Indie director Nick Vallelonga had always relied on film to capture the rich colors and textures for his indie films. But he knew those days were numbered as the quality of HD continued to improve and the economic advantages of shooting HD over film loomed large. For the feature film All In (starring Dominique Swain, Michael Madsen and Louis Gossett Jr.), he made the leap from film to HD, using the Sony F900 CineAlta HD camera.

NV: The main element was the poker angle, which is a hot topic right now. But from my point of view it was really a father-daughter story. To me they could have been playing pool or dominoes, it didn’t really matter. It’s about this girl whose father is a gambler and his gambling lessons are also his way of giving her life lessons. Ultimately she takes that into her adulthood. So that’s the main story and the backdrop is Texas Hold ‘Em, which is what attracted everyone to the project.

Of course the exciting part of it is the poker sequences. There’s only so much you can do with someone turning cards and guys sitting at a table. On a cinematic viewpoint there’s not a while lot going on there. That’s why I concentrated on developing the characters because if you can connect with them than that makes the poker sequences more exciting. I shot a lot of close-ups to try and capture the emotion of the game because I think that’s why people like the game so much cause there’s a lot of bluffing and reading the other person.

NV: I’d made a small film called Choker, a tiny sci-fi, horror, action movie and we shot that on the Panasonic Varicam. I wanted to do a little experiment with the HD. I wanted to do something inexpensive so I could see how the HD looked. That film was by the people putting together All In and they asked me to produce and direct.

I decided based on my experience with Choker to shoot HD again and try to push the envelope and try to make an HD film look like a studio movie. So we went with the Sony F900. My DP Jeff Baustert worked closely in prepping it so it would really look like film. At the screening everyone asked me what type of film was used so the mission was accomplished. Knowing the technology and doing what we did with the lenses – using long lenses and less light ‘ and speaking with Ian Verdavect (digital colorist at PlasterCITY), who did the post color correction in pre-production and even having him come on set occasionally enabled me to get the look of film using HD.

NV: There were a lot of tricks I’d heard about like using smoke and stuff like that but I didn’t do any of that. The lighting was essential, minimal lighting. I lit it like I was lighting film but I used less light, a lot less light. The HD picks up so much more than film so using less light approximates the look of film better. My gaffer and my DP at first were freaking out when I told them to turn off that light, knock those lights down, because HD picks up so much.

The daytime stuff everyone is afraid of but I just approached it like we were shooting a movie. The great thing about HD is having the monitor on set so you can see what you’re going to get. By having DPs that know the technology the notion that HD looks like video is one that will pass very soon.

NV: It definitely helps financially. It probably saved us anywhere from $350K to $500K for the amount of film I would have shot, when your talking about film stock and processing fees, dailies, transfers. People say it saves money cause the lighting setup is faster but that’s not completely true. You still have to light things properly but once you have things up and running you can do extra takes and allow the actors to experiment a little.
There’s a portion of the film that is a flashback and people have said looks like the Godfather, which was a pretty big compliment.

I don’t know even if I had a bigger budget whether I would go back to film at this point. I probably wouldn’t. I don’t think it’s necessary to shoot film at all.
This was an under $2 million budget but we tried to make it look like a studio movie.

NV: I’d done Choker at PlasterCITY and it was very important to have the post involved right from pre-production. And talking with Ian and my DP before we even shot about how much to light it, what was possible in post afterwards. So when I got into post we were already on the same page.

I’d shot a pilot for MTV and editor Tony Wise was available so he cut that. So then I brought him on for All In. In the past I’d edited a lot of the films I directed which had been good to a point but is it always good to have another set of eyes to give a fresh perspective.

IV: There was a lot of talk back and forth about different looks between me, Nick and Jeff. They wanted a certain look and were asking how much should they push it because the camera itself has a lot of image altering settings. We did some tests but then while they were shooting they were digitizing in compressed 1080p HD (DVCPro HD) format for editorial. They were editing on the same (Apple) Xsan that I’m color correcting off of. So I was able to load up the first drafts of the edit while production was still happening. Even though it’s the compressed footage, it’s still HD resolution. I was able top load the compressed images and make a temp palette of looks so that Nick could see the possibilities and set the look.
Then I saved all those settings in the database and months later when picture was locked and we went back to the uncompressed footage I still had those settings for that look and then we just tweaked and made minor adjustments. So I had the look set, which helped them because they knew when they were shooting that how they were shooting was going to produce the look that they wanted.

With HD, you don’t really have dailies. You can have them but it’s a lot of extra steps and cost cause you’re not actually doing any telecine. So it is important to do some minimal color correction early to ensure that you will get the look you are going for.

IV: Color correction HD is a little more challenging because they are less options. It’s faster and more immediate but you do have fewer options in terms of where you can push an image depending on how it’s shot. On set it’s great because you can use less light and of course it’s great for independent filmmakers because you don’t have to worry about extra steps of grain and dirt fix and things like that. With film work it all gets transferred to HDCAM SR at low contrast so you are able to push it in many more directions because all your highlights and shadows are protected. With HD you don’t have that. You have to watch your highlights a little more so they don’t blow out.

IV: That’s what we’re exploring now, bringing that process onto set. That’s the next step, so they can see on set what the final look is, even though that isn’t what is being recorded to tape. Gamma & Density makes a software program called 3cp that builds LUTs so that you can set the look on set and then store that LUT and export it to multiple color correction utilities. You capture a TIFF file and set the look and then save that LUT. The nice thing about 3cp compared with some other on-set color correction systems is that it doesn’t lock you in to a particular system and you can go to any color correction system you want.