Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Light keeps me company - a poet of Light and Shadow - Rajiv Jain (India Photo / Cinematographer / DOP)

A sample lesson: Film vs. HD ...

Budding filmmakers are quite lucky compared to years ago. Today you can make a movie in any format and still be taken seriously, assuming you have a great history and pretty good production values. As mentioned previously, The Blair Witch Project is one of the most successful ever made independent, but it was shot with a video camera to use (non-digital).

Before the digital revolution of the 1990s, things were very different. If the film was shot on a format other than 35mm, it has no chance of being distributed. 16mm was not taken seriously and the video was a joke. These standards have been so deeply ingrained in the industry, that even the actors were reluctant to work on non-35mm shoots.

All that has changed now. Affordable, high quality digital cameras have democratized the industry. But 35mm film is the standard by which all video formats are judged.

Is video reaches the same level of quality 35mm? Old school filmmakers say "no" because the image capture capacity of 35 mm is a "gazillion" times larger than the video. Is this really the case? Let's take a closer look. The truth may surprise you.

Note: The study is based on lower Classic HD with 1080 lines of horizontal resolution. In 2007, the first ultra HD camera was introduced with an amazing 4520 lines. Keep this in mind when reading!

The concepts associated with high definition (HD) can be confusing for those of you not familiar with video camera function. If you are a beginning filmmaker, terms such as scanning lines, SD, HD, and 4K technology, will certainly turn heads!

Fear not, the concepts are surprisingly simple. In this lesson we will cover the basics of high definition video and give you a good understanding of terminology. In addition, we will look at the 4K technology, also known as Ultra HD. This technology is used by the revolutionary Red One camera, introduced by the company Red Digital Cinema in 2007.

To understand the high-definition video, we must start early and to examine how images are recorded by a video camera.

Registration

When you take the video tape through the recording head of the camera. The head is essentially an electro-magnet, which is activated by the electrical signal from the image processor. As the video circulating on the head, the iron particles in the band are magnetized. This, in essence, becomes the recorded image.

The latest generation of video cameras can record on the hard drive or a removable card. This allows files to be transferred directly to your computer for editing.

Scanlines

The video image is recorded a horizontal line at a time. These lines are called scan lines and the process is known as scanning. If you look closely at a television screen you will see scan lines. You probably can not see them on your computer screen because the lines are narrower than on a TV.

Standard Definition (SD)

The term "definition" refers primarily to detail visible in the video image. It is measured by the number of horizontal scanning lines within a single framework. In the United States and Japan, the standard definition video is 525 lines. In most European countries, standard definition is 625 lines. (The first is known as NTSC, it is PAL).

High Definition (HD)

While much fuss has been made on HD, the concept itself is simple to understand. Technically, anything that breaks the barrier PAL 625 lines can be called high definition. Most.