Billups used a Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media camcorder for a new episode of Bones Detectives for the Discovery Channel

Visual effects specialist Scott Billups recently wrapped photography for green-screen mattes-using a Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media camcorder with Canon HD wide-angle lens-that provided photo-realistic scenes of ancient times for a new episode of Bones Detectives entitled “Shadow of the Sun Lord” for the Discovery Channel. The show was delivered on a 1 TB G-Tech RAID-protected hard drive.
As visual effects supervisor for the show (he also directed three others in the 12-part series), Billups shot scenes of actors against a green screen background from a jib on a soundstage in Sherman Oaks, CA, using the Infinity’s uncompressed HD-SDI output.

Q: Why did you choose the Infinity for this project?
A: These episodes involve a lot of electronically inserted effects, so it was the right camera for the project. It provides a clean video signal, which was really important for this job. There are two things that are important for pulling a good chromakey: [one is] good color rendition and the other is the cleanness of the signal-no noise. That’s why digital technology is so much better for effects work than film. Noise is what gives you junk on the edges and makes a compositor’s job harder.

When doing effects, a HD digital frame in NTSC would be cleaner than a 4K film image, because it doesn’t have as much noise artifacting.

The Infinity proved to be superior to other cameras on the market because it uses the latest digital technology, that is, CMOS [2/3-inch, Thomson-developed Xensium] imagers, compression algorithms, and removable storage. I’ve found that the older the technology, the noisier it is. Right now the two cameras that provide the cleanest output, in my opinion, are the Infinity and the Red One cameras.

Q: The Infinity offers three selectable compression modes (DV, MPEG-2 I-frame, and JPEG2000). Which compression did you use?
A: Well I would have used JPEG 2000, but for this I recorded straight out of the camera, as an uncompressed 2K image to an AJA Video KONA3 card in a MacPro tower. With the KONA card I’m able to record all of the information coming from the camera. There’s nothing wasted. And with the KONA card I’m putting it into a color space that’s larger than the original data stream. Of course we needed several SCSI cards with 6 TB of storage. I have a complete workstation on a portable cart that I can roll into the studio and roll back to my edit suite.

Q: What about Rev Pro cartridges? How did they hold up during production?
A: Well, I’ve heard good things about the format, but I didn’t do the edit on this show, so I didn’t use it personally. I know they used JPEG2000 compression to store the straight narrative scenes on Rev Pro disks and the footage looked great. And we didn’t lose any data, so that was a big plus.

As for the Infinity camera, it worked extremely well for me. We were in the studio pushing it all day long and never had any issues with heat or reliability. I am very impressed with the camera’s performance and it’s ease of use. When I’m in the studio, I have so many other things to think about that I don’t want to have to take time to find the features I need. On the Infinity, it’s well laid out. I call it “idiot-proof.” A lot of people like the bells and whistles, but that’s not what this business is about. For me, it’s getting the job done as efficiently and sensibly as possible.

Now the form factor of the camera can be improved, in my opinion. Here we have a really advanced camera in the body of a 1990s camcorder. I wish it were smaller.

Q: You used a Canon wide-angle HDGC KH 10ex3.6 IRSE ½-inch lens. Why?
A: Well, we were working in a short-throw studio and I like to go in there and go wide if I need it. I worked on a jib shooting downward and this Canon lens worked superbly. It’s a great lens.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about HD production?
A: HD is a marketing buzzword. Anything with one more raster than PAL (525 lines) is considered high definition in my book. It’s really about digital production, and where you get the greatest advantage in using digital is in visual-effects work. If you’re not doing visual effects, it’s cheaper to do it on film, half the time. A dialogue-heavy script is better served on film.

For more information on Scott Billups, visit http://www.Pixelmonger.com.