Back in August, Televisual gathered a small crew and headed over to Amsterdam for a short film called “The Red Coat”, with the goal of shooting for HDR delivery and really testing the Panasonic VariCam Pure (with Codex V-RAW recorder) and the full range of Fujinon HK Premier and ZK and XK Cabrio cine-zooms.
Inspired by the cult 70’s psycho/horror/drama “Don’t Look Now”, the footage for “The Red Coat” was recorded onto Codex drives as V-RAW using a total 1.2TB of storage. According to Televisual, the drives were regularly swapped over with the RAW assets reviewed on the new Atomos Sumo 19 HDR monitor/recorder and backed up to the new Codex 8TB Transfer Drive while rendering a second H264 viewing copy and backing up to SSDs.
Check out the SDR Vimeo version of the short film below:
Crew:
- Cinematographer: Steve Lawes
- 1st AC: Ben Margitich
- 2nd AC Gabriel Jones
- Sound recordist: Francesco Corazzi
- DIT/Producer/Director: Gary Palmer
- Colourist: Matt Watson
You can see the Behind the Scenes video below, in which the director and AC discuss the benefits of using the Fujinon zooms and shooting with the Varicam PURE for a 4K HDR delivery.
Panasonic VariCam PURE Specs/Highlights
| Recording Resolution | 4096 x 2160 (4K), 3840 x 2160 (UHD) |
|---|---|
| Recording Frame Rate Maximum |
120 fps or 100 fps |
| System Frequency | 59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 24p, 23.98p |
| Recording Format | VRAW 4K 12 bit / 4K 10 bit / UHD 12 bit / UHD 10 bit |
| Recording Video Signal | 4096×2160/59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 24p, 23.98p 3840×2160/59.94p, 50p, 29.97p, 25p, 23.98p |
| Recording Time with 2TB Capture Drive |
4K 12 bit / 23.98 fps: 100 min. 4K 10 bit / 23.98 fps: 112 min. 4K 10 bit / 120 fps: 22 min. UHD 12 bit / 23.98 fps: 106 min. UHD 10 bit / 23.98 fps: 119 min. UHD 10 bit / 120 fps: 23 min. |
According to cinematographer, Steve Lawes, working with the VariCam was a joyful experience.
The dockable Codex raw recorder makes for a nice package, in addition to having the advantage of shooting with V-RAW, which gives you 14+ stops and being 4K meeting the requirements of the larger broadcasters and the online streaming companies like Amazon or Netflix.
The layout of the camera is quite intuitive and I know Ben [Margitich, First AC] really likes the control panel that he can have wherever he wants on the side. The VariCam image has got an organic look that I like with good colour tonality and a cinematic aesthetic.
Recording for HDR requires lenses that are fast and sharp enough to avoid ghosting or other artifacts and deliver consistent and true blacks for the sensor to capture. The HK Premier 14.5-45mm and 18-85mm at T2.0 proved fast enough to use with available light at night and delivered really nice bokeh and shapes at the back of shot along with deep blacks and vivid colour reproduction.
To read more about “The Read Coat” and how it was shot for 4K HDR delivery, head over to Televisual’s blog here.
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Is it just me or is this video sort of well.. not too impressive looks wise?
Totally agree. Somewhat…. videoish
Completely unimpressive. If my camera produced results like that I would be worried. Had no filmic qualities. I’m not liking a lot of the images that are being produced with the Varicam or the new EVA1. Right now I only know of one good example of the Varicam line is Netflix’s Master of None S2. Any others?
Dull, unimpressed.