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Shooting with HD cameras

Jan 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY ADRIAN PENNINGTON

HD documentaries

Filmmaker Nick Broomfield, best known for his 16mm documentaries, switched to HD for his latest dramatic feature “Ghosts,” which is about the fate of the Chinese cockle pickles on Morecombe Bay.

Broomfield's influential documentary style has been developed with a bare bones crew of between three to five people. He found he was able to maintain this compact shooting method with HD. Shooting 35mm automatically necessitates extra people to manage the lenses and change magazines, and the whole backup of catering and transport, he said. Working in HD allows Broomfield to transmit less tension to the cast's nonactors than if the camera were rolling film.

HD's ability to capture low lighting levels made it ideal to underline the dingy, realistic living conditions of the immigrants' houses. He selected a Sony 750p camera with prime lenses. Cinematographer Mark Wolf wielded the camera handheld, although he said it would need someone with an athletic build to hold the unit for such a long time. For his next feature about Iraq, Broomfield is searching for a handheld camera with similar image quality.

Some night scenes shot on a Norfolk beach required significant noise reduction using Final Touch software and a Snell & Wilcox Niagra. The HD grain was exacerbated in the transfer to 35mm for the final cinema print. Some digital noise was unavoidable, but combined with film grain on transfer, it became too noticeable and would only be negated with the arrival of D-Cinema projection equipment, he said.

Capturing raw from CCD

Although it's widely known for capturing features such as Michael Mann's “Miami Vice,” the Grass Valley Viper is slowly finding its way into conventional broadcast. None can be more conventional than BBC veteran comedy “Last of the Summer Wine.” For 26 series, this was a film production. Mulligan shot the last two series digitally on Sony 750s and then Viper.

For Mulligan, digital filmmaking can only truly be achieved with uncompressed capture from cameras like the ARRI D-20, Grass Valley Viper and Panavision Genesis. The Viper, for example, captures information straight from the CCD, bypassing all in-camera processing. Whether the output is to disc or tape, it's pure unprocessed data that buys users an extra stop and a half of exposure range, Mulligan said. The director of photography has exposure control straight from the lens with no conversion of color temperature, gamma correction or highlight control. With more exposure latitude and more picture data captured to the system, it puts the ability to hold light levels back in the hands of the operator.

Mulligan said the digital negative system, which captures straight from the chip, gets nearest to a film aesthetic. It holds the highlights and rolls into the blacks gracefully. Essentially, it's operating a digital workflow in a film capture mode so the skill of the director of photography can be concentrated on focus, framing and exposure rather than tinkering with 72 submenus.

Director of photography Pat O'Shea monitors the raw log output on a 17in Cine-tal HD screen, which can be switched to give a color-corrected video look. Rushes are down-converted to DVCAM for editing on Avid.

Mulligan said he could almost get away with shooting just off the monitor because he trusts the camera so much. That allows the director to watch the performances by eye and trust the camera to capture the scene.

Tapeless HD

One of the chief advantages with HD acquisition is being able to view rushes almost instantly on-set. That benefit comes to the fore when shooting on digital media, such as disc or Flash memory card (a feature of Grass Valley's Infinity and Panasonic's P2). Random access to clips can be viewed as thumbnails and played back instantly either on a flip-out screen or a field monitor.

Corporate producers began rapidly adopting Sony's XDCAM HD (PDW-F330 and PDW-F350) when it was introduced last summer. They were attracted not only by a cost-effective entry to HD (an F330 camera with an integral lens starts around €12,000) with output validated by Discovery and National Geographic but also by some key tapeless workflow benefits.

Freelancer Alister Chapman specializes in capturing meteorological phenomena like tornados for documentary and stock footage shoots. The XDCAM records proxy MPEG-4 files at the same time as HD files to be downloaded straight off the disc to broadcasters. Chapman often finds himself in a race with rival stormchasers to get footage to a broadcaster and said he's bringing in more sales with this time-saving benefit.

His travel kit includes a laptop loaded with Final Cut Pro and XDCAM plug-in to ingest the images at twice real time. He can press shot markers while shooting to mark clips and note them as good or bad takes so when it comes to editing, he's already created a rough EDL.

Chapman also appreciates the camera's cache record function when trying to capture lightning. Previously, he'd leave the camera running and use up large amounts of tape. Now, only when he sees lightning, he presses the button, and he can be confident that the camera has recorded the previous 10 seconds.

Wailing Banshee founder David Baumber has been shooting XDCAM HD for a recent transatlantic video for London Business School and Columbia Business School in New York. Previously, he'd shoot 40 minutes of tape, capture it for 40 minutes in the edit suite and then scrub through to select a shot. Now, he can download via FireWire, searching for clip numbers rather than time code. During Baumber's six months with the camera, he did not have to use his DVCAM or DigiBeta VTRs. He now saves all rushes as clips on a LaCie drive and reuses the disc.

Such tapeless acquisition of high-definition material seems to point the way forward. The next hurdle is to convince post and production companies to accept disc rather than tape and the alteration in workflow (not to mention the digitisation and dubbing fees) that entails.