You can make good documentaries with the most modest equipment, especially when you are learning. There is so much excellent equipment today, so this chapter will highlight just the key features you should look for.
In documentary you often shoot material handheld, so the professional electronic newsgathering (ENG) camcorder (camera + sound recorder) has a sidemounted eyepiece and a body balanced to nestle on the operator’s shoulder. This allows the camcorder to become part of one’s head and shoulders (Figure 9-1). Smaller camcorders often record amazing sound and picture, but having the eyepiece at the rear means the camcorder is a free-floating appendage held ahead of your face (Figure 9-2). The lack of bodily contact produces stress in your arms, wrists, and hands when you must hold shots steady for minutes at a time. Usually, a pivoted liquid crystal display (LCD) unfolds from the side of a small camcorder so you can look into it from any angle. For low-angle shots, you look down into it; you can even face it forward so you can see framing as you speak to the camera (Figure 9-3). LCD screens work fine until you try shooting under sunlight—when the image becomes too dim to see. That’s when you need the viewfinder eyepiece. Controls are miniaturized and fiddly for larger hands and not always placed where you want them. Never doubt, however, that if you work within their limitations, they are capable of serious work.
Practice controlling all of your camcorder’s functions until their operation becomes second nature. This is your instrument; practice until you play like a pro.
Consumer equipment offers variables in video and audio through tiny switches or thumbwheels. The menus these deploy look like verb tables for a foreign language (Figure 9-4). Learn what they offer, and run through all the options until you’ve used every one. Current choices show up in the viewfinder as icons, so these you must recognize, too—or discover later that all your participants have yellow jaundice because the winking saucer was trying to tell you, “Set white balance.”
Most camcorders have multiple functions. In addition to serving as a movie camcorder, yours may become a stills camera, a player, or a line recorder (meaning you can use it to rerecord like a VCR or DVD recorder). A function knob routes you to the chosen option, whereupon you face more options. The manuals holding the key to these riches are often discouragingly cramped, so it’s good to download a full-size manual from the manufacturer’s site. To absorb the manual painlessly, turn it into flash cards so you and your crew can test each other. Tossing on the high seas in a trawler is no place to start looking for the manual sound-level control.
Professional equipment, being rugged and physically large, allows visible, easy-to-set controls, of which there are many. Expect professional and prosumer (midway between professional and consumer) camcorders to have a black level control and a gamma (color linearity) control, as well as manual exposure, focusing, and sound level settings. Also usual are genlock (ability to electronically lock sync with other cameras and recorders) and four sound channels.
In color work you aim to make flesh tones look natural, so the first move in digital camerawork is to set the correct white balance. This allows the camera to shoot white objects under a particular light source and show them as white onscreen, not pale pink, green, or orange. The reason is this: Although white light contains the whole spectrum, real-life light sources—including different kinds of skylight—are mixtures in which different colors predominate. Each bias is said to have a different color temperature. To compensate, you must set your camcorder’s “white balance” for shooting under that particular source. If you don’t, everyone under that supermarket fluorescent lighting turns out a bilious green.
Every light source has its own color temperature. Adjust a camcorder white balance by framing on white paper illuminated by the relevant light source. Press manual white balance control, then wait until the cam-corder reports that balancing is complete. Anything under that light source will now be recorded with color accuracy.
Look for these white balance options on your camcorder:
White balancing balances the camcorder’s response under a given light source’s color temperature. It is no match for problems arising in a scene containing mixed color temperature sources.
Outdoor and indoor color temperatures always vary. It’s normal to use lighting between, say, 2800 and 3200°K (degrees Kelvin) indoors and then find that what’s visible out of a window, being under 5600°K daylight, looks blue biased onscreen. You face a dilemma: White balance for the outdoor light, and the folks indoors look orange. Balance to indoor tungsten light, and the folks outdoors go bluish. Here are three approaches to shooting in mixed color temperature situations like these:
Yes and no. Digital color correction in postproduction is remarkable. You can easily warm an overall cold color cast or change contrast and brightness, but changing only a single shade (a human face, for instance) without altering everything else takes advanced software and the skills of a colorist. Moral: Cure everything you can during the shoot.
Your camcorder probably offers manual exposure control. The link may be electronic or, in more expensive camcorders, a physical lens aperture (or f-stop) control. With this you can underexpose to simulate a sunset (Figure 9-5) or overexpose to see the features of someone backlit (Figure 9-6). Lockable exposure is vital if you don’t want it to float every time a light or dark object crosses frame. The type and accessibility of the control (lever, knob, thumbwheel) are as important as its responsiveness. Positive and immediate control is good, floating and slow is not.
The camcorder normally adjusts by averaging light in the whole frame, which only answers some situations. Even when the camera samples chosen areas of the frame, it’s easy to get undesirable effects. Don’t get into the habit of relying on automatic exposure; it will let you down when you can least afford it. In circumstances of rapidly changing light, however, only automatic exposure can maintain acceptable results. Imagine, for instance, following someone out of a car at night and into a roadside caf é. You pass through a maze of lighting and color temperature situations and need all the help you can get. Here, switching exposure and white balance to automatic can help you do a better job.
A backlight control compensates exposure when a subject’s major illumination is coming toward the camcorder and is thus backlit. Avoid using the preset; use manual exposure to set the exposure so you get the backlighting effect you want.
Many camcorders have inbuilt neutral density (ND) filters. These, when you activate them, act like sunglasses, lowering the amount of light reaching the imaging chip while remaining color neutral. A one-stop reduction is a.3 rating; two stops,.6; and so on. You may need ND filtering to avoid overexposure, or you can use it to force your lens into using a larger aperture. This makes it work at a shorter depth of field, which might be useful if you wanted to throw a background or foreground out of focus.
With the addition of a matte box (see Chapter 26) to hold filters in place, you can:
Most camcorders have a picture gain control. This, calibrated in decibels, amplifies the camera’s response so you can still shoot in really low light situations. Useful, but expect to pay with increased picture noise (electronic picture “grain”). After you’ve used it, remember to return the gain to normal.
Camcorder lenses often have no visible calibration, but you can get tech specifications for your camera and make comparisons with others through the B & H Web site provided below. You can also run simple tests using a tape measure to determine your lenses’ widest and narrowest angles of acceptance. Unless you are filming wildlife, a long telephoto end for the zoom lens won’t be as useful as a truly wide-angle end. Wide-angle lenses make moving shots look steadier and they allow you to cover the action in a confined space such as a courtyard, car interior, or small apartment.
Zoom lens ranges are expressed in millimeters from shortest to longest focal length. A 9 mm to 90 mm zoom has a 10:1 zoom ratio (divide the large figure by the small).
Below is lens information for a Canon® XL-2, which has a good wide-angle end. For other camcorder specifications, visit the B & H Photo-Video-Pro Audio Web site (www.bhphotovideo.com/c/shop/1881/Camcorders). B & H carries a huge range of equipment, and their Web site offers much excellent information.
A camcorder body that accepts interchangeable 35mm stills-camera lenses looks like a wonderful idea. When the imaging chip is smaller than a 35mm format, however, much of the image gets wasted and the advantages are largely illusory. Look instead for a good-quality zoom to which you can add diopters (supplementary enlarging lenses) when you need to alter the lens’ s range. Diopter shortcomings usually show in the widest image as a softening of focus or a vignetting (darkening and cropping) at the image corners. This is especially obvious when using a large lens aperture in low light. A fixed (non-interchangeable) zoom lens has one other, less obvious advantage—it keeps the imaging chip sealed from dirt and damage.
Depth of field (DOF) is the range of distances through which objects remain in acceptable focus. If you focus on a subject at, say, 10-foot distance, focus may be acceptable as near as 8 feet and as far as 14 feet—a DOF of 6 feet. DOF varies according to (a) focal length of the lens and (b) aperture (or area of the lens) in use. For more information, see Chapter 25, Optics.
The camera operator, especially during handheld movements, must often rapidly adjust focus. In well-lit surroundings, focus is not critical because small imaging chips, like the 8 mm film cameras of yesteryear, have a large depth of field (DOF; see definition in box). Under low light conditions, DOF shrinks, focus becomes critical, and maintaining focus may become a struggle. The large viewfinder and mechanically positive lens control of professional cameras make this easier, but focus control on small camcorders may be an imprecise electronic connection. Some even have a lag between adjustment and seeing any results. Most, however, have a useful focus button that temporarily engages autofocusing. Expect most camcorders to offer these focusing options:
For everyday use, keep an ultraviolet filter (UV) on the front element of your lenses. It protects the lens from damage and inhibits UV light scatter in large landscape shots, which the digital system sees as mist. Always use a lens hood to shield the front lens element from shafts of sun or other strong light. Even when coming from outside the lens’s field of view, it strikes the lens’ s front element at an angle and causes halation (light bouncing internally between multiple lens elements). This degrades the overall picture with an admixture of white light.
For all aspects of camcorder sound, see Chapter 11, Location Sound.
Portable video equipment runs off rechargeable batteries. Chargers double as power converters, so you can run equipment indefinitely from an AC wall outlet. Rechargeable batteries seldom run equipment as long as you want, especially if incorrectly charged. Manufacturers’ literature abounds with optimism, so estimate generously how many batteries you should take on location. Work each battery to its useable limit and then completely recharge, expecting it to take between 6 and 10 hours. Read manuals carefully in relation to conserving battery life, as wrong handling can shorten a battery’s memory.
Buying or renting a large-capacity battery belt would seem to solve the dying battery problem, but many camcorders only work with batteries of a particular interior resistance. Sensing it’s in bed with a foreigner, the camcorder will shut down automatically. Never assume anything will work unless confirmed by manufacturer’s literature or reliable experience. This you can often find via the Internet. Locate user groups by Googling “groups” and your equipment’s make, type, and model. Enthusiasts are often generous with their help and experience.
There’s cold comfort here for the underfunded. The budget tripod and tilt head are a dismal substitute for the real deal. They may work fine for static shots, but try to pan or tilt and wobbly movements reveal why professionals use heavy tripods and hydraulically damped tilt heads. You can improve any camera movement by shooting with a wide-angle lens. Turning on the image stabilization may smooth your movements, but believe nothing until you’ve tested it.
A baby legs tripod is a very short one used for low-angle shots, and a high hat is a hat-shaped support for placing the camcorder on the ground or other solid surface. A serviceable alternative is a sandbag, which you pat into shape to allow a degree of angling.
A spreader or spider is a folding three-arm bracket that goes under the spike legs of a professional tripod (Figure 9-8). You lock the legs to the spreader so they don’t splay and collapse. A spreader also guards against scratching or denting a floor and lets you pick up the camcorder and tripod as one unit so you can plunk it down rapidly elsewhere.
At each new setup, check the spirit-level bubble built into the pan/tilt head to see that it’s level. If you don’t, you’ll pan only to find by the shot’s end that horizontals are inclined. Better tripods allow quick leveling through a ball-and-cup system (Figure 9-9).
Adjust the head to give some drag when you pan or tilt to help smooth your movements. If your head permits, position the camcorder’s center of gravity so you balance its weight equally over the pivoting point. If you don’t, it may roll forward or back when you momentarily let go of the pan handle.
This bolts to the base of the camera and in one movement mates instantly with the pan/tilt head (Figure 9-10). Later, if you switch to handheld operation, you can instantly free the camera by pulling a single lever. Take care that the camera is securely mounted; some quick releases are dangerously sensitive if your sleeve catches the lever.
A practiced and well-coordinated human being makes an excellent mobile cam-corder support. For a small-format camera during long-take shooting you may need a shoulder brace (Figure 9-11). For more ambitious work involving movement, try using one of the Glidecam (Figure 9-12; www.glidecam.com), VariZoom (www.varizoom.com), or Steadicam® (www.steadicam.com) systems. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady used one to good effect in Jesus Camp (2006, United States), their frightening film about the religious conditioning of young children. After grooming young children with a mixture of inspiration and fear, fundamentalist preachers whip them up in preparation for future leadership roles to “take back America for Christ.” The gliding, swooping camera complements the kids’ agitation as they reach a weeping, speaking-in-tongues fervor.
For a dolly, use a wheelchair with its tires a little underinflated. Professional dollies run on tracks like a miniature railroad. Your production must fully justify the outlay because they are heavy to transport, expensive to rent, and labor intensive to use. If your film is a historical reconstruction, for example, you may need all the equipment and expertise of a feature film crew. Before you get to this point, you can shoot perfectly good tracking shots:
Minimize movement and road vibration by using a wide-angle lens. You can also smooth a tracking shot during postproduction by applying a degree of slow motion.
Reliable color and framing come only with a properly adjusted field monitor, which can double as a jumbo viewfinder when you shoot off a tripod. This is your guarantee of color fidelity while shooting and a double-check on viewfinder framing, which can easily be misaligned. If you must make do with a domestic television, use the highest quality video inputs: digital, S, or component inputs are better than analog composite, where the signal is encoded and sent down a single wire. Monitors and televisions have abysmal sound quality, so feed the camcorder or DVD player sound into hi-fi headphones or into a stereo system during viewings. The improvement is truly dramatic.
Novices tend to move the camera too readily and to overuse the zoom (it’s called “firehosing”). Unless well judged, every camera movement becomes a problem during editing. Slow camera movements, especially uncertain ones or long, slow zooms, make editing difficult or even impossible. Shoot handheld material with a wide lens and using physical movement up to, or away from, the subject instead of zooms, which are always unsteady handheld.
Develop zoom-and-compose skills using Project 4-SP-11 Advanced Interview: Three Shot Sizes.
Any material you shoot should be conceived in three boldly different sizes of image—wide shot (WS), medium shot (MS), and close shot (CS). For special moments, there’s also big close-up (BCU). Only boldly different images of the same thing cut together well—two shots of a statue, for instance. If the size change is too small, a cut looks like an ugly jump cut. A good discipline while you’re shooting a series of shots is to internally call each new composition and then go to it as quickly and naturally as possible. Handheld shooting should be a series of held compositions linked by efficient movements—each keyed, where possible, to movement within the frame, such as the movement of a character.
Develop handheld camera skills with Projects 4-SP-1 Skills Practice: Handheld Camera Steadiness, 4-SP-2 Skills Practice: Handheld Tracking on a Moving Subject, and 4-SP-3 Skills Practice: Handheld Tracking Backward with Moving Subject.
Shooting handheld often means holding the camcorder in front of your face, so your steadiness deteriorates as your arms get tired. You may need a shoulder brace for long take work (Figure 9-11). Most camcorders incorporate image stabilization technology that somewhat compensates for unsteadiness, but this can introduce a weird movement lag.
Practice all the major controls until your fingers automatically find everything that matters—sound level, exposure, focus, zoom, and so on. Every cam-corder you ever use will have limitations, so practice your instrument until you can always get professionally respectable results.
When deciding whether to use a tripod or go handheld, simply ask yourself what experience you want the audience to have. At a young children’s birthday party, you’d get among the kids with a handheld camera, because this height and viewpoint augment their perception of themselves. The point of view of an uncle standing apart would be more grounded and best taken from a tripod, as would the kind of interview you see in Figure 9-13 where Nancy Schiesari is directing Tattooed Under Fire (a work in progress for a KLRU/ITVS production).
Sometimes your subject calls for complete mobility, so you sacrifice some stability for nimbleness. When the audience sees the need for compromise, it can well accept it. Other times, you want to use a telephoto lens and can only do so from a tripod-mounted camera.
The worst misuse of a handheld camera is for wide shots of buildings or landscapes. Our perception of such things, unless we are inebriated or suffering an earthquake, is of things solid and secure, so common sense dictates that you place the camera on a stable support.
Finding focus while the camera is running is an accepted part of filming actuality. To focus:
Rehearse with the recordist where your edges of frame are going to be in different sized shots. Once the camera is running, run your eye periodically around the edges of your composition. You want to assess your composition as a whole, not simply put your subject in the crosshairs like a rifleman. You also want to detect microphone or other intrusions straight away. Watch for telltale shadows (of the microphone, for instance). When you intend panning or tilting the camera to a new composition, momentarily open your closed eye to check where you mean to go, and then make the movement. When you are about to make a strong camera move, try to flash a hand or facial warning so you don’t catch the recordist by surprise. He or she should constantly be checking your movements as well as those by the subject.
If you under- or overshoot and alight on an incorrect framing, hold the erroneous composition for a few seconds and then imperceptibly “creep” the frame to its correct proportions. To acknowledge error by recovering too quickly makes the audience feel insecure.
Your composition will be better once you’ve done Project 1-AP-4 Analyze Picture Composition.
When making a handheld tracking shot:
Here’s how to develop the camera operator’s Groucho Marx gliding walk:
Whatever camera movement you make, always try to:
Whoever checks out equipment should always assemble and test it before leaving its checkout point. Make “test and test again” your true religion. Leave nothing to chance. Make lists, then lists of lists. Pray.
Optimism and filmmaking are bad bedfellows. One blithe optimist left the sound tapes of a feature film in his car trunk overnight. The car happened to be stolen, and there being no copies, a vast amount of work was transformed instantly into so much silent footage. Imagination expended darkly at predicting the worst makes you carry spares, special tools, emergency information, first-aid kits, and three kinds of diarrhea medicine. A pessimist never tempts fate and, constantly foreseeing the worst, is tranquilly productive compared with your average optimist.
Whoever checks out equipment should arrive early and assemble and test every piece there and then. Nobody should ever assume that because the equipment is coming from a reputable company, everything will be all right. Murphy is waiting to get you. (Murphy’s Law: “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.”) Expect him to lurk inside everything that should fit together, slide, turn, lock, roll, light up, make a noise, or work in silence. The whole Murphy clan lurks in every wire, plug, box, lens, battery, and alarm clock. Make no mistake; they mean to ruin you.
For tips on scouting locations, see Chapter 24, Preparing to Direct; for more on lenses and their use, see Chapter 25, Optics; for more on camera equipment and camera supports, see Chapter 26, Advanced Cameras and Camera Equipment; and for books on camera usage and film techniques, see:
Artis, Anthony Q. The Shut Up and Shoot Guide: A Down and Dirty DV Production. Boston: Focal Press, 2007.
Ascher, Steven and Edward Pincus. The Filmmaker’s Handbook, Completely Revised and Updated. New York: Plume Books, 2007.
Bernard, Sheila Curran. Documentary Storytelling: Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films. Boston: Focal Press, 2007.
Detmers, Fred, Ed. American Cinematographer Handbook. Hollywood: American Society of Cinematographers, 2004.
Groticelli, Michael, Ed. American Cinematographer Video Manual. Hollywood: American Cinematographer, 2004.
Hurbis-Cherrier, Mick. Voice and Vision: A Creative Approach to Narrative Film and DV Production. Boston: Focal Press, 2007.