HD100 filmout to show in LA and Chicago
 

The Chicago event Stephen Noe posted about will also take place in Los Angeles.

I will be showing a selection of footage shot on the HD100 and output to 35mm film by DuArt at JVC events in LA (Jan. 31) and Chicago (Feb. 2). The presentation will include a selection of footage from my Madagascar shoot last fall and a studio set-up I did in New York, plus Charles Papert’s Mini 35 test. Sounds like Stephen Noe may be showing something too?

Here’s the link:
http://pro.jvc.com/pro/seminar/LACHI...prohdshow.html

Charles, hope you can make it to talk about your footage!

Andrew, any chances/plans for the screening to come to Vancouver, Canada?

Andrew, did you see the 35mm blown-up HD100 footage, right?

report request
 

Is it today, right? Can you report us as soon as possible?

Looked amazing. Even the Mini35 looked great transfered to 35mm film. That's all I wanted to see =)

Was there, I'll write a detailed my two cents about it tommorrow.

Ah crap. I missed it. I thought it was day after tomorrow.

Just got back from the filmout seminar at the DGA. Had a great conversation with some GREAT people! Especially Michael Pappas....totally cool dude and I'm glad to call him a friend. After everyone left, we continued to talk in length about cameras and video history and the JVC HD100 filmout we just saw and all kindsa great stuff he was schoolin' me on. My piece-of-shat 1988 Legend that I ripped through the streets of Hollywood to get to the seminar 30 minutes late in, freakin' ran out of gas!!!....guess who was there helping me to the gas station....YOU GUESSED IT....PappasArts! *smile* The HD100 filmout was a classy and nice event hosted by JVC. The events host was great. The host, Andrew Young, shot some great looking (yet gruling & dangerous) footage in deep jungles of Madagascare @ 30p and converted it to 24p for the filmout. My hats off to him for accomplishing this feat.. Charles Pappert is the man! He spoke about his footage and we seen his great stuff blown up as well. Both men were very great speakers. Ask me specific questions. They are easier to answer. Rather then giving you a full report. I can answer my opinions that way easier. Michael Pappas will undoubtedly give you a full report on his findings as well.

Moviola just sent me an email about an HVX200 seminar next Tuesday on the 7th. I don't know if there will be a filmout for that. I hope so. I will probably attend that as well. Maybe I'll get to meet more of you great people.

- ShannonRawls.com

Hi Jiri,
That's up to JVC - I'd love an excuse to come to Vancouver.

Hi Leuname,

Yes, I have seen it. I shot it and made the film out. Because of that I'll let others who were there do the reporting.

Just got back from the HD100 to 35mm film at the Directors Guild.
 

It was great to meet Shannon Rawls finally. Shannon is one cool bro, and a very nice fella to talk with. Not an ounce of ego too with Shannon; just a nice humble person! Nice to finally meet Charles Papert too, another nice humble person. Nice to have seen Producer Illya Friedman & Director Ben Rock ( Ben and Illya shot the HVX200 35mm film out at Laser Pacific ) again.

Hey Kief, nice to meet you as well. We've got to pick you the right camera for that great poject......

I wasn't to impressed with the HD100's performance on this film out. I wanted it to perform better. It's an awesome camera with lots of features. Ofcourse lets keep this in check, this was a film out on a big screen as well a digital projection onto a 25 foot screen. For TV drama, it's a killer ass camera....Pro lens and everything. Built well too!

About the film out. It felt like video more than I liked. Highlights were just too video. It's better than DV, however I just was not to impressed. Unlike the HVX200 film out to 35mm, that was very good outside of the codec artifacts that were in some of the shadows & lower tone parts of the frame. The HVX color on the 35mm out was outstanding too; the HD100 color was not as good as I felt it should be. The digital projection also was not as good as I felt it should be. The H1 digital Projection I have seen was much better and had more rich colors. Now I did make a few suggestions of turning the sharpness down, and boosting the chroma more.


Outside of this technical blawwwwwwww......... Andrew Young's work is excellent. His close up photography was cool too! The things he went through as a filmmaker to get his shots makes you respect his strong will to make his film. Andrew is from the film side and does not have a lot of video time under his belt I believe he said. So the camera didn't get tweaked as well as it should. Century, send Andrew a wide angle lens adapter he can use for his next trip back..............

I wish JVC and all companies would get involved.

These companies should offer free downloads of custom presets to make their cameras have different looks with quality driven settings towards best performance. That's what the SD cards are for......

Why let a guy like Andrew shoot with your camera and not atleast say here a some tips. Someone needs to give Andrew a deal on a quality lens adapter and scrap that make shift one...

Charles material was wonderful, however it was missing the color from his clips I have seen on my HD system when viewing them. Charles wished he could have been part of the process he told me . I wish he was too! His footage carried over to 35mm the best.

The Film lenses in Charles Paperts footage gave shallow DOF, however lowering the sharpness. I just did not like how well that was amplified on the big screen. Elements that are slightly noticeable on small HD systems become much larger issues on the big screen. I would not use this system, rent a wide angle and either telephoto in or accept the dof we get on 1/3 ccds.

Comparing this film out to how the HVX200 film out. The HVX 200 holds up on the screen quite well, because it handles highlights and tone very well. A gorgeous well balanced image. As i said in the past resolution is only one factor, tone, color, ped, enhancement and high light control just to name a few are so important. Now if you do couple this with a high res ccd ( 1 million pixels and up ), then you will have one hell of a high res camera.

The XLH1 digital projection, I have seen more than once of the clock maker via a DVCproHD playback was so outstanding. Miles from the digital projection from the HD100. Even the HDV tape 1080i filmed over in Italy with a prototype XLH1 projected was beautiful. Gorgeous looking, and that was on 1080i hdv tape...


That's my tiny report IMHO.....

PS: Next time us DVINFO/DVXuser people need a meeting area; I was hoping to meet some of you that attended...


SIDEBAR ABOUT HDV. I HAVE HAD THIS .PDF FOR SOME TIME, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK....... THIS IS WHAT I WROTE EARLIER...


The anti HDV is all BS and hype.

People take the HDV scenarios where it was Implemented *incorrectly. Sight those situations with slight of hand while detracting you from excellent performing HDV acquisition*technology

. HDV progressive is good. I would preferrer a 4:2:2 HDV, however HDV 4:2:0 in a progressive capture is far and above 4:1:1.



Here is a quote from a white paper on HDV.

{ So an HDV image encoded at 25 Mb/s (IBP) is roughly equivalent to an I-frame image-encoding of about 60 Mb/s. So, when comparing two compression schemes, remember that the higher bitrate version may not necessarily provide the better image quality }

Here is the link to the HDV white paper on HDV.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/BSD/liqui..._HDV_40804.pdf



Michael Pappas
Arrfilms@hotmail.com
PappasArts & Arrfilms Main site

CONTACT VIA AOL INSTANT MESSENGER
AT { PAPPASARTS2 }


XLH1 and HVX200 frame grabs and news here:
http://www.pbase.com/Arrfilms

http://www.PappasArts.com
http://www.Myspace.com/PappasArts

Hi Andrew,

Great footage and presentation. I had a few chuckles. Is it possible that you may post your process after finsihing editing to 35mm film. Like what steps you took, methods, recommendations and what to perhaps stay away from (E.g. FILMOUT). Mainly for those who weren't there, but also for people like myself who wants to go to film on some projects and didn't get a chance to write everything down at the seminar.

Thanks

It was a great presentation and I must say that Andew is a great asset to indepenent film makers. I talked to Andrew breifly about publishing the settings he thinks are best for various applications and he noted he would do that here when he had the time to do more tests.

Andrew, once again thanks for the great presentation and I'd definately like to work with you and DuArt on some narrative film out tests. Any chance you would be interested in this?

TIM

Figured that was you with all the great suggestions during the screening Mike.

As an aside, what follows are the words of a guy who's only film experience has been short films originated on super 16mm film. I'm not yet versed enough to speak in knees and coring so bear with me:

Off top I agree with Mike that the footage was not as impressive as I'd expected. For starters, the main goal of the cinematographer, documentarian Andrew Young (great sense of humour this guy), ran somewhat counter to what my personal aspirations were in viewing footage to evaluate the camera. Coupled with the fact that he pretty much jerry-rigged his own wide-angle lens adapter on one of the first cameras off the lineup, you get the idea.

Shooting mostly with an extremely wide 35mm lense, the Safari footage looked a bit "dull" with colors that I'd best describe as "only going so far", desaturated greens and browns and yellows that lent a very flat, neutral image. Again, this was not a problem for Andrew Young as it was his intent and as such I'd have to say he accomplished what he was after (Mike had a great suggestion here about boosting the chroma on image acquisition in the field and desaturating in post, the reverse of Mr. Young's method here). Andrew also shot his footage at 30p because there was no way to edit 24p HDV footage when he went out. He then forced the footage to 23.98 after he'd made all his edits, lending an appealing 1/4 second motion decrease that was fine for a non-dialogue piece. Because he shot in some ridiculously wild conditions, Mr. Young rode the zebras for exposure so there were places in the print where clipping could be seen where image was just gobbelled to white. Overall, there was still a very video look to the HDV transferred to film Safari imagery. Some of this couold be attributed to a default sharpening function on the camera Mr. Young said he'd advise anyone to turn off in the future.

As Mike mentioned, the closeups Andrew shot with a few diopters were EXQUISITE in the blow-up. Matter of fact, just about all of the long lense photography here, faces etc., faired much better, as is to be expected with video acquisition. Also, the wide angle stuff where most of the imagery was kept to the foreground faired better than "expanse" shots as well, variances in depth seemed to aide the image just as greatly as focal lenght.

THE REAL TREAT was Charles Papert of HDVinfo.net stopping by with a film transfer of his Mini35 tests with the JVC! Actually, let me rephrase that, Andrew Young, the filmmaker from above, is a member of the DuArt family (his grandpa founded the place) and so before coming out he took the Mini35 tests we've all seen on the net, downloaded the raw files and commenced a filmout on his own whim. This was the first time Papert had seen the piece on film. How awesome a guy is Andrew Young folks?

Now THIS STUFF looked GREAT! The image from the net of the woman standing before the bed of flowers was fine, and an OTS scene of a couple in conversation was even better, the grain of the print combining with the focus falloff behind to really sell the image. Most impressive however was quick shot of the camera sat in a patch of lawn on a 100mm lense. The AC racks from fore to back to foreground etc. and the behavior of the image was so purely filmic I nearly wet my pants. It was the best color imaging of the camera and the most cinematic framing of the evening, basically a glamour shot that showed what this thing can do albeit under the forgiving circumstances of perfect light, shooting the warm tones of fresh chlorophyl and on the lovely glass of a 100mm prime lense (and all color corrected by Andrew Young at DuArt). There was a night exterior immediately following this that was somewhat underwhelming though, again, Charles Papert had no intention of transferring these things and for the night shot would definitely have done things differently (imho).

The best thing about the Mini35 stuff was that it gave the best example of THIS camera's approximation of a "film look." From a motion standpoint, 24 p is 24p and the JVC nailed that portion of the exam. From a color standpoint, it was neither the Canon's pallete nor Panasonics, something in between that's "natural" in the vain of Panasonic's color rendering though not nearly as robust as the Panasonic. Basically, it seemed like a Fuji to Panasonics Kodak, every bit as valid an imaging emulsion/chipset. You could certainly make a film with this camera, though I'd think the mini-35 is ESSENTIAL TO THAT!

*****Quick note, every piece of footage mentioned above was shot with the CineLike Function on. And just about everything projected was projected on both film and video EXCEPT the Mini35 demo which I REALLY wanted to see projected digitally :(*****

There was one last piece Andrew showed that had the JVC side by side with the $30,000 Standard Def Panasonic SDX900. The JVC held it's own against the $30,000 dollar cream of the standard def crop. It was Mr. Young's opinion that had his detail setting been figured out the JVC may have edged ahead (I preferred the soft quality of the SDX900 here).

That said, the best thing about this was it showed that perhaps resolution isn't as big a notion in film transfer as we like to think. Bob Diaz over on DVXUser put the SDX900's resolution at about 408 lines; even if the HVX comes in at 540 (which I don't beleieve at all), that's more than adequate and sedcondary to other aspects of the imaging as was suggested here.

Sucks that I'm leaving LA in 24 hours for a year road trip around the country. As a starving director type guy, I could get used to these screenings. The food was delicious :)

Good notes folks. Andrew, if you do catch this thread, thanks again for doing the filmout and inviting me to participate, it was a fun evening.

Barry, it's interesting that you favorably noted the color imaging on the Mini35 clips--I was a bit disappointed in the rendition as it was noticeably off from the originals (which can be viewed/downloaded here); in fact I would quantify it similarly to the Andrew's footage in that it was rather ruddy and brownish with reduced saturation in the greens, somewhat sepia as Michael P. noted. Seeing Andrew's footage digitally projected I felt the color was more accurate. Thus I would hesitate to blame the camera for its color palette, especially considering that neither he nor I got too involved in the color matrix settings.

This was my first time seeing any 1/3" HD material filmed out, and while there were niggling points I was overall really impressed, compared to the DV filmouts I've seen. I feel secure that I could shoot a narrative piece with this (or the H1 or the HVX) and be satisfied with the results on the big screen--it may or may not fool the most critical viewer into thinking that it was film-originated, but I think it would still look good.

Oh, and finally--I think it's worth nothing that Andrew's footage contained many scenes that are real compression challenges, such as running water. I looked hard and didn't see any of the artifacting that I might have expected from much of what I've heard of the HDV format (and that I have seen on similar scenes on DirectTV, for instance). I'd love to hear if you guys saw anything that I missed. It was also good to hear that Andrew didn't suffer any problems due to the GOP scheme; all of that camera abuse and no dropouts. I've had very limited HDV experience and after hearing so many naysayers on the format I was pleasantly surprised by all this.