Original “raw” clips from “Reverie” Now Available for Download

September 26th, 2008 in Articles / New Technology / Photo News
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Three of the raw files from the prototype Canon EOS 5D MKII – files straight out of the camera – that were used in “Reverie” short film – are now available for download to your hard drives. (*Please Read Important Note Below for SPECIFIC LIMITATIONS OF USE.)

To access these go to this following link here.

You will need the latest Quicktime player to view these – and many of you may have a hard time playing these at full resolution without top of the line systems – given the heavy amount of 30 fps 1920 x 1080 pixel data that is contained within each file.

UPDATE: We’ve broken 500 comments asking for 24p/25p  – awesome. You’ve all made the point loud and clear. I wanted to share a few thoughts with you…

First of all – I’ve had a chance to work with a lot of cool companies these past few years – in the development of both software and hardware – and if there’s one thing I’ve learned (actually two):

1. You need to find out right away if something is technically (im)possible – is what you’re asking for something that the hardware / software can do… obvious – but easy to overlook – don’t waste your energy pushing for something that simply can’t be done…

2. You need to request only ONE thing… THE most important thing to you. And STAY FOCUSED ON THAT – so that they understand you are willing to give up on the 5-30 other features you are dying for… if you don’t do that – you’ll overwhelm them… and they’ll ignore you.  Well they might not exactly ignore you – but remember that other people are asking for different things as well.. if you’re enough of a “pro” to ask just for one thing and let the other things go – they know that “the” one feature truly is KEY to you.

So for now… 24/25p should be the ONE request in my opinion.

1/48th is icing on the cake..
and different frame rates, specific exposure settings etc even more icing.

The idea here is that you want to make sure they do their best (a herculean effort) to work on a firmware update. Understand that adding a single new feature – to the FIRMWARE – weeks before the release of your camera – is kinda nuts. Not wise. You could screw the entire camera up – and turn it into a brick – and a commercial flop… they have likely “locked down” all changes – and are now in production – that’s completely my guess… the prototype camera was a last “beta” in software terms… normally companies only make “fixes” between the final beta and the final release (Gold Master)  – they almost NEVER add new features.  It’s simply too risky. Remember: Canon has been working on this camera for YEARS.  Any change they make in the firmware – has to be tested with quite a few different departments and groups… to make sure a firmware fix for example doesn’t cause an unexpected hardware problem… or image quality problem with 24p for example – or software issue w/ the Quicktime H.264 .mov files… and be tested on dozens of different machines… you get the idea.  All of this so you don’t get this dream camera when you buy it – and have it freeze the first time you turn it on to 24p…

The idea is: have them start to work on the 24/25p feature – as a FUTURE firmware update – the sooner the better… so we should  stay focused on that. Don’t start asking for 30 other features…

Also – pls don’t say you want 24p even though you “don’t know why” you want 24/25p but because it sounds cool- because that kills our cred. (Credibility for the non US people.)  I appreciate the enthusiasm- but it does more harm than good.

The good news is – I haven’t heard anyone post a reason as to WHY this couldn’t be pulled off TECHNICALLY… w/ a firmware update… are there any engineers out there that could tell us that we need to calm down and stop asking this because it’s impossible because of limitations x, y & z? If we don’t hear of any… then… 24 p at some point is more realistic…

I personally would not expect the 5D MKII to come out (the first ones that people buy) with 24p… but I could see Canon saying they are working on a firmware update at the time of the release and that they are “optimistic” that they will find a suitable solution with 1-3 months from release… that’s what I’m hoping at least – thanks for listening – and even more – thanks for POSTING!

For those asking for the ability to manually set exposure – I understand why. But you’re not really thinking very creatively. Set the camera to aperture priority… aperture is now locked down… then the shutter speed is either 1/60th or 1/125th… ISO is set as a result of the meter… so point the camera to a dark area or to a light area and once you’ve got your desired final setting  – and hit the (*) button – boom you’ve locked down both the shutter speed and the ISO forcefully… until you press (*) the exposure won’t change – even if you stop and then record again (that is my current understanding of things) make sense? So the camera as is can be “tricked” into full manual already… you can always point a small flashlight into the lens to force it to stop down or hold you hand over the lens to force it to open up… may not look good to clients – but a lot of the little tricks we do are our little secrets after all eh?

Back to the original post: To reiterate – all of the footage that was used in the “Reverie” movie – was raw – untouched in terms of color correction, exposure correction, noise correction – nothing was done to them whatsoever.  These clips should prove that definitively.  The clips were simply downloaded off of the CF card, dropped into Final Cut Pro – and cut.

We worked very quickly – relying mostly on natural light (at night.)  Only two light sources were use:  One Profo 7b battery strobe pack – using only the modeling light – (with bare head, bare head with grid, or beauty dish) and one small LED light source.   With the exception of the couch scene, and bathroom scene – no color gels were used to modify the color temperature of the color.  In other words – relatively very little “artificial” or “added” light sources were used in the making of this short film – especially when you consider that most films would require one to flood and entire street with light to shoot a “night” scene.  The Canon 5D MKII is much more sensitive to low levels of light relative to other capture systems out there – and allows one to maximize the use of available light – and minimize their use of “artificial” light sources.  This (and the small size of the camera) allows for much greater mobility and saves hours or “pre-lighting” for filmmakers that need to work quickly.  You can see a behind the scenes video here – that shows how we lit the scenes and how we shot this short film.

In a day or so – 10 Full resolution JPEGs will also be released – to allow you to see how well the camera captures still images as well.  The low light performance – and remarkable quality of 21 Megapixel files at 1600ASA and 3200ASA – have somewhat been overshadowed by the video to date – and should not be.  I will announce those as well on this post with an update.


(* SPECIAL NOTE:  I have released these clips for you to download to your hard drives for evaluation only.  You may share these freely with others with the following terms:  AT NO TIME can these images be used in any media whatsoever without attribution.  In other words you may not cut your own film with these clips ( 😉 ) and if you are a publication – you may not run these clips on your website without the following specification – the clips must run with the following credit “© Laforet Visuals Inc  – blog.vincentlaforet.com “.  )