I NTERV I EW | SET- UP
made to shoot Star Wars: Episode II entirely in 24p. Six prototype systems were made and filming started one month later. The rest is history. When George Lucas completed principal photography on Star Wars: Episode III , he used the full prowess of the 24p standard – namely, full bandwidth 4:4:4 RGB 1920 x 1080 @ 24p. POTTED HISTORY Once Sony’s HDCAM cameras shot Star Wars , digital cinematography never looked back – especially Sony’s CineAlta brand as it became known for the very highest benchmark in moviemaking. Through the years, Sony followed the F900 with the F23 and F35 with a bigger sensor. Then the F55 and F5, which looked to be marketed to a wider audience. The F65 entered the market in 2011 with a CMOS sensor measuring 24.7x13.1mm, which generated 4096x2160 pixels. The camera was able to shoot 120fps in 4K with a data rate of 20GB/s. Directors, such as M Night Shyamalan, decided that the appearance of the F65 meant that he could finally say goodbye to film. “I couldn’t be any happier with the F65, which is amazing since I’m a ‘film guy’ and I thought I’d die a ‘film guy’. It’s a digital
media that’s warm and has humanity in it, which is obviously the most important thing to me,” he says. Belle was the first movie in the UK to be shot with the F65 and DoP Ben Smithard commented: “The amount of detail and colour it captures is breathtaking. I wanted the audience to feel the beauty of the 4K images and be involved in the story, and the F65 made that a reality. It really is a camera for the future. I plan to use it again on future film projects.” Thierry Arbogast, AFC and DoP on many of Luc Besson’s films including Fifth Element, shared his experience of shooting with the Sony F65 camera on the movie Lucy : “Until now, Luc has filmed very little in digital – just a few shots here and there for technical reasons and never a whole film. For Lucy , he wanted to take the plunge. There was no doubt that for him a huge draw was the colour fidelity and rendition of skin tones.” VITTORIO STORARO For legendary cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, the Sony F65 was his director’s first taste of digital, too. “When Woody Allen asked me to do Café Society , he’d never done a digital capture. At that time I knew it was a chance to step up to this new digital world,” he says. “I chose the Sony F65 camera so that the image we had on-set was as close to the final image as possible. I
George Lucas asked for comments. At the end of the discussion, he said, Lets do it.
LEFT At this year’s Camerimage Sony was showing how minimal the Venice camera could go with the new extension system on an EasyRig.
DECEMBER 20 1 8 | DEF I N I T ION 09
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