Last August, director Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Life Aquatic”) asked me to shoot the behind-the-scenes show for his latest feature project, “The Darjeeling Limited,” which he planned to shoot in India over the fall and winter. Owing to his unique style and sensibilities, the director didn't want a typical behind-the-scenes show. Instead, he suggested a far more personal, engaged approach, one in which my presence as a shooter and interlocateur would figure prominently.
Anderson and I worked together 15 years ago on an early version of “Bottle Rocket.” And he wanted to use the same off-screen interlocateur approach in the behind-the-scenes show because he thought it would highlight the project's authenticity. Indeed, the demand for authenticity was central to the entire production. Throughout the project, I strove to capture the essence of the larger project and the journey we and hundreds of technicians and craftspeople embarked on aboard a specially constructed Indian Railways train chattering across the Rajasthani desert.
The right camera for the job
My assignment in India had multiple components, including a one-hour HBO program and a 30-minute behind-the-scenes show for DVD, in addition to podcasts and electronic press kit (EPK) interviews featuring members of the cast. All of this demanded a versatile workhorse that could handle the rigors of four months of virtually non-stop production. In this context, my chosen camera — Sony XDCAM HD PDW-F350 — had to meet many environmental and operational challenges, not the least of which were searing desert heat, persistent blowing sand and marauding bands of ill-tempered monkeys.
High-contrast balance
The low humidity and perpetual cloudless skies contributed to a harsh natural look, the unattenuated midday sun of the Rajasthani desert being reminiscent of the cursed summer light in southern California.
Shooting high-contrast exteriors is a major challenge for any camera regardless of format, and this was certainly the case for the F350 with its diminutive 1/2in imager. High-resolution chipsets in a reduced size configuration tend to sacrifice a degree of speed and highlight latitude in exchange for the extended definition. While such compromises were evident, scrupulous attention to the camera's knee setting greatly mitigated the deleterious effect visible on screen.
Coming to grips with the midday exteriors, I initially pushed the camera knee upward in order to maintain clean clear whites in the brightest highlights. I had noticed in my first days that the default knee of 85 tended to produce dingy gray whites, especially in Anderson's white linen jacket, his customary wardrobe on and off the set. While setting the knee to 98 ameliorated the off-white condition, the elevated knee also increased the incidences of clipping, a fate worse than the compromised whites I was trying to avoid.
In the end, I concluded it was best not to second-guess the F350's default knee value. When shooting in uncontrolled conditions like those encountered in the Rajasthani desert, the default value of 85 produced the best results without clipping — a major consideration in HD when the finished program is likely to be magnified many times on a large-screen display.
Low light capability
Shooting alongside the Panaflex GII with Cinemascope lenses and 5218 stock, the camcorder captured a roughly comparable gray scale in low light. In general, where the film camera struggled, so did the F350, producing a kind of common ground in the two media types with respect to digital noise and film grain. A night campfire scene, for example, posed a particularly tough challenge as it was captured without supplemental fill light. The film camera's struggle for traction closely mirrored the F350 shooting behind the scenes.
In my case, I was able to reframe significantly to take advantage of brightly lit elements such as the edges of actors' faces or the burning wick of their torches. I use this edge-light strategy often to increase the low-light effectiveness of small-format HD cameras. Viewers are more willing to accept substantial underexposure as long as something in the frame is bright enough to draw the eye away from swirling noise (or film grain). The actual speed of the camcorder appears to be approximately ISO 80 -160. I used this as a working reference with the camera shutter turned off.
The devil in the details
As most shooters are aware, an appropriate detail setting is critical for capturing tasteful professional images. In Sony camcorders, the factory default is invariably set too high, leading most shooters to lower the detail setting to -10 — a conservative but prudent setting given the anticipated large-screen presentation of my long-form program.
For the EPK interviews featuring the principal cast, including Anjelica Huston, I opted to further lower the master detail to -15 along with reduced skin detail. The camcorder's logical albeit reduced set of menu offerings facilitates this kind of tweaking, underlying the versatility and inherent value of the camcorder for shooting EPKs, behind-the-scenes and similar-type work.
Going tapeless in pubic
This is not really as risqué as it sounds. The XDCAM's disc-based workflow proved to be highly efficient in the field. Despite the daily thick coating of sand and grit that formed on the camera, lens and me, the disc-based recording system operated flawlessly in the cramped quarters of “The Darjeeling Limited” and in a range of arduous environmental conditions.
The easy review of recorded clips accessible through the thumbnail menu facilitated the creation of a meltdown reel, greatly reducing the clutter of miscues and other unwanted footage entering the pipeline. I shot more than 150 hours of XDCAM HD over the course of my three-month assignment. I hardly needed to handle and manage an additional 40 or 50 hours of junk I knew I'd never use.
The disc-based XDCAM system also facilitated the technical checks I conducted each evening, as focus, backfocus, color balance and audio quality for each clip could be verified in seconds. Moreover, the camcorder's noiseless operation on set proved to be a real boon, as the production boom and mic would frequently sweep by inches away.
An operational perspective
I used the camcorder's iLink/Firewire output to capture SD into Final Cut Pro for assembly of sequences and subsequent authoring of screening discs inside DVD Studio Pro. The long-form file naming convention enabled by a recent software update proved to be a godsend as it permitted a highly efficient management of more than 125 hours of recorded footage.
Of course, not every shoot and assignment is peaches and cream with respect to camera gear. Several of my peeves are not specific to the F350. One is the inability to see critical focus in the viewfinder. Not only are today's viewfinders, regardless of manufacturer, woefully inadequate for practical use, but also the focus markings on the lens are blocked by the finder. Therefore, zone focusing is not even an option without removing one's eye from the camera.
The famed documentarian Albert Maysles once addressed this issue by extending a makeshift plastic pointer from the focus ring to facilitate viewing. Shooting behind-the-scenes or documentary fare requires fast and efficient operation with minimal fussing. Not seeing clear focus in the viewfinder and not seeing focus marks on the lens barrel is a miserable scenario that leads to many missed and out-of-focus shots.
The F350, like other camcorders in its class, could use an integrated dust cover over the left-side toggle switches. This is logical given the exposed nature of these switches and the relative ease with which they can be inadvertently repositioned.
In the SD black-and-white viewfinder, it's not immediately obvious (despite the on-screen characters) if the white balance switch, for instance, has moved. This leads to my criticism of the single rotating filter wheel in the camcorder. The camera uses a recessed push button to engage the daylight filter. In bright daylight, the status of this button is not at all apparent. Nor is the effect visible in the viewfinder notwithstanding the characters displayed in the finder that can be too easily missed.
In addition, the record tally in the viewfinder is also positioned too far off-axis. This makes it easy to overlook in the heat of battle.
All in all, the PDW-F350 performed beautifully, and its outputted images have received rave reviews from the director and studio executives. Operationally, the camera is extremely robust with a solid workflow as exemplified by the XDCAM menu system and iLink/Firewire connection.
Barry Braverman is a veteran cinematographer with more than 20 years experience in feature films, documentaries and music videos. He is currently serving as a digital media expert and consultant to major studios. His latest book, “Video Shooter,” is available from CMP Books atwww.cmpbooks.com.
