BBC to "allow" Super 16 for HD broadcast

[Nicholas Kovats]

Some famous UK film directors have been successful in petitioning the BBC to "allow" Super 16 film for UK broadcast, i.e. http://www.screendaily.com/territories/ ... ntID=40294

Here is a copy of their letter from this past spring, i.e. http://www.screendaily.com/Journals/201 ... Yentob.pdf

Shoot film!

[JeremyC]

Thanks for posting this but its a strange little saga. Just a few days back I was talking with a guy from the beeb who deals with small format film i.e. transferring it. I mentioned to him the whole thing about the BBC stopping taking commissions in film and his reply was that this had never been so, which surprised me as I am sure I had been at a conference session at IBC in Amsterdam years ago where Andy Quested, the beeb's HD guru, had said to us all that the beeb was no longer commissioning stuff on film. If I remember correctly the reason given at the time was that film 'interfered' with the compression system used to distribute transmission to the transmitters around the country and I also seem to remember sitting there puzzling through why film grain (random distribution) would cause problems with a DCT based compression system.

However, the years roll by and the BBC continued to show Spooks (MI5 in the US) which, wait for it, was shot in Super 16 for its entire 10 seasons and whats more when the promoting its HD channel start up the BBC centred its advertising of the joys of HD by using Spooks as a perfect example of viewing in HD!!!!!

Now if my memory is correct and the BBC did say it was no longer commissioning on film because of film's 'effect' on the transmission chain can anyone reading this in the UK tell me if they ever, ever saw problems when Spooks was on-air in either SD or HD.......................?

But aside from using Spooks as an example, along with my not very reliable memory, the BBC also shows movies (film), history docos (lots of old scratchy film there) and station idents, promos etc shot on film. But, as I do not watch that much television perhaps I have missed the BBC going off air over the past six years or so every time it put one frame of film to air.

So what was this whole BBC-film-phobia about? Was it just that some key 'decision makers' felt that film didn't fit with the BBC and the brave new world of broadcasting and those people have now moved on so film can come out of its BBC bunker or was there a real technical reason or something else entirely. Can anyone enlighten me?

[Pj]

Hi

For the past few years the BBC has been actively persuading producers and even forcing many not to use Super 16mm mainly because many there are from engineering backgrounds and they just don't like film whatever the format, they also want to be seen as modern and progressive. For many there Super 16's grain was too much, too random and they prefer the ultra clean images derived from digital, a technology that's rational and logical which the engineers could understand with ease.

For me the grain is what adds texture and gives Super 16 it's beauty and charm and making its images more real and life like, after all life isn't ultra clean!

Pav

[JeremyC]

Hi

For the past few years the BBC has been actively persuading producers and even forcing many not to use Super 16mm mainly because many there are from engineering backgrounds and they just don't like film whatever the format,

Pav

Hey! I'm one of those from an 'engineering background' in broadcasting who, as well as EM'ing lots of TV shows and 1000's of hours of racking (shading for you in the US), worked on broadcast cameras down to component level. None of that exposure has lessened my love of film. My broadcast engineering colleagues also like film however I do find the people who 'enjoy' working with servers and similar systems in broadcasting don't seem to notice much about images while the gadget boys and girls in television (I'm an engineer not a gadget boy) get attracted to the latest thing be it physical or jargon based. This isn't a just UK thing but I've also noticed it when working with my American colleagues.

Part of the reason could be that so much long form production is now outsourced and the only production gadget boys and girls come into contact with is fast turn around stuff (i.e. camera to server to post to air) or live so don't have any experience with drama or documentary led production and its much safer talking in jargon.

But I also think you don't understand the dynamics of television, since when is a producer going to let an engineer tell them what to do and as I said the producers at Kudos ignored the BBC wrt to film and Spooks.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Excellent point and observations from both of you.

I suspect the tremendous consumer imaging space impacted BBC management.

Jeremy, I think you are referring to a process (digital video) as opposed to a traditional craft (film). There is little patience for craft be it exposure, framing, development, grain, lighting, transport, etc. Convenience trumps the entire production chain and the false propaganda of expensive film.

Film's ability to render an accurate color space are legendary. The amount of monies spent in post production rectifying color space issues is mote. Me thinks a critical financial analysis is needed. Have post production costs actually decreased? I suspect not.

The "democratization" of cheap digital hardware reducing analog phenomenon to approximated bits has churned out more footage than can be reasonably consumed/watched. There is tremendous hubris associated with ownership as opposed to craftsmanship. There is a tremendous herd mentality in creating push button imagery. Exposure? What's that? Can I buy it online? In silver?

[carllooper]

There was a report a while back about grain interferring with compression systems and for that reason they wouldn't be doing film, but as I understood it at the time (that I heard the report) that reason was a short lived problem, and was subsequently resolved.

I imagine when they were first testing compression of film transfers they were using a simple compressor not specifically designed for film. Compression relies on frequency domain correlations across the image and temporal correlations between frames. Grain is random so a simple compressor would end up reading the grain as information that it needs to keep, rather than as redundant information it could otherwise abandon. The result is that the signal can have trouble being compressed to the same stream size compared to video. The output signal can be regarded as too "heavy", ie. breaking byte budget limits. But worse than this - if the compressor was pushed to the target stream size the results could be god awful as the grain would interfere with the correlations for which a compressor is looking. Instead of compression occuring more 'organically' (where artifacts would be less visible) they'd be occuring evenly and randomly across the entire frame.

A good compressor would be one that degrained the film first (not entirely but enough to meet a particular byte budget). I imagine this is what they would have ended up realising and doing just that.

C

[JeremyC]

Nobody seems to have noticed the point I made of the irony surrounding Spooks. If I had been a member of that lobby group I would've just taken a copy of Spooks to the meetings with the BBC and left it propped it up in front of me on the desk without saying a word. Plus I might have added the BBC series, Merlin, of which the engineering colleague on the desk next to me provided post support to when working in Soho (yes another of those 'engineering colleagues who supposedly 'hates' film, sigh, and is magically able to direct the decision making of BBC executives [snigger]) and he told me that out of the million or so feet of Fuji film the last series used over £ 70,000 worth of silver was reclaimed.

Excellent point and observations from both of you.

Jeremy, I think you are referring to a process (digital video) as opposed to a traditional craft (film). There is little patience for craft be it exposure, framing, development, grain, lighting, transport, etc. Convenience trumps the entire production chain and the false propaganda of expensive film.

I was referring to a number of things, the digital process amongst them, but was exercised by the guy who blamed engineers which just showed he doesn't have an understanding of the television industry. However, I am with you in your comment about little patience being shown by the gadget boys and girls that abound in broadcast television, us engineers have the same problem as we are constantly harried when an engineering approach requires patience and the bringing together of particular craft skills by technicians in order to get a project on-air.

[Pj]

I am not an expert, all I know is that there has been a growing culture within British broadcasting, especially in the BBC to get rid of 16mm film and this attitude gained more momentum as good and portable electronic cameras arrived. It is interesting that people forget about the quality, I know Merlin was shot on Super 16 after the BBC had announced 'no to Super 16'.

I recall a director telling me that 16mm was only there because of its portability, while some were clearly passionate about film, generally speaking I don’t recall a great passion for 16mm. I know that in the BBC Film camera operators were recruited to ‘specialist’ film departments and Electronic camera operators were recruited to engineering departments as ‘technical operators’, the two were seen as being very different. I suppose there was a tendency for the film departments to be inhabited by the privileged classes. I think Film people within television were generally considered to be snobs, they were often swanning around with their film cameras and light meters making everyone else feel inferior.

Pav

[MIKI-814]

I think Film people within television were generally considered to be snobs, they were often swanning around with their film cameras and light meters making everyone else feel inferior. Pav

:lol: aren't they?

[Nicholas Kovats]

Well, I guess the insecure digital heads exacted their "filmic" revenge. No Super 16 for you.

This is all camouflage for the respectful right to use what medium is appropriate for the subject. My main point being that I am weary of the now entrenched propaganda swirling around film costs. Either you engage your craft or not. If you really need to express yourself you will find means. The digital "democracy" is not our artistic salvation. It can be a means to an end. At the moment we are drowning in push button imagery.

[JeremyC]

At the moment we are drowning in push button imagery.

Very much agree.

[doug]

If super-16 is now accepted by the Beeb, how about super-8 ?
Surely grain can be made to disappear, or if Vision 50 is used it could theoretically be comparable with a fast film on S16 ?

[carllooper]

A film production company, in control of the entire technical pipeline, can just deliver the work to the broadcasters, finished on digital, regardless of how they shot it (be it 35, 16 or 8).

How are old movies broadcast? Or the exterior shots they shot on film in old Dr Who shows? Or World War II documentaries?

Saying you can't shoot film (for broadcast) would be like saying, for some technical reason, you can't photograph a brick wall for broadcast, or you can no longer shoot trees on a Friday morning for broadcast. Or that clay-mation is no longer broadcastable.

I think the original issue was whether the broadcaster could continue to accept work that had been finished on film (rather than any issue with work shot on film). If finished on film it would mean that they (the broadcasters) would then have to do the film to digital finish - and as I understood it, they weren't properly set up to do that in-house, or the digirati were too busy playing computer games to give it the proper consideration it deserved. But of course if a production company does it themselves (or through their own houses) then there wouldn't be any technical issues for the broadcaster at all - as the production company would have already solved them.

So the issue (as I understood it) was just in relation to any work that might have involved in-house technical resources, for which there wasn't any at the time. But somehow this got transformed into a wider policy beyond it's initial scope/rationale.

It's like a huge number of web developers today, with a quasi-religious belief in HTML5. Despite the fact that older technologies such as Flash (amongst others) might still be more appropriate for certain applications you have a bunch of loud self opinionated (and typically young) fwits, brown nosing dim witted executives (and even technical directors), arguing that everything should now be done in HTML5 only (regardless of project and creative teams with particular technical skills). And getting away with it. Simplistic arguments then become simplistic policies that propogate down the food chain, while one track minds bubble up the food chain, with a fascist-fetish for the final solution - for the one ring to rule them all.

Carl

[Nicholas Kovats]

Carl,

My understanding is that the BEEB was no longer accepting final product originating and delivering in the Super 16 format. Contraindications abound considering there are or were numerous examples of popular UK shows originating on Super 16, i.e.

"This move comes after a campaign led by Directors UK to advocate that filmmakers should be able to make a choice to shoot and deliver on both film and digital formats."

Meanwhile the Walking Dead continue to munch on Super 16 cameras and film.

[JeremyC]

The other week I was speaking to a guy from the beeb who works with the beeb's scanning of small formats i.e. 16 and 8 and he told me the beeb never got rid of their telecine and film scanning equipment, they are now housed in a non descript building on an industrial estate in Uxbridge on the outskirts of London.

Interestingly I was having a conversation with one of my engineering colleagues this afternoon who is going back into Soho and he told me that 2 perf 35 is being increasingly looked at here in the UK for television origination (but not for commercials). Has anyone else here heard this?