It's one of those late autumn days in Southern California where you start out wearing a parka as you're setting up the camera at 6 a.m. By the time the talent shows up you're down to T-shirt and shorts, which generally lasts you till the sun goes down and you end up reaching for that parka again.
For us the sun went down ten hours ago. It's 3 a.m. on the far back reaches of the Warner Brothers lot. We've been using The Gilmore Girls locations for Faye Dunaway's directorial debut--an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams story Yellow Bird--and now the studio needs it back.
The next show's production company is starting to roll in, waiting for us to pack it up. You can hear them powering up their jennies as we push to get off the last shot of our 20-hour day. It's a stunt shot where an old Chrysler crashes out of a garage and speeds away. Unfortunately, the car we're using has long since seen its days of speeding pass away with the other last vestiges of the mechanical age. The first two attempts to smash out of the garage are met with failure as the flimsy stunt doors prove too much of a barrier to the rusting pachyderm.
We joke about the poor stunt man who's sitting in the tiny garage with that idling smog factory and then realize that maybe it's not so funny and we'd better get this gag rolling. A quick amendment by the grip crew renders the garage door flimsy enough for a child to break through on a tricycle. Sure enough, take three is pure magic as the beat-up relic lunges through the doors and putters off into the night.
"Cut! It's a wrap!" calls out the movie's director. It's pretty much the same routine that's gone on for nearly a hundred years at this same place. Looking around our exterior location, the houses and buildings look like any contemporary Midwestern town. But walk inside any one of them and you're met with the cavernous carapace of ancient beams, massive girders that have looked down on a thousand crews doing what all film crews do.
But hey, we're not a film crew. We're shooting digital high-def, and there is an almost palatable shift as business-as-usual becomes quite unusual. Although our crew is entirely composed of grizzled film veterans (some, far more grizzled than others) and we probably have several centuries of film experience among us, there is that indisputably persistent re-alignment and re-definition of duties that technology always brings.
The lives of grips and gaffers remain little changed in the face of digital technogogery. Lights still need to be set by hand and will be well into the Twenty-Second Century before anyone figures out a way to digitally improve on the ineffable grip. But that's about it. The loader has now been replaced by the far more expensive HD engineer and the DP needs to have a far greater understanding of the numerous limitations and advantages of shooting in high-resolution digital acquisition systems.
First and probably foremost is the concept of shooting a positive image. Unlike film, where you're recording onto a negative medium, HD is more like shooting directly onto a fast color-reversal film stock. The blacks carry a good deal more information than the whites as you trade the softly rounded shoulder of film for the liner articulation of the video knee circuit. Constant attention to the waveform monitor, while not mandatory, is strongly advised.
The digital DP is further presented with a recording environment that constantly wants to make everything look like really good video. A truly cinematic look on HD takes a significant mastery of both lighting and engineering. Good, cinematic HD is much harder to create than good film, while mediocre HD is much much easier to create than mediocre film.
Those who look to HD to save time and money on production should consider looking elsewhere. Unless your project has a lot of effects (like ours), or you get really excited about technology (guilty again), there are better ways to make a movie.
Standing on the old studio's back lot, surrounded by the new tools of the trade, the movie's director, with her years of craft in front of the camera, takes a broad swipe at the air that encompasses the monstrous aggregates of old methodology and new technology. "Just look at this! Everything is in play, we're at risk, this is very exciting!"
Even the most grizzled members of the crew must smile at Faye's infatuation with the new technology as she wiggles her way through the camera crew to take a look at a new filter that we're considering.
The obvious advantage of recording on to an inexpensive medium (videotape) has not escaped Dunaway as more than once the actors heard her calling out, "Just keep on going and then roll right into it again. Tape is cheap."
Perhaps no other incident so keenly drove home the inherent cost-effectiveness of the actual recording medium as when James Coburn, in his role as an evangelical preacher, got hung up on the word Gethsemane. Time after time he'd work his character into a hollowed frenzy only to be stopped dead when he came to that word. In a traditional film production the director would generally make accommodations after a failed take or two. Maybe even utter the popular' "We'll fix it in post," but not here.
Without the budgetary pressure of burning film, the urgency was gone, as the extras who populated the congregation chuckled politely with each botched try. When he finally did get it out, it was in a one of those "hellfire'n brimstone" deliveries that you felt down in your shoes.
Cast and crew alike, all looked up at the towering Coburn, who was on a roll and driving home a performance that was pure gold. After a moment of stunned silence, Faye Dunaway the actress, who was sitting in the congregation as her character Aurora Beavis, remembered that she was also Faye Dunaway the director and called out (in character) "Cut!"
Once out of character, Faye is quick to point out the advantages of shooting in a relatively low-cost acquisition medium. "It's an idea that I first got when I worked with Luc Besson," she explains. "He would operate the camera and he would talk to the actors during and between takes. There's a great advantage to letting the film run
and maintaining the connection with the actors. As an actor, the ability to stay in character without breaking the energy lets you build on your performance. You get up for the scene but maybe you missed a little something or you want to come at it from another direction. Because tape is cheap, you're not as predisposed to cut, and so you keep rolling and refining the performance until you get everything just right."
"With film there's always that pressure to cut, but when you do, everything deflates," Dunaway continues. "Hair and make-up come in and start fussing with the actor, people start drifting off to craft services, and you end up losing everything that you worked so hard to build. If you can keep on going from one take to another, you start building on all the tension and energy that's in the air, and start generating a higher caliber of performance. That was obviously the case with James, and just look at what we got."
"Yellow Bird is my first HD project as cinematographer, and there are many pros and cons to the medium," states Eric Anderson, the show's DP, taking a decidedly upbeat view of the process. "It takes time to run and route all the cables, match and set up cameras, and you generally have to light more carefully. And when you move, it's like a train pulling out of Grand Central Station.
"I rated the Sony/Panavision F900 camera at 200 ASA, based on where the white registered 100 percent on the waveform monitor," he adds. "I think this was too conservative, and I found myself stopping down 1/2 to 1 stop. A 1/4-stop change is a big deal in HD. On one crane shot, we did a four-stop change.... It was really good to have an accurate monitor because you know where your highlights, midrange, and shadows are. Since you have your dailies right there on the set, you can go home knowing exactly how your lighting looked. Directors, production designers, gaffers, all of us could watch for ourselves and make changes if needed.
"The downside to having a 'God' monitor on set is that everyone knows what you're doing and can see the changes you're making. DPs who end up working in this medium may long for the days when they could have private conversations with the gaffer. Now everyone sees that the backlite is too hot, and 'drop a double' becomes a more public affair," Anderson concludes.
With film, a good DP sets his shot and fires away at the director's discretion. With HD the DP needs to maintain a constant dialogue with the engineering staff as well. With film the DP is usually on set, tweaking with the gaffers, grips, best boys, and electricians, as well as supervising the various esoteric workings of the film chain. With HD you'll generally find the DP and his key gaffer--and quite often the director--hanging out in "Video Village" with the engineering staff.
Jeff Cree is the Acquisition Systems Specialist for Sony and has spent more time in the HD trenches than anyone I know of. He graciously stopped by the set to check my system configuration after Sean Fairburn, SOC (the show's original engineer for the first several days) was pulled off to do a John Woo movie.
Jeff is widely considered to be one of the leading authorities on the Sony F900 and any DPs who have an HD project in their future would be well advised to attend one of his highly popular seminars. As Jeff points out "There are essentially two techniques to using the F900 in a film type environment. One is having a remote control station (Video Village) with a remote operator/engeneer who works with the DP and actually controls or paints the image as it is recorded. The other technique is to preset the camera to a conservative profile and then just light and operate using that setting as you would a film stock."
Even though using an engineer ads another voice to the chorus, Jeff feels the advantage of using the on-set engineer (especially when printing to film) is that you can stretch the signal's parameters and utilize more of your available bandpass than with a baseline set-up. Jeff adds, "The Fox Television show Titus has been using the same pre-set, both inside and outside since their first week of production and that methodology has served them well."
Aside from the technical knowledge that Jeff brings onto the set with him, is a wealth of practical tips and advise. "One of the keys to doing field production where you are using a Video Village, is making sure that you have a proper environment for the monitor" Jeff adds. Brightness is something that changes every time the ambient light changes around the monitor, so you want to take care to control the light so you're not painting blindly. Obviously the proper monitor set-up is very important."
Jeff gives my cables one last check, re-calibrates the pluge on our "God" monitor and walks off toward his car parked in front of a West Wing exterior. "You're on your own Scotty" he chuckles as he climbs in and drives away. I slide inside the walls of VideoVillage, which by now looks more like a homless refuge than the shrine to technology that it truly is.
Eric Anderson slides in as I start matching up the cameras for the next shot. He's followed by the Key Gaffer, Ken Wheeland who want's to see the new lighting, and then Camera Operators Tom Fraiser and Alan Gitlin stick their heads in. Just when it seems that there isn't any possible way anyone else could possibly intrude, the 1st AC Alan Koplin, Charly Cabrera our co-producer and Tracy Scott the script supervisor all poke their heads and everyone jostles to accommodate.
It's tight and stuffy inside the make-shift coverings of Video Village and I remember Sean's parting words. "Maintaining a fat signal isn't nearly as hard as controlling access to the monitor."I'm beginning to get it.
Several weeks later, at the end of a very long twenty-two hour day, Faye finally calls out "That's a wrap" for the last time. There would normally be the traditional wrap party but we're all much to tired. Faye walks up and says that we'd better take that cover shot that I've been bugging her about for the past several weeks.
I wearily set up my RB-67 medium format camera and blast off a couple rolls of Faye and DP Eric Anderson, (the fact that the shots are not on the cover is a testament to how tired we were). I'm so tired I can hardly focus, Eric's practically asleep at the camera but Faye's still full of energy and wants to go review the days shots. Eric and I pass on the invitation as we flop down on the nearest grip-to-ground adapters (apple boxes).
Looking around and apparently coming to terms with the fact that the shoot is finally over, Faye pulls up an apple box and sits down next to us. Eric and I look at each other, both realizing that this is the first time that we've seen her actually relax on the set. It's kind of spooky really. The journalistic node in my brain kicks in as I pull out my tiny recorder and ask Faye if shooting in HD was all worth it.
Faye smiles that spunky, one-of-a-kind smile and replies, "There are, of course the practical givens; you can go out and shoot a lot more because tape doesn't cost as much money...but that's not why I did it. We did a very sophisticated budget and HD was only about athousand dollars less. We shot in HD because, quite simply, it is what's happening. This is a transitional time in motion picture production, its exciting and fresh."
"We're out there on the leading edge of technology and art," she continues. "I've been watching the stuff that people like Mike Figgis and Lars von Trier and Dogma's been doing, it's a new revolution. I guess its the variety of expression that appeals to me. I like the challenge of it and the clarity and newness of the medium. I love the magic of film, and there's nothing like it. Perhaps I'll work with it again, but for this project I wanted to explore this new world of high definition. I'm glad I did."
Mercifully, my tiny recorder runs out of memory and turns itself off with a beep. Eric and I stumble outside and shade our eyes from the bright sun of a perfect Southern California day. A day that we're both destined to sleep through.
This article originally appeared in Issue1, Volume1 of DigitalCinema Magazine