ARCHIVE: Aug 05 2005 TO April 01 2006

1 April 2006             Counter: 31,645

We were shown alternate screenings of 4K digitally projected material and standard film, with test images originated on both video and film and for the first time it really was impossible to pick the difference. Well, it was a bit more like listening to über-expensive Hi Fi equipment: There was a slight perceptible difference, but it didn't make us any the wiser as to which was which. For example, one of our guys was sure he'd picked the film print, but then the smartass projectionist put the picture into Fast Forward, obviously impossible with film!  

So how have they done it? Frankly we're baffled. We know that the footage was only captured using 1,920 by 817 pixels, yet it had all the crispness and sharpness of 4K-scanned film on a 4K projector. There was no sign of grain in fast-moving lowlight areas, and the highlight handling was the best we'd ever seen on a video camera. OK , we're sure that with the right sort of film, you could probably get slightly better highlight handling under extreme conditions, but as is often the case with film origination, usually it's cheaper to modify the location or the script!

So where does that leave us? Well, it's obvious that Panavision were onto a winner with this all along, although we can't understand why they were so niggardly with demonstration material. However, we're also booked in for some über-secret demonstrations of a modest "film" project being shot with the D-20, which, thanks to the same image processing software used by the Genesis, apparently produces identical resluts.

So, while we're forced to admit that the Genesis exceeds our wildest performance expectations, we're not sure how that will actually help PV's fortunes. Anyway, for further explanation, and a sample image, click here.

28 March 2006             Counter: 31,580

We saw a brief mention on somebody's Blog that they'd actually seen some of the Superman Returns release footage, and they reported it looks like 1940s Technicolor! It's incredible how many people seem keen to put all their eggs in this particular basket, considering that there hasn't been a single publicly released project or film that uses them! Will the shit hit the fan in June? Watch this space...

18 March 2006             Counter: 31,404

However, what caught our interest was there was a 1957 film called "Zero Hour!" whose script was used (word-for-word in many cases:-) as the basis for the legendary 1980 spoof of all subsequent "Airline disaster" films: Airplane! (released as "Flying High" in some countries).

So at first we thought that the Genesis was being used on a remake of the very movie that was mercilessly lampooned in Airplane! and apparently without too much re-writing! But sadly, it's not; it sounds like some sort of routine low-budget psychological thriller, exactly the sort of market where we think digital cameras have a place of sorts. Except that they're trying to Hype the Genesis as a "top shelf" product, which it clearly ain't!

16 March 2006             Counter: 31, 372

It's always amusing to watch the "usual suspects" on that forum talking totally through their collective assholes, about what this camera is going to be able to do and so on, while us geeks (hopelessly hamstrung by our book-learnin' and so
on:-), can't see for the life of us why this thing should work any better than its 3-CCD ancestors, apart from the depth of field thing of course.

Panavision didn't exactly go out of their way to describe what sort of sensor is actually used, but we eventually got the straight dope, after a lot of effort. It was also us who told the world that the Genesis was going to be used on Superman Returns; and we can't understand why they wanted it kept secret, considering their gung-ho confidence in this cinematic millstone- er, milestone....

Ah well, we wait.

And yes, we saw that news story 'Superman Returns' Had Trouble at Takeoff (from Zap2it.com), concerning problems with the Genesis in the early days of the shoot, but that could have happened to anybody, using just about any sort of equipment, so it's not really a reflection on the Genesis itself.

Mind you, we're not terribly impressed with this image, if it's one from the Genesis:

I mean, look at that crap highlight handling.

13 March 2006             Counter: 31, 332

It's painfully obvious to anybody who has spent time on a real movie set that they're mostly just pathetic posers acting out some dumb fantasy, with a small sprinkling of real but strictly "bottom shelf" commercial operators.

Now, after a month or so of deliberating, someone has actually plucked up the courage to remove the link to our site at the bottom of that page! Well done, whoever you are!! The four hours you no doubt spent spent doing that diverted you away from your normal sparetime activity long enough to give your eyesight a chance to recover a little.... Even if only temporarily, you just might be able to glimpse the difference between 35mm film origination and HD! Just maybe...

5 March 2006             Counter: 31, 200

The question is, is it worth $4million a year to be bonked by the photogenic and personable Perleman? Oh well, at least he's given up smoking those damned cigars!

Oh the pain ... the pain! This follows hard on the heels of another gouge into Ron's personal piggy bank: "Item 8.01: Other Events" which is a discreet SEC filing duly noting the fact that the indefatigable lad has shelled out another $64,792,000 of his own money to pay off another round of bondholders, recruited by PV's distinguished former management in the 90s! Interesting that the last time he did this, they made a big noise about "a private investor" (actually RP himself) injecting about $130 million into Panavision. We suspect that many of the staff were expecting to see the benefit of some of that money, when it reality it just went to repay an earlier round of outstanding bonds. It would appear Ron's fiscal finagling days are slowly drawing to a close...

Meanwhile, this image has nothing to do with anything in particular, we just liked it:-)

24 Feb 2006             Counter: 31, 077

First of all, the figure of 200 x 150 pixels is what you would get if one of those images was cropped to 16 x 9. In other words, that is then minimum number of pixels that could carry the information recorded on VHS!

Secondly, contrary to what is routinely parrotted by people who should know better, the horizontal resolution of Betamax is not "360 lines", it's actually slightly worse than typical VHS at a little under 200 lines! Chrissake; how could a format that records at two-thirds the tape speed as VHS possibly give a better picture?!

The confusion has arisen because of the again-oft-parrotted statement that Betacam is the "professional version of Betamax". It's not; it might use the same tape cartridge, but that's where the similarity ends. Betacam is a component recording format which runs the "Betamax" cassette at about nine times the normal Betamax speed. Believe it or not, (and you probably won't, but we're used to that:-) Betacam is actually a copy of a VHS-based professional format jointly developed by RCA and Matsushita in the early 1980s! This went on to become known as "Recam" or "M-Format" with almost identical specifications to Betacam, but in that case, the Beta-based format won the race. (Tech-savvy people might have wondered why Sony chose such a cumbersome method of multiplexing the chrominance signals compared to the method used in M-Format; but that's just the old patent-sidestep-fandango:-)

Apart from all that, the 640 x 480 figure for NTSC (720 x 576 for PAL), is subject to all sorts of caveats, like whether it was recorded as widescreen or standard, progressive or interlace and so on. In widescreen mode the pixels have to be stretched sideways for cinematic projection, but there are still only 640! Let it suffice to say that the illustration shown is being fairly generous!

And by the way, it's no accident that many of the new film scanners on the horizon have 8K (and more) capability. Modern sub-Nyquist down-converters will produce a 4K image that looks considerably sharper than something actually originated with a 4K 24 fps video camera (if such a device ever becomes practical).

23 Feb 2006             Counter: 31, 063

But Sony also own record companies and spend a lot of time suing people for copyright infringement. With the common-or-garden variety MP3 player, you can load songs from or copy songs to other MP3 players more or less at will. Obviously it would look a bit poor in a copyright infringement court case if the defence could point out that Sony were marketing the very same players that allow people to play possibly pirated music, so Sony walkmans can only be accessed by some real crap pieces of propritary Sony software, viz Sonic Stage and Connect Player. This is supposed to prevent multiple copying of MP3 files but in an awful lot of cases, they just won't work at all, which means people wind up paying hundreds of dollars for a very fancy paperweight!

Similar story with regional coding on DVDs, although this is mostly outside the US. In PAL countries the story is the same everywhere: Cheap $US30 Chinese DVD players will play discs from all regions, and output either PAL or NTSC with a simple menu setup change! (Despite their low price, these things are a true technological marvel; they're mostly just one big silicon chip which, apart from doing all the MPEG decoding, can generate impeccable composite PAL or NTSC, all with a single quartz crystal and virtually no external components!)

But the much more expensive Sony DVD players will only play the discs of the region they're sold in! Apart from that, most of the cheapies have every possible video and audio output socket imaginable, while most of the Sony's don't... Again, Sony own movie studios and hence have an interest in maintaining a visible anti-piracy and pro-region coding stance! The only "excuse" Sony can offer their angry customers is that their DVD players are "legal" while the others aren't! Big deal!

Now, Sony are ramping up the Hype over their new 4K "Qualia" Ultra-HD video projectors and again their corporate schizophrenia rises to the occasion! (Not that there's anything wrong with the projectors themselves, in fact we were very impressed with them, as we mentioned in a Dec 13 posting last year, see below.)

This is a "to scale" diagram of the difference in pixel counts of various video projection formats, a copy of one that Sony use in their literature. The main difference is that their intention is to compare 4K projection to 2K projection; originating format resolution is not mentioned! (And yes folks, that microscopic yellow square is all you get with VHS! The actual video signal is still 525 line NTSC or 625 line PAL, but basically it's like the camera has been defocussed). And for all you Mini DV wankers, that red rectangle is all you're playing with.

Trouble is, they now have to make a case for 4K projection, which is what you really need to beat 35mm film projectors, but at the same time they have their camera division trying to tell everybody that 1,920 x 1080 HD video is also "indistinguishable from 35mm film"! That being the case, why do we need 4K projectors?

Ah well you see, they're for showing stuff originated on 65mm film! Er but guys, hardly anybody shoots 65mm, they mostly originate on fine-grain 35mm stock and blow it up for 65mm cinema release!

16 Feb 2006             Counter: 30,965

Chrissake; get real guys! They use 1/2" chips; which means the actual imaging surface is about the size of the average guy's little fingernail! And you're gonna blow that up onto a fifty-foot screen?! Apart from that, how come you've just gone to all that trouble to produce the Genesis just to give you that extra bit of control over depth of field, but now a half-inch chip is suddenly good enough?! AND you'd need a lens that costs more than the camera itself to produce anything approaching a true 1920 x 1080 image....

OK we're sure they're a cut above your average "Prosumer" (God we hate that word!) high-end 3-chip job, but "low-end film production" is a bit of a stretch. Not too many people use even their 2/3" older brothers for that, and they'd have to produce considerably better pictures than these toys.

But, like all Sony's products, they have their place, it's just that that place isn't usually where Sony's marketing people would like it to be!

There's actually two models, the F350 and the F330, the latter being about two-thirds the price of the former. They have most of the CineAlta features like 24p origination, variable frame rate and so on, but technologically, that's pretty much petty cash!

Both use XDCam Blu-Ray DVD recording technology, a move which, while superficially attractive, has a number of drawbacks, chief of these being that a small amount of damage in the wrong place can make an entire disc unreadable! Apart from that, at present the only way you can edit the footage is to transfer it via i Link/FireWire/IEEE3194 into a PC or similar editor, although that is sure to change.

Whatever unkind things you want to say about tape, at least if a couple of feet of of it gets chewed, all you lose is that part, the rest of the tape is unaffected. Sony's recent ventures into 3-inch-DVD based consumer camcorders haven't won too many friends; an awful lot of home movies have turned into drink coasters!

So OK lads, well done; compared to what you could get for the same number of your local currency units ten years ago, this is nothing short of miraculous. But we could say that about the average digital handycam, too...

Digital cinematography? Don't call us; we'll call you!

14 Feb 2006             Counter: 30,917

"Your article on digital photography vs. film seems to have been written by someone with no actual practical experience as a director of photography. Most of the faults you find with video are non-issues to someone with an actual familiarity with professional video equipment. Perhaps you should leave commentary on these issues to someone more qualified instead of spreading misinformation?"

Which particular article did you mean; there are quite a few on this site in case you haven't bothered to look. If you're talking about the Wikipedia article on Digital Cinematography, we didn't write that, (although it was partly written by one of our supporters). However his contribution was so badly mutilated by the subsequent editing of other "experts" that's he's disowned it. Please, feel free to "correct" it any way you want; the Wikipedia is rapidly turning into a big joke anyway.

Most of the articles on this site were written by people with extensive experience with the technical side of both video and film production techniques, which is the reason for their skepticism. (A few people have commented on the lack of technical jargon in them, inplying that they weren't really written by "experts". In fact, most such jargon was laborously excised by one of our less technical editors, to make sure that other non-technical people would have a half-decent chance of understanding it!) In any event, those articles are there to explain certain established facts, not to support the idle fantasies of miniDV wankers and the like who think that the arrival of "Digital Cinematography" is somehow going to parachute them through some mythical "celluloid ceiling!"

Excuse us for being tedious, but we have been hearing statements like yours for over 20 years, ever since the first tube Betacams became available, but oddly enough, people still prefer to use film!

And just a few more comments:

Most of the faults you find with video are non-issues to someone with an actual familiarity with professional video equipment.

Perhaps you should leave commentary on these issues to someone more qualified

Look sonny, THIS is not "misinformation"; this is a FACT: People like you have been making much the same statements for over two decades, yet the overwhelming majority of movies, high-end commercials and TV shows are still originated on film. There must be some reason why they're ignoring the likes of you; but we'll leave it to you to figure out what it is.

By the way, have you noticed how long this site has been running? Did you really think that we haven't already received hundreds of e-mails like yours? Like, did you think we were going to close it down, now that we've been "informed"?! Have you been reading too many Chick Comics...?

11 Feb 2006             Counter: 30,876

Of course the "Teaser Trailer" is far to short to tell us much, but what you can see looks pretty damned ordinary color-wise! The faces have the same turd-brown tint as they did in Star Wars II & III and his "red" cape is a sort of brownish-burgundy color that looks like something bought in a discount curtain store! (It takes some of us back to the 60s and the first Plumbicon Color TV cameras with their pathetic red response:-) There are some still photos available as well but they don't tell us if they're Genesis-derived or not. Whatever, they're pretty crummy as well. So, it looks like Siegel wasn't kidding about the "comic book" finish!

So what does this prove? Well ... nothing really. Apart from the fact that we're not entirely sure why they think the Genesis is such a tremendous step forward anyway, even if it could produce "images instinguishable from 35mm film" (and we remain extremely skeptical about that), it looks very much like this film isn't really going to be allowed to prove anything, one way or the other.

Meanwhile information on Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is slowly trickling out, but, as with the Superman Returns trailer, it's really hard to judge as it whizzes through everything so fast. But it does look like they've managed to get a workable image more by exercising greater control over the lighting than by any virtue of the camera itself. In other words, it still looks like video, but we'll wait until we see it on the big screen before we pass final judgement.

The Genesis is, after all, little more than the guts of a Sony 950 HDTV camera with a single-chip pickup unit in place of the prism-based 3-CCD one. Apart from the improved depth of field, we can't see why it would work any better, and there are reasons why it would probably be inferior.

Ah well, we wait.... Excuse us if we mention we've heard all this before...

7 Feb 2006             Counter: 30,825

26 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,679

What is it with that guy? Look at the "timeline" of his purchase of Panavision:

• 1996: John Farrand takes over as CEO, next thing:
• 1997: Perelman buys the place for an over-the-top price and then:
• 1999: Panavision announces the George Lucas Star Wars next-big-thing-yeah-right, except:
• 2000 to present: Hardly anybody takes any notice of it and so:
• 2003: Farrand then gets fired (surprise surprise) and is replaced by Ex-Technicolor Dude Bob Beitcher, and:
• 2004-2006: Distinct signs that PV are getting out of "Digital", and so:
• 2005: Presumably Perelman thinks he's learned his lesson and promptly spends $0.75 Billion on a film processing company, about a week before Texas Instruments announces it has received massive contracts to fit Digital projection systems to half the theaters in the US!

See the problem is, most of the people who make all the noise about "digital" seem unshakeably convinced that digital acquisition and digital projection are somehow joined at the hip. Which of course they're not, but we're not going to go through that again here. So, we presume, film lives for acquisition and shows every sign of continuing to do so, so therefore, film projection will also contimue to thrive.

But any idiot could surely see that even if you could shoot "digitally" for free, that would make virtually no difference to the cost of making the average feature film or prime time TV show. All that crew, actors, sets and so on cost exactly the same!

But the projection side is another story entirely, and we've never said otherwise. There are enormous advantages to switching to digital projection, and practical technologies are just now becoming available. The low-cost blue-violet solid-state lasers that make "Blu-Ray" DVD technology possible are barely a year out of the laboratory, but 2006 looks set to be the year when the whole HDTV thing really happens.

And what the hell do you do with a film processing plant in that environment? You wanna buy an LP pressing plant while you're at it?! Nice work Ron!

And get this:
"Deluxe's current management team, led by Cyril Drabinsky, will continue to run Deluxe's day-to-day operations. 'I am very pleased that Deluxe has such a fine and knowledgeable owner in MacAndrews & Forbes and Ronald Perelman. Their years of experience in the motion picture and entertainment industries will be a perfect complement to our business and we anticipate a long and prosperous future under their ownership,' said Cyril Drabinsky, CEO, Deluxe Film."

Is he taking the piss? We'd like to think so:-)

29 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,641

It can be a bit heavy going and repetitive but they don't pull any punches.

23 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,576

Sorry we didn't spot this earlier, but it doesn't mention Panavision so it doesn't register on our news alerts.

19 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,542

We suppose you can check out the Wikipedia definition, as it appears to be reasonably accurate. But basically what they're talking about is software that's supposed to magically overcome all the glaring technical deficiencies of their (and presumably everybody else's) video-cameras-pretending-to-be-movie-cameras!

A common example of an Algorithm is the "sharpen" command used in programs such as Adobe Photoshop. This works by examining all the pixels in an image and manipulating the image brightness of the ones surrounding bright-to-dark boundaries to produce the illusion of a sharper image.

An "Algorithm" is basically a plain English description of what will actually be happening in the computer program (well, as plain English as it gets:-), which then has to be converted to executable computer code by a programmer. In a program like Photoshop, the "sharpen" Algorithm is actually a small(ish) program in its own right, that only gets activated when it's needed. (This is part of the basis of so-called "object oriented" programming; if it wasn't done that way, programs like Photoshop simply wouldn't fit on PCs!).

So basically, every time someone points out some deficiency of the perceived Dalsa image, the stock answer is: "We have algorithms for that." To which tech-savvy observers might respond: "Where?" Why aren't you showing us this plethora of "algorithms" instead of just telling us about them?

And that, my friends, is what in the past they used to refer to as "vaporware". See, in the days before the IBM PC became the industry hardware standard, individual computer manufacturers had to produce both the computers and the software to run on them. It turned out to be a lot harder to design good software than it was to produce the hardware it ran on, and a lot of manufacturers were in the habit of announcing impressive-sounding software "suites" for their new machines, that had yet to be written, in the hope of attracting customers.

Nothing new under the sun, it seems....

15 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,450

It reminds us of a particular item from Stephen Pile's excellent book The Book of Heroic Failures (1979):
"A Nigerian labourer explored new areas of fraudulent endeavour in March 1967. While working on a building site in Lagos, he altered his pay cheque from £9/4s/0d (nine pounds, four shillings, no pence) to £697,000,009/4s/0d. The fraud was entirely successful, right up to the moment he tried to cash it."
Which for us, pretty much sums up the current "Digital Cinematography" situation...

14 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,440

But now apparently, even that's not enough! OK we could make the words into GIF files (ie a "picture" of the word) which wouldn't be recognized by the censorware, but it's easier just to not use them!

Other than that, there's nothing to tell you about; not too unusual for this time of year.

6 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,298

Sony's new SXRD LCD-on-silicon technology is certainly impressive, particularly in the value-for-money arena, but the older Texas DLP technology still takes some beating. All they need to do is get the cost down, and there's no particular reason why that won't happen once a market is established.

As we mentioned earlier, the biggest hurdle has always been a practical storage medium, which appears to have been overcome with the new blue-laser-based "Blu-Ray" DVD format. Earlier notions of downloading movies direct into the projector's hard drive via satellite were so-o-o-o-o 20th century, and obviously a total turnoff for exhibitors!

Dual-layer Blu-Ray discs hold about 27 Gigabytes, enough for a feature film on HDTV but probably not good enough for cinema projection. However, there's no reason why the movie can't be supplied on two or more discs. Piracy is an issue that will have to be faced, but with a bit of forward planning this could surely be overcome.

Here's a tip guys: why not glue some sort of plastic collar around the perimeter of the disks, that can't be removed without wrecking it. That would make the disk too big to fit in standard 5 1/4" computer disk drives, but you could easily make special drives for the projectors. That way, you could manufacture the disks with the same equipment used for commercial HD DVD releases.

Yes, theoretically, someone could still modify a standard drive to take the bigger disks but you'd need the combination of someone with the mechanical skill to do that plus the programming smarts to crack the coding, which is pretty unlikely.

1 Jan 2006             Counter: 30,198

It appears that the Rank deal has now officially gone through. The gushing writer of the article obviously isn't too familiar with the dirty details of Perelman's stable of other deceased equine acquisitions, though. Revlon is over 2 Billion in debt and still running up massive annual losses, and while Panavision isn't quite in that league it's still massively crippled by debts and in real terms isn't worth a plywood Peso.
The notion that owning Panavision and Revlon is somehow a door into the film industry generally shows that the writer knows about as much about that subject as Ron does! If he wanted to get into the film industry we're sure he could just buy a Studio!

Well another year sputters to a close. Panavision continues to defy the laws of gravity. Two years or so on, all of the "new generation"; "megapixel"; "Digital Cinematography" cameras (sorry about all the quote marks; we didn't know how else to put it:-) have yet to see a single frame of publically-projected film. Just more hot air, and more "gosh-wow" "house of mirrors" journalism.

Sorry if we sound a tad suspicious guys, it's just that it should be pathetically easy to settle this for once and for all with a few "killer" film out demos. But we don't get that, do we? No, we just get a few limited showings of "set pieces" arranged and tightly controlled by the manufacturers. Add to that Panavision's abruptly pulling out of the famous "Shootout at the old Cinegear Corrall" with a lot of Abe Simpson-type meaningless spluttering, after it got sand kicked in its face by the D-20 in the infamous candelight test!

The few microscopic Genesis-derived stills that WB have allowed the world to see don't look very impressive at all, and indeed Bryan Singer has admitted that this project "might not the best advertisement for the Genesis or Panavision." (Actually it was Tom Seigel, his DOP. But whatever...) OK, we might be wrong, this might turn out OK, but if so, we would have to conclude that the people in charge of the project are paranoid or just barking mad! We can't find out anything about "Flyboys" at all any more, making us wonder what the hell is going on there, and more importantly, what kind of deal did they make them.

Meanwhile the low-budget Australian Thriller "Wolf Creek" was shot on very ordinary 2/3" HD equipment apparently without any help from any of the major Film rental companies, and earned a nice piece of change worldwide. People we know who have seen it comment that while the picture quality is pretty ordinary for a Cinema release, that doesn't detract from the story too much as it's definitely not an "eye candy" production. Which is the segment of the market where we've always said HD had a place, but no, they insist on using it Blockbusters like Star Wars and Superman Returns. (Which of course, are not Sony movies....)

24Dec 2005             Counter: 30,130

Well, he's done it. (See our Dec 13 story below for more information). But we do wonder where the $750 million is going to come from, and what do the other shareholders think.

23Dec 2005             Counter: 30,120

Chrissake, you'd think he could easily have just bought the guy out or made some other arrangement, but no, he has to get out the big guns, once again trumpeting to the world his true stature. (Considering he was once paid over $30 million in "greenmail" to cease his attempts at gaining control of the board of a certain company, you'd think he'd understand this concept). But hey, nice work Ron: Now every deranged low-life with a thing about well-off Jews is going to know exactly where you live! Just look for the sidewalk cafe....

Intriguingly, there's a mention in the second story about Perelman and his present spouse (#4, Ellen Barkin) discussing divorce earlier this year. We suspect Ron has never really gotten over being out-spoused by John Farrand!

One of his insiders who secretly writes to us assures that the one thing Ron really can't stand is bad publicity, so on that note:
Ron Perelman, East 63rd's Guardian of Good (From "Curbed")
Bistro 1, Perelman 0 (From NY Daily News, Online edition)
You'll need to scroll down past the Mick Jagger story.

21Dec 2005             Counter: 30,097

Technically it sounds pretty much on par with the Arri D-20 except that it's only a 16 x 9 sensor, which as in the case of the Genesis, strongly hints at "TV" origins!

Like Dalsa, they insist on refering to a "4K" chip with Bayer-Filtering as "4K" which it clearly isn't. Sounds very much like more Kinetta-style vaporware to us, but you never know. If projects like this do ever pan out, this will make things awfully difficult for Panavision! Nice illustration of the different format sizes though:-)

15Dec 2005             Counter: 30,000

14Dec 2005             Counter: 30,002

When we logged in the counter was already at 29,999, but by the time we fired up Photoshop some low-life had already kicked the counter over into the dirty thirties:-) Ah well, as they say, you can't trust anybody over thirty!

Our "Ron my boy" entry below has prompted readers to point us toward a few more entertaining Perelman anecdotes which we may publish in the near future, as a bit of light holiday reading!

13Dec 2005             Counter: 29,968
(Ho-Ho Ho! Only 32 more to the big three-oh-oh-oh-oh!)

<Wise old Jewish uncle mode = "on">
Ron! Ron! What are you doing?! Ah, your poor father; I swear he'd be turning over in his grave, if he was dead! What is the matter with you? First of all you let that schmuck Farrand talk you into buying into these Panavision no-goodniks.

I can just imagine it too: "Ron" he'd say; "This can't miss! Digital is the way of the future! Soon everyone will be wanting only Panavision Digital cameras. Film is dead my precious! Get in on the ground floor!

But was it dead? No. Is it dead? No. You only had to ask the right people, but would you listen? No. So have you learned your lesson? No. Now; you're go to the other extreme. Buying a Film processing company? For $800 million? Oy Vay!! Who keeps giving you all this good advice, Ron? Or are you planning to sue them for 1.6 Billion later on? I don't know, Ron, that sounds a bit of a risky strategy to me....

Ron, Ron, you do realize how much of a film processing company's income comes from developing film from film makers? About three-fifths of diddly-squat, that's about how much! The real money is in release prints! Oh you know that do you?

Well, I've got two words for you: "SXRD" and "Qualia"! Well ... make it three; "Sony" as well. Do yourself a favor; run, don't walk, down to Sony's QUALIA NY showroom at 550 Madison Avenue, and check out the near future of theater projection! You want real "home cinema"? (As in 150-inch-plus screens.) When the "Blu-Ray" HD DVD format hits the stores next year, it's all going to happen. It will, it will, Ron! Go see for yourself.
<Jewish uncle mode = "off">

OK, we've always said that it'll be a long time before digital cameras replace film at the start of the movie-making process, but the writing is very much on the wall for celluloid projection! Yeah, they tried to bring this in about seven years ago to much fanfare, but at the time the projectors were crap, the price was astronomical, there was no practical method of storing movies, and service and reliability issues were a real concern. This is now about to change.

Drastically.

Recently a couple of us were invited to an informal demonstration of Sony's new "Qualia" SXRD "4K" projector, (by some of our "closet supporters" at Sony:-), and we've got to say, that was damned impressive! For the first time we've seen a digital projector that really is better than film. (And we've always been the harshest critics of those things!) And for home use the 2K version is no slouch either, and almost affordable! We could certainly live with that wall-sized "no-questions-asked" 1920 x 1080 picture, and it would hold up pretty well as a small cinema projector as it is right now!

OK, they're not cheap, right now, but the prices of all Sony's projectors (and other display products) have been pretty much in free-fall for the last few years. So it will happen. And there will be massive changes to the industry. Instead of just showing movies, cinemas will be able to screen live happenings, such as sporting events, "American Idol" finals and that sort of thing.

So if you've got 800 million skins to throw down the drain like that, Ron, trust us; you'd be better off using it to pay off Panavision's debts. Do that, and get rid of about two-thirds of the upper management and you'll own a company that's actually worth something!

Why are we telling you this? Because we love to say "we told you so", and we can't do that if we don't "tell you so"! We know nobody ever takes any notice of us; that's half the fun of it!

7 Dec 2005             Counter: 29,852

We've also been of the opinion that even if Panavision did manage to open up some totally new sort of market niche (and that most emphatically hasn't happened yet), the situation would be rather like that of the IBM PC: a vast horde of leaner, hungrier and technically more experienced competitors would both crowd them out of the market they created, and savagely cut into their existing markets.

As an example, here's an example of a single-chip HDTV (well sorta:-) camera, from a generally unknown equipment manufacturer: SI-1920HD, 1920x1080 pixel HDTV Camera (From the manufacturer's own website).

They provide a very nice .pdf file that gives you lots of good information, not just on their product, but on the subject of HD cameras generally. The SI-1920HD is based a CMOS 1920 x 1080 pixel chip, which we'd imagine was originally intended for a 3-chip HDTV camera. Since it uses Bayer filtering, it's true resolution is really only going to be about the same as a high-end standard definition 3-CCD camera, but that's still pretty impressive, given the size of the thing!

5 Dec 2005             Counter: 29,814

"The Loan Agreement provides for, among other things, a $64,792,000 term loan from PX Holding to Panavision that will mature on December 31, 2007. The term loan will bear interest at a rate per annum equal to 9 5/8%, payable semi-annually on February 1 and August 1 of each year, commencing February 1, 2006"

What this ostensibly means is that in two years time Panavision is supposed to pay back the $65-odd mill, as well as $3 million every six months in interest. How they propose to do that with their current annual losses of around $20-40 million is an interesting question, but we'll just have to file that with all the other interesting questions!

Oh yeah, their share price is back down to four bucks, too:-)

2 Dec 2005             Counter: 29,765

If you attempt to access http://www.arri.com.au you just get redirected to the main Arri website in München, which doesn't appear to provide the link to Arri Oz. As yet there still doesn't appear to be any sign of life down there, according to a contact who works nearby.

23 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,635

Perelman To Buy U.K. Film Unit? (From Forbes.com)

We don't have anywhere near as good access to UK companies' financial information as we do US ones, but we bet they have their share of stories to tell!

19 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,568

See the trouble is, ANYBODY can edit and alter a Wikipedia article. ANYBODY, even you! We basically said: "been there; done that," good luck, don't say we never told you so!"

He had three goes at putting in a section on Panavision's true financial and sharemarket history, but no matter how many sources and links he provided it was never enough; some f*ckwit who calls him/her/itself "Girolamo Savonarola" (apparently the name of some middle ages religious figure who got burnt at the stake or something), keeps re-editing the entries. We presume ths dipshit must work for Panavision; nobody else would write such self-serving drivel and then claim someone else was "biased!"

All of the text that points out the miserable track record of Digitally captured movies for cinema release has been deleted as well.

Anyway, he's finally seen the light and pulled the financial section, and told this "Girolamo Savonarola" to go f*ck him/her/itself.

Sigh, but this is just the Internet in action: one big house of (cracked) mirrors, the blind leading the blind and all that!

For anybody else with notions of embarking on such a Quixotic mission, be warned: Once someone has posted an article in the Wikipedia, it becomes FACT!! How DARE you even THINK of correcting the author's cherished misconceptions.

14 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,486

Apart from some nice reports of John Galt contradicting himself, we have some wonderfully verbose discussions on the problems of using 35mm Cine Lenses on 2/3" HDTV cameras, the drawbacks of trying to use size-compensating optics and so on. But not a single mention of the real problem.

Have any of those f*cking eggheads ever even looked at a video camera and a film camera side-by-side?! Have a look guys; take the lens off any sort of 2/3" video camera (HD or otherwise) and use it to focus an image of a ceiling light onto a piece of paper. What do you see? Yes, the image focuses about two inches away from the rear element of the lens.

Now get any sort of 35mm cine lens and do the same. What do you see? Yes, the focal plane is closer, in some cases a lot closer! Far less than two inches.

Now, see if you can figure out a way to get the cine lens far enough into the video camera to focus on the CCDs. Without using a chisel to chop a hole in the dichroic beam splitter prism....

Forget all that crap about MTFs and image sizes and so on; the real problem is that you can no more fit a cine lens into a 3-chip camera than you can have intercourse with your ear canal. Although no doubt some of you will have tried it:-)

The frightening thing is that despite the enormous amount of discussion of this subject on the various forums, nobody seems to be aware of this particular  problem until one of us brings it up. We just can't believe how many so-called "professionals" don't seem to understand what to us is a very simple concept. Dalsa even have an "FAQ" that explains that you can't use "Digiprimes" on the Origin. Jeezus-Tapdancing-Christ; like they need to explain that to somebody who's going to use one of those ultra expensive gizmos?

12 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,456

John Alonzo, ASC: On High Definition
(From The Operating Cameraman Summer 1994).

Back then they were claiming that the current-generation HDC500 HDTV cameras were the equivalent of "1200 ASA film". There was no "Digital" prefix then, it was just "HDTV"! (What's happened to them in the intervening period then; generally, technologies tend to get better over time:-) Anyway, 11 years on the technology has advanced significantly, but the bullshit remains firmly locked in the 1980s!

In the interview, Galt refers to the HDC 500 as a "Third Generation" HDTV camera, which we suppose makes the Genesis a "Fifth Generation" camera. By the way, whatever happened to Japan Inc's "Fifth Generation" computer project...?

We're trying to find some information on a 1987 HD production Galt did for Canadian TV called "Chasing Rainbows," which is supposed to be the first "serious" HD production in the world. (Using tube-based analog HDTV cameras and a recorder you had to carry round on a truck, and you needed a generator to run it because it drew over 3 kilowatts). One of of our readers says he actually remembers reading about it; if it's the same SMPTE article, to make a copy for the offline edit, they used a standard definition NTSC camera to "film" the HD monitor screen!

11 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,445

"The tests have convinced me that the familiar look and feel of motion picture film are fully present in this digital 24P system, and that the picture quality between the two is indistinguishable on the large screen," said Lucas.
All together now; 1-2-3: BULL....SHIT!!.

He wasn't just talking about ordinary 35mm either, this was VistaVision.... Change hands George....

"It's an exciting step that we are taking, and working with Sony and Panavision, we plan to further advance this system over the coming years," continued Lucas. "Star Wars: Episode II is our first giant step."
Heh heh heh, but not with Panavision's help! Snicker snicker...

9 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,398

We seriously doubt that you are going to do yourself or anybody else much good with your stated course of action, since it may simply force the hand of management who would prefer not to open up that particular can of worms: you may find that half the company may then be open to similar disciplinary action!

We strongly recommend that you cease and desist as we really doubt you are going to achieve anything with this. Whilst you might think we'd applaud any activity that is detrimental to the affairs of Panavision, in practice, it always seems to be the "good guys" who wind up getting shafted!

Arri Oz Splutters on Very little info has come our way, and not a lot seems to be happening. The Local ACS awards were hosted by Arri Australia and they appear to be moving into "temporary premises," next door to their proposed permanent digs. If you're interested, click here for a satellite image of where they're going to be located.

Months have passed and Arri have apparently still not filled some of their key technical positions. Unsuccessful local applicants have apparently been using expressions like: "Dreamland, mate!" They're still advertising in the local SMPTE online edition.

1 Nov 2005             Counter: 29,264

Dalsa ramps up the Origin.  This may or may not be a recent story, but we've never seen it before and it's dated today: Dalsa Digital Cinema (from the Dalsa Website). They certainly look serious about this, and they give quite a comprehensive rundown on what's available for rental and so on.

However, we don't know how seriously they're going to be taken by the industry in general. They still insist on calling their camera a "4K" unit, which it clearly isn't. For a start, it uses Bayer filtering which means its effective resolution has to be something less than that.

The other problem is illustrated by these images we've lifted from their site. Nowhere do they  reveal the actual dimensions of their sensor chip, but we presume these images are meant to be to scale. (Note: We superimposed the "35mm" image onto the active area of the Dalsa sensor).

If that's the case, a standard 35mm film frame will just fit height-wise onto the Origin's sensor, but it appears to occupy only about two-thirds of its width. Since most 35mm cine lenses will just "cover" super-35 without vignetting (ie a sharply-focussed "porthole" surrounded by a circular blurred area), in practical terms, the useable width of the Dalsa sensor is only about 2.6K.  After allowing for the limitations of Bayer filtering, it's going to wind up having a genuine resolution something less than that of the Genesis and probably about the same as the D-20! Also, if the film is meant to be released in 2.35:1 format, they're only going to be using about 1,000 pixels vertically, and that's before the Bayer filtering is taken into account! 

(Unlike Panavision:-) Dalsa do have quite a nice .pdf document on their site which gives an in-depth discussion of the virtues and vices of the various sensor technologies currently available, and their reasons for choosing the technology they did, (although you need to be technically well up to speed to understand a lot of it). It is somewhat amusing though that after openly stating that: "technology can't really put back what wasn't there in the first place," they then more or less imply that their technology can in fact do  that!

Having said all that, the Dalsa still sounds like a fairly impressive performer sensitivity- and dynamic range-wise. (Perhaps taking its cue from film,:-)  it uses the old-fashioned but tried-and-true frame transfer technology, which dates back to the first workable CCD cameras in the early 1970s! Like the D-20, it uses a rotating mirror reflex shutter, which, although it does provide a nice optical viewfinder like the D-20, its real purpose is to blank off the CCD sensor during the frame readout period. If you don't do that you get some pretty horrendous vertical smearing. We've always said that that's the best way to build an HDTV camera, but there seems to be this almost superstitious dread of having something mechanical atached to an electronic camera! (Never mind that the recorder is still extremely mechanical)! 

So what's our conclusion?

• It's just more "film is dead" bullshit,  for the consumption of people who aren't likely to ever in a position to take its pulse anyway!
• It's not really going to work any better than the D-20 or the Genesis, which is to say, not that well at all.
• It does however illustrate what we've always said about Panavision's foray into the "Digital Cinematography" market: Even in the unlikely event that it does take off, all they've done is demonstrate that there is a market. Once that happens there are many other people  far better equipped to exploit this market than Panavision ever could, which is more or less what happened with the IBM PC in the 1980s!

But it ain't gonna happen. Well, not until they start making 8K x 6K "true RGB" 35mm-sized sensors (ie with nearly 150 Megapixels!) Until they do, film is always going to look better! 

26 Oct2005             Counter: 29,180

There are also quite a few pictures from the set of Superman Returns but in neither case is there a single frame that actually came from the Genesis itself! So for a product that's supposed to be the grestest thing since sliced bread, they seem to be keeping everybody standing around with their jars of peanut butter and jelly for an inordinately long time!

20 Oct2005             Counter: 29,085

We used to have two regular contributors from the financial world who kept us reasonably up to date with PV/RP's financial philandering. Unfortunately over time we've lost contact with both of these (do drop us a line if you happen to see this, by the way). Ever since Panavision were delisted from the NYSE they've more or less closed ranks with regard to press releases and so real information is hard to come by.

We'd sort of gotten out of the habit of checking PV's current performance on Yahoo! Finance, and so we never realized that their total operating loss for 2004 had climbed to an impressive $40 million! It's starting to sound like that old Irish joke:

"Well, we got some good news, and we got some bad news..."
"The bad news is we've run up another operating loss this year."
"But the good news is, we've managed to double last year's figures!"

Anyway, we've decided to add links to the relevant Yahoo! Finance pages so you can check them whenever you wish. Just remember: most of the dollar figures are in thousands, and (most important) figures in brackets represent a LOSS! So "(40,000)" actually means a loss of $40 million!

PV Share Price
PV Balance Sheet
PV Income Statement

And tell us O Mighty Ronald: How the f*ck do you work out that the value of Panavision's "Goodwill" is $259,909,000?! Are you sure it's not $259,910,000? or $259,908,000?!

Or that Panavision's "intangible" assets come to $66,266,000? That's a pretty detailed figure for something that's "intangible" isn't it;-)

Mind you, the way they're going, the only "Goodwill" the bulk of PV's employees are likely to have anything to do with is the place where you go for second-hand clothes....

7 Oct 2005             Counter: 28,894

Oh dear. So one of the few remaining people at Panavision with any kind of reconizable talent (and wee Iain is VER-R-R-RA talented, make no mistake!), is leaving.

We've also heard that Arri Sydney have hired another person, reportedly another ex-PVNZ employee who spent some time at Whites in Canada, but we've yet to confirm this. From what we've heard from some of the guys at Gecko Germany (a service company formed by a group of disgruntled Arri engineers and technicians) they may live to regret making the move to Sydney. Which is a shame, but we can't not "tell it like it is" just to sink the boot into Panavision, however much we'd like to!

5 Oct 2005             Counter: 28,869

Ah well, we always were a bit dubious of a bean counter with a name like "Bobby"!

2 Oct 2005             Counter: 28,820

Interesting article on Ron Perelperson We found this on the website of an Indian Newspaper of all places: America's Most Feared Corporate Raider. It's basically a rundown of his business history, but it's significant in that it doesn't mention Panavision!

14 Sept 2005             Counter: 28,564

Meanwhile the search continues for more staff. We've also heard that it's almost impossible to get hold of any of the senior staff at PV Sydney as they're always in endless meetings. Give you one guess as to what they're about:-)

13 Sept 2005             Counter: 28,544

By far the most effective solution is to use a simple motor-driven shutter to blank the light off during the frame transfer period, which is what Philips/BTS did to great effect with some of their cameras.

Ironically, the Arri D-20 would be completely immune to this effect with its reflex shutter system, but as it uses a CMOS sensor, it wouldn't suffer from this problem anyway!

Considering the enormous advantages of having an optical viewfinder system like the D-20, you'd wonder why Panavision didn't so this. Anyway, we hear that Arri are waiting in the wings to see how "Superman Returns" pans out, and if it's satisfactory they're going to come down on them like a ton of bricks!

It's an interesting point that, while the Bayer mask used by the D-20 theoretically won't give as accurate a color rendition as the RGB sensor used by the Genesis, that problem really only occurs when you feed the resultant signal to a TV monitor or similar that's expecting equally-sampled RGB. In most cases the only "receiver" that's going to "see" that signal will be the ArriLaser, which can be software-modified to "expect" the over-sampled green channel. In other words, for film work, there won't be any difference, except that the D-20 will have higher resolution.

With all due respect to our friends at Arri, we still think the whole notion of "Digital Cinematography" is a crock of shit, but we're always ready to be proven wrong. Hasn't happened yet...

8 Sept 2005             Counter: 28,490

We've heard that Arri Sydney have now found premises in the suburb of North Ryde and have pinched at least one guy from PV New Zealand. Word also is that subtle overtures have been made to various staff members of PV Sydney, but nobody seems terribly interested in jumping ship!

27 Aug 2005             Counter: 28,333

Chrissake, how many years are the various manufacturers going to get away with pushing their "revolutionary" products that hardly anybody actually uses?

Take the Kinetta for example. All it is is a 2 megapixel single-chip (sorta) HD camcorder, that's supposed to be a direct substitute for 16mm film. Various Internet discussion forums have separate "Kinetta" sections, all this for a device that nobody has ever actually seen working, and by the looks of it, nobody is ever going to!

Despite the hype, no sign that the Dalsa Origin has found a single customer, nor the Arri D-20 for that matter.

Yes the Genesis is being used on Superman Returns, and PV have defied our best efforts at finding out how much they're actually paying for the privelege. Our money's on SFA but we're always prepared to stand corrected. Where's MR NFP when you need him? Not that he'd know anyway.

12 Aug 2005             Counter: 28,139

The director also explains that, like many big budget films these days, Superman Returns is actually being shot with a digital camera called the Genesis, and that in fact this is the first film to 'really utilize' this specific camera. Designed and built by Sony and Panavision, the Genesis's images, according to Singer, look more like film than any other digital camera to date.

Like "many big budget films"? Obviously Panavision are keeping their success to themselves:-)

9 Aug 2005             Counter: 28,083

Now, not only does the Genesis produce "35mm film" quality, it's actually the equal of 65mm and even IMAX! This despite it having the exact same miserable 1920 x 1080 "HD" resolution of the CineAltas!

This was from an interview at Comic CON 2005 (conducted by www.joblo.com). Most of it is just the usual fan-related stuff, so here's the relevant bit:

What we're doing is shooting the film with something called the Genesis Camera. We're the first film to really utilize this camera. It was built from the ground up by Sony and Panavision to look more like film than any digital camera to date has done and it�s quite fascinating. It's created quite an image. Kind of was spawned from when I did Brandon Routh�s screen test. I did it in both 35mm and 70mm and I looked at the 70mm image and the resolution, and I said, 'God, if we could only shoot this movie in 70mm.' But it's not possible with the way that the cameras, the lenses, the rigs, the processing of the films, it�s just not possible. So the Genesis Camera came the closest to creating something classic, but new. And with a resolution that will blow up to IMAX. You'll be able to project on the side of the biggest building in this town and it will be pretty vivid, pretty clear.

5 Aug 2005             Counter: 28,027

PV have also got something like 100 Cine Altas, most of which are about 6 years old. How many f*cking films of any significance have been made using them? (OK they get used for making lower-budget TV shows, which have been traditionally made on video anyway. That's not what they said back in '99; we've got the copies of AC to prove it!)

Currently the vast majority of enthusiasm for this new "cinematic technique" seems to be generated by people who have neither seen a single frame of Genesis-derived film, nor are likely to be allowed to set foot within several miles of a film set! The vast majority of movies, whether for cinema release or made-for-TV (even cable!) as well as prime-time TV shows, are still shot on plain old 35mm film! Like, do you think those guys are all stupid?! The clowns on some of these "Digi-phile" Web Sites are starting to sound like characters out of those silly religious comics put out by outfits like Jack Chick! That is, the only reason all those hopeless: fornicators, adulterers, liars, cheats, atheists/People who still shoot on film are: like that/do that, is that nobody has actually told them about: Jesus/Digital Cinematography! It couldn't possibly be that they've had a look and said: "no thanks".

(By the way, have you ever wondered why people leave those little comics lying around in washrooms, laundromats and so on? Do the publishers really think that any normal person is going to be in any way influenced by the inane tripe they invariably contain? Of course not. But they do turn over a very nice piece of change selling them in bulk at 15c a copy to the gullible f*ckwits who do....)

For those who came in late as they used to say in the "Phantom" comic strips:-) Our only real interest in all this "Digital Cinematography" bullshit has only ever been to point out that as far as we can see, the whole thing is just a financial smokescreen cooked up by the former PV management, to give the impression that they still have something new and exciting to offer the industry, and so please don't pull the financial rug out from under us just yet!

Panavision maxxed-out their financial credit cards nearly ten years ago, and it never ceases to amaze us that they're still solvent. But they keep pulling these technological rabbits out their that, which seems to keep their financial backers amused enough to let the party run along a little longer. (Do you see our Chick Comic analogy yet? Who exactly is all this "Digital Cinematography" waffle really aimed at...?)

Let's put this old record on one more time. (Maybe we should transfer it to CD before we wear it out:-) How exactly is the Genesis going to make any significant difference to Panavision's financial status? They already have about 80% of the market now anyway - the presence of the Genesis isn't going to magically generate more work - so in a lot of cases, every time a Genesis goes out, that's one less film camera that does.

Pretty much everything else is going to be the same: same lights, same grip equipment, same lenses and so on. So how does effectively replacing a film camera that they own, with one that they have to mostly buy from Sony work towards improving their bottom line?

The other problem is that there are quite a few other potential players in the current "35mm sensor" camera field, who are hanging out to see how this Superman/Flyboys thing works out. Most of them are in a far better technological position than Panavision to exploit this technology, in that they can produce the technology themselves, rather that just buying a Sony-made "black box". Just as VistaVision cameras had considerable success using relatively cheap 35mm still camera lenses, there's absolutely no reason why the same thing can't be done to make a relatively inexpensive competitor to the Genesis.

And make no mistake, the Genesis and most of its current crop of competitors (Dalsa origin, Arri D-20 etc) only produce 1920 x 1080 images, despite all the manufacturers' extravagant claims. So using a premium-quality 35mm cinematography-type lens on one of those is likely to be a waste of money. So what does Panavision really have to offer, apart from its name?

ArriOz slowly materializes Still not too much to report yet. They've registered the domain name www.arri.com.au but at the moment you just get a blank screen. All that's there is a "stub" HTML file that stops you geting a "404" (file not found) message. We do actually have phone numbers and e-mail addresses but we're not sure if they want them publicised, and as we've mentioned on a number of occasions this is not the "ESArri" site, so we won't until they "go public". There is an  info@arri.com.au address, we don't know if it's manned as yet.

We've heard that it's going to be a full rental/sales outpost and that current Arri Australia sales agents Cine Australasia are going to withdraw from Australia to concentrate on their Singapore operation. We've also heard rumors that services of ex-PV Sydney and more recently Camera Collective client contact operative Kate Walton have been secured, making the current line up: Ex CEO Fox Studios Sydney Rod Allan as Managing Director; ex-PV Sydney National Rentals Manager Bill Ross as Rentals Manager, and the aforesaid Ms Kate Walton. Interviews for other staff continue, as does the hunt for premises.

We also hear that PV Sydney are on the move, too, but so far nothing has been decided.

As for the rest of the world; zip!