Arri
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Digital Motion Picture Cameras in 2015: The Dust Settles
Have you heard? The United Nations designated 2015 the “International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies,” and cinematography made the cut. But is IYL 2015 finally the year in which the dam burst of innovation subsides, and new digital cameras and techniques no longer threaten to drown us? Surveying the latest advances in large-sensor digital cinema cameras for Filmmaker’s fifth annual round-up — written, as always, on the eve of NAB — gives me pause to consider how far we’ve come in the five years since Sony’s F3 and FS100 were cutting-edge… since Panasonic’s AF100 stirred passions, ARRI’s Alexa represented a bold choice, and RED’s hand-assembled Epic-M […]
by David Leitner on Apr 28, 2015 -
“I Don’t Want to Sound Negative About Digital”: DP Robert Yeoman on NAB Show, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Shooting Film
From April 11-16th, more than 100,000 tech heads and industry professionals will descend upon Las Vegas to gorge themselves on the latest cameras, lights and gadgets at the annual NAB Show. Nestled among this digital idolatry, you’ll find at least one psalm to the archaic when cinematographer Robert Yeoman takes the stage to talk the miniatures, stop-motion animation and 35mm photography of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yeoman will be featured as part of NAB Show’s Creative Master Series on April 13th in a conversation with American Cinematographer managing editor Jon Witmer titled “Checking into The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Sponsored by […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 8, 2015 -
Test Footage from the ARRI AMIRA
Last September, ARRI introduced the AMIRA, a relatively inexpensive cousin (at $40,000+) to the manufacturer’s near industry standard, ALEXA. Though the resolution is 2K, the AMIRA shares the same sensor as the ALEXA, so its footage maintains some filmic consistency. Designed for documentary and television work, Cinema 5D notes in their review that the AMIRA may be best suited to small crews with mostly handheld cinematography. And, as suspected, it’s far heavier and larger than its competitors in Canon’s C100/C300/C500 series, or any DSLR. The images nevertheless speak for themselves.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 23, 2014 -
ARRI Reigns Supreme at the Oscars
Setlife Magazine has generously compiled the technical specifications of the films nominated for the Cinematography, Directing and Best Picture Oscars, and let’s just say ARRI shows up more than once. All of the Cinematography nominees were photographed on an ARRI (3 Alexas versus 2 Arricams), with a mix of Panavision, Zeiss, Cooke and Angenieux lenses. Also noted were the films’ negatives and prints, which bandied back and forth between Kodak and Fuji. Only her (C300) and The Wolf of Wall Street (EOS C500) opted for Canon, in addition to their arsenal of Alexas and Arricams. Notably absent is any sign of Red. […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 20, 2014 -
Jean-Pierre Jeunet on his 3D Movie, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
When he was eight, Jean-Pierre Jeunet would marvel at 3D pictures on his View-Master. It was a popular toy where someone could see a sequence of stereoscopic images printed on a cardboard disc inserted into a handheld viewer. “It my first step into cinema,” the director of Amelie fondly recalled, “because I would adjust the frame in the viewer to change the order, and I’d imagine a new kind of film.” Little did Jeunet know that his beloved View-Master would lead to him to direct an entire film in 3D 52 years later. Jeunet was speaking about the pleasures — […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 25, 2013 -
Back to the Future with 4K: Large-Sensor Motion Picture Cameras in 2013
A motion picture camera used to be a light-sealed box with a strip of film running through it. Was it easy to thread? Did it run quiet? How bright was the viewfinder? Today’s cameras are exponentially more complex. They are literal bundles of separate technologies, each lurching forward at a different rate. To understand today’s cameras, you must understand the parts to understand the whole. This is my third annual overview of digital cinema cameras for Filmmaker, and it is being written in the run-up to NAB 2013 in Las Vegas, the world’s largest trade show devoted to digital video […]
by David Leitner on Apr 5, 2013 -
Good Things in Smaller Packages
For those of us excited by the advent of large-sensor motion picture cameras, this past year has been the Great Leap Forward. Signs are everywhere. ARRI’s ALEXA swept TV series production in the U.S. Canon harnessed Hollywood pomp for the November launch of its C300. RED placed an eight-page glossy fold-out to tout EPIC in April’s Vogue (“The camera that changed cinema is now changing fashion”). Sony shipped no less than 100 F65s, the first Super 35 camera with an 8K sensor. A year ago, in “Does Size Matter?” I surveyed the still-budding field of large-sensor cameras for Filmmaker and […]
by David Leitner on Apr 17, 2012 -
Leitner’s Mondo NAB, Part 3: SSD, Tapes and Storage
Originally posted April 2011. At back-to-back press conferences prior to the opening of NAB’s show floor, both Panasonic and Sony acknowledged the still-unfolding natural disaster in Japan and asked that our thoughts be with the Japanese people. Sony added that despite critical damage to its media plant in Sendai, supplies of HDCAM-SR tape would return to normal by June. Sony’s Sendai Technology Center (which I’ve visited) practically invented the high-performance tapes necessary to DV and HDV (metal evaporated) and HDCAM-SR (metal particle), and still manufactures a preponderance of them. Having persuaded both film and television industries to adopt HDCAM-SR as […]
by David Leitner on Nov 27, 2011 -
Reaction To The Canon C300 And Red-Scarlet-X: Part Two
In my previous blog post I interviewed several directors of photography who are shooting material for web and television to get their reactions to the recent Canon and RED announcements. You might sum up their reactions as, “We wanted to like the Canon, but it’s too expensive!” To complete the picture, I talked to a couple of people who have worked on a number of indie films, and have worked extensively with cameras like the RED and Arri Alexa. Finishing Artist and VFX Supervisor Dermot Shane is based in Vancouver and routinely works with material from REDs, and Arri’s (both […]
by Michael Murie on Nov 14, 2011
