Bloom: 7D & 5dmkII TESTED on BIG SCREEN for Lucas. Shot / Tested at Skywalker Ranch!

Really fun to watch and live this little..I mean huge moment vicariously through you and the article.
 
Congrats Phil, your best work yet. Loved the timelapse sequence.

How did you screen this, did they hook your laptop up to a Christie Roadster?
 
Why did you choose to use the 5D over the 7D for most of the principal photography? The 7D would have given the folks at LucasFilms a more familar look to what they are used to seeing in terms of actual film cameras, plus the native 24fps to boot.
 
KeithAndrews.TV said:
Why did you choose to use the 5D over the 7D for most of the principal photography? The 7D would have given the folks at LucasFilms a more familar look to what they are used to seeing in terms of actual film cameras.
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all the 5d stuff was conformed to 24p in cinema tools creating perfect 24p. I chose 5dmkII as had new 16-35mm lens I wanted to use.
 
philip bloom said:
all the 5d stuff was conformed to 24p in cinema tools creating perfect 24p. I chose 5dmkII as had new 16-35mm lens I wanted to use.
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So you were able to convert 30p into 24p and make it look that good? I have always heard it looks terrible when you do that since its not rendering every frame when its converted. What did you use?
 
mbell75 said:
So you were able to convert 30p into 24p and make it look that good? I have always heard it looks terrible when you do that since its not rendering every frame when its converted. What did you use?
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I believe Bloom said he re-timed the footage to 24p, which is like over cranking. The 30p was played back at 24p (80% speed) rather then being rendered into a 24p file and trying to maintain the same playback speed. The former will look spectacular and the latter will be a problem depending on subject matter.
 
mbell75 said:
So you were able to convert 30p into 24p and make it look that good? I have always heard it looks terrible when you do that since its not rendering every frame when its converted. What did you use?
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conforming to 24p simply extends the clip, causing a slight overcrank and perfect 24p
 
Philip, that was a beautiful piece... as is all of your work that I've seen. Thank you!

I was wondering what setup (camera gear and settings) you used for the timelapse of the fog and the star sequences. Also when you do your timelapse are you rendering the clips outside of Final Cut (Quicktime?) and then importing the clip to Final Cut to work with or are you bringing the individual Jpegs directly into Final Cut? If you could provide some specifics I'm sure alot of us would really appreciate and benefit from it. I know I would.

Cheers,

Jeff
Phoenix, AZ
 
YO! Moving shots are the best, and the key to making a great film.
This footage looks great.
Coming from DV, my 7d footage is amazing, though cineforming is a pain, but way better than tape.
I have read a bunch of forums and you seem to pop up everywhere. Got some good pointers from you. Nice job.
Screenforme.com
 
Philip,

Great to see that you were tapped to go to the ranch to do this. You're the right man for the job. Obviously, you gave them an eyeful of what can be accomplished with these cameras.

I'm really disappointed to see that Lucas has become so separated from the physical production side of technology. There was a day when he worked with guys named Tippett, Berg, Gawley, Dykstra and Erland (to name a few) to invent the systems for creating effects - or bastardizing anything they could get their hands on to make it happen.

I got to play at Kerner on a few occassions before they started to shift all the resources over from what we all thought ILM was toward Lucas Digital and Letterman and all that side of the business.

Maybe they'll start shifting a little bit of the R&D focus back torward inventive filmmaking and less in the world of strictly digital realization for nearly eveything they create.

Rant from a huge fan of the ILM of old... complete.

e
 
Beautiful.
I was just waiting to see a wookiee skipping along in slow motion across one of those grassy fields or maybe fishing on the water or something light hearted like that.
 
My favorite part from the whole article was this:

Rick and Mike had seen what these cameras were capable of and wanted to really know just how much you could push them. They had seen mine and others work online but really wanted to see how well they performed projected. The joy of these guys is they have a great attitude. If it looks great on the big screen then that is the most important thing. Not codecs, limitations, bit rates etc…all those are very important but the most important thing by far for them is how it actually looks and it passed with flying colours. That is what they really care about.
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I agree whole heartedly with Ryan. It will be nice to move into discussions about what cool stuff can be achieved with these cameras rather than the maths and science and pixel counting. I found the amount of debate/bashing over the shortcomings of the image processing rather tiresome. Nice to see that (according to Lucas and gang, and I am sure many others) it looks great up on the big screen. Well done Phil.
 
WOW! And besides wow.... specifically, what camera (5D, 7D) and lens (most importantly) was used for that amazing opening shot? (the porch shot... I know it's simple but freakin' beautiful)
 
I'd have to say the nighttime footage was the most impressive, technically. As usual, Phil managed to stretch the last ounce of quality out of any gear he shoots with. I would have loved to see the master footage!

UPDATE:
I just viewed the downloaded "master" footage on my projection system, on a 12' screen at a viewing distance of about 8'. Here are my observations:

Overall a very clean image, and quite free of aliasing, unlike other 5DmkII footage I've seen online. However, this seems to come at the expense of fine detail. The video mode footage looked a bit soft. However, the time lapse footage looked wonderfully sharp and detailed, down to the pixel.
I did see some rainbow aliasing (Beyer filter aliasing) in the scene after the water fountain closeup, where the roof tiles produce aliased rainbows.
Another anomaly I noticed toward the end, was what looked like CMOS wobble in the image of the pond foliage.
Colors were rather muted. For a cloudy day, I prefer bumping up the saturation, rather then reducing it.
The night footage was bright and clean, and appeared to have a wide lattitude, encompassing starlight and artificial light nicely. I don't know how bright the stars shine in northern CA, as they are barely visible here on the East Coast, but I would imagine that took an effective ISO about 256,000 to capture that brightly.
On the projection screen, I could easily spot the still images compiled to video vs. the 'video' mode images--there is a huge difference in clarity. Still, in video mode, the camera does a decent job. Of course the big plus is shallow DoF here.
I would have liked to see the EX3 footage that was shot that day for a realistic comparison.
 
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