The Verbatim History of HD Aesthetics and Technologies
Click the link above to go direct to interviews
Between 1890 and 1910 it was not considered an imperative that the voices of early film practitioners were recorded. Today, film studies are an important element of understanding the way our world is shaped and perhaps it would have been more enriching had we had the foresight to record those early voices. At this moment we are in the latter end of having been innundated by a tsunami of innovation in the way we capture and record data and it is this area that digital video or as some call it, electronic cinematography, can flourish. This current period has been between 1990 and 2010, the mirror period of the development of early film (though some argue this began a century before). It is now time that we need to record the voices of the pioneers of Electronic Cinematography so that researchers can look back and hear those voices speaking in the idiom of this study and the culture of the time.
It is for this reason I have decided to undertake a series of interviews with people from around the world who are working in HD and Electronic Cinematography to try to hear not only what they have got to say, but what they are also saying in those unspoken moments between words where we can reflect on the assumptions of the time were we to look backward from some time ahead when people might study this area. This therefore is a resource for future researchers, but also for those approaching the issues around what I would prefer to call High Resolution imaging as opposed to High Definition as that term represented a previous horizon when we could only dream of shooting above broadcast quality.
Above, Geoff Boyle who created the Cinematographers Mailing List, an acknowledged leading website in sharing information between professional cinematographers.
It is the broad spread of disciplines interviewed that will give us a global picture of the form, viewed as a group, overall attitudes will be revealed. Another element is the duration of the research - three years is a long time with digital technology and so interviews completed at the beginning of the research will be different from those made at the end - and it is this variety too, with the perspective of time, that will unveil other components that will render possible a grasp of what this particlar time means in the development of this special area of technology.
The resource is a series of video interviews shot on HDV, as it's a cheap format of a reasonable resolution, which will then be put onto DVD or Blue Ray, plus a selection of interviews on the web. Above, you can click the picture and go to a list of uncut interviews. It was important to me that we discussed the subject and so allow information that might not have been given in a formal interview to come through. I make no apologies for shooting styles, sound quality - any of that. The selection of people is simply who I think is relevant to the discussion and who I can afford to get to - I began in July 2007 and shall continue for three years. Currently there are 10 interviews with Artists, Cinematographers, HD Data Tecnicians, Games Designers and so on; I hope by the end of 2010 to have camera and post production designers and technicians added, plus more of the roles I've already interviewed. The collection of DVD's will eventually be lodged with various institutions with whom I am curently negotiating. If you are a member of such an institution and wish to archive and make available these interviews - do contact me. Also, if you feel you would like to contribute an interview in the spirit of the ones you find on this site - do contact me.
For Myself, I've been a DP shooting dramas, promos, commercials, live shows and so on on in both film and video and my first experience of HD was around 1992 with the philips 1250 line system, continuing on into the Raw Data mode of today - but in fact when John Logie Baird lost the contract for the providing the BBC with a higher resolution system than he'd previously set up to deal with the threat from EMI (their 405 line system, over his earier 32 line attempts then 200 lines - all rasta scan), he immediately called for a 2000 line system as the bar for fulfilling human physiological needs. Some would say this is still the bar - others are pushing for higher and higher resolution - a natural impulse as, if we haven't got mountains to climb - we'll invent them.
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