HD Cinematography

One of the biggest problems I see in the new age of movie making is how to treat the red headed High def step child of our motion picture world. The biggest mistake any movie maker can do is try to achieve the so called Film look. There is no digital or anlog medium that can compare to the organic nature or true motion picture film. I am not making any arguments here or trying to step on any ones toes about this whole issue, but I thought I should write about how to care for the HD image during shooting.

First off HD has a EI film speed equivalent rating equivalent of about 320. when shooting HD set the EI to 320 on your meter. But there is more to just setting your EI to 320.  There are a lot of parameters to think about during the process of shooting.  The shutter speed of most HD cameras can be adjusted control light and decrease motion blur. 

I find increasing the shutter speed on a digital camera is almost the equivalent of adjusting the shutter angle. Like the movie the "Saving Private Ryan," the shutter angle was set at 45 degrees. The shutter angle causes an almost surreal effect making the film look more gritty and it captures all the little blood spatters nicely. Virtually the same effect can be achieved for setting the shutter at 15000 or 10000. However, like the shutter angel on a film camera the more the shutter angel is adjusted the more exposer compensation in needed.  Its quite a trip and can be a good alternative to cutting out large amounts of light. 

If you don't want that saving private ryan look then neutral density filters are a good option. 

The thing about HD is its too forgiving on the depth of field, but focusing the image properly is an  extremely sensitive operation and needs to be measured with great accuracy. 

 In star wars episode one, george lucas, shook the main stream movie world when he shot his big epic in HD. In one of the American cinematographer articles the cinematographer who shot star wars episode one explained that inorder to achieve the same or simular depth of focus in film you have to open the aperture all the way in order to achieve maximum depth of field.  If your going to shoot a movie in HD the only way you are going to maintain a strong depth of field is to always keep the aperture all the way open. In film this would not be an issue, but hd is not film. 

There is a myth involving the use of the progressive 24 frame rate. First of all, there is no way a camera can shoot true progressive on any tape medium. It is always going to have some interlacing or at least the footage is going to be processed in camera so that you don't see it. During the capture process it is only perceived that it is one frame at a time. The only true way to get actual 24 frames per second is by shooting one still image after another like the red one camera does. It is understandable that people want to migrate to HD moviemaking because its cost efficient nature. however, one must take in to consideration that the look of HD no matter how good will never take on the same or simular nature to how film captures the image.

Film has always had an extremely large latitude to begin with and the image is captured one frame at a time on a very long strip of film.  film also has one natural and inherent defect and that is during the shooting of film on a motion picture camera produces a very slight jitter to the frame.  HD could never truly produce that kind of effect.   Shooting on film is all an organic mechanical process.  HD can often be described as clean crisp or sterile.  

During the early days of cinema, cameras where hand cranked. So during playback the frame rate would vary causing the motion in the image to speed up or slow down. Some time later cameras developed motors or spring wound mechanism to maintain a steady frame rate. Shooting at 24 frames per second in film was the most economical and visually stable frame rate. Film can be shot and projected at 120 frames per second, but to shoot at that rate would be a nightmare. at such a frame rate the film would be extremely difficult to expose not to mention waisting film like crazy. shooting at 18 frames per second just makes the image too fast and choppy on playback. hence is why 24 fps is the most sensible frame rate to shoot at on film.

Now for the myth. While filmmakers will shoot 24 fps on a motion picture film camera, the projected playback is 48 FPS. Effectively displaying every image of film twice.   This means that for every one frame of picture shot the projected image of that shot footage is shown twice on the screen.  The reason for this is because the 24 fps is just slightly slow for the mind to process as normal motion and 48 frames per second is perceived as normal motion for the our eyes. 

Anyone who has ever shot on HD can tell you that 24 p seems a little bit strobey. The reason for this is the camera will always project what it shot. There are HD cameras that have the option of shooting 60 p and this is the closest we will ever get to shooting 48 fps to achieve that so called film look. Filmmakers have been raving for years and demanding camera makers to produce the so called 24p film look.  Camera makers try to meat consumer demands by satisfying there need to shoot 24 p. Ignorance can be bliss I guess. when ever I shoot on HD I will always try to shoot at 60 fps vs 24 because of the whole frame conversion / projection issue can be a total mess. It frustrates me that the consumer is almost always stuck with setting the camera at xyz factory preset frame rates. It would be awesome if most cameras had variable frame rates. Some cameras do but you would have to pay out the nose to actually get something like that.

I know that the RED Camera exist and it shoots one frame at a time.  This is revolutionary, but for the life of me I can not figure out why its so hard for the entire industry to Migrate.  I know there is a fad going on now with Digital SLR cameras being able to shoot 24 fps but the technology and ergonomics on both cameras is just not there.  

Being able to record and archive on these two camera types can be a nightmare.  I think that is why Traditional tape format still seems to be the most versatile at the moment. The XDCAM in my opinion is the most viable medium to shoot on other then tape. the XD cam uses blu ray disks which I find the most suitable as an archival medium, but the camera cab be very expensive.

Currently Holographic Versatile Disc are under development and and is in use, but its is quite expensive selling at a whopping 180 dollars a disk. The disk however, can store 300 GBs and has a transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s (125 MB/s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

This particular medium could change the world, but if the disk can come down to $20 a disk and players and recorder for under $200 for consumers this could replace all the mediums we have out to date.  Even tape and blu ray disks and the tape format.  

The potential for Holographic Versatile Disc could be exponential.  Just the shear size of the disk could minimise piracy because no one can really transfer 300 gbs over the net effectively as a consumer.  the other thing this could revolutionize the industry is we could distribute content on HVD with the intent that every person could enjoy the theater experience in there own home not to mention game development.  

I remember when sony playstation 3 first came out and hearing each unit was about $1000 to produce initially. But if sony sold there playstatons for that much they would never have sold as many as they did and sony's playstation 3 game franchise would have been a complete disaster.  The same concept for the Bata max when it first came out. Bata max was expensive and the tape only played up to an hr of video. VHS on the other hand won the war because it was cheap to produce and could record over 2 hrs of content.  VHS had to win because the average movie is 120 mins.  

When shopping for a camera there is never the end all be all of cameras and recording formats.  Right now there are so many mediums we can shoot on.  P2 cards, HDV tapes, SD cards, blu ray disk, DVD's and hard drives.  The Tape medium has been around the longest and does not have the tendency to become corrupted easily.  HVDs in the future could be its replacement but for now I really don't see how we can do the switch from tape to HVD.   

I think that is why I bought the canon xha1 because it was tape based and HDV is cheap to produce with outstanding quality.  

Yes I know The  RED cinema camera is the best thing sense sliced bread but for the average joe  video guy who has a wide array of clients to worry about it can be a little too much.  

For me I found a happy medium with my little hdv canon.  It does the job and gives me images that a movie audience might want to see.  

So if you can avoid getting solid state media or hard drive options then that will save you allot of headache in the post and archival area.  Solid state and hard drive technology is just so un predictable, expensive, or has no efective archivability.  

I know some of you have there heart set on a camera already and I am not trying to sway any one to get one camera over another. I am just simply pointing out that our world is still in the middle of a formmat war and I for one pick a medium that is more robust and cheap.    

Every business has there demands for what quality there clients will demand.  So go with the camera that fits your biz model.  personally I love RED and I would gravel and drol at the feet of a person who owns one, but I know with all my heart that I can not only not afford it, but the technology is just not ready for mass video production.  

I wanted to close in saying that HD is a wonderful medium to shoot on, but don't treat it like the red headed step child just because you can't shoot film.   If you treat HD good then it will be good to you.  So shoot HD how it was intended to be shot and learn to love HD in its entirety.   

By
Robert Sawin