Apple called them "our guinea pigs". A Sony representative commented that this type of workflow had never been attempted before on one of their films. For Alex Kendrick of Sherwood Pictures, the making of the upcoming Sony/Provident Pictures movie, Fireproof, was a technical adventure.

Set to be released on September 26th, Fireproof follows firefighter Captain Caleb Holt as he prepares to walk away from a rapidly disintegrating marriage. But before he can go through with the divorce, he receives a challenge to give the marriage 40 more days. Reluctantly agreeing, Captain Holt discovers that the job of rescuing people from fires is nothing compared to this assignment ‘ rescuing love from the ashes.

Similar to Sherwood Pictures’ previous film, Facing the Giants, Fireproof was shot using the Panasonic VariCam. But unlike Giants, Kendrick didn’t rely on DVCPro HD tapes. Instead, an SDI feed was captured from the Varicam directly to an on-set Mac using Final Cut Pro and Blackmagic’s DecklinkHD. The video stream was encoded using Apple’s ProRes 422 at a 220 Mbps data rate. “This data rate was much higher than if we had gone with DVCPro HD. We used the tapes as a backup, but 98% of the time the capture was a flawless process,” says Kendrick.

The decision to capture the footage directly to hard drives was motivated in part by his experiences editing Facing the Giants: “On our last film, we only used DVCPro HD. And although the image was great, there were times we had to zoom in or crop the sides, and we began to see artifacting as the image was enlarged.” Alex knew they needed to go another route with this project.

Plans began to be made to capture the footage straight to the computer. Apple’s ProRes 422 was the new kid on the compression block at that time, and its combination of lower data rate and higher quality made a winning team. On the hardware side, AJA’a IO Box was the top choice, as it enabled HD capture and editing with a laptop. It kept the setup smaller and simpler. But when they couldn’t get their hands on an IO unit, plans had to change. Instead, the entire editing workstation had to be brought on set, with a Decklink HD card as the capture device. Bob Scott, the film’s DP, commented, “It was a little bit bigger than what I originally envisioned, but it worked fine.”

Once system specs were in place, Kendrick still wondered how stable the capture process would be during filming. But surprisingly, workflow problems arose from another source. They planned on using the Panasonic HVX-200 as a B camera to get shots in situations where the Varicam just wouldn’t work, such as by the fast-moving wheels of a freight train. But the process of importing the P2 footage was not straightforward. “It took us longer to figure out the workflow with the P2 cards than it did with the VariCam and Blackmagic card. On the front side I began to get real scared that we weren’t going to be able to get to the P2 footage because our technicians were having trouble dumping it out,” Kendrick admits.

Once principal photography got underway, the benefits of Fireproof‘s all-digital workflow became evident. As soon as a scene was shot, Kendrick could walk over to the capture station and immediately play it back. This instant feedback was invaluable in making sure he’d gotten what was needed. “There were several occasions where I would watch the footage and then say, ‘We need to do this differently or frame this differently,’ and we would be able to go back and do the scene again right away,” says Kendrick.

He also appreciated the ability to begin editing during downtimes on set. “I’d rather shoot digital than film because of the ease of the workflow. Whenever we’d have a break on set, I would go piece a scene together. Two hours later when we were getting ready to set-up another scene, I could show the crew an edit.” When shooting wrapped in December, most of the film’s scenes were rough cut.

This immediate access to the day’s footage didn’t come without a price. The Varicam had to be tethered to the desktop at all times, no matter what was being shot.
This proved problematic, especially during crane or dolly shots. In one scene with a car wreck, the crew found it especially tricky to maneuver the cables without compromising the tether. “But,” says Kendrick, “that forced us to be creative, and we came up with a solution.” Creativity notwithstanding, the SDI feed was still lost on several occasions, such as when DP Bob Scott was holding the camera on his shoulder as he ran through a burning building. Alex took it in stride. “Safety’s gotta come first. In those instances we just had to rely on what was captured in camera. And those shots are cut so quickly anyway, the average viewer won’t even notice the quality difference.”

The SDI umbilical cord meant that not only did the camera have to stay close to the computer but the computer had to stay close to the camera. Bob Scott says it was a logistical challenge. “Our video village wasn’t just a viewing monitor. It was a whole control room setup. We had to have a complete mobile editing system attached to the camera. The computer’s recording everything we’re doing, so that department was one of the most vital of all.” Because the computer was moved around so frequently, the workstation’s various components were stored in hard cases and carted around in an SUV to the different shooting locations.

The video village crew soon had the setup process down to a fine art. Kendrick says, “We would arrive ahead of the rest of the crew to begin setting up the workstation. I think the fastest we ever did it was forty minutes, but normally we gave ourselves an hour. And that’s everything. The camera, tripod, power lines, battery packs, tether to the computer, workstation, monitors, software ‘ everything was up and running.”

Once shooting wrapped, it was time for serious editing. “Because we were planning to finish on film, I needed to edit in a true 24fps timeline. When Final Cut Pro captures out of the VariCam, it captures all 60 frames but only tags 24 of them. Before I could really edit, I had to convert the footage into true 24fps. Converting the footage took some time to do, so we just dedicated a couple of days to that task The benefit of going this route was once everything was converted, it only used a third of the original storage space. The final cut of our movie took up 65 GB, even though we shot probably 2 TB of footage.”

Would he go all digital again, annoying tether and all? Kendrick says an unequivocal yes: “I plan on shooting my next feature this way. I was so pleased with the quality of the image. And even though we shot at 720p, the footage could stand head to head with 1080 footage because it was captured at such a high data rate. Sony blew it up to 1080, and when they compared it to other projects shot on 1080, they couldn’t see much of a difference. Because of the data rate, it was a really impressive image.”