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Westeros Blog: For the Cinephiles


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A tweet from Jonathan Chang, Digital Media Coordinator as HBO’s Studio West, notified us to the fact that he has rough cuts of the first five episodes on hand. According to his Formspring page, he is “someone who puts security onto DVDs, makes tape dubs, edits clip reels and such.”

While tweeting back and forth, he offered this interesting detail for those who really want technical details on the production: the production is being shot digitally, using something like nine on-location Arri Alexa cameras. This is a change from the original pilot filming, where we reported that ARRICAM Lite and Arriflex 235 cameras were in use. As Chang noted (and as we’ve previously reported), much of the pilot has been reshot using this new system. Looking around, it seems like the Arri Alexa system went into production in late 2009. The Alexa is described as a system aimed at competing with the RED ONE system, shooting greater than 1080p resolution and aimed squarely at major theatrical and television productions.

By way of comparison, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire—with its first episode directed by executive producer Martin Scorsese—uses 35mm film with Panaflex cameras.

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I love ARRI, it's what I learned on in film school. Of course those were 1940's vintage 16mm cameras with fixed lenses, but they still shot awesome pictures and worked like a dream. Looks like the price point on this camera is in the same range as the Red One, which is just amazing...but they had to do it, least Red One take over the entire industry.

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Roland Emmerich's not-blowing-up-the-world movie Anonymous, set in 16th century England and concerning itself with political intrigues around who'll succeed Elizabeth I as well as the "true" authorship of Shakespeare's plays (hint: not Shakespeare; the Earl of Oxford is the primary character).

Here Emmerich's VFX producer/supervisor talks about the results of camera tests using the Alexa and the RED MysteriumX (both basically in beta at this point in time), and basically he says they're absolutely fabulous, film is dead (probably overstating that a bit), and there's really no telling between them.

One of the interesting aspects of the Alexa is that it can record in Apple's native high-end codecs, so you can basically go straight from camera to Final Cut Pro or other compatible editing suites and start editing. _And_ you can dual record in that format plus ARRI's RAW format for highest possible resolution -- immediately edit the 1080p recording, then just export the time codes and the like and you can automatically edit the uncompressed, raw material. Seems very, very handy for a speeded-up work flow.

A few more words with Mr. Chang revealed that GoT is pretty much on the cutting edge for HBO, going all-digital like this -- almost all their other productions are film. That said, he is of the opinion (and maybe HBO's Studio West in general shares it) is that film will remain king for a good long time at HBO. This reminds me that just the other day a collaborator with Christopher Nolan and one of his favorite DPs basically said they were film die hards and you'd have to pry film cameras from their cold, dead hands.

I noted to him that Scorsese briefly flirted with going 16mm for Boardwalk Empire, BTW, which boggled me -- and I think surprised him. He said it's a period piece, so maybe they could have gotten away with it ... but he wasn't sure it would hold up in HD. Which is probably part of the reason Scorsese decided to go with 35mm (but with added grain and some other tweaks).

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It looks like Scorsese is planning to shoot "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" in 3D on the Alexa. The book is incredible and it's interesting (and I think noteworthy) that Scorsese is going with the latest cinema technology on a movie that celebrates the very earliest movies ever made.

16mm is just fine for TV, even for HD transfer probably. The quality is still very high even when you blow it up to a big screen size. Most TV was shot on 16mm for a very long time, but even "The Wire" was shot on 35mm and if any HBO show was shot 16mm, it probably would have been that.

Just looking at the tech specs on the camera, too. It's interesting it can record in the two formats at once, but it makes sense (probably standard for the high end stuff...I wouldn't know). My camera records in AVCHD format, which is murder on digital editors (very choppy to view) so that you have to render a proxy file in a lower format before you can edit. It's really annoying and adds a lot of time and complexity to the process especially when you have a lot of big, long files to work with. This basically gives you an original and proxy format at once, so you don't have to waste rendering time.

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