Four Directors Share Hard-Learned Lessons on the Pros and Cons of Digital Filmmaking

by Xeni Jardin

But as the technical sophistication of this new medium grows, it begins to earn a loftier place in filmmaking's 100-year history. No longer the last-and-cheapest resort, digital projects are increasingly sparked by creative choices: consider the growing number of digital features in Mike Figgis' Time Code 2000, Richard Linklater's Waking Life, and Lars Von Triers' Dancer in the Dark. Recent forays into digital cinema by legendary French New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Agnes Varda are among the many examples of established filmmakers exploring its fresh creative ground.

As more celluloid-schooled directors make their digital debuts — some vowing never to go back to analog — digital moviemaking generates a more expansive lexicon, capable of delivering an explosive array of new stories, to new audiences, in new ways.

Do some scripts lend themselves more readily to digital? Is it really the liberating, crew-shrinking, no-lighting, cost-cutting, freewheeling new medium it's cracked up to be? What's difficult about it, and who's writing the new rules?

To explore the possibilities, we asked four directors behind digital feature films — Gary Winick, Rodrigo Garcia, Nicole Holofcener and Gary Walkow — to tell us why they chose the medium, what they've learned in the process ... and what's next.

	Director Gary Winick

"I'd just finished directing my first higher budget film, The Tic Code — it was a really frustrating experience. The film couldn't find a distributor, and wasn't coming out. I went to see Celebration with Tic Code's cinematographer, Wolfgang Held, and after the movie ended we couldn't stop talking about how wonderful it was, and how liberating digital video (DV) must be.

"We thought about how John Cassavetes worked in the '60s and '70s. His films were all about truth of character and setting, and we thought that if he were around now, he'd probably be a big fan of DV. The collaboration Cassavetes had with his actors, the moments he found, were so intimate and truthful. Digital video lends itself to that perfectly.

"When you're shooting a 35mm feature, the camera itself becomes such a big presence on the set. With small digital cameras, the attention can move back to the acting, there's more intimacy, less need for lighting; you can shoot in more practical locations. The actors regain their rightful place as the focal point."

Launched in 1999, InDiGent — short for the Independent Digital Entertainment (www.indigent.net), was financed by the Independent Film Channel to produce ten low-budget digital feature films.

Eight of the ten have been produced to date: Campbell Scott's Final; Chelsea Walls, directed by Ethan Hawke; Rick Linklater's Tape; Ten Tiny Love Stories by Rodrigo Garcia; Bruce Wagner's Women in Film; and Kill the Poor, directed by Alan Taylor. Winick's digital feature Tadpole and Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity are being presented at Sundance in January 2002.

"Digital cameras can be portable enough that if you suddenly come up with a new approach, you can just back up and redo your scene.

"Charlie Chaplin used to make films that way, which is why there are millions of feet of his film in vaults — he'd rework his script while he was shooting, he was constantly trying things. Because he was so well known, the studios allowed him to do that. These days, studios just aren't going to give directors permission to play around that way in 35mm — on DV, you can."

But digital filmmaking isn't without frustrations, Winick admits. "Sound synching can get really complicated. You'll often have post-production glitches with sound-and-image artifacts. Since you're usually shooting more than you would with film, when you get into the editing room you've got twice as much to log and sort out. The script supervisor's job becomes mammoth because you may be using three cameras, shooting a large volume of footage — and we've shot these projects in as little as two weeks, so the pace is rapid."

Image resolution, which scores high on many directors' lists of top digital drawbacks, is also a sore point for Winick.

"The focus quality isn't there yet with many of these digital cameras, when you blow up to 35mm. But when camera manufacturers finally compress that hi-definition 24P camera to the size of a hand-held, everything will change."

Winick believes the speed and efficiency inherent in digital filmmaking can adversely rush the director's creative process. "When you're making a 35mm movie, and you have to pause between setups, you'll pause to think through what you're going to do next — but with digital you just keep on going. You need to remember to stop, create time to reflect and work thoughtfully."

InDiGent plans to produce another four films in 2002. Paradoxically, digital filmmaking's fast-growing sophistication is both a blessing and a potential threat to the collective's future.

"As digital technology evolves, the cost of making digital films goes up. We don't know how long our model can be sustained while that progresses. At some point, it may not work for IFC anymore; but until that happens we'll still keep going after directors who have projects they've been longing to do."

Director Gary Walkow on the set of The Last Big Toe with actor Henry Czerny (photo: Steven Rothblatt)

"When new filmmaking technologies like the Éclair camera were introduced in the 1960s, they helped propel the French New Wave. Technology always makes creative innovations possible, but the old rules of storytelling still apply. The viewer won't care what your movie was shot with if they're engaged with the story."

Walkow's directorial credits include the William S. Burroughs biopic, Beat, and the Dostoevsky novella adaptation, Notes From Underground.

Big Toe follows the tale of four aliens that venture to Earth to experience different aspects of human life. Actor Henry Czerny, who worked with Walkow in Notes, plays all four extraterrestrials.

Walkow says the choice to go digital fit the story's creative and technical imperatives. With Czerny playing four roles, digital compositing was a must. "It would have been impossible to make [this movie] on a low budget five years ago... This feature just had to be digital."

Walkow's choice of medium made it possible to integrate each of Henry Czerny's multiple characters into a single shot without using costly special effects. "We locked off the camera and shot multiple takes, once with Cop Henry, once with Hippie Henry, once with Priest Henry — with wardrobe changes in between. We were careful to isolate each Henry to a portion of the frame in order to avoid the need for traveling mattes. The creative challenge was making the scenes play dramatically without being able to see a master until the shot was composited in Final Cut Pro."

"I didn't sit around drooling about Aeroflex and Panavision [cameras] when I was shooting in 35mm, and I don't lie there at night dreaming about Sony hi-def cameras now. What's interesting is what you can do with them. They're tools and you're telling a story."

Director Nicole Holofcener (photo: Alexia Platt)

After unsuccessfully seeking financing from multiple sources, Holofcener's project found a backer in Blow Up Pictures, a New York-based company that finances and produces digital features — but on the condition that Lovely be shot digitally.

"I could have shot it on anything, it just happened that this is how the financing came through," says Holofcener. "I was just happy to be able to do my movie."

Holofcener and cinematographer Harlan Bosmajian began experimenting with cameras and image quality. "Harlan was already very experienced with high definition, which helped," Holofcener says. Lovely was her first all-digital experience, and she had concerns about the medium's visual limitations. "We tried our first shots on a nice, hi-def 24P camera, and the results looked so beautiful; this surprised and relieved me."

"We had some unexpected technical problems on the set, and since not everyone on the crew knew about digital video, the problems were more mysterious, and a lot more frustrating, than if we'd been shooting film. But the DP and AC knew enough that we were able to work through the surprises."

Director Rodrigo Garcia

Also an accomplished writer and cinematographer, Garcia's digital directing debut, Ten Tiny Love Stories, consists of ten short monologues delivered in direct address. Garcia says the idea to shoot Love Stories in digital high definition came about as the solution to a creative problem.

"The longest of the monologues runs 15 minutes, and I wanted to do them without cuts. A can of film only lasts ten minutes, but with digital we were able to shoot nonstop."

Shooting in high definition provided other forms of dramatic enhancement. "The actors talk directly to the camera for the length of the unedited monologue, and I wanted the feel to be ambiguous — are you watching a documentary? An interview? A performance?" Digital's "look" helped Garcia to blur the aesthetic boundaries between film and video, and create the right visual context.

When asked what kinds of features lend themselves best to digital, Garcia winces. "My answers would all be cliché: hand-held jerky stuff; grittier stories; movies you shoot from the hip. We take for granted that a lush Merchant Ivory period piece wouldn't be right because digital is better suited for what's contemporary. But we only believe that because we were all weaned on film. The kids growing up now who write digitally, paint digitally — film is no nearer to the 16th century for them than digital is. Who are we to say that The Three Musketeers must be shot on film and not on DV?

Having successfully completed his digital debut in Stories, Garcia aims to shoot his next project digitally as well. Again, he insists his choice isn't budgetary. "I want it to have a 'documentary' look, and I need to shoot fast and furious in very confined locations."

"Ultimately, story, characters and performance still rule. The size of the camera or your image resolution — none of that is going to save your sorry ass if the end result is boring.

"The truth is that these new technologies are all just storytelling tools — and in the hands of talented artists they'll be great."

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