Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan may have used the 7D for some shots

Cory Braun

Cory Braun

Well-known member
I just got back from a screening of Black Swan at the Chicago International Film Festival and the film was excellent. When I was reading the credits I saw something like Canon 7D Dailies Handled by... I'm not sure if it was dailies or something else because I didn't catch it right away but it 100% said Canon 7D something. The majority of the film I'm sure was shot on 16mm and if the 7D was used it was probably only for a few shots here and there but either way the film was beautiful looking and if the 7D was involved with it then that's very cool.

I also will not be surprised if Black Swan gets a nomination for Best Picture, which I believe would make this the first film that involved a DSLR that got nominated.
 
Cory Braun said:
I just got back from a screening of Black Swan at the Chicago International Film Festival and the film was excellent. When I was reading the credits I saw something like Canon 7D Dailies Handled by... I'm not sure if it was dailies or something else because I didn't catch it right away but it 100% said Canon 7D something. The majority of the film I'm sure was shot on 16mm and if the 7D was used it was probably only for a few shots here and there but either way the film was beautiful looking and if the 7D was involved with it then that's very cool.

I also will not be surprised if Black Swan gets a nomination for Best Picture, which I believe would make this the first film that involved a DSLR that got nominated.
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Slumdog Millionaire - the scenes in the slums were shot with a 1DIV, I believe (the 7D wasn't available to the public yet). It won both Oscars for Cinematography and Picture.

There are probably more.
 
I believe the 7D was released before the 1Div -- October 2009 for the 7D and December 2009 for the 1Div.
 
DSLR's are used all over the place in film production now for shots that conventional cameras don't work in. Get used to it. They're a tool like everything else. 127 Hours used a TON of different cameras during the shoot.
 
There's a youtube clip floating around where Aronofsky talks about using the 7D to steal shots on the subway and making Portman and everyone pretend like they're not filming so they don't get caught.
 
From the December issue of American Cinematographer (Matthew Libatique, ASC):

We used a Canon 7d or 1D Mark IV for all the subway scenes; I could just carry a 7d and shoot on the subway all day with a very small crew. I did some tests with my wife beforehand to figure out my ASA, my stop, and how I was going to deal with the focus. I didn't use any rigs with it because I wasn't trying to shoot in the traditional way. I tested a bunch of different exposures and then brought the footage to Charlie Hertzfeld at Technicolor, who put it in the system so I could look at the highlights, the moire and the resolution. The 7d has more depth of field than the 5d, but i needed that because i didn't have a follow-focus unit and needed to work really fast. I shot everything documentary-style. I did all the focus pulls by hand, and we'd just look at it on the camera's monitor. I ended up shooting on a Canon 24mm lens at 1,600 ASA to get as much depth of field as possible at a stop of t8 1/2
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From the picture attached, looks like the 24mm 1.4L + 7d
 
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Sounds like there's not much difference between the average DVX user and an award winning director, haha.

ecking said:
There's a youtube clip floating around where Aronofsky talks about using the 7D to steal shots on the subway and making Portman and everyone pretend like they're not filming so they don't get caught.
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Krunko said:
Sounds like there's not much difference between the average DVX user and an award winning director, haha.
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Just $17,000,000 and a professional top-notch crew. :)

Why he chose to steal a subway scene is beyond me. To feel young again? To make the actors feel a certain way? For a cute EPK story. Doubt they were too broke to do it... PLUS... I'm surprised they did it for the insurance reasons alone, had something gone wrong.
 
_JD_ said:
Tiny Furniture was shot 100% on the 7D- you can check out Roger Eberts review here:http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101208/REVIEWS/101209970

Not one mention that it was shot on a 7D- and that says a lot.
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I saw Tiny Furniture last week and while it's inspiring that a film shot on the 7D got a distribution deal, I did not like the film at all. I could name many aspects that bothered me but one thing that stood out was that the acting was horrible (minus one actress). The cinematography was nothing to write home about either. There were however a few clever lines of dialogue here and there.
 
black swan looked great. the 7D scene looked good and worked perfectly.

tiny furniture it's ok, but the 7d does "its job" right.

can't wait for the next gen of canons
 
Saw Black Swan, and yeah I noticed the DSLR footage from a mile away. I don't think normal cinema-goers would notice.

In terms of colours and grain, they match really well and good emulated look. The problem that stands out is that the DSLR video hasn't got the resolution of 16mm, so it looks out of focus and very soft in comparison. And also there's jello and camera jitter.

But cool that they used it to steal subway shots!! =]
 
Cory Braun said:
I saw Tiny Furniture last week and while it's inspiring that a film shot on the 7D got a distribution deal, I did not like the film at all. I could name many aspects that bothered me but one thing that stood out was that the acting was horrible (minus one actress). The cinematography was nothing to write home about either. There were however a few clever lines of dialogue here and there.
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I'm not inspired anymore by any picture we see shot with today's available cameras. I was inspired with 28 Days Later and the DVX100 .... Now ? You can make a feature with most any camera available to professionals and prosumers alike.
 
Here's a great read on it:

http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2010/12/black-swan-canon-7d.html

I'm new to the camera world but have worked a few jobs where we shot on the 7D and 5D Mark 2 and am very curious as to how they take such a compressed "HD video" (as shot on the DSLRs) and make it playable on a feature size screen.. Is the quality of all the other footage just downgraded to match up with the DSLR's footage?

Oh, and yes.. I'm new here. hello everyone! :)
 
whitehorse84 said:
curious as to how they take such a compressed "HD video" (as shot on the DSLRs) and make it playable on a feature size screen.. Is the quality of all the other footage just downgraded to match up with the DSLR's footage?
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Ooh that was a great read thank you! I want that 24mm Canon L lens now, and what I loved about Black Swan was that the DOF of DSLR footage wasn't crazy shallow and razor thin which tends to be the case with DSLR love. I don't think any of the quality of the 16mm footage was down-graded to match... the grain and colours of the 16mm is beautiful. Maybe they added more in? I would guess, unless someone who worked on the film posts here, that they scanned some of the Fuji's grain patterns and put that ontop of the DSLR footage to match the look.
 
Lammy said:
Ooh that was a great read thank you! I want that 24mm Canon L lens now, and what I loved about Black Swan was that the DOF of DSLR footage wasn't crazy shallow and razor thin which tends to be the case with DSLR love. I don't think any of the quality of the 16mm footage was down-graded to match... the grain and colours of the 16mm is beautiful. Maybe they added more in? I would guess, unless someone who worked on the film posts here, that they scanned some of the Fuji's grain patterns and put that ontop of the DSLR footage to match the look.
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he said on the subway shot since he didn't have follow focus unit or anything else he wanted as high of a f stop as possible so he shot in 800 ISO with f8.5 or so f.stop so that the depth of field was not shallow so that he could get natalie prfectly in focus
 
Technical specs for Black Swan:Camera
Arriflex 16 SR3, Zeiss Ultra 16 Lenses
Arriflex 416, Zeiss Ultra 16 Lenses
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon L-Series Lenses
Canon EOS 7D, Canon L-Series Lenses

Laboratory
Technicolor, New York (NY), USA

Film negative format (mm/video inches)
16 mm (Fuji Eterna Vivid 160T 8643, Eterna Vivid 500T 8647)
Digital

Cinematographic process
Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format)
HDTV (1080p/24) (source format) (some scenes)
Super 16 (source format)

Printed film format
35 mm (anamorphic) (blow-up) (Fuji Eterna-CP 3513DI)
D-Cinema

Aspect ratio
2.35 : 1

So the 16mm print was "blown up" to 35mm which would help Aronofsky achieve the graininess he was looking for. I wonder if the "anamorphic" part of the process was a simple crop- certainly there are no anamorphic lens attachments seen in the Canon subway shots.
 
So, judging by that, the 16 mm was scanned at 2K, meaning that the 7D/5D shots were only missing about 100 or so pixels?
 
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