Wherin I Demand Global Shutter, and Then Don't

You know, the need for sensors any larger than the ones we have seems to have disappated. Back in the olden days (10 years ago) distributors and buyers would complain about folks not shooting on 35mm because (among other things) the depth of field is so much greater on a small-sensor video camera than on the "big sensor" of 35mm motion picture film.
We used the equivalent of a 35mm sensor on Angry Planet and Alien Insurrection using a Letus camera adapter. Oh, and Clonehunter.
But starting with Day II we've been using a micro 4/3rds format camera. At first it was the GH1 and now the GH3. We save a lot of weight on the camera rig by not having that Letus adapter (although that adapter does look nice, I kinda like everything Letus does.)
The micro 4/3rds is bigger than Super-16 but not as big as 35. But you know what? It's big enough. You open that puppy all the way to f2.8 with a long lens and you have some nice softness in your background. And also it isn't a bear to focus. It's kind of the best of both worlds.

Gratuitous armor.

Thing is, with the micro 4/3rds cameras we now have to contend with rolling shutter.
You see a bunch of tests on the Internet showing the skewing that rolling shutter does. And, for instance, on my brother's camera footage from his quad copter you can see the propellers "bend" from the rolling shutter.
But for most practical situations you just never see the rolling shutter. Even in hand-held fight scenes with whip pans the issue of the rolling shutter seldom makes itself apparent to the naked eye. Yeah, if you freeze a frame you can see that vertical lines are bendy. But other than that, who really cares?
Well, I'll tell ya, you care when you go to do a composite with a handheld camera. On the GH1 we learned (after struggling in post with the GH1) to be very careful when compositing in a background on a handheld shot. So we started being very religious about locking down the camera when we were going to be compositing (say) giant robots in the background.
When I realized this I started jonesing for a (somewhat) large-sensor camera with a global shutter.
The other significant issue with the GH1 was the way the blacks got very noisy in low-contrast environments. This causes these obnoxious horizontal bands across the screen that are impossible to get rid of.
So we moved up to the GH3 with a single f2.8 zoom (uh, 14mm to 35?) The GH3 has improved on that noise in the blacks (which was dinging us in QC) but also behaves better as far as rolling shutter artifacts are concerned. I have no idea what magic the engineers at Panasonic are doing but it's rather magical.
In any case, it seems we have a much easier time doing composites with handheld shots. And that's really almost all I care about.
Here's a video of footage from the GH4. The GH4 is a 4K camera. I don't really care about 4K. Nobody else does either.
But there's a lot of nice motion without (what I can see at least) a lot of rolling shutter artifacts.

Shower Scene

Although principal photography on Android Masquerade is complete we knew we had to get this one shot of Kate coming out of the shower.

First I had to prep the gun. It looks roughly the way it did when Joe put his red-dot scope on it. But the caps had to be taped in the "up" position (which they don't really do). This closeup makes the contraption look awfully ersatz, but we didn't photograph it such that you should really notice or care. I think.

Yes. It's not in the script. I just thought it would be amusing if her character were hiding in the shower -- with the shower on -- fully dressed and carrying a gun.

I want credit here. Hottest day of the year so far and the lead actor gets to stand in a shower where she can control the temperature. It seems like every other time we're shooting on hot days we get the "Oh for continuity you have to wear this winter coat/be slathered in body paint".

Because it amused me. It still amuses me.

I'm glad that you can't see my reflection in this shot. But you can see the mask hanging on the wall.

I also got some very gratuitous closeups at high-speed of water dripping off the muzzle of the gun. Click through to embiggen a little selection of that. I am enjoying my ability to shoot high-speed again now that we're using a GH3.

Six of Seven

On our penultimate day of principal photography we went out into the deep wilds of the Hickory Run State Park in Pennsylvania.

Kate Britton lines up a shot.

 Specifically we shot in the Hickory Run Boulder Field, which is this crazy field of (you guess it!) boulders.

Queen of Mars, Kevin Kirner, Joe Chapman. Those aren't extras behind them, nor are they alien robots (as far as we know). A surprising number of people were in this park on a Monday.

Thing one: it was hot. I mean like frying eggs on the rocks hot. I was practically burned out after being in the direct sun for 20 minutes. Good grief. It was hot out there.

Why does everyone think "Mad Max" when they see Kate's uniform? Is there like an Australian poster for the movie where he's wearing a similar helmet?

Thing two: the boulder field, while it looked cool, was impossible to walk on. You couldn't just move a few feet one way or the other without really taking your time not to break an ankle.

I cannot even begin to tell you how important ice cream break was.

The third thing about the boulder field is that we really didn't have the right kind of horizon. So the ground looked very cool. But the horizon was just green Pennsylvania trees.

The helmet makes it VERY difficult to sight through.

Lastly I almost had a coronary when the Panasonic GH3 decided it simply wouldn't play back any of the footage we'd shot in the latter part of the day. I just looked at it on my laptop -- it seems to all be there (in fact there are some stills above). But why did it do that? I have zero idea.

1301 Day 5 (which is reel 4)

This is a British riot helmet. Probably used to put down a miners strike. In any case, it has much better use here as a helmet of the Terran Defense Force.

 I have not gotten the reel number to actually match the day number in several movies now. I really have to work on it.

 

 

 

 

 

Maduka Steady cops his best rock-star pose as Linus in Android Masquerade.

Kate Britton is suited up and ready to fight some robots.

Here's Kate geared up (but in front of a grey background.)

Over-the-shoulder I found this great reflection in the red-dot scope which Joe had put on our 11mm paintgun.

Jared Van Heel smiles knowing this was the martini of the day.

I've been experimenting with changing the color temperature of the white balance scene to scene. This, to me, is a bit interesting. We can swing to blue (I think the bulk of the day was shot at about 3300K) or very bronze (when making the color temperature more like 10,000K).
Man, the GH3 at the highest bit rate sure does use up hard drive space. I do hope it's worthwhile to shoot at a high bit rate. Hopefully that means the lowest couple of stops will be boostable cleanly. We'll find out.
I have to figure out if we want to edit on Premiere or Final Cut. One huge advantage for Premiere is that it'll edit the h264 files without becoming cranky. With Final Cut we'd have to transcode all the footage.
The GH3 does a weird thing -- the picture doesn't seem to come into focus until I go into record. I don't know what's up with that.

Day 4 (which is only the third reel) A

The Queen of Mars hangs her beautiful Martian artwork.

Shooting at a very high bitrate with the GH3. Trying to use the Wi-Fi as video tap did not work so well for us.

Kate Britton as Barbara.

Brianna June Tillo as Vicky.

Kate Britton.

Brianna and Julia Rae Maldonado as the android version of Barbara.

The Queen of Mars looks on as Julia and Brianna look to the mirror.

Barbara's squalid apartment gets messier every day.

Eating strawberries and popcorn beneath the alien art.

Moar on GH3

Okay. So the slow motion is very cool. It works the opposite way that I expect ("40%" means overcranked, not undercranked) but it does work nicely. It sure is nice to be able to shoot in slow-motion again.

Furthermore, high ISO's work well. A 6400 ISO seems actually usable. And the close focus on a f2.8 zoom lens is pretty phenomenal.

I still have to get the HDMI transmission to work. I ordered a mini-HDMI cable when I needed a micro-HDMI cable. Or, maybe that's the other way around. In any case, I ordered the other kind.
The noise performance seems to me to be very commendable. This particular brick wall is the sort of thing that drove the GH1 to distraction.

We're shooting here wide open at 6400 ISO, f2.8, with a shutter at 1/50 (which is the rough equivalent of films 180-degree shutter at 24fps).
One of the other big improvements the camera has is that apparently (at least when shooting in Quicktime/.mov format) it assigns unique file names to each shot which don't get reset until the camera is deliberately told to reset them. This is a big deal for our file management as having all these dang files named exactly the same thing is pretty frustrating. We'll see how that goes.
The video image is still not happy with very low light. It gets grainy, and not in a good way. So, you know, we'll still have to actually light stuff.

Looking for Editors, GH3

We've posted an ad on Craigslist for the non-paid position of editor. The first posting got flagged, primarily because editors who aren't working get all angry that we aren't paying.

So as long as the ad doesn't get flagged, it's here.

This is a non-paid position. I know, we don't like it either, but we don't have the cash money to pay you. It's a gig primarily for someone just looking for credits or material for a reel, etc.
We make science fiction feature films, straight-to-video. There's a blog where you can find all our previous movies along with trailers: blog.pandoramachine.com (the blog and many of the trailers are rated R so they're not necessarily "safe for work"). 
We edit in Final Cut Pro 7. We have a cozy little edit suite in TriBeCa where we do all our post-production. We're looking for a serious and focused person to work on the picture edit of our 11th feature. 
Our schedule is flexible and we're are serious about getting this film completed speedily. The time commitment is also flexible. Typically we have more than one editor work on a project (each editor handling a different "reel".) But we're open to someone wanting to edit a small amount or a large amount of the movie(s). 
Interested? Do you think you can carve out some regular time each week to edit? Hit us up! 

Got the GH3 with the Lumix 12-35mm lens. The first thing I hadn't realized is that the camera will shoot in .mov format directly. We only get about an hour of footage on a 32GB SD card that way but otherwise it sure is less work and hassle.

3200 ISO, f2.8, 1/50 shutter

Good grief this lens will let you focus closely. In the regular motion-picture format (which I haven't set stills to yet) it'll look even closer because the aspect ratio will be 16:9 rather than the 3:4 which you see above.
With the GH3 Panasonic has changed some things from the GH2 back to the way the GH1 had them. Things I think were better on the GH1. Like flipping from AF to MF is a bit easier on the GH3 than on the GH2.
I'm eager to try the slow-motion on the camera. And I'm kind of curious to see where the ISO gets too noisy to use.
But getting back to the "shooting in Quicktime (.mov)" thing again. Boy, that makes using Final Cut Pro less annoying. We'll see.

If we upgraded our camera

So. If we had a new camera we'd need an HDMI transmitter for it, no?


(Only $99 refurbished.)
Which would, in turn, require a micro HDMI to HDMI cable.
 
Now, of course, we'd need a camera like the Panasonic GH3 (which performs better in low-light but has a bit more aliasing and moire in some conditions than the GH2).


And a really bad ass lens.
 
(You can actually save a couple hundred bucks by getting that lens used.) With, you know, a UV filter for the lens.
 
And spare batteries.
 
And a pair of SD cards.
 
And some sort of power supply for the transmitter.
 
Although honestly I don't know what the power draw on the transmitter is like. Surely this is overkill, no? And for that matter, how would we mount the battery and the transmitter? I'm inclined to just tape them to the handheld rig. I'm sure there's a more elegant solution.
Lastwise we need a monitor with HDMI inputs. I think I've bought three of these monitors so far. They work great:

GH2 or GH3

So I borrowed Libby's GH2 camera to shoot over the weekend. I thought that perhaps the video noise would be better on the GH2 over my GH1. I do think and sometimes believe that this is true. We've been careful about avoiding low-contrast low-light situations in the GH1 but I really never saw the horizontal banding on the GH2 that we'd see with the GH1.
So having done further research on the GH2 vs the GH3 it seems there's a bit of a notion that the GH2, yes the 2, is the better camera in many respects. Not exclusively though.
Which is interesting. It seems to me that the low-light performance of the GH3 is better than the GH2 (and therefore the GH1).
The only thing I really wished were different about the GH2 is that with the GH1 I can flip between manual and auto-focus with a fairly easy flip of a switch during a shot. This is not really the case with the GH2 as the switch is harder to flip whilst shooting.
Both the GH2 and the GH3 shoot natively in 24p. This means I'm not fighting with the deinterlacing/reverse-telecine issues I have with the GH1. That's super pleasant actually.
It's a tad annoying that Panasonic keeps changing the battery size with each camera. Here's a good comparison review.
I feel like we're going to need to get a Black Magic 4K camera just because we need something with a global shutter. That's $4000.
The GH3 is only $1200.


The killer app on it may in fact be that you can use the Wi-Fi feature to get a tablet to see through the lens. We haven't had video tap in ages. Everyone on set just trusts that I've somehow shot something worthwhile. And, you know, mostly they do trust. It's just nice to be able to see through the lens.
Maybe I'll have more thoughts on cameras. Maybe I won't.

Day, Uh, Something

I'm a little confused about what day of shooting this is. Because I labeled a day of shooting like four shots of an air intake building of the Holland Tunnel as "reel one" and so our actual principal photography began with "reel two" and really I should have labeled that first day as "B roll day 01" or something.

Leslie Ann Chastain getting some help from Tom Rowen putting mud on her face.

 We went to a lot of trouble to find a spot with no poison ivy to shoot this.

Leslie wears a Tyrannosaurus Mouse T-shirt.

I've shot 1000 stills with the Panasonic GH1 at this point. Or at least 1000 stills since the last time I reset the counter

No gang signs!

Tom Rowen gets ready to slate.

 It occurs to me that maybe this is the break of 2000 or 3000 stills. I don't actually know how to read the file numbers.

The non-creepy Tom Rowen menaces Annalisa Loeffler.

I'd like to point out that Tom actually wrote this scene with the hillbilly cannibals. And he wrote this part for himself. So you know, whatever he's trying to say here. Uh. Yeah.

You menace one lady, and this is what you get for your trouble.

Joe Chapman made us this great knife gag -- actually casting it from the Gerber hunting knife we're using. The hunting knife is comically difficult to remove from its scabbard.

It's not a good day to be a hillbilly cannibal in the Dismal Swamp. Tom Rowen (dead), Annalisa Loeffler (standing), Leslie Ann Chastain (dead), and Julia Rae Maldonado.

Coming upon a witch. That's actually Leslie Ann Chastain shemping for Rebecca Kush (who will be shot in closeup later.)

Today's CSI team will be played by Christopher "Cletus" Pope and John Dillon.

Producers demanded a photograph of the "Skunk Cabbage" sign.

 I think one of the trees with a bat box was knocked down by the hurricane. But mostly the swamp looks pretty good. Leaves are gone by now, of course.

I'm makin' art here. 

To Grok

So these faux trailers used in pre-production seem to be hitting the web now. Perhaps some studio's legal department had a change of heart and pressed the OK button on letting these on the YouTubes and such because the clips are "fair use". I have no idea. But they're very interesting to watch. This is the one used for Looper.
Looper clip-o-matic trailer from rcjohnso on Vimeo.
You know, we should really do these. We so don't. But as a thing to describe the tone of a movie they're a really good idea.
Of course it's also possible that our entire movies are nothing more than concept trailers so maybe I should be quiet.
On my GH1 issues:

So, uh, this is what was causing the camera to fail on our first day of shooting. Yes, having the camera on a tripod will cause the write error when shooting with a 24p wrapper. That is... sooo intuitive.
So I unhacked the GH1 and didn't have any problems (although we never went on sticks on the second day of shooting).
What's my remaining issue? That dang ARDrone software. Is it recording when the REC light is blinking or when it's solid? And what does the blinking mean? Because I can't reliably get the thing to record such that I understand what I'm doing. So we do multiple takes and check them and... sometimes that works.

Hacking

I hacked the GH1 camera again. I made it shoot 23.98p so that I wouldn't have to convert from 29.97 when I read the .mts files on a PC.
Also I very modestly upgraded the data rate to 22Mbit. I know that a lot of the Internet screams about the inherently low data rate on the GH1 but that's far from the biggest problem we have.

Indeed, the biggest issue we have is the horizontal bands which show up in low-contrast low-exposure areas. And all I did was increase the ISO limit in movie mode to 3200 (which is not conducive to lowering the noise, but I thought it would be amusing.)
Tommy and I went and shot some plates of what will be the evil dude's lair. It's one of the air induction towers for the Holland Tunnel.

Although it's absurdly humid today the overcast-ed-ness is photographically perfect (that and the fact it's not actually raining.) The above still is taken from the video. Dragons will swoop in. It was tricky to get shots without boat traffic but we did manage to shoot early enough that there weren't any visible lights across the river.

Color Balance

So, I have an issue with how to write down the white balance settings on the GH1. Maduka came up with a system.

-1, +8

That is, on the x axis you click once to the left (for -1) and then on the y axis you click up 8 (for +8). And that will give you the color balance we used on The Prometheus Trap.

Photographing the screen on the GH1 with an iPod is not ideal.

Of course, we also used Canon S.S.C. manual lenses -- usually at about an f2.0 -- on the camera. And that's a big difference over the stock lens. And I like the stock lens. It's just that there's something about these old S.S.C. lenses... I don't know what it is. The stills we have use exactly the same color balance and settings as the motion picture we're shooting, so they're an accurate look at what we shot.

Day 6 part trois

Kate Britton gets out some aggression with her crowbar.

Kate opens up a can of whoop on Captain Haskins.

 Today we shot almost entirely with the 28mm Canon S.S.C. lens. We shot mostly at a 2.8 at a rating of 800 ISO on the GH1.

Kate Britton is a violent, violent, person.

 The lens is softer than the 50mm we've used on most of the movie. But with the hazer having broken down maybe that's better? I sorta dug the big soft feeling of the 28mm today. Plus, it'll focus really freakin' close.

Andrew Langton gets killed a whole bunch of times in this movie. I am amused by the under-lit floor he lands on here. The Queen of Mars made that horrible gash in his face. 

Ramsey Scott, our costume designer, amuses me greatly. Plus, how fantastic looking is our crew? I mean, could they be any better looking?

 QOTD:

Rebecca Kush brought sweet-tea infused vodka to set. She said "I brought vodka flavored with Drew's favorite thing!"
Kate Britton said: "You brought bunny-flavored vodka?"

"Cut" Means "Keep Acting"

Liquor
So, I haven't been drinking on this set. It's mostly because I'm afraid that it'll mess with my focus. Literally, my focus — I have to manually focus my lens on this picture. I am in love with my Canon SSC lenses. We didn't use them on the last two pictures but boy, they're just beautiful.
My depth-of-field is a quarter of the width of an actor's eye, but the picture is beautiful.

Footwear
I've made another determination: I will put a $100 line item for a new pair of sneakers on each movie I make. Running around on concrete floors all day will mess up my knees. No more of that. One new pair of sneakers for each movie. New Balance 840's are my shoe of choice right now.
They are not a good looking sneaker, mind you. Can I dye them? How about some black paint?

Camera
I do wish the camera I shot on did not have rolling shutter issues. Now to be clear, the only time I run into it where it's a problem is during compositing. So we lock down the camera for all composites (and add a bit of motion like it's handheld later).
Also: the time has come for us to get video tap. I honestly don't understand the need for HD video tap. SD is perfectly fine for seeing what's going on and for focusing.
Furthermore: I don't mind the amount of compression we get with the relatively low bitrate on the stock Panasonic GH1. Those things just aren't where the problems lie for us. Horizontal banding? Yup, that's an issue (and one which I simply cannot guess when will happen or not.) Rolling shutter? That also stinks. Blacks which are sunk forever? That could be an issue, but we shoot around it.*
We shot two features with a hacked GH1 and I've gone back to the unhacked stock version of the camera. First of all, it's more reliable. For those of you who have been on set when the camera has decided to cut and destroy a take, you know exactly what I mean. The camera works as advertised when it's "stock".**

Kermit
Watching takes I realize I sound like Kermit the Frog on a bender. I'm shouting things like "Stay in character!", "I'm bored with not making a movie!", and "Be more aggressive getting that microphone in there!".
At one point I actually said "The word "cut" means "keep acting"!

*The blacks being sunk actually saves us some time in post color-correction 'cause let's face it — you want to sink the shadows anyway. And with the amount of fog we typically have on set our contrast is pretty low anyway.
**I keep hearing horror stories of the RED going down in the middle of a shoot day. That must be incredibly demoralizing.

The Journal of the Intellectual Elite

I'm totally going to start a newspaper and call it the "Journal of the Intellectual Elite". No really. And I wouldn't be the first one. Go ahead, translate that. I'll wait.

Speaking of the intellectual elite, here is my sister's dog.

I'm experimenting with these little bitty lights. It's going to be interesting to figure out what they do.

Self portrait with LED.

We're not going to shoot on Sunday 'cause of sick actor.
I've been concerned about these bands of noise I'm seeing occasionally on footage with the GH1. Here's a note from a forum on the GH1 by Steve Castle:

Banding usually occurs under certain conditions, its not just high-ISO, but rather a combination of the subject/environment you're taking relative to how much the noise is being amplified via a high-ISO setting. Banding noise is most noticeable in the shadows, or when an image has been superlatively brightened.

It's very hard to predict when the camera will be irksome like that. But it does seem to have to do with shooting under exposure.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can/should shoot with my Canon S.S.C. lenses on this movie. We could get nice shallow depth-of-field and we could shoot in very low light. Is it worth it? Should we do at least one take that way? I don't know. I know I'm shakier without the optical stabilization from the kit lens.
Also -- and maybe I'm just noticing this in my office -- but the strange color of the light is bugging me. The one other time I had that issue was on Day 2 when we shot outside and had funny light. But both times the light itself was indeed strange. I'll have to double-check with the kit lens.