How can BetaSP be used for Digital Cinematography I hear you ask, SP is after all an analogue format. I’m not out to knock Digibeta or any of the many other digital formats that are around, all I am suggesting is that you don’t need to use Digibeta to obtain that much sought after "filmic" look. The most important part of achieving a "filmic" look is the way you plan and shoot the subject, not the camera you use or the format you record on.

Optex for example produce a wide range of "digital cinematography" accessories for use with Sony Digibeta cameras. These accessories don’t actually change the way the pictures are recorded, they merely allow you to use film style accessories such as prime lenses and extension viewfinders. Many of these add-ons can in fact be used with standard BetaSP cameras.

So how does the use of a prime lens make the pictures more "filmic"? Well the answer is they don’t. What they do give is very high quality pictures due to the simpler optics required and force you to either move the camera or change lenses instead of just zooming in and out as you would with a more standard video lens. The fact that you have to move the camera to get a tighter shot gives a more realistic point of view than zooming in, after all our eyes don’t have zoom lenses. It also means that you have to think about the shot that little bit more and plan the shoot in more detail. Of course you can always treat a zoom lens like a prime lens, just use two or three fixed focal lengths and leave the zoom rocker alone.

One of the camera add-ons that really can make a difference is the use of a matte box and filters. Most video cameras use sophisticated (some more sophisticated than others!) electronics to make the image as detailed as possible, giving very high edge contrast. These "hard" edges are not something you normally associate with film. While you can turn down the amount of detail enhancement applied by most professional video cameras you do normally need some to maintain a reasonable looking picture. One way of softening the hard edges is by using a diffuser type filter such as a "pro-mist". Filters are a great way of altering the look of a picture; graduated filters can be used to reduce the brightness of a bright sky, bringing the contrast range to within the range the camera can handle. However they should be used with care, the aim is not to add some sort of psychedelic effect but to enhance the image.

Without doubt the one thing that will alter the look of your final image more than anything is lighting. Most film shoots will make use of large soft light sources, not just a blonde or redhead on a stand. You can easily turn your blonde into a soft light by using a diffuser, but make sure its big enough and in the right place. Also keep an eye on the depth of field, a short depth of field tends to look more "filmic" as it mimics the way our eyes work, focusing on one subject at a time and not the whole scene.

Okay, so we’ve seen how lighting etc. can be used to get a "filmic" look, but what about the cameras themselves. The real advantage that the current range of Digibeta cameras give you is the fact that you can adjust just about every setting and then store the settings on a memory card. Most modern cameras can be adjusted to some degree, the level of adjustment depending on the individual camera. I use a Sony DXCD30W docked with a PVV3 BetaSP recorder and you can alter almost every aspect of the camera’s set-up. It hasn’t got a memory card but instead has four built in memories. If you need to store any more settings than that then it’s simply a matter of writing the settings down.

Once the shoot is over there is still much that can be done to get that "filmic" look. Most films comprise mainly of sequences of shots that have been cut together, dissolves are only used in a transition from one time or location to another. Again this comes back to the original planning of the shoot. If you’ve been careful at the shooting stage then there should be no need to use dissolves during most sequences. All too often dissolves are used to cover bad looking cuts. Careful grading (colour correction) can be a help. Often the pictures will look more like film if the blacks are slightly crushed. Grading is especially useful if you can’t adjust the gamma settings on your camera, a good quality colour corrector will allow you to tweak the gamma of the picture, allowing you to match more closely the gamma of film stock.

Another technique used is the removal of one or the doubling up of the two fields that make up each frame of the picture, after all film only has frames. This should be done with care as simply removing one field will halve the vertical resolution and may lead to some nasty jagged edges on near horizontal lines. A better method is to combine both fields into one new field that can be shown twice in each frame. In theory removing a field should make the pictures look poorer, but most people seem to prefer the slightly flickery look it gives.

All of these techniques can be applied to almost any format, including BetaSP. If you compare well shot BetaSP and Digibeta side by side you’d have to look hard to see the difference (except perhaps for any dropouts). So it’s not the format or whether it’s digital or analogue, it’s the way you approach the job in the first place, that’s the most important factor in producing a "filmic" look.

Over the last few months I have been working on a number of projects where the director has wanted a "filmic" look. I have shot everything on BetaSP with my Sony D30W in anamorphic 16:9. Through the camera’s set-up menus I reduced the detail correction by 70%, reduced the master black level by 10%, altered the gamma to –30 and reduced the camera sensitivity by 3db. In addition I used a range of diffuser and pastel filters with my standard Fujinon Zoom lens. For Lighting I used a Blonde and three Red Heads. The blonde was normally used with a large diffuser or reflector and the Red Heads used as spot and fill lights. The rushes were then edited up to Digibeta. Some grading was used to further enhance the look of some of the scenes and then the two fields were combined.

I am very pleased with the results, the soft edges and warm tones make the pictures much more pleasing to the eye. I don’t believe that you would be able to see the difference between the pictures I have obtained using BetaSP and the pictures I would have got using Digibeta. I’m sure you could probably measure the difference with some expensive test gear, but at the end of the day the viewer doesn’t care whether the pictures are technically superior or not, all the viewer wants is good looking pictures and a well told story.

The new (and not so new) Digital formats all have their role to play as television moves on especially when it comes to editing. However they don’t mean that BetaSP is no good. Many cameramen have a lot of money invested in a good quality BetaSP kit, so why not save the money you would spend on paying extra for a Digibeta camera and instead give the cameraman more time to compose and light the shot properly. Of course you could always shoot on "digi" and allow the cameraman a little more time, but often budgets wont stretch to both.

These are my views on the subject of "Digital Cinematography".

Alister Chapman