hd or 16mm?

[85hal9000]

I planning to shoot a diplome film by the end of the year. It´s going to be black and white,almost old style look, inspired by Sigmund Freud´s books.
on the first meetings with the director, we decided to go 16mm (maybe b&w negative, or color negative then corrected b&W).
but now i was thinking if it was a good idea to maybe shoot it on HD (we won´t have any high standard Viper or Varicam, but something a little below, like Panasonic 900).
the film isn´t going to end on a film copy, and we won´t have much money for post/color grading...
what do you think I should take into consideration, not only in terms of money, but also final product quality?
is there any black and white movie shot HD (except sin city, which is not traditional b&w)?

thanks for your help and time! Matteo

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It's just a matter of which look you prefer. HD-to-b&w is going to look cleaner and sharper, but it may not feel like an "old movie" unless you play around with the image. I've had b&w shots in an HD movie, but I can't think of a whole HD feature turned b&w other than "Sin City", but there are some straight b&w shots in that movie to give you an idea of the look.

Maybe you should do some simple tests. Also, if you shoot HD for b&w, play around with some diffusion filters to recreate the halation effects of b&w, plus soften the image.

 

[Michael E. Palm]

After watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and reading the article in AC... I see a lot of strength in shooting with the Viper.
Being able to achieve a look like that with a HD camera goes to show where this industry really is leading towards.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, but are you convinced that they couldn't have gotten as good a look shooting on film, or is it simply an accomplishment that their HD looked as good as film would?

Their advantages in shooting HD were mainly for all the post-production visual effects, which not every movie has to deal with. That, and Fincher's penchant for shooting a huge number of takes.

 

[Michael E. Palm]

I believe it was a smart choice to use this camera. I could not visually see a difference between the switch to 35mm film. And when budgeting comes into it... I can understand why the Viper would be a suitable choice.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

When you're talking about a 150 million dollar movie, the cost of shooting it on 35mm film is not a huge percentage of the budget.

Like I said, shooting digitally mainly made it easier for their efx work plus shooting large numbers of takes without cutting.

But obviously such a movie could have been shot conventionally in 35mm film. Look at an efx heavy movie such as "300", shot on film, whereas "Sin City" and "The Spirit" were shot digitally, but both had similar approaches otherwise. There are plenty of efx-heavy movies shot on film, such as "Transformers".

After Harris Savides shot "Zodiac" on the Viper for Fincher, he basically wondered what the point was, to shoot digitally and work harder just to get something that almost was as good as 35mm film. "Benjamin Button" is an important work because it fits completely into conventional aesthetic notions of what a movie should look like, yet it was shot digitally, and it will probably be the first digitally-shot movie to get an Oscar nomination for its cinematography. It may even win, which would be a milestone for digital cinematography, that it finally seems to be roughly equal to what we have been getting for years by shooting on film and now can deliver a truly attractive-looking movie. That's significant, but is it revolutionary to just achieve parity to a quality level we've had already?

I'm not talking about the groundbreaking efx work, by the way, in terms of aging and de-aging actors using digital make-up.

Using the Viper certainly had some practical advantages for dealing with the nature of this movie, but as I said, plenty of efx heavy movies have managed to deal with film origination. And when you're talking about a movie of this budget scale, they could have managed to handle anything -- such as "Dark Knight" did by using IMAX for some major sequences.

If "Benjamin Button" proves that major movies should not be scared of shooting digitally anymore, "The Dark Knight" proves that major movies should not be scared of shooting large film formats either.

 

[Michael E. Palm]

If "Benjamin Button" proves that major movies should not be scared of shooting digitally anymore, "The Dark Knight" proves that major movies should not be scared of shooting large film formats either.

Well said, did it bother you seeing the aspect ratio change in "The Dark Knight"?