I spent most of March and April in Bangladesh where the market and opportunities for filmmakers are growing exponentially. There is excitement in the air as the country’s rapid growth is producing a shortage of skilled shooters and program producers. Four new TV channels in Dhaka are coming on line this year.  In this scene the production grip “crew’ inclusive of several volunteer beach children help force the camera crane through the deep sand at Cox’s Bazar on March 26 Independence Day.

Assessing the industry landscape, the effects of lingering recession, and the massive losses suffered by the major Japanese players it’s easy to see how NAB 2012 could feature a dearth of new products. Sony, Panasonic, JVC, will offer little if any new gear, while Canon, flush with cash from its high-flying DSLR business, is primed for yet another surge of sales from its ersatz still-and-video cameras and flagship EOS C300.

With the notable exception of Canon the Japanese manufacturers have proven themselves unable to adapt fast enough to changing markets. While the companies’ managers in the U.S. and abroad are in a mad scramble to develop products that consumers and professionals will actually buy, they still cling to the hope that the television stations and the broadcast market that long sustained them will somehow miraculously reappear.

Not a chance.

Of course a spate of innovative new products will be the key to resurrecting the fortunes of Panasonic, Sony and the rest. But so is recognizing the inescapable fact that the broadcast market has substantially disappeared. Other markets will need to be recognized and embraced. The education market is huge and growing, yet Sony in all its wisdom recently laid off or transferred its entire education staff.  Go figure.

Canon continues to be the one bright spot in this area. The company just opened a state of the art education facility in the heart of Hollywood, with plenty of room for customer service, cleaning of cameras, classes and workshops. Wow.

It’s nice to see one major Japanese company doing something right. It should give us all a modicum hope.

That’s a tall order these days. If you’re shooting HDCAM, XDCAM, HDV, AVCHD or, heaven forbid, standard definition DV, you are capturing the world in a mere 8-bits. In all its sophistication and wisdom your camera’s processor outputting 8-bits to the recording medium can only assign one of 256 possible values to each sample; which can severely limit the color fidelity and smoothness of gradients in your images.

Ten-bit recording formats like the pricey HDCAM SR and Panasonic’s more economical AVC-Intra ought to be where we are heading. Manufacturers have leaped full bore on the high resolution sensor bandwagon, but for our bread and butter assignments upon which we depend every day, the 10-bit capture formats offer far better performance with fewer headaches at the end of the post-production rainbow. Our NLEs employing Apple ProRes or Avid DNx are already supporting 10-bit workflows so it simply makes good sense to utilize this greater bit depth and precision from the outset.

Beware of 8-bit cameras like the Sony F100, Panasonic AF100 and even the new Canon C300 that offer high resolution but at a mere 8-bit capture and meager 8-bit output via HD-SDI. This workflow is compromised from the outset, and can very well impair precise color correction and compositing downstream.

I’m currently in Prague working with students from FAMU, the national film school located here. While the workshop over the last week mostly covered 3D fundamentals and storytelling the class and I also had the opportunity to try out the Panasonic’s latest compact P2 camcorder – the AG-HPX250 – an economically priced 10-bit model that captures to AVC-Intra 4:2:2. Given the camera’s compact configuration and 22X macro zoom this is one powerful handheld beast. And the pictures captured in a wide range of conditions certainly bear that out.

Despite the camera’s diminutive size its performance can only be described as remarkable as my group and I shot around the old city in driving rain and sleet into the night and before dawn with startling results . I often fantasized about just such a camera that can perform this well in such a tiny package. Navigating across the historic Charles Bridge before dawn the camera supported by a Sachtler DV6 were the perfect combination: lightweight and flexible at a full-range of focal lengths and frame rates from 1-60 FPS.

The HPX250 with an MSRP under $6000 does entail a few notable compromises however, including several that are maddening: the bayonet lens-shade mounting system is needlessly imprecise and frustrating; the camera’s tiny flimsy controls, especially the menu selection toggle, are virtually impossible to operate with gloved hands, the rotating main power/mode switch is awkward to engage; and the miniscule release tab controlling access to the P2 cards is poorly designed and implemented.

Despite the operational tradeoffs the camera is sure to set the new benchmark in high-performance compact camcorders. Every camera of course comes with its own set of compromises. And this camera is no exception.

The HPX250 in Prague. December 2011.

It’s not a stupid question. Consider the major strength and weakness of the Panasonic 3DA1 is its orthostereoscopic 60mm interaxial. On the one hand by matching a human being’s interocular distance, we can be assured that objects captured at a “normal” distance with a “normal” lens will appear with a “normal” roundness from a human being’s perspective. This is critical if we as shooters are to be successful in our 3D endeavors: capturing your leading lady or young starlet with her head shaped like a medicine ball will not do much for your career.

On the other hand the 60mm interaxial can be limiting; objects approaching well inside of ten feet (3m) may cause severe eye strain; the hyperconvergence inducing headaches, nausea and a flight to the exits.  This is because the converging of the eyes requires musular effort, which increases dramatically with diminishing object distance. A similar peril exists on the other side of the screen in positive space. The 60mm IA increases the risk of hyperconvergence; a condition audiences particularly loathe as they try to splay their eyes out like Marty Feldman.

Panasonic’s new 3D camcorder HDC-Z10000 effectively reduces the risk of hyperconvergent and hyperdivergent conditions. By shrinking the interaxial to 42mm the economical 3D model ($3500 list) will allow comfortable capture of objects down to a mere 17 inches (45cm). This means the Z10000 will prove more useful in the critical six to eight foot (1.5m – 2.5m) range where we shooters tend to do most of our work.

The down side of the narrower IA is the noticeable loss of depth beyond fifteen feet (4.5m). This may be fine if working primarily on sets or for shooting sit-down intereviews when coupled with the wider than normal (32mm equivalent) lens. This is a critical point. Shooting with the Z10000 and a “normal” lens will yield the approximate point of view of a small dog or cat whose interocular distance is 42mm. Maybe this is what you want, maybe it isn’t.  The point is to know what the heck you are doing: The narrow IA decreases roundness from a human perspective; the wider field of view gained from the 32mm equivalent lens increases roundness to restore the human perspective.

The design of the Z10000 with its lofty ridiculous model number is designed to do exactly that.

Panasonic's Z10000's 42mm interaxial allows comfortable close placement of objects as close as 17 inches (45cm) but beware the loss of the human perspective; we see the world with our eyes about 65mm apart and so our 3D camera and storytelling skills must be adjusted to ensure capturing objects with the proper desired roundness.

Unless you’re Sony it isn’t too often that a camera manufacturer rents a Hollywood studio, in this case Paramount, and hires an A-list director, in this case, Martin Scorsese, to do the introductory honors. But that’s exactly the case on November 3  as Canon will announce its most professional large-format camera yet from its underrated and (until now) ignored video division.  Not another DSLR variant, the new camera is expected to offer very high resolution at 4K or greater, 4:2:2 intraframe compression, and practical recording to SSD onboard storage. Any way you look at the new camera, this is an aggressive upscale move, and a veritable shot across the bow to Sony’s best-seller F3 model, which has dominated the scene for most of the past year.

Given Canon’s propensity for excellent controls, rugged construction, and operational ease, this camera could quickly become a major player in the large-sensor  camera wars, especially given the quality of Canon optics that will surely go with it.  As Panasonic fumbles and Sony shakes in its boots, the stakes couldn’t be greater for the major camera manufacturers (and RED) as we near the moment of the great announcement amid the pomp and circumstance this coming Thursday.

Stay tuned. I’ll be all over this one.

In a recent poll about 80% of Americans were said to hold a negative view of 3D entertainment movies and TV. With such a predisposition towards 3D it’s not surprising that 3DTV should find very tough going in North America. In Southeast Asia, the 80% figure also applies, except there the lop-sided percentage refers to positive feelings towards three-dimensional format; only 20% of consumers of theatrical fare have a somewhat or very negative view of  3D.

In Europe the feelings are not quite so negative towards 3D entertainment, especially in France, where the bulk of 3D equipment sales, cameras and plasma displays have taken place. I am in the UK this week, and I can perceive a substantial level of resistance from consumers, albeit at not nearly the level of disinterest or even antipathy that is currently the case in the U.S.

Maybe France knows something the rest of the West doesn’t. Or else it may simply be reflective more of French culture  and proclivities in the cinema.

I’ve always been a film guy. I cut my teeth on 16mm. My first child was an Arri 16SRII for which I traveled to the factory in Munich factory 30 years ago to take the delivery. At the National Geographic, that’s all we shot, day in and day out, and there was something reassuring about it: we could hear the film and sprockets chugging away, and we knew we were recording images.  With our many years of experience, we had absolute confidence in what those images actually were.

This month I’ve been shooting second unit camera for Moonrise Kingdom, directed by my old friend Wes Anderson. Wes and I date back to the pre-Bottle Rocket days, when I used to shoot commercials and industrial films for Owen Wilson’s dad in Dallas. In those days the film medium was all we had if we really wanted to make a movie. The digital thing was still at least a decade away for serious filmmakers.

Which is why this shoot for me on Super 16 was like a breath of fresh air.  The S16mm camera strapped to the underbelly of a 270-horsepower Cessna seaplane would be challenging enough for any imaging system, given the physical stress and massive volume of water pouring back over the lens on take-off.  Employing a digital camera however in this setup would be sheer folly, given the force and volume of water and the tight waterproofing required to protect the camera from the massive assault. A modern digital cinema given its thermal characteristics would likely not be able to sustain the heat buildup inside many layers of water-tight plastic – without substantial re-engineering with respect to the camera’s cooling fan and concomitant changes in the aerodynamics of the aircraft.

Here the simplicity and reliability of perforated film chugging over sprockets made the most sense, as the film camera was clearly the right tool for the job. The versatility and latitude of the Vision 3 7213 film proved to be just as critical; the lighting conditions aloft changing dramatically as we darted in and out of the thick clouds of an approaching storm.

Comfortable 3D viewing requires matching left and right eye photography. The QC session can help identify obvious faults.

I recently spent a morning at Technicolor’s 3D quality control lab in Glendale CA and was extremely impressed with the sophistication of the QC teams and the review process. Graphical software developed by Technicolor enables the QC operator to accurately assess hyper-divergent and hyper-convergent scenes. No remedial action is performed at this point;  the process is solely intended for informational purposes, to alert the filmmaker of potential problems that might impact the viewer’s comfort and overall experience.

Only four pixels of vertical disparity will pass muster in the QC suite so left and right cameras with even the slightest mismatched geometry are readily identified. Color discrapancies and synchronization issues affecting the left and right eye are also easily spotted and flagged. Truth is, under this level of scrutiny, virtually every 3D project ever produced, regardless of budget, will return a bevy of red trouble flags.

The filmmaker’s challenge then is to somehow separate the redness of the QC report from his or her legitimate storytelling goals. The creative requirements of visual storytelling in the third dimension necessarily precludes following too closely the dicates of the QC session. Producers may look upon the report’s red areas, a hyperdiverged background, for instance, in the corner of a scene, and lambaste the stereographer, director and DP, but is this “fault” so identified in the QC report really a defect that will detract from the viewing experience?

Let’s keep in mind that story above all must drive the technology, not the other way around. Audiences do not determine their like or dislike for a 3D  program based on the green versus red ratio in a QC report. Yes, the report can be extremely useful to identify clearly disturbing 3D conditions, but it should serve as gospel to compel changes in the storytellers’ creative choices.

1937 Raleigh Roadster: the mechanical world that used to be.

This entry doesn’t have much to do with the digital craft or video storytelling, although in a way it has everything to do with it. Today I’m in Wales fetching a 1937 Raleigh Roadster with a three-speed Sturmey-Archer and 28 X 1.5-in tires. When this cycle was manufactured in Nottingham two years before the outbreak of World War II there was little about it that one of average or sub-par intelligence couldn’t understand. After all this elegant machine is the quintessential mechanical device with rod-actuated brakes; the three-speed internal gearing integrated into the rear hub operated by a a push-pull cable engaging the planetary gears.

We lived in a mechanical world then, and when something went wrong with the Raleigh Roadster, it was a simple fix – easy to figure out, and easy to remedy. On the other hand, today it accomplishes little to break open a DVD player’s case and stare down a microprocessor. Troubleshooting in the digital era requires insight and understanding of theory, bits and bytes. That takes training and discipline and ongoing study.

So today I am thankful and grateful: my latest cycle acquisition is blessedly devoid of the digital complexity that defines our time.