While film camera basics have remained unchanged for decades, the voluminous flow of up-to-the-minute accoutrements available to the discerning cameraperson has remained constant.

A certain tech-savvy production house scion illustrates the principle, citing the habit of a certain hot cinematographer to regularly march into the office brandishing a copy of American Cinematographer, pointing excitedly and expectantly at a new bauble like a kid with the Sears catalogue.

With an endless demand for new – or old – looks, there is always a new complement of must-have gear and new or revisited processes in addition to the products which have become the established, de rigueur extras in every kit sent out to set. The lights get bigger, the cameras get more accessories, but mostly, it all gets more expensive.

Expansion buzz

On the macro scale, those companies in the business of stocking that gear are on continual alert for the next thing in terms of gear as well as the next move by the competition. This year in particular there seem to be indications of a reordering among the major shops. According to one equipment player, ‘There is a lot of kicking tires’ going on among many of the shops, with noise about geographical moves, and shifts into new areas of business buzzing discernibly in the background of discussions about the latest and greatest cameras, lights and sundry toys.

William F. White will expand the scope of its Vancouver office, moving from its current lighting and grip lineup to a ‘full package services,’ operation in early 1999. White also recently formed a joint venture with England’s Joe Dunton, (O.B.E. – Order of the British Empire) a pivotal player in Europe’s camera business.

The White venture will operate under the name JDC International in London and in Wilmington, nc as of Aug. 1. The London operation will feature about a dozen high-end camera packages, with full camera, lighting and grip services in Wilmington. ‘We’re broadening our reach,’ says Bill White.

PS Production Services has changes in the works including its move to a new 50,000-square-foot facility as of September. ps head Doug Dales says the move will represent a major upgrade of the shop’s warehousing and shipping and receiving facilities.

Clairmont Camera, which operates in Toronto, Vancouver and Hollywood, plans to open a shop in Montreal in the near future.

New lighting toys

In terms of popular gear, there is, as usual, a wide collection of new gear and not-so-new gear that finds favor with ever experimental dops, particularly in the commercial market.

In terms of the latest and the greatest, Kino Flo lights remain in both of those categories, with new product announcements coming out of Showbix Expo in l.a. last month and a continuous overwhelming demand for the company’s existing lights. Partners’ Film Company’s Ross McLean reports continual scarcity of the lights, in spite of a recent large order.

Kino Flo’s Scott Stueckle says the Sun Valley, ca-based company, founded by Winnipeg-born and Ryerson-educated Frieder Hochheim released a handful of new products after Showbix Expo, spanning from small- to large-scale lighting solutions. In terms of future popularity, Stueckle says perhaps the most universally adaptable new light is the Flathead 80, an eight-light fixture that can be used with any existing Kino Flo ballast.

‘This means if someone needs a larger, brighter Kino Flo, they don’t necessarily have to go and buy a complete new system,’ says Stueckle. ‘This head is backwards compatible and adapts to their existing 4Bank ballasts.’ The Flathead 80 is touted to put out nearly as much light as the company’s Wall-O-Lite, but weighs half as much and costs less than a third of the price of that system.

Kino Flo has had a significant impact on the industry, says cinematographer Bert Dunk, and how green and blue screen shooting is done. ‘Up until they came out with super blue and green fluorescent bulbs, which have a very narrow spectral output, lighting for blue and green screens was a very major task,’ says Dunk, who first used the lights on The Addams Family.

Elsewhere in lighting, PS Lighting’s Jim Kennedy says the Toronto rental company is receiving an order of four new Strikers from Tennessee-based Tek Lighting Systems. The new 50,000-watt unit allows manual operation, programmed operation and dmx compatible operation.

At the extreme end of toy usage, McLean cites something spotted at Showbix Expo – the Telefinder – a director’s viewfinder with a transmitting video camera in it to transmit the view the director is seeing from anywhere on set through the viewfinder to a monitor (or record it).

Dunk points to large-scale new continuous output hmi softlights from Lightning Strikes in Hollywood. Dunk recently tested one of the lights, a 50,000-watt softlight which has a nearly four-foot arc and is dimmable down five f-stops with no significant change in color temperature. ‘It’s an incredible light for lighting big outdoor scenes,’ says Dunk.

DOP’s favorite gear

Commercial and long-form cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak points to processes as well as gear when he talks about what’s current in his art. Baszak acknowledges the greater proclivities toward toy use and experimentation among commercial dops, and points to a number of new and ongoing high points in gear, including the popular-as-ever Arri 435. The camera has been in use for the past year and a half but remains a fixture due in part to its speed ramping capabilities.

‘With this camera, the ramping technique became very accessible,’ says Baszak, who has worked on numerous commercials as well as Bruce McDonald’s Highway 61.

Baszak also points to the Over/Under dual camera system created by Clairmont Cameras, which allows the user to shoot to cover the same field of view with two different cameras. The camera configuration was conceived by dop Tom Burstyn while he was shooting tv movie Crazy Horse and involved shooting a day-for-night dream sequence using two aligned cameras – one using color and one using infra-red black-and-white film – and a partial mirror rig.

Role of colorist

But in addition to the toys, Baszak highlights a human component of image-making that has assumed more prominence: the role of the colorist. ‘Good ones are often essential to the look of a commercial,’ says Baszak. ‘People like Bill Ferwerda [at dave] can be total creative partners and can be as important to the final look of a commercial as a cameraman.’

Baszak and cinematographer Sean Valentini cite a lens from Clairmont with the technical designation of Squishy Lens, which uses a flexible, ‘squishy’ element which, when compressed creates an area where light entering the taking lens is undisturbed while the area around the clear zone is curved, de-focusing the entering rays. The lens is controlled by a joystick to create various altered images.

Baszak also points to the use of different stocks and film processes, like the enr process, widely used in feature films. Cinematographer Simon Mestel also cites the process, which he has used recently with director Richard D’Alessio on jobs including a Lexus spot out of smw and Carlsberg out of Bozell. Typically, in the final stage of processing, film goes through a bleach bath. Skipping this process makes the print heavier, increases contrast and adds a silver sheen. Mestel says the process is used on a significant number of Hollywood features and the drawback to using it in commercials is budgetary: using the method requires that a print be made rather than just taking the negative to transfer. On an upcoming job for Levi’s, Mestel had also been experimenting with 35mm Ektachrome film, which had been used recently in Oliver Stone’s U-Turn and also provides a contrast boost. Mestel puts the use of Ektachrome in the context of the trends and influences that appear in advertising. The film was used widely in the 1970s, an era from which advertising is drawing stylistically. Mestel also points to the ‘whole wide lens thing’ as another exemplar of the style cylcles. ‘In the ’80s, advertising switched from long lens vignettes into more comedy dialogue storytelling,’ says Mestel. ‘People started to use more wide lenses and I think now it’s changing back again to more conventional lensing – although it’s hard to tell because you go back and forth.’

New camera stuff

In the world of big camera guns, Panavision is expecting to receive the much touted Millenium camera this year which has been released and is in use in other international markets.

Looking skyward, the latest camera system from Flamborough, on-based Wescam is the F118. The newest of Wescam’s 35mm gyrostabilized film systems, the F118 is touted to be easier to handle, with magazine and lens changes speedier and more flexible and ability to fly with the Panavision 11:1 Primo lens. Wescam was used recently in Armageddon and in the upcoming Soldier from Warner Bros.

Last year Arri made video assist an integrated part of the popular 435 camera and is expected to incorporate video into the 535 camera in the fall of this year.

William F. White recently made a major purchase of Arri lights, buying a full range of the lights, as a departure from the Ianiro it typically stocks. In keeping with the expanded Toronto facility, the company has expanded its range of services and the amount of available gear.

On the lighting side, the shop recently acquired a Mini-Mosco, a more maneuverable 36K Mosco with remote-control heads, which will be mounted on a trailer behind one of the package trucks, with expected availability in mid-August.

The shop now has 14 package trucks, including a new truck with a 30-foot box. Various interesting toys at the sprawling Toronto warehouse include the ‘chicken coop,’ a made-in-house contrivance consisting of six 1,000 watt bulbs in a soft box and used on Storm of the Century and a new chase bike, and a motorcycle with a side car tailor-made for a Steadi-cam operator, with a spinning seat.

The set-up allows more speed and accessibility to tighter spaces says White’s Larry Sacchetti.

White’s remote head and crane department, headed by Bob Lynn, has also expanded with, among others, the addition of Long Ranger crane from Filmair, which reaches up to 44 feet with a remote head. Lynn joined White’s last year around the time of the company’s expansion, bringing the Megamount, a three-axis remote head, to its existing department, which has been expanding in scope since.

In addition to new gear, like the Titan crane, and a motorized crane counterbalance by Mercury, Lynn says the department now also has camera assistants and robotics technologists who are devoted full time to operating the cranes.

In cameras and lenses, White’s recently acquired a set of Cooke S4 lenses and has another 18 sets on order. Says national camera manager Chris Holmes, the lenses are White’s competitive answer to Panavision lenses and offer superior performance in, for instance, controlling the bloom that occurs with lens flares.

Holmes says that White’s has undertaken a major initiative in the area of video assist. While the shop had formerly covered the basics, providing the standard monitors and the like, expansion has meant a wider range of services, overseen by video manager Greg Williams including 24 frame playback systems and digital high-speed playback, to provide a better and better on-set picture of the quality of what’s being captured on film. White’s recently supplied Midwinter Productions’ Bride of Chucky feature which entailed accommodating the video assist needs of the brigade of puppeteers working behind the scenes to bring the awful little creature to life. The video assist initiatives are a part of an effort by White’s to become more active partners in a production, says Holmes. ‘We’re trying to become more involved in the production rather than just be a rental resource,’ he says.

Video innovations

On the video side of the equation, the buzz is about wide screen and high definition, as the broadcast changes sweeping across the world begin to impact the Canadian market.

Toronto’s Sim Video recently acquired a new camera lineup including the Sony HDW 700 high-definition digital camera and the DVW 700 digital betacam. Sim says the DVW 700 has about four times the resolution of a digital Betacam – with two million pixels, 1125 lines of horizontal and 1100 lines of vertical resolution. ‘The net result you have with high definition are pictures technically in the realm of 35mm film,’ says Sim. ‘There are still going to be the debates about the `look’ but that is something I would leave for the cinematographers.’

Sim Video recently worked on a high-defintion shoot for Toyota destined for high-definition projection in Japan. In terms of widescreen shooting, Sim says there is some early interest from producers looking at possibly meeting the future demand for programs shot for the 16:9 aspect ratio. The cbc will likely be the first broadcaster on board with its long-term History of Canada series shot with the widescreen camera.

Toronto’s Catchlight is now offering the DVW 700WS 16:9/4:3 switchable digital Betacam to accommodate producers cutting for present 4:3 shows and archive for future 16:9 purposes.

Vancouver’s Shooters Production Services has also ordered HDW 700 cameras and a complement of Canon and Fujinon lenses as well as additional DVW 700 wide-screen cameras, and Shooters’ Dale Johannesen says the camera investment is to ensure that domestic and international clients have access to the best possible gear as they look down the tape road. ‘As this marketplace becomes more global we have to position ourselves as leaders in technology so we can compete with companies in l.a. and New York,’ says Johannesen.

Johannesen also points to the begining of a demand for shooting a 16:9 master on high definition and downconverting 4:3 to a digital Betacam master to achieve immediate broadcast and archival goals at once.

Shooters does a large amount of work for foreign markets including Japan and Europe as well as the u.s. where there is a greater demand for wide screen says Johannesen. The shop recently worked on a Riverdance project out of Europe shot with six 700 widescreen cameras and delivered in 16:9.

A seminar held recently in Toronto demonstrated the Sony HDW 700 and featured a screening of 35mm film, which had been transferred from footage shot on the high-definition camera. According to Sim, the high def-to-35mm transfer process offers another, potentially cost-saving alternative to filmmakers who can shoot a feature for a fraction of the cost of using film, then transfer to film at Sony for roughly $30,000 – a large sum but still likely cheaper overall.

Cinematographer Harry Lake has done tests with Sim using the high-definition camera and while some would have tape emulate film, Lake says the tape results are excellent in their own right. ‘I don’t think it matters,’ says Lake. ‘It’s an excellent picture and it will be used more and more.’

Lake says dops will likely adopt the camera more easily, the more it can be used like a film camera, and Sim has made innovations toward that end. While tape has been regarded as a lower-budget option, Lake says it’s a mistake not to apply the same – or more – care to lighting considerations as a film project.

Lake also points to a need for more assistant dops to work in the format and a possible csc initiative to establish an electronic training course for assistants. ‘I look at it as another tool,’ says Lake of the digital video camera, ‘It’s coming in so let’s get on with it and learn about it and do it properly.’