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. Sony F65 8K camera
The F65 is the pride and joy of Sony's 4K operation. Worth upwards of US$50,000 (about AU$48,500, £32,650), this is the Ultra HD camera that Sony Pictures is using to shoot all its movies and TV shows. It actually shoots at a native resolution of 7680 × 4320. That's 8K, or 33.2 megapixels - four times the resolution of 4K, which in turn is four times the resolution of Full HD. So take the number of pixels in a Blu-ray picture and multiply by 16. What's more, it can do it at any framerate up to 120fps. This allows film crews to downsample after shooting so they can be sure they're working with the very best pictures.
2. 4K film scanners
Even Laurence Olivier classics from 60 years ago can be watched in 4K. But first the original film must be rescanned. This isn't such a bad idea, either - film typically captures a lot more data than ever makes it onto the screen, and our Sony guides tell us that 4K is finally the right resolution to capture and present all that picture information on screen for the first time. These machines scan original film in 4K resolution at around 1.5fps, but that's just the start of the process…
This 4K scanner can capture detail from the original film that other formats miss
3. Colorworks remastering suite
The big problem with film is that it degrades over time, so the older it is, the more work is needed to get it into shape - a task made ever more complicated by the sheer amount of detail and data captured by 4K images. Sony's Colorworks remastering suite is where movie directors come to master their movies, frame by painstaking frame. Some artefacts like noise and white spots can be removed by an algorithm but most defects require an engineer to polish up every frame individually.
Remastering movies in 4K means working in frame-by-frame detail
Sony is constantly remastering classic movie and TV titles, and currently has over 100 4K movies in its library, new and old. While some movies can take just a few months to remaster, Lawrence of Arabia has taken nearly three years to get into a condition where the studio was happy with it. We can tell you it looks absolutely stunning.
But after all the work, the finished product (in this case, Breaking Bad) is dazzlingly good
4. Remastering facility with 11PB local storage
Of course, with hundreds of movies being scanned and edited digitally in 4K, that data needs to be stored somewhere. Sony Pictures Studios has networked servers with 11PB - that's 11 petabytes, or 11,000 terabytes - of local storage. All of this is also backed up locally and elsewhere on tape. Every green light in the image below represents a separate drive, and contained on these drives are forthcoming native 4K movies like The Amazing Spiderman 2 and After Earth, so in a way, you can now say you've seen those titles before your friends. In a way. Sort of.
Every green light represents a drive containing a 4K native movie
5. High quality sets
With every generation of picture improvements comes higher production values. Long gone are the days of the Fawlty Towers sets that nearly fall down whenever a door slams shut, or Dallas window backdrops that were clearly painted by school children.
Filming in 4K means there's no room for shortcuts in scenery
Check out the window on a 4K TV set. Even standing on the set, the window is convincing.
This window scene looks as though you should be able to step into it
Looking up close, only the set furniture gives the game away.
When every detail shows, you have to get every detail right
To pull off this look requires extremely high resolution photography.
High resolution photography replaces set painting
It also takes superpowered backlighting which can be dimmed and coloured to give the illusion of daylight or dusk.
Backlighting is carefully controlled to create the passage of time
We had a walk around one of the sets for the forthcoming Showtime cable drama Masters of Sex starring Michael Sheen. It was the nicest house we've ever been in, yet it's built on the same soundstage where Wizard of Oz was filmed in back in 1939. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures on that set, so you'll just have to watch the show.
6. Sony's professional OLED monitor
Sony's 4K sets make use of the company's super-awesome professional grade OLED monitors for displaying footage in all its natural splendour. The F86 camera can output several different video channels so that different members of the crew can tune into different feeds. The cinematographer needs to be able to see the natural lighting, whereas the camera operators might want to view the footage with different contrast setting so they can see exactly how much detail is being captured in the dark areas of the picture.
Different crew members can select a different feed from the F65 camera
And a few other cool thing we spotted at Sony Pictures...
Who you gonna call?
The Breaking Bad RV
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