Digital, Cinematography & Art

The other night, I was lucky enough to go to a UK premier event for "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" (GotG2), organised by the British Cinematography Society and sponsored by RED. This was held at the Regent Street Cinema, which opened as the first cinema in England in 1986. Apart from being a very entertaining film, GotG2 is remarkable because it is the first film made with RED's 8K Weapon camera which is currently the world's highest definition digital cine-camera.

The reason that the event was so interesting, was that there was a live interview with Henry Braham the chief cinematographer involved in making the film. This gave real insight into why the makers decided to use this particular camera, the overall design process and some of the practicalities involved in making such a visually stunning, high action film with multiple special effects.

For someone who is not involved in the film industry, it was startling to learn that typically such a film will involve a global team of close on 15,000 people. This means that all those endless credits at the end of a film only really represent the tip of the iceberg and making a film is at a similar level of complexity to designing and building a large item of capital equipment like a ship or an oil rig.

I also learnt that it took over 3 months to plan out the main scenes in terms of what the scene involves, who moves where, the angles from which the shots will be made, how the camera or cameras are going to be positioned and moved, as well as what the lighting arrangements will be to create the right visual story. Then there is a lot of interaction with the other departments, e.g. costumes and make up, to ensure that the overall visual intent will come together coherently. Furthermore there is a lot of testing to validate that the camera will perform in the intended conditions and to ensure that the limits of the camera's functional capabilities are understood.

Then there is the organisation of the shooting at the various sets used and continuous validation of the footage shot by review in on site min-cinemas, even before the footage goes for full special effects processing.

Overall, it seems that the film industry got to Agile Development and Continuous Integration before the software industry. It also validates a metaphor I sometimes use to explain to non IT people that project managers are like film producers, solution architects are like film directors and requirements are like a film script. But it also brought home, how despite all the technology and the automation involved in making a film, the creative process is still subject to the laws of physics and still needs a huge investment of skill and artistry to deliver. Jobs may have changed, but technology has not made people obsolete.