|
The big cost to a film production is setup time. Any production serious enough to be shooting on 16 mm, 35 mm, or HD will have separate crews for camera and grip/electric. On any given setup using a film camera, typically the camera crew is finished assembling, loading, mounting, framing, and focusing the camera long before the lighting department has finished their work. So camera isn't the limiting factor.
On HD sets, there's a lot more to do with the camera than just assemble, load, mount, and point. There are cables going every which way for audio and video feeds, big heavy monitors to set up in little lightproof tents, presets to tackle. Also, HD adds an additional member to the camera crew, the HD engineer, who checks levels and keeps close eye on his waveform monitor. The HD engineer is also responsible for knowing all the little tricks with the camera's menuing that the cinematographer couldn't be expected to deal with.
I recently shot a short film that used all three formats mentioned, and our HD shots were the most time-intensive. Part of it was because the set-up times were so much longer with a video camera, and part of it was probably because an HD shot is infinitely more tweakable since the cinematographer can see his final product right there on the monitor.
Pictures of our shoot accessible through my web site!
|