Speaking of Film

Conspiracy

Atinge of irony surrounds Roger Deakins' feelings about the growingsophistication and flexibility of digital post technology. On the onehand, Deakins helped pioneer the groundbreaking digital intermediatefinishing process during the making of O Brother, Where ArtThou? On the other hand, he sometimes wonders if such technicalbreakthroughs could eventually encourage “producers and studiosto reduce the role of the DP during the post phase.”

Deakins, a five-time Oscar nominee, including this year for TheMan Who Wasn't There, and other DPs with similar pedigrees,probably don't have to worry about being phased out of care takingtheir beloved film images in post any time soon. Nevertheless,according to Steven Poster, president of the American Society ofCinematographers (ASC), the arrival of the digital intermediateprocess, and other digital breakthroughs permitting quicker, easier,and more flexible manipulations of film-originated images, do requirecinema-tographers to be more vigilant than ever before about stayinginvolved throughout postproduction.

West Wing

“While the digital intermediate process gives you greatercontrol [in post], it also creates a greater venue for misuse of thetools to subvert the original meaning of the image,” Posterpoints out. “So, I think cinematographers are starting to figureout that they better be involved throughout the process.”

Indeed, Poster, Deakins, and many other cinematographers focus lesson the highly publicized arrival of high-resolution, digitalacquisition technology, and consider the digital intermediate processto be the true digital advancement that will fundamentally impact theart of cinematography in the years to come.

E.T.

After all, the ability to scan an entire motion picture into thedigital world for electronic color timing and editing was provenfinancially viable (under certain circumstances) by Deakins' team atCinesite, Hollywood, in 1999 and 2000 during the making of OBrother. Since then, the process has become fairly common, so muchso that Deakins says, “studios are now pushing it, partly becauseof business pressures as many facilities go digital.” But hereiterated his concern about the technique's proliferation: “Ifthe DP is not available, they now have the technical ability to alterthe images anyway, sometimes in an extreme manner.”

That's one of several important issues that concern today'shigh-profile cinematographers who now have an unprecedented number ofoptions in stock, format, equipment, and digital post, along with anincreased ability to mix tools and techniques. Millimeterrecently surveyed six well-known DPs to get their thoughts aboutissues, trends, and recent innovations in film-based acquisition forboth feature film and television. Those DPs include Deakins, Poster,five-time Oscar nominee Allen Daviau, Stephen Goldblatt, a two-timeOscar, two-time ASC, and one-time Emmy nominee, James Chressanthis, aformer Emmy nominee, and Tom Del Ruth, winner of three Emmys and fourASC awards, including this year for his work on The WestWing.

Alan Daviau

Digital intermediate is one of many reasons cinematographerscontinue to talk about the age-old issue of creative control. Deakinsis concerned about the proliferation of the digital process not becausehe's not impressed by its potential — after all, he largelypioneered it — but rather, because he fears seeing digitalintermediate become a producer's “post choice dujour” for business, rather than creative, reasons. He wouldprefer to see such post choices made the same way he makes film stockand camera choices: based on each project's creative needs. In the pastyear, for instance, Deakins made a conscious choice not to usethe digital intermediate process for either The Man Who Wasn'tThere or A Beautiful Mind.

“The issue is resolution,” he explains. “At themoment, the standard for digital intermediate has been set at 2k. It ispossible to work at 4k, but there are huge cost issues associated withbeing able to store that much digital imagery. It's a scientific factthat 2k is not full film resolution. For O Brother, thatwas OK, because sharpness was not what we were looking for. There, wewanted the look of a faded, '20s postcard, like a tinted photographfrom that period, and the only way we could color the film in thatunique way was to do it digitally. The Man Who Wasn't There, onthe other hand, was a black-and-white movie, and we wanted a verysharp, clean, low-grain image. Processing the negative traditionally,in the laboratory, was more than adequate for that, and it gave usbetter resolution. How to use digital intermediate, and when to use it,is a huge issue right now for cinematographers.”

Roger Deakins

Building on Deakins' point, Allen Daviau — known as being oneof the industry's most open minds when it comes to testing digitalacquisition and postproduction techniques — wonders why theindustry would want to rush to replace “old” approacheswith “new” ones.

“Finishing a picture through the normal chain, looking at itwith a color timer, doing an answer print, interpositive, dupenegatives, and release prints — what's wrong with that?” heasks. “Until digital distribution becomes the norm, thetraditional method works fine for most material, except where there areextensive effects or where you want a particular look. I think we arestill a long way from having digital intermediate be a standard for allfeature films. In the meantime, we'll live in a hybridworld.”

James Chressanthis

For television, digital mastering also has huge implications. TomDel Ruth thinks that's precisely why TV cinematographers shouldinsist on the right to be deeply involved in the digitalmastering phase.

“The digital intermediate process is starting to catch on fortelevision, and it holds great promise,” says Del Ruth.“After all, the concept gives us the best of both worlds, in myview: the ability to shoot on film, which lets us capture and holdcontrast, the ability to change the look of film with different stocks,and then the ability to go into the telecine room and digital post andcreate various effects, composites, and subtle changes. Butcinematographers should insist on absolute control over the finalimage. They should insist on the full creative right to adjust contrastor color without anyone else riding herd on them. We originate theimage, and therefore, we should be the final arbiters when it comes tothe final look of those images, in accordance with the director'svision.”

Steve Poster

Many DPs express similar concern about maintaining creative inputduring the remastering process used on older feature films forre-release and DVD, whether relying on digital or traditional labtechniques. Daviau recently completed supervision of the traditionalremastering of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, which he shot forSteven Spielberg back in 1981, and the creation of an HD master for DVDrelease. He reports that remastering experience was “extremelypositive” because studios Amblin/DreamWorks and Universal“had the foresight to maintain the original E.T. negativein pristine condition,” and happily encouraged hisparticipation.

Still, some DPs express concern about having their earlier workaltered without their participation, and sometimes, without theirknowledge.

Tom Del Ruth

“I get lots of calls about doing new masters of mywork,” says Deakins. “On the other hand, sometimes, theydon't call at all, and some of my films were remastered withoutinvolving me in any way in the color retiming. If they aren'tcontractually obligated to call you, they won't always do so. That'sdefinitely an issue for DPs, something we're sensitive about. I mean,what if they remastered O Brother and changed the whole schemeby going back to the original negative and not the original digitalmaster? Since the original negative is colored differently, it wouldlook nothing like the original movie. Or, what if they remasteredThe Man Who Wasn't There in color, though we shot it on a colornegative before processing it in black-and-white? Those kind ofproblems are why the original DP must be involved.”

Poster puts it another way: “The DP is the only one whounderstands the restraint and taste that went into collaborating withthe director to make the original image. If you re-master thatmaterial, and take him out of that equation, it would be very difficultto maintain the original intent.”

The use of black-and-white imagery in feature films continues to bea niche area for filmmakers, as old as the art form itself. But it'salso a good example of how today's cinematographers are advancingestablished film acquisition techniques. In the past year, forinstance, Deakins opened eyes in the cinematography community with hismethod for The Man Who Wasn't There. Winning an award from hisASC peers for that work and nominated for an Oscar, Deakins used whatDaviau describes as “a pioneering approach.”

“The film has obvious film noir and B-movie references,”Deakins explains. “To achieve the full tonal range of grays andto maintain a rich black and a clean white, which were important togive particular scenes a variety of looks, I performed several tests.In the end, I found that by using a medium speed, lower contrast colorstock (Kodak 5277) and printing onto a black-and-white, high-contrasttitle stock (Kodak 5369), I could get the black-and-white image withsilky mid-tones and the tight grain structure that wewanted.”

Daviau raves about his colleague's work because he feels Deakins, inpartnership with Deluxe Hollywood film labs, “developed a wholenew science to go with his art when it comes to black-and-white. Heproved that by using modern color emulsion stock as his original, andthen finding a way to make title stock (5369) work at proper contrastranges to print the color negative out in black-and-white, he could geta crisp and unique look. He came up with a way to extend the life ofblack-and-white in the modern era.”

Venerable Super 16mm film stock was likewise involved in ahigh-profile project during the last year. Stephen Goldblatt, a formerdocumentary filmmaker, won praise from his peers for shooting the HBOtelemovie, Conspiracy, for director Frank Pierson using Super 16(Kodak Vision 200 stock), and then manipulating those images digitallyat Cinesite, Los Angeles.

“I was attracted to Super 16 for this project [about thehistorical meeting in which Nazi bureaucrats planned details of theFinal Solution] for creative reasons because most of the film takesplace in one room,” says Goldblatt. “We wanted adocumentary nature to the piece, handheld, and Super 16 was perfect forthat. It was a much better choice than HD, since we wanted the film toresemble older footage of that era, not modern video. The choice gaveme a clean negative, and yet, we had the opportunity to do our blowupto 35mm digitally. That was crucial, because in the past, the drawbackof Super 16 was the difficulty in doing an optical blowup. But with thedigital intermediate process, we avoided that problem completely. Wegot a lot of compliments on the 35mm blowup.”

Goldblatt emphasizes that blending film types and stocks is also agrowing trend, thanks to today's ability to digitally mix and matchimagery. That's the approach James Chressanthis took shooting theremake of Brian's Song for ABC. Chressanthis, nominated for anEmmy in 2001 for his work shooting Life With Judy Garland: Me and MyShadows, shot many of the Brian's Song football sequences inSuper 8mm, sprinkling that material into a 35mm movie.

“We shot 8mm [Pro 8 Film, engineered from Kodak Vision stock]for the football games at 9fps, which is an odd frame rate, and then wetelecined it at 9fps to digital Betacam,” explains Chressanthis.“The digital Betacam was then blown up to a 35mm negative [andthe film was finished at 35mm]. That approach gave us a blurred,streaming, poetic, extremely subjective kind of treatment for thoseshots, which still intercut well with the ultra-sharp, 35mmphotography. We didn't use 16mm because that was too close to 35mm forthe look we wanted. We also used 8mm for traditional home-movie scenes,and for scenes where the actor [Sean Maher] playing Brian Piccolo isreceiving chemotherapy. There, we utilized 8mm with an extremedistorting lens to show the agony he was going through.”

Chressanthis adds that he had such a “positiveexperience” blowing the 8mm images up to 35mm that “I'dlike to film an entire movie in 8mm someday.”

“After all, with all the digital formats making so much newsthese days and even major filmmakers experimenting with mini-DV to makemovies, I think it's cool that this 70-year-old medium — 8mm— that many people think is obsolete, still has professionalvalue,” he says. “I've blown up 8mm, and it looks as good,if not better, at 35mm than mini-DV, so why not do an entire movie thatway?”

Chressanthis also filmed actress Judy Davis during certain portionsof his Emmy-nominated work on Judy Garland in black-and-white— part of an attempt to craft images similar in nature to the waythe real Judy Garland was filmed decades ago.

“We used film very similar to what they were using 50 yearsago — Kodak Plus-X black-and-white stock,” saysChressanthis. “It gave us a silvery, pearlescent quality, verysimilar to old footage of Garland, which met the creative goal forthose sequences.”

Another topic concerning film DPs is a lack of diversity when itcomes to film print stocks. According to Steven Poster, while thecurrent generation of origination stocks is “brilliant,”the same cannot be said of print stocks.

“There has been a lack of development in print stocks,”says Poster. “Right now, they are pretty limited — weessentially have a choice of contrasty and contrastier. We've beentalking to Kodak about this, but right now, they have limited the lesscontrasty stocks at the same time they have been doing better withshooting stocks.”

Allen Daviau explains, “Kodak 5386 was the previous standardfor normal contrast print stock, but they dropped it and replaced itwith regular Vision stock, which is a higher contrast print stock. Manyof us wish they were still offering a normal contrast print stock,because regular Vision stock has more contrast and color saturationthan a normal print stock. This means the cinematographer is oftenforced to change his or her lighting style to accommodate the printstock, and that's not the best way to do things. If Kodak providedanother normal contrast print stock, that would give us morechoices.”

On the lens' front, cinematographers are impressed with recentadvances in the development of Prime lenses and other tools forshooting HD that have partially narrowed the gap between film andvideo, but Poster worries that much of this development has been donein response to the arrival of digital acquisition technology, and notenough development is being done in the anamorphic universe.

“We have not seen a lot of developmental work in recent yearson anamorphic lenses,” says Poster. “That's a big loss,because we need newer and better anamorphic lenses. With the scienceand technology available today in optical design, I'm sure there arebrilliant things that could be done with anamorphic lenses that are nottaking place, and that's too bad.”

Cinematographers are also closely following digital projectiondevelopments, and some have concerns about digital projection thatmirror their traditional complaints about the lack of uniformity amonganswer prints projected in cinemas throughout the world.

Deakins says the problem is simple: In the same way that the qualityand condition of answer prints can vary wildly over time, from cinemato cinema, depending on use and conditions, so potentially can thequality of digital projection systems.

“It's true that answer prints can look lousy over time, andcinematographers have always been concerned about this,” saysDeakins, “but the same principal applies with digital projectors.After all, how do we know each projection system will be maintained togive the optimal image once they eventually become commonplace? I saw ademo recently where there were dropout specks appearing on the screen,created because the projector got tainted somehow, either by atechnical flaw or dirt or something else getting into the system. Therewere color artifacts all over the screen. So, the idea that digitalprojections will always be pristine isn't realistic. Any projectionsystem, over time, will produce artifacts of one type or another. So,what's the difference between a film artifact and a digital artifact?Either way, the original image is altered.”

According to some television DPs, the look of many episodicdramas and TV movies has evolved in recent years into the cinematicrealm, all during a period in which budgets have tightened and film hasfaced competition from HD.

“For one thing, we're shooting in lower light levels thesedays,” says Del Ruth. “We also have a wider range of Kodakand Fuji stocks to choose from to illustrate any mood you can imagine,much like feature film people. So, in that sense, shooting for TV hasmoved closer to the feature film world, where we can find affordabletools to produce desired emotional responses. The evolution of lenses,and improvements in the weight and flexibility of film cameras, havealso contributed to this trend.”

Goldblatt, currently shooting a six-hour, two-part HBO film fordirector Mike Nichols based on the Angels in America stage play,agrees, and he suggests the evolution of film-related technology getsless ink than HD technology, but deserves more.

“HD cameras are still big and heavy, and they don't have thesame quality in the highlights or the shadows,” says Goldblatt.“Right now, I'm shooting at night in Central Park, shootingaround 800 ASA with extraordinary results on film. Some shots we'recreating are so wide [that] we need every ounce of film speed we canget. Plus, I'm using the small Panavision Millennium cameras, whichpermit us to get onto tiny sets without umbilical cords. Don't forgetthat film is at a pretty advanced stage of development compared to HDtechnology.”

In any case, an obstacle faced by television DPs is the fact that TVimages are often unintentionally altered after post,during broadcast, due to the nature of the transmission processrequired to send TV signals to homes. Therefore, Del Ruth says therecan no longer be “final control” over TV images intelecine, the edit suite, or anywhere else.

“Most DPs get 98% of what they want into the final TV master,but once that master is sent to the network, it's uplinked and sent bysatellite to downlinks all over the country, which distribute thoseimages to cable companies, who dominate most American TV sets rightnow,” he says. “Each of those downloaded images can stillbe adjusted electronically at the download site — they cancontrol brightness, remove colors, and so on, and they can do itautomatically. But they can't possibly know what was in the mind of thepeople shooting the material originally. So, sometimes, what theviewing public sees has little relationship to what was originally donein the telecine room. I'm actually a little shocked that our industryis not more careful with its representative imagery.”