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MillimeterRobert Altman’s Take on HD
Apr 24, 2006 3:26 PM, Michael Goldman
A Prairie Home Companion marks the second straight feature shot using high-definition cameras from director Robert Altman. Coming on the heels of The Company in 2003, A Prairie Home Companion debuts in June. It was shot over the course of five weeks last year at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn.—the location where the real Prairie Home Companion radio show, upon which the movie is based, is produced.
As previously reported in HD Focus, Altman’s team, led by DP Ed Lachman, ASC, shot the movie using several Sony HDW-F900 cameras, all outfitted with Fujinon HD Cine Style lenses, and recording to three Sony SRW-1 HDCAM-SR portable digital recorders.
But technical details aside, Altman says he largely adopted HD for his last two films because of his preferred shooting style—improvisational, lengthy, uninterrupted takes. “I don’t want the actors to always know when the camera is on them—with high definition, I can just keep going, and I like that,” Altman explains.
Through meticulous testing, the development of proprietary lookup tables in pre-production, strategic lighting and shooting, the use of the film-style Fujinon lenses, and a lengthy digital intermediate process at Technicolor, New York, Lachman made sure to maintain a stylized film sensibility for the imagery, per Altman’s mandate.
Altman claims the result is a film that few people could tell was shot digitally. Since digital exhibition remains far from ubiquitous, at least for now, the 81-year-old director emphasizes that this is an important distinction—most people who see Prairie will see it on film. Altman says production of most modern movies, whether shot on film or HD, leads to the creation of fresh film negatives and release prints that may bear little direct connection to the original in-camera negative or data. The notion of getting rid of or replacing film is irrelevant, Altman says.
“The point is, I’m interested in using HD now because it suits my style,” he says. “A movie like Prairie doesn’t have many exteriors or big, sweeping vistas and all that. It’s an ensemble piece shot inside a theater with lots of cameras rolling all the time. We had one take, in fact, that was about 17 or 18 minutes long with three cameras, without stopping. Shooting anything of that nature with something other than HD, now that HD is available to us, would be silly really. HD definitely makes improvisation easier, which is something that is important in my films.
“But I believe that it does not make a difference whether you acquire a film negative on set or make one later, after shooting digitally, in a sense,” he adds. “Many people shoot on film, throw that original negative away, edit and process or do effects in digital space, and then go back and finish on film. That makes it a new piece of film. This is no different than that. We have a new negative, just like they do. People very rarely use the original negative for the final version of the film—they make a new one. So I’m happy the technology lets me shoot the way I want to, but I don’t look at it like I’ve changed or whatever. I’m using the tools that work best for the material and the way I want to work. It’s about giving me more ways to do things.”
(For an in-depth look at the workflow and techniques employed in making A Prairie Home Companion, check out the upcoming June issue of Millimeter.)
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.