Cameras and Numbers

Had a great meeting with the DP.

This blog is serving as a scratchpad today and will get into the nuts and bolts a little bit.

We've worked together enough that we didn't spend a great deal of time talking about "the look." He knows my tendencies, I know he can make things happen. The only potentially unique piece of information is that because of the nature of "The Location" - I want to make sure I have a limited Depth of Field because I want to make sure that I can control where people's eyes are. This is a notable issue in shooting with digital forms.

One thing I talked to him about that I will state here is that I am trying to be very conscious that no area receives too much of the budget. For example, the location cannot absorb 30 percent of the budget.

That said, this rules out a completely 35mm shoot because rule of thumb is that it costs at least $60,000 in stock and processing for shooting 35mm.

Now, because of the nature of the location, this should be fine. However, we do have several scenes which are exteriors with a lot of limiting conditions for lighting. We may, in fact, shoot these scenes in 35mm and use a degrainer (his suggestion) during telecine to remove the grain to fit in with the rest of the film. Since the look would be so drastically different anyway - I'm not sure anyone would really notice. Also - because those locations are rather remote, it might be easier to shoot film out there (another comment he made).

So - for the bulk of the shoot this basically leaves two options: The F900 HDcam or the HVX200 DVCPro100. In either case I would require special lenses for the depth of field. The HVX200 is a brand new prosumer camera. It would absolutely be the least expensive option. It will just barely be on the market by the time we are shooting. The F900 is what most TV shows that shoot in HD are using. The F950 shoots to HDSR which would be great, but prohibitively expensive. The HVX with a 35mm adapter and appropriate amount of p2 storage would be around $12,000 as a purchase. Could definitely turn it around for a 20% loss, keep it and use it, or rent it through a friendly rental house. But worst case actual cost to production would be around $3000 on a purchase/sell turnaround. I'll need to see sample footage with the camera/lense combo before deciding if it is really an option.

F900 with the lens package I need for my DoF obsession would be about 1750/day at 3 day weeks, for 3 weeks. $15,750 The 35mm camera would be about this plus stock (.57/ft) and processing (.12/ft) and minimum 200/hr telecine to HD (350 if you don't have a deal anywhere) at a 3.5:1 ratio.

Here's a little movie math for anyone interested:

90 minute movie shot on 35mm at a 10:1 ratio (don't assume you can shoot less than that, everyone does and goes over budget. Maybe 8:1 if your strict. 2:1 if you do 1 take and have no coverage. "The who shot Primer did it in a 1.5:1 ratio" - yes, and regretted it, listen to his commentary.)...

that's 81000 feet = 55,890
15 hours of telecine = 3,000

and... hey! that's 58,890. And the rule of thumb holds true!

Since in my film we're talking about 10 minutes of exterior stuff at the most, I can divide that by 9 and get: 6543. I'll see what I can do to reign that in. S16 is not an option. It's too grainy and would never match the HD.

also note that this exterior stuff will be shot over a weekend and therefore be a one day rental on all the equipment which means it will make sense to shoot it outside of the solid three weeks of the rest of the shoot. Which give me 18 days to shoot about 80 pages, about 4.5 pages a day.

What I did not talk to the DP about was his lighting and grip package. We did talk about the lighting method and were in agreement that for the most part we want to try to use practicals. This will give a lot of extra time to get the performances right - and the dolly moves. I'm adamant about the camera moving a lot. I will have to email him and ask him his thoughts on a grip package.

The other point of budgeting interest we figured was that we could get away with 1 swing grip/electric and 1 camera assist. We will need a handful of guys for 1 or 2 days at the start to prelight the set.

I'm realizing that this blog will be required reading for whomever ends up coming on to help run the production.

Speaking of which - we also spoke about the possibility of using his production company because they have insurance and accounting in place already. This may work out well. I won't get into the details until I get to that part of things.