Lab

From Page to Stage
Some scripts or treatments can be open-ended with visuals, giving sparse details about how one should interpret the words of the story. Other scripts can be on-the-nose, detailing camera motion, lighting and composition. With television or documentary-style projects, shot-listing simple setups will often carry enough to inform the cinematography team. Before a shoot, an assistant director will often send out shooting scripts and miniaturized shooting scripts called sides, which both contain breakdowns of each shot needed for that day. A storyboard becomes useful when the script calls for complex action. Storyboards can be ridiculous stick figures or tiny works of art, but they need only convey a sense of motion within the shots, and composition from shot-to-shot. For scenes with extremely elaborate visuals, it may be helpful to create an animatic to test the effectiveness of the angles and action, and give the full dynamics of the motion, actors and set. What’s important is that the heads of each department have a good understanding of the priorities to effectively cover the scene.

Determining Aspect Ratio of Imagery
The aspect ratio of a video or photo is the number referencing the dimensions of a frame size. A 16:9 aspect ratio, or 1.77, displayed in high definition video is equal to the aspect ratio of a length of 1920 pixels by a width of 1080 pixels. The most common aspect ratios for high definition video are 1.77, 1.85 and 2.35, but there is no set rule on what frame size to use. Most HD cameras capture video at a 1.77 ratio even though the image sensor itself is usually of a different length to height ratio. That is not to say that 1.77 is what you have to use in the pictures you are shooting. Images of a cheetah running on a wide open plain might feel more appropriate in a wider 2.35 frame, whereas images of a house cat in a small room may lend itself to a narrower 1.77 format. Deciding the aspect ratio is essential to framing, and should reflect the scale, set and story.

The Right Camera for the Job
Technology has evolved a great deal in the last decade and there are a wide variety of film, video and photo cameras to choose from. In some cases, like the Panasonic GH4 or the Canon 5D, the photo and video features have been packaged into a single DSLR camera. The most important criteria for the camera will usually be based on the story mood or the project’s specifications. If one is shooting a 1940s black and white, noir movie and the expectation is truly to evoke that era, then one may want to consider shooting film. A digital camera can come close to the dynamic range of film now, but skin tones look unique to a digital sensor or a frame of film. The human eye is picky about skin tone, and unless extreme care is taken, digital won’t look like film.

Most digital cameras come with CCD or CMOS sensors. CCD technology is usually better in terms of video capture, because it uses a global shutter to record like film, one frame at a time. CMOS sensors capture images much like the way a television plays images, pixel by pixel, line by line. The CMOS sensor rolls through the image, giving it the name rolling shutter. When a camera is moving quickly, this rolling shutter can create a lag in the image recording, leading to a jello effect in the camera movement. To their credit, CMOS sensors are often incredibly sensitive and ISOs can be pushed high, without a loss in quality. The CMOS also draws much less power, so if a shoot requires longer record times, the battery savings can pay off.

Digital recording file formats are a fundamental piece of the puzzle. 10 and 12 bit 4:4:4 RAW video look magnificent, but if one needs lightning fast turnaround times or hundreds of hours of footage for a documentary, it may not be the recording format of choice. When there is post production staff to handle these formats or there is longer production timelines, then more power to you. For scenarios where color grading and cinematic production value are less of a concern, 8-bit 4:2:0 Prores files might be more efficient for the project.

Choosing a Lens for a Camera
Selecting a lens ultimately comes down to preference, and how you want the image to look, but the characteristics of all lenses are very different. When modern lenses are matched to high resolution sensors, the resulting image can take on a hyper reality, a somewhat clinical approach to visual design. When these same sharp lenses are used with film, the grain of the film will retain a softer, more organic quality. So in the past, the impulse of many cinematographers and photographers had been to grab the sharpest lens possible. However, the resolution is so high on cameras now that cinematographers should be having a conversation about how to control it, whether through the use of filters or the use of older lenses with less resolving power. Yes. I said that. When a close up photo is taken with a 4K camera with new cine zeiss lenses, one can see more than the eyes and a nice smile. The make-up, pores and fly-away hairs all become visible. It’s all you can see! When we were all shooting film, we took for granted the natural ability for film to forgive this alternate microcosm. Perhaps that’s what you might want your audience to see; furthermore, the sensor technology we have now correlates to another important choice before a production begins.

Behind the Glass
Most cameras use lens mounts unique to the brand, with the exception of cinema cameras, where the Arri PL mount has become nearly ubiquitous. Canon uses the EF mount, Nikon: the F, Olympus: the OM, Panasonic: the Micro Four Thirds mount, and Sony: the E mount. Unfortunately, not all of these lenses can be adapted to fit on one another’s mounts, because the flange focal distance can vary between camera systems. If the distance from the mounting flange to the film plane is smaller than the lens format’s flange focal distance, then they will be compatible, and an adaptor will permit focus to infinity without any additional optics. Some adapters offer built-in optical elements that reduce the focal length, and increase the effective maximum aperture of the lens. For cameras with slow rated sensors, the extra light could be necessary for low light situations.

Let There be Light
Lighting is an expansive domain that could fill tomes with styles, setups and equipment. Pound for pound, it is the department that will maximize production value the most, so if the expectation is broadcast quality or even cinema caliber, the project’s planning and budget should scale accordingly. There are many different light fixtures such as tungsten, fluorescent, plasma, arc, HMI, LED and more, each with its own light qualities, beam characteristics, color temperature, and wattage rating. Some of these will perform better as key lights and others will find better use as flat, fill lights. The grip department controls and shapes the light with diffusion, scrims and gels, while the electric department safely manages power distribution to the set. Safety should be the highest priority at all times. Sandbags should be placed on the front leg of c-stands holding the lights, and safety chains should secure the metal barn doors to the light’s housing. Placing gels or diffusion too close to hot lights can lead to smoking, and if there’s a fire sprinkler system, the set could be ruined. Don’t be that guy.

Moving Shots with Camera Staging
Once a scene has been blocked out with the talent, the nature of the shot will be established. A shot can be dynamic or static and should carry the character and momentum of the scene. Moving shots can be very engaging because new elements create visual interest and discovery. However, this comes at the cost of setup time and often specialized equipment.

A dolly and track is a traditional way of moving the camera with good stabilization. They can achieve very smooth motion limited only by where the tracks can fit. Some dollies like the Fischer dolly are very heavy to stabilize the shot to greater effect and have pneumatic lifts for booming up and down, while simultaneously moving side to side. A smaller tool used for side to side tracking is the camera slider. These come in various lengths and can be attached to tripods or placed on appleboxes for low angle tracking.

Steadicams are stabilization systems worn by an operator, giving a Robocop motif. These offer very organic, smooth shots with some booming potential. The other big benefit to using a Steadicam over a dolly and track is a savings in setup time. A new offshoot of the Steadicam is the digital stabilized gimbal, such as the Freefly MoVI system. The handheld rig takes the operator’s motions and translates them into stabilized pan and tilt camera movements, which can then be further refined through a wireless graphic user interface. Currently, the gimbal systems can only support sub 10 pound camera rigs.

Jibs and cranes provide a way to boom up and down over large distances, allowing a shot to raise over buildings or give visual exposition to set a scene. One often sees these types of shots at the beginning or end of a scene, because the motion itself is very dramatic. It can make a big, Spielbergian shot, but they can be very clunky to move into position and set the frame.

Helicopter shots are utterly insane. Most of all, it requires perfectly coordinated timing with action on the ground, meaning cracker jack radio communication. Like the jibs and cranes, these shots can give sweeping images of large areas of terrain. Sometimes there is an operator handholding the camera from within the cabin, and other times the camera is mounted to the bottom of the helicopter and controlled via remote. In the last several years, drones have come into style as a more economical way to achieve the helicopter-style shot. There is definitely a learning curve to flying drones, so it’s good practice to have an experienced operator, even if it is a crash camera being attached.

Explaining Field of View
There is a lot of confusion about how the lens of one format affects a sensor of a different format. For example, when pairing a Full Frame 35mm lens with a Micro Four-Thirds sensor camera, there is approximately a 50 percent crop factor in the image produced. The effective “field of view” of the image is proportional to the ratio of the lens format size to the camera sensor size. So a Full Frame lens at 80mm focal length becomes approximately 160mm when the lens is attached to a Micro Four-Thirds sensor camera. As far as frame sizes go, the saying is, “A lens is a lens.” The only thing changing is the field of view.

The Art of Invisibility
Editing is an art of invisibility, because a narrative with proper assets and timing rarely calls attention to itself. There are those that celebrate a theosophy that a film is made in post, or can be fixed in post. For many documentaries, there is truth in this, but for performance-based scripts, don’t drink the kool-aid. It becomes vastly more complicated to correct poor camera staging or lackluster performances. Indeed, a drama plagued with enough production flaws will become a different drama, or more likely, a horror show. So the incentives for planning well are very high. Don’t plan to fix it in post.

A sense of timing and a feel for the subject matter are the most prized things an editor can bring to a time-based media project. A script is merely a reference in post production. At this stage, the editor is using the media as his paint and canvas.