I came across this short BTS video about the making of Alexander Sokurov’s ‘Russian Ark’ (2002) and was enthralled by the process of making this movie (90 minutes), without any cuts. Yes, that’s right, in one take.
The whole digital capture sounds amazing. What are your thoughts about this? Technically, back in 2002, it sounds like a big gamble. I’m also not aware of what RGB 444 is. Can anyone enlighten us?
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I’m no color expert, but 444 refers to the color depth. The number of bits dedicated to luma and chroma.
These days, most video I deal with is captured as braw 444, color corrected, then output for Blu-ray or streaming as ProRes 422.
For the early days of digital video, shooting 444 would be a big deal, especially since the compression options were fewer. I haven’t watched the video yet, but I suspect they were shooting to tape, not hard drive.
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I have a Blu-Ray copy Russian Ark. Love it!!
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I stand corrected. “First movie ever recorded uncompressed to hard disks.”
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Geoff Hall, RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, the numbers signifies the varied amounts in color used for the film. Saw the vid. looks great!
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Sounds like the recording computer was a second device, tethered to the camera. So there was a person following the camera operator around, carrying that computer.
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Mike Boas definitely recording to hard drive AND uncompressed MIke. That’s what I call heavy data use!
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Eon C. Rambally Hi Eon, yeah, I got the RGB reference but wasn’t sure what 444 was. In 2002, it feels like it was a seat of the pants job.
I love the fact that it’s an indie art house film that decided what they wanted to do and this then meant they had to push the technological boundaries in production.
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Steven R Mitchell I feel a must-have purchase coming on, Steven!