In the history of this program, the formats have been like this:

From July 1994 to December 1996 they used 16mm film.

From January 1997 to May 1999 they used "Super 16" for a wider image area (but I don't think this footage was ever actually post-produced in HDTV).

From July 1999 to April 2002 they used Super 35 (with 3-perf pull down) for HDTV post-production (with the Standard 4:3 image taken from the middle of the HDTV frame).

And, from July 2002 to whenever they're going to shoot digitally. I don't think fans of the series have ever noticed any of these changes (because they care more about how a certain actress' hair changes more than they care about this kind of technical stuff).

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If they had used film in any medium, they would have added enourmous cost to the thirty grand they were allotted. With HD video shot at 24fps, they are able to shoot at the same ratio of about 60:1 as a major funded studio picture would be able to do. This does wonders for content quality as they do not have to worry about if thier film budget will be shot to hell trying to get the right shot.

When you are talking about tv features that will NEVER make it to a theater, HD video 24fps is the definate way to go. IF you are trying to make a feature film meant for the theaters, it only works if you are not going to have a large budget to play with as far as film goes.

IF you are GL, you can do whatever you want, because you are, in your own mind, a film god.

But we know the real story, GL is a hack, got lucky once or twice, and now just collects the money most of us are willing to give him.

Yes, I am a sucker for a light saber. I want one.

I've gotten to watch first-hand as two different productions switched to HD, but both of those were regular multi-camera SD shoots. Some of things that changed: Framing of shots, since they now must protect a 4:3 safe area within the 16:9 frame. Until most viewers have 16:9, that extra frame area will be used for just fall-off--they assume that viewers won't letterbox unless or until it's forced on them. This led to some slight re-blocking of the cameras, since one-shots in SD became kinda sorta two-shots in HD. Also, the guests (this was a talk show) and the makeup folks became a lot more picky about their work after seeing the new pictures.

The other production was a regular sports telecast. There, focus became an issue. The camera operators were often missing best focus due to their viewfinder monitors being too small. But down in the truck even slight focus errors were very visible on the HD production and match monitors. They ended up running extra video gain (sacrificed some noise performance) in order to get more depth of field and a little more forgiving focus environment. This was a while ago, so I don't know if viewfinder peaking circuits have been improved to help out with this or not. At the time there was discussion about putting focus overrides on the CCUs, thus allowing the VC touch up focus (as if a good VC doesn't have enough to do during a shoot! Oh I forgot, this was sports. Nevermind. ) In the end I don't think they did that.

In the year 2000 the SMPTE Hollywood Section got a tour of the new HD facilities for The Tonight Show. I don't remember seeing remote focus controls on the Sony HD CCUs I saw there. A funny sidenote: Jay Leno crashed our meeting that night, just as Tonight's TD was giving his presentation. Leno mentioned how doing the switchover to HD had been a long (11 months) and arduous process (not interrupting current production on the same stage) for everyone involved, and said some people had questioned whether the effort had been worth it. He then asked how many of us had HD sets at home. Out of the 350+ SMPTE members and guests that were there, not one hand went up! People were looking all around to see the expected show of hands, and seeing none, started to laugh. To which Leno retorted, "Thank you! I rest my case!" as he walked off in disgust (he was kidding ). It was a funny, kind of embarrassing moment, to see all those high-powered engineering types there with no one owning up to having an HD set yet, but as someone said later during the tour, "We're engineers. We can't afford those things!"

Cheers,

Paul
Gimpy Staff Projectionist, Senior Vidiot
Crown Neonopolis 14
Downtown Sin City, NV USA

Anyway, I'm told that the digital cameras they'll use will be the same Sony model which George Lucas used but without all the Panavision enhancements. The series is a drama which usually shoots single-camera style. I've heard that the digital camera will be attached to a big cable (which, I suppose, will lead to the monitors where the director usually watches). The sound mixer will also need to be hooked into this system. With the Arriflex cameras, of course, the camera was "cordless" and the director watched on a regular TV receiving a low-power video transmission. The sound equipment was also independent of anyone else's gear.

So... this will require many adjustments on the set. As for post-production, many attractive options are introduced. In the past, the exposed film was shipped from Utah to Los Angeles every night. Its was then processed, transfered to video and beamed back to Salt Lake City... where the off-line editors began their work immediately. Now they have the option of making as many "perfect" dubs of the original tapes right here before shipping anything to Los Angeles. Or will they transmit the raw footage to L.A. and never actually send a tape? I don't know.

I'm guessing they won't want to increase the number of set-ups nor the number of takes they would normally do per set-up. Such things would only kill more time and exhaust the cast members (and crew). So I don't imagine they'll take advantage of cost savings to increase the shooting ratio. I guess I'll find out.

From your location I assume you are talking about the Utah based Touched By an Angel. To answer Scott's question, I know this show got some torque from network a few years back, after CBS started a regular prime time HD feed, they wanted to include this show and the 16mm origination just didn't cut it in HD. I personaly viewed the Super 16 to HiDef transfer, and honestly, it looked pretty wretched stacked up against the other network prime time pruduction, the vast majority of which was 35mm based. I know that $$$ is a big issue on this show, so you this may be the way to go to keep things up and running.

That camera can be configured for standalone recording (ENG style) with a dockable D5HD transport on the back. Or it can be configured with a cable feed (usually just triax, not very thick or heavy) to a separate recording area, which sounds like what your production is going to do. Cable-wise it's not much different from feeding a video tap to a director's monitor. Also, some productions continue to do double-system sound with a separate sound cart, but send a feed from that cart to the HD recorder as an additional backup (D5HD supports four audio tracks). Timecode is probably still the same--no more crystal sync. Are they going to shoot 24P?

Triax cable (if that's what they'll be using) should present no problems for a Steadicam. Most operators simply tie the cable off to their battery belt, allowing enough slack to move the arm freely. An AC or camera utility can page the cable for the operator if need be.

I agree that the shooting ratio probably won't change. No need to if the director is confident and knows what he or she wants.

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So... I probably won't know what's really going on nor the nitty-gritty details until production begins again.

And, why did The Tonight Show switch to HDTV so early? I wonder. I remember when The Late Show with David Letterman was one of the first shows broadcast in stereo back in the mid-1980s. Seems like NBC likes to use gimmicks like this on late night programming. But... who's watching it that way? Personally, my 7 year-old big screen TV still works fine and I'm not about to dump it just for an HDTV monitor of approximately the same size. Who really has that kind of money (or wants to go into dept for such nonsense)? However, I'm tempted to get an HDTV receiver which would output a letterboxed picture to my NTSC monitor and give me Dolby Digital audio. It'd be somewhat less costly and give me some significant advantages right now... so it's tempting (but I'm guessing the price would be a lot lower if I waited a year).

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