CommunicAsia-BroadcastAsia diary, Singapore, June 2014 --A revisit 12 years later, to a block-buster event

V: 4k resolutions up to 1,000 fps, HD up to 3,000 fps

Prime Focus was the first familiar Indian name that I noticed at the Communicasia-BroadcastAsia twin events, while the first Singaporean Indian booth I stopped at was t-eight. Two persons were busy demonstrating the merits of ‘slowing down your world’. In film parlance, that means using high speed cameras that, when played back at normal, much slower speeds, give you infra slow motion (slo-mo). The two were from the significantly large Tamil community of Indians that lives in Singapore. Senthilnathan M., the Founder, who is a Cinematographer, and Kalpana R., who is an Executive Producer and Writer. Quite apt—a writer named Kalpana (imagination)!

Senthilnathan, an award-winning cinematographer, has over a decade of cinematography experience, with works ranging from advertising to independent narratives. Says he, “We are extremely excited about our new addition: the Phantom Flex4K, an obscenely powerful piece of hardware. It has recording frame rates of 1,000 fps, 2,000 fps and 3,000 fps for 4k, 2k and HD video qualities. You can work without being connected to a laptop and have the creative freedom to move the camera about freely. That facilitates longer takes. It is of large capacity (up to 2 TB), and ‘hot swappable’. (A hot swappable device is a peripheral or component that can be removed or added while a computer is running. Replacing a device while a computer is powered on is called "hot swapping.") Phantom Cine flash drives allow shoots to go on longer before downloading, and let you easily incorporate the clips into your timeline. The Cine raw format ensures the fastest high-speed capture on.”

The camera was launched at the International Broadcasting Convention, September 13-17, 2013 in Amsterdam. In March 2014, director Brendon Bellomo and cinematographer Gregory Wilson used a Phantom Flex4K camera to capture a burning house fire, at 1,000 frames per second, in 4K resolution. Shooting at that resolution and quality consumes around 16GB of storage a second, so despite the 1TB and 2TB removable storage system that the Flex4K uses, every shot had to be meticulously planned; with an internal buffer of 32GB, each shot could be no longer than 2.2 seconds in length. This footage from March was the first video to be shot with the Flex4K. The result was staggering.

Director Bellomo has previously worked on visual effects for the Oscar-winning Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Wilson has used cameras like the Red EPIC, Sony F55, Phantom Flex and Canon 5D Mark II on a variety of shorts and other projects.

Watch fire video on:

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On BroadcastAsia 2014, Senthil shared then following thoughts:

“We are participating as exhibitors for the first time, though I have visited earlier editions of BroadcastAsia. There was good turn-out this year and the event was a good vantage point for your services and products to be seen, although it would be better to have it in one big hall, compared to the split rooms, which was the format here. People were confused over the layouts (so was this writer, Senthil).

I felt Marina Bay Sands wasn’t a very convenient location. It was better back in the early years, when it was held at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Center (not too far from MBS, and a stand-alone Exhibition Center, without a premium hotel attached to it).

It was much easier for loading of equipment and to get to. There were more eateries there too. (There are hardly any eateries around MBS).

To view Senthil’s work, click on the link below.

t-eight show-reel:

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