JVC Film Screening Of Madagascar Footage by Andrew Young

BobDiaz

BobDiaz

The Professor
Today, January 31, I went to the Directors Guild of America to see the JVC presentation showing Andrew Young's film of Madagascar shot on the JVC HD-100 and printed onto 35mm film.

http://pro.jvc.com/pro/seminar/LACHIProHD/lachiprohdshow.html


I was running a bit late today, so I came in to the last half of the 4 PM showing and stayed for the whole 6 PM showing. Overall, I'd say the JVC held up very well. It was unfortunate that Andrew didn't have more than 1 week to learn the camera before going on the shoot. As a result, the detail level of the camera was set a bit too high. This gave a funny over sharpened unnatural look to the image.

Ignoring the over sharpened image due to not knowing the camera, overall the image looked good on the big screen. Yes, even 720p footage if done right, can look very good on the big screen. I sat in the front row a little off from dead center. I did notice CA in some of the shots and Andrew admitted that his makeshift wide angle adapter made it worse.

His footage was shot at 30p and transferred to film by slowing down the frame rate. This stretched 1 second to 1.25 seconds on the film. Medium and slow movement looks good, but some of the fast action shots (even when played 30p with a video projector), like the river rafting and driving down the road, seemed to strobe. It would have been interesting to see his river rafting footing displayed on a frame by frame bases, because the random changes in the image are a real torture test for MPEG-II.

By far the most interesting footage displayed was the Panasonic SDX-900 SD DVCPRO/DVCPOR50 Camera. When it was shown side by side with the HD100, the HD100 looked sharper, BUT the SDX-900 still looked good too. Considering the low resolution of SD, I wouldn't have guessed that SD could look that good projected to a big screen. Even with a Kell Factor of 0.85, the SDX-900 has a vertical resolution of around 408 lines. Given that the HVX-200 was measured from 540 to 650 lines, it would peform very well on the big screen.

Of the 17 hours of footage Andrew shot, he reported 1 dropout and one shot had the SSE (Split Screen Effect) appear briefly. The trip turned out to be brutal for both the people and the camera. The good news is that both survived. There are more things I'd like to add, but it is getting late and my brain is starting to turn to mush...


Bob Diaz
 
I was at the 6pm showing. From what I saw the HD100 looked good with the film transfer. If the sharpening wasn't so high it would have looked much better. The raw footage that was shown from the digital projector wasn't as good as the film out. The over sharpening was really bad on the digital. Still it was good to see what this camera could do with a film out on something that wasn't even planned on going to film. There were a couple clips in a studio environment and those looked really good. Plus I'm sure that whole 30p thing didn't help with the look on the digital projector.

There was also something weird going on at the event. JVC was making it seem like their camera was the only one to record 720p 24p. Meaning it didn't record a pulldown into the footage. I guess they didn't want to say the name of the HVX in their little sales pitch. The last time I heard the HVX can do this and much more.
 
I was at the 6:PM screening. The JVC looked pretty decent on 35mm- although fairly unsaturated. However, the un-color corrected HDV rough-edit playing back from the WMV DVD looked far better on the DILA digital projection when compared to the 35mm- the colors were much more saturated. The DILA projector really produced some very fine images.

Wide-angle footage from the JVC was also very disappointing compared to the macro shots. The cinematographer went through hell to get the footage he did, and should be commended for outstanding work. He also gerry-rigged a x.7 adapter in front of the standard Fuji lens, which may be partially to blame. Tough to tell from the footage however.

That being said, MOST (not all) of the footage was very similar and involved natural light. While challenging to physically shoot, the generally high overcast sky footage didn't seem a particularly challenging test for the camera to resolve. The cine-gamma undoubtedly helped. I seemed to remember the JVC having a tough time at the corporate office in Cypress with a vase of flowers and a Tota?!? Perhaps that cam was a prototype.

I must say that the JVC was a huge step up from the Z1U footage I saw projected digitally at on Friday at Sundance. Although "Stay" is a very good movie, the performance of the Z1U (even with the digital projection) was quite poor.

FWIW, and even though I'm biased, I feel fairly confident that no one present would say that the final JVC 35mm output looked "better" than our first pass HVX 35mm film out.

I.
 
I too attended this event and bob pretty much summed it up well.

I thought the quality of the film out was impressive and although the comparison between the SDX-900 and the HD100 was interesting it reflected more the quality of the film out process than the performance of the cameras. If a producer is going to pay to film out using a Teranex to upscale and Arri Laser film recorder using 5242 intermediate stock you may as well shoot it on film.

Most low budget films will never be transfered to film and for many of those that are will be transfered using CRT film recorders with grainier film and a lot less image processing.

The best part of the presentation was when they digitally projected the source footage. It looked very good, like video but very good.

There was some discussion about hard drive recording but it was hijacked by a couple of audiance members so it wasn't as informative as it might have been.

All-in-all the HD100 is a very nice camera. One thing that kind of annoys me about all of these comparisons is that everyone who is kind enough to do them seems to be working under serious time and resource constraints. The manufacturer know these types of comparisons will take place and yet they do little to support them. Its almost as though all of them lack the confidence in thier products.

Andrew Young gave a great presentation and for those of you in New York you should check out DuArt, he seems very down to Earth and willing to help independent film production.
 
ChuckS said:
Most low budget films will never be transfered to film and for many of those that are will be transfered using CRT film recorders with grainier film and a lot less image processing.
:smiley_do
One thing that kind of annoys me about all of these comparisons is that everyone who is kind enough to do them seems to be working under serious time and resource constraints. The manufacturer know these types of comparisons will take place and yet they do little to support them. Its almost as though all of them lack the confidence in thier products.
Click to expand...
I think that answers your question as to why they don't help out much.
 
It was a good presentation. I also appreciated the Mini35 comparisons... I'd seen that stuff before but on the big screen it really took on a new character. You guys pretty much covered what I would say about all that, so, on another note...

I was REALLY impressed with the 48" reference monitor they were showing out in the lobby. Absolutely gorgeous picture, and the price isn't all that bad, really. $4000 for true 1920x1080? Give me a few months and I might bite.
 
Hey Bob we were at the same screening. I am the one who mention that he should lower the sharpness and boost the chroma etc. I wish I could have met you..


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 to as well. We got to pick you the right camera for that great poject......

I wasn't to impressed with the HD100's performance on this. 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!

Now 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 blawwww, 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..............

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

PS: Next time us DVX people need a meeting area, I was hoping to meet some of you that attended...



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
 
It did look look good, but 1920x1080 plasma's look really good too. It appeared to be rear projection and bloomed a bit.
 
I too was at the 6pm screening. It's worth mentioning that they also screened a 35mm filmout of footage shot with the HD100 and the P + S mini35 adapter, using Cooke cinema lenses. There were a few shots, involving a woman and man in a garden setting. The first shot appeared soft, but the d.p. who shot it (I forget his name) explained it was operator error. The other two shots mostly rack focused from plants in the fore, mid, and background, and another shot of someone walking past. IMO, those shots looked VERY, very much like they had been shot on 35mm.

Based on what I've seen tonight, (and the footage I've been able to download from this site) I feel confident that the HVX should be capable of delivering sweet looking images for the big screen. Time will tell. (BTW, I'm getting an HVX and the G35(just pre-ordered!), not the $10,000 P+S.)
 
The only plasma I've seen that looked comparable was a 50" 1080p Mitsubishi that was even MORE expensive, if I recall, and with less calibration control. I'm no fan of rear projection, but I gave this one a full walk-around and it held up from pretty much any angle. I'm not the leading expert on these things, but it met the criteria I quickly checked it for.
 
I'm suprised that everyone isn't jumping up and down. Granted I haven't seen the HVX on 35mm I thought the JVC did very well. I was worried about only having 720p but it held up fine.

Andrew took a camera he had only for 1 week, glued on a .7 wide adapter that wasn't even made for that lens, and took the camera into the worse conditions imaginable. Shooting though the stock lens on a 5K camera through rain, cold, constant moisture, etc. the footage was very impressive. Granted it was obvious that some shots could have used the detail setting turned down and the color bumped up but he admited that he like the muted color tones and shot that way on purpose.

I'm glag this footage came from worse case scenario with uncontrolled conditions as it really shows what the camera can do. There were a few highlight issues but it still held up, I can't imagine how much better it could look when controlled better. I was also very suprised with the HDV performance. I didn't noticed any artifacts and while there was some strobing in the water I don't think it was due to HDV. The point they made about only recording 24 frames to tape and keeping compression less than when you record 60 and pull out 24 in post made a lot of sense and it probably why it looked so good.

The other technical point that probably helps this camera is that it records 1280 x 720 all the way through. There is no up/down sampling going on in this camera. Also, the camera offers 720p 4:2:2 via the component outputs.

This camera is not perfect but for the price many independent film makers would be happy. I really need to see the HVX on 35mm now but who knows when that will be. Pappas - I knew that was you giving pointers during the presentation, I think he might actually use some of your suggestions.
 
JVC rep was going on and on how MPEG-2 compression didnt highly compress data, but used a more efficient way of doing it. So, please do not say HDV is highly compressed. j/k

A lot of comparison between HDV and DVC Pro HD.

I thought some of the close up shots were amazing. Wide not too good.
 
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/liquidblue/English(US)/doc/WP_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
 
Michael, you've seen both an HVX and a HD100 filmout, so how do you think they compare ?

And were there any lowlight scenes in either, and if so, how was the artifacting/noise ? (if you weren't looking for it, would it be distracting?)

I'm just wondering now, if the lower price of the JVC plus new glass, and add on's, the cam might be a great contender in this area (especially with a good CC program).

What do you think?:beer:And what was the problem with the wide shots ?

Cheers.
 
D and G - There was some footage from the HD100 that Andrew shot around a camp fire at night. I believe he said some was at +6 gain and some even as high as +12. This footage seemed like the only light was from the fire and you could see noise. I'm not sure if the 35mm film out helped mask the noise as grain or if it just didn't bother me but in my opinion it would have passed most audiences.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top