Digital cinematography |
Digital cinematography is essentially filming motion pictures on digital video instead of photographic film. This is certainly not a new concept: before it was re-packaged as Digital Cinematography in the late 1990s it was known for many years as Electronic Cinematography . Sony had been trying to market this concept using tube-based analog HDTV cameras since the late 1980s, with very little success. It was not until 1998 when they were able to introduce workable 1920 x 1080 pixel CCD cameras with attached HD Digital Betacam recorders that anybody began to take them seriously.
There are endless arguments over what actually constitutes cinematography , since by definition this implies something that exhibitors think worth displaying on a giant screen in a Cinema, usually in the hope of attracting paying customers. At the moment many of the projects shot with electronic cameras do not really come into this category. If they get a public airing at all, it is usually at non-profit film festivals, and as often as not, projected as video rather than film. If such projects ever get released for sale, it is nearly always on DVD or videotape, so strictly speaking, they are really nothing more than television productions.
Around the turn of the last century, several film director, including James Cameron and George Lucas, stated that they will probably never shoot on traditional film again .
Currently the vast majority of major Hollywood movies are still shot on film, and more intriguingly, so are the bulk of prime-time US-made television programs and commercials. So on one hand there is a small but vocal minority of film producers claiming that 1920 x 1080 pixel video is good enough for display on 50 foot screens, and on the other, a relatively silent majority of producers who insist that only 35mm film origination is good enough to be shown on both two-foot TV screens and fifty-foot cinema screens.
It s true that lower-budget non-cinema-release movies are increasingly being shot with digital video cameras (although not necesarily high definition ones), but the preferred medium for that is still 16mm film.
There are several types of cameras currently used for digital cinematography:
= Sony CineAlta =
The [http://www.cinealta.com CineAlta] series of cameras are High-definition television cameras geared toward motion picture production. They can shoot at the same 24 frames per second (24p) as film and have a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels (1080p) which some say is very comparable (and even superior) to film. Needless to say, this last statement has been viewed with extreme skepticism by many industry professionals, given that some film scanners usefully scan up to 10,000 pixels horizontally, from standard 35mm film.
Furthermore, the main thrust behind the development of 24p origination was that it is a more universal format for television production, since it can be more easily converted to both 25 frame PAL and 30 frame NTSC. The Digital Cinematography application is really only a spin-off of this.
CineAlta cameras (most notably the Sony HDW-F900) record onto was shot with more advanced HDW950 cameras which can record the full 1920 x 1080 pixels. However, when shooting in the 2.35:1 widescreen format (often incorrectly referred to as Panavision ) only about 800 of the 1080 vertical pixels are actually used.
= Mini-DV =
DV cameras have been around for many years and have been used on independent and low-budget films, but are most popular with common consumers. There are too many models to list here but the Canon XL-2 series is used frequently. It was used on Steven Soderbergh s Full Frontal , for example. It is important to understand that there are two components to this format: the camera and the recorder, and most of its limitations lie with the camera. Generally, the Mini-DV tape format is capable of recording considerably higher quality images that the attached compact cameras can produce.
One of the first Mini-DV cameras to be used on a feature film was the Sony VX-1000 which was used to shoot Spike Lee s Bamboozled .
= Thomson Viper =
The [http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/cameras/viper Viper FilmStream Camera] has the same resolution and frame rate as a high definition video camera like the CineAlta, but captures an uncompressed video image. (Many earlier model high-definition video cameras compress their images at least slightly.) It was used on Michael Mann (film director) s Collateral (movie) . The Viper can shoot in extremely low light levels, thus much of Collateral could be shot on the streets of Los Angeles in middle of the night without a lot of additional lighting equipment. There is no tape format that can handle the data generated by the Viper camera, so images are usually recorded to a disk array. This allows the footage to be edited immediately after it has been shot. For this reason, director David Fincher used the Viper camera on a Hewlett-Packard commercial with complex visual effects.
Fincher later decided to use the Viper to shoot his entire next feature Zodiac (film) . Zodiac is the first feature film shot exclusively with the camera.
= IMAX =
The IMAX film Aliens of the Deep was shot with a custom-built, underwater high-definition video rig.
= Panavision Genesis =
Following the lukewarm film industry response to the CineAlta, in 2004 Panavision introduced the Genesis. The Genesis produces similar 1920 x 1080 resolution images to its predecessor, but uses a single CCD sensor with the same width as a standard 35mm film frame. This overcomes a number of the shortcomings of small-format imagers as used in the above cameras, and also allows standard 35mm cine lenses to be used, with much the same control over depth of field as a 35mm film camera. The Genesis is currently (Oct 05) being used on the films Superman Returns and Flyboys. So far, no Genesis-derived commercial projects have been viewed publically.
= Digital video vs. film =
Some notable directors have stated that they have been converted to digital cinematography and will never return to using film. Some of them are George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, David Fincher, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, and James Cameron. However in a more recent interview Lucas modified his stance somewhat, to the effect that: he would use whatever is more appropriate to the particular project.
Some of the alleged benefits of digital video are: *Digital video allows for films to be shot faster, and for less money than film. *Digital video, unlike film, does not need to be developed and can be played back and edited immediately after shooting. This can help in avoiding continuity errors. *Digital video can record image and audio on the same media. *Digital video cameras are smaller than film cameras. *Digital video is recorded on a cassette or hard drive device, which can hold considerably more footage and are cheaper than a ten or twenty minute film stock. *Digital video is more sensitive than film, and usually requires less lighting. *Most films are already edited on a digital system after the developed film stocks are converted to digital video. Film requires a lengthly telecine process to be converted to digital video.
However, after the intital flurry of interest, the use of digital video for motion pictures has caused a backlash among many film enthusiasts. The main argument against digital cinematography is simply that the image quality and 24 fps frame rate has not yet caught up to even run-of-the-mill 35mm film, and that films shot digitally have a cheaper look, or that the footage looks too crisp and washed over .
Generally, the problem is that despite being re-labelled Digital Cinematography cameras, they are still television cameras, and retain all the limitations of television cameras. TV cameras work satisfactorily in totally enclosed sound stages (or TV studios) where there is 100% control of the lighting, which is how the vast majority of the Star Wars and Spy Kids films were shot. However, taken outside into on location situations where there is far less control over the lighting, video cameras tend to perform poorly. In this case, any potential savings in stock costs tend to be eaten up by the need for extra lighting equipment to flatten difficult lighting situations.
Other issues:
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