Recently I got into a discussion on the future of cinema with a guy that’s been in the CG world for nearly the past 20 years. Understandably it all started with Avatar. I concede that it’s a milestone and will probably be remembered in many textbooks as well as popular writing for years to come but on the other hand I simply cannot make myself watch it. No matter how amazing the effects are, as everyone around me keeps pointing out, I just cannot get past the stupidity of the story. I’m sure by now you’ve all seen the Avatar = Pocahontas in space parody. I’m sure something similar could be written for basically any movie but the thing I can’t get past is that it’s just ridiculous waste of time. I’ll wait for the same effects to be applied to something worth watching.

There’s every chance my views on computer generated movies and stills will change sometime in the future but for now I firmly stand by the opinion that you can’t beat reality. It is, more often than not, stranger than fiction. And not just in the development of the story, documentary vs fiction, but purely in the technical perspective. Sometimes things just happen in front of the lens that you couldn’t engineer on the computer. Not because it would be technically impossible now or far in the future, but because it’s unexpected.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Ever since seeing the movie above I was convinced CG reality is or will be very soon, identical to the real thing. And accessible on a very limited budget. This short movie has done more than any blockbuster Hollywood production to bring CG into the realm of reality. I honestly didn’t know untill the second half that it wasn’t made on a HD DSLR camera. I was shocked.

If I get back to that discussion I mentioned in the beginning… what it did for me was a just as big as The Third & The Seventh. It brought into focus a realisation that from now on cinema will be developing into two directions and you won’t be able to tell the difference. Let’s call it the new and old way.

The old way was film production as a collaborative process. You had the writers, the producers, the director, the actors and the editor. Each of them is arguably as important as the rest of them in the entire process. Each of them brings something to the project that changes, if only slightly, what the original author had in mind. Either it’s because the actor improvised or simply interpreted the script differently or because the editor cut a few scenes or… you get the idea. The end product is a collaboration that evolved through subjective and objective filters and because of it can be either better, worse or simply different.

The new way on the other hand can be a product of one author only. There is only one filter involved in the process and the result will always be what that author wanted (provided certain conditions). It’s a way of making films that will be particularly suited to strong egocentric authors that absolutely need everything under their control. That do not allow for outside input. Which I guess is OK as well.

Obviously the old and the new way will eventually look and feel identical but if for some reason the new way prevails entirely it will kill an entire industry and in the process largely prevent happy accidents from happening. I’m always reminded of Burgess Meredith aka Grandpa Gustafson in the end credits of Grumpy(er) Old Men. You just can’t script them like that…

PS I highly recommend watching the making-of The Third & The Seventh vids as well.

Sometime in early December we got our hands on some new gear (JVC GY-HM100e) at work so I got to play with it to test the handling and workflow. The video below, shot in 1080 25p (exported in 720 25p), is a result of an early morning shoot one Saturday on an island in the middle of Drava river just outside Maribor. It was the first real test I did – other than playing around in the office – so I kept it pretty much all on auto to see how it performs on its own and because I wasn’t that comfortable with the controls yet.

Dawn on an Island from Jernej Burkeljca on Vimeo.

The result of relying on the camera having amazing brains is more noise than I would have liked. Image quality strongly reminds me of compact cameras set on ISO 400 and above. And essentially this camera is just that… a small camera with some pro features. In photo world it would find its equivalent in the Canon G series. Fine, indeed quite nice, in a lot of situations but quite horrible when you push it towards what it hasn’t been designed to do. Bottom line is that at high gain the image is ugly. It’s not that there’s a huge amount of noise, it’s just ugly in the same way it’s ugly on nearly all small sensor cameras and mobile phones. So now I know to avoid flipping the gain switch if I don’t have to.

The other problem I have with nearly all video cameras is the depth of field. The infinity of it. I’ve gotten so used to shallow DOF that it really annoys me when I use anything other than an SLR and a fast lens. Obviously this is only relevant if the project you’re doing requires shallow DOF, in most cases cameras such as GY-HM100 end up doing one man band documentaries shot handheld where focusing is something you just don’t bother with, indeed don’t want to bother with. And for that kind of work I believe this camera is near perfect. It does a good job on full auto, it’s small and featherweight. So light that I kept checking if there’s anything at all in the bag where Canon 20D with 70-200/2.8 attached usually resides. The little JVC also comes with 2 XLR ports for more serious audio work and offers a decent post workflow. Manual controls on such a small camera are of course a slight issue for clumsy people with big fingers but they’re not such a problem so as to become unusable.

There is an issue with post though and I’ve written more about it when I first encountered it. I’ve yet to find a long term solution to the audio being mangled up in Premiere but the simple fact of the matter is that transwrapping the files is fast and easy and everything works great from there on. Premiere CS4 handles it beautifully and the result is above.

The question is… would I buy it for myself? No. But I’d love to use it whenever there’s a need for such a camera. Handheld, mobile, efficient style of filming. But for me personally I’m much more inclined towards a one for all solution. Since my 20D still works as it should I’m not contemplating a switch but when that day comes I’d like a 7D please. That would suit my own taste in photo and video much more and I would avoid carrying more stuff than I’d like. I tend to leave the 70-200 behind often enough as it is.

EDIT May 25th 2010
I have so far confirmed this “bug” exists in CS4 and CS5, description and two possible solutions follow below

Recently I’ve been testing a JVC GY-HM100 HD video camera (or GY-HM100E to be precise, since it’s a European variant) and I’ve uncovered an issue with audio imported in Adobe Premiere CS4 that appears to be badly documented. Note this is not a review of the camera. I’ll have to do much more work with it to pass any judgement, so for now I direct you elsewhere for opinions on how the camera behaves.

I first noticed the sound issue when I imported MP4 files into Premiere CS4 (GY-HM100 can also record MOV files which I have not tested). The problem is that on some parts of a clip the waveform goes crazy and there’s nothing but very loud noise (maxed out) on both or just one of the channels for a few seconds but then it goes back to normal. You can imagine my shock when I first played back a very silent clip of a pre dawn nature shoot with speakers near maximum only to receive a proper wake up “hum”.

same clip, two very different waveforms (original left, converted version on the right)

The files are otherwise fine when played through other software such as VLC player. Other people report the same thing is happening in Soundbooth CS4. Yes, I tried it out and the same thing is there as well but I never used it before so for me it hasn’t been an issue. Why or how this is triggered is still a mystery to me. It seems to be independent of mode/resolution (I was shooting in 1080p and 720p), type of sound recording (external or internal mic) or (based on forum discussion) operating system. I’m not sure how exactly but it would appear to be a codec problem in Adobe CS4 rather than anything being wrong with the camera.

The DVinfo forum thread does provide a temporary bypass though. And it is to be found through a conversion tool MP4toMPG by MIK Digital that converts audio (mp2 @ 320kbps) and copies the video 1:1 into an MPG2 container file. In short, it does the job. The app is written in German, however it is very simple to use and does everything in 3 steps:

1. select source folder
2. select target folder
3. execute

Obviously converting files is not a long-term solution and I’ll keep searching for an answer. But for now this hack/bypass will have to do so we can keep shooting and editing the footage.

Featured comment (segment) by Fredrik Lindau

I have found that if you copie the whole map-structure from the memmorycard to your harddrive the clip works fine. But if you only copie the MP4-file you get this sound issue.

The above mentioned solution has now been confirmed. Simply copy the entire directory structure (not just the clips or clip folders) from the card and audio will play just fine in Premiere CS4 and CS5. It’s a bit of a mess to find specific clips but ultimately it avoids transcoding so there you go.