First XDCAM Feature
DP Mauricio Rubenstein gave the XDCAM a tough test if you‘re thinking about how well it shapes up to film. The piece, Puccini for Beginners, needed an absolutely traditional film look–the one that goes with Romantic Comedies. “It has to be so that the girls look pretty,” Mauricio says. “It has to be so that the look is crisp and a little bit glossy.” He knew the colors had to saturate in that Romantic Comedy kind of way, with a kind of polish that belied low budget indie.
Of course, plenty of people are achieving film look and film style with digital cameras, but not all in this style. Yet Rubenstein says, “for this particular project this turned out to be the right camera” (with Canon HD primes and a cinelike zoom). “I don‘t tlak only in the level of how saturated the colors, how deep the contrast or how the chip is performing. This combination produced a very cinematographic look.” He mentions selective focus, something he says digital cameras had trouble with in the past, as well as the scale of distance and size. He mentions night exteriors lit with lampposts and describes dark exteriors as having “body and definition.”
Although He tested the image to confirm the look was right, but did very little learning on the camera, “just picked it up and shot”–both on location in NYC and on set.
This makes sense for Rubenstein who says he is not a “numbers person or a technical person.” He‘s shot film, Sony F900 and Varicam, and knows only that, regardless of the numbers or the lingo, he needs primarily to “understand where the limits are and what creatively I can achieve” with a given format. An obvious statement perhaps, but an important one. The aesthetic and lexicon of film is all about what happened in between the limits, you could say that‘s true of almost any art form. But people rarely say it about digital cinematography, at least not yet. Many focus on seeking out parameters that most resemble those of film, and don‘t consider that to be about limits. Further, people don‘t yet consider it important to discover the limits of digital in the aesthetic sense. Limits are a dirty word, but in fact they are the engine of collaboration between artists and their media.
As Maurico talks it‘s clear that despite his low tech claims, his idea of knowing his limits might be better described as knowing his options. These options encompass the traditional DP tool kit of lighting, stock/format, exposure, and timing. But they also extend into post. I‘ve heard many filmmakers talk about fixing things in post. But Mauricio talks about his post options in a very specific and analytical way, more like how a DP might talk about what goes on in the lab. He doesn‘t make “fix it in post” generalities, but describes deliberate weighing of whether he should use a Power Window or an HMI to make a certain moment work.
He shares some XDCAM advice:
-Go with the standard settings and you‘ll have a lot of space to correct in post production.
-Be aware that your whites are not going to clip as fast; don‘t be afraid of high contrast
-If you have look back over the footage, don‘t be afraid you‘ll damage your master.
In his workshop in the Film Center earlier this week, Mauricio showed clips to illustrate wide exteriors shot in available light and comparisons between corrected and uncorrected footage. He tells a cautionary tale of dialing in a bit of extra red and then not liking it. He tells of his low light adventures, his speed decisions and how the shooting and the post worked together. “It‘s not that everything that happens on set we say ‘we‘ll fix it in post,‘” he emphasizes. Using the experience he gained correcting Super 16, he describes an intimate relationship with his daVinci choices–and like most veterans of the color correct suite he marvels over the specificity he can now achieve with color correction tools that have progressed dramatically in the past decade.
