The digital video revolution

COMMENTARY--Sometimes you have to go searching for opportunitiesfor personal development, and other times it lands onyou like an elephant dropped from a B-52 bomber. Iactively searched for opportunities to work overseassimply because I wanted the experience of living andworking in a foreign culture. Bouncing betweencountries like a spastic two year old might not beeveryone's cup of tea, but it has been an amazingexperience full of interesting events I'll rememberforever. On the other hand, I never expected to endup "director of photography" on a low-budget,feature-length film.

When I responded to a flyer posted around town, Iexpected at most to be an extra. Instead, I ended upspending two weeks worth of 18-24 hour days behind apair of digital cameras. At the end of those twoweeks, besides having piles of dirty clothes thatwould put the Augean stalls to shame, I came tounderstand the revolution that digital technologyrepresents for the film industry. Digital media will democratize filmmaking, a process that will lead to more films that don't rely on funding from major studios.

The cameras
For our film, we chose to use a pair of CanonXL-1 DV cameras (to be precise, one XL-1 and oneXL-1S, which is the newer of the two cameras). Theseare the same cameras used by Danny Boyle for hisrecent film, "28 Days Later."

DV is a digital video standard that is common inlower-end consumer camcorders. DV cameras areTV-oriented, which means you have to choose between acamera that produces video in the NTSC format (thestandard used in the United States and Japan) and PAL(our choice, since it's the format used in Europe, butalso because PAL is closer to the movie frame rate andoffers marginally better resolution than NTSC). Thisalso means that you have to chop off a bit of the topand bottom of the screen in order to fit the imageinto movie format. The XL-1S has optional 16:9guidelines that makes it easy to tell where the cutoffshould be, while the older XL-1 doesn't.

The Canon XL-1 is a 3 CCD camera. A CCD, or a "ChargeCoupled Device," is the part of the camera thattranslates light into digital signals. Most camerashave only one CCD, as is the case with my Sony TRV-30 camcorder. The advantage of having 3 CCDs is that each CCD only has to deal with one color, Red, Green or Blue, which gives rise to greater clarity and richer colors.

One of the cool things about the Canon XL-1 is itscost, at least relative to traditional film cameras. The Canon XL-1S lists for about $4,700, though Amazoncurrently offers it at $3,598.94. We paid about $90per camera per day to rent them. This is cheapcompared to the next step up in digital media, theSony Digibeta camera, which would have cost us about$180 / day to rent, and inconceivably expensive tobuy.

Cost savings extend down to storage format. The CanonXL-1 stores its data on MiniDV cassette tapes, thesame format used in consumer-grade digital camcorders. Mini DV tapes cost between $4 and $6, depending ontape quality. By contrast, Digibeta records toBetamax cassette tapes, which cost between $40-$50 pertape. This low cost left us free to film as much aswe wanted, which partly explains the 17 hours of videowe ended up with.

An important difference between the Canon XL-1 andlower-end digital recording devices is the degree ofmanual control you have over the recorded data. Most camcorders are of the point and shoot variety. These cameras automatically adjust to prevailing light conditions, which can cause problems as you pan the camera during a shot. This should be apparent to anyone who has used a consumer-grade video camera in outdoor shots and ended up with crisply defined clouds behind a pair of darkened silhouettes.

In contrast, the Canon XL-1 has a manual setting thatallows you to control things like aperture (akaF-Stop), shutter speed, and "white balance"(basically, this ensures that your images don't comeout blue or orange shifted). It has a whole bunch ofother settings that make the camera look like thedashboard of a transatlantic jet, but for the mostpart, you can ignore them if you want to a) convertyour digital movie to film which can be shown ontraditional projection equipment (which we do), and b)if you are doing everything using manual settings,which we did.

The Process
Along with the cameras, we rented lighting equipment,sound gear and a field monitor. Good lighting iscritical, particularly so for digital video with itslower resolution vis àvis traditional film. Our lighting setup included alarge, 1.2KW light (in industry parlance, a "blonde"),two 650W lights (a "redhead"), a "bounce board" (whichis used to bounce light into or away from a scene), aChinese lantern with a 100 Watt bulb for soft lightingin close-up scenes, and a collection of gels(basically, a collection of colored pieces of plasticwhich fit over the lamps and alter the scene in subtleways).

Sound equipment included a four-channel audio mixer, aset of clip-on microphones, and a boom microphone. Sound inevitably tends to be the hardest to get right,and we had several scenes we had to re-shoot becausethe sound was acting up.

One of the most useful pieces of equipment we rentedwas the field monitor. By plugging the field monitorinto the back of one of our cameras, the directorscould see exactly what the camera was seeing, andadjust the shot accordingly. This may seem of mildimportance, but isn't for the simple reason that themonitor is a more accurate reflection of the amount oflight available in a scene than the viewfinder on thecamera. We often found that what seemed a bit dark inthe viewfinder looked perfect on the monitor (andperfect in playback). Furthermore, it's usuallyeasier to see the insidious boom mike descending intothe scene on a monitor than it is using the viewfinder(imagine a large, fuzzy salami slowly edging its wayinto the shot from the direction of your choice, andyou'll understand what I mean).

Filming a scene is an agonizingly slow process. First, you have to get the lighting right, and thatcan take a half hour or more of experimentation. Next, you have to check that the sound is sufficientlyloud for the shot (run a "sound check"), which at 4 AMcan be hard to remember. Last, you have tochoreograph where the actors will walk in order tomaintain the "artistic" nature of the shot, or at amore mundane level, stay ON camera. Next, you try toshoot the scene, which often must be re-shot becausea) the Chinese lantern pops accidentally into viewlike that big, gyrating ball that trapped people in"The Prisoner," b) the boom mike, or boom arm, gotinto the shot, c) the sound decided it didn't feellike cooperating, or d) the evil directors decidedthey didn't like the acting in the scene. This canresult in a single angle in a particular scene takingseveral hours.

As noted, we ended up with 17 hours of footage. We'llload all 17 hours onto a pair of 200GB externalFirewire drives (1GB equals about 5 minutes of DVvideo), and edit them using standard desktopcomputers. This is the real power of the digitalvideo format, allowing people with desktop computersto edit what in the past required expensive,specialized equipment.

Still, that 17 hours of video will take 3-4 months ata minimum to distill into a movie lasting about anhour and a half. No one likes to stare at the samecamera angle for five minutes, a fact apparent whenyou start to look at movies from the standpoint ofhaving to replicate what they're doing from acinematic standpoint (I'll never look at movies thesame way again). For that reason, we have a varietyof angles on the same scene, and our job over thecoming months will be to splice those angles into acohesive whole that is visually interesting and fun towatch. Likewise, we'll have to include music, whichwe'll do after the movie has been completely edited.

The Revolution
Traditional filmmaking using photographic film is aVERY expensive process. Besides the cost of rentingthe equipment, the film stock itself is costly, andthe skills necessary to properly shoot and edittraditional film take longer to acquire. Digitalfilmmaking lowers the cost bar for filmmakers both interms of raw prices and the skills necessary to do itproperly. This will lead to more people having accessto the tools necessary to make movies.

Digital media is also far easier to distribute thantraditional film. Traditional film is usually shippedin large rolls which are expensive to produce. Incontrast, digital media can be downloaded overhigh-capacity connections via satellite. This greatlyreduces the cost of distribution, and furthermore,puts film distribution within the reach of filmmakerswithout the resources of major studios.

Unfortunately, digital film distribution isn'tfeasible until movie houses shift to digitalprojection equipment. Like the barriers faced byelectric cars in a world of gasoline stations, mostmovie houses have traditional film projectionequipment. Furthermore, digital projection equipmentcosts around $150,000 per projector (versus $30,000for a traditional projector) in a market where rapidlychanging digital technology is likely to make thatequipment obsolete in a few years.

Even without a market centered around digitalprojectors, the simple fact that more can aspire tomake movies in the first place means more will bemade. Those movies judged sufficiently interestingwill find a buyer willing to go to the expense ofconverting a digital video to traditional film (aprocess that will cost about $30,000). Making a moviein the first place is the biggest issue, and digitalvideo makes that process easier, and more critically,cheaper.

The Future
Digital filmmaking won't completely eclipse bigstudios. Big studios are like the venture capitalfirms of filmmaking. They have the bucks to financelarge productions, which includes things like actorsalaries, REAL sets (as opposed to sets stocked with knick-knacks from one of the directors' family home), and simple things like food and transportation. They also have an extensive promotion network, and are the first place movie theaters will turn when it comes to picking a movie with broad appeal.

The likely presence of "big" movie making companies,however, doesn't change the fact that digital mediawill allow more "independent" films to be produced andfind a market. This will enrich the world of visualmedia, and provide fertile ground for smaller mediaproduction companies.

As a final point of interest, DV isn't the last wordin digital video. Video quality with the Canon XL-1is "good enough" as evidenced by the wide release and popularity of Mr. Boyle's horror epic, but still pales in comparison to traditional film. The real competitor to film, in terms of quality, is High Definition. High Definition, or HD, is touted as the video standard of the future, and is being actively promoted by the US government. HD is a format that matches the wide screens seen in theaters (even the CCDs on HD video cameras are shaped like movie screens, in contrast to the CCDs in the Canon XL-1, which are shaped like TV screens). High Definition digital video cameras already exist, with the high end occupied by cameras like this SonyHDWF900, and the consumer end starting up withcameras like the JVCGR-HD1.

Today, High Definition falls into the "prohibitivelyexpensive" category (the HDWF900 will set you back acool 100 grand), but then again, High Definition isn'texactly lighting the television world on fire...yet. When it does, prices can be expected to fallprecipitously, and the last reason for continuing touse traditional film in the moviemaking process, notto mention video cameras that still think in terms ofTV dimensions versus movie dimensions, will fall. High Definition would unify the theater and homeviewing format, generating even more cost savings andwidening the market for budget filmmakers looking fora place to sell their product.

The future for digital video is exceedingly bright,and its low cost is the surest path to its inevitablesuccess.

biography
John Carroll is a software engineer living in Ireland. He specializes in the design and development of distributed systems using Java and .Net. He is also the founder of Turtleneck Software.