Romance in the Machine: Digital Cinema Goes Operatic
by Tony Reveaux
The transition from motion picTURE film to digital cinema is at least as big a step – technologically and thematically – as was the conversion from silent films to sound in the 1920s. High-definition (HD) has become an integral part of this progression, both justifying and enabling theatrical-scale digital projection and sound. Digital is also necessary to support the growing number of 3D releases coming at us in the next few years from Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. More new theaters are being built equipped with all-digital projection and sound from the start, such as the Century at Tanforan that opened recently in San Bruno.
Sing the Song & Walk the Walk
The New York Metropolitan Opera: Live in High-Definition series comprises eight opera performances transmitted live and received by satellite dishes enabled by National CineMedia’s Fathom Digital Content Network. On this coast, each title is shown once at 10:30 am in theaters located in San Francisco, Daly City, Emeryville, Larkspur, San Rafael, and San Jose. This season, the Met will reach a global audience of more than 150,000 people – many of them opera first-timers – through live transmissions.
As part of general director David Gockley’s far-reaching media development and expansion, the San Francisco Opera (SFO) now presents theatrical Cinemacasts and live community simulcast programs, such as the ones playing at Civic Center and AT&T Park.
Under video director Frank Zamacona, the Koret-Taube Media Suite is the first permanent HD production facility in any American opera house. Simulcasts are given full real-time switching and mixing. The performance footage is later fully edited and conformed for the Cinemacasts, and, in time, other broadcast and DVDs.
The production control room houses three robotic operator consoles, 27 high-definition LCD monitors, a 16-channel audio console, a Sony switcher with 16 inputs and 8 outputs, and a 32 x 34 router. The suite utilizes Sony 310 HD broadcast cameras and an array of Cambotics robotics.
The Castro: an acre of seats in a palace of dreams
The Bigger Picture, an Access IT company, is the technical enabler, distributor and manager of SFO’s Cinemacasts nationwide and internationally. Audiences are sure to enjoy the stunning HD presentation quality of the operas from their stadium seats in any one of the modern multiplexes hosting the series, including theaters in Fairfax, Petaluma, Sonoma, and Sebastopol.
San Francisco’s Castro Theatre is a landmark addition to the SFO series. The theatre itself is a match made in heaven for grand opera, with its Spanish, Oriental and Italian influences, tapestry-like sgraffito panels on the sidewalls, and a spectacular tented ceiling. The auditorium will seat over 1,400 in a fantasy setting that is at once both lavish and intimate. The Castro’s traditional Wurlitzer organ prelude, played by David Hegarty, introduces the grand acoustics.
SFO’s master audio engineer Max Christensen helped wrestle the 300-pound, 20,000 Lumen Christie CP2000XB digital projector up the balcony stairs, then shoe-horned it into the 1927 projection booth. “The Doremi server uses JPEG-2000 compression,” he said, “where each frame is treated like a file. The Zip cartridge for Samson’s content was 250GB.”
When director Gus Van Sant brought location production here for his bio-drama Milk, the producers made several community and in-kind donations. One of the most lasting thank-you gifts will be their contribution of about one-third of the cost of the long-delayed restoration of the Castro’s marquee and blade. That classically bold beacon of signage is an instance of neighborhood identity that would be rare in other cities. In the left wing of the theatre’s lobby, you can see a photo board that documents the process of the restoration.
Subtle titles
SFO first started using supertitles in 1983. Not everyone understands the languages nor memorizes the librettos; so to accommodate and cultivate an audience, simultaneous English translation text was projected on two screens, controlled live by a technician (Christopher Bergen performed this task on Samson). SFO also rents its supertitles to other opera companies around the globe.
One supertitle screen was positioned about halfway up the stage wall on house left, while the other was placed on house right. No matter where you sat, it was an awkward angle for your eyes to bounce back and forth between the action and the words. More recently, supertitles have been consolidated on one screen hung at the top of the proscenium arch. While relieved of the old ping-ponging, the text’s position is vertically most distant from the stage action.
The inspiration for this form of visual translation had evolved from the silent cinema and from subtitled foreign films in art houses. Now with SFO’s Cinemacasts, the supertitles become standard subtitles at the bottom of the screen. They are so much easier to read, and they compete less for your attention than theatre supertitles, making the experience much more comfortable for audience members. Thus the sticky translation situation has come full circle.
Intermissions at the Opera House tend to run up to 30 minutes, as massive scenery is lifted and shifted behind the curtain. Digital intermissions are ten minutes, and a no-foolin’ countdown window appears on the screen helping you to strategize your popcorn run. Those ten minutes are well-invested for the audience – the screen displays schedules, stills, cameo statements, and featurettes of a speeded-up set change.
Cutting from stage to screen
Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah (1877) is grand opera with all the chimes and trumpets. Its strong and decorative visual character renders it an excellent subject for HD. I enjoyed the stage performance at the Opera House, and did so from a good orchestra seat. Seeing it in digital HD at the Castro in many ways enhanced and strengthened the core values of the show’s design and performance, sometimes in hair-raising immediacy.
I’ve watched operas from the upper reaches of the Balcony Circle, and even at that altitude the sound is grand and the experience is pleasurable. But at those tiered removes – where divas and bassos are but a couple of inches high – there is a certain disembodiment between the sounds and the sources. You must exercise a certain skill at connect-the-dots between voice and arm-waving to keep track of what’s going on.
The HD framing and context is much more immersive through cinema’s window. You are no longer made aware of the monumental proscenium’s limitations. Set designer Douglas W. Schmidt confessed that his concepts for Samson were inspired by the movies of Cecil B. DeMille, and in HD they are sweepingly deep and towering with regal wrath. Carrie Robbins’ costumes in HD revealed their vivid textures and the tactile details of the silks, brocades, embroideries and jewelry that generally go unseen by audiences in the orchestra section. Tom Munn’s lighting of sets and actors didn’t miss a beat in keying for video.
The video director wisely conducts the movement and cutting to respectfully nurture and convey the special balance needed for opera performance. Opera makeup must be laid on at the scale of airport runway markings to be read from the balconies. The closest the camera gets to the talent is a wide full shot, since an XCU could come on like Rocky Horror.
Pans, tilts and follow shots are much more stately and measured than those found in most film. Cutting is never rapid, nor potentially disassociated from the establishing shots. A jump cut could have the effect of a demolition derby in the weighty visual physics of the opera stage. The real take-your-breath-away aspect is the unprecedented closer articulation of the performances, as of a singer like Olga Borodina’s Delilah delivering every heart-stopping note and word of her aria revealed in fully expressive nuance and mood.
How high the def
Act III opens with Clifton Forbis’ Sansom, blinded and shorn of his power hair, seen in a rarely used medium down shot, prostrate on the stone floor. This scene of the prison dungeon in Gaza was as dark and lightless a set as you may see in any opera. With the giant vertical millstone rearing up into the cavernous dusky dome, the moment was as monumentally spooky as a waystation in the Doom 3 game. But I couldn’t distinguish more than a third of the depth and shadow detail as I had perceived in the stage presentation. It is here in the readings of the black values that HD still struggles to match film. At the rate that technology is advancing, this issue may likely be solved before Samson comes around again.
And while nothing can duplicate the deep, smoky chemistry of being part of an audience at a live opera performance, still there are thrills for audiences that have not seen opera previously – or those who have been away from it. So far, the viewer response has been very reassuring, demonstrating that there is an audience out there for ‘highbrow’ material.
The successes of spreading it further and sharing it all with greater audiences through digital cinema can help ensure that, though its heroes and villains may die, this glorious ancient art form shall endure.
Tony Reveaux has been a Bay Area media writer, editor, teacher and consultant since the 70s.
Posted on May 05, 2008 - 02:55 PM
by Tony Reveaux
The transition from motion picTURE film to digital cinema is at least as big a step – technologically and thematically – as was the conversion from silent films to sound in the 1920s. High-definition (HD) has become an integral part of this progression, both justifying and enabling theatrical-scale digital projection and sound. Digital is also necessary to support the growing number of 3D releases coming at us in the next few years from Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. More new theaters are being built equipped with all-digital projection and sound from the start, such as the Century at Tanforan that opened recently in San Bruno. Sing the Song & Walk the Walk
The New York Metropolitan Opera: Live in High-Definition series comprises eight opera performances transmitted live and received by satellite dishes enabled by National CineMedia’s Fathom Digital Content Network. On this coast, each title is shown once at 10:30 am in theaters located in San Francisco, Daly City, Emeryville, Larkspur, San Rafael, and San Jose. This season, the Met will reach a global audience of more than 150,000 people – many of them opera first-timers – through live transmissions.
As part of general director David Gockley’s far-reaching media development and expansion, the San Francisco Opera (SFO) now presents theatrical Cinemacasts and live community simulcast programs, such as the ones playing at Civic Center and AT&T Park.
Under video director Frank Zamacona, the Koret-Taube Media Suite is the first permanent HD production facility in any American opera house. Simulcasts are given full real-time switching and mixing. The performance footage is later fully edited and conformed for the Cinemacasts, and, in time, other broadcast and DVDs.
The production control room houses three robotic operator consoles, 27 high-definition LCD monitors, a 16-channel audio console, a Sony switcher with 16 inputs and 8 outputs, and a 32 x 34 router. The suite utilizes Sony 310 HD broadcast cameras and an array of Cambotics robotics.
The Castro: an acre of seats in a palace of dreams
The Bigger Picture, an Access IT company, is the technical enabler, distributor and manager of SFO’s Cinemacasts nationwide and internationally. Audiences are sure to enjoy the stunning HD presentation quality of the operas from their stadium seats in any one of the modern multiplexes hosting the series, including theaters in Fairfax, Petaluma, Sonoma, and Sebastopol.
San Francisco’s Castro Theatre is a landmark addition to the SFO series. The theatre itself is a match made in heaven for grand opera, with its Spanish, Oriental and Italian influences, tapestry-like sgraffito panels on the sidewalls, and a spectacular tented ceiling. The auditorium will seat over 1,400 in a fantasy setting that is at once both lavish and intimate. The Castro’s traditional Wurlitzer organ prelude, played by David Hegarty, introduces the grand acoustics.
SFO’s master audio engineer Max Christensen helped wrestle the 300-pound, 20,000 Lumen Christie CP2000XB digital projector up the balcony stairs, then shoe-horned it into the 1927 projection booth. “The Doremi server uses JPEG-2000 compression,” he said, “where each frame is treated like a file. The Zip cartridge for Samson’s content was 250GB.”
When director Gus Van Sant brought location production here for his bio-drama Milk, the producers made several community and in-kind donations. One of the most lasting thank-you gifts will be their contribution of about one-third of the cost of the long-delayed restoration of the Castro’s marquee and blade. That classically bold beacon of signage is an instance of neighborhood identity that would be rare in other cities. In the left wing of the theatre’s lobby, you can see a photo board that documents the process of the restoration.
Subtle titles
SFO first started using supertitles in 1983. Not everyone understands the languages nor memorizes the librettos; so to accommodate and cultivate an audience, simultaneous English translation text was projected on two screens, controlled live by a technician (Christopher Bergen performed this task on Samson). SFO also rents its supertitles to other opera companies around the globe.
One supertitle screen was positioned about halfway up the stage wall on house left, while the other was placed on house right. No matter where you sat, it was an awkward angle for your eyes to bounce back and forth between the action and the words. More recently, supertitles have been consolidated on one screen hung at the top of the proscenium arch. While relieved of the old ping-ponging, the text’s position is vertically most distant from the stage action.
The inspiration for this form of visual translation had evolved from the silent cinema and from subtitled foreign films in art houses. Now with SFO’s Cinemacasts, the supertitles become standard subtitles at the bottom of the screen. They are so much easier to read, and they compete less for your attention than theatre supertitles, making the experience much more comfortable for audience members. Thus the sticky translation situation has come full circle.
Intermissions at the Opera House tend to run up to 30 minutes, as massive scenery is lifted and shifted behind the curtain. Digital intermissions are ten minutes, and a no-foolin’ countdown window appears on the screen helping you to strategize your popcorn run. Those ten minutes are well-invested for the audience – the screen displays schedules, stills, cameo statements, and featurettes of a speeded-up set change.
Cutting from stage to screen
Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah (1877) is grand opera with all the chimes and trumpets. Its strong and decorative visual character renders it an excellent subject for HD. I enjoyed the stage performance at the Opera House, and did so from a good orchestra seat. Seeing it in digital HD at the Castro in many ways enhanced and strengthened the core values of the show’s design and performance, sometimes in hair-raising immediacy.
I’ve watched operas from the upper reaches of the Balcony Circle, and even at that altitude the sound is grand and the experience is pleasurable. But at those tiered removes – where divas and bassos are but a couple of inches high – there is a certain disembodiment between the sounds and the sources. You must exercise a certain skill at connect-the-dots between voice and arm-waving to keep track of what’s going on. The HD framing and context is much more immersive through cinema’s window. You are no longer made aware of the monumental proscenium’s limitations. Set designer Douglas W. Schmidt confessed that his concepts for Samson were inspired by the movies of Cecil B. DeMille, and in HD they are sweepingly deep and towering with regal wrath. Carrie Robbins’ costumes in HD revealed their vivid textures and the tactile details of the silks, brocades, embroideries and jewelry that generally go unseen by audiences in the orchestra section. Tom Munn’s lighting of sets and actors didn’t miss a beat in keying for video.
The video director wisely conducts the movement and cutting to respectfully nurture and convey the special balance needed for opera performance. Opera makeup must be laid on at the scale of airport runway markings to be read from the balconies. The closest the camera gets to the talent is a wide full shot, since an XCU could come on like Rocky Horror.
Pans, tilts and follow shots are much more stately and measured than those found in most film. Cutting is never rapid, nor potentially disassociated from the establishing shots. A jump cut could have the effect of a demolition derby in the weighty visual physics of the opera stage. The real take-your-breath-away aspect is the unprecedented closer articulation of the performances, as of a singer like Olga Borodina’s Delilah delivering every heart-stopping note and word of her aria revealed in fully expressive nuance and mood.
How high the def
Act III opens with Clifton Forbis’ Sansom, blinded and shorn of his power hair, seen in a rarely used medium down shot, prostrate on the stone floor. This scene of the prison dungeon in Gaza was as dark and lightless a set as you may see in any opera. With the giant vertical millstone rearing up into the cavernous dusky dome, the moment was as monumentally spooky as a waystation in the Doom 3 game. But I couldn’t distinguish more than a third of the depth and shadow detail as I had perceived in the stage presentation. It is here in the readings of the black values that HD still struggles to match film. At the rate that technology is advancing, this issue may likely be solved before Samson comes around again.
And while nothing can duplicate the deep, smoky chemistry of being part of an audience at a live opera performance, still there are thrills for audiences that have not seen opera previously – or those who have been away from it. So far, the viewer response has been very reassuring, demonstrating that there is an audience out there for ‘highbrow’ material.
The successes of spreading it further and sharing it all with greater audiences through digital cinema can help ensure that, though its heroes and villains may die, this glorious ancient art form shall endure.
Tony Reveaux has been a Bay Area media writer, editor, teacher and consultant since the 70s.
Posted on May 05, 2008 - 02:55 PM
