Three DPs/Three Cameras

Efficient workflow, great images, on budget: these are all magic words, not just for cost-conscious producers but for the cinematographers who paint and frame the images we see on television. With a choice of HD cameras, cinematographers can now not only shoot high-def, but also make a more conscious and informed decision on which HD camera they pick, not just to meet the specific challenges of the TV project, but to integrate well into the creation of the aesthetic they’re going for. We spoke to three cinematographers lensing three different TV series, to ask them why they picked the camera they did and what their experiences have been transitioning to HD production.

Camera: Grass Valley Group Viper
Program: Terminal City on HBO (in the U.S.)
Production Company: Crescent Entertainment

The producers of Terminal City, a 10-part one-hour drama about the life of a family after the mother learns she has terminal breast cancer, originally called for 16mm acquisition to meet the series’ tight budget. But cinematographer Tom Burstyn had another idea. He had just finished shooting The 4400, a sci-fi show for Paramount Pictures, using the Grass Valley Group Viper. "I was amazed at the speed at which we were able to work," Burstyn says. "So I thought that, for a show that couldn’t afford any overtime, combined with the savings of the lab and processing, the Viper might be a good choice." Although the Viper package cost more than a 16mm package, Burstyn was able to convince the producers that the Viper would make shooting days quicker and more efficient.

Burstyn enthuses over the "very, very detailed" images from the Viper used in HDStream mode (color-balanced 4:2:2 output). "The most important thing is the tonal range," he says. "It almost has the latitude of film. In practical terms, it’s equal to the latitude of film."

Plus Eight Digital vice president of operations Michael Shugrue reports that Burstyn was shooting 23.98 progressive for 1080, and recording to HDCAM with the Sony HDW-F500 deck. The Viper, says Shugrue, shoots 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, and 30 fps for 1080p and, for 720p, all of those plus 50 and 60 fps. " Burstyn chose 23.98 fps because that’s the overall standard for audio syncing," explains Shugrue. "If he had shot 24 fps, the audio would be off."

The trade-off with shooting Viper has been that the camera is tethered to the recording deck by a cable. "And that’s a daunting thought in these days of Steadicam and crane shots," admits Burstyn.

Having a digital imaging technician (DIT) on set was crucial to the workflow. In addition to setting up the workstation and then getting a cable to the camera, the technician played a role in wrangling the cable. Burstyn and his crew had to choreograph the movements of the cable, especially when doing a long dolly or crane shot, to make sure the cable was pulled out of the view of the camera. He also notes that GVG will ship a camera-mountable Flash-based recorder for the Viper, called Venom, later this year, liberating the camera and solving some of the media-loss issues so problematic in the last generation of RAM-based portable recorders.

The small size of the camera body was, however, an advantage. One of the series’ characters has a compact car, and the operator was shooting in the backseat. In one scene that required the POV of the driver, the operator drove the car and operated the camera on his shoulder. The recording deck was loaded into the trunk with the cable routed outside the car into the trunk.

For Terminal City, Burstyn used two Viper bodies, two Fujinon zooms and an Angenieux zoom along with Zeiss digi-primes, all provided by Plus Eight Digital. "Where the Zeiss primes are beautiful, the zooms seem to be not quite there yet," he says. "For example, the long one is an HD zoom used for sports and, as you get to the telephoto, it gets darker so you have to make an exposure compensation. It’s no big deal, but it’s a pain."

A brutal schedule made lighting Terminal City a challenge: the production averaged between 11 and 13 pages a day, with a record day of 16 pages. "I wanted to design a look for the show that didn’t sacrifice the actors’ time on set but also helped set a mood," he says. The solution was to use very few but big lights. The lighting package, from Paramount Lighting, included two 18Ks, 6K pars, 2 4K pars, numerous little HMIs, a Kino Flo package and multiple tungsten lights. "In the case of a room with sunlight coming through a window and a big bright spot in one corner with the edges very dark, I found I didn’t have to fill very much," says Burstyn. "Because of the nature of the camera, the shadows retain a lot of contrast, which is why you don’t have to light them very much. So I could have a very dark scene with a dark face and still capture all the nuance of expression without it having to be bright."

After a career of working in film, Burstyn says the biggest lesson he’s taken away from shooting HD has been to treat it as if it were reversal film. "You worry about the highlights," he says. "Instead of setting exposure based on the shadow, you would set your exposure by the highlights and light the shadows."

With his experience on The 4400, Burstyn has learned to light exclusively by eye. "I have not brought my light meter out once in the whole show," he says. Burstyn would light the scene as he thought it should be and then check his eye by going back to the monitor, making any necessary adjustments. "After a lifetime of lighting for film, I have a feeling for what I want," says Burstyn. "The fact that there’s a monitor sitting back there that shows the perfect image gave me the confidence to light it totally by feel. It’s become a very intuitive process."

Camera: Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD
Program: Missing on Lifetime Television
Production Company: Lion’s Gate Television Corp. in association with CHUM Television

Cinematographer David Herrington shot the first season of Missing with Platinum 35mm three-perf. But the weakened U.S. dollar tightened the budget for this Vancouver, BC-shot show, and the producers needed to save money. "I spent three to four weeks just looking at various cameras and seeing what they could do," remembers Herrington. "Denny Clairmont [of Clairmont Cameras] told me not just to consider how many lines of resolution the camera offered but how the output looks." The Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD camera provided a variable frame rate that was ideal for the series’ many dream sequences. Even better, to Herrington’s eye, was the look of the images. "The one thing that impressed me about the VariCam was that it looked like film," he says.

Renting from Sim Video in Toronto, Herrington put together a package of two VariCams for the seven-day episodes (the second unit shoots with its own VariCam), with Fujinon wide-angle zoom and telephoto zoom lenses and a set of prime lenses. Because of HD’s greater depth of field, Herrington wanted to shoot with as wide an aperture as possible and had Harrison & Harrison filters made in neutral densities of 1.2, 1.5 and 1.8.

On location for four days and on a standing set for three, Missing requires the entire gamut of interior, exterior, night and day lighting situations. One of the biggest challenges, says Herrington, was shooting vehicles in exterior night scenes. "The headlights burn out - the hot, white glow from them just goes nuclear," he says. The neutral-density filters, some gels and Roscoe scrims knocked it down to a more manageable level. "But the grip has to do an impeccable job so it doesn’t show up when someone is climbing out of the vehicle," Herrington adds. "We got so used to it when we were shooting at night and there was a vehicle, I’d get the grip prepped on it."

Herrington says it took three or four weeks to truly get in the groove with the lighting. In the first month, he reports, he was behind the Leader LV 5152DA waveform monitor instead of the camera, which was a somewhat disconcerting experience. "I had to make sure I wasn’t clipping and that we had the information we needed," he says. "But once I figured it out, I knew what it would look like and I used that knowledge to push myself more. We actually moved a lot quicker with HD than with film."

Once he felt confident with the VariCam’s palette, Herrington said he could use extremes of contrast in lighting to make it more moody, and the picture held up very well. "Once you get used to the reality of overexposing the whites, then you don’t overexpose," he says. "And if you do want to overexpose it, you get there quickly. Film still has definition in the white area and video loses it dramatically and quickly."

Herrington credits his crew with adapting to the idiosyncrasies of HD and Sim Video with matching up the output of A and B cameras to avoid extensive color correction in post. Sim Video’s John DeBoer says that his HD engineer Ken Rice pre-matched each camera using a DSC Laboratories Combi Chart, setting them to SMPTE 709 (a standard setting for cameras). On set, Rice monitored the cameras. Twice throughout the run of the show, the cameras were rematched during routine maintenance. "They don’t drift that much," explains DeBoer.

"Once I figured out [the lighting], I knew what [Missing] would look like and I used that knowledge to push myself. We actually moved a lot quicker with HD than with film."

When one complete scene was badly exposed – with lost information in the whites and blacks – Herrington and his crew tried an ABB (automatic black balance) and found that solved the problem. From that day on, they did an ABB whenever they changed anything on the camera.

"I told the crew that I want to treat this like film," says Herrington. "And I can’t tell you how much fun I had. I’ve learned to like HD and use it as a tool."

Camera: Sony HDCAM HDW-900
Program: Rescue Me on FX Network
Production Company: Canterbury Productions

When Rescue Me debuted on the FX Network last season, Jonathan Freeman, who shot the pilot and first two episodes, used the Sony HDCAM HDW-900 camera and an array of standard Canon zoom lenses. When cinematographer Tom Houghton took over, he continued to use the camera through the end of the first season and, now, into season two. "I’m always pleasantly surprised by the look," says Houghton.

Most of the show – a one-hour drama starring Denis Leary about life inside a New York fire station in the wake of 9/11 – is shot handheld. As a result, says Houghton, he tries to keep the production simple. "The format is to be as spontaneous as possible," he says. "We cover it as you would normally cover dramatic material and we do some blocking. But the scenes sort of evolve and because it’s handheld, the operators can go with the flow – and they do." The show ordinarily uses two Sony HDCAMs from the Video Equipment Rentals office in New York.

Houghton came to the show with some solid HD experience, through Sony’s Lab 24P. It’s been useful in shooting Rescue Me on location, often in NYC’s gritty streets, as well as on a set of the firehouse, which is a garage that doubles for the front of a firehouse, with big doors. To light the show, Houghton has assembled a kit that’s a mix of Kino Flos, HMIs and MaxiBrutes – "the usual television package," he says. "I do a base lighting and don’t have time on the schedule to finesse it," he says. "It’s not like a feature film where you work carefully to make sure the sun is in the right place at the right time. We just don’t have that luxury." That said, Houghton has been surprised at how well the Sony HDCAM works under what he describes as harsh lighting conditions. "When something is shot when the sun is at its highest, its least flattering position, the results are perfectly acceptable," he notes. "The show has evolved in such a way that we’ve been able to accelerate our days."

Does Houghton light differently for HD? " I’m learning not to," he says. "I’m trusting the medium to respond well, both in camera and in post production." He works around difficult lighting conditions, such as when the firefighters walk from the outside of the fire station in daylight to the interior, lit with fluorescents. "I can’t match the intensity of the light that’s outside at the bright time of day," explains Houghton. "So I have to work with the director to incorporate a cut so I can jump back inside. That way, it doesn’t look like there’s a vast difference in the light balance."

The show’s biggest challenges revolve around the extensive number of fires and stunts. The practical concerns are obvious- camera operators Gabor Kover and Jamie Silverstein wear fire suits on set – but Houghton was also initially worried that the fires’ bright light would blow out the images. That hasn’t proven to be true, and Houghton monitors the lighting via walkie-talkie with the camera assistants while he’s watching the monitor.

Having the HD monitor has been a mixed bag for Houghton. "The thing I dislike is that I’m separated by a 25-foot cable so I’m not on set as much as I’d like to be," he admits. "But I do have the knowledge of exactly what I’m shooting, instantly. And we’ve never had any problems. HD seems to be working."