Slumdog Millionaire wins "Best Film"...without much film at all.

Slumdog Millionaire is truly one of those inspirational filmmaker stories. We never get tired of an underdog and a low budget film about a poor person in India is about as un-commercial as you can get in the feature film industry.

The recognition for the film (to date) includes:

2008 Camerimage Film Festival "Golden Frog" Award for best-in-class visual aesthetic and technical values

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures "Best Film for 2008"

American Society of Cinematographers nominates Anthony Dod Mantle, BSC for Outstanding Achievement Award for Slumdog Millionaire.

A total of four 2009 Golden Globe Awards






Nominated for ten Academy Awards

Received 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Directing, Cinematography and"Film" Editing.


In addition to being amazing, it's also a "film" that was acquired, in the majority, digitally. (depending on who you're quoting and whether or not you refer to raw footage or finished screen time the figure sits around 60-70%).

There has been a LOT of buzz around some Digital Cinema Cameras, but this one has been a bit under the radar.

The Silicon Imaging 2K and 2K Mini are now officially cameras of legitimate capability... Actually they really aren't two cameras. The 2K Mini is the sensor assembly alone and works by ethernet link to a fast laptop, which constitutes the 'processing' portion of the camera body, complete with viweing LUTs and an onboard version of Iridas SpeedGrade embedded for viewing picture adjustment. The full SI 2K takes the mini and inserts it into a full camera body with all the processing and storage on board, including the embedded version of SpeedGrade, no laptop required. If you have the full SI-2K, you already have the Mini, just detach it from the full body and connect it to the body via ethernet and you have a dash cam or POV camera with a full body on .

The camera uses a Super 16mm sized Bayer sensor (for more on Bayer, see my blog post on the Bayer patent from 12-14-08).

The workflow-favored format for the camera to write to is CineForm RAW, which is a high quality, compressed RAW motion picture format that has several post workflow options for editing directly inside an NLE without 'flattening' the image.

(**I should probably point out that I was involved a bit with this camera's testing prior, and shortly after its release, as well as involved with CineForm products, so I am probably not without my biases...)

Congratulations to everyone involved with Slumdog Millionaire, and congratulations to Silicon Imaging and CineForm.

Links for more info:

Slumdog Millionaire at IMDb

Silicon Imaging

CineForm

So what qualifies as 'High Definition' Video?

One basic criteria often referenced for high definition video is having at least four times the resolution of standard television (double the pixels horizontally and vertically). However...

A significant source of confusion for production professionals migrating into HD delivery is that the accepted picture sizes for digital television distribution vary and not all are “high definition” by any modern standard we could apply. In the United States, the ATSC or Advanced Television Systems Committee has issued “Table 3” of picture formats for digital television, specifying 640x480, 704x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080 as digital video display resolutions. Both the 640x480 and the 704x480 formats have interlaced and progressive variations at multiple frame rates, with the progressive scan versions often referred to as “extended” or “enhanced definition,” the spoken shorthand being “EDTV.” (HighDef.org has the chart, as well as a simplified version here.)

The two accepted frame sizes for HD, 1920x1080 interlace/progressive, and 1280x720 progressive are 16:9 aspect ratio picture formats.

1280x720 is not 4x as many pixels as standard definition video (it even falls short of 3x), but it is used as a progressively scanned image. Most professionals would agree that progressive scanning does allow for the perception of very high detail with the tradeoff being progressive scanning does sacrifice some aspects of the smooth motion of interlaced scanning at an identical frame rate.

Advocates for the 1280x720 progressive format point out that while 1920x1080 images may be larger in size, when the 1080 frame is interlaced the picture delivers only half of the picture content every 60^th of a second, while “720p” can refresh the entire image every 60^th of a second. In this scenario then, 720p would deliver only slightly fewer pixels over time than “1080i,” and it would be temporally “sharper.”

The comparison and debate over spatial resolution (frame size) and temporal resolution (frame rate) and whether one trumps the other didn’t begin here and it won’t end here either. However, it's probably significant to note that one large stock footage library has ceased placing new footage acquired as anything less that 1080...and the trend for program format for an increasing number of broadcast and cable networks is to simply require a 1080i master with the stipulation that footage may be acquired as 720p (not mastered) with prior clearance... Many local stations will undoubtedly drag their feet on upgrading local origination to HD resolutions in the present economy, but mastering you content in HD maximizes shelflife.

Each professional needs to take a hard look at what sort of projects they do and what kind of delivery requirements are involved. It does look as if mainstream program distribution is definitely pointing toward 1080.

John Galt of Panavision chats a bit in the pasture...

John Galt, Panavision's Senior Vice President of Advanced Digital Imaging (and I'm happy to say, a professional acquaintance of mine) has taken some time to chat with CreativeCow.net on pixel counts, dynamic range and a really interesting new technology that Panavision has in the queue called 'DynaMax' (Think HDR in motion).

Some of this discussion does come back to the point of what the human eye actually sees... The December 9th, 2008 entry here on the blog has some additional thoughts... see "Shoot it and they will...probably see it"

As always, I refer those of you with questions to watch Panavision's excellent videos on camera sensors, image sharpness and modulation transfer function, which are permanently linked in the right margin.

TimK