Chap_2

You need to know the basics about DV and motion picture equipment so you can make informed decisions in development and preproduction. The details regarding the DV technology, formats, and other tools are covered in later sections. For now, get comfortable with learning a new vocabulary and understanding the overall process of making movies.

You Need It When?

Among the many decision you need to make regarding your show is what you may want or need to buy versus what you can borrow or rent. Many DV moviemakers invest in equipment because they plan to make more than one show and the initial expense seems relatively.

Decide soon if you’re going to be buying or renting the most important production gear, such as a camera, portable field mixer, and so on. Then consider when you’ll be making your purchases. I have worked with producers who have purchased a DV camera the day before the shoot, giving the crew no time to get familiar with it before beginning work. This is not a wise strategy. Your crew needs a chance to learn the tools.

If you plan on producing and shooting your show yourself, then it’s even more important to get your hands on the equipment as soon as you can. You’ll have plenty to do on the set without having to scramble for the user’s manual.

The only time I suggest waiting to make a purchase is with your nonlinear editing system (NLE). Consider waiting until just before you need it to write that check. The market is still fairly volatile and prices are dropping all the time.

Production Gear

In production, you’ll need tools for creating and capturing picture and sound on the set. This includes a camera, lights, rigging, and audio equipment.

DV Camera

A DV camera or camcorder is one that follows the digital video specs outlined in the DV standards document, the current version of which is IEC 61834, developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The IEC is a standards body related to the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

DV uses a 13.5MHz sampling rate and a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) compression scheme. A single image (spatial) or successive images (temporal) may have adjacent pixels that are the same value, so DCT compresses these pixels as one to save bit space. DV also gains some of its compression ratio by adding interfield (not interframe) compression of video images that don’t have substantial motion.

DV audio accepts two channels at 16-bit 48kHz, or four channels at 12-bit 32kHz. DV information is carried in a nominal 25-megabit-per-second (Mbps) data stream. With audio, subcode (such as timecode), Insert and Track Information (ITI), and error correction, the total data stream comes to about 36Mbps recorded to tape.

Although digital video sample rates, color space, and tape width are standardized, camera and camcorder designs are not. This is one reason you see so many different models with varying features. For example, although DV can handle four channels of audio at 12-bit 32kHz, or two channels at 16-bit 48kHz, many of the DV camcorders and decks are limited to two 12-bit 32kHz channels or one 16-bit 48kHz channel.

Consumer, prosumer, and professional are categories of equipment developed by manufacturers based on the expectations of users. Consumer cameras tend to be small and lack manual control for certain features. Prosumer cameras are a step up in sophistication and have pro-level features, such as white balance and zebra stripes, but they’re hidden within electronic menus. Pro equipment is fully functional, with all the bells and whistles easily accessible by exterior buttons and knobs. They also tend to have better lenses, more rugged housings, and bigger price tags.

Although many of the prosumer cameras lack certain desirable features, a variety of vendors offer add-ons to expand their functions. For instance, camera manufacturers used unbalanced stereo miniplugs for the audio in and out on many prosumer cameras. Several companies now offer audio boxes to make better use of DV’s audio capabilities.

With these add-ons, professional camera operators and broadcasters have purchased prosumer DV cameras. Not only do they get the quality they need, they save themselves a bundle of money.

For more information on DV and other digital video formats, see Chapter 18, “Making Video Digital.” For more information on common DV camera controls, see Chapter 19, “The DV Camera.”

Lighting

Chief among the requirements for creating an image is carefully designing and executing your lighting. Lights come in various sizes and color temperatures, and lighting equipment includes reflectors and bounce cards. It also includes controls such as scrims, flags, dimmers, and so on.

The goal is to create an image that falls within the technical parameters of the equipment, while properly expressing the intent of the director.

For more information on lighting equipment and practices, see Chapter 20, “Lighting for DV” and Chapter 21, “Lighting Techniques.”

Rigging

Rigging is anything you do to place equipment in a certain position. For the camera, you may use a shoulder mount, tripod, dolly, or jib arm. You may need a hostess tray or some other device to mount a camera on a car.

For lighting and lighting control, you may need a common piece of equipment called a Century stand, or more commonly, the c-stand. C-stands are remarkable tools with use limited only by your desperation. You may also use mafers, cardellinis, and other grip equipment.

Whatever you need to do, you can be assured there’s a piece of rigging equipment to help you do it. There’s even rigging equipment for shooting underwater, off heights, while parachuting—you name it, it’s out there.

For more information on gaff and grip equipment and techniques, see Chapter 22, “Rigging.”

Audio Gear

The goal of capturing sound on location is to get the clearest audio signal with the least amount of noise, recorded at the highest quality possible. Location audio gear comprises mixers, headphones, booms, microphones, and cables.

It’s unlikely that a microphone mounted on your camcorder is going to capture your best audio in all situations. Prosumer DV cameras are often lacking in audio features, even though the format itself is loaded with them. The fullest-featured cameras have two modes of stereo sound: 16-bit for two channels or 12-bit for four channels. Most DV prosumer camcorders, however, give you one channel of 16-bit 48kHZ, or two channels of 12-bit 32kHz, and they use stereo miniplug connectors for audio in and headphones.

Fear not: If your camera has limited audio capabilities, there are plenty of vendors who offer inexpensive add-ons, so you’ll be able to use pro audio equipment with your prosumer DV camera.

For more information on location audio, see Chapter 23, “Capturing the Sound.”

Postproduction Gear

Postproduction means gathering all the material for your movie and putting them together: footage and dialogue, animation, special effects, music, sound effects, titles, and anything else you may need. To do this, you need two kinds of tools: one set for assembling the video, and one for assembling the sound.

Cutting Picture: Hardware and Software

Your choices for editing software depend on your operating system. There are several demo versions of popular applications on the DVD for you to try.

DV uses a high-speed data transfer protocol officially named IEEE 1394. (Sony’s version is called iLink, whereas Apple gave its version the catchier name of FireWire.) IEEE 1394 is the jack and the protocol that lets you transfer the DV data to your computer.

The DV specification includes frame-accurate device control and the ability to read and write digital video. A 1394 connection allows moviemakers using 1394-equipped DV camcorders and NLEs to transfer the DV data stored on a tape into their computers with no generation loss.

Decide early on whether you’re going to be working with an editor. If so, hire your editor early in the process and discuss exactly what kind of system the editor will be using. You don’t want to walk in with a tidy box of materials only to find out your editor doesn’t have compatible gear. Also, discuss rates now. It’s easier to negotiate when you don’t have deadlines looming.

If you’re going to cut your show yourself, you need a fairly robust machine with as much RAM as you can afford, a card for transferring your DV footage to your hard drive, and plenty of storage space. One gigabyte of storage will hold about 4 minutes 45 seconds of DV video. Two gigs is about 9 minutes 30 seconds.

For more information on editing equipment, see Chapter 30, “Cutting Picture.”

Post-Audio

After you have locked your picture, you’ll go on to handle your post-audio work. Decide early whether you’ll be handling this yourself or going to a post-audio house.

Usually, I organize material, place sound effects (called spotting), and create a scratch version for an audio engineer to follow. I take this material to a post-audio house in Seattle, not because they have fancy equipment, but because the engineer has better ears than I do. He knows what to listen for, how to add or subtract sound elements for a better effect, and often has good ideas.

If you decide to handle your post-audio yourself, you’re going to need a way to deal with audio coming from a variety of formats.

If you want sound on a DAT or DA-88, you need an appropriate deck and a digital-audio workstation (DAW) or digital audio card in your system to handle the transfer of digital audio to your hard drive. If you want to use an analog format, you need some kind of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) hooked up to the outputs of the turntable, cassette deck, or reel-to-reel you need. You need software to handle the transfer or digitizing as well.

Finishing

After the picture and audio are locked, you may want to consider video sweetening, a combination of tape-to-tape color correction, clamping to legal colors, adding reference bars and tone, and adding titles.

Anyone who has worked with NTSC video knows that the initials stand for the National Television Standards Committee. It also stands for Never The Same Color. NTSC requires video color to fall within a certain standardized range. To make life more difficult, these NTSC standards are not the same as the standards for computer monitors or software. It’s easy to cut a show that looks fine on your computer but horrendous on a television.

Your show needs legal colors. Legal colors conform to the NTSC standards for TV broadcast. There are two ways to do this: Use a piece of software that will clamp your video or have it done while doing a tape-to-tape color correction.

In addition to making your video technically legal, tape-to-tape color correction sets the colors from shot to shot and scene to scene for a more consistent look, while cleaning up some video noise. You can have a postproduction house handle this, or use software, such as Video ViXen (a demo is included on the DVD). Color correction is processor-intensive and takes a long time.

You also need to add reference SMPTE bars and 1kHz tone to the head of your tape so the duplication house can set its equipment. Additionally, you need an 8-second countdown. Many NLE software applications have a utility that will create one for you.

NTSC and 29.97

NTSC is the broadcast standard in most of North America. Back when television used to be only black-and-white, TV displayed 30 frames per second, with each frame composed of two fields. The television cameras and sets first scanned the odd-number lines and then the even lines, and what you saw playing on your TV was an interlaced display. Video back then could be considered as 60 fields per second, coinciding with the alternating current from the power mains at 60Hz.

For technical reasons regarding color and audio, NTSC was changed to 29.97 frames per second, or 59.94 interlaced fields per second.

Different standards developed elsewhere in the world. One of the most common is Phase Alteration Line, or PAL, used in Europe. PAL has 25 frames or 50 fields per second, matching the 50Hz AC power coming from their power mains.

You can’t mix and match NTSC and PAL equipment and expect it to work together. Also, if you need a master for use in a country that doesn’t use NTSC, you will have to get a standards conversion master made. Your duplication house will either be able to provide the service or recommend someone who can do it for you.

Selling

You need at least three masters of your show. A master is the completed motion picture, with bars and tone, legal colors, countdown, and audio split to two channels, the dialogue track and the music and effects (M & E) track.

The dialogue track contains all spoken words in the piece. The M & E track has all music, sound effects, sound beds, and any other audio. Splitting the audio in these two tracks allows broadcasters to dub the movie. Dubbing replaces dialogue in one language with dialogue in another.

One master will be vaulted. Vaulted means it’s stored in a postproduction facility, duplication house, or film and video storage house. The vault is climate controlled and fireproof. You’ll pay for the privilege of storing your show there.

One master is for festival screenings, and the third master will go to your duplication house, where you’ll order 50-100 VHS copies for your marketing effort.

In addition to your masters and VHS dubs of your show, you’re going to need support material, including a press kit. The kit contains

· A one-page press release announcing the project with full contact information

Some people also include an interview they’ve done with the director or lead actors that press people can crib from.

An electronic press kit (EPK) is a video about the project. It comes in a variety of forms, but the ones I’ve seen usually have a trailer, interviews with key personnel, and some behind-the-scenes footage.

For more information on selling your show, see Section V, “Selling: How To Keep Your Shirt.”

Buying Equipment

Most people who want to make DV movies want to buy a DV camera. Price versus power makes a lot of the prosumer cameras a very good value. But people rarely think about audio, lighting, and rigging equipment. Although you can always rent, you may want to purchase some key pieces so you’ll always have them on hand.

Many DV moviemakers are also interested in purchasing a nonlinear editing (NLE) system with which to edit and otherwise manipulate image and sound. I understand the impulse. I own my editing suite. With the way I work, I couldn’t afford to make DV movies any other way.

Following are some general guidelines about purchasing DV equipment you should consider while developing your project. Purchase and learn the equipment before principal photography and remember: If you purchase, you must maintain.

$$$

Figure out what you do and don’t like by renting equipment at first; plus, you’ll ease the strain on your wallet. There are other tools and lots of tricks that we’ll go through in Step III: Production: Action!

DV Camera Packages: Things to Consider

You never just buy a camera. You buy a camera package. This includes the camera body, lenses, power supplies, batteries, cases, audio adapters, filters, monitors, tripods, and so on.

DV camera. Consider what format of DV you want to work with: DV, DVCAM, or DVCPRO. That will often affect features and pricing. With consumer and prosumer cameras, camera means camera body and lens. For professional cameras, this means the camera body alone.

Lenses. If you want to use interchangeable lenses, you need a camera body that can handle that. Very few prosumer cameras have interchangeable lenses, so you may be looking at a pro-level camera. Fortunately for prosumer buyers, the lens that comes with the unit is versatile, so you may not need interchangeable lenses at all. Plus, third-party manufacturers make add-on wide-angle lenses for these cameras, although they’re pricey.

Number and size of CCDs. Get a 3-chip camera with the largest CCDs you can. A 3-CCD system uses a dichroic prism to split the light into red, green, and blue, expressed as RGB. Each color has a dedicated CCD chip for processing, so a 3-chip camera will give you better image quality. CCD size determines how many sensors are available for each RGB image. The more sensors, the more detail and the better the image.

1394 Input/Output (I/O). Don’t get a camera without a 1394 input/output (I/O). The 1394 I/O allows you to transfer DV footage from your DV camera to your nonlinear editing system, and then back again. You can make digital clones of your master tapes from your camera to a separate deck if you need to.

Analog video I/O. Analog in and out is very handy if you need to transfer analog video to your DV system. Analog output is necessary if you want to use a field monitor, a highly recommended practice. (Monitors are discussed later in this section.)

Optical image stabilization (OIS). OIS uses mechanical elements in the lens to shape the image when the camera shakes. It’s preferred over electronic image stabilization (EIS).

Viewfinder. Black-and-white viewfinders make focusing easier, which is why pro cameras have them. Most prosumer DV cameras have color viewfinders, and many now have LCD viewfinders. Although handy, LCD viewfinders are not reliable regarding color, focus, and other issues. If you want an LCD viewfinder, consider a camera that has a color LCD and a standard eyepiece viewfinder.

Zebra stripes. Professional and some prosumer cameras offer zebra stripes. Zebra stripes are electronic flags that show up in the viewfinder as horizontal lines across overexposed or saturated parts of an image. They look a lot like a zebra’s coat. You adjust exposure until the stripes are minimized.

Manual control. You want to control as much of the image and sound as you can. Manual focus, exposure, and zoom are required. So is manual audio. Unfortunately, many consumer and prosumer cameras have an automatic gain control (AGC) that rides levels on your sound whether you want it to or not. Look for controls that you find easy to access and manipulate, and can do what you need to do.

Power supplies. You’ll want a rugged AC power supply. Some can power a camera and charge a small battery simultaneously. Batteries are the easiest way to power your camera, but you need at least enough for no more than two battery changes per shoot day and a charger. Consider battery belts for longer run times.

Cases. There are two kinds of cases you need: hard and soft. The hard case protects the camera and camera equipment within a hard-shelled box filled with foam. Soft cases are great for protecting the camera gear on the set. A good hard case protects your camera from just about anything, whereas a soft case protects it from dust, smoke, and some rain.

If you’re going to be shooting in water, you need a specialty marine case to protect the camera. If you’re expecting rain or snow, you may want to use a rain cape or rain jacket. If it’s going to be cold, consider a heated soft case to keep the camera and camera operator’s fingers warm.

Filters. Camera filters have two functions: to manipulate an image and to protect the lens. At minimum, you need a UV filter on every lens to protect the glass.

Monitor. Every time I shoot without a monitor, I end up dissatisfied with the image. Make your life easier by buying and using a good video field monitor—not an LCD screen, but a pro-level field monitor with blue screen. You’ll need batteries, charger, AC power supply, and a case for it. Make sure you have a cable and adapters to go from the camera’s analog video out to the monitor’s video in.

Tripod. Even a cheap one is better than none at all. Tripods consist of several parts: the head (that’s what you put the camera on) and the sticks (that’s the three legs). Spreaders keep the legs from folding up on themselves. Consider getting a fluid head if your budget allows for it. Fluid heads are easier to use, allow you to pan and tilt more smoothly, and are usually more rugged.

Audio Gear: Things to Consider

Many people experience serious sticker shock when they see the prices for audio equipment. Sound is just as important as picture, so commit yourself to buying the best you can afford.

Like cameras, sound equipment should be considered as a package. The package includes a mixer, headphones, boom, microphones, and mic mount and cables. For some cameras, it may also include an audio adapter box.

Audio adapter boxes. Many prosumer cameras require a special adapter that allows you to plug in pro audio equipment. These adapter boxes fasten underneath most camcorders and provide two XLR mic/line inputs and one stereo output that goes to the miniplug of the camera. Some new prosumer DV cameras can handle pro-level audio feeds and do not require the adapter boxes. They need an adapter cable that converts from XLR female to stereo mini.

Mixer. Your location sound mixer on your sound crew will ride the level of the audio using a mixer, giving you greater control over the audio going to tape. The mixer should have enough inputs, generate phantom power and 1kHz tone for setting levels, and have stereo outputs. Be sure it’s battery powered so you don’t drag cable and to lower the chance of AC interference, resulting in buzzing on your audio track.

Headphones. Not earbuds, but earphones. A good pair should be plugged into the DV camera and worn by the sound mixer on the set. You may want a second set for the boom operator.

Boom. A boom places a microphone in the best location to capture the best audio. They come in all sorts of sizes and prices. Many DV moviemakers use paint roller arms and other extending poles quite successfully.

Microphone. You need an external microphone with a fairly narrow pick-up pattern. Shotgun and short shotgun mics are very useful. So are lavaliers. These microphones come in two types: dynamic and condenser. Dynamic microphones tend to be cheaper and not as sensitive. Condenser microphones are usually more expensive and very sensitive.

Mic mount and cables. You need some kind of microphone mount so you can put the mic on the boom. The best kind is a shockmount, which floats the microphone to lessen handling noise. You also need lots of appropriate cable.

Lighting and Rigging Gear: Things to Consider

If you think there are a lot of options with cameras, wait until you see your choices with lighting and rigging equipment. I recommend you rent most of your lighting and rigging gear. It’s expensive, heavy, and it has to be stored and maintained.

See Step III, “Production: Action!” for more details and techniques on lighting equipment.

Light kits. There are many types of lights. Start by considering a tungsten kit with three fixtures of various sizes and types.

Fresnel instruments have lenses allowing you to focus the light. They’re very handy, but when you just need a lot of illumination, open-face instruments will do. Make sure it comes with stands, scrims, barn doors, and so on, all in one case. You also need extra lamps of two types: tungsten (3200 Kelvin) and daylight (5600 Kelvin). Make sure the kit is for motion pictures and has solid support equipment. Nothing can ruin your day like getting a hot light right on the noggin.

C-stands, grip heads, and grip arms. C-stands hold just about any piece of motion picture equipment, especially flags, scrims, and cucalorises. C-stands always come in handy, so you may want to get at least two with grip heads and grip arms.

Gels and diffusion. You need color correction gels and diffusion materials. Reflectors are always handy and you may want to consider getting a reflector holder to mount on a c-stand. You can also combine open face lights with softboxes, egg crates, Chimeras, and other diffusion tools to make the light softer and more pleasing, especially on faces.

Flags, nets, and silks. Flags cut light completely, nets cut light partially, and silks diffuse light. Get a couple flags, one single and one double net, and a silk or two. As you work with the lights, place the flags, nets, and silks in and around the source to see what effect each has. Just be careful—although they’re all treated, they will scorch and burn.

NLE: Things to Consider

You can buy or you can build. Either way, you need hardware and software to get DV footage in and out of the nonlinear editing (NLE) system. See “Step IV: Postproduction: Directing the Movie” for more information on using this equipment.

Capture card. The capture card allows you to transfer to and from your DV source deck and your computer’s hard-drive. The capture card may be an interface, with the DV compression and decompression (codec) software based. It may be a hardware-based codec, with the same kind of processor and data handling as a DV camera. Hardware codecs are fast and expensive; software codecs are slower, but significantly cheaper.

Source deck. You can use your DV camera as a source deck, but that does place extra wear on the heads. Manufacturers offer various DV videotape decks you can keep with your editing system. They offer various functions at various price levels.

Capturing and editing software. Your choice depends on computer platform, available drivers for a specific application, and which one feels the most comfortable for you. Most editing applications allow you to control your DV deck, select what you want to transfer from a DV tape, and transfer it. Often a demo or light version of the application is bundled with the capture card or NLE system you buy. There are also several demos of editing software available on the enclosed DVD.

Hard-drive space. Two gigabytes of hard-drive space will hold about 9:30 of DV footage. If you have an hour to transfer, you’ll need about 13 gigs. Having more than one hard drive is a good idea—you place the editing software and scratch disks (the place where the editing application will hold temporary files) on the main drive, and your audio and video files on another.

From Five Essential Steps in Digital Video

Chapter 2: An Equipment Overview