Documentary

[Christoffer Glans]

So, let's assume we can get about 5min on one 8gb card...
That means that if you want 40 hours of material you would need 480 CF cards. Or harddrives that can fit about 3840Gb of data.

I think Scarlet is a great camera for getting visually appealing documentaries, but let's get real here. If you make documentaries and are going to shoot 3K, then you need to plan you footage or not just shoot as you did before.
You can't just let the camera roll and hope that something happens.
It's another way of working.

So, while it's quality in a small package that enables for some "in the moment" footage in high resolution, it's also a camera that isn't really practical for most documentary filmmakers.

 

[millrick]

practical

practical

So, let's assume we can get about 5min on one 8gb card...
That means that if you want 40 hours of material you would need 480 CF cards. Or harddrives that can fit about 3840Gb of data.

While I agree that Compact Flash doesn't seem to be ,at the moment, practical for documentary making we shouldn't expect that to be the case forever. CF cards now have a maximum capacity of 137GB with a transfer rate of 133 MB/sec. I predict that specification will be increased dramatically in the next few years.

Compact Flash cards won't be used just once, as tapes are. They'll be immediately copied onto another drive and reused.

If we were to use portable hard drives instead, we don't need to bring 3 terabyte drives into the field, just ones large enough to record a day's footage.

While documentaries do need lots of storage, we're used to that already. However, if a crew is going to be in the field for days or weeks on end, without a practical way to transfer CF cards to another storage medium, then yes, tapes are the way to go.

 

[Jason Murphy]

That said, if you're out in the field, there's something to be said for a small camera with really sturdy construction (i.e. milled aluminum or whatnot), that, at least as far as the recording mechanism goes, has no moving parts to get dust and sand into.

Also, for working in a more low-key fashion, or when trying to steal a shot, the Scarlet is certainly lower profile than the EX-1.

 

[Jason Murphy]

I think Scarlet is a great camera for getting visually appealing documentaries, but let's get real here. If you make documentaries and are going to shoot 3K, then you need to plan you footage or not just shoot as you did before.
You can't just let the camera roll and hope that something happens.
It's another way of working.

I guess this is really the heart of the matter. It all depends on how you want to/have to work, or the situation you're shooting in.

The "record everything imaginable and hope something sticks" method of shooting certainly has its uses, but also some limitations. Like I mentioned earlier, a 5 second or so pre-roll function would certainly be a boon here, so you're not just shooting perpetually and hoping that magic happens in front of the camera.

On the other hand, there is a long history of amazing documentaries that have been shot on 35mm and 16mm (which, admittedly, I suppose would usually count as the "visually appealing" type), for which 80 hours of footage was definitely not the norm, and more or less by necessity, more care was often taken while shooting, because burning a take didn't mean using an extra $2-3 for a miniDV tape.

Brilliant docs have come from both schools of shooting, and I think that at least for the latter, (and in some situations for the former), Scarlet could work wonderfully.

 

[Joel Kaye]

the Scarlet is certainly lower profile than the EX-1.

Seemed like Scarlet was a little bigger than the EX1 when I saw it... the EX1 is pretty small. They'll be close in size probably.

The problem with dumping footage in the field is it's one more thing to manage. And if you copy to one hard drive and it fails then what? You need to dump to a mirrored raid or two drives. See what a pain this becomes once you're doing it for real with important footage?

To me that's the part of the workflow that needs to go away somehow. Right now my RedDrive is the risky solution to that. But on important stuff I'll have a RAID on set. It's the only way.

 

[Jim Klatt]

This is one of the reason why I use tapes still(HDV). The image might not be as perfect, but the workflow is so much more manageable and less expensive for me. I don't have to worry about cards running out of time, so I don't need an external hard drive and laptop to lug around or slow me down. I also don't have to worry about something failing. The workflow brings more responsibilities that I often don't have time to cater to.

 

[Joseph Hutson]

On February 17, 2009 analog standard definition television broadcasting will be terminated in the USA. August 31, 2011 is the date for Canada. It's 2011 for Japan as well, and 2012 for the U.K. Broadcasters worldwide are commissioning high definition documentaries right now, and as a result, standard definition documentaries will become harder and harder to sell. The internet will remain a low definition medium for the foreseeable future, but theatrical documentaries are increasingly being shot in HD.

While Digital is going to be mandatory in 2/09 in the US, that doesn't mean HD will be. I know broadcasters are going HD during the switch, but a ton of people are getting converters...not new HD TV's.

Broadcasters are also already delivering Digital SD, so SD is not going to be out the window in 09.

Before you defend yourself millrick, I did not say that you said SD would be out in 09, I am just clarifying it.

 

[Rob Gardner]

My clients (PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic) are requiring SD (digibeta) and HD (HDCAM 1080) tapes for deliverables. We shoot in DVCproHD and up res with a Kona 3 card to HDcam. I am buying a Red as an experiment to see if we can make it work within the hardware workflow we have now (8 Core Mac, Kona 3 card, Digibeta deck and HDcam deck). DVCproHD tapes are not cheap, but another consideration is the archival value of what you shoot. I have been making roughly $3,000 a month from footage I shot in 1996 for PBS that is being sold by Getty. How will we archive Red material? A stack of hard drives, I suppose.

My sense is that Red will be a fine camera for documentary productions, unless they are severely limited in budget. Our shows have tended to be higher budget and we have always had someone pulling focus anyway. On the other hand, budgets seem to be going nowhere but down in the documentary world, and production values seem to be less important to the buyers.