Shoot Processing-The Environment

The day of the shoot, you walk onto the sound stage (or location) prepared to begin filming. The set has been constructed prior to your arrival by the "swing gang." You'll be working with a diverse crew of people to get your scene done, each of whom has an important role in the making of the movie.

* The cinematographer (or director of photography) is responsible for the lighting, choice of film, correct exposure, correct use of lenses, and supervision of the camera crew.
* The mixer is responsible recording the sound. Other sounds are added during post-production by foley artists.
* The gaffer is responsible for making sure all the lighting equipment is where it should be and operating correctly. The gaffer sets the lights so that the finished picture will have the desired effect.
* The key grip is responsible for the rigging (carpentry) and for moving and readying the sets and camera dollies.
* The set dresser decorates the set.
* The property master ensures the sets and actors have all the necessary dressing and props.
* The wardrobe master is responsible for all wardrobe needs.
* The make up person is responsible for all makeup.
* The assistant director keeps order on the set and makes sure the production moves according to schedule. Normally hired by the producer, the assistant director aids the director but also watches over the production company's investment. Sometimes this involves prodding the director to finish the shots planned for a particular day, or hunting down actors if they are not where they should be on the set. The assistant director also functions as a record keeper and handles time cards and minor union disputes.

You are told exactly where to stand and where to move. Every time you stop someone places a piece of tape on the floor. The camera follows you slowly. You rehearse the scene on the director's command. Once. Twice. Then the director says, "Let's go for a take." You are about to be filmed for the very first time in your life.

The assistant director yells, "Quiet on the set!" The actor who appears in this scene with you (playing the role of Grubowski) moves to his position. He stares into the fire as the cinematographer instructs the cameraman to take a medium shot.

"Roll it," says the assistant director. Someone says, "Rolling." "Speed," says someone else. "Thirty-five, take one."

An assistant holds a slate in front of the actor's face and snaps it shut. This "clacker" will later aid the film editor in synchronizing the picture to the sound. "Action!" commands the director.

Seconds later, the director calls out, "Cut. Do it again." The process is repeated until the director yells, "Cut. Print it." The makeup person moves into the scene and adjusts the actor's makeup. The director now wants a close-up shot and the cameraman films several takes until the director is satisfied with each one.

Finally, it's your turn for a close-up. You know that the camera and microphone will be within a few feet of you, so you'll need to communicate ideas and emotions at a very close range.

"Action!" You enter the room clutching a tea mug, your hand trembling as you imagine Emily's might. You're careful to "hit your mark" and stop exactly where the tape was placed on the floor earlier in the day. "Cut," the director says, and tells you to do it again. Finally, he calls out, "That's a wrap."

You take a deep breath of relief. You've made it through your first day on a movie set. The assistant director gives you your callsheet, or your schedule, for the next day's shooting. The crew begins to pack away the equipment for the night. The film shot that day is sent to a lab where it is processed and made into "dailies." Dailies are film clips that are viewed after each day's work in order to evaluate performances and spot any technical problems. They are shown to only a few people—normally, only the director, producer, and director of photography.

Making Mini DV seen like Film

There are a lot of plug-ins and software options which will help your video look more like film (and help you get closer to your limit on your credit card), but we'll stick with the tools you already have: a video camera and the editing software on your computer.

The Saint on Film
My good friend Juliana Marchand wanted to shoot her graduate thesis project, La Santa, on Super 16 film (the widescreen version of 16mm), but, like most graduate students, she didn't have the money. She came to me and asked if I could shoot her vision on Mini DV and give it the look of film. Here is what we did.

Aspect Ratio
First, we decided on the aspect ratio of our "film." Juliana and I agreed to shoot in a 1.85:1 ratio, which is a standard film aspect ratio. It's the ratio of the width of a frame to its height. When people see letterboxed footage (black bars across the top and bottom of the screen on a 1.33:1 television), they automatically think of film. I also like the wide canvas this lets me work with as well.

Letterboxing bars are easy to create in a painting program and easy to add as overlays in your video editing software. Some editing software comes with built-in letterbox effect that masks your video with the click of a button.

You'll certainly want to be able to frame your shots for 16:9 during your shooting. One way to do this is to create some 16:9-framed video with your software and bring it back into your camcorder. Then you can use a dry-erase marker or gaffers tape to mask the LCD screen. Do not try to tape cardboard to the front of your lens, however, since it makes a soft letterbox that doesn't work very well at all.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend creating a letterbox with the 16:9 setting in a consumer camera, unless it shoots a true anamorphic widescreen image. If you simply crop to 16:9 in your camera, you can never recover the top and bottom footage. Instead, shoot the entire 4:3 frame, and then letterbox in post. This is much safer and gives you more options later if you change your mind or want to distribute your movie in a different format.

Sharpness and Filter
We also employed two techniques to soften the harsh look of video. First, I lowered the sharpness of our Canon GL1 by decreasing the C.Sharpness value in the menu by two units. Many consumer cameras allow you to alter the sharpness: consult your manual. Second, I bought a Tiffen Black Pro-Mist 1 Effect Glass Filter. This $45 investment helped tone down the sharpness, soften the image and add some highlight flare. If the budget is tight, use a pair of sheer panty hose and stretch them over the lens. You should definitely test all of these methods before you go on the actual shoot. You can also consider performing a very light sharpness adjustment using a filter in your editing environment, but this will add significantly to the rendering time of your project. I actually prefer the in-camera adjustments to any of the filters I have used.

Control
Once we were on the set, we incorporated two conventions borrowed from over one hundred years of filmmaking: controlled lighting and controlled depth of field. I will admit, both of these techniques intimidated me in my early years of shooting, but after experimenting with some simple lights and camera settings, I realized it was not so difficult. I also studied scenes from my favorite films with the sound down and my finger on the rewind button so I could analyze light, shadow and focus.

Lighting
There are many different styles of lighting, but I suggest you start by learning the three-point lighting system, which you can read up on in this magazine's monthly Light Source column. Learn the basics and then experiment. Proper studio lights are ideal, but halogen shop lights or photoflood lights will work. Outside, you can bounce sunlight with car windshield reflectors or white poster board. Just about every single film you spend money to go see manipulates and controls light very carefully. If you want your video to look like them, you need to control your light as well.

Depth of Field
One way cinematographers manipulate what their audience will concentrate on within the frame is by manipulating the depth of field. Depth of field is the range of distance in front of the lens (e.g. from four feet to eight feet) that stays in focus at a given aperture setting and focal length. At its deepest, everything from the closest object to the camera to the farthest from it is in focus. The more you zoom (telephoto) the shallower the depth of field. When I want a shallow depth of field, I place the camera as far as I can from the subject (on a tripod of course), have the subject stand at least ten feet from the background and zoom in to compose my shot. This puts the subject in focus and put objects as close as five feet in front or behind them out of focus. You'll see this technique in almost every film you watch, but rarely in projects shot in video.

Opening the iris (aperture) will also give you a shallower depth of field. An easy way to achieve this is to use neutral density (ND) filters (either an in-camera option or a screw-on filter) to cut down on the intensity of light entering your camera, thus forcing the iris to open. You can also reduce the exposure by increasing the shutter speed, which will allow you to open the iris more.

Contrast Ratio
One serious difference between film and video concerns contrast ratio. Film can handle a greater ratio of bright to dark than video can. With video, a dark shirt on a light-skinned person in a dark room is not going to work. Video cameras cannot show details in extremely bright and extremely dark objects in the same frame well. If you expose to capture the details in the bright part of the image, you will often crush the details in the dark. Though there are some cameras that may mitigate this limitation with film-like gamma curves, there isn't a lot you can do about it except be conscious of the limitation and try not to have a huge range of brightness values in your shot.

Many Other Methods
These are the main methods we used to make our Mini DV short La Santa look like it was shot on film. There are many other aspects we could have played with, including: color correction, adding film-style grain, manipulating the gamma, shooting in PAL (25fps), frame blending, frame mode setting, adjusting shutter speed, edit with cuts and cross dissolves only and de-interlacing, to name a few. Good audio will help sell the effect and you could even use a damaged film filter (such as hair in the gate, scratches or dust), if that's the effect you want.

We entered La Santa in about fifteen festivals. It was accepted in over half and won five awards. Most of the success of this short is due to Juliana's writing, directing and the efforts of our crew. I was most pleased, however, when a critic or fellow filmmaker leaned toward me at a screening and asked if I shot it on 16 or 35.,

Use of monitor in Digital Cinema

In “Digital Cinema Solutions”, my recently released documentary surveying the entire field of digital production and post, a number of high profile filmmakers weighed in on the effects of the ever present HD monitor on our new working environment.

"The monitor is probably the most important thing about the shooting on High Def process right now." stated noted cinematographer Allan Daviau, ASC.

“You look at the monitor and what you see is what you're getting." That’s one of the major advantages of shooting digital according to James Cameron; but how do we really know that the image we sign off on during production is the same image that will ultimately be perceived by our audience? And what about the changing paradigm of cinematography, where once the Director of Photography was thought to be the only one trusted to predict how the image from the set would translate to the screen? Now anyone who knows how to watch TV may feel qualified to judge the image on the monitor; but are they? Don’t get me wrong; it’s great to have these superb new tools to help us judge the images we capture, and it’s a great boon to the collaborative process for a director to consult a monitor and ask for specific adjustments. But, it’s still my job as a DP to be the guardian of the image and to try and make sure that what we see on set will be the same image ultimately translated all the way through post to the final exhibition, whether it be to a theatrical screen, a home TV set, or both.

I don’t like to think I’m all that old, but I have to admit that when I started shooting movies we didn’t have video assist monitors, and when they did start to appear on the scene they were barely watchable in grainy black and white, flickering, sometimes just enough to see the framing. And even this was at the steep price of robbing brightness from the camera operators optical viewfinder by splitting the beam to the video tap. In those days we were forced not to rely on these images too much, but instead to develop the ability to foresee how the image in front of us would look once it got screened in dailies and beyond. Sure, there were sometimes a few surprises, but experienced DPs developed their eye by simply running a lot of film through their cameras and then seeing the results projected or telecined. Nowadays, we are able to take advantage of the superb images we can see on our display devises, (perhaps better than anyone will ever see them again). It’s instant gratification, instantaneous feedback; quicker than polaroids or one-hour photos.

“We're gonna need less ESP...It's not going to be sub-vocal, subconscious communication,” says James Cameron, speaking of the effect of the monitor on the collaborative process. “It's going to be very conscious; there's the image, what do we want to do? What do we want to change? There’s the immediacy of actually analyzing the image that you're creating at the time; you experiment with filters, with lighting, you see it in a very immediate sense, and you don't have to wait until the next day to see how it came out, which I like a lot because I like the ability, the freedom to experiment without having to be too conservative....more creative in the sense of giving oneself permission to try things without having to worry that you've lost a day's shooting."

It is still the DPs job, however, to interpret how these images will be translated so that they can be seen by the final audience. Today’s monitors are great, but the only way I know how to feel confident of my results and of what I’m ultimately going to get is through testing. I shoot extensive tests before any digital production and I try to see them all the way out to film, or whatever is the intended distribution. If you’ve got a show in preproduction, labs and rental houses will generally offer you gear and services for testing so that you can see your work on the big screen and get everyone’s input early in the process, which can be really helpful later on.

“It makes our life so much easier to be involved from the outset.” explains Ron Burdett, CEO of Los Angeles based post house, Sunset Digital, and a founding member of The Hollywood Post Alliance. “We'd like to work with the digital filmmaker early on to help them capture a good, healthy image on digital. From there they can go anywhere, be it transfer to film, broadcast, or digital projection. Unfortunately, there are sometimes some hard lessons to be learned when filmmakers are disappointed that the images they see here in post are not what they perceived on set. It’s not just a matter of how they may have had their display devices tweaked, but also what type they were using, CRT, LCD, or Plasma. The type of display technology used can make a huge difference since they all represent black and color in different ways. We sometimes spend a lot of time trying to get back to what they thought they already had.”

Monitors are precision instruments, and really no less important than your production camera. This is especially true in HD, where there is even less room for error. The higher the resolution, the more any image capture problem is going to be magnified, and as compared to film, we are confined to a much narrower exposure latitude. “You have to be careful when you shoot with a digital camera that you have the image in terms of the setting of the iris fairly accurate to what you want to achieve," according to Allan Daviau, ASC. "Because if you overexpose an image or burn something out, that's all there is."

So we know we need to be precise in our settings and the only way to do this is to have accurate equipment with which to monitor. “An uncalibrated monitor can be merely an illusion that can cause more damage than not having a monitor at all,” says David Riddle, for many years in the business of calibrating video monitors and related test equipment. “A certified color video monitor is the only means to precisely determine that what you are seeing, in terms of exposure, latitude, color saturation, color hue, depth of focus, and framing, is correct.” He also stresses how important it is to provide a consistent ambient illumination level in which to view your monitor. With this in mind, he has created a unique, hard-shell transport and utility shock-proof case that houses several types of Sony 8” and 9” standard and high definition monitors. His custom engineered case not only helps protect the fragile monitor from getting damaged and knocked out of calibration as it travels to location, but also creates a consistent viewing environment. With a built in hood that eliminates ambient light from contaminating the display, you can evaluate your image consistently no matter the lighting environment, whether interior or exterior location.

With the attendant personnel including Director, Script Supervisor, Digital Image Tech, Producers, and other department heads, it seems the video village has sometimes grown to become a small city, and it takes a pretty good size monitor to service this crowd. A general rule of thumb is that the ideal distance to view a monitor is at about six times the vertical of the screen. So at a distance of 6 feet, you should be looking at approximately a 24” 16x9 monitor, even a little closer if you want to see all the detail HD has to offer. If a control monitor gets much bigger than that, you should probably be looking at smaller, multiple monitors.

There are many great manufacturers including Sony, Panasonic, and Ikegami, among others, turning out great full size HiDef production monitors that are at home in video village, but one that I also try to get on every shoot is the Astro model WM-3001. With it’s convenient size, (6” LCD weighing less than a half pound), it’s small and light enough to be mounted right on the camera. I like this because it keeps me on set, right where the action is, instead of being stuck back at video village. It also has a built in wave form and vector scope which can be superimposed over your picture to truly analyze what you’re looking at. This also makes it especially easy to calibrate, by first outputting the Color Bars signal from the camera to the monitor, then selecting the Vector Scope mode and superimposing it over the Color Bars to dial it in. This is a fast, easy way to get a proper color representation of the camera.

It used to be that if you got just a little off the perfect viewing angle, an LCD would appear to fade out, but with their new models, they seem to have remedied that problem. Other features include dual inputs so you can A/B switch between two sources like another camera or playback for matching. It also accepts either HD or Standard Definition.

Mark Forman, of New York’s Forman HiDefinition
Screening Room recommends that if a project is ultimately meant for large screen projection or theatrical release, that it only makes sense to periodically project your digital dailies on a large screen. “In the production stage certain visual parameters can only be seen on a large screen. On a small screen, focus will sometimes appear to be there, but when projected it will be soft. Another aspect seen in projection that may not be readily apparent on the set monitor is production items in the background. When seen, these things are usually a rude awakening.” In other words, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and a few dollars spent on a professional screening room is a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to fix it after production has wrapped.

Even more today than in the past, the Director of Photography needs to be vigilant at every stage of production and post as the image is manipulated and transformed throughout all it’s various electronic incarnations. But without good quality, well maintained monitoring equipment and a bit of practical experience gained by testing, we are only flying blind. I prefer to use every tool at my disposal to assure that what we see is ultimately what we get.

The Post Production in Cinema Work

The film editor must know how to tell a story, be politically savvy when working with directors and studio executives, and have a calm and confident demeanor. Millions of dollars of film and the responsibility of guiding the picture through post-production and into theaters rest in the editor's hands. Scenes may have been photographed poorly and performances might have been less than inspired, but a skilled and creative editor can assemble the film so that the audience will never see these imperfections.
To better understand the editing process, imagine you are seated in a movie theater. The lights are dim and credits appear over an establishing shot of a seacoast town in Maine. The title appears on the screen: Blueberry Hill. After the last credits evaporate, you see a long shot of a vacant summer cottage, then a medium shot of a mysterious-looking man pouring lighter fluid on the grass near the house and striking a match. The grass catches fire; the man flees. The vivid crackling of the fire dissolves into the sound of a young girl's laughter as she packs clothing into a cardboard box and sings along with her CD player.
Who created this scene? The screenwriter, director, cinematographer, actors, lighting designer, sound designer, and, finally, the film editor. Working with the director, the film editor shaped the scene into its final form. After hours and hours of reviewing the unedited film, he created this one-minute scene. The scene appears to take place in a seacoast town in Maine during an autumn afternoon. In truth, little of what the audience sees on screen occurred in Maine, and it certainly was not all filmed in one afternoon.
The actor who played the mysterious man was most likely filmed on a Hollywood set in late summer. The young girl was filmed on a different set in early fall. The establishing shot of the seaside town was filmed months earlier in California, not Maine. The song on the girl's CD and the sounds of the crackling fire were recorded in a studio. But when you see the finished scene, all of the sounds and images work together. They appear to have taken place at one time and in one place. That is the magic of film editing.
Cuts and Transitions: Assembling the Scene
Editors select sounds and images from all the film that has been shot and arrange them to make the movie. They also plan how one shot will best transition to the next. Assembling the opening scene of Blueberry Hill, the editor might choose to begin with a wide shot of the bay, focusing on the white caps and buoys that dot the water. From the shot of the grass catching fire, the editor might decide to dissolve to the girl packing clothes into a box. There are dozens of possible transitions the editor can choose, each of which will create a different feeling.
Editing often begins as soon as film has been shot. Early scenes are assembled for the producer and director to view. Occasionally, the actors will also view these early scenes. Many directors choose not to show actors these edited scenes for fear that they will affect the actors' performance.The first cut of a film, called a "rough cut," takes up to three months to complete. The final cut may take another month to finish. Sometimes the editor works alone, sometimes with the director. The sound designer and music composer join them for the final cut, adding sound effects and the musical score. When the editing is complete and the director and producer have approved the final version of the film, this final cut is sent to a negative matcher. The negative matcher makes a negative of the film that exactly matches the final cut, and the negative is then sent to a film lab where prints are created. These prints eventually end up in theaters.
In the past, editors worked with copies of negatives called "work prints" to plan a film's scenes and transitions. When an editor was satisfied with the final film, he or she would create an edit decision list, a list of each shot in the film and its length. The list would correspond to numbers, called "edge numbers," printed on the edge of the work prints. These numbers helped a negative matcher accurately copy the work print and cut the negatives.
Today most editors use computers or nonlinear digital editing systems to compile a film. This is more efficient, but for the most part, the process is the same. The work prints, complete with edge numbers, are stored in the computer. The editor arranges the work print, and then creates an edit decision list that will be passed on to the negative matcher