April 24, 2001
Filmmakers Say Digital Video Makes Documentary More Democratic, More Personal
By Arun Kristian Das
In 1999, Cleveland native Alan Roth had the good fortune of attending the first reunion of the New York Art Quartet, a group of jazz musicians who played together in 1964 and 1965. Roth arranged to interview the musicians, and even set up a five-camera shoot of their reunion concert.
The shoot cost Roth, an independent filmmaker now based in New York who was essentially self-financing the project, about $2,500. This budget included deferred wages for his crew, insurance, and the cost of the medium itself--10 digital video cassettes--about $130. He borrowed four of the five cameras from fellow independent filmmakers in addition to using his own camera--a Sony VX1000, which can be bought at The Wiz for less than $3,000. All five cameras were of the relatively new DV (digital video) format. For Roth, using digital videotape rather than film, which is exponentially more expensive, was the only realistic way to get elaborate concert shots in the can.
"When you really want to have that multicamera shoot, it was within budget, and that was something that you just couldn't think of doing in the past," Roth said. "It does make it possible for those people who have their own particular vision to have a chance to express themselves through this medium."
The "past" Roth referred to is before recent advances in video technology resulted in a so-called digital revolution. The advent of compact, inexpensive, high-quality digital video cameras and editing systems has lead to the "democratization" of filmmaking.
The high cost of making movies has long been the mastiff at the gates of the industry. While the Hollywood budgets are constantly rising, the independent scene has always found ways to produce quality works at more modest budgets. Much cheaper than film stock, videotape until recently had been a poor alternative to celluloid. Its resolution and color fidelity is significantly inferior, and its grainy quality is magnified when blown up for projection on movie theater screens, which can cost between $4,000 and $60,000 depending on the length of the movie and the transfer process used, according to the Web site DVFilmmaking.com.
So, features and documentaries shot on video are naturally more suited to television broadcast rather than theatrical release, and in fact many TV documentaries, such as programs for PBS, A&E and the 24-hour news channels, are shot on high-quality (but bulky) analog video equipment that uses a format called Betacam--the same gear used for electronic news gathering. But TV news and TV documentary equipment has its own high price point. With cameras costing upwards of $30,000 and editing equipment hitting the $100,000 mark, such ENG technology has always been at least a tad beyond the budgets of many independent productions.
For these underground and grass-roots filmmakers, up until 1994 the only alternative to renting Beta systems or incurring huge debt to pay for film stock was using an analog video camera that could be found in the closet of any camcorder-happy parents of a newborn. But these home video formats, such as Super-VHS and Hi-8, were and continue to be poor substitutes for professional-level equipment. Many documentarians made do with these formats, shooting tape after tape of footage, hoping usable shots would be found in the editing room.
Indeed, the extremely well-received "Hoop Dreams," a documentary that follows two inner-city boys through four years of high school as they strive to reach college basketball and the NBA, was shot entirely with mid-level analog Hi-8 camcorders. But it is rare that a movie produced with such equipment gains widespread attention, and even then, "Hoop Dreams" was appreciated mostly for its compelling story and editing style, which made up for the raw look of the pictures themselves.
What digital video has done is provide low-budget filmmakers, artists and even journalists with is a portable and cheap format that can actually compete with the big boys in terms of picture and sound quality. To most viewers on most televisions, DV looks just as clean and crisp as the professional-level formats. DV is a high-resolution format that records video and audio signals as digital information, which can then be transferred to a computer for editing without any loss in signal quality. Nowadays, many computers sold for home use feature video editing capabilities, and while such software is not nearly as sophisticated as the $100,000 professional studio systems, for under $5,000 a resourceful filmmaker who can work within the device's limitations can worry more about creativity and storytelling than budgetary concerns.
A standard DV cassette that holds 60 minutes of footage costs between $8 and $20, depending on brand and quality rating. By comparison, 50 feet of Kodachrome Super 8mm film stock costs about $10, but lasts only about three minutes, and processing 50 feet costs another $10. Super 8 is the cheapest of films to shoot and process--the more common and higher-quality 16mm film stock costs upward of $40 per 100 feet, with processing running much higher. In addition to DV's comparatively low per-minute cost, video is immediate--a filmmaker can play back footage right after shooting to make sure nothing went wrong, and videotape can be used over again if necessary.
And that is really the big coup of the DV revolution--it gives anybody with a few thousand dollars the chance to tell those stories that would be hard-pressed to find any funding in the world of film stocks and bigger-budget PBS or HBO docs. These stories are oftentimes of a very personal nature, such as documentaries about the filmmaker's own family. Nandini Sikand, a New York-based television producer and independent filmmaker, created "Don't Fence Me In," a documentary shot on Super-8 film that chronicles the life of Krishna Sikand, the filmmaker's mother, against the backdrop of India's political and social history. Sikand decided to spend the money on Super-8 because of the rich texture of film. She said that many indie filmmakers who had long embraced Super-8 as a relatively lower-cost medium of choice have now similarly embraced DV for its size, versatility and price.
"A lot of people who used to work in Super-8 and still do are now approaching DV as not just another video format but as another cheap alternative in terms of the quality of the technology but also just in terms of what one can do with it," Sikand said. "I see a lot of crossover to DV of people who work in these formats that have been marginalized."
Naturally, such easy access also means a glut of mediocre work and even good work might never gets seen by anybody for lack of a distribution deal. "I think you're going to have cameras in the hands of people who've never made a film and I think that can be wonderful, but it can also spawn a number of disaster films in the process," said Sikand, whose current project is a film about the myth of Amazonian women and its relation to breast cancer, shot on DV and Super-8. "[DV] is very unobtrusive as a format, and I think that's really changed how we work, and for that reason I also think its changed the kinds of films that have been made."
It's a common sentiment. Working with cameras that weigh less than 10 pounds and can be carried in knapsacks proves to be very convenient for small film crews or solo shooters, especially in crowded urban settings where the filmmaker would rather remain relatively inconspicuous.
"If you go somewhere, and you're shooting on film, basically everything stops and people watch," Roth said. "If you're shooting on [DV], people are so used to seeing video cameras that its not as intimidating. You can, in a sense, be more intrusive and get away with it."
Despite its growing role in the production of more risky and avant garde films, the DV revolution still faces tough competition from big productions and skepticism from many stations and producers. Nonetheless, those naysayers are taking notice. And some are acknowledging the format's power and influence.
"DV has democratized documentary-making, but it is still an underground movement, and its potential impact, still nascent, has yet to be felt in mainstream broadcasts," said June Cross, a veteran documentary producer for Frontline. "DV can cut the cost of a mainstream, i.e. PBS or traditional network-oriented, documentary by as much as two-thirds; but it requires greater skill, or maybe just different skill." Cross has produced such highly regarded films as "The Two Nations of Black America" and "Secret Daughter."
And yet, Cross acknowledged that the format has allowed independent filmmakers with real talent break through "the glass ceiling" by producing compelling stories on low budgets and making an impression on executives at certain broadcast outlets such as HBO, which has a reputation of fostering cutting-edge documentary filmmaking. "I just watched a doc, 'Raisin' a Ruckus' by Katie Galloway ... on organizers of protests against the [World Trade Organization]," Cross said. "This kind of work would never otherwise be commissioned because the costs are so great; yet the work has never before been so needed as professional broadcasters have less and less time and even less money to do the kind of reporting that needs to be done."
What the technology has done, quite simply, is allow enterprising independent producers get a shot at doing the stories that the networks don't have the patience for or the courage to do. Cross lamented the lack of innovation that seems to pervade television studios, and lauded DV for opening the door to creativity.
"I don't see how broadcast journalists could get any lazier than reading the day's papers and pitching stories based on some print reporter's enterprise," she said. "If their less seasoned colleagues are taking a small camera and documenting a corner of life their bosses would never green light, what harm is it?" ###