I'm prepping my fourth shoot on HD as a cinematographer, and am looking for other peoples' experiences with shooting this format. With 12 years of experience behind the camera, and having shot tons of film and video, I'm still trying to adjust to this new technology. The different thing about this shoot for me is that it's the first "ultra low budget" project that I'm doing where I'm heavily involved with ordering the camera. The last projects already had the camera packages put together, and they weren't shooting in nearly as complex of situations as this one (lots of night exterior, heavy drama, special effects, two cameras, etc.).
The biggest headache is the cost of the camera equipment. The producers didn't budget near enough for camera, especially since we need two of them. Of course, everyone thinks shooting HD is a lot cheaper than shooting film, but it's just not true, and we're not seeing enormous savings.
Everyone wants to charge full price, and for a three day week. Don't laugh, but my original wish list for two cameras and all the accessories came to $30,000 at Panavision for a five day shoot. They eventually agreed to do the shoot for $8,000 after I amputated a lot of my list, but it's still too much. So now we're going to a small rental house, and I'm not getting much more than a nice ENG package. I'm still fighting for a waveform monitor, but they have to subrent it at a cost of $1200. I can rent an entire 16mm camera package for that much! And not having the waveform is like shooting film without a light meter.
I can understand why some rental houses are charging so much money for this stuff, since it goes out of date faster than film cameras. There are some items that won't, though, like Prime lenses, waveforms, and monitors. Ahhh, the prime lenses. The lenses are my biggest loss on this show, because I have to shoot some large night exteriors, and the Canon zooms I have only open to a 2.1, which is an effective 2.6. At least Panavision's zooms are a stop faster, and are less prone to ugly flares.
Anyway, I'm finding that HD is not the answer when you're shooting short projects, because I could almost shoot this whole thing on 35mm with much more convenient accessories for the same price. At least with 35mm, the producers wouldn't be questioning my need for prime lenses and extension eyepieces. I also wouldn't have to deal with SDI (or a painful lack thereof), component video, and downconverters. And I haven't even mentioned the poorer quality of HD compared to film. No wonder so many DPs are reticent about HD -- it's just making us look bad, and the cost is disappointing.
That said, I'm excited to see how everything goes with the shoot next week. I don't know if I'll agree to shoot another one unless the budget has $5000-$6000 per camera per week, though.
-Graham
The biggest headache is the cost of the camera equipment. The producers didn't budget near enough for camera, especially since we need two of them. Of course, everyone thinks shooting HD is a lot cheaper than shooting film, but it's just not true, and we're not seeing enormous savings.
Everyone wants to charge full price, and for a three day week. Don't laugh, but my original wish list for two cameras and all the accessories came to $30,000 at Panavision for a five day shoot. They eventually agreed to do the shoot for $8,000 after I amputated a lot of my list, but it's still too much. So now we're going to a small rental house, and I'm not getting much more than a nice ENG package. I'm still fighting for a waveform monitor, but they have to subrent it at a cost of $1200. I can rent an entire 16mm camera package for that much! And not having the waveform is like shooting film without a light meter.
I can understand why some rental houses are charging so much money for this stuff, since it goes out of date faster than film cameras. There are some items that won't, though, like Prime lenses, waveforms, and monitors. Ahhh, the prime lenses. The lenses are my biggest loss on this show, because I have to shoot some large night exteriors, and the Canon zooms I have only open to a 2.1, which is an effective 2.6. At least Panavision's zooms are a stop faster, and are less prone to ugly flares.
Anyway, I'm finding that HD is not the answer when you're shooting short projects, because I could almost shoot this whole thing on 35mm with much more convenient accessories for the same price. At least with 35mm, the producers wouldn't be questioning my need for prime lenses and extension eyepieces. I also wouldn't have to deal with SDI (or a painful lack thereof), component video, and downconverters. And I haven't even mentioned the poorer quality of HD compared to film. No wonder so many DPs are reticent about HD -- it's just making us look bad, and the cost is disappointing.
That said, I'm excited to see how everything goes with the shoot next week. I don't know if I'll agree to shoot another one unless the budget has $5000-$6000 per camera per week, though.
-Graham
