{"id":70,"date":"2026-07-04T19:37:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/?page_id=70"},"modified":"2026-08-04T02:04:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T02:04:02","slug":"technical","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/technical\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Technical<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n<\/div>\n

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An Historic Film to Solve A Transitional Problem.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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While it may seem an archaic problem in today\u2019s world of REDs and Blackmagic PYXIS cameras everywhere, and even cell phones that can shoot 24p HD, in the early 2000\u2019s there simply were not digital cameras that were affordable and easy to use for quality 24p filmmaking.\u00a0 \u00a0Sure, George Lucas had shot Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones<\/em> digitally, but the Sony HDW-F900 CineAlta body cost $82,000; a full rig with lenses could easily run $250,000.\u00a0 Most camcorders were stuck in NTSC interlaced.\u00a0 Some filmmakers had used the PAL version of the Sony VX1000 and used deinterlacing and slowed the speed down to 24fps; but the resolution was only 720×480.<\/p>

Add to the mix that there were still very few digital theaters at the time.\u00a0 Though it may be forgotten by many, in 2003 there were only 89 digital screens in the United States; all the rest were still running 35mm film exclusively.\u00a0 So back then even George Lucas had to have a film transfer to play in most theaters!\u00a0 Unfortunately, most tests of DV-to-film blowups were disappointing, with resolution below 16mm.<\/p>

\"Sony<\/a>Then the new HDV format came out, using an anamorphic 1440×1080 format, presenting some new possibilities.\u00a0 \u00a0Many low-budget filmmakers began wondering about shooting in HDV and blowing up to film: but how would it look?\u00a0 John Jackman decided to find out.<\/p>

John was one of the lead writers for Digital Video Magazine<\/em>, pitched the idea: why don\u2019t we do a short film and test a film blowup, with professional film DPs evaluating the outcome?\u00a0 The editorial staff was interested, the National Association of Broadcasters was interested, the camera manufacturers were interested, and the theater owners were interested.\u00a0 Green light!\u00a0 But what to produce as a test?\u00a0 The budget was $1,000 \u2013 not much more than pizza budget.\u00a0 Everyone suggested a very short, simple film set in an office or apartment.<\/p>

\"\"<\/a>John pulled out the Windsor Knot<\/em> script \u2013 and everyone said \u201cYou\u2019re crazy! You want to produce a costumed period piece?\u201d\u00a0 But John went to work.\u00a0 First was to find a location to stand in for Fort Belvedere, the castle residence of Edwards VIII.\u00a0 He reached out to SECCA, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, which is housed in the historic James Gordon Hanes mansion (a Norman Revival home built in 1929) and got permission from Karin Burnette, director of operations, to film there.\u00a0 He asked Karl Stimpson, a local antique car collector, to loan a period vehicle.\u00a0 He reached out to Tom DiNome in the PR office at Sony, and Sony loaned\u00a0 the latest Sony HVR-Z1U camera.\u00a0 He asked DV Film in Austin and Heavy Light Digital in New York about doing a test film transfer.\u00a0 Everyone lined up.\u00a0<\/p>

Post-production was a challenge as well, since Adobe Premiere could not handle HDV footage.\u00a0 We used Cineform\u2019s Aspect HD plugin to handle the footage (now included in Premiere).<\/p>

The end result was screened in the Gold Theater at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, with three professional DPs scrutinizing the results.\u00a0 Their comments were folded into a feature article in the January 2006 issue of DV Magazine, which you can read here:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Of course, in our day twenty years later, most theaters are fully digital, with fewer and fewer houses having a film projector at all.\u00a0 Which makes it amusing that now the big deal is Christopher Nolan shooting Odyssey entirely on IMAX 70mm film, with all the tremendous inconveniences of that process.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Technical An Historic Film to Solve A Transitional Problem. While it may seem an archaic problem in today\u2019s world of REDs and Blackmagic PYXIS cameras everywhere, and even cell phones that can shoot 24p HD, in the early 2000\u2019s there simply were not digital cameras that were affordable and easy to use for quality 24p […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-70","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/windsorknot.org\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}