Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

TAPELESS PRODUCTIONOne advantage (in some cases a disadvantage) of digital cinematographyis that there are many options for the actual recording, transport,postproduction and archiving. All the options can be a bit confusingsometimes and almost always require some research and testing. Itis important to test your workflow at the beginning of the project.The results of your tests may affect what camera you choose, howyou archive the data, and so on.It is now clear that the future is tapeless cameras, which recorddirectly to digital media such as hard drives, Panasonic’s P2 cards,even directly to laptop computer. Tapeless cameras shoot as file-based,which means that each individual shot is a separate computer file thatcan be randomly accessed. These files are like any computer file: theycan be quickly copied, transferred, or backed up.MetadataMetadata means “data about data.” Digital files from tapeless camerascan have identifying information attached to them, which makesthem more useful and vastly easier to keep track of, sort, and classify.They contain metadata that can be searched just as one would searchfor a specific file on a computer. Metadata can contain a myriad ofinformation: timecode, date and time, length of shot, which cameraand lens was used, and in some cases (with GPS) even where the shotwas taken. As discussed elsewhere, metadata is an important part ofshooting and working with RAW video files.With film and tape cameras, it is often the custom to bump a slate:shoot the slate as a separate shot. Don’t do this with a tapeless camera,because you will just end up with a disconnected shot that may haveno relation to the scene it is slating.Some of the characteristics of tapeless/file-based workflow are:sivededicated tape decks, and so on.Tapeless WorkflowsTapeless, file-based workflow is substantially different from workingoff recorded tape. The advantages are numerous, but there are somepitfalls you need to steer clear of, one being loss of data. There aremany ways to approach tapeless workflow, and each editor generallyfine tunes the method to suit their equipment, work style, and typeof job.With tape, it is rare to lose the footage or have it be unplayable(although it can happen); in a tapeless workflow, every individualshot is a separate computer file recorded at high speed onto a harddrive or flash memory. It is easy for data to become corrupted or belost in a hard drive failure, or to simply have the unit lost, damagedor, destroyed. It is also easy to misplace or erase video files. Harddrives are highly unreliable as a form of video storage; always be sureto back up to at least two hard drives — three is better.To guard against these catastrophic losses, many productionsemploy a data wrangler, whose only job is to download the footagefrom the camera, put it in the right location, and above all — backit up! The data wrangler replaces and does mostly the same job as aloader on a film shoot.HD cinematography171