‘’Artistically Mathematic’’

Bot-Trilogy, three short movies shot with Sony F65 and Leica lenses.

The first thing I learned when supervising ‘’Oceans’’ (during 5 years and a half) and watching
to the 500 hours of both digital and film footage, was that digital texture exist: clinical, noisy,
thin, thick, with some artifacts. Textures were depending on lenses quality and compression
level of course. Texture wasn’t so absent than it was described by a lot of people. End of post
with rescaling, many colour grading treatments followed by denoise, degrain and other top end
calculations beared out the fact.

All right, ‘’Oceans’’ finished two years ago, meaning like Jurassic era in the digital way of
measuring time. It was with old system of compression, low bitrate but, Nowadays, everybody
think that there are some differences between an Arri Alexa image and a Red Epic image. It’s
certainly due to some specificites coming from the type of sensor, the treatment made by the
camera and the postproduction. I often heared about organic image on Alexa stuff. I don’t
speak about the body of the pixel of an Arri raw image like I would speak about a 1998
Chateauneuf du Pape or a 2002 Pic Saint Loup but I'm afraid being not so far. Why not
considering a pixel like a living thing and artefacts in the digital process like assets?

With this state of mind I started to approach the new cameras coming on the market. The
arrival of the F65, last year, made me think that it would be interesting to dig into these 16 bit
linear raw files and this pretty big amount of photosites on this sensor: around 20 millions
delivering a ‘’4K’’ image.
Numbers, numbers… Why number of bit and photosites could interest a producer?
In fact, it should, like the Alexa when shooting raw, the depth of colour and the number of bit
enable some freedom on set. Meaning no more lights?
No sorry, another way to work. That’s the purpose also of this article.

But through my last good and …not so good experiences with new cameras I decided to
reconsider each steps of the process with an artistic approach. Very pretentious isn’t it?
In each of these steps that new workflwows provide with a lot of generosity, there’s no more
the familiar smell of chemical development or fixing baths, there are mathematic formulas,
algorithms, interpolations, compilations, mappings, Excel files, kind of things, to be honest I
generally tried to avoid.
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So I decided to make some investigation on mathematic and art.
A pretentious old student?
No, everything came from a simple fact, all formulas allowing to progress in the workflows
have been designed to produce a better image at the end. But what is a better image?
Who’s in charge to design it?
Let say that I didn’t want to look at all manufacturer answers on the different workflow
processes with a suspicious look but with a fresh young student approach.
Unfortunatly I’m not anymore a student and I’m not so young but it’s nice to play some
naivety.
How what is that? A new Debayer! Fine! Let see how far we can go on this!
ACES architecture, new space colour ! Great! Let’s go!
Was I able to do this alone? For sure not!
There are things that I
don’t want to
understand too much.
Better to keep some
stupid face and to say:
oh yes! You think so?
(in french: Ah Bon!)
When it becomes too
technical or too
abstruse, that’s a way A short explanation of the Bayer pattern which fit most of the new cameras:
to answer like another. Alexa, Epic, F65, F3… There’s no pixels on a sensor but photosites.

De-Bayer? Who cares? Well, when shooting raw, raw? Oups! Sorry again, raw means that the
signal is supposed not to be compressed, so when shooting raw with such cameras, the signal
must be recomposed to be seen. This operation called De-Bayer has a great influence on the
budget and the quality of image. We’ll see later how to deal with this.

I worked with same old partners: Lut and gamma curves designer Olivier Garcia from
HDSytems, camera operator & DIT François Paturel, senior colorist Laurent Desbrueres, and
technical manager François Dupuy both from Digimage Cinema, on a serial of three short
movies called Bot-trilogy directed by Ben Elia. A film addicted director but with open minded on
our researches.
The idea was too use little stories of robots and to play with it to guide the audience where we
want them to stare at into the frame.

“4K” screening has some peculiarities: one is that you get a lot of things to see, sometimes too
much. Choosing a depth of field has always been an artistic decision, in 4K it becomes a very
important one. In 4K, the bokeh (the aesthetic quality of the blur) is definitively a new
challenging tool for filmmakers. 4K gives different types lenses more specifities and ‘’flavour’’.
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In 4K you will really see a huge difference between a set of Cooke lenses and a set of Ultra
Prime ones. Thanks to Gerhard Baier from Leica, I knew from previous experience that
Leica Summilux-C lenses were delivering some ‘’roundness’’, legacy of Summilux and a very
good sharpness. I was really curious about the combination of Sony F65 and the Leica
typical Bokeh.
Back to the texture, I’m sure that many cinematographers, filmmakers will be excited by all
possibilities of marriage between various new sensors and different type of lenses.

So a brand new camera, a good set of prime lens, a bunch of old friends and very
understanding facilities and overall, a wish to discover some new territories.
Happy naive student!

ECOBOT
The first movie ECOBOT produced by Nicolas Pollacchi from HDSystems, France was shot
during 5 floody days in the forest of Fontainebleau.
Good test, 6 persons including a one feet tall robot dealing with gears in bad condition is
always an experience.
First point: camera was really easy to work, I knew from my previous boring ‘’lab test’’ that
we got 14 stops dynamic range and I started to work only with my meter on the second day.
Oscilloscope, waveform, usual video monitorings were mostly there to check the frame.
It was a very positive experience and I was really interested to see the first colourist reaction
of Laurent in the grading suite .  
Verdict without appeal: A lot of latitude to play with colours. For the moment certainly the
largest one.  

HDSystems Customized Log + 2383 LUT + Digimage Grading 1 HDSystems Customized Log + 2383 LUT + Digimage Grading 2

We went very far away to shift the colour

without having any noise appearing. We
wanted to work on two versions of grading: a
naturalistic approach and an explorative
one. After several tests we applied a Kodak
film LUT even if we knew that there won’t be
any film transfer. Why? HDSystems Customized Log + 2383 LUT + Digimage End of Grading 2 during shot

Because simply on this film it looked better.

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Does it mean that you can shoot in summer and create an autumn look?.
Yes, for sure skin tones are a limitation, but it could help 1st AD’s and production managers to
deal with scripts supposed to be shot all over a year.

After my first experience on F65 as second unit DP on ‘’Generations’’* a demo film for Sony
in UK, I understood that de-Bayer process and curves allowing to land in the grading suite
were the first steps to reconsider.
If we have a short explanation about workflow, we speak about:
Shooting >> F65 Raw files >> Debayer and calibration (in ACES colour space) through Lut’s
and curves of Open EXR (32-bit) files & DPX (16-bit) files >> Grading >> DCP >> Screening!
See below
Easy to write on paper, less easy to deal notably with new ACES colour space, which version
by the way?

Pretty new but really

efficient, this new
architecture and colour
space is supposed to be
wider than the human
vision. The architecture
guarantee standardized
image encoding
specifications and many
other items to
standardize the
workflow. No doubt a
better future for Bot-Trilogy workflow, a collaboration between HDSystems & Digimage
production managers! facilities. Customized calibration of all parameters including grading

So why being interested in a schema like the one above?

Because the three orange parts De-bayer, Calibration & Grading are the steps where you
can create a new image and guess what? These steps are also the places to save or to
loose money if you don’t anticipate. Avoiding a serious pre-production with these new types
of workflow, could be an interesting but damaging challenge.
To save time and money we just used the card player to read the footage, then we chose
the proper takes and we only de-bayered them.
Imagine shooting in 35 mm and only processing small parts of the neg, the takes which
interest you. That what we did and it was a serious reduction of processes and stockage,
Saving money when shooting 4K is mandatory.
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*“Generations” directed by Pete Farrer, 1st Unit DP: Nic Morris, BSC
Purist will point out that we finally use DPX files which are reducing the colour shades of the
F65. True, but I will argue than between a 100 Mo image in Open EXR and a 55 Mo in DPX,
european producers will choose the last one for the moment.
This serial of films was intended also to simulate choices on feature films. Anyway the quality
of DPX 16-bit was pretty stunning.

ECOBOT showed us the huge palette of colours of the F65, But above all it shows us that the
calibration settings of Olivier was revealing a lot of possibilities than the Sony log. A larger
dynamic range we expected, and a very low level of noise perfect for a night shooting.

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ACES_LUT_HDSYSTEMS_FULL_LOG ACES_LUT_SONY_ SLOG 2

On the outdoors images of ECOBOT above, the one on the left, with a dull contrast (no, I don’t
need to swallow antidepressants) is in fact containing all infos to dig and grade into the highlights
of the robot shoulders and into the shadows of the rock. On the contrary the image on the right
with Sony S-Log doesn’t own any infos in the highlights and get more contrast in black level
which is definitivly not friendly for colorist.
Am I saying that Sony settings are bad? No it’s simply not the speciality of Sony. The company
provides for long years solutions to create user gamma curves as well as Arri recommand Color
Front and other companies to De-Bayer the Arri raw. No one can be an expert in all solutions.

After positive reactions following first screening, to get this trilogy achieved, my friend Martin
Kreitl, german producer from MKMedia fllms raised funds from Leica through Gerhard Baier,
from Sony UK through Ainara Porron and Peter Sykes. Martin introduced Oliver and Marcus
Schmidle (FGV Munich rental house) they played a very important role in the last short movie.

CITIBOT
CITIBOT, second concept of director Ben Elia, a chase between a drone and a young woman
took place in the streets of Montmartre by night. This was a kind of masochistic DP challenge
because whe had to shoot in extreme low lights, with greenish old mercury city lamps, on
locations where you normally bring some lighting equipment, cables and generator on top and
bottom of stairs to respect women skin tones.
Because of the results in post of ECOBOT, I wasn’t so scared by the impossibility to make any
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tests due to a tight schedule.
After having seen the photos of the first scouting,
Ben insisted we were making a romantic comedy
not a vampire film. I took a very small amount of
lighting equipment: 350 W on batteries including
one 200 W HMI and 3 little Led’s, one flag to
protect actress from the too greenish light, when I
could and .. that’s all. We weren’t allowed to get
more than 10 persons and to shoot more than 5 Photos of reccces. Montmartre stairs lit by
hours by night, A king of challenge! old greenish mercury lamps

Olivier Garcia who de-bayered the first dailies

were a bit afraid by the level of green, but he
found a combination of Lut and Log curves to
provide us a very low level of noise. Does it
change the life of a producer? I don’t know
but thanks to Olivier I shot on locations where
my meter was only working when setting it at
3200 ISO.
Customized Log - Final grading

On the image above the stop was set at T1.3. I had to put 4 slides of grid cloth diffusions on the
chimera of the Nila led (set at 45%) to reduce the fill-in on the actress. All along the movie we
faced extreme low light situations (Stop was generally T 1,5, T 2,3 maximum). On the images
below the greenish colour was very strong, even with our settings and we had to select and
lower the green phase on the Resolve 9 colour grading system. We were pretty amazed being
able to make so easily and so quickly such corrections in this lowlight parts of the image (this
type of green citylamp is delivering non linear spectrum). The idea was to preserve skin tone in
this hostile colour environment.

Customized Log Customized Log + DCI LUT Customized Log + DCI LUT + Grading

About black and white films, I feel frustrated, having done only a few in film school so it was a
great pleasure to achieve a B&W version of CITIBOT. Unfortunatly we had no time to go back
to the raw files so we desaturated the image. Laurent designed on the Resolve a custom curve
he applied on all the film and in one hour, we graded the 2’30’’ of the film.
A custom curve? It’s the right tool in post if you want to reproduce a style of contrast similar to
film stock (I speak about contrast not texture this time) from B&W italian movies of the 50’s or
the famous, unfortunatly extincted, Dupont de Nemours B&W film stocks. 6
The digital black and white is extremely stunning on the last new cameras like Alexa, Epic.
The F65 combined with Leica Summilux lenses at full aperture provide another interesting look
and texture.
When shooting by night with such cameras you can think that you don’t need anymore lighting
equipment. Wrong, you definitively need less, but I would say you need different lamps.
But what you’re not doing on set, you have to do or to fix in post.
Is it just shifting some lines in the Excel files from shooting to post?
No, not so simple. By example on CITIBOT, the fact that we can’t stay more than 5 hours by
night was a real issue and the sensitivity and huge colour reproduction of the F65 camera
allowed us to work faster. We had more shades to grade correctly the skin tone. But I can’t
imagine having done i work without the skills of Laurent, he had to use several tricks to offers
some wonderfull beauty shots.
To resume, it was a great asset having this camera in these extreme conditions but you have to
anticipate some more time in post. You can’t bet on both sides. And it’s the same in a 2K
workflow.

LUVBOT
After dealing with nature and night shootings, the last concept from Ben Elia was LUVBOT, film
dedicated to skin tones. It was shot with two women of different ages in studio. Ben chose a
classic approach to tell this sci-fi story: a woman in love with an android.
We wanted to show skin tones control ranging from low lights to highlights.
We decided on purpose not to use filters on set to see the real texture of the F65 / Leica
Summilux combination.
No more lighting situation, Marcus
Schmidle from FGV offered us all
facilities to work in his studio.
Thanks to Martin Kreitl and his team
leaded by Benedikt Wiedenmann,
production manager & Thomas Fischer,
1st A.D. we succeeded in shooting in
two days after one prelight day.
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For make-up artist, Luna Elisa Federowicz, and myself the first goal was to make the android
believable. Isabelle Voinier, HD make-up consultant brought us a lot of advices.
The real stake was to deal with two actresses, two different generations, two different skins.
LUVBOT was the studio experience were obvious results appeared: the stunning range to
play with skin tones totally confirmed in post, the importance of tests of make-up, the
importance of calibrated Lut’s to help directors and producers.

4K, SHARPNESS, SKIN TONE AND GRADING SYSTEMS.

On this camera process, there’s no possibility to change the level of sharpness during de-
Bayer step. We anticipated with Laurent, the colorist that we will have to deal with all these
pixels specially on ladies skin tones.
On ECOBOT we used a Luster grading system in 4K on a 9 meters screen. No skin, and the
stake was to show all details of nature, very easy!
For CITIBOT, sharpness wasn’t an issue, the full aperture of the lenses gave us a softer
image.
But for LUVBOT, during shooting the stop was set at T 2,8 which gives more sharpness and
we knew that we will need to soften certain details of the skin with different defocus levels in
post.
On the last two films the 4K Christie projector was in maintenance during the days of grading
so we had to work (tight schedule again!) on a 2K’s one with a Da Vinci Resolve 9 and a 5m
screen.

Customized Log Customized Log + DCI LUT + Grading

The result was that when we checked our work on LUVBOT the day after on the 4K Christie
projector, we weren’t so satisfied by our levels of defocus.
So if you’re shooting 4K for large screen, you need a 4K projector and a large screen. About
time, according to colorist’s point of view, as far as you get the right 4K projector you need
the same time than in a 2K workflow.
For sure you need filters to control the resolution. I share the point of view of Steven Poster
that combo filters (combinations of different filters) will be usefull in 4K.

8
The Resolve offered us very interesting options to defocus. Is this the best grading systems
for 4K? I only have experienced 4K on Baselight, Luster and Resolve. As DP I see only
differences on time and transparency to proceed during grading sessions. Will the final
result is affected by the tool? Too hard to answer, I believe in my colorist choices and It
seems that Resolve has some advantages. Same point of view in 4 months?
Not sure, there is still the Jurassic era syndroma!

A DP POINT OF VIEW
I heard a lot of things against 4K. Why shooting 4K if you have to fight against the numbers
of pixels?
I never felt we had to fight during the Bot-Trilogy, we had to work with a new tool and it’s the
first steps for new images. I remember having heard the same things when HD arrived and
when Arri Raw came. Why using the Raw recording? SxS recording is enough!
When you saw last films shot with Arri Raw there’s no discussion.
Too much sharpness with the 4K?
I’ve been setting Dior black nets number 10 on the back of Cooke lenses when I was a
focus puller and on many commercials I did as DP. Why? Cooke lenses were too sharp?
No, because it was a style, a director’s demand.
No bad or good camera, no bad or good 4K, just bad or good choices depending on the
means, the ergonomics and the artistic demands.
I’m eager to work with the Delta Penelope. If I’m correct, it seems that Jean-Pierre
Beauviala had anticipated 4K, no? And with the technology of its sensor, sure we have a
new texture!
For me the real issue is not on 4K, I saw issues on many workflows no matter the number of
pixels.
The communication, the transparency is the best natural way to help rental houses, teams
and labs
Manufacturers have to help labs to explain new codecs, new de-Bayer solutions.
At Imago Technical Committee (European Federation of Cinematographers), we want to ask
cameras manufacturers to provide explanations on new raw files, specificites on new
codecs, possibilities to load on FTP servor raw footage, de-bayered footages with one at a
quality level recommanded.
Arri opened this way with a very good website and a lot of help from their technicians and
engineers.
The issue is simple: with the crisis there are no means and no time for most of the
manufacturers and labs to use their R & D departments at the maximum of their efficiency.
It is impossible for camera manufacturers, rental houses, DP’s and labs to know all the
different workflows. There is no specialists of all these new technologies.

9
We saw that the preparation of the workflow is more important with this new tools than
ever. On set no time to change anything, so better to use skills of specialist in
preparation.

That’s why DP’s like Alfonso Parra, Geoff Boyle, Mitch Gross, companies like Color
Front, Pomfort, HDSystems, Digital Praxis and many, many others are often the key to
guide us in this maze.
For me these films were giving us the proof that we have to be accustomed and trained
to this 4K image. The 4K image has to appear in post on a large screen. Displays on set
can’t reveal all the assets or issues so a new education is created by this tool.
Back to learning in the same way we’ve been to use 35 mm.

But for me all these tools are regiving the lab and the colorist the central role

BEN ELIA DIRECTOR’S POINT OF VIEW:

‘’Back in the late 90's, I hated the idea film stock will be replaced by digital image.
At the beginning it looked like video. Even in HD.
I was desperate : I will never make a movie who actually looks like a movie.
It will look like a Muppet Show episode.
The arrival of the Alexa and today, shooting on 4K was some sort of an epiphany.
Suddenly I was back into a film shooting, but better.
Because there was the data management forcing you to shoot only a few takes.
And there was this crystal clear image on the monitor to check your take.
In post-production, everything became possible with color grade management.
You can create a totally different film with all the options you have on a 4K image.
There's a downside though.
Without a suitable workflow, you might end up with a video look.
But with the right workflow ?
You get a brand new image’’

Some remarqs for techies on F65

For sure a need of new kind of filtering in front of the lenses or at the back is also created
by this camera.
The original viewfinder is the weak point of the camera but Sony with F5 / F55 has
launched a new viewfinder which can fit on the F65 after a small modification

10
The main issue for me is a lack of flexibility on the outputs to play with 3D Lut’s.
Camera is less havy than an Alexa with a Codex but the ergonomic can be for sure
improved. Camera is a bit bulky but when shooting handheld it was fine. Of course the
side panel should have been on the other side .
The camera and the recording systems are very reliable.
The tools to expose and control the focus are clever and efficient, I didn’t use often the
waveform but my meter and my spotmeter.
But for me the most important place to rate a camera is the grading suite and at this step,
the colorist Laurent Desbrueres concluded that it was the camera which was giving the
most incredible possibilities. For the moment….

Philippe Ros AFC

Director of photography
Digital Imaging Supervisor
Member of the Technical Committee of Imago

Following:

21627 signs with space

For helping the schema in full resolution

The photos will be delivered after approval of the article.

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 Luster 2013 or Resolve 9
ACES (AMPAS) Colour space

Creation of Lut’s
(Lin to Log) Open EXR
& or
Creation of DPX files Film or DCI
Log Curves colour space

De-Bayer process Calibration Grading

F65 RAW Files 4K DCP

Mathematic
and / or
creative approach?
Sony F65

Shoot Exhibition
EFILMPRO ARTICLE 2012 DEMAND Text 20 000 signs with spaces.

Dear Phlippe
Me and Filip have studied your presentation. And we think it's a good basis for the article.
We have some suggestions:

TEXT DESIGNED FOR A LARGE AUDIENCE

Filmmakers, Cinematographers, Producers

1. The text need an intruduction - the story behind the tests you've made.
What was the idea, the background for this undertaking? Who's idea was it?
Who was involved in the preproduction?
OK

2. There are plenty of very complex diagrams like this one on slide 20. We think they are not necessary in the article.
OK

3. Aside from one slide there is no further information, about the system for color corection you have been using.
Is it possible to use the same workflow with other platforms like Nucoda, Resolve or Mistica?
OK

4. We also coudn't find the information, how did you manage to get an increase one stop of aperture and keep the low
noise level? (of course if it's not a top secret information)?
OK

5. We like the final statetments (- yours and the directors) in the end of the presentation. We would like to keep it in the
text. But maybe there should be also an additional summary,
saying about the benefits and consequences of your approach for the movie producers, who need to open their minds
for new thinking, if they want to use the new tools and avoid problems and high costs.
OK

We want them to believe in the need of using such advanced tools, but in the same time, they should learn, the
importance of preproduction, the optimal workflow and the importance of DoP's involvement in every stage of
production.
OK

6. We would like to publish the text in accompanied by an online publication of film fragments and pictures.
Unfortunately the print technology is not a sophisticated enough
to convey all the fine nuances in the grading process. Do you think it would be possible to have some video fragments
showing the possibility of the grading etc?
OK

7. We want this article to be a story not only for the cinematographers, who are interested in the new tool, but also for
the producers, who should learn about the challenges of the new technology.
OK

So please try to keep the technological details not necessary on the highest professional level possible, but try also to
explain things, when you get the suspition, they might scare this group of.
OK

I suggested to PSC, they should have you as a speaker during their seminar for the producers, which should take
place during Camerimage. I hope they will agree to my recomendation.
Your articel, which is going to be published in FilmPRO first, shoud be a good prologue to the seminar.
END OF OCTOBER
Best regards
Irena
r