Carracci's 1582 painting, The Butcher's Shop, as recreated by Philip Haas

The Butcher’s Shop, painted by Annibale Carracci in 1582, has      been recreated in a 21st century adaptation using the             ARRIFLEX D-21.

Commissioned by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, where the 16th century work of art hangs, the short film was the idea of filmmaker Philip Haas, who envisioned the project as an attempt to inhabit the world of the painting and of the artist who conceived it.

The film will play in a continuous loop on a pair of screens facing one another, with the audience in the middle. While footage of the butchers at work plays on one, the other will depict the artist as he paints them – a view not shown in the painting. Carracci then leaves his screen and appears on the screen with the butchers.

By using moving images to depict the creation of The Butcher’s Shop, the museum hopes the painting will become an emotional experience that will encourage visitors to use the same sort of imaginative approach when looking at others in their collection.

Brought to life with actors in a London studio, The Butcher’s Shop was captured using the new ARRIFLEX D-21 in Data Mode supplied by ARRI Media. Behind the camera was Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt BSC, who had worked with Haas on The Situation (2006) – the director’s film about the war in Iraq.

Bobbitt had initially become interested in the potential of the film style camera after attending a presentation at the Plus Camerimage 2007 festival in Poland, which had included a discussion with DoP David Higgs about his experiences shooting Guy Richie’s latest gangster movie RocknRolla with the ARRIFLEX D-20. “Having looked at some of the material David Higgs had shot for RocknRolla I was intrigued and really impressed with the quality of the imagery that was being produced in Log. I thought that theoretically it would only improve in raw,” says Bobbitt. “As Philip was describing what it was that he wanted to do, just the nature of the imagery, and the fact that we were going to be in one location in a very controlled environment – I thought it would be a really interesting project to do in raw data capture.”

		DoP Sean Bobbitt BSC hand-holds the ARRIFLEX D-21 for a low-angle shot

One of the issues that has previously stood in the way of the use of raw data has been the problem of getting the data easily from the camera to a suitable recorder. Now, with the newly developed ARRIRAW T-Link method, it is possible to transport the raw Bayer pattern data utilising a standard dual link HD-SDI connection. During the shoot the raw Bayer signal was recorded directly from the camera onto a Take2™ uncompressed data recorder from S.two. The recorder also provides real-time image reconstruction of the raw data to supply an HD preview image via an HD-SDI 4:2:2 link. ARRI has worked closely with S.two to allow the company to record the ARRIRAW T-Link, for which S.two was granted ARRIRAW T-Link Certification.

Captured images are then developed in post. The raw Bayer data is processed by sophisticated ARRI software and reconstructed frame by frame to create DPX files. Once created, the DPX files can be loaded into any postproduction system. For The Butcher’s Shop they were taken to New York, where Haas lives, and grading was carried out at DuArt on a Scratch system from Assimilate.

For Bobbitt the primary advantage of working with raw data is the fact that captured material is uncompromised by compression. “You are working with all of the picture information straight off the sensor itself,” he states. “At no point is the data affected by compression, so you have the highest quality material possible all the way through the workflow. That gives you the maximum amount of latitude, in both exposure and colour information, moving you more into the area of film – in terms of the quality of the imagery and the potential for the manipulation of that information to create unique imagery.”

The end result didn’t disappoint. “The camera creates an image that is so clean and in this particular case – as we were recreating a historical work of art – actually adds to the viewing experience. It came out very painterly, which is exactly what we were looking for, so I’m very excited by the finished film,” concludes Bobbitt.

For the ARRI Rental Group the project provided the opportunity to put the camera’s raw data workflow to the test, for Haas and the Kimbell Art Museum it was a voyage of exploration into new territory of interpreting art.

Michelle Smith