“Even before we took them to Digital Domain we’d reviewed footage on monitors and it was pretty easy to see the winner would be the F23. It had higher sensitivity than any other camera, lower noise, it handled highlights better and it seemed like you could pull brilliant colours out of it.”

Directors Andy and Larry Wachowski are no strangers to digital film-making, having embraced cutting edge post production techniques to achieve the “bullet time” slow motion effects for The Matrix and the CG-intensive V for Vendetta.

For their latest feature project, a $150m effects-driven adaptation of manga comic strip Speed Racer, they are once again breaking new ground with an all-digital production shot entirely on Sony F23 cameras.

The Wachowski’s vision for Speed Racer included vast quantities of digital effects, a startling colour palette and a demand for on-set experimentation including live compositing.

Christina Ricci

The digital effects team headed by John Gaeta (The Matrix) turned to post production supervisor Fred Meyers to conduct pre-production tests with a view to specifying how this could be achieved.

At ILM, Meyers developed the 24P HD workflow that allowed George Lucas to shoot, post and master Star Wars Episode II — Attack of the Clones and Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. Since 2006, he has engineered 3D production systems including those for Walden Media’s upcoming Journey 3-D.

“At the time there was some scepticism that Speed Racer would be a digital shoot,” says Meyers. “They wanted me to investigate if the look that the brothers wanted could be shot and created digitally.”

The studio-based project was housed for 16-weeks in June 2007 at Studio Babelsberg in Germany. “It was going to be mainly a green-screen and post production driven project which made it suitable for digital. But no-one knew which format, if any, would work.”

Meyers divided the test into two. He approached LA-based camera supply facility Pace Technologies to support the digital and film shoot-out with multiple cameras and then arranged with post house Digital Domain for a series of tests assessing the visual “noise” and colour range of a number of cameras.

Dynamic colours

Strong colours
“There was a strong suggestion that the feature’s style would be playing with colour,” says Meyers. “They didn’t want something muted or bleach bypassed but to punch the colours. They wanted a very fast workflow on set which enabled full resolution, instant playback, and also to bring compositors onto set to play around with green screen extraction.”

A major request was the ability to record long depth of field since the Wachowski’s wanted to replicate the comic strip’s vibrant style and keep foreground and background in sharp focus.

“Even before we took them to Digital Domain we’d reviewed footage on monitors and it was pretty easy to see the winner would be the F23. It had higher sensitivity than any other camera, lower noise, it handled highlights better and it seemed like you could pull brilliant colours out of it.”

One by one the cameras were dropped from the test until just the F23 and one 35mm film stock were left. Meyers shot a live action test and performed a quick grade to approximate the film’s look before taking rushes all the way through the post process creating a digital cinemaster and film out master. “We did a side by side presentation and it was a pretty easy choice,” he says. “To get a long depth of field you have to have an awful lot of light yet we were shooting indoors on virtual sets. The F23 had that sensitivity to light.”

Sophisticated fx

Only at this point was a DoP assigned to the project. David Tattersall (who had shot Star Wars Episodes I,II and III) came on board for principal photography in Berlin.

Seven F23s fitted with Zeiss DigiPrimes and DigiZooms were hired from Pace Technologies and supported by leading high-end sales house Band Pro Munich. Official master recordings were made to HDCAM SR SRW-1s docked onto the back of each camera or remotely tethered. Working masters were also captured at 4:4:4 to Codex disc recorders to facilitate on-set replay and from which material was sent directly to Avid workstations.

Matthew Fox

Perfect choice
“The utilisation of HD and particularly the F23 is a perfect choice for this type of production,” says Tattersall. “Having the full family of Zeiss lenses available simplifies my choices as every lens is as good as the next.”

The F23’s modular design enabled them to be configured for mounting on a wide variety of rigs and all over the speed racer cars.

“Even though our cameras were early production units, their performance and reliability were fantastic,” reports HD engineer Dale Hunter. “The capability of the camera to do under- and over-crank was something that we used practically everyday on the Mac unit. Although the bulk of the camera department had never seen this camera, everybody picked up on how to work with it very quickly. Very few, if any, real problems crept up.”

“There’s absolutely no reason why more features can’t be shot on the F23,” asserts Meyers. “If you know what you have to do with digital cameras then you can get great material. In fact it’s easier to get great-looking material than with film. You’re more likely to see everything in focus for example on an F23 whereas with film something could go wrong and you wouldn’t see it until you got prints back from the lab.”

The F23 is more than an incremental change, he suggests. “It’s a step change in digital film-making. You don’t have to wait for 4K cameras. You can do it now with the F23.”

Speed Racer is a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, of a Silver Pictures Production.