Digital Filmmaking

The Changing Art and Craft of Making Motion Pictures

Thomas Ohanian, Natalie Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138156999
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136053535
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Film e video

Digital Filmmaking has been called the bible for professional filmmakers in the digital age. It details all of the procedural, creative, and technical aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production within a digital filmmaking environment. It examines the new digital methods and techniques that are redefining the filmmaking process, and how the evolution into digital filmmaking can be used to achieve greater creative flexibility as well as cost and time savings. The second edition includes updates and new information, including four new chapters that examine key topics like digital television and high definition television,making films using digital video, 24 P and universal mastering, and digital film projection.




Digital Filmmaking provides a clear overview of the traditional filmmaking process, then goes on to illuminate the ways in which new methods can accomplish old tasks. It explains vital concepts, including digitization, compression, digital compositing, nonlinear editing, and on-set digital production and relates traditional film production and editing processes to those of digital techniques. Various filmmakers discuss their use of digital techniques to enhance the creative process in the "Industry Viewpoints" sections in each chapter .

Postproduction

6	The Traditional Filmmaking Postproduction Process

Digital filmmaking techniques are changing the methods by which the laboratory prepares film for the postproduction process. In later chapters, we will explore in depth the areas of digital, nonlinear editing for picture and sound, digital video compression, and the transmission of a scene from one editing system to a viewing station thousands of miles away. However, now it is beneficial to describe the traditional filmmaking postproduction routines—the manner in which films are put together, screened, changed, and released. Only by being exposed to this history can we ascertain just how significant an impact digital filmmaking methods will have on postproducing a film. What follows then is a very basic, but thorough explanation of the traditional filmmaking postproduction process.

DIFFERENT FILM CATEGORIES

As we know, there are feature films, documentaries, animated films, and so forth. Overall, how a film is put together and delivered is the same regardless of the type of film being made. There are obvious differences along the postproduction route—one example is in the form of changes. For the feature film that must be previewed before an audience, it may be necessary to make changes. For the documentary film, the process of previewing the film and making changes based on audience reactions is extremely rare.

A HISTORY OF IMAGE AND SOUND EDITING

Given the history of film editing, the incorporation of digital techniques for picture and sound editing is extremely recent. This chart shows editing chronology:

Film Editing	c. 1900
Analog Audiotape Editing	c. 1945
Videotape Editing	1956
Videotape Editing with Timecode	1970
Digital Disk-based Audio Editing	1985
Digital Disk-based Picture Editing	c. 1989

As the chart shows, digital disk-based audio and picture editing are relatively new techniques. For almost 100 years, film editing and the film editorial process have been the quintessential low-tech method of completing a film, basically using scissors and glue or splicing tape.

Standards

Film, running in a film projector at 24 frames per second, is a unique standard in a world where standards are often difficult to achieve. A feature film or a documentary can be shipped to any country and played on a projector without any special modifications. True enough, if the film offers multi-track digital sound, a specific theater may not be equipped to take advantage of this capability; however, the pictures will play back and analog soundtracks will be used.

The issues of standard formats and display areas are classical areas of difference between delivering a program on film or on videotape. There are various film gauges such as 35mm four-perf (perforations per frame), 35mm three-perf, 16mm, Super 16mm, even Super 8mm. There are also different ways of utilizing the display area of the film frame, such as using 35mm four-perf film in Academy, Cinemascope, or Super-35mm format. Regardless, it is the 35mm fourperf Academy format film that has become the standard of projection across the world. This unique advantage ensures that the product created by one filmmaker in Los Angeles, California can be played on a projector in Bombay, India or in Rome, Italy. This country to country interchangeability that film enjoys is not experienced by videotape.

There are many different types of videotape formats, such as ¾” Umatic, 1” Type C, MII, Betacam, Betacam SP, D1, D2, D3, D5, Digital Betacam, DCT, and formats which tread a line between consumer use and professional use—VHS, Hi 8, and S-VHS. A dizzying array of new videotape formats are introduced each year. Which format to invest in is a difficult and frustrating decision for many facility owners and program creators.

There are also different display methods for video. Some countries display video at NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) rates of 29.97 fps, 60 Hz, with an interlaced scan of 525 lines; other countries utilize PAL (phase alternate line) rates of 25 fps, 50 Hz, scanned at 625 lines (or in some cases, 525 lines). A film-originated program that has been transferred to NTSC videotape cannot be played on a PAL television. Along with NTSC, PAL, and a SECAM (séquential couleur à mémoire; used primarily in Eastern Europe and France), there are new display formats such as High-Definition Television (HDTV).

Faced with these decisions, it is no wonder that program makers have relied on originating on film and transferring the completed film to the videotape format of choice, in the display format endemic to a particular country. The importance that a foreign market has to a film’s earning potential requires that the distribution medium be easily transportable and displayable. Film offers this, videotape does not, and it remains to be seen whether a digital medium can compete with film on this issue.

Standard Practices

Standard practices have developed within the film postproduction process. In general, the manner in which a film is finished is the same from country to country. The actual equipment and personal tastes and techniques may differ, but the gross processes of how film is developed, workprinted, synchronized, edited, screened, changed, and finalized are remarkably similar around the world. Contrast this to the world of videotape editing, where the capabilities of one editing room can be greatly different than another room.

Given this history, there has been no great impetus for filmmakers to change the way they go about postproducing a film. This is changing as digital filmmaking techniques enter and permeate the postproduction process; a redefining of these principles and methods will be necessary. Just what will be the responsibilities of the assistant editor? How will the responsibilities of the optical house change, now that a computer disk and not a film workprint are delivered? Large scale changes are taking place in the areas of defining responsibilities given the long history of film postproduction.

THE TRADITIONAL FILMMAKING PROCESS

On-location or ln-studio

Let’s assume we are shooting 35mm four-perf film. A roll of film is loaded into the film camera and these camera rolls are usually ten minutes in duration when running at 24 fps. Sound for the film is recorded on a separate ¼”, reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. While there are different types of recorders, the most common is the Nagra. By utilizing two different systems, one for recording picture and one for recording sound, film shooting is often called a dual-system approach.

Processing the Film

Each day, when shooting has been completed, all of the exposed camera rolls are taken to the film laboratory for processing. This may be a lab in the same city or in an entirely different country. It is now routine procedure to shoot a film on location, say, in Eastern Europe, to process the film in London, and to edit the film in Los Angeles. This division of tasks will become far more prevalent when it is digital data moving over communications lines and not film cans being delivered by overnight airline carriers.

Continuing, the exposed negative is processed, and then a positive, or workprint, is created. It remains to the filmmaker to decide if all of the negative will be workprinted and this decision depends upon the sheer amount of film being shot. Most often, less film is printed than was shot. Only in the case of an extremely small shooting ratio will all the film be workprinted. A guideline for the average shooting ratio for a feature film in the $10–13 million dollar range (the budget for a feature film considered to be average in Hollywood terms is approximately $18 million) will be approximately 20:1. This ratio refers to the amount of film shot to the amount of film used in the final presentation. A two hour film will have forty hours of original material.

Of course, there are many exceptions. Some two hour films with tiny budgets will have been shot with one or two takes yielding a 2–3:1 ratio. For these films, perhaps all of the film will be workprinted. Other films, involving scenes covered with multiple cameras and intricately choreographed action sequences, could have a million or more feet of film. If from the million feet, the filmmakers choose to print 500,000 feet, the editor still has a staggering ratio of 454:1 to wade through as the final two hour movie will only consist of about 11,000 feet of film!

To conserve time and expense, the takes that the director wants workprinted are usually referred to as circled takes. These takes are noted, commented, logged, and this log is used by the lab so that the proper portions of the film negative are printed. The quality of the print is minimal, since this workprint will be physically handled, cut, and recut. The critical film timing stage occurs much later where attention to picture quality is of major importance. The original camera negative is stored under appropriate environmental conditions, and will not be utilized (unless another print is required) until the time arrives for the negative to be actually cut and assembled together.

Thus far, our film has been shot, developed, and transferred to positive, yielding a workprint. This workprint can be in either color or black-and-white; budgets may require that less expensive black-and-white film be used for the workprint.

Transferring the Sound

The next stage is to put the sound into a proper format for editing. In the same way that the original film negative is not used for editing, the original audio recordings are first transferred to another format and then stored away. Each of the ¼” reel-to-reel audio tapes is transferred to 35mm magnetic track (mag track). Since 35mm film editing requires that picture and sound ultimately be edited together, sound must exist in the same format as the workprint. Each circled take for picture yields the corresponding circled take for audio. These audio takes are then transferred to 35mm mag track (figure 6–1).

Figure 6–1 The quarter-inch sound roll is first transferred to 35mm magnetic track. This magnetic sound track is then combined with the 35mm picture track. Picture and sound now exist in the same 35mm format, and editing can begin.

Illustration by Jeffrey Krebs.

Note that there are various forms of sprocketed film for sound work. Single stripe contains a single sound channel while full coat track stock is completely coded for multiple sound channels.

There are also various logs, such as the script supervisor’s log, camera reports, and sound transfer reports. On a feature film, one with hundreds of thousands of feet of film, wild track audio (audio that was not captured at the same time that the picture was captured) arrives on ¼” and is transferred to mag track. At any moment, the editor may require a very specific wild track, and it is left to the assistant editor to locate the material as quickly as possible. Absolutely essential to the filmmaking process is meticulous record keeping. One of the great promises of digital filmmaking is that the computer provides the ability to create and maintain large databases of information which can be quickly sorted, sifted, and cross-referenced.

Synchronizing and Viewing Dailies

Thus far, we have solved the first problem: picture and sound now exist on the same media type, sprocketed 35mm film and sprocketed 35mm mag track. Dailies are viewed and editing begins. Using a chinag...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Preproduction and Previsualization
• Production
• Postproduction
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index