Rick Garbutt soc

As someone doing some post-secondary teaching, it's been fun and illuminating refereeing some of this debate as voiced by students (some of whom completely missed what's below). There are actually several issues, including, but not limited to: 1. The "film vs HD" argument makes as much sense as arguing whether water colors are better than oils for painting. Film/HD/watercolors/oils are ALL image capture vehicles, and each has its strengths, weaknesses, champions, and detractors. Anecdotes are a dime a trainload. 2. The English have a great saying in "horses for courses." The sense of it is that you wouldn't do well to rent a Clydesdale to give pony rides at a kiddie party, nor would you harness up a pair of Shetland Ponies to plow that 1000-acre estate of yours. A less quaint way of saying essentially the same thing is "the right tool for the right job." Leading us to 3. Far too many people (often clients of some stripe) expecting ANY system to be able to be all things to them all the time. If I'm shooting for the big screen, that's one thing. Shooting for direct-to-video's another. It is naive to tell me I'm shooting something for your website, and then expect that this low-budget stuff will look boffo for your international anamorphic theatrical release. Leading us to 4. A piece of advice that should be etched on plates of bronze erected between granite pylons all MUST pass under on the way to every production meeting: "Your project can (a) be cheap like borscht; (B) be ready last week; © look like IMAX™. Pick any TWO." It's the way the world works, and if there's a court of appeal, I've yet to hear of it. 5. I am beyond weary of doofuses yapping on about how "expensive" film stock/processing/telecine is. You betcha, there's costs there. But because video is perceived as somehow magically "free," some people shoot it as though they're on a divine mission to fill every available byte of memory on the planet with raw footage for their 10-minute magnum opus. And the next time someone tells you it doesn't "cost" anything to shoot TAKE 526 because you're shooting HD, don'tcha know, remind them that the crew/cast/location costs (and the meter on those is running continuously) can be easily $12,000/hour, and that little ol' "only 5 minutes" it took to go back to ones and do another take also set the budget back $1k. Do that 20 times a day, and just you watch how it adds up. Add in all the postoroduction costs of even just logging this stuff! "Free"? Hardly, at the end of the day. It's astonishing the number of folks that just don't seem to grasp this concept. Good PMs and Producers and 1st ADs do, and will become ogres about keeping to schedule. But, guys, most/all of them would rather NOT have to be ogres. Bottom line is out-of-control overshooting can easily make a video shoot as expensive as film, maybe moreso. "Expensive" film seems to garner more respect, and folks (painting with a VERY broad brush, here) seem to be a bit more careful about crossing Ts and dotting Is before the camera rolls. In the old days, they called that "bringing craft to the set." There's still a lot to be said for some of the Old Ways. [Addressing the shooting of Dwama here: of course the dynamic in documentary shooting is rather different. But overshooting HD is NEVER "free".] 6. Does the image capture vehicle augment the story? We're sort of back to the horses-for-courses consideration here. Since the days of colloid plates, photographers have cultivated a fine-grain fetish. And there are sometimes you don't want that. Robert Wise and his crew deliberately went for a coarser grain look for his version of Andromeda Strain. The reasons are ably set out in the American Cinematographer article on the film. Do you want absolutely razor-sharp resolution? I dunno: why not ask your 40-year-old leading actress who's plaing a 22-year-old character? I marvel at the vidiots who prosteletyse about "how much BETTER video is than film," then invest a lot of time and money going for a "film look." Poster children for double-think. 7. If 80% of your target audience cannot reliably see any difference on the screen, IT DOESN'T MATTER what you shot it on. If I can screw a photosensitive hamster onto a tripod and get a great image on an anamorphic theater screen, that's my Special Trick. I've spoken with folk who don't have the visual acumen to spot lighting continuity errors of really ugly sorts who'll lecture at length about equipment minutae they've read in a pamphlet somewhere. I've had someone tell me I was probably glad I shot a project on 35mm, the while I had to just smile, nod, think to myself, "how glad I am I had the 12-120 serviced on my Arri 16BL at the start of this one," and think, further, "what a noodle!" Years ago, there was a transcription of a 35mm for national TV broadcast discussion in the SMPTE Journal. A gentleman from ABC (as I recall) allowed as their premiere airing of THE ROBE ended up being 12th generation by the time it hit the home TV screen, as they had to run (for reasons I forget) a de-anamorphed 16mm print. "Were there complaints about image quality?" he was asked. "Yes," he replied. "About 8, nationwide, and all from guys at network stations who were watching vectorscopes, and not the movie." Quo erat demonstrandum. Unless you're making movies targeted at the apparently burgeoning geek demographic, the cumulative act of production should be transparent to the audience, leaving only the story - a point well-voiced in other postings. 8. No tool is any better than the craftsman wielding it. State-of-the-art cameras, either HD or film, made by leading manufacturers, are all capable of shooting lousy images in the hands of the inept. Sometimes a wannabe will luck out, but I wouldn't risk my $10M project to the hands of some ... <I'm searching for a polite noun, and you can probably guess it> Very modest equipment, in the hands of a Zen Master, can produce breathtaking results. 9. Life is a parade of compromises. Mathematically, you might express this as an overlapping of sets. For us CameraFolk™ this often involves trading off budget vs personnel available vs postproduction flow vs artistic requirements of the project vs budget (it keeps sneaking in) vs personal cameraman preferences vs technical requirements of the photography vs distribution/exhibition vehicle vs .... and EVERY project chooses its camera package and film/HD on a hopefully happy resolution of all those often conflicting things. Did I mention budget? The real Art for the cameraman here is to make the wisest possible choice, given all the constraints, and then making it all Work. Often, a far, far taller order than you'd think. 10. Regardless of HD or film, a Friendly Warning: immediately upon hearing the phrase "all you've got to do..." the careful cameraman will hold it right there. On account of it's NEVER, EVER "all" you have to do. I'll stop at 10, because we're metric here in Canada. If you've read the whole sermon, there's a special reward waiting for you in Heaven, I'm sure; meanwhile, thanks for your patience and indulgence. I hope I've constructively contributed at least a couple of things for thought. <braces self for onslaught of indignation...>

The answer to all questions in very technical areas like this is "it depends." As a general rule of thumb, (an important qualifier!) if the interval between frames is 5x or less the exposure time, you can probably get away without a capping shutter. Because conditions in the field vary wildly, I'd suggest this as a starting point only, and I highly recommend tests before serious production footage is shot. It's one thing to be shooting time-lapse of a flower opening in a highly controlled studio environment; a lot of bets change when you go outside and start filming clouds. And they're likely to change again if the sun is in the shot, pounding right into the lens. If the sun is anticipated to enter the frame, I'd strongly recommend putting your dense NDs and Polas IN FRONT of the entire lens. Lenses focus light (DUH!) and there may be intermediary focal points within the lens where infra red can be concentrated, meaning you run the risk of the sun's head separating lens elements and the horror and heartache that comes with that. If the interval between frames is long, you can damage the front surface of your shutter or warp its metal body - remember how good magnifying glasses are at starting fires... I WOULD VERY STRONGLY RECOMMEND anyone looking to do T/L shots with the sun in frame check out the many astronomy websites and forums for detailed advice about this. Reflex camera viewfinders can, conceivably, irreparably damage your retina if you look at the sun without proper precautions. Spare retinas are hard to come by, expensive, and impossible to install (note the irony...). Please don't endanger yours! T/L is wonderful stuff, and 35mm is still, for many applications, the Rolls-Royce of image capture vehicles. And every shot is its own little (sometimes not so little) set of engineering problems that must be solved if the shot's to look great. If I can presume to offer four ESSENTIAL starting suggestions, they'd be: Test. Test. Test. Testtesttest. And then test some more. Become aMAZingly familiar with your own equipment. Take notes. Lots and lots and lots of notes. Refer to them constantly. You'll be glad you didn. Pretend you're an idiot. (There are days when this is no stretch at all for me.) Check, double check, and then check again EVERY setting on the camera. Considering the effort involved to shoot this stuff vs a few seconds of screen time, this is REAL cheap insurance. Once you set the camera going, LEAVE IT ALONE, unless you have the delicate finger touch of a practiced forger and safecracker. Cultivate a slight frown, and a look as though you're peering far, far into outer space to figure things otu. This may come quite naturally, as a good chunk of shooting T/L IS Rocket Science.