Video is almost always cheaper to shoot. Equipment and crew cost about the same as a 16mm film shoot, but tape stock is much cheaper than film negative, and with video there's no costs for processing, transfer to tape, or audio syncing.  When you have to shoot a lot of sync sound, especially "talking heads," the difference between film and video costs really add up.   Interviews chew up enormous mounds of film or tape. When you are shooting tape, another twenty- or thirty-minute roll costs next to nothing. On film it costs a lot. On the other hand, if most of your shooting is MOS (without sound,) you have a clear idea of what you need, and a good eye for getting it quickly, film can come in at a reasonable price.

Dual Solution

Frequently there's a need to combine talking heads with cut-away footage. In this case it sometimes works to shoot all your interviews on tape, and the rest on film. This duality is possible only if you can neatly divide your tasks, shooting the head on one (or more days) and the rest on different days. Otherwise you will double-book equipment and some of your crew on the same day, hardly a cost-effective move.   An exception: if you own your own equipment, sometimes it is worth not charging for the extra rental to make a better final product.

Lighting

There's a misconception that shooting video takes less lighting. There's a similar misconception that shooting 16mm takes less lighting than 35mm. I think these wrong ideas come from the fact that 35mm production usually has the most money to spend, and spends more on lighting. Sixteen has less, but more than video. A sort of domino effect. In my experience, lighting well takes about the same time and equipment whatever the format. And whatever the medium, lighting expands to fit time and budget.

When I have to shoot with NO lights, just the sun, my first choice is 35mm. It has such extraordinary latitude and a superb ability to read into highlights and shadows. Tape, on the other hand, even in the best of the latest video field cameras, has an extremely narrow range of exposure and detail. A great colorist/technician with one of the latest cameras can perform near miracles, but the finished product will still look like tape.

Stylize Video

One of the ways I've found to make tape look quite marvelous is to stylize it. Get away from trying to make things look "natural."

Working for a daring director who goes for strong visuals, I recently shot a series of talking heads to promote an Interactive Media Conference coming up next year. We put a sky drop behind every interviewee, dollied slowly in a semi-circle back and forth around the person, changing the key on the fly to the opposite side each time we came around, gelling the lights to strobe warm and cold. We dutched as we went, put the head in the corners, sometimes small/high-or-low/left-or-right, sometimes close-in.

In one interview we had to shoot in the person's small house. We flew the sky-drop just outside the window and set a grip to "painting" it, clearly marking the drop as a drop. In another we put the interviewee on the floor, and propped a tiny white picket fence by his feet. It was clear that he was sitting on a carpet, and the drop was just a drop. The result was vibrant and strong. The client loved it. The interviewees loved it (including feature director James Cameron who at first thought we would make viewers seasick) and viewers seem to love it too. No one is aware it was shot on video. It just works. Would we have shot it on film if there had been a bigger budget? You bet. Would it have looked better? Yes, and best of all if we could have shot on 35mm. But for the end purpose -- screened on small TV's usually from a VHS copy, what we did on Beta SP looks probably 80% as good as a far more expensive 35mm shoot.

Looking For Grain

When it comes to commercials, there's no question that if you can possibly find a way, shoot on film. The new 16mm film stocks (see "Choices:/Shoot Kodak or Agfa?" article in the same library) are phenomenal. I've shot lots of spots on sixteen, and the always look great -- but they also always show themselves to be 16mm if you look closely. At its very best, this medium simply cannot provide the detail that 35mm does. On the other hand, there are times when you are after an effect that 16mm provides. Especially grain. Today's stocks are so fine-grained you have to work to get them to look grainy. A while ago I shot and directed a boxing promo for Hal Riney in a gym using color stocks we converted to black and white at the transfer to video.

Unless you want to work with an editor who refuses to cut on video, there is no longer any good reason to do so on film. The advantages of editing on video are: quicker, cheaper, greater flexibility and choice.

Many years ago when I was working as an apprentice on   "Two For the Road," flat-bed (film) editors were just coming on the market.  I was allowed briefly into the sacred room where the truly marvelous editor was cutting the show as we shot it.  He told me he simply refused to use these new machines. He insisted on cutting on an upright Moviola. "I need to feel the images in my hand," he said, holding up a strip of film, and slapping it into the gate.

The fact that this Moviola. was extremely noisy, basically incapable of running more than one sound track, and really designed to cut only very small sections of film at a time didn't deter him. Nor did the new flat-beds' ability to run two or three sound tracks at a time, the fact that they are relatively quiet, and could easily handle long segments attract him enough to switch.

Today there's been another switch in technology, and many flatbed film editors find switching to random-access video editing just as difficult, abstract, and divorced from the angst of editing as that wonderful film editor I encountered years ago. But most of them are coming around. The ease of random access is just too delicious. No more hunting for lost trims. No more reconstructing work print to try a different cut. No more mechanical splicing.

It's true that the very speed and relative ease tempt one to a quick solution without plumbing a scene's true potential. But the dedicated editor will always go the extra hour/day/week if you'll let him, to uncover the real wealth in your material. One of the recent innovations that adds to the rationale of transferring anything you shoot to tape and editing it there is that if you need to end up with a film print, you can now track negative edge numbers on your video edit, and later cut your original negative to match your edited tape. Furthermore, time-code printing on the edge of your negative, which is available on the newest cameras, means that you can sync your film to your audio as you transfer (or later if you prefer) practically automatically.

Transfer Film to Tape