A new way of shooting coverage with the RED?

[tallsided]

A while back when George Lucas shot Attack of the Clones, he claimed that they could take a long shot of the footage shot with the Sony HDW-900 and zoom into a medium or a close up of the actor if they needed it for cutting purposes.

This style of editing really interests me and the options it opens up for an editor in post is huge. I'm thinking if you shoot at 4k and export a final version at 2k, you have 2k worth of "disposeable" resolution to take advantage of. You could create your shots in post! Panning, dollying, cropping, etc.

I think for Indie filmmakers, the ability to re-work your shots in post would create a greater freedom during editing while alleviating some of the pressures involved in shooting (ie -- budget).

For instance, you wouldn't need as much coverage. If two people are on the couch talking, light the scene accordingly. Shoot a couple takes as a long shot and a set of medium shots for both actors. Then you would have the freedom to create the rest of shots in post.

It would make shooting a movie faster and cheaper because you wouldn't have to worry about as many lighting set ups or camera set ups. You wouldn't have to lay down a track for a dolly or set up a jib for a small crane shot. You could achieve all those results in post while minimizing the expense involved with the actual production.

Am I crazy in thinking this way? Would this new workflow concept work well with the RED? I hope it will be a workable concept.There's a lot of talk about Red's integration with FCP. Hopefully FCP and RED will be able to support this style of filmmaking / editing. I hope they will allow you to edit in 1k, create your shots in post (dollies, cranes, close ups, inserts, etc.) and allow you to export all your changes through the edl to the master 4k version. Wouldn't that be amazing? I think all indie filmmakers would be a little more relaxed if the RED allowed this kind of creative freedom in post.

[Michael Schrengohst]

You can do that now with HD. I sometimes need to crop in on an actor.
But it is not the same as moving the camera around and getting a real close-up. What you are talking about is similiar to pan and scan which they have been doing for years.

[Thom Steinhoff]

it's nice to know the cropping safety net is there, but I wouldn't plan on falling into it every day as part of my act!

Just "zooming" in for a closeup would not seem natural as it would become a 3rd person closeup and if two people are talking you would want to move to an OTS.

Also, the best part of the dolly is that it is truely moving through that space and the camera can pan back with the actors to follow the action and be part of the scene. I think an artificial dolly move would be a bit lifeless (almost like a pan of a still)

Again, I think it is nice to know the net is there but just shoot like it's not there and if the editor needs to use it--they'll be glad they can.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's fine to use these tricks in editing, but to actually shoot a movie that way comes off as a bit lazy.

When you specifically set-up a close-up, you tweak all sorts of things to improve the shot -- move the off-camera actor closer to the lens for a tighter eyeline, improve the lighting on the face, adjust the placement of background objects (or move the camera) for better compositional balance, plus get the mic closer to the actor for better sound.

You may also discover certain problems when you enlarge in post, like the focus being off. And you are essentially using a smaller portion of the lens optics compared to setting up a closer shot. Plus noise problems may be more obvious.

Plus, of course, you've limited the final project to 2K.

So I would keep in the back of your mind that post-enlargement is an option - like when you shot a medium-shot of a baby and never got a needed closer shot because the baby went away. Or a dog or other pet doing unrepeatable action. Or a perfect performance that only happened in the looser angle.

But I wouldn't plan a day's worth of shooting with this notion that you'll just zoom in later in post to get all your tighter coverage. I think the results would be somewhat stylistically mediocre with that technique. There is a whole art to composing a shot on a set that get's lost when tighter shots are just "grabbed", whether in post or with a second camera not placed carefully. Not to say that we don't rely on 2-camera techniques to save us all the time, but we have to understand the compromises we are making so we can plan accordingly.

[Jason Murphy]

Gotta second David Mullen here. Getting everything right on set while shooting may require a little extra work, but it will save EVERYONE headaches in post. You should know what you want before you shoot, and make every effort to get it, unless you're working in some improvisational style, in which case you should still eventually (hopefully somewhat quickly for the sanity of your crew) nail down what you want and get it during shooting. Shooting with a plan to fix everything in post is lazy filmmaking, and it almost always shows in the final product. Get the exposure right, get the framing right, get the camera movement right, make sure the performance is right. It's worth it in the end. Coverage is certainly useful, but it can be a crutch.

Of course, I remember hearing the more extreme viewpoint of this during a talk by Chris Doyle about his cinematography, and the differences between shooting films in the US and Asia, during which he said flat out: "If a director shoots coverage, he doesn't know what he's doing." Of course, shortly after Doyle said that, he ended up shooting a ton of coverage for Barry Levinson in "Liberty Heights," so... :)

[David Mullen ASC]

The other problem is this insistent need that directors and editors seem to have for close-ups because they are cutting the movie on a computer monitor and can't imagine who the scene will play on a larger screen.

I shot a 35mm anamorphic 2.35 film once and the editor threw out most of the wide shots, used mostly just the close-ups, and on a third of them, digitally zoomed in closer to make them even tighter. So when the whole movie was recorded back to film for projection, it was awful -- just a bunch on giant heads on the big screen.

So half the time, I'm almost happy when we run out of time to shoot tighter coverage and the scene has to play in a medium shot with some camera movement rather than get all chopped up into tight shots.

I did another feature with a TV director who wanted over-the-shoulders, close-ups, tighter close-ups and ECU's on practically every scene no matter what. Boy, that was tedious... plus we seemed to work nothing but 16-hour days to get all of that. Again, the final cut of the movie was a string of choker close-ups.

[tallsided]

All very good points. Thanks. I thought of this workflow style and got excited, but didn't think of all the things you have all said. mise-en-scene isn't broken so no reason to fix it. Thanks again.

[zak forrest]

on the making of the big lebowski, you can see that roger deakins made a little cutout with paper or something, the shape of the backs of heads and seats, and he puts that at the bottom of the video tap, i suppose to help him imagine what it will look and feel like in a movie theater, big.

[David Mullen ASC]

George Miller said something like that when he did "Road Warrior" -- when he looked at the viewfinder image, he imagined it was being projected on a big screen with tiny people sitting below it.

[MikeCurtis]

One smart thing I overheard when talking to some guys who shot an IMAX feature - even though they were cutting in DV, they used a projector and were looking at a 6 foot wide image just over the top of their computer monitors. Helped them to remember the Imax scope of things.

I'd recommend a similar approach for anything feature-bound if:
a.) editor wasn't used to cuttting for Big Screen
b.) you had budget for projector
c.) you thought it was kewl to do so.

: )

-mike