I’m talking about scenes where the screen jumps from one face to another while two people are having a conversation.
I saw an interview with Sidney Lumet where he mentioned that he could film this kind of scene in one take with HD. Supposedly, without HD, this kind of scene would have been done by filming one actor at a time in two takes (if everything goes right.)
Why couldn’t they just use two cameras at the same time and point them at each actor while they have their conversation, and then edit the two videos together? What is it about HD cameras that allows directors to do this?
My guess us that the interviewee was talking about wide screen aspect, vs 4:3. A widescreen shot is wide enough that you can fit both actors in the same frame, where there might not be enough room in an SD frame.
It may be that the higher resolution of the HD footage will allow both actors to communicate subtle facial expressions in a wider shot, while such minute details would be lost to viewers of SD footage without a closeup shot.
Or he could have been talking about being able to shoot with multiple cameras simultaneously. That’s hard to do with film cameras because they’re pretty big. If you’re filming direct to digital video, you can run multiple cameras at the same time because they’re small and quiet.
None of us can be sure what he meant. Can you find a link to the interview?
I concur with Gus’ interpretation. I’m not sure about Lumet, but “single camera” TV shows like The Office and Arrested Development use(d) multiple video cameras to shoot the sort of scenes that would have used one film camera in the past.
Well, film cameras can be pretty damned big (and loud, whirrrrr), example. But I’d think an HD camera would need quite a lot of that outboard equipment – lenses, eyepieces, yadayada – as well. Having said that, I don’t work in movies, perhaps an experienced shooter can comment.
He’s talking about having multiple HD cameras on the set, instead of just one film camera. With traditional film technique, there’s only one camera, and you set up and capture each shot separately. Since shots are, on average, a few seconds, it’s a very time-consuming process.
For action scenes and stunts, they occasionally use multiple film cameras, but it’s very rare for ordinary interior and dialog scenes.
Lumet is saying that he used at least two HD cameras to film the scene in question. This allowed him to shoot a longer continuous scene because he could later cut back and forth between the two cameras. Shooting a long sequence with a single camera is notoriously difficult, because you have to painstakingly choreograph the movements of the camera and actors around the set. With multiple cameras, if something doesn’t go perfectly with one camera, you can cut to the other one.
You also get two views of the same performance, which is what he’s talking about in the interview. Lumet found that one of his actors had had an unexpectedly honest reaction to an improvised line by another. If he had been filming single camera, he wouldn’t have gotten that reaction, because the camera would have been focused on the guy delivering the line, and not the one reacting.
There are small film cameras and big HD video cameras. But, in general, HD video cameras are smaller than film cameras. But, more importantly, when you set up a shot with an HD video camera, you know what it will look like. The “video tap” on a film camera’s eyepiece gives you only general framing of the shot. It’s too low res to do focus. You can’t really tell the lighting perfectly until the film is back from the lab. And you can BUY the astounding Red One camera for a week’s rental of a 35mm Panavision film camera. So, rather than set up one camera angle, shoot all the lines from that direction, re-set the camera up, re-light and shoot all the lines from the other direction, you set up one whole scene and shoot with multiple cameras. I much prefer they do this if possible, as the actors can do the whole scene and can react naturally to each other.
Well, why? Too expensive to use multiple film cameras at once? Seems like you’d *save *money if you could shoot in half the time, or less, even you have to process twice as much film (sez me, who has no idea what it costs to process movie film but I do know that a set full of people is expensive).
That was the very first production HD camera ever, I think. He was pioneering. By Episode III, it was half that size/weight. Now, the RED Camera, as a good expample of where HD is heading, is almost the same size as a prosumer handicam.
Actually no. There have been HD camera systems around for decades before. The camera Lucas used was unique in that it was operationally like a film camera rather than a re-purposed HD video camera. But HD pioneers like George Coppola and Barry Rebo had been shooting analog “HighVision” HD on open reel tape back in 1986.
I can’t speak to 35mm, but 16mm colour negative film costs about 15¢ per foot to process. (A 400-foot roll is 11 minutes.) Then you have to print it, which means buying more stock and more processing. Nowadays you can just transfer the camera original to digital and edit on a computer, but eventually you’re probably going to want a print. (There are a number of steps from the camera original to the release print, but I’m going to skip them for brevity.)
Anyway, multiple cameras. If you are shooting a scene with two cameras in different places, then you need two lighting set-ups. Lighting can be pretty complex, and there are stands and flags and cookies and whatnot. Those can’t be in the shot for either camera. (Incidentally, check out some older films – the first ones that comes to mind are Hitchcock’s The Birds or The Trouble With Harry – and look at all of the shadows. It’s my impression that directors are more concerned with shadows today.) And the lighting for one angle can’t interfere with the lighting from the other angle. The film cameras and the audio recorder also have to be synched. I would rather use one camera and film the scene multiple times. You’re going to get several takes anyway.
EDIT: Oh, yeah. Notice the cover on the camera magazine in sqeegee’s link. That’s there to reduce noise from the magazines.
I don’t know, that wasn’t a Production camera, it seems like it was an experimental technology. I can’t find mention of it on the web anywhere, though, so I can only suspect that it doesn’t count.
Oh, no the director (actually Director of Photography) is concerned either way. But it’s often easier to set the lighting when you’re looking at exactly what the camera is picking up than when you are recording on film.
NHK’s “HighVision” analog HD system was very definitely production technology, and the system was broadcast in Japan and in use in the US in the late 80s and early 90s. I’ve been involved in consumer, industrial and broadcast video since the 1970s and open-reel B&W “Porta-Pack” video. Rebo’s work in commercials, industrials, art installations for museums and Coppola’s HD work for ShowTime’s “Fairy Tale Theater” were very well known at the time.
There is a regrettable tendency to assume that everything is on the web. Not true. Not even close. And there is a huge black hole where the pre-web 80s and 90s are concerned.
The stuff I’m talking about was all over industry magazines like Post, Millimeter and American Cinematographer and consumer magazines like Premiere, Video and Stereo Review. But most industry magazines either haven’t made their old material available on the web (preferring to keep a small income from selling re-prints) or stopped publishing before the web happened.
Even magazines devoted to the Internet have disappeared. Boardwatch had it’s entire back issue catalog on the net. Then they were sold to another publisher…and the whole thing disappeared. Boardwatch was the place that documented the story of how the entire Net nearly disappeared when the National Science Foundation decided they no longer wished to pay for the backbone connection everyone was using. I was reading at the time and remember it all, but if I don’t go to a library and read back issues on microfilm, it may as well not have happened.
In the same way, manufacturers and retailers don’t bother to put up sale information about equipment they no longer sell.
I remember how important Rebo was to the early days of HD in the US, but he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. I’ll fix that, but I’ll have to do it by groveling through the Chicago Public Library or the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City for references. What I can’t do is show it by doing a Google search for his name.
