From our director Steve Rowe: 4K Cinema is here to stay. I went to go see The Great Gatsby last week. I wanted to see it for two reasons. First I like the story and Gatsby is about the only book that I have ever read that would qualify for the label “literature.” The other reason I wanted to go see the movie is that it was shot using the Red Epic Camera. Epic is the big brother of Scarlet. Epic shoots 5k images and Scarlet shoots 4K. TV Cops was shot on a Red Scarlet Camera in 4k. I have to say it is quite an amazing camera. 4k refers to the camera’s resolution (picture quality) which is about four times the quality of current high definition TV. High Definition TV is 1920 x 1080 pixels, 4K cinema is 4096 x 2048. Now here is the really cool thing. Most cinemas now project 4K digital copies of movies. It is so exciting to think that independent filmmakers have access to a camera that is comparable to what the studios are using. So how was The Great Gatsby? I knew I was going to like it and I did. It was shot in a very stylized manner with lots of CGI effects. I thought the performances by Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton as the Buchanans were real standouts. Surprisingly, I also enjoyed the soundtrack. Now about that Jack Lord lens. Jack Lord played Steve McGarrett on the original 60s-70s TV show Hawaii Five-O. The name Hawaii Five-O, is a hat tip to Hawaii being the 50th state. The Jack Lord lens is the 50mm (Five-O). A 50mm lens is a normal lens, it is neither a wide lens nor telephoto. Here are a couple of similar stills from TV Cops to illustrate the point. The two shot of Greta and David was shot with the 50mm normal lens. Notice how most everything in the scene is in focus including the building in the background. This is much the same way as we see. Contrast that with the two shot of Frans and Chris in the hallway. It was shot with a 135mm lens. The only ones in focus are the actors. Both the foreground and background are out of focus. Actors tend to like longer lenses as they direct your attention to their performance and are generally more flattering. By the way, both stills are directly from Scarlet not from a “still” camera. Next up, our long awaited movie poster!
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 11:38:45 +0000
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