Getting Started

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the first edition of The Digital Filmmaking Handbook. Looking back, it’s rather shocking to see that 10 years ago the way films were made was very different. It’s an exciting time to be updating this book because

filmmaking technology has improved so dramatically. Video image quality has become so good that 35mm motion picture film, at least for indie filmmakers, has gone the way of 35mm still photography film: no one is shooting on it anymore. Digital is easier, cheaper, and although some will argue that it lacks a quality that film has, no one can say that it doesn’t look good in its own way.

Large crisp images with tons of detail, amazing low-light capabilities, a greatly simplified postproduction workflow, and prices that keep dropping make digital video the most popular choice for everyone from indie filmmakers to hobbyists. And, in addition to overall improvements in quality, working with digital video is much easier than it was 10 years ago.

Better, Cheaper, Easier

Why are things so much better for filmmakers today than they were in 2000? First, image quality is better. Ten years ago, DV was the norm for lower budget filmmakers. Nowadays, it’s HD. A quick comparison of a DV image and an HD image says it all (see Figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1

Video image quality 10 years ago (left) and today (right).

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But it’s not just image quality that’s improved, computers are better, too. Faster data processing and digital connectivity mean that you don’t have to build and outfit a computer with specialized hardware upgrades to ensure that it can handle digital video editing. Yes, you’ll still need to make sure you have a computer with certain baseline characteristics, but you’ll most likely be able to use it straight out of the box, and it will probably cost less than a videocapable rig of 10 years ago (see Figure 1.2).

Storage drives are bigger and cheaper. Everyone’s got lots of media these days, so even nonfilmmakers commonly use storage drives that hold one terabyte (Tb) or more. That means HD-capable drives are easy to find at local retailers or online.

Monitors are better, cheaper, and more compatible across the board. Oh, yeah, and they’re wider. In the old days, you had to have a separate special video monitor in addition to your computer monitor, and those old-school monitors were square. Nowadays, you can use flat panel HD monitors for everything, and they are widescreen, just like your HD video (see Figure 1.3).

But the biggest improvement of the last few years is in the price and quality level of HD video cameras. You can get a DSLR camera that shoots full-quality HD video like the Canon T2i (see Figure 1.4) for about $700 (not including lenses and accessories), or you can get a very good HD camera that is considered comparable to 35mm film cameras, like the fullycustomizable RED One (shown in Figure 1.5). The $20,000 price tag of the RED One might sound expensive, and it is, but the RED One is designed to go head-to-head with high-end digital cinema cameras, which start at around $65,000.

Figure 1.2

Top-of-the-line computers, like this Apple MacBook Pro, can serve as a digital video editing workstation straight out of the box.

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Figure 1.5

The RED One is a special fullcustomizable digital cinema camera aimed at indie filmmakers.

If you’re shooting on tape, you’ll still need some sort of video interface to get media off the videotape and into your computer, but as file-based media becomes the norm, you are much more likely to simply remove a disc from your camera, put it into your computer, and drag the files across (see Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6

In a typical tapeless editing workflow, video is digitized inside the camera, stored on a disc, such as SD cards, and the resulting digital files are copied to the computer’s storage drive.

And there’s more. Lighting technology continues to improve: smaller HMIs, LED panels, and professional fluorescents use less power so that you don’t need a generator, give off less heat making the set more comfortable for everyone, and are professionally calibrated so that you can ensure that your project looks great (see Figure 1.7).