In Broadcast - March 2014 - 48

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 29 - MARCH 2014

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InGEAR

'Tree Man' Avails Of AJA 4K Solution
Filmmakers Jon Reiner and Brad Rothschild depend on AJA's Ki Pro Quad for the documentary 'Tree Man'...

h e n N e w Yo r k- b a s e d
ﬁlmmakers Jon Reiner and
Brad Rothschild teamed up to
produce 'Tree Man', an independent
documentary focusing on an Upper
West Side Christmas tree vendor,
they knew the project would be a
challenge.
Many of their desired shoot
locations had limited access, and
there was a very small, ﬁxed window
of time to capture all the necessary
scenes in the few weeks leading up
to Christmas. Additionally, the ﬁlm's
modest budget topped out at around
$100,000; 20% of which was raised
though a Kickstarter campaign.
Before shooting, Director/Writer/
Executive Producers Reiner and
Rothschild consulted with Director
of Photography David Leitner, who
devised an inventive approach
to capture the grandeur of New
York during the holiday season.
Working quickly with the smallest
rig possible, the crew used a Canon
C300 to create intimate portraits
of tree vendors who ﬂock to the
city's streets every December. But
a combination of logistical, practical
and aesthetic demands drove the
team to instead use a Canon C500
in 4K mode to shoot the night time
spectacle that is New York City at
Christmas, including the iconic tree
at Rockefeller Center.
"It may seem counter-intuitive to
use 4K to save money and shoot
more efﬁciently, but we wouldn't
have been able to capture what
we did any other way," said Leitner.
"We wanted to create flowing
montages of New York's famous
Christmas decorations at night as
a counterpoint to the challenging
personal stories we were telling. But
to do so with a large-sensor camera
like the Canon C300, we would have
needed heavy zooms with servo
motors, controllers, extra batteries,
a beeﬁer tripod - not to mention
extra cases and cabling to schlep
around. Which would have meant
an extra assistant or two.
"Instead, with a Canon C500
and AJA Ki Pro Quad, we used

DP David Leitner sets up for 'Tree Man'

Canon EF Cinema Primes to shoot
locked-off 4K "masters." Tree
Man will be ﬁnished in HD, and
a 4K original provides more than
enough resolution to punch in and
simulate dynamic moves like pans,
tilts, and zooms during editing and
post-production, when the ideal
direction and speed of a moving
shot in a montage can be better
determined. Otherwise I would have
had to operate each shot ﬂawlessly,
with perfect instincts while under
intense pressure, since time and
permission, were in short supply
on the chaotic holiday sidewalks
at Rockefeller Center and Radio
City Music Hall.
"Using lightweight prime lenses
instead of long heavy zooms
helped to not draw attention to
ourselves. Even with the AJA Ki
Pro Quad mounted on rods at the
back of the Canon C500, we had
a small unobtrusive rig. Along with
another big advantage - maximum
apertures of T1.3 and T1.5. The
Canon Cinema Primes were two
stops faster than zooms for night
shooting," continued Leitner.
'Tree Man' follows the annual
pilgrimage of Francois, a veteran
tree seller from Montréal whose
Christmas time stand at Broadway
and 102nd Street has been a festive
neighbourhood fixture for many
years, along with other colourful
Manhattan tree sellers, male and

female. Principal photography on
this modern holiday tale began in
November 2013.
"Much of the narrative of the ﬁlm
is made up of character studies of
people who sell trees on the streets
of New York and most of the story
reﬂects that emotional intimacy. At
the other end of the story, we're
highlighting what New York City
does to celebrate the holidays, and
that happens on such a large scale,"
explained Reiner. "By shooting those
scenes in 4K, we captured the full
range of that aesthetic grandeur and
dynamic colour."
Recording directly off camera to
AJA's Ki Pro Quad in ProRes 4444
enabled Leitner to review shots
in 4K on a MacBook Pro with a
Thunderbolt drive, and then, using
Final Cut Pro X, output HD ProRes
4444 ﬁles to hand off to editors John
Cook and Jenny Cook.
"The Ki Pro Quad allowed us to
introduce the advantages of 4K to
an HD project for an end result that
not only looks amazing but was
economical to attain," explained
Leitner. "I've used a lot of AJA
products over the years, and they
are reliable and ruggedly built; the
Ki Pro Quad is a real performer
and reasonably priced. It enabled
us to work in 4K ProRes 4444, an
extremely high-quality 12-bit codec
with no chroma subsampling. We
used a single short BNC cable to

AJA Ki Pro Quad - 4K footage
allows for regions of interest

Shoot Workﬂow
Locked down shots of
Christmas carolers and the
holiday spectacle were captured
in 4K using a Canon Cinema
EOS C500 digital camera with
Canon Cinema Prime lenses.
A Ki Pro Quad mounted at the
rear of the camera recorded
these scenes in 4K ProRes
4444, using an AJA Pak512
SSD for storage.
After being copied to hard
disk with an AJA Pak Dock
connected via Thunderbolt, 4K
ProRes ﬁles were played back
in real-time on a Mac Book Pro.
As editing progresses, lockeddown 4K shots will be used
to generate pans, tilts and
zooms to create lyrical montage
sequences ﬁnished in HD.

send a 4K Canon RAW signal from
the C500 to the Ki Pro Quad, and
the Canon Log gamma and ﬂattened
look you get from the RAW image
is all preserved in 4K ProRes 4444."
Still taking shape in the editing
room, 'Tree Man' is tentatively
scheduled for release at the
end of 2014.

AJA Ships Io 4K Boasting Thunderbolt 2
A

JA Video Systems is shipping
its Io 4K, an evolution of its
popular devices for professional
video I/O, updated and customised
for Thunderbolt 2 technology and
the latest 4K workﬂows.
Io 4K connects to any Thunderbolt
2 device such as the Mac Pro, and
offers an additional Thunderbolt
2 port for daisychaining other

peripherals in supported workflows.
Io 4K offers a broad range of
professional video and audio
connectivity, supporting the latest 4K
and UltraHD devices. AJA's proven
conversion technology allows realtime high-quality scaling of 4K to 2K
and UltraHD to HD. Io 4K seamlessly
integrates with leading broadcast,
post-production and delivery tools

such as Final Cut Pro X,
Adobe Creative Cloud, Avid Media
Composer, AJA Control Room,
Telestream Wirecast 5 and more.
"There has been so much
anticipation for the Mac Pro
from video professionals whose
workﬂows truly stand to beneﬁt
from its incredible power," said
Nick Rashby, President, AJA Video

Io 4K - 4K/HD/SD capture/playback

Systems. "Io 4K not only represents
a new evolution in our video I/O
devices, it is also the ﬁrst product
to market showcasing AJA's new
product design aesthetic while
still embracing our commitment
to performance, reliability
and support."

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In Broadcast - March 2014

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