Professional film databases will have contact details for insurance brokers that deal specifically with film projects.
Other insurance
It is possible to insure the negative if you are shooting on film, or tape stock if you are shooting on video. This will cover your film if the negative is exposed or damage occurs due to faulty camera equipment etc. This type of coverage will normally cover you for up to the limit of the budget of the entire production. This is only really worthwhile if your production has some major financial investment and is more typical on feature films.
BUDGET SAVING
Insurance, just like most other commodities involved in filmmaking, is negotiable.
Insurance companies work competitively against each other to try and entice as much business as possible. The amounts that you will have to insure for are often statutory requirements, or will be figures set by hire companies and studios to cover loss and damage of equipment or property. These figures are often non-negotiable; however, the amount you will have to pay to cover them may not be.
If you are organising insurance then always try to get quotes from as many different companies as possible. Make sure you inform other companies of the lowest quote you have had and see if they will give you a lower quote. Also check with equipment hire companies whether the amount they require you to insure their equipment for is insurable on an old for old policy or a new for old. An old for old policy will always be substantially cheaper to obtain as it covers the equipment for replacement with second hand gear rather than brand new.
11. SHORT FILM FORMATS
CHOOSING A FORMAT
The format that you shoot your film on is also known as the acquisition format or origination format, as this will often be different from the final format you screen your film on.
Choosing a format to shoot a short film on is not an easy task; what you may gain in ease of use and value you may lose in image quality and vice versa. Understanding not just the quality that various formats offer, but also what they entail as far as workflows go, is essential in making an informed decision.
There is no such thing as a best format, as all formats have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to you to find the one that suits the style and budget of your film. Although a lot of importance is often placed on the formats that various short films are made on, it’s important to remember that a good film doesn’t rely on its means of production.
Which acquisition format you choose will probably be governed by your budget. When considering formats, you not only need to think about the costs of hiring the camera, whether video or film, and the stock you will need, but also the type of post-production workflows that the given format entails.
With a format such as MiniDV, the resulting workflow may be very straightforward, and the entire post-production could be completed on a home computer. Whereas shooting on film will entail not just the cost of the camera hire and stock, but also the costs of processing and transfer.
What acquisition format you choose should be carefully weighed up between the cost of the format and the quality it provides. The following is a basic list of commonly used formats for short films, in order of ascending quality.
Figure 19. Costs of shooting on various formats.
35 MM
S16 MM
HD
HDV
DV
This refers to quality as in the resolution, colour space etc that each format is capable of producing in optimum circumstances. The quality of these formats is dependent on many variables, so this list assumes that each is used with the best equipment in the best conditions.
With so much choice and so many variables, the quality of formats is a subject of constant debate; certain aspects of any format may out-perform others and all formats are constantly being improved upon. So when choosing any format you should do your research to find which suits your film most.
EXPLOITING A FORMAT
In the spectrum of formats that are available to you as a filmmaker each has a set of characteristics and idiosyncrasies, which when taken advantage of can contribute to creating a specific look.
It is a common mistake for people to assume that just by choosing a particular format this will instantly produce a certain look that may be associated with it. When making your choice, it’s always important to remember that higher quality is only useful if you have the means to exploit its potential.
Most people will be aware of the difference in, say, the visual qualities of footage shot on MiniDV, compared to that of footage shot on 35mm film. On a very basic level they look different because of the amount of visual information that each is capable of recording (see resolution), with MiniDV being at the low end and 35mm at the high end. But when considering how you want your film to look it is important to remember that what you may associate with MiniDV video footage and 35mm film footage is probably dependent on examples you have already seen.
Most people will have had experience with a video camera set on an auto pre-set and associate this basic look with the format. You might also associate films seen at the cinema with 35mm. In terms of quality of resolution that each is capable of recording, it is certainly true that one is of extremely superior quality to the other, but to assume that to shoot your film on video will give it the look of a bad wedding video and to shoot on 35mm will make it look just like a Hollywood movie is not true.
One of the reasons why so much video footage looks low-quality and 35mm looks high is to do with the conditions in which they are used. Video cameras, due to their size and price, are ubiquitous and used in all kinds of different situations, whereas 35mm cameras, due to their size and price, are rarely used outside the controlled environments of commercial filmmaking. What I mean here by controlled environments is studio or location set ups, where it is common practice to adjust every detail to define the look of the shot. This can range from the lighting, which could have taken hours or even days to be set up, right down to the shades of a character’s costume or make up, chosen due to the speed of the film stock being used. This kind of attention to detail goes a long way to producing the look of a lot of films shot on 35mm and therefore the image we generally associate with it. I’m not saying that if you were to recreate this level of control for a video shoot the image would be as good as film, as it wouldn’t even come close, it just doesn’t have the capability. However, controlling as many factors as you can when using any format will allow you to achieve much better quality and unity in the images you are capturing. When used under these controlled circumstances you may well be surprised how lower resolution formats will out-perform your initial expectations.
If your deciding factor over which format to use is budget, which it normally is, you will sometimes find yourself on the borderline between being able to afford a higher-resolution format and a lower one. Always consider the pros and cons carefully. Although it is common practice for filmmakers to strive for the better quality format, consider what else you could spend the extra budget on that may not improve the resolution but could improve the production values in other ways. Obvious examples like lighting, set design and costumes can make a massive difference in the film’s look and it just might be worth compromising on the image quality to make the overall appearance of the film more unique.
ASPECT RATIO
Aspect ratio is a term used to refer to the dimensions of an image. It is specified as a ratio that relates to the height in comparison to the width rather than a measurement in cm or inches, as these measurements will vary depending on the size of a monitor or projection screen, while the aspect ratio governs the shape.
Figure 20. Common aspect ratios.
Aspect ratios are used to describe the dimension of all kinds of images within filmmaking, from projected cinema images to the shape of a viewfinder. The figures are derived by dividing the width of the image by its height. This can then be expressed in a number of ways. In filmmaking the height of the image is normally given a
s 1.
This creates common aspect ratios such as 1.66:1 for the dimensions of a Super 16mm film image or 1.33:1 for a 35mm film image. However, using 1 as a constant isn’t a standard outside of filmmaking. So many aspect ratios for television and video formats are given as ratios to other figures. For example standard televisions and computer monitors have an aspect ratio expressed as 4:3, while widescreen HDTV iSuper is 16:9. This disparity in how aspect ratios are expressed can be confusing. Image sizes that are very similar can have seemingly very different ratios attached to them.
For instance Super 16mm film with its aspect ratio of 1.66:1 is nearly the same ratio as HDTV 16:9, which is why Super 16 is very suitable for HDTV broadcast.
Widescreen
Due to the current switch from standard-definition television to high-definition, the old 4:3 aspect ratio is gradually being phased out in favour of the high-definition 16:9 aspect ratio. This is an important consideration when choosing what aspect ratio to shoot and screen your film in, as most broadcasting channels no longer accept 4:3 SD for broadcast.
Masking/letterboxing
It is common practice when making a film to start with the largest aspect ratio you can. Many 35mm films are shot at academy 1.33:1, which is nearly the same as 4:3. However, only the central part of the image is used, so that it ends up having an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which is a widescreen format. This is achieved by the rest of the image being masked out with black strips, referred to as letterboxing or postboxing.
Racking
When an image has been captured at a larger or different-sized aspect ratio than that which it will be screened at, the result is extra frame area that will eventually be masked out. This extra frame area can be moved up or down, before the masking is applied, allowing the image to be reframed during editing or conforming.
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a process used to display widescreen images on ordinary 4:3 displays such as standard television. Rather than letterboxing the image, which allows the whole frame to be seen, pan and scan only shows a portion of the widescreen image. It is common practice for widescreen features to undergo a pan and scan for broadcast on television. The process of scanning only a portion of the frame and then panning to another area can also be used as a creative technique during post-production.
12. VIDEO
Video is a long-established format for shooting short films on. The availability and low cost of shooting on video has led to a whole new generation of filmmakers who might never otherwise have had the budget to get into filmmaking.
The advent and development of video technology has lent itself perfectly to the needs of short filmmakers and while it used to be synonymous with bad image quality and low production standards, the technology has advanced massively over the last decade, resulting in new higher-definition formats and an improvement in quality for even the most basic of video cameras. New video formats are emerging yearly and increasing the quality available to the filmmaker. Where video used to be associated with a certain look and style, new high-definition formats are much closer to the look of film. Technology that five years ago was only available to a select few Hollywood directors has filtered down into the prosumer market and is now widely available to many short filmmakers. The digital revolution will continue advancing at high speed, and it’s only a matter of time before domestic video cameras will offer these same cinema-quality images, democratising the technical side of the filmmaking process. For the moment, however, there is a huge difference between different types of video formats and the quality they offer. To differentiate between them you need to be able to understand the fundamental differences, and then work out which one is right for you and your film.
Analogue
Analogue used to be the predominant way in which video information was recorded and played back before digital surpassed it. There are still many analogue video formats in use that offer high quality. However, the major drawback with analogue formats is that each time footage is played back, or a transfer is made, degradation and loss of information is more likely to occur and this is what makes digital preferable. Unless you don’t have any digital options there is really not much point in using an analogue video format anymore. Filmmaking has for some time been geared towards digital workflows, so choosing an analogue format will make your workflow options more complicated, with digitisation required to convert the analogue information.
Digital
Digital video stores image and sound information by sampling frequencies and then transforms this information into numbers known as bits and bytes which create binary codes. This method of information storage is very stable, allowing transfers to be made quickly, through multiple generations, with little or no loss of quality. Digital video has revolutionised filmmaking and, apart from processes involving film negatives and prints, filmmaking has largely converted entirely to digital formats and systems. This has produced more and more compatibility between systems such as digital cameras and editing suites. Coupled with the speed at which digital technology works, this means that workflows are now becoming simpler, and enables very immediate results. For instance, plugging a digital video camera straight into a computer with a firewire to transfer the footage is entirely based on digital technology.
Compression
The amount of digital information needed to create a video image is huge, and, for it to be storable or transferable on most digital tape formats, compression is needed. What compression does is take the digital information for an image and convert it into more efficient and feasible amounts. Digital compression achieves this by encoding the digital data through the use of codecs. This encoded information results in smaller files so that more can be stored and transferred, for example, onto a digital tape or computer hard drive. Once at its required destination, generally a computer hard drive, the information can be decompressed and played back. The most important thing to understand with this process is that, although there are many varieties of compression and ways of performing compression, they all fall into two main categories, lossless or lossy.
Lossless is a form of compression that results in the decompressed files retaining all the original information and therefore quality that they had before they were compressed. Lossless compression is ideal for filmmakers as the original quality of the image is preserved. The drawback, however, is that high-quality uncompressed footage returns to its large file sizes and so requires huge amounts of storage and high processing speeds to work with.
Lossy compression by its nature needs to reduce the amount of information that an image contains. Given the characteristics of any moving image, there are several different aspects of it that the codec can reduce; colour information, size and resolution, and sound can all be compressed, but how many codecs achieve compression is by literally throwing information away. This is not as drastic as it may sound. If you imagine most digital cameras are capable of capturing images with millions of colours in, much of the colour detail will actually be imperceptible to the human eye. So, for example, a certain form of compression might potentially operate by deciding which ranges are not as important as others and get rid of the ones not needed. This may result in an image that looks the same as the original image, but will have slightly less subtlety in the range of colours. In general, high-resolution images always contain more detail than you can actually see, so compression codecs are generally based on the principle that they lose the less pertinent information. This resulting lack of detail may be imperceptible unless you want to perform processes such as grading, which will change the original emphasis of apparent colours and relies on there being high amounts of colour information. Images that will later be blown up for projection will also often expose the detail lost during compression. Sound on the other hand, due to its reasonably small file sizes, rarely needs to be compressed. Lossy compression is generally a necessary evil as uncompressed footage is often impossible to store and process. It allows us to record, store and pr
ocess larger amounts and is ubiquitous within digital filmmaking. This then presents the filmmaker with a choice over how much information is lost and of what kind. Different formats employ different codecs using different amounts and types of compression and this should inform the filmmaker’s choice of which format to choose.
Bad compression
It’s a common misconception for people to think that choosing a format with the least compression gives them the best quality. What’s important to remember is that high-resolution formats often require more compression than lower ones, simply because there’s more data to capture. For instance, a format with four times more data information than another might employ twice as much compression, but at the end of the day it has four times more data that has been compressed so will be far better quality than the low data that has only been lightly compressed.
Short Films Page 8