Arri D-20 Takes the Field
By Michael Goldman
The Arriflex D-20 film-style digital camera system is getting extensive workouts under grueling field conditions these days, with a couple of low-budget features currently using the camera, and the upcoming TNT miniseries about the history of the CIA, called The Company, using it this summer. But independent filmmakers working with New York’s Camera Service Center (Arri-CSC) were the first to get the D-20 in the field earlier this year on two short film projects that will shortly hit the festival circuit.
Milia, a 15-minute short from director Jorge Valdés-Iga, put the camera through its paces earlier this summer, and Boxcar Symphony, a 13-minute short from director Shlomo Godder, used the same camera shortly thereafter—both with help from Arri-CSC and Andreas Weeber, Arri-CSC’s head of digital imaging. Weeber had previously worked at the Arri factory in Germany, and was brought back to New York by the company to introduce the D-20 to the U.S. market. He volunteered to serve as the primary camera operator for Valdés-Iga and his DP, Philipp Friesenbichler, during the making of Milia. Shortly after Milia wrapped, one of the producers on that project, Tim Cruz, asked Weeber to bring the D-20 into the Boxcar Symphony project, working with DP Phil Van, which Cruz was also producing.
They proceeded to use the D-20 tethered to a Sony HDCAM SRW-1 deck, recording at 1080p (4:4:4) resolution, inside a vintage 1910 railroad boxcar at the New England Railroad Museum in Connecticut.
On the production side, Cruz and Godder say they are satisfied with the D-20. Other than limitations in terms of using the camera handheld, and early problems with their generator, which had nothing to do with the D-20, they say the production went smoothly.
“We decided to use Cooke S4 lenses, since we were worried about getting a digital look and felt they would tend to be a bit warmer and softer,” Cruz says. “This is a period piece, and we had researched photographs of the era, and wanted it to have an authentic look. We were worried about that, shooting HD, but what we ended up liking about this camera is the medium format look of the imagery. Most film shot on boxcars in the era this movie takes place was shot on medium format film back in those days. Combining the Cooke lenses with the D-20 and the way we lit things, it allowed us to get that kind of look. The camera does have low ASA, which is why we needed a big lighting package. We ended up going for 50 ASA without any gain. During the day, though, it was perfect. I’ve done shoots with other HD formats, but when we shot into the blacks with this camera, we could really pick up details in the shadows. On the big screen, the details are really there. It looks like medium format film, but cleaner, in my opinion.”
“Obviously, there is no grain, since this is a digital format, but beyond that, we found there was enough color information, latitude, and a shallow depth of field to make it look filmic,” Godder adds. “Not ‘like film’ in the sense of duplicating familiar stocks, but in the sense of looking like a new, mid-range film stock. That’s how it looks to my eyes, anyway.”
Filmmakers finished the piece in Final Cut Pro HD at GRS Systems in Manhattan, N.Y. Editing, however, was a complicated process, according to Cruz and Godder, because of some under-exposure issues that caused filmmakers to struggle with their original down-conversion during editing. This wasn’t a problem related to the camera itself, they hasten to add, but it did slow down parts of the post process.
“Some shots were slightly underexposed, and when we downconverted it, some things essential to the narrative weren’t visible,” Cruz says. “During editing, we did color correction to bump up many of those details for the downconversion, but we didn’t get it all back until we onlined at GRS. They really helped us because this was the first D-20 project onlined in New York, using their SRW-1 deck. We got back a lot of details we thought were lost forever. There was an original exposure problem, and, then, not enough play in the downconversion process to bring it back. The great thing was, during the online, we were able to do more specific color corrections. We have a scene with an old lady dying in the box car, and using FinalTouch HD within Final Cut Pro HD, we were able to isolate her face and make her look more pale—a great makeup job done in the computer. It’s great to have those kind of tools to help when there is a problem, but the original exposure problem would have been a problem even with 35mm film.”
Arri-CSC’s Andreas Weeber, who worked on both Milia and Boxcar Symphony, says such projects are invaluable in furthering the development of systems like the D-20. And, even as the camera is being used on other projects, more changes are on the way, Weeber says.
“There are software changes we’ll do as we learn more about different looks and color characteristics—LUTs that will be slightly modified,” Weeber says. “And there are other features still in the works, like the ability to re-process raw data images on external computers. Then there is the obvious demand for a more compact storage medium on board the camera. Right now, for Steadicam and shoulder work, we are using the Arri Flashmag system (developed out of Thomson’s Venom flash memory recording technology)—solid state storage that we did not yet have available on (Boxcar Symphony). But that is something you remove and download to HDCAM-SR tape. Eventually, tape won’t be the final solution for recording or storage, so we are looking into new versions of hard disc recorders, and making this camera compatible with them.
“But keep in mind this camera is meant to be a film-style technology, and it takes that approach a long way with an optical viewfinder, and having most aspects working just like they would with a film camera. The focus puller does the same thing, the lenses are the same, the matte box, follow focus, all of that stuff. So any additions or changes they make need to be done in a way that keep this film-like approach in mind.”
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