(15 April 2008 3:00 pm)

LAS VEGAS: Only in Hollywood, where technical brilliance and creativity are pursued in every frame, can you have a session dedicated to a topic like digital cameras and their effect on lighting, wardrobe and makeup.

This session happened at Nab Show 08 in Vegas, but the panel was Hollywood. Moderated by Art Director's Guild president Tom Walsh, panelists included production designer Yoojung Han, costume designer Cynthia Obsenares, DoP John Ted and Warner Bros wardrobe manager Janis Macewan.

So what was the discussion about?

Well, for more than a hundred years now, the craft of film making and the various departments that it involves has evolved its technical finesse benchmarks. And a majority of those 100 hundred years, the recording media has been film. By default, everyone from the director to the D.o.P, to the production manager to the lighting boy, to the wardrobe manager, everyone refers to film and its properties sub consciously as the basis of any technical decision making.

Of late, however, digital is the emerging medium, offering limitless creative possibilities and new directions to be explored, at the same time it is also a different beast to deal with. So while laymen wouldn't understand what the big deal between film and digital is, there is a lot of new knowledge that technicians across the board are trying to update themselves with and habituate themselves to.

"What is true white and how black is black?" began moderator Tom Walsh. This was one of the topics in his list of ten which he wished to discuss with the panel. Other topics included the Moire Effect (Spirals and artifacts that occur with striped and certain kinds of patterns and textures in clothing), Painted vs Photographic images in backdrops; use of colours and tones, etc.

Walsh played a montage of digital images, and pointed out how digital photography had made certain concepts possible (Like a surreal blue Snow Hill backdrop in Alaska, with subject in focus being an internally illuminated white tent. In that masterpiece, ambient was the only light source for the backdrop and the subject had a single lamp light source illuminating it from the inside). He also showed some examples where digital had spoilt the party, where the whites had burnt, the white in the interiors merging with the light from the exteriors, or where the cloth patterns had changed and were distracting away from the narrative.

Costume designer Cynthia Obsenares shared that when working with digital it was advisable to work with milder shades and tones like off white, cream and light blue rather than full white. DoP John Ted, however, dd run through some slides showcasing how one could achieve pure whites and blacks within the same frame.

Warner Brothers wardrobe manager Macewan had brought along with her, a dozen costumes. All costumes had been used in Warner Bros productions and were shot on film with no complaints. The same costumes, however, when shot with the digital camera and displayed live at the session, appeared to be imperfect for shooting. Some had artifacts, some changed colour, others had moiré.

Even if your medium is film, sometimes even your 35 mm footage might have to be converted for D Projection or the production will have a D2DVD release, or an HD broadcast at some point in time. It is, therefore, better to keep digital into consideration right at pre-production before freezing your choices.

Continuing on the pre-production bit, DoP John T shared, "You need to have camera tests and if you are using HD, then you need to test your footage by viewing it on an HD monitor. It is also advisable to pick cameras with true RGB with full colour (4:4:4)."

Both Walsh and John opined that HD as image capturing technology complemented very well with CG & VFX. The native footage being in digital meant one generation of loss lesser (as film footage would have to be scanned). The entire digital workflow gets seamless thanks to this, they opined.

"Shooting in digital means that much more collaboration is needed between the production designer and costume designers in the pre production stage itself" shared Cynthia Obsenares. Knowing what is going on in the backgrounds, in terms of shade, color, texture, shape, design and what its meant to communicate, means the costume designer has so much of a context to create a blend or a contrast with."

"With input source shot on digital, CG set extensions and crowd simulations blended that much more seamlessly into the frame," pointed out Walsh.