SD on theater screen?

R

Ryan-Guy

Well-known member
How well will SD hold up on a theater screen?

I'm planning my first narrative feature (I've produced a doc feature with Af100 etc.) and call me crazy but I am thinking that I may want to shoot it on the Canon XL2. I am looking at this strictly as a creative choice as it will be a "lost footage" doc style film. BTW with my budget I could easily choose an EX3 etc.. My single concern is that on a large projection screen SD could just annoy the audience, regardless of the fact that it would have been shot on SD if it were real, and consequently take them out of the story completely.

Note: The story takes place in 2007, a time when HD wasn't mainstream, and like most lost footage genre movies is filmed by non-professionals.
 
It holds up well. I've had to use DVDs for projection before, both for exhibition and testing, so I can speak from experience. When I make the decisions at festivals DVD copies are required for backup.

That said, I wouldn't recommend it for your project. The fact that it's being shot by non professionals without lighting or proper equipment is going to do enough to make it look found. While you can always dirty the footage in post you can never add resolution that you would have liked. I'd also really question your statement that most lost footage movies are filmed by non-professionals, but I don't have any evidence either way.
 
Our local 48 Hours film making competition shows the finalists (SD PAL widescreen) on a 70mm theatre screen. Looks just fine. Sure you can see the pixels if you look for them, but that's the last thing on your mind if the film's good.

But Cassius makes good points. Depends somewhat on your planned distribution too - a distributor may not be keen on a film that's "only" SD res, and probably won't be interested in your "artistic" justification.
 
That's good to hear. The camera won't actually be handled by amatures, it's just it will appear that way. I will be cam op for most of the shooting. The idea is to create the illusion, while carefully choosing blocking lighting etc.

And I have thought about shooting HD and then degradding the image to look like home footage, but what has me interested in the xl2 for this specific project is I've read that it records 12bit. Not sure if 8 or 10bit HD is better than 12bit SD though.
 
To piggy back on others, Paranormal Activity 3 was shot in HD, then they added tracking lines and such to get a VHS look.
 
Ryan-Guy said:
And I have thought about shooting HD and then degradding the image to look like home footage, but what has me interested in the xl2 for this specific project is I've read that it records 12bit. Not sure if 8 or 10bit HD is better than 12bit SD though.
Click to expand...
The XL2 is DV25, it's 8 bit.
 
As recently as last year the vast majority of mid and lower tier film festivals projected from an SD DVD. This year a larger number have moved to accepting Blu Ray as an exhibition format, but DVD is still pretty common.

As was noted sure, you can see pixels, especially if you're fairly close to the screen, but it looks ok.
 
Test various solutions.
Try to get the look in the camera as much as possible.

See if shooting HD then dumping the fooatage to SD then blowing up to thatrical projection does the trick for you. The only issue i would say agains shooting with XL2 is that it just doesn't hold up well on wide shots.
 
5 years ago, when I did my 1st 48HFP film, I shot standard def with a Panasonic DVC30. The San Diego 48HFP has been showing both HD and SD videos. When an HD (from a Panasonic HVX200) was projected right after my SD video, the HD video was such a relief to my eyes ... I knew it was time for me to switch to HD. My suggestion is to shoot HD, then add just a small amount of film grain in post. (Maybe render 2 versions, one with more grain effect, and see which people like most.)

But if you still want to shoot SD, I've read that many filmmakers have had success with a Panasonic DVX100, shooting 24 fps progressive.

- Ken
 
Some very good points. While it sounds like SD can hold up, it looks like I should just go HD, then degrade it if needed in post. The fact that it wont hold up on wide shots scares me away from it.
 
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