Western Canada has long been known for documentary filmmaking and cinematographers with a particular talent for capturing stunning scenery and the unexpected moments found in unscripted location settings.

Aiming to increase the quality of their projects and experiment further in their craft, Prairie dops are increasingly looking to the high-definition format when it comes to documentary productions.

Among the hd converts is 20-year cinematographer Doug Munro of Calgary, who has been working in high-def for the past two years, most recently on The Forests of Canada, an hour-long hd doc produced by King Motion Pictures of Edmonton for ctv and tva.

Also making the switch hd are producer/director Jeremy Torrie of Winnipeg-based I.C.E. Productions and dop Brian Rougeau, who are gearing up for their first high-def doc series, Powwow Trails.

Although only a few documentaries have been shot in high-definition to date, Munro sees enormous potential for reality-based programming shot in the format.

Forests of Canada is a case in point. The film looks at all aspects of forestry in Canada and was shot across the country over the course of a year.

Munro owns a Sony HDW700A high-definition camera, as well as a 16mm and a 400A broadcast camera. He says the decision was made to shoot in hd because of the high quality achieved with digital recording and because the program fit the wide-screen format.

‘We were doing a lot of vista shooting in the forests, footage shots from helicopters which look great on wide screen.’

hd cameras are particularly helpful when it comes to shooting documentaries because they are fast and can be used efficiently with small crews, he adds.

‘It’s extremely mobile and reliable, which is important for documentaries. We worked in minus-40-degree weather to plus-30 degrees, in wet and very dry conditions, and the camera held up.’

The great range of contrast which can be achieved with hd was particularly crucial on the Forests project, says Munro. ‘Traditional digital or other broadcast formats do not have the contrast range. With hd you have the ability to resolve fine detail in a pleasant manner. When shooting a forest on video or film all the trees tend to mesh together, but you get much more detail with hd.’

This was also particularly useful when shooting a black sky filled with millions of breeding Monarch butterflies.

Since forests are very dark at ground level and extremely bright where the sun peeks through the treetops, exposure-related difficulties often crop up when following an action (i.e. a bird) from deep in the forest to a point where the sun shines through.

The hd camera offered a solution to this problem. The HDW700 allows for different settings to be recorded, so Munro did some lighting tests and came up with several settings for the various lighting scenarios, which were then saved on a digital card.

‘It allowed us to stretch the apparent contrast range so we could shoot an object in the dark and the light and hold the detail on both ends.’

By lessening the detail function, images are given what Munro calls an ‘unenhanced look’ far from what can be achieved using traditional videotape. ‘It gives nice soft edges, but the resolution is still there; it’s a subtle but sharp look that’s not enhanced.’

He also used graduated neutral density filters to control sky contrasts. ‘We got some really nice vistas using the filters,’ he says.

Munro mixed 600mm telephoto images with 5.2mm wide-angle lenses. He framed shots both as a 4:3 and 16:9 frame so the final product can be viewed in either format.

Shooting from the helicopter was one of the biggest challenges on the Forests project, says Munro. Helicopter mounting systems are not set up for hd cameras so they had to adapt the Tyler Mount System.

‘We had to throw away a lot of their controls and separately operate all the controls, with our own control boxes running to the camera. And we had to use our own monitor,’ explains Munro. ‘From the original system, we only used the mounting in front of the chopper and the tilt control.’

hd is so sharp you can often see the helicopter’s vibrations in the footage. ‘To stop this,’ he says, ‘I made sure the helicopters were set up properly and secured the camera so there was no back and forth play from the helicopter on the mount.’

By shooting at low altitudes and using wide angles, vibrations can also be minimized, he says.

Munro undertook camera tests for two weeks prior to the shoot. ‘Don’t underestimate the testing,’ he advises, ‘because you can get much more out of the hd format by spending the time to fully understand the camera and its subtleties.’

HD hits the Powwow Trail

The camera testing stage is about to begin for Powwow Trail, a 13-part, hour-long doc series for aptn that looks at the origin of the powwow as well as the legends and meanings behind the dances. The four-month North American-wide shoot begins mid-May, with Jeremy Torrie directing and Rougeau behind the camera.

Torrie decided to go hd on this project for creative and financial reasons. The series will showcase in detail the beautiful outfits worn by the powwow dancers as well as various locations around North America. The highly visual nature of the project made shooting in hd a smart creative decision, says Torrie.

‘High-definition will pick up the vibrant images, the beadwork on the outfits, the dancing against the sunset,’ explains Torrie. ‘Because of the intricacies of the costumes and the regalia, I wouldn’t be able to capture the essence of these images in any other format. hd will make the images more vivid and detailed.’

The only other option would have been shooting in 35mm, but that would have been prohibitively expensive. And because the shoot roams North America, lighting and equipment for 35mm would have been cumbersome.

‘Going hd will save huge costs on lighting because of its low-light capabilities and there’s no film transfer,’ says Torrie. ‘It has pan and scan and 16 x 9 letterbox so you can play a bit. And if you want an hd master, you can create an edl on your master, plug in the edl later on, and go online.’

ice has purchased a Sony HDW700 (1080i) high-definition camera. The HDW700A is a digital hd camcorder utilizing Sony’s two-million-pixel PowerHad Frame-Interline Transfer ccd imagers and 10-bit 74.25MHz dsp processing of the rgb video. It’s a highly mobile, one-piece field system. The camcorder uses hd half-inch metal particle tape and includes three optical pre-filters plus sample-and-hold circuit and low-pass output filter, a memory chip setup card and six Shadow Quantizers.

‘It’s a high-end digital field camera; it has a 16:9 ratio movie wide screen, is compatible with other cameras and can be upconverted nicely to hd,’ says Torrie of his decision to go with this camera.

Torrie wanted an hd camera with a super-wide frame for the many close-ups of the costumes, so he chose to purchase the 30-frame hd camera, but will also lease a 18:1 hd camera for longer shots, b-roll, background shots and any hand-held long shots. A Sony Beta sx digital broadcast field camera will be used for pickups.

The three cameras will ensure the powwow dances and ceremonies are covered from all angles and the various concurrent activities can be captured, says Torrie.

An intensive three weeks of camera tests is just getting underway.

‘I am going to start over like it’s a new format,’ says Rougeau, who has 10 years experience shooting on video, including the Gemini Award-winning doc The Genius of Lenny Breau, and more recently, the 16mm feature Kanadiana (executive produced by Jamie Brown of Credo Entertainment). ‘I’m going back to the basics and going in with a sense of discovery.’

Color, detail and exposure levels will be central to the testing process.

The color palette of hd is fantastic, says Rougeau, and he wants to be able to capture images and scenery in various light settings.

‘I’m experimenting to see how far I can push the camera – changing the look for different colors and constancy and how far I can overexpose.’

Rougeau also plans to work with the grain feature on the camera to see what kind of granularity he can achieve for some shots.

Since the hd footage will be down-converted to ntsc, playing with the detail levels of the camera will be crucial, says Rougeau. ‘I want to achieve a balance whereby the footage looks great on hd but also down-converts well to ntsc.’

Powwow Trails is being shot almost entirely outdoors, so Rougeau will be testing a broad range of lighting conditions – low light, sunrise, sunset, golden-hour settings, etc. – as well as checking high-contrast levels.

‘Many people have criticized the interlace aspect of the camera,’ says Torrie. ‘One of the arguments is you can see a slight amount of smear in pan or dolly shots, but I think it’s negligible. We will test to see what we can get away with and what we can’t.

One of the challenges of the shoot, says Rougeau, is the fact that he will be shooting events as they unfold.

‘I can’t be hauling around a monitor to make sure it looks great, so I have to find general optimum settings so I can work quickly and catch things as they happen – testing will be important.’

As for shooting style, Rougeau says wider shots will establish the settings, then the camera will slow down and tighten up on close-ups of the detailed costumes worn by the performers. A jib and a dolly will be used for lots of angled and moving shots, and there will be quite a bit of hand-held camerawork.

For the historic and storytelling sequences, Rougeau is going for what he calls ‘an impressionistic style of shooting – wide shots, extreme close-ups, slow, fluid movements with the camera on sticks, not hand-held.’

For these sequences, Rougeau will use a portable color-control unit to adjust the gamma (which works the detail on the black) and the knee (for the highlights) to increase the contrasts and saturate and de-saturate images.

‘This gives you total control – I can look at a monitor and the response is immediate, and I can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that looks good,’ he explains. Another option is to go into the menu system, but that takes more time, he says.

‘It’s a documentary, but we want to try to be as artistic as we can,’ says Torrie.