Shooting Videotape Film Style

7/27/2019 Shooting Videotape Film Style

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Shooting Videotape Film Style

By Ben Shedd, H.J. Brown and Matt Adams

This article is copyright by the ACS Holding Company 1982 and reprinted by permission of the publisher.

"I believe there are no real aesthetic differences between film and tape-just attitude differences. It's all really justpictures and sound-and working to capture the images we see in our minds. We approached 'The Dream of Don

Guadalupe' with this attitude and it worked." - Ben Shedd

"The Dream of Don Guadalupe" is part of the public television series CALIFORNIA DREAMS. This particularsegment features Alejandro Rey at actual historic locations in Northern California and combines archive graphicsand stills from the life of Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo as Rey recaptures California's history from 1770 to1890. "The Dream of Don Guadalupe" will be shown on PBS May 18 (1982) nationally.

In the half-hour telecast, budgeted at $80,000, Patrick Griffin, writer and executive producer, called for voiceoversof excerpts taken from Vallejo's own five-volume history of the period. The series was made possible by a grantfrom First Interstate Bank of California Foundation. CALIFORNIA DREAMS and producing station KOCE-TV hadcommitted to shot and edit the series on videotape when Ben Shedd, an Academy Award winning filmmaker,

joined the production. The script called for lots of locations, quick setups by a small crew, and lighting situationsnormally associated with the latitude of 7247 (16mm color) film (ASA ***).

H.J. Brown, Director of Photography, recommended film be used, but the hard and fast decision had been made.Brown was cinematographer on the award-winning PBS 13-hour (Carl Sagan) series COSMOS. The filmmakersaccepted the challenge with eagerness and went to work. Following is a discussion by Shedd, Brown and Matt

Adams, video technical supervisor.

BEN SHEDD: Because I supervised all aspects of location production, almost immediately I joined Patrick Griffinand another CALIORNIA DREAMS production crew to shoot aerials of the sweeping countryside before thesummer browning (of the California hillsides) occurred. It also made good budget sense, as the other crew wasalready planning helicopter shots of San Francisco.

I've done over thirty hours of aerial photography from helicopters, but this was the first time I'd had a TV monitor inmy lap to watch. I was able to reposition images as we went along, spotting upcoming terrain, comparing it with

the monitor image and giving cameraman Tom tucker and Spirit Airways pilot Ken Chase more of my ideas toconstantly improve the shots.

We used a tall grove of eucalyptus trees across the road from the adobe house to fly over and tilt up from, wipingthe image of the house into the frame. However, just outside the Adobe House State Park grounds are a highway,and next to the grounds are a mass of telephone and power lines which I didn't want in the shot. By watching themonitor and giving Tom and Ken update instructions as we flew and taped, I was able to coax a high spinningshot of the old adobe so that it seemed to be sitting in a huge filed with no sign of modern civilization around. Withthe monitor I saw what we had, "printed it," and went on to the next location.

Following this one-day shoot in Northern California, and having only seen three of he seven locations in person, Iset about storyboarding all the sequences from ideas in my head. The location shoot was scheduled to be fivedays long with a travel day at each end. A long middle Wednesday was planned for the crew to travel three hours

from Carmel north to Sonoma after taping in the morning.

H.J Brown and I flew to Northern California three days before the shoot for a practical look at all the locations.

H.J. BROWN: We planned the precise shooting schedule around the sun and how it would affect each of the sixlocales at a particular time of day. The California State Parks locations were going to be open to the public and wehad to include that fact in our schedule planning. The crew consisted of key people only. Gaffer (and SuperGripinventor) Ken Phelps, Grip Jeff Bains, Assistant Camera Paul Sherwood, Videotape recorder Operator Al Lugo,Production Manager Bill O'Neill of KOCE-TV, Sound Person David Dobkin, Associate Producer Barbara HiestandProduction Assistant Christine Denny, and one of Ben's University of Southern California Cinema/TelevisionDoctoral students, Don Schroeder, who took most of the production stills. We soon added Video TechnicalSupervisor Matt Adams of Video by Design


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BEN SHEDD: We started at the Old Mission in Carmel, Calif., Vallejo's birthplace. Each sequence was designedwith everything moving, the actor against the background, the camera in concert with or in opposition to theactions, always expanding, always growing, revealing new images as the story content moved us ahead. As oftenas possible, I planned to do long takes covering whole paragraphs of dialogue, with no coverage or safety in orout points.

The first few setups were fine, but when e put Alejandro Rey under the eaves of a Mission corridor (an easy shotwith color negative), we saw streaking and "comet tailing" in the playback. I had H.J. shoot this sequenceoutdoors as a static close-up of Alejandro Rey, which still looked terrible on video.

After a frustrating 14-hour first day with great delays because of the streaking and other technical problems, Iwanted to do the rest of the shoot on film and transfer the negative, without workprinting, directly to tape forediting. H.J reminded me that we had decided on videotape, and that it had to be possible to shoot what we hadin mind or the whole "tape explosion" was junk. Production manager Bill O'Neill fond an available alternative videocamera in the San Francisco with a Tech, Matt Adams of Video by Design, who arrived the second morning.

H.J. BROWN: The first of shooting was with a video camera deigned and built ix years ago. The second day waswith a IKEGAMI HL 70 built in late 1979 or early 1980. along with the IEGAMI came technical advisor Matt

Adams, who was priceless. Let it suffice to say that the six-year-old camera was unable to perform to thestandards of Video: 1981. It was never seen again.

MATT ADAMS: When I arrived in Monterey to help an ailing video crew (because of a less than acceptable

shooting day), I sensed that Ben and H.J. would gladly have traded in the video gear for a film camera. With thislevel of negative energy I probably should have turned around and gone home, but I just couldn't resist thechallenge, or rather, opportunity. The crew wanted to make high quality images and this was an opportunity toprove that there are more complex uses for video than shooting clips for the six o'clock news. The IKEGAMI HL79 color video camera was the only piece of equipment, which I substituted in the already existing one-inch videopackage.

As we began to set up the first shot. I was relieved and excited to sense that careful attention was being given tolighting, composition, exposure, and picture image. In film shoots these important components are given time andattention, but often neglected in video, the instant gratification medium. This neglect is the primary reason videofails to look as good as film. H. J. brown was treating this location soot as if there were film in the camera.

BEN SHEDD: The new camera captured the images we were trying to create. The foggy, ple-grey sky looked

wonderful over the ocean. In the early afternoon, the fog and crew raced each other to a Carmel Valley ranchlocation. I needed the fog in the morning, now I wanted sun for the opening shot. The sun, with a steamy mist,held throughout the shooting, just as we'd planned. Sometimes you can't beat the gaffer in the sky.

H.J. BROWN: The Ikegami functioned without fail. However, operating a video camera is somewhat different thanoperating a film camera. You are looking through, or at, a tiny black-and-white video monitor in the eyepiecewhich would be suitable for framing if the lines within it were at all accurate. I drew my own in with a MagicMarker. The eyepiece is not very sharp and is otherwise worthless for seeing lighting setups. It does work as alight meter, but I found that very distracting. Our attention was therefore drawn to the larger and more colorfulSony Monitor which was with the other video electronics in the gray KOCE-TV shipping case. What you see itwhat you get. I grew accustomed to looking at the monitor on set-left or set-right while operating the camera.

MATT ADAMS: Concerns about the video camera's reliability slowly faded as the Ikegami camera consistently

produced excellent pictures. I sensed H.J. was looking for some guidance on the rules of shooting video and thisneed helped to expedite a good working relationship between us.

BEN SHEDD: H.J. and Matt immediately began what became a constant conversation between them as H.J. litthe shots, and Matt, sitting at the monitor, tweaked the exposure while watching the waveform monitor and thepicture.

MATT ADAMS: The color monitor provides the key image on the set. What you see (on the monitor) is what youget. There is no need to bracket exposures or change filter packs. Color correction can happen in real time. Theimage is immediately available for instant feedback and freer, more efficient experimentation.


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To give H.J. the best possible "view-finder" image on the monitor we had Ken Phelps fabricate a wide-anglesunshade out of black showcard. It was affixed to the monitor, completely cutting out extraneous reflections, andwas used throughout the production.

BEN SHEDD: We returned to the Mission to reshoot the first days "impossible in video" under-the-walkway shot,partly because it's what I wanted, and partly out of stubbornness and determination to believe that videotapecould do this shot just like film could, and it did.

We found a wonderful room inside the mission to redo an exterior shot, which on videotape (with the old camera)

had made Alejandro Rey look like a TV variety show host. With the new camera and H.J.'s lighting, the sceneworked an Alejandro became part of the environment. We used original pages from Father Junperio Serra's diaryas props, probably worth $10,000 a page.

H.J. BROWN: The historic homes were an art director's dream, completely propped with antiques from the period.However, the rooms were small and we couldn't move many of the furnishings. There were no fly-away wallseither, just doorways and halls.

"The Dream of Don Guadalupe" was shot entirely with a #1 fog filter, with two exceptions. Once, the combinationof other filters made the #1 unnecessary, and the second exception when a net or nets were used. The nets I useare homemade in black, beige, and white. They were used to add more of a period look to the Vallejo dialoguepoint-of-view shots. The net gave a pleasing sort of half-star effect along with a general softening of the image. Alot of candles were used burning in the shots as they were the natural light source of the period.

BEN SHEDD: From our pre-shooting research, H.J. planned to shoot the Petaluma adobe house in the very earlymorning to pump sunlight under the eaves, and also to match the helicopter material. On the scheduled morning itwas all fogged in. We shot the adobe interiors, while waiting for the sun. The lighting made these rooms look like iwas a gorgeous sunny day outside. When the sun did come out t was too high in the sky for the overhangingporches they were designed to keep the sun out) and Ken Phelps, the gaffer, needed every reflector in the griptruck to fill in the deep shadows.

H.J BROWN: The exteriors consisted of daylight, fog, dusk, and firelight. If the day was overcast, some kickerswere added for punch because a too flat image is really too flat on video. If the situation was close-up brightsunlight, large silks were used for the actor's eyes, and a cutter was used to take the board reflection (too strongfor video) off the actor's chest. Exterior day long shots needed some rather interesting filter combinations. I sued acombination of polar screens and one or more NBRA (Natural balanced ratio attenuators) - I just call them neutral

density graduates. I was mostly using a one-or-two-stop NRBA to cut the overly bright areas and even out thevideo gain. Sometimes it took all three NBRA filers to achieve the desired effect.

MATT ADAMS: It is a given that the contrast ratio in video is nowhere near the contrast ratio in film. the idea is tolight in such a way that you fool people into thinking video has a better contrast ratio than it does. You must makevideo appear to be holding more shadow detail than it can actually hold. On "The Dream of Don Gaudalupe" wewere continually looking for ways to compress the contrast ratio, especially with filters on portions of the image, tokeep the final image what Ben and H.J. had in their minds.

H.J. BROWN: The dusk sequences were lit with single fay key light through soft frost, a western exposure skylight fill (one minute after sunset) and 1-Ks and 2-Ks for the windows of the house in the background. With videoyou just keep cranking up the gain as the day or scene gets darker. This didn't seem to change the quality of theimage for the first couple of stops, but after that it becomes noticeable and finally a definite effect appears.

BEN SHEDD: We did the sequence in the Vallejo vineyard just after sunset and it looked like color negative-notpushed.

MATT ADAMS: H.J. shot the videotape with low light levels throughout the production. Low level light can turn intomuddy video very quickly. I was extremely conscious of maintaining critical exposure in the camera to avoid thispossibility, riding the edge most of the time. The Ikegami camera was carefully set up at the beginning of theshoot as was the color monitor.

H.J BROWN: The interior lighting environments were the Mission, Fort Sutter jail, Benicia State capital, Vallejo'sSonoma dining room, and the adobe house's dirt floor kitchen. Because of our schedule one of the interiors wasshot at night, but lit as though it was fully day outside. This was done by tissue papering the windows and using 2-


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K's and fays outside. The interiors were lit by bouncing 2-K's and 9-lights off foam core and adding hard crosslights and kickers where necessary.

I found that colors which were close together did not separate from one another very well in video so using hardrims and kickers were crucial for modeling and creating the look of the shot. Sometimes we balanced the interiorto exterior in color temperature and density, and sometimes we didn't. At ties we put tungsten lights outsidewindows we could see through, and other times we used reflectors outside to pump daylight into the interiors. Itwas just a matter of considering the look we wanted and the sources available. Last year I did a documentary onthe police department night work and I lit the whole show with two large flashlights.

BEN SHEDD: We lit all the candles in the Bencia State capital building, even though it was day. The room wasfilled with beaver top hats and quill pens, and reeked of the historical period. Alejandro Rey's outfit was such aperfect color blend with the room's wall that H.J. ad to add a heavy cross light, motivated by the sun through thewindows, to create good separation from the background.

MATT ADAMS: I changed the color balance of the camera only a few times during the production. Once, whenthe script called for a period warm feel to the image, I white balanced the camera for daylight and then we shotthe scene with an 85 filter on the lens.

H. J. BROWN: I didn't need a light meter at any time on the entire show. I had three or four other meters instead.One meter readout appears in the video-camera's black and white viewfinder and is distracting as hell. It registersas a series of moving diagonal lines in the image highlights or hot sky, and it sort of changes to a negative image

as well-and that's when the light reading is correct! Another readout was the green scale near the monitor andrecorder in the gray box. The third meter was Matt Adams. Matt and I kept a steady discussion going on betweenus regarding exposure, trying to find ways to make the video accept the image we gave it, but nevercompromising the look of the image. The video techs will tell you every time you need to open up or stop down.

The most frustrating thing I found about shooting one-inch video was he inability to resolve subtleties the way filmdoes. It doesn't see subtle changes in color, texture, or lighting. Correcting for this usually means adding onemore kicker or eye light, doubling the gel color, or spotting or flooding a unit much more that I would haveexpected.

MATT ADAMS: The waveform monitor was my absolute light meter. There is no way to tell how the image looks(from an artistic viewpoint) from the waveform monitor, but it gives the output of the video camera in absoluteterms.

The evolution of video took a giant step forward two years ago with the introduction of second generation self-contained video cameras. These high performance cameras allow video to be shot without aesthetic constraintsand technical limitations. Combined with portable one-inch video recorders, video now has great locationflexibility. If the scene requires very low light levels, it can e recorded without concern for noisy video or banding.Remember, the color monitor is your reference. It must be set up correctly or it can be very deceiving. Video, likeall other tools, requires skilled people to operate it.

BEN SHEDD: By the third day, the crew was working very effectively, wasting little time with each set up. Crewmovement and job co0rdination are slightly different on a video crew than on a film crew, especially in theassistant camera department. The video monitor needs a power supply. At each setup the white balance on thecamera and quickly checked the camera registration. This camera prep needs to be organized into the rhythm ofprepping a shot or it can create downtime, especially for the actor.

H.J. BROWN: I think it currently takes a little longer to shot videotape than film on this kind of production. Frommy perspective, shooting videotape took about five to ten minutes longer per major shot to move, set up, light,cable, and shoot than film set up takes to ready.

Ben's storyboard called for a period point-of-view shot for Vallejo with me riding horseback.

I climbed up on the horse. The crew handed me the video camera with 50 feet of coaxial cable attached to theone-inch recorder. Well, the horse didn't care much more for he whole arrangement than I did and it bolted. Itsuddenly occurred to me that this wasn't such a terrific idea. If I and the $45,000 electronic camera were to hit theground we'd al be going home. We tried, but I shot this sequence with a 100 foot load of 7247 in my Beaulieu(16mm film camera).


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By the time we arrived at Sutter's Fort in Sacramento on the last day, one of the fort sequences had beeneliminated. Sutter's Fort is large and carefully preserved, and Ben wanted to see as much of it as possible in oneshot. I plotted a diagonal dolly move, pushing forward to reveal Alejandro Rey while showing the westerncourtyard, and then panning a following him back along the dolly track showing the eastern courtyard. We saw the"printed" take as we shot it and didn't even watch the playback.

BEN SHEDD: I wanted to do firelight shot at night to add drama. This kind of shot was certainly possible on film.We could have done the whole show like this against a stage cyc in a studio, but how dull.

H.J. BROWN: Video responds just fine to fire. I put a 1-K with some spun and M2 gel under a portable barbecuewith a wood fire. A tree branch being swept up through the 1-K light added the flicker. The flames acted quitenatural on video and the faint skyline silhouette was crystal clear.

MATT ADAMS: Video technology can now deal with imagery like the night fire scene we shot. Older cameraswould have produced comet tails or lagging, or electronic noise which never looks good. Sometimes film grain isok because it moves about randomly. However video grain is not random and appears redundantly in the sameplace and always the same size. We had no noise or comet tailing from the fire. It looked great!

BEN SHEDD: As we started the postproduction we had all the stills and graphics left to put on tape. Videotapeeditor Barbro Semmingsen and I shot sample stills for the rough-cut with a cheapo black and white video cameradirectly on 3/4-inch cassettes.

We couldn't find a video camera animation stand to shot pre-programmed stand move (from point A to point B in aspecified time). I didn't want to use a video camera on a tripod because the barrel rotation on the zoom lens is tooshort for slow starts and stops. We decided to shoot the stills on film.

H.J. BROWN: For the stills I shot with ACL (16mm film camera) with 1050 Angeniex lens equipped with an a.Chrosziel Munchen fluid zoom ring. I shot material of every size and shape, from slides, photocopies, prints,paintings, old books, and artwork to historic maps on loan from the library. There were over 150 different pieces ofart, all shot on 16m 7247 and then the negative was transferred directly to one-inch tape on Compact Video'sRank Cintel fling spot scanner. Camera moves were timed and counted in our heads during filming. Many moveswere designed to be combined and dissolved together during the on-line videotape editing session. In the finalprogram they look like stand-animated sequences.

MATT ADAMS: In no way do I see video in its present form replacing film. However I do see video as a solidalternative to 16mm color negative, especially if the final distribution medium is television.

BEN SHEDD: A note t our old film friends: Don't worry, H.J. and I haven't by any means abandoned film. I foundworking with videotape was very much part of the whole business we work in, and not a second class part of it. Is

just one of the tools, like film.

H.J. BROWN: Each medium in which I've worked, be it 35mm wide screen, 16mm, or videotape has its assets,limitation, and restrictions. Each medium can be made to look very good if it is presented in the format for which itwas shot. There is no good or bad film or video, only the necessity to see and understand the capabilities of each,and work with those capabilities. its still just sound and pictures, light and shapes. It's just a matter of seeing.

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Shooting Videotape Film Style