4K on the Way
by Patty Mooney
Crystal Pyramid Productions
It was a day like most others in San Diego – warm and sunny with a slight breeze off the Pacific Ocean – when the video crew drove down the I-805 into a suburb south of the city known as Chula Vista (or “Chula Juana” to San Diego natives.) Years ago, when we had first met in the early 1980’s, Director of Photography of Crystal Pyramid Productions, Mark Schulze, and I used to fire off our hand-constructed cardboard rockets in barren dirt fields. Now, in that same area, here were these rows upon rows of new tract homes with random parcels of grassy parks thrown in for good measure.
We arrived at the address where we would be filming, parked the car, and knocked on the door. We were greeted by a very friendly family that would soon be the topic of our broadcast shoot.
Our team of three set up a Red Epic camera and attached all the camera support items needed including the Mattebox with filters, and lit for the interview. The client wanted us to set up the camera to shoot in 4K. Why? Because this would eliminate the need for a second camera and second camera operator.
This is one of today’s biggest trends in the video production world. We now have the capability in one camera such as the Red Epic and our newly-acquired camera, the Sony PXW-FS7, to shoot in such high resolution that the editor can just zoom in to any shot and get multiple shots out of one camera without any visible loss of resolution when delivering in HD. You can even print out giant stills from raw footage that look amazing. Sony, Canon, JVC and other camera giants, have now hopped aboard this bandwagon.
Is that the way we’re heading? Or will 4K fade away like 3D cameras and TVs? If you, too, had attended the NAB 2015, you would have been able to check out the Arriflex Alexa, AJA Scion, the Blackmagic URSA and URSA Mini, which looked a lot like a Sony FS7 knock-off, and a score of others. Judging by the number of new cameras now on the market with 4K technology and up, it looks like another revamp of all peripheral support may be impending. Remember moving from Standard Def to HD? What an upheaval that was.
So back to the Chula Vista shoot. We spent several hours at their home shooting the interview of the family, and then B-Roll of them engaged in various activities: eating breakfast, watching television, doing homework, and then taking a walk to the park near their home. The footage was so clean, so clear, that you felt you could put your hand through the monitor and enter the scene. And of course the client loved it.
Isn’t technology remarkable? One day you’re a kid tuning into your favorite cartoon in the 1960’s on a Saturday morning. It’s a small black and white TV with “rabbit ears” on the top and if you want to change the channel (you have a choice of five) you have to get up and do it manually. From time to time the vertical hold might “let go” and then the picture will continue to roll upward. If the picture gets fuzzy or audio goes out, then Dad gets up to bang on the side of the television, and everything is fine again. There is a finite number of hours in the day during which you can watch TV, because the broadcast service goes off at midnight after which there’s nothing but the hiss and look of “snow” or a test pattern.
Even with all the technological changes we have raced through exponentially during the last several decades, I wonder, have we really changed all that much? We’re still that same family enjoying each other’s company, a nice big bowl of popcorn and watching something “good” on TV.
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Patty Mooney is VP, Video Producer and Editor at San Diego’s award-winning video production company, Crystal Pyramid Productions.
