Blackmagic Forum

Hi all - would appreciate any thoughts regarding the pros and cons of my options for shooting a black and white feature film early next year on my BMCC MFT mount.

For me it's a choice between ProRes (I edit with FCPX) and RAW. I realise my options are wider come the edit/grade in black and white as well as colour with RAW, but is the difference enough to be worth it given it's not a colour film?

Equally, I know this is a rookie question but can someone talk me through the fact I'm dropping from 2.5k to effectively 1.9k with the ProRes, with respect to future cinematic projection (I'm intending on sending the film to festivals)? Given it's a "Cinema Camera" is it really silly to have bought it (over, say, a 1080p DSLR) then only use a 1080p mode? Or does the oversampling make a significant difference? (assuming it does oversample for the ProRes).

My big concern is the sheer cost of RAW storage for a feature with any sort of half-decent shooting ratio. It's mind-boggling really; in fact it's encouraging me into the mindset people used to have on low-budget shoots with film, which in some ways I don't think is a bad thing in terms of filmmaking discipline. But at the least we're talking £1k-2k, possibly more; with ProRes it's obviously way less.

If you're worried about the cost of hard drives for a feature, must be in micro-budget territory.

I wouldn't worry about it. Shoot ProRes, use some money saved on better lights and lenses.

Jules

tomyoung wrote:
My big concern is the sheer cost of RAW storage for a feature with any sort of half-decent shooting ratio.

Well, even with my nano budget, storage is not such a big deal. 1tb is enough for 2hs of raw. How many hs would you need? 6-8? It's not THAT crazy expensive. You could also cineform the DNGs to save some space.
Raw does need a pretty powerful machine though to be time efficient.

Nicolas Belokurov wrote:

tomyoung wrote:
My big concern is the sheer cost of RAW storage for a feature with any sort of half-decent shooting ratio.

Well, even with my nano budget, storage is not such a big deal. 1tb is enough for 2hs of raw. How many hs would you need? 6-8? It's not THAT crazy expensive. You could also cineform the DNGs to save some space.
Raw does need a pretty powerful machine though to be time efficient.

1 TB is enough for 2 hours of RAW? I think I've been miscalculating then. Maybe not so bad.

In terms of the powerful machine - I'm actually struggling a bit as I experiment with the workflow at the moment. I'm on a Macbook Pro 2011 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, 4 GB memory. Da Vinci Resolve processes the RAW files OK (although I can't get the LUTs to work properly for some reason despite following the guide to the letter) but they're obviously stuttery, as I expected. But I imagine once it reprocesses out the other end (once I've XMLed via FCPX for the edit) it's gonna take a LONG time. On the other hand, I haven't actually managed to get the workflow to work yet anyway so I'm not entirely sure. Bit of a steep learning curve for an ex-Sony V1 user!...

RAW 2.5k is worth the effort for your B&W feature.

2.5k gives you a better 1080 picture from downsampling, and RAW gives you much more flexibility in creating your B&W look. You can also develop several diferent exposures of RAW and combine them in your NLE, Resolve or your compositor, and come up with some great B&W images.

You should take a look at this book, it might give you some ideas:

While RAW would be ideal, if you do it right in camera ProRes should have more than enough latitude to grade most things and you may well get some improvement elsewhere looks wise if you spend it on other things.

As for resolution theres not likely to be all that much difference if your are handing over a 2k or 1080p master picture wise whichever you use.

If you are worried about storage, then doing some test shoots to help you lock in your look, so you know what lighting makes the colour correcting easiest, then you can dispense with the bulk of the RAW and use the more workflow friendly ProRes. This of course assumes your shooting plans will allow you the control of lighting to this degree. (if you can get costume and makeup in thats great, as is cast, easy to get a set that looks awesome, only for it to make one of your leed roles look aweful due to your grade, and knowing how various easially changable things like lipstick shades behave in various grades is great. Yes it can be done in post but if you can remove even one secondary in the grade by a simple change on set and you know this before you shoot why not do it then. Worth doing even if shooting RAW in fact.

There is the option where the odd scene isnt as easy to lock down in camera look wise to shoot those couple in RAW and the rest in ProRes and use the extra latitude to match the rouge shots n.

Don't forget you should be storing several backups of footage, requirements vary but 2 seperate backups plus the working copy (unlikely to be RAW especialy with CinemaDNG) is common enough.

Go for RAW if you can meet the storage and workflow requirements. But if meeting the cost of RAW causes you costs that would provide a greater improvement elsewhere, then it may be worth spending it there. Thats a sum its tricky to help with here.

I done a rough HDD storage budget for shooting a 90mins feature before, and the prices for the hard drive is not as much as you would imagined, but shooting PRORES obviously saves loads of money. This is based on a shooting ratio of 1:20 which is high for a narrative feature, and only considers the price of the Hard Drive (HDD), excluding the enclosing and others. Hope you will find it useful.

On BlackMagic Cinema Camera 2.5K

RAW:
256GB=30mins Raw Footage,
1hr Raw=512GB, 1.5hr Raw=768GB

If shooting 1:20 Ratio=30hr of footage
768x30=23040GB=20.04TB
Plus Proxy, export, etc=24TB

4TB HDD=130GBP on amazon.co.uk

24TB= 6 x 4TB=780GBP

One Extra Full Backup will be another 780GBP

-----------------------------------
PRORES:
256GB=150mins Prores
1hr Prores=102.4GB
1.5hr Prores=153.6GB

If Shooting Ratio of 1:20=30hr Footage
102.4x30=3072GB=3TB
Plus Export, etc=4TB

4TB HDD=130GB on amazon.co.uk

Thanks very much for those extremely helpful replies, that book looks perfect!

The kicker with RAW is the backup. There's no way I'm going to make a feature without full backup obviously, and it basically doubles costs. Now that's true of ProRes too, but it makes RAW extremely high in micro-budget terms.

The frustrating thing on a micro-budget (well probably even on low budget) is it's very hard to get opportunities to test things out where it really counts - to see end-point workflows on a large cinema screen. That said, the second poster up above has made me think it's well worth testing things pretty extensively in terms of specific scenes, and I do have access to an excellent HD 1080p projector which is a start.

If anyone was able to chip in with an opinion as to whether I'm crazy to think about a feature just using a MacBook Pro that would also be appreciated...it seems to me it's literally possible (I know I won't be able to use DaVinci Resolve in real time but that doesn't necessarily matter) but I have a feeling that waiting for processing is going to be astronomic amounts of time.

I'd also like to say thank you for the book tip - already pre-orderd the German version which will be available mid November.

Tom, some more thoughts I'd like to layout here for you:

Recently I recorded 3 operas (each well over 3 hours) with 3 cameras. For the wide shot I used my BMCC recording to a 500 GB SSD in ProRes film mode. Because the wide shot was stationary and left unmanned and the light condition would vary extremely in-between the acts the BMCC was the camera of choice for that job. The resulting images are detailed and sharp, the dynamic range is great. Even my client who has no experience with cameras said immediately after watching the first pictures 'Wow, looks great'.

So the ProRes option is definitely a valid choice for your project.

If you really want to go for RAW than you should try to limit the shooting ratio to about 1:7 (with experienced director, actors and some rehearsing easily possible to reach). I have never seen that take 20 became better than take 3 or 5 or maybe 10.

So for a 90 min feature you would get away with about 0.5 TB x 1.5h x 7 = 5,25 TB (or 7,5 TB with 1:10). That means 2x Raid-5 with 4x 3 TB harddrives (Western Digital RED)
Each drive costs about $100, together $800.
Consider the external storage cases like a Synology DS413 (4-bay, LAN GB, USB3.0) for about $400 each, together $800.
That gives you 2x 9 TB of very usable and reliable storage for $1.600.
That should fit even a very tight budget.