Sunday, May 17, 2015

Shooting Film

   Yes, we're actually going back to a 19th century technology to shoot our latest epic. I had looked forward to it. After a couple of years or digital movies and series, I had longed for the simple, mechanical whirr of the film camera. It's kind of like missing an old girlfriend after a few years. All you remember are the good times. Remember chart lights? Yeah, we do 'em. Remember gelling windows? It's back. 85 filters in the camera? Every day. But then you start to see the bad side. Camera jams. Hairs in the gate. Horrible video taps. All in all, I think it's about an even tradeoff. Now that I've gone back to it I can see that there are advantages to both.

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a chart light?

Michael Taylor said...

Who's your DP? I'm assuming he/she insisted on using film rather than digital, which means that DP has one hell of lot of clout...

D said...

My DP is Andrew Dunn BSC, Just a liitle clout.

D said...

A chart light is a light that is brought in to shoot a color chart before each scene to insure the proper color timing for film, you dont use them for HD

Michael Taylor said...

On my now gone-forever little sit com -- shot on digital, of course -- we used a chart light before every shoot day for the first 80+ episodes… then the final season, no chart light. Maybe the camera technology improved (although our cameras were hardly cutting-edge, state of the art units) -- or maybe our DP was just seeing things all those previous years.

I wouldn't discount the latter…

On multi-cam shows, there are two things I don't like about digital that weren't a problem with film. First, digital uses "peds" -- camera pedestals -- operated by one person. With film, each Panaflex (with a 2000 foot mag) was on a real dolly pushed by a dolly grip, with a camera operator and a first assistant/focus-puller. This allowed for precision moves and excellent focus throughout. With peds, the camera operator does it all -- shoves the ped around, frames the shot, does the zooming and tries to hold focus. I've seen some excellent ped operators, but no matter how good, nobody can do all that as well as three specialists concentrating doing on their job. Adding injury to insult, the coming of digital+peds put four dolly grips and two camera assistants out of work on each show.

Worse, each ped trails a very long cable, and with four cameras plus two sound perambulators all dragging cables, moving from one set to the next has become a logistical pain in the ass.

Such is the price of "progress," I suppose...

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