June 23, 2004
In 1970, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles caught the world's attention with the racially charged Watermelon Man. The Godfrey Cambridge comedy was daring to some at the time, but Van Peebles wanted to go further with his next project-to put on film his unique take on the turbulent times. "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971) had thematic links to Van Peebles' previous success, but it wasn't designed to go down as easy; as a result, he had a considerably harder time getting it made. Now, Van Peebles' son, actor-director Mario Van Peebles, recounts his father's tribulations in his own film, "Baadasssss." (The distributor rejected its original and more evocative title, Life Lessons: How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass.)
Here the son plays the father in an unusual film-part documentary, part dramatic re-creation. While the original was shot in 16mm with additional scenes in 35mm, the younger Van Peebles took advantage of some of the newest digital camera equipment available.
Veteran cinematographer Robert Primes, ASC-the only person so far to receive the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers Award for shooting a dramatic series (MDs) in high definition-is comfortable working with film or digital equipment. "Both methods can give you great results," he says, "and both methods have their own drawbacks. Producers are always wise to involve the director of photography in these decisions."
The limited production budget Van Peebles was able to wrangle from Showtime rendered the option of 35mm prohibitively expensive and discussions initially veered toward 16mm. It seemed to make sense for this early '70s period piece about the creation of a low budget film shot mostly in that format. Primes and the producers were able to negotiate very favorable deals to go the 16mm route before they finally decided to use digital. "Baadasssss" was shot in high definition with the newest iteration of Sony's CineAlta 24fps progressive scan camera, specially modified by Panavision for feature film shooting.
The decision, says Primes, turned out to be more appropriate than he'd originally imagined because of Van Peebles' shooting style.
In any side-by-side comparison between the cost of shooting film and HD, one item that stands in HD's favor every time is the price of media; videotape sells for a fraction of what 16mm film costs even after deep discounts, and tape, of course, requires no processing.
The low cost of the media isn't always a decisive factor, Primes explains, because there are other expenses associated specifically with shooting HD that can offset those savings. On "Baadasssss" however, it turned out to be extremely important because of the large amount of material Van Peebles ended up shooting.
"Mario is a very effusive and energetic man," Primes notes. "He was starring and directing and he's extremely ambitious. He's a practical person but he is so full of ideas and he milks everything, so we shot a ton of material. Much more than we'd planned. If we'd been shooting 16mm film, we'd have seriously busted the budget."
Primes explains that the look of the film also benefited from a digital finish, which would have been cost-prohibitive had they used film for the shoot. "We shot the whole thing with late '60s/early '70s psychedelia in mind," says the cinematographer, who digitally enhanced the color at Hollywood postproduction facility LaserPacific.
"For some parts we souped up the colors and saturated them. If you oversaturate colors, the picture gets 'noisy' and takes on an artificial look. Normally this wouldn't be desirable, but for "Baadasssss," we pushed things past the point of just looking artificial to where colors were just popping off the screen. Our use of over-the-top colors is all part of the feeling of the '70s we were going for."
While there are still drawbacks to digital cinematography-it can be harder to light for and the equipment can be less mobile than the film equivalent-Primes expresses great pride in the visuals, noting that some of his most respected colleagues left a recent screening convinced they'd seen a movie shot on 35mm film.
The technology, he adds, is constantly evolving. "Not that long ago," Primes recalls, "digital [camera equipment] was of such poor quality that you couldn't get a decent image without using all sorts of tricks and tools. Now it's getting better and better to the point where, if used really well, it can be indistinguishable from film in some circumstances."
Primes says that Both Sony and Panasonic, manufacturers of the two major competing high definition systems aimed at the feature film market, are making great strides in addressing the problems generally associated with shooting in high definition-particularly the medium's infamous difficulty with handling overexposure.
"This stuff is changing all the time," Primes explains. "A cinematographer might have done a test a year ago and decided HD's all wrong for a certain type of show, but those results might no longer be valid."
.
|