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Article Search Advanced Search The Next Stage of HD TV Production By Jon Silberg Dec 6, 2005, 14:31 Robert Primes, ASC, and Rick Maguire, ASC, have a few things in common: They've each had long, successful careers as directors of photography, they currently shoot alternate episodes of ABC's Night Stalker series and they both use Panavision's Genesis cameras to do it. But beyond that, the two are very different kinds of cinematographers. "Bob Primes and I are the yin and yang of cinematography," Maguire declares. "He's done a lot of work in high def and is very interested in it. I come from the world of film and am most comfortable using the methods I've always used. I did do some work with the [Thomson] Viper and I'd gotten used to lighting to a monitor instead of just using my meter and my eye, but I didn't like what I'd heard about working in HD. I'd heard horror stories about people using paint boxes on set! That's a whole world I don't even want to know about. Things can get so far out of whack." Apparently, Sony and Panavision had decided to address issues relevant to both kinds of cinematographer when they designed the Genesis. The camera's sensor is comparable in size to a film frame in the Super 35 format, so lens focal lengths and attendant depth of field characteristics are identical to those that film shooters are used to. The sensor itself can handle a dynamic range much closer to that of film negative than can other HD cameras. The onboard HD SR-format recorder can take greater advantage of the sensor's specs and lay down more picture information than was possible in the Sony HDW-F900 shoots that had concerned Maguire. While some shooters have come to embrace the techniques used on HD shows—adjusting tonal and color information through camera settings and other controllers, for example—others, including Maguire, want no part of it. Based on the 1970s series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, this updated version stars Stuart Townsend as Kolchak, the intrepid reporter who manages to encounter supernatural phenomena in the remote corners and sewers of Los Angeles every week. Photography for an episode takes place on location around the city of Los Angeles, on set in three Sunset Gower stages and inside a downtown Los Angeles office building with genuine picture window views of the city. Both cinematographers say the Genesis allows them to capture greater extremes of light and shadow than they could with an F900. Producers called Maguire to join the show very late in the game. "I was home in Santa Fe," says Maguire, "and I got a call at 2 p.m. to get to L.A. and start scouting locations at 11 p.m. that night for an episode that would start shooting the next morning. I had no prep time whatsoever." Needless to say, he was concerned about the learning curve to get up to speed on the new Sony/Panavision camera. "I showed up to the set the next morning and looked at the camera and there were no fancy knobs; there was no painting and adjusting necessary," he recalls. "I thought, 'Okay, I can deal with this. I've used this lens and this matte box many, many times. These are the tools I've grown up with.' So I got out my light meter for the first setup and we lit the scene exactly the way I would for a film shoot. Then they turned on the monitor. I took one look at it and said, 'I'm home!' There was no adjustment needed whatsoever." In fact, the only new developments from his standpoint concern what he refers to as his 'stock' and his ability to rate it at EI 800 or 1000 to get a decent stop and still be able to balance to the nighttime sky, either on location or through the windows of the skyscraper-based newspaper offices. Primes has also enjoyed a long career shooting film, but he got involved with—and came to embrace—digital image creation early on. He'd participated in the testing of 720p and 480p imagers long before the F900 and Panasonic's VariCam actually came along to divide the market. At various times he represented the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), the Camera Guild (ICG) and the Directors Guild (DGA) on committees working to establish aspect ratio and image quality standards for digital cinematography. He was among the first to use the first iteration ("slash 1") of the Sony F900 when he shot the feature Forgotten Valor, and he took note of the improvements on the later version ("slash 3") when he used it for Mario Van Peebles' How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass. Primes is also the first cinematographer to receive an ASC Award for a series (MDs) shot in HD. Primes has embraced many of the attributes that digital cinematography offers and film does not. He likes to take advantage of the controls cameras including the F900 have for knee, pedestal, gamma and other image properties while shooting. Primes takes great care to ensure his monitors are perfectly calibrated and sealed off from extraneous light inside a black tent. For Primes, a light meter is a tool of limited use compared to an HD monitor and scope. "A light meter only deals with a single tone," he says. "Now I can deal with all the tones." Primes agrees that he could light for Genesis the way he would for a film show, "but, frankly, that's not what I want to do. I shot a film show last winter and felt I was going backward being on set with an exposure meter. I'm spoiled. I've got that big, beautiful monitor and, to me, it's much better than an exposure meter. So I told [Panavision], 'This camera is great, but I don't want to work like I'm shooting film.' I do better work when I can see the exact image on the monitor. That's the way of the future. Why would I want to go back?" Primes and Maguire use the same camera on alternating weeks, but they work very differently. On Primes' sets, there will always be a well tented space for one or two HD monitors and a scope, and Primes can be seen dashing between the set and this station, fine-tuning the look of every setup. In order to facilitate this workflow and give the monitor the WYSIWYG nature he's come to enjoy when shooting HD, Primes uses a gamma conversion box supplied by Panavision. This device, located downstream from the camera, allows him to tweak the curves and make specific refinements electronically to any point in his images' shadows, mid-tones and highlights. The controller does not affect what's recorded—the tape retains all the information even if Primes uses his controller to crush the blacks or clip the highlights, for example—but the box allows him the level of control he's come to enjoy from digital cinematography. The gamma box also records the correction information for every setup onto a removable Sony Memory Stick, which is sent with the SR tapes to Encore Hollywood and used as the guide to creating his dailies. With this setup, Primes is essentially able to "time" his own dailies on set. "Last night, we had a scene where four Hell's Angels walk into a grocery store with shotguns," he says. "They're silhouetted because you're never supposed to see their faces. I have just the tiniest bit of light on one of them so you can maybe catch a flash of his face but aren't able to make out any features. Because I'm controlling the 'printing of my dailies' through the monitor, I can control exactly how much you see and how much you don't. I can go right up to that edge of teasing the audience without relying on timing or printing later because I can see exactly what it looks like. It's almost like I'm at a da Vinci while I'm on set," he marvels. In other words, he's modified his work method to be able to do precisely what Maguire does not want to do. Needless to say, Maguire doesn't make use of the gamma box, and his sets have a decidedly more film-like look to them. "Bob likes the tenting affair," Maguire observes. "I have some black duvetyn around the monitors, but I don't like that whole tent thing. It gets hot and smelly in there. You don't believe me, but it really does! And I never use a waveform monitor. I did for the first few days, but I don't even turn it on anymore. I'm old school. I've had 30-odd years of using a light meter. If I'm balancing to the light outside, I'll take a reading outside and know what I have to balance to. I don't need to wait for the boys to get the camera and the monitor all set up. I'll get started right away; when I'm through, I'll be within half a stop of where I need to be just by eye." But both cinematographers appreciate the Genesis sensor's ability to see into the shadows. A show called Night Stalker can certainly benefit from the ability to shoot real night exteriors and balance the lighting to real streetlights or bare bulbs without having the highlights clip and the shadows disappear into noise. The two—who each shoot their own second unit—have been able to do some night shooting with no additional lighting at all. "The first things I shot for Night Stalker were some street scenes," Primes recalls. "We went out and shot through the windshield of a car and out the back of a minivan on the streets of L.A. between 1 and 5 a.m." Since he was really stealing shots night-for-night without lighting or additional setup, his crew found itself in an unusual situation for a group of people making network entertainment. "I have this big Genesis camera and a huge zoom lens and I'm just shooting a street corner and suddenly there's this car and in it people are doing a drug deal. I thought, 'Holy s**t! We're going to be shot to death.'" Fortunately, they made it out alive. The shadow detail also benefits the cinematographers when they shoot scenes in the newsroom on the 16th floor of a downtown Los Angeles building with windows on three sides. "When we shoot, we're seeing real life through those windows," Primes says. "We're seeing freeways jammed up and the Staples Center. When it gets to be sunset, it's sunset. When it's night, it's night. What we get is a sense of life you absolutely could not get at a studio." Naturally, as with any first-generation technology, there are improvements both cinematographers would like to see in future iterations of the camera. First, there is the ENG-style electronic viewfinder. Yes, it's color, but operators would much prefer a genuine reflex viewfinder. Also, the camera is heavy for handheld and Steadicam work. "When we get a Steadicam operator who hasn't worked with it before, we warn him that this is a heavy camera and his arm might bottom out on him," Maguire says. "After you've used it a few times, you learn how to set up the arm for it, but it's still very heavy. All the weight is concentrated on the back, sort of like an ARRI BL. I know a lot of people who would be happy if they made a lighter version." Overall, however, Primes and Maguire both seem quite happy with this tool, even if they use it in very different ways. "I couldn't get a job for a while because I didn't have high def under my belt," Maguire says. "But to me, when I use the Genesis, I'm shooting with a Panaflex. I've got my lenses and accessories I've used for years. Producers now can go back to hiring a director of photography based on lighting ability and not his knowledge of how to control a particular camera. "I can use the camera my way and someone like Bob, who has more of a technical background, can use it his way. Bob's tried to show me stuff about the monitor and the scope, and I say, 'Yeah, that's interesting, Bob.' And then I shoot it my way." 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