Tippster,
Sounds like your brother inlaw is working his way up through the ranks “the normal routeâ€.
In answer to your question as I’m sure you B-inlaw can also answer…
why wouldn't we ENG/EFP guys be as able to perform the camerawork as well as the ex-film guys? Is it more a "Fiefdom" thing?
I never said you couldn’t but calling them ex-film guys is premature…
In Los Angeles as a rule, you either shoot TV-news or shoot film production…slim chance of crossover as they are separate industries not even aware of each other.
But lets not confuse my above statement with the ongoing debate of film vs video for production you speak of when referencing Lucas or Mann and whither a video guy can make that cross over. They can as often is the case but not a news photographer being hired for a big budget gig. Again, they are different industries.
High-end big budget film projects are just that and would never take a news photographer seriously in considering him/her for a big budget camera position period. I don't say this in vain of the news photographer as I'm one myself.
If you want to work on big budget film or video productions you have to work you way up through those ranks, not shooting news. Shooting news is not the experience those positions require. There’s no reason you can’t start shooting news, then video commercials, later some film commercials or film doc’s and then trying to get into the higher end film/video production arena but its not the normal route to take.
I attempted to go the film route but getting that work was based on my production and film experience, not that of news.
I originally moved to LA with the intent of getting film work and actually came close as a position was offered to shoot 2nd unit on the 16mm production “Dr. Quinn and The Medicine Women†providing I could get into the IATSE film division but, initiating fees cost to much at the time plus I lacked the “paid†film experience required to join however, this would be waved if you actually had a job but technically I didn’t have the job because the production company required me to be in the union first. A real catch 22 you could say.
Being hired as a Cinemaphotographer for either a film or video production is a huge milestone and usually pays high 6-figures on large film projects so don’t take getting those gigs lightly. I’m sure your brother in-law can contest the difficulty just in getting 1st unit gigs compared to 2nd unit gigs and that’s just as an 1st or 2nd AC.
Hope this clears up any confusion regarding my earlier comments.
Your reference to Lucas and Mann may be over the newest Sony F900 24P HD Cam that’s getting all the Hollywood buzz lately. I’ve posted an article below and a website full of information on the direction that video/film is heading.
http://www.cameraguild.com/technology/index.htm
Here’s another great article that supports your reference to George Lucas shooting "Episode II" in HiDef and his reasoning for doing so.
http://www.hidef.com/digital_age.html
Revolution or Evolution?
Bill Bennett, David Darby and Allen Daviau, ASC shed light on the battle between Hi-Def and Film
By Meg Thayer
The following article was originally published in Indievision Magazine (formerly Guerrilla Filmmaker).
“I’ve been shooting Hi-Def for over thirty years. It’s called film.â€
– Allen Daviau, ASC
David Darby has a nightmare that he’s on a set, shooting one of his award-winning commercials. His camera won’t adjust to bright light, needs its backfocus adjusted for every lens change, has a primitive black and white viewfinder that doesn’t show color or critical focus and has only about five stops of exposure latitude, and limited lens choices (four zooms and six primes).
A heroic sales rep appears on the horizon carrying the great new hope. The Future. A camera with a razor-sharp color viewfinder, variable speeds from one to several hundred frames per second, twelve stops of exposure latitude, hundreds of lens choices that require no refocus once the backfocus is set, and this cool stuff inside called film that’s made of ground-up trees and silver. This new camera allows the user to move ten times faster and gather more visual data, resolution and color accuracy. And when light projects through the strand of celluloid it produces, the resulting image is indescribably beautiful.
In this dream, Darby drops his old Hi-Def digital camera to the ground, clutches the new film camera and never looks back. He awakens in a cold cinematographer’s sweat, and cries out, “Oh my god, I got it backward!â€
Could Darby ever learn to love the 24P Hi-Def digital camera?
If this anecdote seems like high drama, it’s fluff compared to what’s going on in the entertainment industry. The tension between film and Hi-Def proponents has reached a boiling point. When words like “Death†and “Revolution†creep into industry conversations, headlines and seminar titles, you know there’s a full-fledged battle being waged. Even bumper stickers allude to this controversy. One is particularly memorable: YOU CAN HAVE MY FILM CAMERA WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS.
Bill Bennett tells of a Hi-Def seminar at which he and cinematographer Steven Poster, ASC (Stuart Little 2, Someone To Watch Over Me) were panelists. “Steve and I were there to support the idea that 35mm is still a wonderful way to originate for a Hi-Def end result. And some wise guy was standing on his little folding metal chair, purple veins sticking out in his neck, screaming at Steve to sit down and shut up, that they don’t want to hear about film anymore. I was shocked.â€
The Hi-Def hype has led to absolutist phrases such as “the Digital Revolution†and “Film is Dead,†a ploy that has resulted in lines being drawn so that those in the entertainment industry feel compelled to choose a side and engage in a Sharks vs. Jets-like gang dance.
Exactly what is it that underlies the controversy? Is it fear and injury? Cinematographers fear that they will be forced to shoot with Hi-Def digital cameras and then, as Darby says, “We’ll get blamed when the medium doesn’t live up to its publicity––that is, it doesn’t wind up saving money or looking ‘just like film.’ It’s not that cinematographers are afraid of change. It’s going back in time that we’re afraid of. If you’re going to have a revolution you should have something better to offer, or something at least as good.†And, for their part, Hi-Def camera manufacturers naturally fear that they’ll lose their large dollar investment.
Manufacturers understand the cinematographers’ pioneer spirit and realize that a more eager, diligent testing pool cannot be found. So they have traditionally introduced new technology to the cinematographers first, giving them an opportunity to test each new product. The cinematographers then report their findings to the manufacturers who make the necessary improvements and then roll the product out to the industry at large.
This time it was different. The Hi-Def camera manufacturers by-passed the cinematographers and pitched their cameras directly to producers and studio heads. The pitch included promises that their new digital cameras would require fewer lights and smaller crews, and that with advances in digital projection, release prints (in the neighborhood of $1,500 to $2,000 per copy) would go the way of the 8-track cassette. In other words, shooting Hi-Def would save everyone time and energy, which equates to money.
Regarding these claims, Bob Harvey, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Panavision says, “You hear comments like ‘with Hi-Def [cameras] you don’t need any lights’ or ‘you don’t need a cinematographer,’ which is ludicrous. I even heard someone in line up at Sundance say that with a Hi-Def camera you don’t need a caterer!â€
The confusion as to what Hi-Def can and cannot do, has been exacerbated by yet another factor; the blending and blurring of all things digital. Three distinct areas of digital production exist in Hi-Def production and understanding them is the strengths and weakness of each separate area:
1. DIGITAL ORIGINATION
(shooting in an electronic digital format)
2. DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE
(a telecine or tape-to-tape process where one can modify color, contrast, brightness, darkness, diffusion, etc.)
3. DIGITAL BROADCAST OR PROJECTION.
Each area functions separately and only one area is origination-specific. Both the digital intermediate and broadcast can be used for film-originated material.
An innocent comment by a member at a recent Cinewomen IRIS meeting illustrates the public’s confusion about these three digital aspects: “I hear lots of shows are going to Hi-Def now that people are buying Hi-Def televisions.†Even in the entertainment industry, many don’t understand that a show broadcast in Hi-Def could be shot in absolutely anything, from analog video, to 8mm film to 65mm film. The origination medium, or what the piece is shot on, doesn’t necessarily dictate the broadcast or projection medium.
Bennett feels that journalists are adding to the public’s misunderstanding of Hi-Def. He cites a trade publication in which an author remarks that the television show NYPD Blue had converted to Hi-Def. “What the author didn’t say, is that NYPD Blue is a film-originated show. And for it to go Hi-Def means nothing to the cinematographer other than composing for a different aspect ratio. It’s the posting and distribution (broadcast) that’s Hi-Def.â€
One thing that’s crystal clear in the dark cloud of uncertainty about the future of shooting Hi-Def is the passion it has raised in cinematographers. Notorious perfectionists by nature, cinematographers devote their careers to achieving the ultimate aesthetic image. As a rep from a digital camera company stated, “Cinematographers are a difficult lot. And with video, they’re like the Flat Earth Society. They refuse to admit that it’s the way of the future.â€
In fact, cinematographers continuously look to the future. They’re tech-heads engaged in a never-ending search for new techniques and equipment that will enable them to advance to an even more pure and creative image. Some of the techniques they’ve discovered through experimentation are downright weird. Like shooting film backward through the base to give it an aged quality, shining flashlights through the viewing system, or deliberately filming with shutters out of sync or with no shutter all. So why would cinematographers refuse to embrace an innovative new technology such as Hi-Def?
Allen Daviau’s wisdom on the subject of Hi-Def is, “Stay calm. It’s a new medium.†Understanding the context of the film vs. Hi-Def rift shows how imperative it is to begin a clear dialogue on the actual strengths and weaknesses of the Hi-Def camera.
Here are eleven simple questions and straightforward answers from Allen Daviau, ASC, Bill Bennett, David Darby, Bob Harvey (Vice President of Sales at Panavision) and Michael Schwartz (Sales and Marketing coordinator for the Sony Pictures High Definition Center).
QUESTION: Does Hi-Def make an image that looks like film?
BENNETT: In Hi-Def demonstrations, the manufacturers carefully select scenes where video does look like film. And you can, shooting in very controlled situations, create scenes where the image looks very similar. But, in other situations and in broader use, a child could tell the difference. Allen [Daviau] showed me a comparison check between film and video. In the piece that was shot digitally, the green outside the window was a bright green mass. Whereas in the piece that was shot on film, you could see individual blades of grass. There’s detail there. The ferns blowing in the breeze were discernable.
DAVIAU: The Hi-Def camera, particularly as Panavision packages it, is really good. It’s better than I expected it to be and holds the top end (or highlights). Can it shoot a good picture? Yeah. It sure can. But is it the same as film? No.
HARVEY: I don’t like to compare them. They’re different. It’s like some painters prefer watercolor and some prefer oils. It’s a choice.
SCHWARTZ: Certainly in Daviau’s hands it does (look like film). If you get a chance to see the test he shot for Panavision, you’ll see that he really captures the film look. I tell people to think of it (Hi-Def origination) as a film stock. It has different characteristics. People should ask themselves if the characteristics of Hi-Def work for their project.
Does a Hi-Def-originated image handle depth of field in the same way that film does?
DARBY: No. It has way too much. You see everything too clearly. One of the big problems with video is depth of field. In film, we choose what to focus on within the frame so that the eye falls there, and we allow other areas to be less focused. Whereas in video, much more is inherently in focus, and it’s more work to tell the eye where to look.
HARVEY: Traditionally, cinematographers shooting on film have had more control over depth of field. Lenses for electronic cinematography need to be 2-1/2 times better than cinelenses because cinelenses focus on a 35mm frame. The 24p lens targets a 2/3-inch chip, which is 2 1/2 times smaller than a 35mm frame. When you couple that with the fact that we made the lens very fast (it shoots its best pictures wide open at T 1.6) the cinematographer has much more control over depth of field. That creates a film look. We have four zoom lenses and six prime lenses that were developed from the ground up for George Lucas. Depth of field is still a function of lighting along with the speed of the lens.
DAVIAU: Because the chip in a Hi-Def camera is smaller, it has a greater depth of field, which isn’t always good. Lots of times you want a more shallow depth of field.
SCHWARTZ: Film has a one-inch imaging area whereas Hi-Def has a 2/3-inch imaging area. If the cinematographer wants a more shallow depth of field on Hi-Def he or she can do certain things to achieve that.
Do you need fewer lights to shoot Hi-Def?
DARBY: You need the same number of lights, and you need to take more care when using them because video can’t handle extreme brightness. All video, including Hi-Def, winces and squints when it’s pointed at anything really bright, like backlit water or backlit smoke. Then you need to create black. Negative fill. People who say you don’t need lights to shoot digital video are saying that you don’t need lights to shoot any story. I just want to know who thinks that the scene with the yellow pickup truck on the railroad tracks in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the scene at the bridge in Apocalypse Now or any of the great stories ever done could have their deliberate use of lighting removed and still have the same affect on the viewer. It’s absurd. We remember these scenes because they’re lit in a profound manner. Not because some knucklehead pulled a video camera out of a nylon bag and pressed “Record.â€
DAVIAU: No, you don’t need fewer lights to shoot Hi-Def. I hosted a forum at the Motion Picture Academy and we had a great panel including Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Soderbergh. A producer, who was in the audience stood up and said, “I just visited a set the other day where they were shooting with digital cameras. They had a crew of five, the actors had no marks––they could go with great freedom wherever they wanted––and there was no lighting. They just shot.†And I could see that this is the dream. The dream that there’s no lighting. And I’m sorry, but with any medium––I don’t care what it’s recorded on, whether it’s film, digital, or sensitized string as the old saying goes––you’re going to have to control the light. That’s what makes images. You may be adding it with lights, with box reflectors, with grid cloth, with muslin. Or you may be removing light with negative fill, putting black cloth on the shadow side or removing skylights overhead, but it’s the control of the light in conjunction with the composition of the image that makes a wonderful image.
HARVEY: Cinematographers haven’t lit for exposure for years. They light for effect. They light to tell a story. Now, we’ve introduced a new format (Hi-Def) that allows the cinematographer to do a similar thing electronically. The camera and lenses that we lease are professional gear. It’s not Circuit City stuff. You do need a cinematographer and crew and you do need to light the scene. People aren’t renting professional Hi-Def cameras to shoot Bar Mitzvahs. That’s not to say that you can’t shoot Guerilla-style with [a Hi-Def camera], but you can do that with film too.
BENNETT: Cinematography is the design of the light.
SCHWARTZ: That you don’t need lights to shoot Hi-Def is untrue. Hi-Def cinematography comes down to three things: lighting, lighting and lighting. It’s such a myth that you don’t have to light a scene and have it appear as aesthetically pleasing as a well-lit film. It’s simply not true. People need to take the same amount of care when lighting Hi-Def as they do when they’re lighting film.
With Hi-Def, do you need a smaller crew than with film?
DARBY: For Hi-Def you’ll need the same number of grips and gaffers and it will take them longer to get blacks. Until they fix the viewing system, someone will be have to hawk-eye the monitor to find that split second when the camera goes out of focus, because the Cinematographer can’t judge focus critically through the viewfinder, especially during action. The video department will no longer be a department of one. Your video village is going to become a town with city limits and a mayor.
It’s ironic that video cameras supposedly give their best “film look†with the lens wide open. That’s exactly when you need to judge focus most critically. And judging focus is one of the real weaknesses of the Hi-Def camera’s viewing system.
BENNETT: No, you need the same size crew. Certain people are exchanged. You don’t need a film loader, but you need an electronic technician. Some people will dispute that, because some people do shoot shows without engineers. I think that’s like driving your car at night with the headlights turned off. You definitely need an electronic technician along to make sure the camera’s functioning perfectly at all times, because what you shoot is what you get. There’s no latitude like with a film negative, where you can later manipulate where the highlights and shadows fall.
And even though you’re using a different recording medium, you’re still pushing dollies, building sets, setting up lights, flying blacks overhead, operating a crane, running sound, wardrobe, makeup, etc. You’ve lost your loader but you now have a video tech and the tech costs more than a loader.
HARVEY: It depends on the script. You may be exchanging a loader for an electronic technician, but you still have the same number of guys.
SCHWARTZ: Of course you can get away with a smaller crew. But are you going to sacrifice quality to do that? If you’re going for a documentary aesthetic, you can have a smaller crew and you’re in good shape. But if you’re trying to emulate 35mm film, you need to have crew.
Does Hi-Def have as many shutter angles and shooting speeds as film?
BENNETT: Both film and Hi-Def digital can do a wide variety of shutter angles, but Hi-Def video can shoot with an equivalent of a 360 degree shutter angle, which film can’t do. For shooting speeds, with a Hi-Def camera you’re locked to the sync sound speed. Panasonic introduced a camera with a limited number of variable frame rates. And film has an almost infinite number of frame rates.
HARVEY: [In Hi-Def] there are still issues with production speed. You have to [change speed] in postproduction.
Does Hi-Def have the same exposure latitude as film?
HARVEY: No.
BENNETT: No. Video has five or six stops of latitude. Film has eleven or twelve stops of latitude, and it’s exponential. Each additional stop is twice the amount of light as the previous stop.
Does Hi-Def cost less to shoot?
DARBY: It’s a ‘pay me now or pay me later’ situation. And are you talking about money or time? If you have a lot of time, Hi-Def origination might save some money. But in commercials, time is money. And shooting Hi-Def takes more time because of all the little things you have to adjust do add up. When the sun is setting, it’s setting.
HARVEY: Not necessarily. It could. Obviously there’s a big difference between the cost of film and the cost of tape, but it depends on how you’re posting and how you’re distributing.
SCHWARTZ: You save money in film stock. And that’s a dramatic savings. A fifty-minute roll of Hi-Def cam will cost you seventy-five bucks. That’s essentially both your stock and your processing. Then you have the time savings. With film you have dailies processed overnight and you watch them the next day. When you shoot on Hi-Def you get instantaneous dailies. In Star Wars: Episode Two the dailies went straight to the editor. So at the end of the day, they could watch cut scenes. They were able to determine if they’d gotten the material they needed and could strike the set, or if they needed to re-shoot. And when you’re shooting special effects, there’s no film scanning. You can record directly into a hard drive. Star Wars: Episode Two could do instant compositing. They finished something like five weeks ahead of time on principal photography.
Then you can save money on insurance because you don’t have a 35 mm negative which is expensive to insure. I think Star Wars: Episode Two saved $100,000.00 in insurance.
Does Hi-Def cost less to post?
DARBY: Not really. If you don’t take the time to shoot it exactly how you want it, which means controlling the light and exposures to have a perfect finished product, you have to do a tape-to-tape transfer (in which you re-adjust contrast, colors, brightness range, etc.) to optimize the image.
BENNETT: Even if you shoot it exactly as you want it, you always have to do a tape-to-tape color correction. If something is a stop off in exposure in Hi Def, it might not be usable and you can’t save it in post. With film, being a stop off is insignificant. That’s not to say that film allows you to be sloppy, but it allows you to work faster on set because you can utilize the greater latitude.
SCHWARTZ: I’ve had projects that did no post-production color correction. But because Hi-Def color correction is such a powerful tool, most filmmakers want to use it. It’s one of the big appeals of shooting in video. I think we’ll see a trend where productions that shoot in film (like Traffic or Oh Brother, Where Art Thou) will transfer the film into a digital environment strictly for the ability to do color correction. Then they’ll record the digital out to 35 mm.
Does Hi-Def cost less to project or broadcast?
DAVIAU: Digital projection is just starting. It’s expensive. It’s not there yet. We have this wonderful Texas Instruments digital projector, but it still doesn’t have the blacks and so on that we’re used to in film projection. Nothing at all the matter with digital projection, let’s just make sure that it’s better than what we have now and not worse. And digital projectors aren’t cheap. So the idea that you’re going to replace every film projector in the world with one of these is a little premature.
BENNETT: Why would an exhibitor want to replace something that cost them twenty thousand dollars that they’ve already paid for, with something that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and will be obsolete in two years?
SCHWARTZ: One of the most expensive things about shooting digitally is the very last step, the decision to record it to film, which costs about $60,000. What’s nice about that is you have a finished movie and you don’t need to spend the $60,000 if the project isn’t good enough for film. One scenario I’m hearing is that smaller studios will shoot several projects on Hi-Def and then decide which ones warrant theatrical release and which should go straight to DVD or cable.
Would you shoot digital or Hi-Def under any circumstance?
DARBY: I would use it as any other tool. I wouldn’t object to shooting it as long as the people who were paying me understood that it would look like videotape. But if people expected me to get the look that I’m known for now with the same number of crew in the same amount of time, I’d talk them out of it. Because the Hi-Def cameras aren’t up to par yet.
But if I loved a script, and it took place in a controlled environment, like a veterinarian’s office or a courtroom––a situation where the limitations don’t completely destroy your ability to tell the story visually––then sure, why not?
And video is great for documentaries. If you’re all about gathering information, then shoot video. But if you’re specifying the information and having control over it, for the time being, you absolutely have to shoot film.
BENNETT: I already have shot Hi-Def. I’m actively involved in comparison testing the Sony Panavision Hi-Def camera and the Panasonic 720P camera.
If I were offered a Hi-Def-originated project and the project lent itself to the capabilities of the video camera and I felt I could make great images, I would do it. My strategy would be to test the Hi-Def camera like crazy to find out exactly what it does and doesn’t do.
I’m not saying I couldn’t shoot a beautiful commercial or movie on video, but I would be working within a tighter set of limitations than I do now. The moment Hi-Def cameras become better than film cameras, I will be all for them. I just don’t want to have something that only inadequately replicates what I can do with a film camera.
DAVIAU: Some projects might benefit from digital origination for various reasons. I know one gal who’s shooting in DV (digital video), not Hi-Def. She doesn’t have any money, and she wanted to do interviews with a whole lot of older psychics. I said, “sounds like you should use DV. You should go out with a DV camera and let the camera roll for hours while you talk the psychics into telling you the really good stories.†DV is wonderful for that. I know she dearly wishes that she could shoot in Super 16, but DV is appropriate for her documentary.
What is the major difference between film and Hi-Def?
DAVIAU: If I were the producer and it was my money, whether it was a hundred thousand or hundred million dollars, I’d like to have a negative. Because I think having a negative means you have all the information possible in a piece of image-capture material. You use digital origination where it’s advantageous, but the majority of the time I’d rather use film. It’s better inherently, and it’s going to be better ten years from now.
The advantage of originating on film is that every ten years you can go back to that film element and get more out of it than you did the last time because there will be new technology, better scanning equipment, better digital equipment. When you’ve originated on a digital picture and you have digital data recorded, I don’t think you’ll get that much more out of it in the future.
What I found [when we recently telecined Empire Of The Sun] is that I had capabilities that I didn’t have when we telecined in 1988 to D1 master. By having that original film element with all of the information that’s in a film element, we could take great advantage of the High Definition factor for the Intermediate. We got a better image out of the same film element that we shot fourteen years ago.
HARVEY: Film has more perforations. Seriously folks, it’s just a different format. One’s electronic and one’s mechanical.
BENNETT: Both film and Hi-Def cameras can make good pictures. Film offers a much greater color palette, higher resolution, far better latitude and better highlight rendition. The difference is that the Hi-Def digital video camera imposes greater limitations on the cinematographer. It comes down to whether the cinematographer and producer are willing to do what it takes to work within those limitations.
FINAL REMARKS
BENNETT: For my foreseeable future, I hope to continue originating on color negative and doing digital post-production. Then how it gets projected, I’m not sure. Right now, it will be film. Maybe eventually it’ll be digital projection. The Hi-Def digital cameras aren’t presently better than the film cameras I have now, so why should I settle for the limitations? All cinematographers are, by definition, technologists. Bring us new technology that allows us to create better images, more interesting images than our present equipment, and we become very interested.
HARVEY: There’s room for both formats. And as long as professionals use both formats properly, the viewing public is in for some great entertainment.
SCHWARTZ: These gang wars are ridiculous. There are so many more fundamental issues involved than format A or B such as storytelling. All the celluloid in the world couldn’t save Battlefield Earth. The same is true of digital. Shooting in DV (digital video as opposed to film or Hi-Def) has really democratized filmmaking. Anyone with a video camera can go out and make a movie. That means, unfortunately, any idiot can go out and make a movie. It lowers the entry fee.
DARBY: I’d like to see someone remake the Hi-Def digital camera from the ground up. Start with a body that’s more like a film camera, which we’ve had a century to perfect, then give us a chip that’s the size of a film frame, which would help to solve the depth-of-field issue. Then stick to an optical viewing system with the little rotating mirror instead of the electronic viewing system that won’t show you what you’re looking at. The electronic viewing system is okay if you’re shooting a golf tournament––not so good if you’re Alan Daviau shooting Avalon. The problem is, the manufacturers’ starting point is an old broadcast camera that was originally designed to videotape news. They need to throw that away and start over with a film camera model. You want to talk space race here, whoever makes a camera right, built from the ground up first, wins the game.
DAVIAU: There’s so much buzz about digital. They want us to hate it and they want us to be against it and they want us to feel threatened by it. And we’re saying, no, it’s a tool that’s been coming for a long, long time, but it’s not here yet. It’s just starting. And it’s good for some things and not for others. And like with every other tool, it’s going to have to develop. We’re glad to have new tools. It’s just that people want to say, “That’s it! Film is dead!†It’s not a revolution; it’s going to be an evolution. It’s going to take some time. There’s going to be a lot of side by side and we will be shooting, printing and projecting film for years to come. •
hehhe, it's not the tool, it's how u use it hehhe...