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(pag 72)
Technical information:
HDCAM 1:1.85 25fps Shutter 1/50
Sony F-900 Camera
Canon EJ series lenses adapted to HD
Shooting with Arrilaser
Intermediate 5242/ Kodak Premier Positive
In Shooting Audiovisual’s 6th issue, Marta Rey
published an article about different aspects of production.
In this text she offers all the technical information
regarding the choice of Betacam SP format for certain
sequences in a film, given its suitability to co-exist
with footage shot in HDCAM. The other objective was
to achieve as much latitude as possible with the Sony
F-900 to obtain greater detail in both the highlights
and low lights.
“El regalo de Silvia” tells four stories
sharing the same starting point: Silvia’s video-diary,
therapeutic sessions whose emotional tone link us to
the other narrative strands. Silvia decides to donate
her eyes, her liver and her heart, which are received
by people from very different backgrounds. The heart
goes to a middle-low class man with ambitions; the liver
to a hoodlum (Pag 73)
who wants out of his criminal career, and her eyes are
received by a wealthy young woman who lost her parents
in a car accident. The three stories of the receptors
were shot in HD given its proven quality and convenience
when doing multiple takes. For Silvia’s video-diary
we wanted to use a format that, while being of an inferior
quality and having the look of domestic video, would
not alienate the audience when shown alongside the HD
footage. We tried with two different formats: DVCAM
and Betacam SP
For Silvia’s video-diary we wanted to use a format
that, while being of an inferior quality and having
the look of domestic video, would not alienate the audience
when shown alongside the HD footage. We chose Betacam
SP because it was very important to achieve a format
with enough detail to capture the actress’ expression
while still looking like a home video
Once we had colour graded, linked the fields in postproduction
and filmed to 35mm we decided for the analogue format
whose definition was worst than DVCAM, with smoother
transitions between the colours and the edges. As we
can see in Fig. 1, the image was very different to the
one in HD, while still retaining enough detail of the
skin. It was very important to achieve a format with
enough detail to capture the actress’ (Barbara
Goenaga ) expression while still looking like a home
video. We decided not to shoot with an actual domestic
video camera in miniDV due to its poor definition, as
well as its poor reproduction of colour, which, when
compared to the HD, would have destroyed the reality
of the film.
(Pag 74)
Once we had decided on the Sp format for the video-diary
we focused all our energy in achieve the largest latitude
as possible with the Sony F-900 to obtain as much detail
as possible both in the high and the low lights.
We photographed a Kodak grey card with the camera’s
standard setup, and then we did the same using the modifications
made by Ben Allan (www.cinematography.net), which increase
the latitude by modifying the Knee, Whipe Chip, Slope,
gamma, etc. controls.
These changes not only increase the latitude in high
lights, they also make the loss of detail less dramatic
than with the standard. On this set-up we modified the
gamma and the black gamma by using the ITU-709 colour
matrix. In the gamma menu we used coarse 0.45 and the
5th table, which reduces the compression of blacks and
obtains the curve shown in the graph.
Comparing it to the standard we appreciate the increase
in detail in the blacks and the change in the high lights,
making the shoulder of the curve closer to the negative.
The latitude increases around 2 F-stops in relation
to the standard. It goes without saying that with this
configuration colour grading becomes essential, because
the image captured by the camera has little contrast,
appearing slightly washed out, while having great amount
of detail ( see stills ).
Original frames/ Colour graded
frames
According to Jordi San Agustín, colour grading
operator at Image Film digital: “For the digital
colour grading, the camera tests allowed us to find
the largest latitude in response to the high and lowlights,
so we always have accurate values for the whole of the
density curve, which allows us to find the right balance
for densities as well as for colour space and obtain
a great transfer to 35mm”.
To conclude, in Table 1 we can observe the relation
of all the values involved in the HD process. With the
set-up we used the camera’s sensitivity is around
400ASA, however we chose to use 500 ASA by underexposing
slightly to achieve an even better response in the highlights,
given the good behaviour of the camera with shadows.
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