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Senior Contributor Tony Koorlander at Newsroom Publishing’s 2012 Gathering Of Eagles Event
Photo Credit: Harley Blank

It had been nearly 15 years since Newsroom Magazine publisher Robert Butche and Koorlander met in a popular videography and editing group with the unlikely name PigsFly. At the time Butche was a contributor to a professional cinematography group examining the potential use of film era Prime Lenses on high definition video imaging systems.

Washington

Videography Enabled By Technology — An Instrument Of Art

In late September, Tony Koorlander, one of Mother Beeb’s first-generation engineer/videographer/newsmen, set out to participate in Newsroom Publishing’s first Gathering Of Eagles. The night before he was scheduled to fly out of London’s Heathrow Airport Koorlander departed his Bideford home just before midnight for the six hour drive. Tony was not traveling light for he was lugging his 3D videography kit to film the week’s major events.

After nearly three years of pioneering work in 3D videography, including extensive shooting on the sand dunes of southwest England filming Royal Marines undergoing training, Koorlander was ready to share his growing collection of 3D videos and his unique insight into how 3D technology might one day be applied to non-theatrical materials including news gathering.

Koorlander’s 3D camera system was designed and assembled at his production facilities at Bideford in County Devon. His camera set-up is the product of years of research and study. It is not the most expensive 3D videography platform, but the images it captures are superior to most Hollywood movies. The secret is not technology, for Koorlander’s 3D system is based on mastery of human eye-brain response.

In Tony Koorlander’s world getting the right image requires more than having the right equipment. 30 years behind the camera has taught him that high quality images are the result of technology at the right place at the right time. Great video, he assures those less skilled in the field, is the product of planning, execution and long experience at applying technology as an instrument of artistic expression.

Still Frame From 3D Video — Summer Evening In Venice, Italy

When Pigs Fly

It had been nearly 15 years since Newsroom Magazine publisher Robert Butche and Koorlander met in a popular videography and editing group with the unlikely name PigsFly. At the time Butche was a contributor to a professional cinematography group examining the potential use of film era Prime Lenses on high definition video imaging systems.

For Butche, what came out of his engagement with long-established movie cinematographers was new insight into the pros and cons of electronic image capture at a time when StarWars creator George Lucas had already declared the chemical imaging era obsolete.

To some degree, Lucas proved right — in the sense that the advantages of high definition imaging systems forever changed movie making. Within a year, after exchanging views with Tony Koorlander and others on Pigsfly, Butche understood why some of the world’s best cinematographers were limited in their abilities to fully exploit the qualities of HD videography.

The core issues arose from the vast differences between chemical and electronic imaging. Today, some five years after Red Camera technology moved beyond HD resolution ( 1920 pixel width ) to 4000 pixel frames, there is yet another major digital imaging advance that begins at 8000 pixels and frame rates 10 times faster — and likely to continue to climb.

In comparison, film frame resolution, gamma control, colorimitry and grain levels remain largely unchanged. Even so, there is no indication that film is dead — at least not yet.

Theatrical movies, projected at 24 frames per second, had a lore of their own. Movie making was a well understood single format technology where HD video has become a collection of formats that are not only inconsistent with one another but extensible in nearly every characteristic from frame rate to aspect ratio.

In theatrical movies, where the frame rate was always 24 frames, the minimal frame rate imparted movies with a near field motion blur that movie goers became accustomed to. Movie makers, especially cinematographers, liked the look and feel of theatrical movies while videographers found the newly unleashed capabilities of HD video of higher quality with lower acquisition and editing cost.

In the first decade of HD video deployment, the movie business and the HD video business embraced one another. Today’s HD video products routinely include standard movie formats — even down to the 24 frame motion blurring standard that originated one hundred years ago. Along the way HD video, in one or more flavors, whether live action or computer generated images, became the preferred way of movie making.

Today the future of motion pictures is digital — and, thanks to visionaries like Tony Koorlander, in breathtaking detail that delivers a startling three dimensional movie experience .