames and maybe a clip on CML once he's had a chance to review and analyze the footage - but that'll take some time.

-he shot a series of brackets of charts & scales, to get down to the sensitivity of the sensor

-he lit the greyscale and color charts for T16, then shot in 1/2 stop increments from T2 to T90 lit for T16, an eleven stop range

-used a 65mm Cooke S4 (detailed notes to follow in his CML posts - that's Cinematography.net, and it'll probably be in the CML "Future Cameras" discussion thread I'm guessing)

-greenscreen stuff - he shot a coupla kids in front of greenscreen, frizzy hair and all that stuff, at a 4 stops down so as to be on MTF of the lens, but still be with somewhat shallow depth of field so screen got a little fuzzy, a very narrow plane of focus there, a fair amount but not excessive depth of field at the plane of focus

-I asked what is was like shooting with "Frankie" (as the Red test camera has been dubbed) - he said he's shot with testbeds before, about the same as other testbed cameras, wasn't all that bad, pretty well organized and in a frame, can muscle it around move it from one spot to another, move up/down, pan around, etc. - it's just big.

-I asked how he was monitoring if it is capturing RAW - he said they have a computer monitor w/proxy picture to work with for framing & focus etc. - it is a full color low res proxy picture, just not at full res or speed.

-so the day went like this - he got there at 11:00 am after the drive to OC, left at 5 pm, had lunch in the middle, spent 1.5 hours lighting and setting up before talent arrived. Got about an hour's worth of footage probably, but then had to leave at 5 (to get from Orange County back up to LA for a dinner engagement, no easy task for the traffic in that time and place).

-since then he's been busy, and the Red team have been processing that footage - converting the RAW imagery into 16 bit TIFF sequences as well running it through Redcode compression so both uncompressed and compressed can be evaluated.

-they'll put that on a hard drive, courier/FedEx it to him (if they haven't already), then he can take a look at it

-I asked how he was going to evaluate it, asking if he'd be firing it up on his own home workstation, he said he could do that but he also has places he can take it to project at 4K for evaluation

So, depending on Dave's time availability and facility access (for that 4K projection), sometime next week there will be a bunch of useful information as it all gets posted and shared.

Things we might be able to learn from this:

-finally some hard numbers on what the dynamic range/exposure lattitude of this Mysterium sensor is like

-some more solid, quantitative data on how colors are reproduced with this sensor as well

-how well the Mysterium works for greenscreen, now that a proper, professional test has been done

-in talking to Jim Jannard the other day, he was impressed with how detail oriented David was, feels comfortable/confident this was well done and an accurate reflection of how Mysterium footage can look when done right - they pulled an earlier greenscreen image they'd made on their own, because they felt it wasn't done as well as they'd like

-just how efficient the Redcode codec really is - will be able to compare the uncompressed vs Redcode compressed imagery

-some sample stills & footage that is posted by/from a 3rd party, unfiltered by Red

-there will be some uncompressed TIFF (or similar high quality format) files posted online on CML, so folks will finally be able to do their own analysis on actual footage, perhaps a clip as well

Since the 4K screening is Tuesday at lunchtime, and it is now Friday and Dave doesn't have the footage yet, beyond the PR reasons I'm betting that samples etc. won't be available online until after the screening - just not enough time to get it done by then.

So those fortunate enough to attend (it's full according to the website) will get to see footage from the Mysterium sensor in LA next week, then at some point thereafter there will be stills and perhaps a clip available online as well from David's shoot (I'm inclined to guess David's stuff won't be included in the LA screening, not enough time).

-mike

PS - OK readers - who among you is going to the LA screening? Who among you are also going to the ASC/SMPTE film/Viper/Dalsa/F950/D20 thing later that same night? Please drop me an email at mike at hdforindies d0t com, I want to get a list of who is seeing both for post-showing comparative purposes to get feedback.