With camera makers such as Sony and Panasonic touting high-definition (HD) video cameras for some time now, the concept of digital cinematography as an alternative acquisition format to film is not new. However, it seems that there has been a new paradigm shift in this market with the arrival of the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera system, which proponents contend captures the image quality required for true film-like digital cinematography. The Viper, according to Thomson Broadcast and Media Solutions—with U.S. headquarters in Nevada City, Calif.—differs from other forms of electronic and digital image acquisition in that it captures every bit of information a scene has to offer in a non-destructive, transparent, and reproducible way without traditional video processing. Instead of going to a tape, the camera shoots and captures data. And finally, the Viper transfers all this raw data output to an off-the-shelf digital disk recorder (DDR), such as the Director’s Friend.
"One of our first concerns was whether or not people were ready to use disk drives instead of tape for storing material on," says Mark Chiolis, marketing manager, acquisition and production at Thomson-Grass Valley, which makes the Viper. "People are very comfortable with film and a little less with tape because it’s subject to damage. But everyone has had a hard drive crash on their computer, and so it scared many people [from using] disk drives. However, with software like Apple’s Final Cut Pro, you see more people carrying disks around instead of tape. That has helped to pave the way."
Announced at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) confab in 2002, the Viper is packed with high-end technology. For one, the camera uses three 9.2 megapixel CCDs (a total of 27.6 million pixels), which enables it to work in several progressive scan formats: 1080 lines at 24/25/30 frames per second, as well as 720 lines at 50/60 frames per second. And to achieve its film-like output, the CCD signals, from pure black to CCD saturation, are captured with 12-bit A/D converters and then converted to RGB data values using 10-bit logarithmic calculations.
While the development of such a high-end camera was a giant first step, the challenge in the Viper’s first year as a product has been making it something that people could use—i.e. something that would fit easily into the traditional film production and postproduction workflow. "People know the workflow for film and also for tape, but [people are not used to] an uncompressed disk system," explains Chiolis. "We spent most of 2002 and the first part of 2003 lining up partners and working with companies to have solutions for field recording, digital dailies in the field, post processing, and archiving. That told us that we were on just the right track with this."
At NAB ’03, Thomson demonstrated equipment hailing primarily from the disk recorder partners, including such products as Baytech Cinema’s CineRam, the Keisoku, and the Director’s Friend. "The Director’s Friend was the first, and it still probably has the largest selection of tools within the recorder," states Chiolis. "The ASC [American Society of Cinematographers] has made us rename it ‘the Cinematographer’s Friend,]’ and so we have put a new label on it with a new logo. We had that at NAB feeding digital dailies. Also at NAB, with Baytech, we demoed the CineRam onboard recorder with the camera on a Steadicam, untethered. We had another Viper on a JL Fisher dolly and an Angenieux 35mm lens and new optical viewfinder. And then we had another Viper connected to the Keisoku, which records fifty minutes of Viper material in five rack units. We’re getting to the point where technology is catching up with the camera."
According to Chiolis, the Viper supports all of the high-definition camera lenses that work with the standard B-4 mount, such as the Zeiss DigiPrimes, Angenieux zooms, and Fujinon and Canon prime and zoom lenses. "Also at NAB along with Angenieux, we introduced an optical viewfinder, an integral piece that attaches to the front of the camera and allows you to put on a 35mm cine lens," he says. "That was something people had asked for."
SEAMLESS
COMBINATION
As part of the Viper’s NAB demo, Thomson showed footage shot by cinematographer Bill Bennett. The DP tested the Viper primarily to see if it could combine with film-based footage seamlessly. To that end, Bennett shot a three-minute-20-second film about kids in a karate class. The film begins simply, with children doing karate. "As we watch that for a minute," relates Bennett, "we start to focus on a boy who is daydreaming. There is a dissolve to his daydream, which is that he is a super Kung Fu fighter. Then we focus on a little girl, who is also daydreaming. We dissolve to her daydream, in which she is what’s best described as a fairy princess standing on a hillside with very diaphanous cloth wrapped around her. The purpose of the piece was to mix Viper imagery with film imagery. All of the footage of the little kids in the karate class was shot with the Viper mounted on Steadicam, and sometimes handheld."
Post on the demo was done at Vid-Film, Glendale, Calif., a division of Technicolor. "They have a [Grass Valley] Spirit Datacine into which we scanned all of the film at hi-def resolution. [Then we] down converted the Viper material to hi-def resolution, did a color correction and edited the whole thing together," relates Bennett. "The Viper records raw data, and so you do no color when you are shooting. And its data format is identical to that which comes out of a Spirit, so it blends [everything] together in a color corrector. The color corrector doesn’t know if it is film or video, so the postproduction stream is integrated."
The advantage of the Viper, Bennett says, is that it can work on location or on set very quickly. "When you have a crew of seventy people standing around while you are tweaking color, dusting black gamma and white shading, you are wasting their time and the producer’s time," he says. "What does an hour of time cost across seventy people when you get into overtime at the end of the day, as opposed to a telecine session, which is [about] six hundred dollars per hour? That’s a bargain in comparison. Also, the camera records much more information in the blacks and lights-much more color information-than any other video camera out there."
Shooting with the Viper requires an off-board recorder, and Bennett used the Director’s Friend, a console connected to the Viper. An operator records the images and puts them into separate files. But there is another purpose for the Director’s Friend, Bennett notes. "People bring their baggage with them when they start to work with electronic cameras," he says. "They think that they are going to see finished pictures on the set. But by definition, the Viper does not make finished pictures. It records a tremendous amount to raw data. Therefore, the output of the camera looks very flat, low contrast and green. Now if your director, producer—or in the case of commercials, your agency–looked at that, they’d have a heart attack. The Director’s Friend, in addition to recording the uncompressed raw data, looks at the signal and applies a color correction, which can output to an in-studio monitor, [creating] something that looks somewhat like what it’s going to look [like] later. The important thing to note is that in no way does that color correction affect what you are recording, only what the director or agency sees on their off-set monitor."
Bennett’s conclusion from his experience is that the Viper as a complete system (with the Director’s Friend and disk array) can be cumbersome, but he notes that the system is still evolving. "Many of the upgrades are not in the camera itself-it’s the ancillary stuff," he says. "Now several different disk arrays can be used with camera, and there is an onboard recording system that is analogous to a film mag, which right now lasts a minute. They are hoping to get it up to four minutes, the length of a four-hundred-foot mag."
Bennett does see several uses of the Viper, particularly in the effects arena. "Right now, because of the somewhat cumbersome aspect of the requirement of the Director’s Friend and hard disk array, this system would be phenomenal for the green screen sequences, whether for movies or commercials," he states. "Because the camera records raw data, it does matting beautifully. Compression is the anathema of any kind of matting because it messes with the edges, and edges are what matting is all about. In addition, you are on a stage and can plant a big disk array there to record the day’s work. Or maybe it is even a stage that is associated with your post facility and you can pump the data through fiber link directly into their huge disk array in the facility. They can be editing and compositing away as you are shooting."
Bennett says that as the Viper evolves and becomes smaller, with more portable storage solutions, its use for stage and Steadicam shots will increase. "Using a Steadicam now, you have to trail a cable, which is very cumbersome for the operator," he explains. "We were doing it because I wanted to see what it could do, but it kind of makes it complicated—you can trip over the cable. But as its back end is more developed, you see it being used for all kinds of productions."
BLUE AND GREEN
Meanwhile, Dave Stump, a feature cinematographer and visual effects supervisor, tested the Viper in blue and green screen applications. "That the Viper works at 10-bit log instead of 8-bit color space for blue screen for us in the visual effects industry is immensely valuable," states Stump. "I am working at the color space and resolution of film, not video. The camera has more choices of color with which to render things. Also, a lot of people are touting HD, as done on regular HD cameras for film work. I’ve tested it, and when you are shooting using the HD deck as the primary method of storage, you end up with compression artifacts and 8-bit color space-things that I don’t find acceptable to blow up to film. As with the Viper, you are working in uncompressed raw data in either 10- or 12-bit log. The Viper doesn’t reach up to join the world of film; it reaches across to join it."
Stump has run the Viper through its paces for such applications as combining live-action background with animated characters for a possible upcoming feature for Disney. "I’ve been testing the blue and green screen applicability of the camera for that and a couple of other features that are still looming and waiting to happen," he relates.
One of Stump’s tests involved a shot of a woman with long blond hair blowing in the wind in front of a blue screen, which would later be matted over a daylight background. "It is our worst case scenario in compositing," says Stump. "If you can satisfy those criteria, than you can use the camera for anything in terms of blue and green screen. By extension, Viper is applicable to the commercial market because everything that we do in film eventually filters down to the commercial realm."
"While we don’t claim to be as good as film … there are applications within the feature film, television sitcom and hour-long drama market—and the commercial spot market-where this can fit," Chiolis comments. "It does exceptionally well with blue and green screen. It does well if you’re capturing short segments and [want to] incorporate them in a larger project. F2 has introduced removable hard disk packs, so instead of having to take the whole system back to the post house, you remove the disk pack, which is about the size of a film canister. You drop another one in and continue shooting. The workflow is becoming more natural."
Since NAB, Thomson has moved from the testing phase to full commercial rollout. "We put the Viper through a series of tests, trying to make sure we had the feature sets that DPs wanted, that it wasn’t lacking anything, and that there were no major problems," Chiolis says. "We have ironed out a few little bugs and are now ready to go full-speed ahead. We’ve sold five cameras, and we’re starting to see the rental houses ramp up with these. And we see the technology starting to move forward. Within the next couple of months, you will see some serious projects being done on [the Viper]."
