Digital Discussion

ICG cinematographers discuss the pros and cons of
working in the Mini-DV format

By Adrianne Stone

With the current hullabaloo about High Definition cameras being the wave of the future, one would think this were the only new format available as an alternate to shooting traditional film. Mini-DV, however, seems to be emerging as a very popular format. After all, its affordability has already begun to turn filmmaking into a consumer endeavor on the home front. And in theaters, a growing number of films (November, 28 Days Later… and Personal Velocity, to name but a few) have garnered critical acclaim for both their content and their construction.

Our investigation into the advent of mini-DV wouldn't be complete without in-depth commentary from the professionals, so we gathered several cinematographers who've recently worked in the mini-DV format to a roundtable conference where they shared their thoughts on working with the diminutive cameras: Vasco Lucas Nunes, whose feature length documentary DiG! won the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize; Daniel Gillham, whose 2001 feature length film Final was one of the earlier forays into mini-DV filmmaking; and, Shane Hurlbut, whose long-form commercial American Express: Superman (featuring Jerry Seinfeld) was among the first designed specifically for the internet.

What mini-DV cameras did you use for your most recent projects?

Nunes: We used mostly [Sony] PD150s for DiG! [but] we also used the [Sony] VX1000. The PD150, which was the leading camera at the time, has an LCD screen and that's very useful in a documentary when you're moving around and placing cameras anywhere you can. I've also shot with the [Canon] XL1 on another project.

Gillham: Mine was on the XL…I wish it were the "s" but it was the pre- "s" Canon XL1, which InDigEnt had. And [the most recent film I've done], The Thing About My Folks was on the Panasonic DVX100A.

Hurlbut: I used the Canon XL1s for its filmic quality. [Director] Barry Levinson said, "I wanna do this all on mini-DV. I just love that format! It's so light! It's so small!" I had done an Apple computer commercial with a PD150 for the underwater [shots] and we used the Canon XL1 [for the rest]. No other camera that I had seen--Sony, Panasonic, whatever--had ever rendered skin tones as realistically as the XL1 and that was shooting with the fixed lens that was on it.

What other options make these cameras attractive to you?

Nunes: The 24P on the DVX100A is a great option and the lens on it is a little wider, which are great options, but I still find that the PD150 and the new PD170, which both shoot DVCAM, are the better cameras.

Hurlbut: One of the American Express shots was in the desert. I had the worst-case scenario: A man in a Porsche in the middle of Death Valley, so it's low-hanging, no light getting in, blazing sun outside and [the Canon XL1s] was able to retain all the detail of the blue sky and the white clouds. It was pretty spectacular on the dynamic range of that camera. We just had to use ND6 and ND9 on anything we shot through the windows when we were doing close-ups, so we could keep detail. [And] when you put the Mini35 Digital image converter on it, the depth of field helps you so much. Something that would be on the normal taking lens at the same focal length will be blown out and look nasty.

Gillham: I had the same kind of nightmare--a dark red pick-up truck and a white gravel pit in Final. I think Swiss Effects was the only place that was doing film transfers and then later The Orphanage in San Francisco that started up. I noticed a strange motion artifact, almost a stuttering of this dark truck moving quickly against the white background that I couldn't figure out.

Hurlbut: Did you have it in Canon's "Film Look" mode?

Gillham: Mmm…no.

Hurlbut: Okay. 'Cause that takes a lot of that out. The "Film Look" mode on the Canon XL1 basically decreases the sharpness. Instead of grabbing 525 lines, it grabs, like 300. And it grabs them in varying…

Gillham: In a strange interlay?

Hurlbut: In a strange interlay. They've put the Canon XL1s up against all these "film look" things and it's beat them every time. It was the "still photograph" switch on the Canon XL1. Somebody left it on and shot a lot on it and said, "Whoa…this is kinda cool!

So sunny bright exteriors are your biggest
challenge when working with mini-DV?

Gillham: Latitude is the big curse, particularly in L.A. light. It's really nightmarish. The other big negative is that suddenly, we're back to having cables running out of the camera. I mean, there was all this technology to get rid of that and now, suddenly, I'm running around with cables running out of the camera! (laughs)

Hurlbut: But you can see how this mini-DV technology is really starting to echo through with film. Look at what they've just come out with: The new [ARRI] 235. And the [Aaton] A-Minima, which is a dicey camera, [though] it has its moments. But the 235 is the battle-tested of ARRI 3 technology.

Nunes: Also, on some of the new [Panasonic] DVCPRO cameras, they're not using tape anymore. It's a memory card, which I'm sure will happen in this realm, too.

Hurlbut: I can't wait till these cameras go to more of a 35mm chip instead of all the CCD stuff.

Nunes: There's so much great technology out there: size, tape length, portability, and choices. Mini-DV has a look of its own and has its own lifestyle.

Hurlbut: Mini-DV is not trying to be anything. It's its own genre, [unlike] HD, [which] should be thrown into the ocean and sunk to the bottom of the sea. (All laugh) It doesn't know what it is. It's trying to be film, but it's not film, yet it's not video. It's just bad.

Nunes: Mini-DV is its own medium. I completely agree with that. The fact that you can get shutter speeds as slow as 4, that's incredible. We used it thoroughly on DiG! The director [Ondi Timoner], who shot so much of this film, decided early on, "We're going to shoot it on 30 shutter speed and below." That decision gave it a look that, when I go see DiG! in theaters, it doesn't look like anything else that's shot on film or High Def. It's this one appealing look that invites me in to absorb it.

Hurlbut: Well, look at 28 Days Later. That was all shot on the Canon XL1! He shot all that demon [stuff] with a 2000th shutter!

Gillham: It is its biggest strength that you don't get into these discussions with producers and directors in the HD realm with people saying, "Well, we're going to treat it as film." It truly is just the medium it is.

Hurlbut: For me, it was absolutely liberating to be on the set and not be using a light meter. It's all about the monitor.

Gillham: I did that the first day and then [the light meter] just went away! (laughs) And that scale, it slides so much all over the place in terms of what the sensitivity truly is, depending on where you are.

Nunes: So much affects it.

Hurlbut: You can't really go with your meter anymore because if you said, "2-1/2 stops down," with the Canon XL1, a third of a stop meant all the difference in the world. And a third of a stop in film, it's nothing. Even a stop in film is nothing.

Nunes: And, as much as it is fragile, it's also robust. Because of the size, because of the transportation. You can mount six cameras on a car. And it really has a motion to it. But in High Def, sometimes you can't. One could use a High Def camera on Steadicam and record on it. But if you're using the sort of film look where you're running to a Viper camera or something, you're running cable to it. [With mini-DV], you can just slap it on. Once you set your monitor and exposure, you're mobile and you can just go and get it. In the documentary world, the size of a camera and how fast you can set it up and get it in motion is very important. These cameras have revolutionized the world of documentaries.

Gillham: And also the running time on tape versus film. That makes it much easier for actors.

Biggest Misconception: You don't need a crew.

Gillham: That's always the first thing that comes up when I talk to a producer and you just have to talk them through it. "Well, you don't need a loader." Well, no, you don't need a loader, but you do need somebody dealing with the monitors and cables. What you're giving up in one place, you're picking up somewhere else. You don't need as big a crew, but you still need a crew.

Hurlbut: When I did the Amex commercial, they budgeted it as three people to shoot the thing, but by the time it was done, we had eight electricians, six grips, eight camera people…it was like shooting a movie! The misconception is they think, "Small camera, small crew. Run and gun, let's go!"

Gillham: The other classic is, "You don't really need to use slates." I love using slates because it gets everybody to pay attention.

Nunes: There's the whole psychological aspect.

Gillham: Exactly. For actors, it's great too. [Regarding] the physical size of the camera, on the first day of Final, Denis Leary came in and I had the XL1 on the dolly. He took one look at the camera and said, "This movie is going straight to Gameboy." (laughs) The actors were really nervous, seeing this tiny little "Smurf" camera. It took all day for them to calm down about this tiny, toy-like thing that they had in front of them.

How much color correction did you do in Post?

Nunes: In DiG! there are interviews that are slow and have a warm tone and there are club scenes that are very blue with bright lights, so there's a lot of dynamic range. There will be some frames that have half-frame that would maintain some of the values of the previous shot throughout the next shot so I had to do a lot of color correction at Fotokem. If I had a shot with a lot of warmth or that bluish magenta color, then it would go to a shot where it was more white light and then it would go back to the magenta shot and you wonder if it's your eye.

Gillham: And there's no standard for that. You'll hear totally opposite things from different post houses.

Hurlbut: I like to do the color correction on the set because, as a cinematographer, you look through the eyepiece in a film camera and that is your moment to study the world that you're shooting. You can see the color and how the light is falling on the face. You don't get that on these cameras. And that's what I miss the most.

Gillham: I miss that a lot, too. I really have to pretend I'm back in the film world where you're not going to know until dailies, the next day. You have to discipline yourself to think more like that, rather than saying, "Oh, well, you've got an image. Let's go."

Nunes: I'm so glad that every documentary I do, we always have a film camera around to shoot some accent because it keeps you real.

Hurlbut: That's why I like trying to white balance a camera, fool it, do whatever I have to so I'm seeing, in my little 9-inch monitor as close to [what I'm seeing in] the eyepiece as I can. That's really doing as much correction on set as possible and not saying, "Okay, we're just going to give it to the Post gods and let 'em turn out something."

Gillham: I was in the rendering on Final at The Orphanage in San Francisco when I finally realized how cool it was and was convinced [about mini-DV] because I had never had the opportunity to take it frame by frame and have that much control. And taking home DVDs and being able to see them on my computer rather than waiting around to go see dailies was great.

Did you mask your monitors while shooting?

Nunes: I'm happy to say that DiG! is a 4:3 product, which I like. When we project it in theaters, it's 4:3. We didn't mask it.

Hurlbut: I love 4:3 because you can frame so much cooler. It's stretching the format to a different composition, cause I came from the commercial and music video realm [not feature film], so 1.85, 2.35, what the hell were those? It was all 4:3 and that's what I always composed for.

What would your dream prototype mini-DV camera be like?

Nunes: Every camera should have interchangeable lenses.

Hurlbut: Yeah, Ellen Kuras shot Personal Velocity on the PD150 and she said it didn't hold up well on the wide end of the lens and the image just fell apart. That's why you bypass that with the Mini35 Digital image converter. You can put a Cooke S4 prime that's a $50,000 lens rather than going with an $800 anamorphic adaptor.

Gillham: Also, the cameras need a matte box that can come off really fast so you don't have to mess around with putting it on or taking it off.

Nunes: Yeah, really fast. Another design element…the balance. In the documentary world, the mount [on the front of the camera] should be in the back because [for instance], my partner, she shot so many hours, she has tendonitis because of the forward weight of the camera. So having it moved to the back so that when you mount that shotgun microphone to get the sound that you're trying to get in a verité situation and not have to fight with all of your muscles would be great. Also, the option of more 3" or 4" LCD monitors that you can position around…

Gillham: One on the right side of the camera would be great. And having it easier to get into the menus for set-up. No one's quite worked that out and you usually have to get in there so deep to find what you're after.

Nunes: Mechanical focus would be good. The PD150 has that. Also, to have a video-in because if you have lipstick cameras you want to record on the same format. You can also have a switching capacity so you can have the input in and have an image that you processed before and put them back, like you do on all the ARRI cameras.

Gillham: Also, if you're doing a two-camera shoot, just to have the other guy be able to switch over to see what the other camera is doing.

Nunes: As far as how they operate, if you're going to give me a 24P camera, give it to me so that it's not doing a 3:2 pulldown. Every camera should have 24P. That multi-format option.

Gillham: Standard and advanced.

Nunes: It would be great to see this option in which you're recording on a higher format by slowing down the tape.

Gillham: Going on a memory card.

Nunes: Yeah, syncing the cameras up to have time codes sync-able between all the different cameras and see a readable time code.

Gillham: It would also be cool if they could color match each other.

Nunes: Well…then we're talking about a $20,000 camera. (laughs)

Is mini-DV the wave of the future? Will it replace film cameras?

Gillham: No, it's just another medium.

Hurlbut: As long as you take it as just another capture medium, it's awesome. But when you try to say…

Gillham: …that it's a replacement, then you're doomed.