Breaking Bad makeup artist hates digital cinema

[Xrayspecs]

I just audio-engineered a podcast interview with Breaking Bad makeup artist Howard Berger (who also works for Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez). And boy, does he vent spleen about the horrors of doing makeup for digital HD cinematography. It's a pretty interesting interview (conducted by my wife, host of The Fame Fatale podcast) and if you are so inclined to listen, you can find it here: http://www.thefamefatale.com/2013/08/episode-21-pancake-wars.html, starting at about the 5:30 mark.

 

[Guest]

I just audio-engineered a podcast interview with Breaking Bad makeup artist Howard Berger (who also works for Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez). And boy, does he vent spleen about the horrors of doing makeup for digital HD cinematography. It's a pretty interesting interview (conducted by my wife, host of The Fame Fatale podcast) and if you are so inclined to listen, you can find it here: http://www.thefamefatale.com/2013/08/episode-21-pancake-wars.html, starting at about the 5:30 mark.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

"The Red has issues with the red channel and skin tone, but the Alexus..." hehe, Alexus. I am going to trust that comment. Sorry, couldn't resist. The reason I enjoyed this, is it is coming at shooting from a different perspective.


He goes off on Peter Jackson (but in relation to the Hobbit).

He says what many have said..... "it is fiction, we don't need to see detail." I disagree, but agree at the same time. I have been thinking about this again recently.


For me at this point, I have realized I do not care as much about resolution as I do about seeing pixels. In some theaters I see the projectors pixels, and they just sit there. It is awful. But I do not need more resolved detail in the image, I need less pixels. Same goes for HD tv, I do not need more resolution on the average day, but I do need less compression and sharpening artifacts.

So, 4k solves some issue in the theater for me, but doesn't help in the compression artifacts that I will see at home. But 4k improves smart TV functionality, so it is a wash. 4k is king.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps more important to the makeup industry is a better understanding of digital technology vs film.


For example, his perseption of HD is way off. He doesn't realize that s35 outresolves HD, and it has little to do with detail, and more to do with light rendering and noise.

1 - Harsh highlight clipping in digital can more quickly make caked makeup look fake.

2 - Noise of film can create false texture. HD does not have that.

3 - color. Film seems more forgiving on spectrum, and so it is easier to nail color, whereas digital video gets off pretty quick when you leave that sweet spot.

Again, it has nothing to do with actual resolution. It makes me mad. High Definition was the most confusing term ever used for a 2mega pixel resolution screen!

 

[Joncarr]

REDcolor3 was pretty much made to fix the red channel issue for the MX and M sensors. Technology is getting closer and closer to film's color and Dynamic range. It's not just being digital or film now, it's also about filtration and lens choice. If you put any new film stock with master primes without any filtration your be surprised how sharp film really is. 100 ISO film stock resolves to 3.7k digitally and 500 ISO resolves around 3.2k digitally.

Like he said lighting is key. But so is filtration and lens choice.

 

[Guest]

REDcolor3 was pretty much made to fix the red channel issue for the MX and M sensors. Technology is getting closer and closer to film's color and Dynamic range. It's not just being digital or film now, it's also about filtration and lens choice. If you put any new film stock with master primes without any filtration your be surprised how sharp film really is. 100 ISO film stock resolves to 3.7k digitally and 500 ISO resolves around 3.2k digitally.

Exactly, and I think make up artists are generally misinformed about that, and that doesn't help anything. They should do more camera tests rather than complain about how awful digital looks. They are always complaining about the detail and seeing things, but are clueless and blame resolution.

Even with the Dragon, you still have a clean image, and that alone will change the way makeup looks (also, Dragon may not even clip like film or have the same color space in the skin tones, despite having more latitude, but moot point). Film had always created a false texture of grain on top of the cartoonish amounts of make up actors sometimes wear.