A fresh look for factual

Broadcast

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/a-fresh-look-for-factual/5057784.article

The ‘filmic look’ associated with drama has filtered into factual.

Over the past year, the so-called ‘filmic look’ associated with drama has filtered further into factual productions thanks to new budget-friendly camera technology.

There’s no definitive show that started it all. Some point to Made In Chelsea, which established the look with Sony F3s in 2011 and has switched to F55s, supplied by Procam, for its fifth series.

Others suggest food formats like Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals (via S+O Media), or The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, which in their latest runs featured interview inserts shot on Canon C300s to contrast with the standard broadcast kit for audience/ crowd shots (all supplied by Hotcam).

Channel 4’s The Boy Who Can’t Forget was an eye-opener for Shaun Wilton, head of facility Shooting Partners. “Studio Lambert was nervous about using the C300 because it was just released, but they knew that for a lot of scenarios they would be shooting interviews in stark white medical offices and wanted to blow the background to focus attention on the person’s face.”

Broadly, the ‘filmic’ look is achieved by shooting on 35mm-sensor cameras with shallow depth of field, sending the background out of focus and bringing the subject in the foreground sharply into view.

“Ten years ago, kit choices were simple,” says Wilton. “There were Digibeta workhorses for on-the-shoulder ENG-style shoots, or high-end cinestyle cameras for drama. They were two completely different price points and competences, and they didn’t mix.

Even 18 months ago, most people wouldn’t have dreamed of taking out an Alexa or a Red on a factual show.”

The arrival of affordable shooters with 35mm sensors capable of the 50Mb/s data rates required of HD deliverables and of accepting top-of-the- range glass from Zeiss, Cooke or Angenieux has changed the picture entirely. Canon’s 5D DSLR series first broke ground, superceded by the hugely popular C300 and latterly Sony’s F5. In turn, these have forced down the hire cost of the cinematographer’s favourite, the Arri Alexa, and even the Red Epic.

Despite the camera’s reputation for a trickier workflow, Oxford Scientific Films selected the Red from Onsight for its shows The Secret Life Of Dogs and How To Win The Grand National.

“The low cost of the technology and a saturated market, including many Alexa owner-operators, has had people falling over each other for the business,” says Alex Trezies, joint managing director of camera and crew supplier Shift-4.

Where a full Alexa set, including ultra Primes, O’Connor head and Matte boxes, might have cost £1,300 per day a year ago, it is now rate-carded at £850-£900, and will probably go out for £650 to £700. A body-only C300, meanwhile, can be hired for just £150, though lens choices may push it to £500 – still well within daytime budgets.

“With the wealth of inexpensive and specialist stills lenses that can be used via the C300’s EF mount, the camera can produce impressive results in the right hands,” says Will Wilkinson, production director at hire firm Cruet Company.

Filmic doesn’t necessarily mean ‘glossy’, a look generally associated with a particular highly saturated colour, lighting style and/or stylised grade.

“You could say that The Apprentice has a ‘glossy’ look, but it is achieved through a combination of 2/3-inch-sensor F800s and a grade that has a steely, greeny-blueish feel that makes it very corporate and glossy,” says Cruet business development manager Adam Brown.

The C300 is more commonly used for supplementary or single-camera shows and records to Compact Flash.

For multi-camera shoots, the Sony PDW-F800 remains the workhorse because of the workfl ow safety that XDCAM disks provide against juggling with card-based media.

Princess Productions’ The Face, fronted by Naomi Campbell for Sky Living, is shooting an F800/HJ22 lens package supplied by S+O; TOWIE employs standard HJ22 and HJ14 lenses on F800s, yet manages to create a filmic style by creating soft, naturalistic lighting using Chimera Pancakes (below), Dedolight Octodomes or Joker Bugs instead of HMIs. Self-shooters can use pop-up Lite Panels for similar effect.

“Turnaround defines the workflow of TOWIE,” says Dan Studley, technical director at Hotcam. “Lime Pictures looked into C300s, but the data management needed for a show with just three days to edit and grade proved unmanageable.”

Indeed, the shoot-from- the-hip action of traditional docs would seem at odds with technology designed for stop-start takes on tripods. “You can’t move at the same speed as a run-and-gun camera with a video-style zoom lens, so it’s important to factor that in and choose the right format for the job,” says Wilkinson.

“Budget is why the PMW800 still has a lot of life left,” says Sam Higham, rental facilities manager at Onsight. “It just works with one operator and you don’t need additional crew.”

Not that this stops producers who want a dramatic sheen to their show. For Sky Living’s Styled To Rock, for example, TwentyTwenty asked Hotcam to devise custom rigs for five C300s, all time-code- synched and fed into a gallery.

Some productions mix and match actuality with a filmic feel. Ricochet’s Russians In The City is mostly shot on a PMW200 but features slick general views shot on F5 with Cabrio lenses (kit supplied by S+O).

Attempting to capture a look previously the domain of DoPs has given hire shops a genuine stake in productions. Far from shifting boxes, the expertise they have in-house can help producer-directors get the most from the kit. Most rental companies arrange training as part of the hire contract.

“We aim to give everyone an understanding of essential terminology – phrases like ‘peaking’, ‘ramping’ and ‘breathing in’ lenses,” says Shooting Partners’ Wilton.

“We often teach the basics of camera technique: how to frame, to white balance, and to set up a camera properly,” says Shift-4’s Trezies. “We get involved in lighting and shooting techniques. It’s a huge amount of information to teach in often very short timeframes.”

“The biggest issue is focus,” says Hotcam managing director Vicky Holden. “If you take your eye off the ball for a second, you get soft shots.” “On top of this, poor data management can lead to huge mistakes and additional costs, especially when shooting a lot of footage. We always try to impress on clients the value of a digital imaging technician,” says Holden.

“The additional cost of a DIT will often put clients off, but they can save huge amounts of money at the back end by avoiding mistakes.”

S+O head of operations Jessica Reece says: “I can’t stress how important it is to feel comfortable with the kit in the field. There is so much information that sometimes you need to boil it down and say: ‘These are the five things you need to know’.”

Shallow depth of field is currently in vogue, but this trend could soon become over-exposed. The wobbly shots of a second camera, perhaps in black and white, were fashionable a few years ago but now border on parody.

So what’s next? “The F55 will come into its own because it can record HD and 4K simultaneously. It has a global shutter to eliminate blurring on fast pans, and DoPs love it,” says Procam business development manager Ryan Lester.

There’s considerable interest in a forthcoming firmware upgrade to the F5 and F55. Where the C300 is limited to 60 frames a second, the Sony cameras will be able to shoot 120fps at 4K and, later, 240fps at 2K.

“High frame rates might be used to produce slow-motion sequences of high emotion – an X Factor winner’s victory punch, for example,” says Reece. “You could also use one camera [F5] to do everything rather than having to hire a separate slow-motion camera.

“The 35mm look is a high-cost look on a low budget – but everyone is looking for the next style and how they can make their shows stand out.”