Doc production begins

This past weekend Anne-Marie and I went to work on the comics documentary. We shot footage of 24-Hour Comic Day at Cosmic Monkey Comics in northeast Portland. We came away with three hours of tape, including about one and a half hour of time-lapse footage from over night. You can read more about the weekend, including links to an archived live blog of the event, on my production blog for the film.

Because I don't really have a crew or group of collaborators lined up yet, I've had to act as my own director of photography, which is not something I like to do, but which I recognize is a good thing. It makes me a better director, and expands my skill set. Over the weekend, in particular, I got some more practical experience with the Fig Rig, including seeing how easy it is to work when fully hooked up for sound (the answer: quite easy). Anne-Marie and I talked about trying to coordinate me on the camera and her with the mic while moving with the rig, but we decided there wasn't good enough reason, especially since we may have ended up looking like fools!

The week or so before, like many an independent filmmaker these days, I agonized over frame rates and aspect ratios. My deliberations over frame rates are partially available in comments to this post on Susan Ee's blog. In the end, I decided to shoot in the DVX 100a's “24p Advanced mode.” The reason is partially aesthetic, I do like the softer more organic look and feel of progressive video better than I do interlaced, at least for “film” projects. Is 24p “better” than 30p? No. Yes. Depends.

In a truly digital world, I'd probably choose 30p. It simplifies shooting and editing, while retaining much of the analog aesthetic of 24p. However, it is the remote possibility of wide-ish theatrical distribution that tipped the balance to 24p Advanced. From just about everything I've read, the biggest downside to choosing 30p is that it is virtually impossible to get a decent transfer to film with such footage, and, indeed, most shops don't even offer it as an option.

Of course, interval recording is not possible in 24p on the DVX100a, only in 30p or 60i. I shot the time-lapse footage in 30p. Hmmm. As I write that, maybe 60i would have been the better choice, but I wanted to minimize the disparity in appearance between the regular shots and the interval recording.

I did play with warming up 60i as the primary shooting mode, but applying “Cine” settings in that mode tended to just produce muddy looking video. And that brought me back around to 24p as the only way to preserve the transfer-to-film possibility.

Theatrical presentation is also a primary reason for thinking about aspect ratio. For better or worse, my camera's native 4:3 signifies “TV” or “video” not “cinema” or “film.” Unlike the 24p choice, I have my own reasons for wanting a widescreen look for this project.

The film is fundamentally about the city of Portland, and cities are cinematic, either in look, e.g., skylines, or in subject, e.g., the young and hip. Furthermore, as comics and movies are increasingly integrated, it seems like a natural choice.

The question is how to get the widescreen look.

I have two in-camera options: “squeeze” mode and letterboxing. Squeeze mode essentially stretches the 4:3 image into a 16:9 image. Letterboxing adds black bars to the top and bottom of the image.

There are two issues with squeeze mode. One is a loss of resolution (as I understand it, at the center of the image, resolution remains high, but as you move away from the center, the stretching results in lower resolution). The other is the LCD monitor on the camera lacks a widescreen setting, so the image you see while shooting is distorted. An appropriate external monitor can fix this, but I find that cumbersome on documentaries.

With letterboxing you sacrifice pixels for the black bars. In addition, the bars become part of the image on the tape. Effects and filters added in editing and post-production will apply to those bars as well as to the rest of the recorded image.

What I am trying to do is shoot in 4:3, but “protect” for widescreen, that is, letterboxing in post-production. Essentially this is the same as what happens in camera, except that you retain full use of your CCDs for recording “real” information. In addition, the masking you apply in post-production is independent of your recorded footage, which means that transitions, etc. will only apply to what's between the letterboxing.

The trick here is leaving enough room at the top and bottom of each shot to accommodate the masking. However, I will be able to reposition the image when needed, another reason to shoot a “full” image rather than using the in-camera letterboxing.

Like shooting in 24p, shooting in 4:3 will make for easier “blow up” or “up rezing” to film or HD.

One thing I've learned from trying to research these questions is that there are no hard and fast answers. For every person who cautions against, say, squeeze mode due to the loss of resolution there is another who will tell you about the project they just worked on where this was no big deal, even after a transfer to film or HD. My choices are fundamentally conservative in the sense of wanting to conserve options for different formats for distribution and presentation styles.