When you gather a crew together there is generally some excitement in working on something larger than one individual can do. To show up on a shoot with an XL1 or VX1000--a camera probably everyone from the gaffer to grip has in his or her closet--really tests a crew's resolve and hierarchy. To offer a crew the chance to work HDTV is a little more enticing. Now, if we were doing a film with 40 scenes, mostly interiors, and in one week, then maybe I wouldn't worry as much; but we have 170 scenes, more than 20 locations, and being a character piece, we have 5 main characters and over 15 secondaries, and a ton of extras. It is vital to have the crew excited and 100% committed to pull this off, and having HDTV to offer them is a huge asset.
As far as production goes, there are a few challenges in shooting HD, the most challenging being the expense and availability of HD monitors. Because of this, we won't be able to use a Steadicam for the shoot because of the lack of a small, portable HD monitor. What our 15-inch HD monitor will allow us to do, however, is to create scenes that mimic the characters’ interior--similar to film--by playing with the subtleties of shadow and light. And with the brilliance and high resolution of the on-set monitor, these type of stylistic and script-motivated decisions can be quickly realized. Finally, in our decision to shoot HDTV we took into account our production schedule, which calls for a back-breaking 8 pages a day over three weeks. Our Sony HDCAM is going to be no more cumbersome than a Betacam recorder. We won't have the flexibility of a miniDV, but we also won't have to bother with the constant work-arounds needed to get professional results out of these cameras (e.g., XLR adapters, lens adapters, 16 x 9 converters). And, often with those cameras, it is hard to get actors and producers to take you seriously, regardless of the high quality of the camera's pictures. Even in this age of micro-sized gadgets, actors and producers still like to see big cameras on the set (It always makes me laugh to see a XL1 on a crane!). As an indie filmmaker, it gives me a lot of confidence to know there is a format out there that will provide me with tremendous resolution, secure my source tapes as a viable format from which to blow-up, keep my budget under control, and allow me to reap the benefits of digital filmmaking (shooting ratio, instant dailies, streaming video, etc.) We plan on merging the worlds of NTSC and HD in post-production, and I'll know more about our final methods in the coming weeks.
Digital does not have the latitude of film and "blows" out the whites or crushes the blacks. Part of that is the medium but another part of that is the lighting: people tend to light video like crap, because it's easy. Both my DP and I have a film background and approach our lighting schemes the same for digital as we do for DV. HDTV does handle situations much better than low-res DV simply because of its resolution, yet you still must watch for danger spots and set-dress much more carefully than you do for film. A lot of our film takes place in a park, and the shadows there will be long and a formidable problem--nothing HDTV can't handle if we take the time with proper fill and key and pick and choose our contrasts. When I talk of the contrast of this film, I talk about it as a stylistic choice rather than a downfall of digital. Many filmmakers bemoan the digital contrast look - I'll bet their story was not suited to their format. In those cases, go with film or go HDTV, get a great grip package, light it as carefully as you can, and you will have all the latitude you'll need.
However, everything is a trade-off. Yeah, I'd love to get those "subtle" artistic effects that HDTV can offer, but at 8 pages a day, can we take advantage of them and stay on schedule? Again, it's tempting to let the format dictate the craft and story and pace, but often times that leads young filmmakers to have a beautiful first week of shooting, and the last 3 weeks are a frantic mess. Don't get me wrong. I love my XL1 and I have shot some great stuff on it. And firewire is the holy grail on indies, in my book. But from a business perspective, you must think of your market, distributors, and the viability a DV feature has of being picked up versus an HDTV feature. I think there is no contest.