Curtis Clark, ASC, recently signed on as a director/DP at bi-coastal (LA-NY) GO film. Clark intends to specialize in tabletop cinematography for commercials.

Wanting to create material for his transition into directing, Clark recently directed a spec spot using the Dalsa Origin 4K digital camera. “It coincided with new convergences and the availability of equipment like the Codex Digital recorder,” he says. “That opened up interesting possibilities, such as putting the Dalsa Origin on a motion control rig.”

Clark chose Michelob Ultra Light as the topic of his spot. “I wanted to do a beer commercial,” he says. “And I quite liked the graphics of the bottle and the label. They seemed to fit in with the tone of the color schemes I wanted to deal with, which was silver/aluminum metallic and blue.”

Storyboards were conventional, not digital, for a story that follows the journey of a bottle that appears out of blackness. The bottle emerges into frame, twisting and exits camera left. Next comes a montage of elements: the pouring, extreme close-ups of the foam and carbonation. The end shot is the beer-filled glass, with the empty bottle sliding in next to it.

Although numerous short projects have used the Dalsa Origin (including a Black Eyed Peas video directed by Jesse Dylan at the same time Clark was shooting his spot), this would be a first putting the camera in a motion-control rig. Clark also planned to shoot at 36 fps, another first for the Dalsa Origin. “The Dalsa people wanted me to find material to shoot that would further test all the camera’s attributes,” he says. “It would also test the 4K post production pipeline.” J.P. Flack designed the sets; VFX work was done at Sight Effects in Venice, and the entire post-production was done at Post Logic Studios, which played a big role in creating the 4K post-production pipeline.

“It became an intricate team of critical parts that came together, to see if we could enable the Dalsa Origin to realize its significant image quality and capture characteristics all the way through the pipeline,” says Clark. “By going through all the issues, we’d have a commercially deployable system.”

Motion control photography was done at the Burbank-based Image-G, using its Bulldog rig. “We had to resolve how to synchronize the move with the camera frame rate,” says Clark. “This was done by very carefully controlling synch of the timecode between the moco rig and the camera itself. You have to assure a high degree of precision in controlling the motion control movement with what the camera’s frame rate. We knew that this was one of the things that would need to be fine-tuned, and indeed we did that.”

Another issue was ensuring that the original camera synch related to the EDL for conforming. “Assumptions you take for granted in film aren’t always the case in data-driven camera work,” says Clark. “You can’t take for granted with a digital film workflow. When there’s no keycode like there is on film, you have to rely on camera-generated timecode, linked to the original source material. With file-based workflows, you have potential issues with file conversions between camera originals and the edit system, as well as conforming off the original system, which in this case were TIFF files. It’s easy to lose the timecode reference inadvertently because of the potential complexities of how the file conversions are done.”

Clark points out that this issue isn’t unique for the Dalsa Origin but intrinsic to shooting with digital cameras that record out to disk rather than tape. He eliminated the problem “by understanding exactly how to do file conversions a certain way to make sure the material maintained the integrity of timecode throughout the process.” The offline was accomplished with Final Cut Pro HD.

Visual effects-mainly compositing-were done at Sight Effects in Venice, led by VFX supervisor Adrian Hurley. Post Logic Studios’ DI artist Lou Levinson did the color correction with a Filmlight Baselight system. The final conform was also done at Sight Effects, using Autodesk Inferno.

Clark was very pleased with the results. “We had a tremendously high image quality in terms of resolution, obviously without grain, so there are certain significant benefits in terms of compositing, which involved multiple layers,” he says. “And of course we had a quicker easier access to visual effects because you’re already in a digital environment without telecine or scanning. We were also able to generate virtual real-time 1K playbacks on set from the original raw data.” Next go-around with the Dalsa Origin, Clark plans to use color management tools, including the potential of on-set color correction. His conclusion? “The Dalsa Origin lived up to my expectations.”