British Cinematographer issue 51 - Imago

British Cinematographer
Covering International Cinematography
www.britishcinematographer.co.uk
Issue 051 ––– May 2012 40
41
British Cinematographer
Covering International Cinematography
www.britishcinematographer.co.uk
Issue 051 ––– May 2012
Grains vs Pixels
–––Nic Morris BSC
Generations shot on Sony F65
Dolly... Nic Morris BSC getting to
grips with the F65.
With a working title of Generations, Morris with the
support of Philippe Ros AFC, shot a short film intended to
show off the capabilities of the F65, which was screened
at NAB 2012 using a 4K projector. The story is based
around a car being passed down through a family,
encompassing scenes in the 1920s, the 1960/70s and
the present day. According to Morris, who has extensive
experience in both high-end digital acquisition, 35mm
and 65mm, the film came together really quickly: “We
assembled a good team and Peter Farrer the director
came up with a really nice, simple story that worked
without language.”
Morris (Being Human, Spooks and features including
Firelight for Buena Vista) and Farrer were keen to give
each of the periods a look of their own. “It allowed us
to start the film with the old Academy square of 1.37:1,
and with a semi black and white, duotone type feel,”
explains Morris. “Then we went to a period in the ‘60s
with the 2.4:1 wide screen and that strong Technicolor
look. The rest of the film is present day with 16:9 and
more muted, cooler tones. I think it was useful in a film
such as this to show that the camera was malleable and
could achieve different looks. As cinematographers we
want to take the camera’s RAW material and tell the
stories we want to tell. So it’s not just a technical exercise
in recording what’s in front of us.”
Setting the look for the film was aided by having a
Baselight grading suite on set. “At the end of the day
we could ingest the footage off the 1TB cards from
the F65’s SR-R4 recorder, and release the cards back
to the camera,” says Morris. “It also gave us the luxury
of starting to look at the pictures while we were still
shooting. That’s very useful because your colour memory
is only a few hours old at the most. You can then take it
into the suite.”
Our roving reporter
Michael Burns recently had
the pleasure of watching
Nic Morris BSC at work
on a promotional film for
Sony, shooting around
Coniston Water in the Lake
District, putting the new
4K-capable Sony F65 digital
cinematography camera
through its paces.
But it’s unusual to have such a full solution on set.
“We do have rough grading setups on set which allow
the DP to put a look-up table into the rushes,” says Morris.
“I think it’s going to become mainstream with these kinds
of cameras which just produce RAW footage. The RAW
footage is the basic score if you like, while the look-up
table is the conductors interpretation of the piece.”
Morris is no stranger to digital, being one of the
early adopters of HD for commercials. He says he has
‘no emotional baggage with film’, but equally has a
keen eye for the technical differences between the
formats, especially film’s ability to capture shadow
detail in low light: “Talking about cinema more than
television, when you have a low-key scene, a really
dark scene, with film you can really produce prints that
are very rich and very detailed. You can get fantastic
texture and quality - it’s not just a big blob of dark grey.
And I think that’s always been the hardest thing for
digital to do - it tends to go a bit muddy.”
“The F65 is slightly different from other cameras in
terms of how the exposure is judged,” Morris continues.
“On the first test day, I did some shooting in some real
low light levels, with some fantastic shadow detail. I
got really excited about it. For the first time [on digital],
something reminded me of a film camera with Primo
lenses, which for me is a benchmark for really beautiful
texture and quality in the shadows. The camera does
have a really wide dynamic range, it’s just how you work
that and how that gets used further down the line that’s
perhaps the interesting part.”
Another key requirement of course is resolving
power. “Up in the Lake District, there were lots of
drystone walls and the trees didn’t have their leaves on
yet, so there were a lot of filigree branches going off
into the sky,” he recalls. “[Shooting on the F65] was an
absolute delight – the resolution was like using a 10x8
plate camera. The texture in those stone walls and the
texture in the branches absolutely came alive. That’s
something I’ve not seen in another digital camera and
it’s normally something you’re more likely to see shooting
on 65mm. It’s not just the raw shapes of the landscape
that work, but also the texture of the bracken and in the
drystone walls.”
“We were also running new Cooke 5/i and new
[Summilux-C] Leica lenses,” he says. “These are very
high resolving lenses. And it’s only now that you have
a camera of this quality that you’ll be able to see what
these lenses can do.”