American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 14

We're letters

good.
And

Been There, Done That

Jay Holben's piece

this
season's Earth: Final Conflict ("To Boldly
Go...," AC October 2000), which covered
the ins and outs of trailblazing with the
new Sony 24p cameras, was both
on

balanced and well-informed. Co-direc¬
of

photography Moxness and
amply demonstrated that
the new technology doesn't - and
shouldn't
frighten them. It was obvi¬
ous, however, that they were completely
tors

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This is all meant to merely inform
film brethren of the role of a valuable
video crew member. I don't expect that
my

VOs will be added to

episodic productions

crews as more

go to

24p - plain,

old, hide-bound tradition will prevent
that. ("What? Drop an AC to add a VO? I
don't think so.") I only hope that as more

producers, directors and cinematogra¬
phers "discover" video tools, they bear in

-

mind that

of the role certain craftsmen

livings at this work for a good, long
while. And just maybe we've been there
and done that already.

play in video production. They were
keenly aware of the role and importance
of the telecine colorist in the film-capture
process, but have no idea that in the
video world, there is traditionally an
equivalent to the colorist on set called
the video operator or video controller.
Most film people remained uninformed
about this fact.
The video operator
be confused with the

(VO) is not to
Sony "tech"

referred to in the article, who was

present for the first several days of
shooting [with the new camera]. The VO
is the cinematographer's color timer in
the field. It's commendable that Mssrs.
Moxness and Durnan

spoke of

wave¬

some

of

us

have made hand¬

some

-

Mark Sandford

Redondo Beach, CA
Now Just

Digital Second...
some surprise the arti¬
cle about the digital post of 0 Brother,
Where Art Thou? by Bob Fisher (October
2000). We at Digital Film Lab in Copen¬
hagen have posted 18 longform produc¬
tions using the "digital intermediate"
process over the last three years. Six
U.K. productions (three of which were
full features) have gone through our
system, and we are currently working on
a

I read with

forms, detail level, knee point and slope

four features. We have recorded

and the like with

five million frames to

authority, but are
we to believe that they have a true
understanding of the camera's dozens of
operational parameters? It is the VO's
responsibility to make these options
known to the cinematographer for any
given scene, to demonstrate them, and
to advise him of any downside to their
use. Further, it is his responsibility to
maintain visual continuity from shot to
shot, even and especially when shooting
out of sequence. Setup of the color-grad¬
ing high-definition monitor is an impor¬
tant part of the VO's duties, because that
is ultimately the cinematographer's
primary reference. Lighting a scene to a
mis-adjusted monitor can bring a cine¬
matographer nothing but grief.
some

over

interneg, and the
digital-intermediate process is widely
accepted as the new postproduction
standard in Scandinavia. We are opening
a facility in London in November.
The first full feature to go through
the system was the Swedish film Zingo
(from Super 16) in the spring of 1998.
This

was

before Pleasantville, of which

only 60 percent was digitally posted. So
the Coen brothers' film is not

a

"land¬

mark film," as claimed in the article.

Some productions that have used the

digital-grading possibilities extensively
RAT, directed by Steve Barron;
Wisconsin Death Trip (Super 16, mixed
black-and-white and color), directed by
James Marsh; In Absentia, directed by
are:
American Cinematographer - December 2000

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