06-05-2019 - Case Study
"The Shoot" by Jeff Berlin - Sony VENICE and Scorpio FFA Full Frame 2x Anamorphic Primes
By: Jon Fauer, Jeff Berlin
By Jon Fauer and Jeff Berlin
The Shoot is a short fashion film shot by DP and Sony Artisan of Imagery Jeff Berlin. It was shot Full Frame with the Sony VENICE and Scorpio Full Frame 2x Anamorphic lenses. It opened on the big Sony Crystal Display screen at NAB 2018 and played again on the big screen in the Paramount Theater during CineGear 2018.
Jeff explained, “The Shoot was shot 16-bit linear in X-OCN ST at ISO 500 and ISO 2500. To highlight Dual Base ISO, we had a camera with an advance version of Firmware Version 2.0, which introduced that feature. We used Servicevision Scorpio Full Frame Anamorphic 2x Lenses, taking advantage of the full 24mm height of the VENICE sensor, resulting in really beautiful images.
“I was approached by Sony to create a short film to highlight both how the VENICE camera translates skin tones and Dual Base ISO, so we came up with the idea to shoot a fashion video. Proper casting was critical, so I called the owner of a model agency I knew from the days when I lived in Milan, and I booked models with different skin tones and the right look.”
“I did the color grade at Technicolor with colorist David-Aaron Waters. We graded for 8K HDR and 4K SDR using Sony BVM-X300 reference monitors. Output was DPX and ProRes. We also did a DCI-P3 grade in SDR at Bertone Visuals for theatrical projection at CineGear.”
Jeff Berlin, left, directing the models
“My roots shooting fashion, beauty and celebrity portraits heavily inform my sensibilities as a cinematographer. As such, I’m particularly critical of how models and actors look on camera, so naturally, skin tone, texture and lens characteristics are crucial to me. The Servicevision Scorpio FFA lenses, supplied by Keslow Camera, were the perfect choice for this short. They were sharp but creamy, even painterly, and shot wide open for very shallow depth of field, looked beautiful paired with the Full Frame Sony VENICE.”
How Full Frame 2x Squeeze works:
The Full Frame 6K 3:2 (1.5:1) 6048 x 4032 Imager Mode of Sony VENICE covers the entire sensor area of 36.2 x 24 mm.
The Scorpio FFA 2x Anamorphic lens squeezes the 2.39:1 projection image to a 1.195:1 aspect ratio on the image sensor. (2.39 ÷ 2 = 1.195) The squeezed image is full height, 24mm. But the active image area does not have to be as wide as the Full Frame sensor, 37.4. It is actually 28.68mm wide. The additional picture width is cropped in post.
