Stunning Good Looks

Today I had an interesting conversation about bit depth with my toaster.

“So, tell me,” said Harold the Civil Toaster (not civil as in kind, but because he spent some time in civil service), “why the color palette of Project Runway looks familiar without my being able to place where I’ve seen it before.”

Naturally, my jaw dropped in surprise. My toaster almost never asks me cinematography-related questions. Mostly he just complains about life and politics. He’s a crusty old fellow.

“I thought the same thing. The colors looked familiar, but also not--almost as if they were too thin or something.”

“Exactly,” said Harry. (He’s very informal as appliances go.) “The colors have the subtlety that I’m used to seeing in footage shot on Panasonic cameras, like the SDX-900 or the Varicam, with accurate secondary colors--something that’s hard for most video cameras to do, although Panasonic does it quite well.”

“I worked with a sound person the other day who’d done some time on Project Runway.” I took a tray of real butter out of the refrigerator. Harry frowns on margarines and all fats that are solid at room temperature. “He confirmed that the show was shot on SDX-900’s, but at 25 megabits per second (DVCPro25) instead of 50 megabits (DVCPro50). I think it’s safe to say that a lot of the information that’s not being recorded in DVCPro25 is color information.”

“That’s strange for a fashion show, isn’t it? You’d think they’d want to emphasize the colors more.” As toasters go, Harry is more thoughtful than most. “Is it really just about economics?”

“I s’pose. You get twice as much tape time, but yes--the colors drop off dramatically. DVCPro25 is essentially the same as DVCAM, and neither of us like how that reproduces colors.”

“I can’t tell the difference between wheat and rye on DVCAM,” said Harry. “I suppose that’s okay if you’re shooting sports, but it would be a sad choice if you’re shooting a cooking show.”

“I think they do the same thing on Top Chef. They use the right cameras but at the wrong setting. It allows them to shoot for longer periods of time, but the image could be a lot richer.” I really love the way Panasonic cameras handle color. In DVCPro50 or DVCProHD formats the color depth is complex enough to resemble film, although it’s not deep enough to create as much separation as one would see with film. My experience is that color film is much easier to light as the subtlety of color and shading helps separate subjects from backgrounds without a lot of effort. 8-bit HD and video require a lot more backlight and edgelight to pop objects away from backgrounds; even in HD it’s very easy for scenes to turn to mush if there’s not enough done to separate objects from planes.

Uncompressed and higher bit depth formats show less of this “mush” effect. The Thomson Viper, for example, reacts very much the way film does, thanks to its ability to capture a much wider range of color and tonality--although if one were recording the footage to HDCAM or DVCProHD (both 8-bit formats) instead of HDCAM SR that mushiness would quickly return.

I find that the SDX-900 and Varicam, right out of the box, are a little too subtle for my taste. I do like desaturated images if there’s enough color depth to support them, but neither of those cameras look good when the color saturation is reduced. People tend to look dead, which is great for zombie flicks but not spots or corporate projects. (Well… it’s appropriate for -some- corporate. The dead flesh tone occasionally matches the liveliness of the content.) My tendency is to go into both the color correction menus (primaries and secondaries, also known as “Color Correction 1” and “Color Correction 2"), and turn the saturation for each color up to +20. Unlike Sony, whose steps tend to be very dramatic, +20 is only a slight change and adds just a little more chromaticity. If I’m not working with a paintbox I’ll also go into the white balance preset (I believe it’s found under the Operations menu) and change it from 3200k to 3300k, just to add a tiny bit of warmth.

I’ve had great luck creating a “bleach bypass” look with the Sony F900, reducing the saturation by dialing -50 into all the colors in the multi-matrix and using a black net behind the lens. Sony colors pop quite a lot, which makes it easy to dial them back for a more subdued look. The additional resolution of the 1080 image makes color separation slightly less important. 480p and 720p Panasonic cameras fall apart very quickly when desaturated or diffused, but the palette is so soft and lovely that I never find the need to do either of those things.

“I guess money trumps quality, at least when it comes to that last 20% of quality that we’re always trying to sneak into our art,” said Harry. “Speaking of which...”

From the thick toast slot he ejects a single piece of sourdough, wearing a small tuxedo with a lavender bow tie and spats.

“What the hell is that?

“If you have to know,” Harry says smugly, “He’s the Toast of the Town.”

I’m no slave to fashion. I ate him.

I shot this footage back in November when I bought my Lensbaby 3GPL kit with wide angle/telephoto attachments and macro kit.I’m in the process of writing an article about this for HD Video Pro magazine, and thought I’d post the test footage here for an early look. Enjoy!

I’m on a couple of email lists, and a thread on one of them caught my eye this morning. It was about crew and pricing, and inevitably someone stumped us all when they posted a very low price for a two person crew with a Varicam package.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in this business is that you have to charge what you’re worth. If you don’t know anything and you’re barely competent and you can record imagery but can’t guarantee the color or the sound or the lighting are right… then charge very little money. If you’re good at what you do, you have to charge more than the lowest going rate. You’ll lose a few jobs, sure, but in the long run you’ll get more money from better clients.

Here’s the way it works: I’ve seen production companies come and go, mostly on the bottom of the food chain, and the failures all try to do the same thing--turn out a product for a very low rate, and try to get as much work flowing through as possible. As a business plan this sucks, because there’s ALWAYS going to be someone cheaper than you out there, and if you’re competing on price alone you’re going to lose work once you’re not the cheapest act in town. If you’re turning out mediocre video cheap, and someone else comes along and turns out mediocre video cheaper, you’re out of business. And you’ve worked damned hard at getting throughput, so you’re exhausted AND broke.

The companies and freelancers that succeed are the ones that do good work and charge appropriately for it. They don’t kill themselves taking on all comers; they go out and find the clients who appreciate good work and pitch to them. That’s the hardest part: finding the right clients. There are lots of clients who don’t know the difference between news footage and high-quality HD production, and there are lots of mediocre people out there who can give them a product they can live with for not very much money. Successful companies and freelancers rise above that.

Here’s the best part: the companies that appreciate high quality work won’t accept a lowball bid because they equate low budget with poor value. They actually WANT to pay someone decent money because they know the odds are better that they’ll get a good product out of the deal. They don’t want someone cheap, they want someone good.

This might be a good time to introduce the production pie chart. You’ve probably heard of it--it’s quite famous and it works every time. Divide a pie into three slices and label them “good”, “fast” and “cheap”. You can have any TWO. You can have good and fast, but not cheap. You can have good and cheap, but not fast. Or you can have cheap and fast, but not good.

The goal for anyone wanting to go far in the production industry is to be good and fast… but not cheap. If you’re just starting out, you’re going to have to work for less--that’s understandable. But as you gain knowledge of your craft and develop skill, you must charge what you’re worth. Otherwise you can make just as much money with a lot less stress sitting at a desk somewhere.

Here’s what I posted to the email list as a response to the lowball bidder:

A jack of all trades is master of none.

My experience is that when people charge so little, they typically have little to offer beyond a very low rate. And yet there are producers who are perfectly happy with the cheapest camera package and crew they can find--in spite of the picture being poorly lit, white balanced and exposed, or tape not being rolled, or distorted audio, etc.

I used to run into this a lot in LA. A while back one of my local Bay Area clients sent me out on a shoot with a producer who was also the director of the media department for the company’s Southern California office. Over the course of the shoot she spoke frequently about how proud she was to work so “efficiently” in LA, and she was astonished at the rates she had to pay in Northern California. “I pay $1200 a day for a crew and camera in LA,” she’d say, “and if they give me any lip I just get another crew.” Her footage always looked like news, and whenever we sent footage down there for her to match, along with lighting diagrams, her crews could never do it.

I remember a director who worked for a company that was very cheap, and hired cheap local crews whenever they flew him around. In one location he ended up doing all the lighting because he could do it better than the crew that was hired. In another case, part way through an interview, the cameraman leaned over to him and said, “Just so you know, we’re almost out of tape.” The director thanked him and continued the interview until the tape was done. He then waited patiently for the tape to be changed. “No,” said the cameraman, “you don’t understand. We’re OUT of tape.” He’d only brought two and had to go home to get more.

I used to know a guy who charged $550 for a himself, including a camera package (I believe it was a Sony D30). Producers hired him for his gear and made him the PA. His gear--lights, lenses, everything--arrived in duffle bags, and he frequently forgot to bring a mixer. (Very nice guy, though.)

If you’re competing solely on price, something’s wrong--both with the way you’re working and the people who are hiring you. You have to bring more to the table. People have to want to hire YOU, because of what you can do for them, because otherwise there are lots of people who charge cheaply for bad work and there’s no winning that race.

Color meters were never designed to be used to measure light sources with a broken spectrum. How much should we trust them?

My first P2 projects, three web spots, are now live--and I’m impressed at what we did with a small crew and a tiny camera.

Not all cameras white/black balance properly. Learn how to use a paintbox and waveform/vectorscope to do it manually.