Digital Cinematography Dedication To my wife Anne With all my love Digital Cinematography Paul Wheeler BSC FBKS Focal Press An imprint of Elsevier Science Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 225 Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801-2041 First published 2001 Reprinted 2002 Copyright © 2001, Paul Wheeler. All rights reserved. The right of Paul Wheeler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1T 4LP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0 240 51614 1 Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Preface xi About the author xiii Acknowledgements xv Introduction xvii PART ONE Digital Cinematography 1 1 Why digital cinematography? 3 Introduction 3 Exposure meters 4 Tonal range 4 Exposure control 4 Image stability 4 Greater perceived detail 5 Repeatability 5 Portability 5 PART TWO The Director of Photography’s Craft 7 2 Creating a look 9 Decide what you want 9 Sharp or soft 9 Cold or warm 10 Saturation and desaturation 10 Skin tone control 10 The film look 11 3 Lighting 12 Useful styles 12 Soft lighting 12 Hard lighting 13 Coloured sources 13 4 Lighting ratios 15 Defining a lighting ratio 15 Visualizing lighting ratios 15 Different lighting ratios for film and television 16 v vi Contents Using lighting ratios on the set 17 Controlling the whole scene 18 The effect of not recording the whole scene 18 5 Colour temperature 20 What is colour temperature? 20 Filters and Mired shift values 21 The colour temperature meter 23 Location sources 24 Correcting lamps 25 6 Filters 27 Camera filters 27 Matching shots 31 Enhancing filter 31 Fluorescent light correction 31 Polar screens 31 Old filter factors 32 The pan glass 32 PART THREE The Shoot 33 7 Examples of shoots 35 Drama 35 Documentary 44 8 Crewing 48 For fiction 48 For factual 50 9 The Director of Photography’s preparation 53 The recces 53 Preparing for a shoot 54 The technical schedule 55 The camera equipment list 55 The lighting equipment list 59 10 Technical preparation for a shoot 66 Technical checks 66 Camera checks – record/playback 67 Lens checks 67 Time code 70 Accessories 70 Matte boxes 71 Follow focus devices 71 Viewfinders 72 Monitors 72 PART FOUR The Technology 79 11 The camera 81 The television image 81 Additive colour imagery 81 Resolution 82 The digital camera 84 The camera head 84 Contents vii The image sensors 86 The sensor chip 88 The image signal 89 The internal circuitry 90 12 The video cassette recorder 92 The VCR 92 Helical scan 92 Mechanical considerations 94 The scanning drum 94 The drum lacing mechanism 94 A jammed mechanism 94 13 White and black balance 95 White balance 95 What is white balance? 95 White balance using a white card 96 White balance using a coloured card 96 White balance under fluorescent lighting 97 The inner filter wheel 97 Black balance 97 14 Time code and user bits 98 User bits 98 Time code 98 Record run time code 98 Free run time code 99 Synchronising using external time code generators 99 Time of day time code 99 Setting time code 99 Resetting time code after removing a tape 100 Synchronizing using a cable 101 15 Delivery systems 102 Television 102 Projection 103 Transfer to film 104 PART FIVE High-definition Digital Cinematography 107 16 High definition 109 High-definition image capture 109 The Sony HDCAM 109 The Sony HDW-F500 digital recorder 110 Inputting 24P into non-linear editing 111 Panavision digital cinematography 111 Panavision high-definition lenses 111 Depth of field 112 Camera control cards 112 Digi Beta/HDCAM familiarity 112 The camera menus 112 Projection 112 But what does it actually look like? 113 HDCAM – a replacement for 35 mm? 113 Conclusions 113 viii Contents PART SIX The Sony DVW In-camera Menus 115 17 The Sony DVW camera menus 117 The set-up card 117 Reading data from a set-up card 117 Film gamma cards 119 The menu pages 119 Making adjustments 119 Rate of change 120 The user menu 120 Fathers and grandfathers 121 Different software – the quick reference lists 121 18 The Sony DVW 700 menus – quick reference list 122 19 The Sony DVW 700 menus 125 Set-up card 125 Function 1/2 126 Function 2/2 126 Test out 127 Widescreen 127 Level 1/9 16:9 128 Level 1/9 4:3 130 Level 2/9 130 Level 3/9 132 Level 4/9 134 Level 5/9 134 Level 6/9 135 Level 7/9 135 Level 8/9 135 Level 9/9 136 Others 137 D/A gain 137 Mean select 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 137 Auto shading 138 DCC adjust 138 Operation mode 139 SG adjust measure mode 140 Data reset 140 LED select 140 Marker 1/2 141 Marker 2/2 142 VF display 143 Master gain 145 Camera ID 145 Shutter speed 146 Clearscan 147 ! LED 147 20 The Sony DVW 790 menus – quick reference list 148 21 The Sony DVW 790 menus 152 Set-up card 153 Function 1/2 154 Function 2/2 155 Contents ix Widescreen 157 VF setting 158 Level 1 16:9 159 Level 2 16:9 161 Level 1 4:3 and Level 2 4:3 161 Level 3 161 Level 4 162 Level 5 164 Level 6 164 Level 7 164 Level 8 165 Level 9 166 Level 10 167 Level 11 168 Level 12 168 DCC adjust 169 Offset white 169 Preset white 170 Operation 1 171 Operation 2 172 SG adjust 173 Enc. adjust 173 Data reset 173 Menu select pages 1–5 173 Marker 1/3 175 Marker 2/3 175 Marker 3/3 176 VF display 1/2 176 VF display 2/2 177 Master gain 179 Shot ID 179 Shot display 179 Shutter speed 180 ! LED 181 Index 183 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Preface When I joined the BBC’s film department thirty-six years ago as their youngest trainee, video was a huge machine in an air-conditioned room. By the time I left to go freelance, by which time I had become a Senior Film Cameraman, the BBC was just introducing portable ENG video kits consisting of a camera and a separate U-Matic recorder. Those of us who used film and our colleagues who used video belonged to very different parts of the industry and it was rare, if not unheard of, for someone to cross the invisible divide. Now I have happily used, and written a book about, digital cameras that are roughly the size and weight of the most sophisticated Super 16 mm film cameras. Time has certain- ly moved on. With my first book Practical Cinematography I set out to put down all the technical and craft knowledge that a film cinematographer would need to know to work as a Director of Photography. In this book I am attempting to do the same for the digital cinematographer. The scope of the book ranges from the basic science through the procedures that a cinematographer will need to go through to set up a shoot, to a chapter dedicated to high-definition cinematography. Digital Cinematography has evolved from the papers I wrote for the highly successful Digital Cinematography short course I devised and still run at the National Short Course Unit. I always felt that cinematog- raphers gain just as much from images as from the written word, we are, after all, picture people, and I have therefore included 125 illustrations. The objective of this book is to inform the student and working cinematographer alike and hopefully persuade some of my colleagues that, after years of shooting film, digital cinematography can be both very rewarding and great fun. xi This Page Intentionally Left Blank About the author Paul Wheeler has a wealth of practical experience both as a film and digital cinematographer combined with wide experience as a highly respected trainer. He has also written the companion book to this entitled Practical Cinematography which covers much the same areas but for film cinematographers. After twenty-five years with the BBC, by the end of which he was one of only six Senior Film Cameramen out of a total of sixty-three DoPs employed there at that time, he left to go freelance. In the eleven years since leaving the BBC, Paul has had a flourishing career which has bought him many awards including two Independent Producers Association (INDIE) awards for Digital Cinematography. In between shoots he has stood in as Head of Cinematography at the National Film and Television School several times and has also spent a couple of terms as Head of Cinematography at the Royal College of Art MA course.