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Writer/director J.C. Khoury and DP Andreas von Scheele filmed their recent feature-length comedy/drama All Relative using two Canon EOS C100 cameras and an array of Canon lenses almost entirely within highly accessible locations in New York City and nearby suburban Westchester County.

“Our Canon EOS C100 cameras provided the compact form factor we needed to move quickly,” von Scheele explained. “We shot in attic bedrooms, in cars, in bathrooms, and other tight spaces. The size of the EOS C100 camera let us experiment much more easily because we could play around with different angles. The EOS C100 camera also has a really nice low-light factor. Without huge, hot lights, light stands, and big crews you can create a much smaller, quieter, and less obtrusive space for the actors to focus on their performances. Plus, the EOS C100 camera gave us the ability to shoot in Canon Log for the picture quality we wanted.”

Khoury added, “We definitely had a lot more freedom than if we had shot with a larger camera and crew, and more lights. The more you add to the production, the more time and money it takes. The Canon EOS C100 cameras are small, they let us shoot with less light, get closer to walls, and they don’t require as many add-ons, so we could tell the story we wanted to tell without needing to make it a massive producing exercise. It’s always nice to have more money and toys to play with, but sometimes when you have limitations it forces you to find creative solutions instead of just throwing more money at the project. I think a lot of filmmakers are embracing smaller productions because they make it easier to tell the story you want told.”

Crafting the image
The outstanding low-light and cinematic imaging capabilities of the Canon EOS C100 camera are made possible by its advanced Emmy Award winning 16:9 Canon Super 35mm CMOS image sensor and the Canon DIGIC DV III Image Processor. This large 8.3 megapixel CMOS sensor also delivers rich color, low noise, and the depth of field control and dynamic range characteristics digital filmmakers prefer.

“I think we shot the entire film at an ISO of 850,” von Scheele recalled. “There were one or two scenes that went to 1000 ISO, but that was more just to get the right aperture than because we needed more light. What was really nice was to be able to shoot with practicals – lights that are part of your set or location – that you can’t control. When you’re on the street you can just shoot with streetlights or whatever illumination is already there. We shot a lot of stuff on the street at night and that was really convenient.”

“Andreas was able to use streetlights and then add some of our own lights to shape the shot and create the proper ratio,” Khoury added. “But it wasn’t like we had to start from scratch with just our own lights for every shot, although we did do that as well in some situations. The ideal is not to be bound by any restrictions presented by the lights that are already there. You can use them and then shape the shot with your own lights.”

“Many of our choices in adding lights were not done to get a better exposure on our Canon EOS C100 cameras, but because we wanted to manipulate the ratio of the light,” von Scheele elaborated. “For me, one of the best qualities of the EOS C100 camera is its three built-in ND filters. It’s important to have an aperture that helps sculpt the characters out of the background. That’s why it’s nice to be able to – in any situation – stop-down on the aperture when you can’t control the presence of too much light. We often shot with three of the ND’s – particularly when we were outside – and even in certain daylight indoor scenes we used an ND 1.”

The Canon EOS C100 Cinema camera features three built-in ND filters (2, 4, and 6 stops, and OFF) that can be deployed using a manual dial. “The ND filters enabled us to basically shoot at a lower f stop and get less depth-of-field so the background would be more out of focus compared to the characters, making them really ‘pop,’ ” said Khoury regarding the bokeh effects he accentuated with those filters.

“Another reason why these ND filters are so great is because they are built into the EOS C100 camera,” von Scheele added. “Instead of having to change external filters in a matte box – which can be time-consuming – you just flick your thumb for the aperture you need.”

Up close
In addition to the Canon C100 Cinema camera’s light-control capabilities and overall compactness (its camera body weighs just 2.2 lbs.), Khoury and von Scheele found that the ability to choose among Canon’s wide range of CN-E and EF-series lenses for the EF-mount Canon C100 Cinema camera was also a major creative advantage for shooting All Relative.

“You can theoretically put almost any still photography lens on the Canon EOS C100 Cinema camera and get great picture quality,” von Scheele noted. “In the indie world this can save you a lot of money. We used the Canon CN-E 24mm, CN-E50mm, and CN-E85mm Cinema primes, the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM ultra-wide-angle, EF 8-15mm f/4L fisheye USM, and EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lenses. The sharpness was very similar, there weren’t noticeable differences, and they all intercut really well.”

“The 24mm and the 50mm made up maybe 90 percent of our shots,” von Scheele continued. “The 50mm was probably the most versatile lens that we had. It has a surprisingly close focus for a Cinema prime. You can get up to 18 inches from an object and still be in focus. You can get a medium two-shot with it and then push in/walk in for a really nice portrait shot.”

The filmmakers relied on their Canon EF 14mm ultra-wide-angle lens, meanwhile, for shots of the Manhattan skyline and establishing shots of the exterior of their suburban location home. “That 14mm wide-angle lens gives you a really amazing sense of space,” von Scheele confirmed. “Architecture looks really nice when you get more of it in the picture, but shooting a house can be hard because a lot of times you can’t really go back that far before you hit the street or another property. You don’t want to show just half a house in an establishing shot. With the Canon 14mm wide-angle lens, however, you can get something that looks impressive and see more of the full house with less distortion.”

The filmmakers explained that the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens was used for a variety of extreme close-ups. “It’s an incredible macro lens,” von Scheele stated. “We used it mostly for pick-up shots of cell phones and things that pushed the story forward, including a golf ball being hit out and pool cues striking pool balls on a table. The Canon EF 100mm macro lens takes very ordinary things and makes them look really beautiful in the way that it handles depth-of-field and allows you to get so close.”

“We also got shots of our characters in bed together in a nighttime attic,” Khoury added. “We used two Canon EOS C100 Cinema cameras at the same time. I was on the 50mm and Andreas was on the 100mm macro getting very close, detailed stuff.”

“We could really isolate – and get great detailed shots of – their eyes with the 100mm macro because you can get in so close, von Scheele agreed.”

Delivering a movie
The Canon EOS C100 Cinema camera features an industry-standard workflow-compatible AVCHD codec, recording 1920 x 1080 HD using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression at data rates of up to 24-Mbps to two SD cards. The filmmakers recorded their footage both to the cards and to an Atomos Ninja 2 HDMI recorder.

“When you’re shooting Canon Log, you really want to get that dynamic range, and the Ninja gives you a little bit more latitude than the cards,” Khoury noted. “The EOS C100 camera makes great images and Canon Log gave us a lot more space and dynamic range to play with. Our images held up quite well in post. At the end of the day audiences don’t walk out of a movie theater saying, ‘I loved the lighting in that third scene.’ What most people really focus on is the story and the performances. The camera and all of the technical stuff is there to support that.”

“All of our Canon equipment worked great,” Khoury added. “These days, you don’t need millions and millions of dollars to make a high-quality movie that people will want to see. The EOS C100 is a great camera when you’re working on a lower budget. Our Canon EOS C100 Digital Cinema cameras really delivered for us.”

Academy Award-nominated director Sebastian Junger (Restrepo, Korengal) and cinematographer Rudy Valdez chose Canon EOS Digital Cinema cameras and lenses for their new documentary The Last Patrol, the third installment of Junger’s trilogy of war documentaries.  The pair of filmmakers relied on the Canon EOS C300 Digital Cinema camera to capture The Last Patrol, which premiered on HBO on November 10, 2014, and is currently airing on HBO.

The Last Patrol follows Junger, photojournalist Guillermo Cervera, and combat veterans Brendan O’Byrne and Dave Roels as they hike the 300-mile stretch of railroad lines from Washington, D.C. to New York City – a trek Junger originally planned with his close friend and acclaimed war photographer Tim Hetherington before Hetherington was killed in 2011 while covering the Libyan civil war.  The goal of the journey was to get to know America again after a decade of war and discuss why combat is so incredibly hard to give up. Because hiking along the tracks is illegal, they moved with a purposeful invisibility designed to echo the isolation felt by many who return from war. 

“‘The Last Patrol’ is a compelling example of the kind of storytelling that the Cinema EOS system was designed to support,” said Yuichi Ishizuka, president and COO, Canon U.S.A., Inc.  “We are honored that the filmmakers selected Canon professional cameras and lenses for their epic project.”

The men lived outdoors and carried all of their own supplies, which presented an unusual challenge for the filmmakers.  

“What I needed was, basically, the ultimate camera,” said Junger.  “Not too heavy, easy to use with numb fingers, good in low light, rugged if you throw yourself in a ditch, and something that delivers absolutely gorgeous cinematography.”

After searching for a camera that would produce a consistent, top-of-the-line image under rough conditions, Junger and Valdez determined the Cinema EOS C300 digital cinema camera was the best option for the job.

“The EOS C300 camera seemed like it was designed specifically for this project,” said Valdez.  “It’s a lightweight camera with a large sensor that works really well in low light.  With the added bonus of being able to shoot in Canon Log, it ended up being a pretty easy decision.”

Carrying the EOS C300 digital cinema camera on his back during the entire trek, Valdez shot using only natural light while the former soldiers and combat journalists dodged rail security and hiked terrain as varied as dense wilderness and urban streets. 

The images Valdez captured exceeded Junger’s expectations: “When we watched the material, I was absolutely speechless.  It all absolutely glowed with a kind of meaning.  That glow came from the machine we were shooting on.”

Valdez rounded out his kit with a set of Canon Cinema prime lenses, including the CN-E24mm T1.5 L F, CN-E50mm T1.3 L F and CN-E85mm T1.3 L F.

“After some days on the trek, I started looking at the camera with a kind of reverence,” said Junger. “It was incredible.  I can’t imagine making this film with any camera that lacked the power and capability of the EOS C300 camera.”

EditShare, which specializes in shared media storage and end-to-end tapeless workflow solutions, announced version 3.2 of Flow, the company’s media asset management platform. Flow 3.2 boasts a score of new features including support for industry-standard 4K codecs; unique file upload and download capabilities that expand the remote collaboration power of AirFlow, the web-based portal into Flow; and new, fully-automated transcoding and delivery options.

“What sets EditShare Flow apart from other enterprise media asset management platforms is its ease of deployment as well as its ease of use for varying skillsets,” said Jeff Herzog, EditShare Flow product manager. “The breadth and depth of Flow features suits the needs of most media workflows without requiring an entire IT department to deploy. Version 3.2 expands the platform’s remote collaboration, automation and delivery capabilities while providing a broad range of enhancements including 4K format support and a high-availability database option enhancing both workflow versatility and end-user experience.”

EditShare Flow 3.2 includes the following new features and workflow capabilities:

Expanded 4K Support
Flow 3.2 adds support for emerging industry-standard formats such as ProRes 4K, RED R3D and XAVC, giving facilities the ability to scan and create proxy files for 4K formats.

Support for Single-File-Per-Frame Formats
Flow 3.2 adds support for scanning DPX, TIF, Cinema DNG, ARRIRAW, PNG and other file types with sequential file names. Flow can make a proxy of the image sequence and treat it as a single clip element.

Support for Up to Six Channels of HD-SDI Ingest in a Single Flow Server
A single Flow server now supports up to six channels of HD-SDI ingest, providing centralized ingest at a breakthrough price.

Support for Closed Captions in MOV format
Flow 3.2 adds support for Closed Captions during ingest of HD-SDI, preserving closed caption data for editing and playout.

Audio-Only File Ingest
Ideal for audio workflows, Flow 3.2 now supports ingest of audio-only from a video file into WAV and AAC formats, with proxy files generated in the background.

Enhanced Remote Collaboration Capabilities
AirFlow users can now upload and download files from a web browser interface, dramatically enhancing collaboration for users connecting remotely. When downloading clips, users can choose either hi-res or proxy resolutions. When uploading clips, users can specify a target media space to ensure that clips go into the desired location on central storage. Once clips are received, Flow Automation can handle further processing such as automatic scanning, transcoding and email notifications that new clips have arrived.

Fully Automated Transcoding and Delivery
New Watch Folders facilitate fully-automated transcoding or delivery workflows, including new delivery via FTP. Flow Watch Folders are compatible with EditShare storage and third-party storage, providing flexible options for moving content between disparate systems.

New High-Availability Database Option
Flow 3.2 now offers a redundant database option. If the primary database goes down for any reason, Flow automatically fails over to the backup database. Once the primary database is back online, Flow switches back and ensures all data is synced.

Flow Project Improvements
Version 3.2 adds the ability to filter contents within EditShare Projects – sequences, clips and folders – making it much easier to find content in large projects. Through Flow Control, Administrators can also now choose which users have permission to create new Flow Projects.

Folder View of Assets
Previously, Flow always presented a flat view of a Media Space, which makes sense for some type of spaces. However, for Managed and Unmanaged Media Spaces, Flow now presents an unflattened view, showing the folder structure that was created by the user.

Individual File Scanning
Flow 3.2 allows the user to add files to a media space, perform a “quick scan” to register the clip in the database, and then select individual files (or a group of files) for a normal scan, which initiates proxy file creation for those files, facilitating faster logging and collaboration.

From 1915, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation and its revolutionary color processes transformed cinema forever. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Technicolor’s incorporation, George Eastman House is curating a blockbuster exhibition and film series, creating an online exhibition, and publishing a landmark book. In addition, an international retrospective of films from the museum’s collection has been jointly curated by Deutsche Kinemathek, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Austrian Film Museum, and will premiere at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February.

The exhibition In Glorious Technicolor, opening January 24, 2015, celebrates the vivid history of one of the most widely recognized names in the American film industry—a company whose revolutionary motion picture color process enabled such Hollywood masterpieces as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939), and Singin’ In the Rain (1952). Composed of stunning visual displays, this exhibition features original artifacts and projected video clips to explore Technicolor’s wide-ranging impact on the form and content of cinema, and draws heavily from the vast Technicolor Corporate Archive now held at George Eastman House.

Highlights will include the company’s evolving camera technology, from its first handcrafted camera from 1916 to the massive Technirama widescreen system of the 1950s. Original costumes, production designs, posters, and photographs will document how color was used creatively and presented to the public, while the vibrant dyes used to create Technicolor’s incomparable “look” will shed light on the science behind the process. Rare tests from Douglas Fairbanks’s The Black Pirate (1926), behind-the-scenes stills from the Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and home movies from the set of The African Queen (1951) will reveal the stars and filmmakers most associated with color. Additionally, the exhibition will honor the achievements of Academy Award–winning cinematographers Ray Rennahan and Jack Cardiff, as well as Technicolor’s often overlooked engineers, whose work remained largely out of the limelight. A Technicolor film series, curated by George Eastman House, will screen throughout the length of the exhibition at the museum’s Dryden Theatre. For more information, visit here.

To complement In Glorious Technicolor, George Eastman House will present two works by British visual artist Aura Satz, whose oeuvre cuts across film, sound, performance, and sculpture. The installation, Eyelids Leaking Light, will feature the US premiere of Satz’s new work, Chromatic Aberration (2014), in which she explores the aesthetics of “color fringing” by using film elements from the Eastman House collection. Chromatic Aberration will be exhibited alongside Doorway for Natalie Kalmus (2013), an audiovisual work that transforms a Bell & Howell color film printer into a grotto of prismatic lights. Eyelids Leaking Light will run concurrently with In Glorious Technicolor through April 26, 2015.

An online version of the exhibition will also be available, made possible in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. To be launched in January 2015, the site will allow users to explore Technicolor’s rich history through original artifacts in the museum’s collections. It will also act as a portal for audiences to engage in other Technicolor centennial celebrations occurring throughout 2015 at the museum, including the film series, gallery exhibition, and book launch. The website will facilitate access to highlights from George Eastman House’s unparalleled equipment and documentation collections that have previously been accessible only to on-site researchers. Creative, corporate, and technological milestones in the company’s history will be illustrated with high-quality digital reproductions of historical artifacts, new animated graphics, and interviews with curators and experts. The multimedia website will be live on January 24, 2015, and can be found by visiting here. 

George Eastman House’s collection of Technicolor films has inspired a film series dedicated to the various Technicolor processes to celebrate Technicolor’s impressive cinematic legacy. A selection of movie masterpieces for an international tour was put together jointly by Deutsche Kinemathek, the Austrian Film Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. The curated program is entitled, “Glorious Technicolor: From George Eastman House and Beyond” and many of the original prints and modern reprints will come from the extensive collection at George Eastman House. The complete series will debut in Germany at the Retrospective of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) inFebruary 2015. It will include thirty Technicolor films from the United States and Great Britain. Additional information on the Berlin festival and the Retrospective section can be found at berlinale.de. Following its premiere at the Berlinale, the film series will be shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria.

As for the allued to book, The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915–1935 is the first detailed history of Technicolor’s formative years. The lavishly illustrated book draws on a wealth of previously untapped internal documentation, studio production files, and firsthand accounts. Written by James Layton and David Pierce and edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai and Catherine A. Surowiec, The Dawn of Technicolor includes the first comprehensive filmography of two-color Technicolor titles. The book will have its official launch during the 65th Berlin International Film Festival within the framework of the Retrospective “Glorious Technicolor.” The 448 page book is available now for pre-order ($65/$58.50 Eastman House members) and will ship by February 1, 2015.