In the early 2000's, Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC and Bryan Singer made X-Men and X-Men 2 on 35mm film. Now the duo has reunited with Wolverine and the X-Men roster of superheroes for X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was shot native 3D on a variety of ARRI Alexa cameras with Codex recorders.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST posed a raft of tricky challenges: native 3D, heavy VFX and distinctive looks. The ALEXA M and ALEXA XT came through with flying colors. "I've gotten really good results and I haven't found anything I like better," says Sigel. "It's my favorite camera."
The 3D rigs are pretty solid, but what’s evolving are the cameras and lenses that are available for them,” he says. “The options are expanding, and the Alexa M was certainly a step in that direction. We also had some 2D stuff, and for that we were able to use the Alexa XT and record the ARRIRAW right onto the internal Codex drives, and that was very liberating.”
3D Systems Supervisor Ben Gervais agrees. “The Alexa XT with the built-in recorder is a game-changer for us,” he says. “It’s a great leap forward, and it enables 120 frames per second in ARRIRAW. It reduces the footprint and increases reliability.”
The cameras output a Log C image, which were given an initial grade by DIT Julie Garceau. The grades would then be passed with the footage to Company 3, which maintained a truck near the set. Company 3 would ingest the footage to a SAN, and process it. The truck included a projector for screening. Dailies colourist Adrian DeLude would begin with any on-set colour and further finesse the footage in 3D with Sigel and stereographer John Harper, sometimes at lunch or at the end of the day. Singer did not look at 3D on the set, preferring to focus on performance. Sigel usually watched a 3D image during playback. Gervais says that the goal was to make shooting native 3D as easy as possible.
“That meant being mobile, with a small footprint and the ability to go anywhere Tom and Bryan wanted,” he says. “As an engineer, I approach this in terms of equipment capability, performance, size, reliability, and flexibility. We selected fibre-optic systems that allowed us to have essentially an unlimited cable run between the 3D rigs and our workstations. For each Alexa M, we used a single Codex Onboard S recorder, allowing us to record up to 60 frames per second in ARRIRAW for each 3D ‘eye.’ ”
Regarding the capture format, Gervais says, “In terms of creative latitude, the choice is simple. ARRIRAW is uncompressed. Not ‘visually lossless,’ but actually lossless. That means that every subtle detail is preserved. It lets the DP and director make the choice about what details are important to the image in DI, rather than letting an algorithm decide for them. It's particularly important for scenes where you have extremes of contrast – day exteriors with harsh sunlight.”
Asked why the Codex/ARRIRAW workflow was important to his approach, Sigel says, “First of all, it helps in terms of colour correction and image quality, because you’re getting the highest resolution possible. And when you’re colour correcting, you don’t have to fight through somebody else’s colour correction. Even a LUT is in essence a colour correction. Starting from scratch gives you the greatest range, and the maximum ability to manipulate and do subtle things later. It also gives greater freedom for editorial to blow up, to move the image around.”