Movies - Genesis

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The Genesis is Panavision's high-end digital movie camera, which uses a proprietary, full frame 35mm-width, 1.78:1 (16:9) aspect ratio, 12.4-megapixel RGB CCD. It is being used for the first time to shoot Bryan Singer's Superman Returns
and was shortly followed up thereafter by the British WWI film Flyboys.

Unlike the 2/3" 3-CCD RGB imaging system used in the CineAlta HD-900F (used in Attack of the Clones
), the Genesis uses a single 12.4 megapixel CCD chip with the same width (but not the same height) as a standard 35mm film frame. The "Panavized" CineAltas presented a number of unwelcome compromises, as the holy grail had always been to produce an electronic camera that could utilize Panavision's existing range of film-type lenses for 35mm that their customers were already familiar with, producing similar on-screen images with an equivalent depth-of-field characteristic.

Unfortunately, most lenses designed for film cameras cannot be adapted to work on 3-chip (or 3-tube) video cameras, because of the need to allow room for a dichroic color separation prism. On a typical 2/3" 3-CCD video camera the clearance between the rear lens element and the focal plane needs to be at least 50mm (2"). Most cine lenses have far less clearance than this, as they have only ever needed to allow room for the shutter, so on a video camera, the image will want to focus somewhere in the middle of the prism block. Panavision originally tried to overcome this problem with optical adaptors that fitted between the cine lens and the video camera but these have all produced an unacceptable drop in image quality.

Apart from this, there were a number of operational problems with both the lenses and cameras used for Attack of the Clones, and so for Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas severed his long-standing relationship with Panavision in 2003, obtaining newer-model Sony HD cameras and lenses from Plus8Digital instead, highlighting the perennial problem of rapid obsolescence of video formats.

In an attempt to address these and other problems, Panavision followed this up in 2004 with the Genesis, a full bandwidth (4:4:4) HD SDI camera with improved colorimetry and sensitometry-related specs and, probably most importantly, a Super 35 mm film-sized recording area, thus making it focally compatible with regular Cine Primo lenses and giving a true 35 mm depth of field.

Although the Genesis uses a 12 megapixel CCD chip it only actually outputs 6 Megapixels -2M each of red, green and blue, theortetically giving the same resolution as "2K-scanned" film. The chip has an HDTV-style 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio with the same width, but not the same height as a standard 35mm film frame. This is a significant breakthrough in that it allows just about any Panavision spherical 35mm cine lens to be used. However there are as yet unanswered questions about the resultant color quality, since single-chip NTSC and PAL color cameras using the exact same color-stripe sampling technique have always performed poorly compared to equivalent 3-chip models. The main imaging module of the Genesis is made by Sony, but the exact relationship between the two companies is unclear, since their joint partnership was dissolved in 2004 with Panavision's re-purchase of the 8% shareholding Sony bought in 2000.

Although the Genesis would seem to represent a significant step forward, there is still considerable skepticism in the film industry about the real value of digital cinematography for mainstream movie production, and as of yet, only a very small percentage of cinema-release projects have been shot digitally since Sony/Panavision introduced the CineAlta in 1999. Only two true "blockbuster" movies have been shot digitally (as of October 2005): Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Other notable but lesser-stature digitally captured features include: Sin City
, Once Upon a Time in Mexico
and the Spy Kids
series. Significantly, none of the Columbia Pictures CGI-heavy Marvel Comics films (Spider-Man
, Spider-Man 2
) were shot digitally, even though Columbia is owned by Sony.

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Movies - Genesis

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