Eric Coughlin
Veteran
Nobody is saying Red doesn't have a look that is preferable for some films and shows, but the majority still go with Arri.
Netflix Originals camera requirements
- Thread starter Terry_Lasater
- Start date
Because most network and cable TV shows, especially 1-hr dramas, still shoot in HD. Or shoot in 2.8K and deliver in HD.
Which brings us the full circle. Netflix does not want to shoot in HD.
John Brawley
Well-known member
We're all understanding that these requirements are only for projects Netflix themselves commision ? Netflix original programming only.
The very vast majority of Netflix content DOES NOT meet these requirements and yet they happily host it for you all to enjoy in your sub 4K misery.
No matter if you like the camera's look or not, it's clearly myopic to exclude the camera that's chosen and preferred by a vast majority of content creators in pretty much all markets.
JB
The very vast majority of Netflix content DOES NOT meet these requirements and yet they happily host it for you all to enjoy in your sub 4K misery.
No matter if you like the camera's look or not, it's clearly myopic to exclude the camera that's chosen and preferred by a vast majority of content creators in pretty much all markets.
JB
Bern Caughey
Veteran
If you want an earful of RED bashing hang out at the ASC Clubhouse for an afternoon. Obviously not all the members dislike REDs, but they're in the minority.
On the topic of Rockstar level Colorist, there's one guy in LA that was demanding his share of the copyright for anything he put his hand to. Not sure how that panned out as I know a number of Directors who refuse to work with him due to this demand.
Lastly there's a story from the photography legend, Melvin Sokolsky. When one of the film emulation companies stated they could reproduce the look of any of his favorite stocks he replied, " I don't want Velvia, I want Melvia".
On the topic of Rockstar level Colorist, there's one guy in LA that was demanding his share of the copyright for anything he put his hand to. Not sure how that panned out as I know a number of Directors who refuse to work with him due to this demand.
Lastly there's a story from the photography legend, Melvin Sokolsky. When one of the film emulation companies stated they could reproduce the look of any of his favorite stocks he replied, " I don't want Velvia, I want Melvia".
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CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
Sorry as this goes well back into this thread but since it has meandered through so many iterations...maybe a little intrusion will be welcome? I just came across a little clip from my onboard recorder I used on my Steadicam years ago (DV at that point, 8mm prior) that amptly demonstrates the madness we used to deal with. That's the groundglass we used on the Aaton XTRProd on the show Scrubs, exactly what I used to see on my Steadicam monitor (well, a green monochrome version of that), which included the following framelines: 1:78 transmission, 1:78 safe (with 1:85 guides within that), and 1:33 safe. It's composed for 1:33 and protecting the 1:78. Yuck!
Nirv
Carbonite Member
As explained earlier in the thread Netflix sells 4K streaming for a premium the content therefore has to be 4k they're producing otherwise someone will sue. This happened in the UK when Sky transitioned to HD and charged for HD yet they broadcast uprezzed SD.
Netflix intend to produce more of their own content than buy up content so it's a big deal. Their media buying spree is set to continue as they know in order to keep subscribers and also grow they have to add content. The more popular they get the greater the cost of buying content will be so they can control their costs with making their own content and develop their own house Brand. There's some excellent examples of risk taking in their commissioning that probably wouldn't have got to air on TV.
Again, if you want to overturn Netflix's position explain why the end user's enjoyment will be so much greater watching an Alexa shot show over any of the contemporary competitor's cameras. All of the top end Netflix shows I've watched all look stunning no matter what camera system has been used to the point the camera system appears irrelevant. If there was a night and day difference between the Alexa and everything else there may be a point but there isn't. At best it's the difference between one DP's choice of film stock over another's.
Shoot 4k for Netflix or go shoot HD for TV, that'll be the choice producers face.
Meanwhile, HBO is releasing "4K UHD" discs, along with "HD" Blu-rays of Westworld, which was all shot on 35mm film and scanned at 2K only.
It will look better than anything Netflix is shooting on their own but no one will know it's "only" a 2K scan. http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/west...e-the-first-tv-series-released-in-4k-ultra-hd
It will look better than anything Netflix is shooting on their own but no one will know it's "only" a 2K scan. http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/west...e-the-first-tv-series-released-in-4k-ultra-hd
GaryinCalifornia
Veteran
I was going to say close to Fotokem, but I couldn't think of the name of my lab of choice...
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Spent many an hour dropping off and picking up my developed film at Fotokem.
Netflix is spending $6B (that's billion to those in the financial field) on original programming in 2017 alone. It is the trend and the standard setter. It doesn't need to follow anyone else. If someone dreams of ARRI, they can use Alexa65.
The "old" Alexa is getting long in the tooth anyway. If the manufacturer refuses to make a mainstream 4K camera or make Alexa65 in sufficient numbers, then there's no reason to fixate on it.
combatentropy
Veteran
So, clearly the solution to this problem is for Netflix to cancel its 4K advertising.
What if someone sues because most of those cameras are only 4K before demosaicking, which will be less than 4K afterward?
What if someone sues because the focus puller didn't get tack-sharp focus?
What if someone sues because glitches in the internet stream cause the compression blocks to be larger than the 4K pixels?
What if someone sues when they find out that the 4:2:0 or even 4:2:2 compression causes the color to be less than 4K, even though the luminance is?
John Brawley
Well-known member
I think you'll find that's for content, not ORIGINAL content, which was my point.
Really ? That's your argument ?
How about...they already do that now ? Why hasn't someone sued ? If that's really going to happen then they'd take away MOST of their content because most of the content on Netflix right now is NOT 4k.
They have an aspirational goal of 50% of their content being original which they are VERY FAR from reaching.
How about...that already happens....??
I bet there's more Alexa shot content on Netflix now that other cameras. It's already proven.
What you think about one camera over another doesn't matter.
It's those making the content that get to make their acquisition choices. And those choices have been overwhelmingly in favour of a particular camera across many market segments for many years.
And by the way, there are many reasons to preference one camera over another. Look is just one of them.
JB
Since that list now includes BMD's UM 4.6k, it's pretty ridiculous to complain about it.
I find it hard to believe that anyone might not be pleased with a VariCam, outside of things like not having high enough frame rates for some specific shots, or something along those lines. But seriously, who needs slow motion all the time? Usually it's going to be a shot here and there rather than padding out a film's run time like a Transformers film
LOL. It's published on Panasonic's site. It's being used for marketing. Do you take all the compliments made on Cinealta magazine at face value too?
If we were talking big names such as Deakins, Lubezki, Prieto etc, going on record on something like ASC mag, then it would carry some actual weight.
With all that wonderful experience I'm sure you know that protecting for the highlights is different from having nice highlight roll off. That is actually what I'm talking about. Even though you are consistently going around my points and never really addressing them, I have the impression you do know the above.
Yep. It has been pretty much that way all the way through and not only from Mitch. This is why I stopped replying. Not much point. Too much wasted time just to go in circles.
Not to mention all the childish down votes. Imagine if I would down vote Mitch just because I disagree with his points? How childish a person needs to be to do that? Down votes are fit for name calling and other rude things. That is if you are an adult. Anyhow I just laugh at it.
By the way I'm not saying Mitch down voted me. I think he is too much of a pro not to mention a visible adult to do that.
I just came back because this thread now is irrelevant. It is meaningless. Because Martin Scorsese is shooting a 100 million dollars project for Netflix called The Irishman. It will be shot on 35mm and guess what else? Alexa XT! Most likely 35mm for day scenes and Alexa for night I would guess. Neflix picked the production up after Paramount decided to not go ahead with it. The movie will premiere on Netflix. It's a Netflix project. Big movie with DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel and others.
I guess if you have a big enough name you are allowed to break the rules and choose the camera with the best on screen image, instead of being limited to the ones with the best looking spec sheets. Thread is over. Netflix will allow other cameras. This is not Netflix just buying a catalog movie which has been on theaters. They picked up the production. I'm also pretty sure if Scorsese wanted to shoot full Alexa he could. As far as we know it might end up being more Alexa than film. Maybe 35mm will be for flashbacks or something. Too early to tell. But it's obvious the Alexa will be used for main photography too. If it was for VFX they would probably use Red or some other 6K camera.
I suspected as much. That if a big name director would do a project for Netflix and wanted to shoot it all on a Hi8 camera, Netflix would probably have no problem with it. The rules seem to be only for ordinary run of the mill stuff and folks. Or maybe only for their series and not for Netflix feature films.
So the thread has become irrelevant. Have fun.
Nirv
Carbonite Member
You just posted a bogus quote from someone who trashed the role of colourists and the thread has gone round in circles because you are unable to answer or avoid answering questions in the thread.
So, how much highlight roll-off is there in an ArriRAW file or even in LogC? Or are confusing dynamic range with highlight roll-off?
How exactly does highlight roll-off make things easier to shoot and light?
I'm all ears...
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
Are you referring to my "bogus quote"? I simply said Mitch wasn't addressing what Strattos had said. How is that bogus? Do you disagree and think Mitch did address it? Stattos was talking about highlight roll-off and how that is different than dynamic range, and Mitch's response did not address that. It's pretty straightforward here.
I didn't trash the role of colorists, and even if I had that wouldn't negate the simple thing I said about Mitch not addressing what Stratos had said. I think professional colorists are very important to get quality end results from footage.
I was saying that most colorists find grading Arri easier. It's easier to get an Arri to look like an Arri than to get a non-Arri to look like an Arri. Many productions don't have the budget to hire a top end colorist to try to get their footage to look like an Arri (so then have as I said "idiot colorists" end up doing the grading instead) and those that do often still have trouble getting it to look as good as an Arri. At which point you start to question, why not just shoot on an Arri to make your life easier? Of which the answer can be things like budget, need better low light, want a smaller camera, need 4K, etc., but is probably not reasons like, "Image quality and high-light rolloff is not good enough."
Highlight roll-off makes things easier to light because a camera with good highlight rolloff can for example have a blown out portion of an image and still look good, while a camera with bad highlight rolloff will look bad when the image is blown, such that you have to light it to avoid blown highlights. Contrary to what some believe, blown highlights aren't always a bad thing and can be used to create a look that is sometimes preferred over having no blown highlights, or in other cases perhaps not preferred, but considered acceptable whereas with a camera with bad highlight rolloff it would be considered an unacceptable image.
Say you are indoors in a hanger and you have a large opening when the sun is all blown out. So, you can either get some Arri 18K HMI's (which may not have been in the budget) and try to balance out the dark interior with the super bright background, or, if you have a camera with good highlight rolloff, you may decide the image still looks good despite the background being blown, thus allowing you to not need a lot of high powered HMIs to balance out the scene. So, lighting the scene just got easier. Of course often you'll still want to avoid blowing out the highlights, but with good highlight rolloff letting them blow out becomes more of an option since the blown highlights don't look terrible like they do on many cameras.
Now let's say you have a Red with an advertised 16.5 stops of dynamic range (which is a bogus number Red came up with, but for the sake of argument...) and poor highlight rollloff and an Arri camera with 14 stops of dyanimc range and great highlight rolloff. Now you're filming this hanger scene and the light difference from the dark of the scene to the brightest part of the scene is 22 stops and you don't have enough lighting to balance out the scene. So, you take out your Red with a whopping 16.5 stops of dynamic range and find the 22 stop scene is blown, and with Red's poor highlight rolloff, the blown highlights look bad. With that (bogus) 16.5 stops of dynamic range you've got 2.5 stops more than the Arri, but since it's a 22 stop scene those extra 2.5 stops aren't really helping you at all. Now you take out the Arri, with just a measly (real) 14 stops of dyanmic range, shoot the same scene, but your blown highlights actually look pretty good and acceptable.
So, it can be argued that highlight rolloff is often more important than the amount of dynamic range a camera has. I think one of the reasons Arri has been so popular is because their goal was to make a camera that looked like film, with similiar colors, dynamic range, highlight rolloff, while Red and other companies tried to make cameras that had higher spec numbers, which in turn made them look perhaps technically superior in some ways (such as resolution), but less like film, and thus perhaps less aesthetically pleasing.
It seems to me that Mitch is supporting Netflix's decision as it is good for Panasonic as the Varicam 35 is one of the best high end 4K cameras out now which means it's a viable camera for Netflix to choose. But I hope he doesn't let the bias of his job for Panasonic keep him giving honest opinions on other cameras such as Arri. If Arri has better highlight roll-off, I'd imagine instead of trying to downplay that, ignore it, etc., it would be better to admit the importance of it, and then concentrate on the Varicam 35's strengths, such as 4K and low light.
I didn't trash the role of colorists, and even if I had that wouldn't negate the simple thing I said about Mitch not addressing what Stratos had said. I think professional colorists are very important to get quality end results from footage.
I was saying that most colorists find grading Arri easier. It's easier to get an Arri to look like an Arri than to get a non-Arri to look like an Arri. Many productions don't have the budget to hire a top end colorist to try to get their footage to look like an Arri (so then have as I said "idiot colorists" end up doing the grading instead) and those that do often still have trouble getting it to look as good as an Arri. At which point you start to question, why not just shoot on an Arri to make your life easier? Of which the answer can be things like budget, need better low light, want a smaller camera, need 4K, etc., but is probably not reasons like, "Image quality and high-light rolloff is not good enough."
Highlight roll-off makes things easier to light because a camera with good highlight rolloff can for example have a blown out portion of an image and still look good, while a camera with bad highlight rolloff will look bad when the image is blown, such that you have to light it to avoid blown highlights. Contrary to what some believe, blown highlights aren't always a bad thing and can be used to create a look that is sometimes preferred over having no blown highlights, or in other cases perhaps not preferred, but considered acceptable whereas with a camera with bad highlight rolloff it would be considered an unacceptable image.
Say you are indoors in a hanger and you have a large opening when the sun is all blown out. So, you can either get some Arri 18K HMI's (which may not have been in the budget) and try to balance out the dark interior with the super bright background, or, if you have a camera with good highlight rolloff, you may decide the image still looks good despite the background being blown, thus allowing you to not need a lot of high powered HMIs to balance out the scene. So, lighting the scene just got easier. Of course often you'll still want to avoid blowing out the highlights, but with good highlight rolloff letting them blow out becomes more of an option since the blown highlights don't look terrible like they do on many cameras.
Now let's say you have a Red with an advertised 16.5 stops of dynamic range (which is a bogus number Red came up with, but for the sake of argument...) and poor highlight rollloff and an Arri camera with 14 stops of dyanimc range and great highlight rolloff. Now you're filming this hanger scene and the light difference from the dark of the scene to the brightest part of the scene is 22 stops and you don't have enough lighting to balance out the scene. So, you take out your Red with a whopping 16.5 stops of dynamic range and find the 22 stop scene is blown, and with Red's poor highlight rolloff, the blown highlights look bad. With that (bogus) 16.5 stops of dynamic range you've got 2.5 stops more than the Arri, but since it's a 22 stop scene those extra 2.5 stops aren't really helping you at all. Now you take out the Arri, with just a measly (real) 14 stops of dyanmic range, shoot the same scene, but your blown highlights actually look pretty good and acceptable.
So, it can be argued that highlight rolloff is often more important than the amount of dynamic range a camera has. I think one of the reasons Arri has been so popular is because their goal was to make a camera that looked like film, with similiar colors, dynamic range, highlight rolloff, while Red and other companies tried to make cameras that had higher spec numbers, which in turn made them look perhaps technically superior in some ways (such as resolution), but less like film, and thus perhaps less aesthetically pleasing.
It seems to me that Mitch is supporting Netflix's decision as it is good for Panasonic as the Varicam 35 is one of the best high end 4K cameras out now which means it's a viable camera for Netflix to choose. But I hope he doesn't let the bias of his job for Panasonic keep him giving honest opinions on other cameras such as Arri. If Arri has better highlight roll-off, I'd imagine instead of trying to downplay that, ignore it, etc., it would be better to admit the importance of it, and then concentrate on the Varicam 35's strengths, such as 4K and low light.
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CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
I kind of hate to jump back into with this thread because it seems strange to me that a lot of people are arguing passionately about theoreticals and mandates that may never even affect them. But hey, message boards will be message boards.
On the subject of highlight rolloff and Varicam: I've personally had good results. Below are two uncolored REC709 frame grabs from "Mary & Jane", an MTV series I shot last year. These were shot on stage at 2000ISO down from 5000, which on paper lops off a stop or more of dynamic range from the camera. The background outside the small window was a flat, about 8 feet away. Outside the patio doors was a practical balcony (where the bikes rested) and a few greens, and beyond that a backlit translight.
I got everything I needed out of the camera to make what I felt was convincing daylight in this situation, and I'm happy with the way the highlights rolled off and blew out. I stretched the lighting budget further using half the wattage instruments, which helped with our location package.
This was a 1080p mastered show and I could have used Arris if I wanted to. I was more than happy with my choice.
On the subject of highlight rolloff and Varicam: I've personally had good results. Below are two uncolored REC709 frame grabs from "Mary & Jane", an MTV series I shot last year. These were shot on stage at 2000ISO down from 5000, which on paper lops off a stop or more of dynamic range from the camera. The background outside the small window was a flat, about 8 feet away. Outside the patio doors was a practical balcony (where the bikes rested) and a few greens, and beyond that a backlit translight.
I got everything I needed out of the camera to make what I felt was convincing daylight in this situation, and I'm happy with the way the highlights rolled off and blew out. I stretched the lighting budget further using half the wattage instruments, which helped with our location package.
This was a 1080p mastered show and I could have used Arris if I wanted to. I was more than happy with my choice.
Nirv
Carbonite Member
Eric, you wrote this nonsense,
You keep going on about Arri's Highlight Roll-Off like it's a fact. I have asked you (and Strattos) how much highlight roll-off there is in an ArriRAW file or in a LogC file and you fail to answer.
The whole myth of Arri having a magical highlight roll-off stems from a lack of understanding. The Arri highlight Roll-Off is done by a LUT, a very good LogC.REC709 LUT but nevertheless a LUT. This LUT combined with a good number of stops of overexposure and a codec that doesn't posterise these highlight data provides an aesthetic highlight which Arri has become synonymous with.
I'll happily take everything back if anyone can prove that Arri compresses their highlights in ArriRAW or LogC. I don't see any highlight rolloff in the LogC only an extra stop of DR compared to SLog3.