There’s a revolutionary scenario: A discriminating couple walks into a theater in their hometown and sees a movie. They enjoy the film and walk out, discussing the finer points of the movie’s plot. Not its format. Doesn’t sound like a revolution? That’s because our couple was watching an ultra low-budget feature, shot with a consumer DV camera. The 35mm print looked so good that they didn’t have any idea it didn’t originate on film.

Every day, more and more filmmakers are turning to digital tools to tell their stories; some do it out of necessity, some as a stylistic choice, but many hope that their films will play on the big screen. Eventually, most of these films will screen digitally and bypass celluloid altogether, but in the meantime, filmmakers are left wondering whether or not they should transfer to film if they want a chance at theatrical distribution.

As far as choosing a transfer facility is concerned, it’s a buyers’ market. There are at least 15 transfer facilities around the world, in places like Zurich, Austin, England, Holland, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit and, as of this writing, several more are about to open. Each does it a little differently, depending on cost, equipment, and the aesthetic of the project. No question, moviemakers have many options available to them.

Out in the real world of low-budget filmmaking, getting to the point where you have to worry about transferring to film can seem like a million miles away—especially when trying to wade through the muddy waters of pre-production. What do you need to know to get the best film print from your digital footage? How should you prepare? When should you start talking to a transfer facility about your project? MovieMaker talked to some digital filmmakers and transfer facilities to get the answers....

A scene from Fighter, Amir Bar-Lev’s digital documentary on two Czech Holocaust survivors, transferred at 4MC.

Like anything else in this business, the earlier and better you prepare, the better your results will be. Unless you like relying on luck, the earlier you think about the video-to-film transfer process, the better.

Chuck and Buck, one of two DV features in this year’s Dramatic Competition at Sundance, was transferred to film for screening at the festival. It seemed as if the look of the film and the impressive 35mm print made by Swiss Effects were talked about as much as the filmsale to Artisan Entertainment.

Swiss Effects is the transfer facility of the moment. Both narrative DV features screening in the Dramatic Competition, and three of the
documentaries screening in the Documentary Competition at Sundance this year transferred there. Their representatives were on hand during the entire festival at the New Media and Technology Center.

Swiss Effects was originally set up as an effects house in Zurich. Their current technical director, Patrick Lindenmaier, joined them about eight years ago after becoming known in Europe as a director of photography who successfully combined film and video footage.

Lindenmaier speaks about working with Miguel Arteta and Matthew Greenfield, respectively the director and producer of Chuck and Buck, as a long-term relationship. "We worked with them at the beginning, and helped them choose a camera. They shot with a VX1000, in the PAL format." Because PAL shoots at 25 frames per second, it looks far better than NTSC’s 30fps when transferred to a film print running at 24fps.

Using PAL can bring up all sorts of challenges because you have to use PAL equipment throughout the post-production process. Although it is getting easier to find PAL cameras and decks, you still have to look around, and often pay more. Swiss Effects’ web site (www.swisseffects.ch) is full of good information for filmmakers starting to plan their projects.

The relationship between filmmakers and transfer facility was a close one. "We visited the set twice and saw what they were doing—because everybody does it differently. We wanted to understand what they were going for."

Swiss Effects’ advice continued through editing. "They had some slow-motion, and reframing, which you have to be very careful about. We understood the look they wanted, and were careful to get the most out of it."

Even with all this help during pre-production and photography, Arteta and Greenfield still did tests. Lindenmaier said, "During the tests, we found very low-exposure on the tapes, which gave us some problems with the transfer. You have to do your color timing twice, once on video and then again when you make the print—it’s tricky to find the right balance of color and darkness."

It took Swiss Effects three tries to get the print which screened at Sundance; normally it takes them only two. "The filmmakers were far away from Zurich, and we didn’t have much time before they needed the print," Lindenmaier explains. "Plus, it was a fiction film, so it is more important that the look be just right."

When Josh Aronson first started his film, Sound And Fury, there weren’t as many options as there are now. "We shot over two years, and in that time, everything changed."

Sound And Fury, a moving documentary exposing the contentious debate about cochlear implants within the deaf community, screened in the prestigious Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. He shot the film on BetaSP and transferred at 4MC in Burbank. The decision of Aronson and producer, Roger Weisberg, to choose 4MC had as much to do with circumstance as with preference. "My producer had done work with 4MC, so we went with them," explains Aronson. "I didn’t know about Swiss Effects at the time."

Vancouver’s Digital Film Group shooting format comparison tests for Noroc.

Aronson is pleased with his print, although there were some big challenges. The biggest problem he and his producer faced was "getting skin tones right. I’ve been told that with BetaSP, it’s always a problem. When skin tones were right, the background was muddy. There are some scenes that still make me cringe, but I’ve been told by other people that the print looks great."

They supervised the transfer, going out to Los Angeles twice to look at the results before making their final print. The third time was the charm, and they had a print they could screen in Park City.
They continued to tinker, though, and paid for another print after Sundance so that they would have two in circulation.

Amir Bar-Lev, director of the documentary, Fighter, has a different perspective. His film, about a couple of Czech Holocaust survivors who travel together on a sex-obsessed, beer-guzzling journey through their homeland, was also shot on BetaSP; but, they didn’t decide on their route to film until much later in the process.

"We thought we were going to go to 16mm," says Bar-Lev. "We didn’t know we were going to 35mm until a couple of weeks before we made the print. We saw the 16mm tests and were unimpressed. 35mm is more expensive, but it gives the film a different life."

If Bar-Lev had transferred to 16mm, the 4:3 framing would have been fine, but his team ran into problems when they decided to take the plunge to 35mm. They suddenly realized that they would have to crop their entire film to a wide-screen format. "The process of retraining is really interesting. Going to 35mm film, you lose about a quarter of the image. We shot it for Beta—for video—and going wide-screen really changes the feel of the film."

They also transferred at 4MC, where they made a test reel from their footage. After looking at the test, they spoke with the lab about results, gave their comments, and 4MC made the print. It took a couple of tries—at no charge—before they got a print they liked.

An interesting story that Bar-Lev tells is of their first screening, for which they were forced to project digitally because their print wasn’t yet finished. They were very pleased with the look of the digital image, but "a couple of days later, when we screened our 35mm print, it was kind of a shock—we thought the digital projection looked better than our print."

Beverly Brooks of 4MC warns moviemakers to shoot tests and transfer them so they have an idea of what the film will look like. Her tips: make sure you have a sharp image, use low-contrast lighting, avoid artifacts, and don’t enhance the image. Many filmmakers are interested in running a film-look process over their finished film, but be warned: only run a film-look effect over a dub; keep an untouched master for your film transfer. Film-look adds video noise to your image, basically degrading it in a way, to give a desired look on a monitor. When blown up on the big screen, that same noise does not look more like film, it can look like an ugly video effect. Additionally, when your digital film goes to celluloid, it naturally picks up the grain of the film, so film-look becomes unnecessary. In fact, many filmmakers who shoot on video and transfer to film decide to telecine the film print for their video release so it looks more like it was shot on film, avoiding the need for film-look processes.

4MC opened its doors in 1972 as Image Transform, specifically to do video to film transfers. Last year was their largest sales year to date. One can imagine that the success of The Blair Witch Project, transferred at 4MC, could only have increased their profile—and sales. They receive, on average, five or six phone calls every day from moviemakers asking advice. Don’t be shy. Call around and find out what you have to do that best matches your budget and desired result to prepare your film for the transfer facility .

The other DV feature accepted into this year’s Sundance Dramatic Competition was Everything Put Together—the second feature from Swiss filmmaker, Marc Forster. (see MM #36—ed.) Forster meticulously planned his transfer before deciding on a camera.

"We talked to several transfer facilities," says Forster. In the end, he and his producer, Sean Furst, narrowed their choices to Swiss Effects and the Sony Hi-Def Center. "Both did really good work, but we thought Swiss Effects looked slightly better. It’s instinctual. Technically, they probably were very similar." No doubt Forster’s heritage also gave Swiss Effects a leg-up.

Their decision affected which camera they chose. "Swiss Effects recommended the Sony VX1000 or the PD100, both in PAL format," Forster explains. "They also told us to use the anamorphic adapter, which squeezes the image in-camera to make it look right when the footage is converted to the 16:9 ratio on film." This is preferable to using the 16:9 mode built into the PAL version of the VX1000, because it uses the entire chip instead of cropping off the top and bottom. This yields a greater pixel count, giving the image sharper clarity, but can only be used when transferring the footage and converting it to a wide-screen format.

Here’s how Everything Put Together was put together. They shot on DV and transferred their footage to Digital Betacam. They cut the film on an AVID and, when doing their online back to DigiBeta, they did some major color correction and enhancement, and sent a tape of the results to Swiss Effects. Forster’s suggestion: "Make a test before doing color correction. On our small monitor I went pretty far with some of the colors, which had a huge effect on the big screen. I knew from tests before we started shooting what we were going to end up with. But we were pretty extreme with colors—maybe we should have pulled back."

Swiss Effects transferred the video to film, and developed the negative, but Forster made his print at Fotokem in Burbank, due to a time-crunch. It took two prints to get one they liked for their Sundance screening, and they’re going back to do more color correction for an additional print.

Sundance set up a digital projector in every theater, so why did Forster even bother going to film at all? "The film is intended to play in theaters," Forster adds. "Buyers watch the film to see how it will play on the big screen." Moviemakers should consider the costs of transferring to film an additional investment to increase the chances for a sale. Forster believes that, psychologically, screening on film—no matter which format you shoot on—still makes a difference to acquisition executives.

Mark Stolaroff, Director of Post-Production and Finance at Next Wave Films, comes at this issue from a different perspective. "The first test is if you think that video serves your project aesthetically. If it does, then a distributor will be just as happy to buy it, regardless of whether they see it projected digitally or transferred to film."

Next Wave Films can supply finishing funds, act as a producer’s rep, or provide assistance through post-production to emerging filmmakers. They have influenced many filmmakers across the country to shoot digitally, and have found themselves at the center of the digital revolution. "You can hurt yourself by not putting your best foot forward," says Stolaroff. "But, it’s analogous to 16mm, where you wonder if a distributor knows that the film will look different when it’s blown up to 35mm. It’s the square versus the rectangle—it’s a different aesthetic. But distributors make that leap all the time if the story comes across. Content is king."

FilmTeam in Austin, Texas is a transfer facility which started in December, 1998. They are very small, run by two filmmakers: Drew Mayer-Oakes, who handles sales and marketing, and Marcus van Bavel, who is more tech-savvy, handling the transfers and creating software to enhance the issues/38/images.

According to Mayer-Oakes, when they started, their focus "was turn-key tape-to-film transfers where the customer handed us their tape and we handed them a release print. One impetus to starting FilmTeam was watching filmmakers spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on negative cutting, titles and opticals for a single festival screening. When I saw the movement to video and digital, it made sense to go this way."

Some filmmakers who have shot on film still use FilmTeam because they can build their own system, edit on video, and create complicated effects at home, then transfer that video back to film. This way, they avoid the huge expense of replicating all their effects on an optical printer. Shooting on film, finishing on video, and then transferring back to film makes perfect sense for filmmakers who shot on Super-16 and don’t have the money for both a negative cut and blow-up to 35mm for release.

"What’s unique about our company is that we’re very small, we’re privately financed, and we’re in product development at all times. For instance, right now we’re doing a test for a New York-based production company which has some steadicam footage shot in a dark café—it’s got video noise problems, and doesn’t look very good. We saw that we had to fix this, so we created a video noise-reduction algorithm. It looks at every frame and replaces the noise with pure black or pure brown, whatever the best pure color would be for the shot. I can’t imagine that a bigger lab could create software for an individual project."

FilmTeam works with a motion picture laboratory, giving them the negative they make from the clients’ tape, and orders a one-light composite print. Because all color timing is done electronically, they boast that in most cases, they can deliver a good print on the first try. Color correction is done on a monitor that very closely resembles what the film will look like on the big screen.

Filmmakers themselves, the FilmTeam duo understands that shooting a film is not an exact science, and that things happen on set that have to be accommodated by the transfer facility. "Use frame-mode on an XL1 (a progressive mode that shoots 30 fields a second to try to replicate a film look, rather than the standard 60 interlaced fields), and most labs won’t touch your footage. We will." says Mayer-Oakes.

Their website (www.dvfilmteam.com) offers an excellent FAQ for filmmakers to check out. They offer some of the same advice as other transfer facilities: keep your camera settings on manual, avoid fast pans, use PAL equipment if possible, keep your lighting ratio low (around 3:1), and shoot at 1/60th shutter speed or less. It is best to do a test—and as with 4MC, they’ll deduct the cost of a test from your bill if you transfer your feature with them.

The new kid on the block is Digital Film Group in Vancouver, Canada. Although they have not yet officially launched, they have been operational for three months. Also started by moviemakers, DFG has developed a system which, when transferring 30 frame interlaced video to 24 frame film, converts the footage using a technique that blends whole frames, instead of throwing away 6 frames every second.

James Tocher, the general manager of DFG, describes his approach to dealing with their clients. "We look to help people understand the process and empower them to make decisions themselves. Filmmakers have three things to consider: aesthetic, cost, and quality. Those three things have to work together. Sometimes a lower quality image can be better for a certain project."

DFG is putting the finishing touches on a test that shows side-by-side comparisons of a scene shot on many formats, ranging from Hi-8 to Hi-Def, DV, BetaSP, and even film. This enables the moviemaker to decide on the look based on cost and stylistic considerations.

When asked whether there will be an ongoing need for video-to- film transfers with the constant improvements in digital projection, Tocher says, "I feel that people are not going to totally embrace digital projection for a while. From a shooting, as well as a delivery aspect, the industry revolves around 35mm. The quality is there if you’re shooting on 35mm and projecting digitally, but the harshness of video lacks the same texture that film has. We’re providing for a time when people will appreciate the new hybrid medium of video going to film. Personally, I think that video projected digitally just looks like video. When people go to a theater, they expect a textural experience, not something that looks like TV." With technology changing so quickly, Tocher says it’s hard to tell whether this time of shooting on tape and transferring to an analog format will last a few years, or well into the future.

If you are planning a digital short or feature, call around, do your research, and start talking to a transfer facility in the way you would a motion picture laboratory back in the days when you shot on film. The one thing echoed by most filmmakers and transfer facilities is that this window of transferring to film is probably only eight to 10 years long, and perhaps considerably less. After that, you will be able to shoot on film or video, post on video, and project digitally. In the meantime, you’ve got your work cut out for you. MM