While video and digital dailies are touted for their economy, they may cost your production more than print dailies in the long run.
Until recently, viewing a previous day's work onscreen in the form of print dailies was the industry standard for theater-bound film projects. Remarkably, throughout the entire history of the movie business, no one had ever flinched at this prospect. No line producers screamed about the cost, no directors complained that they couldn't watch dailies at home, and no editors balked because the cutting process was too slow. It simply was the way things were done. Nowadays, instances in which every circled take on a camera report is printed on film are becoming frighteningly less common particularly in the low-budget world, but even on some surprisingly high-end shows.
"There seems to be a disrespect on many levels of the industry for what we do as cinematographers, and that's very disturbing, considering our enormous role in the creation of a film," says director of photography Robert Primes, ASC (My Antonia, Money Talks and the upcoming A Murder of Crows). "The trend toward using video dailies in a feature-film environment is a prominent indicator of that."
Even though certain members of the production hierarchy may be satisfied to review performance or other key elements of a motion picture on tape, for a cinematographer engaged in shooting a feature, not being able to see printed film within a timely basis is the equivalent of flying blind. "By taking away any of the elements brought to a movie by its photography, you lose a tremendous amount of the movie's emotional appeal," Primes continues. "Print dailies are the only way for directors of photography to measure whether they're being too cautious, too reckless or right on the money with their approach to the story."
ASC Vice President Steven Poster concurs. "When I'm shooting a feature, I don't look at tape dailies because they make me second-guess myself. Since video images have no relation to the film image, it can throw my eye."
Some would claim this might reflect a purist or anti-progress attitude, but as anyone long involved in the industry would know, cinematographers have always led the charge into the technological future, and herein lies the weakness for much of the pro-video dailies sentiment. In a world in which directing and producing are continually proving to be entry-level positions, key management and creative slots above the cinematographer are often occupied by people whose knowledge of the job's requirements and experience with implementing them are to put it kindly limited. With the debate over film versus tape dailies, this inevitably invites a comparison of two processes which don't have anything in common.
No matter what the format or how good the transfer, the current state of video technology quantifiably discounts precise judgment of every factor regarding lighting, exposure, filtration or scope as it relates to the big screen. In simpler terms, video dailies are useless to the feature cinematographer.
Dan Muscarella is the director of film and video timing at Los Angeles-based Consolidated Film Industries. Having personally supervised the color correction for the film versions of James Cameron's Titanic and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he's well-qualified to comment on the matter. "The only way to know what a director of photography is getting both technically and artistically is by printing dailies. It's impossible to discern any of that on video because there's no correlation between the red, green and blue exposure lights you get with film and the R-G-B readings on a vector-scope. There's too much contrast with video, the image is too hard and there's no way to standardize. Video dailies certainly have their place, but I can't see them working for anyone who cares about what ends up in the theaters."
On the plus side, the new technologies allow for unbelievable speed and versatility in postproduction, but even a cutter who works on the Avid is at a disadvantage without print dailies at hand. Editor C. Timothy O'Meara, ACE (Music From Another Room, The Grass Harp, Hoosiers), for one, really loves the digital systems currently in use. "The fact is that you can only see the character within the character the smaller details in the eyes onscreen," declares O'Meara. "Things you notice there impressions, feelings stay with you later when you go to cut on the monitor and all that is lost. Video dailies are like sitting in front of the TV. With film dailies you're really seeing the movie, and after all, that's what you're supposed to be making, isn't it?"
Editor Kate Sanford (Outside Providence, American Buffalo, Federal Hill) highlights another weakness. "Every so often while I'm cutting, it's important to take a look at a conformed print onscreen to check the rhythm of what I'm doing and gauge the feel of everyone's work as a whole. You can't do that with the tiny monitors and lousy resolution we work with."
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