Jacek Laskus, A.S.C.
On Shooting Frankie and Johnny Are Married

The following is a conversation between Murray Mintz* and Jacek Laskus,the DP of Frankie and Johnny are Married, on the topic of shooting a feature motion picture mixing video and film formats for the big screen.

Q. In shooting a digital movie with a small crew, I found the experience quite liberating. How was the experience of shooting in digital for you?

A. A project like Frankie and Johnny Are Married always presents an array of problems for everyone involved in the movie making process; the cinematographer is no exception. The problems I am talking about come with the territory of making a low budget feature, which usually means having a short shooting schedule, a young and often inexperienced crew. Add to that a Director who is the leading man and it's not easy.

Fortunately, on this film, the Director is a friend and somebody with whom I've had an established working relationship. On the flip side, making a film like this also presents opportunities which are rare or totally impossible on the normal studio or network production. Without pressure from studio executives above, the creative process is very clean. Creative ideas can be implemented quickly and tried with taking a great risk.

By shooting digitally, we could rewind the tape and look at a rehearsal and take a bit of time to discuss it. It also allowed me to check the lighting and make corrections which helped me as I was also the camera operator.

Q. I know you shot in multiple formats; HiDef Video, MiniDv, Super16, 35MM and maybe a couple more. Can you talk about why?

A. The budget was going to be small and after several and lengthy conversation with the director (Michael Pressman) about the look he wanted for the film, we did a great deal of research and shot some tests. After looking at the test footage we decided to shoot in multiple formats, both film and using digital. The choices were based on story, locations and on financial considerations. For the main bulk of the film we chose a Hi Def camera, a Panasonic VariCam and the Zeiss DigiPrime lenses. However, for shooting scenes at the house of the married couple, who are the film's main characters, we decided to go with a small inobtrusive camera that would would allow us to capture the intimacy of their private lives. Our choice was a brand new Mini DV camera from Panasonic, the 24P, that can shoot both 30 frame or 24 frame video which looks more like film. We chose also a Panasonic camera , a brand new that was capable of recording in 24p mode. For shooting daylight exteriors we chose to shoot on film in the Super 16 format which gave us more latitude in the highlights. To shoot the finale of the film, the actual performance of the play, we wanted to give it a more glamorous and rich look, so we decided to shoot with a 35 millimeter camera on a Steadicam.

Q. How was all of the footage integrated?

A. We had all of the footage transferred to HI Def D5 format. This will allow further corrections and on line edit to prep for the final transfer from video to film. The editing was done using the Apple Final Cut Pro system.

Q. Getting back to the cameras, for a moment. How did you make your choices as to which cameras to use for the production.

A. As to the cameras, we had access to the very best from Clairmont Camera and lots of help from them which helped narrow down the choice. We finally chose the Panasonic VariCam over the 24P Sony system. When I shot tests and transferred them to film, I found the VariCam had less digital noise and the film transfers of Panasonic seemed to be more "film like." The texture of the image also had more density, like that of an oil painting, and even depth of field, always a problem with video, was not much of an issue. I also think using the Zeiss DigiPrimes turned out to be a great choice. I knew I was going to be hand holding the camera most of the time, so I thought I needed some constant factor and going with prime lenses was the way to do it. Also having previous experience with Zeiss lenses, I knew of their color matching quality was superb, which is very important when shooting on digital media.

Q. How did you find the Panasonic 24 P Mini-DV Camera?

A. The Panasonic Mini DV 24 P camera was far from perfect, but allowed us the necessity in capturing the intimacy of the characters in their home environment. Clairmont Cameras came through again by designing a follow focus system that worked wirelessly. The viewing system and the zoom controls could be better and I hope Panasonic will improve them in the future models. The camera's ability to shoot at film speed (24 fps) was the decisive factor in choosing it over similar pro-sumer cameras. It's image quality was far superior than the other Mini DV cameras we tested, especially when transferred by E-Film to 35mm film.

Q. Any lessons you can pass on to others who decide to shoot in the digital format, especially Mini DV?

A. I learned one big lesson shooting on mini DV tape with its high compression. Don't underexpose it as you might the film image. Create your contrast, mood, graininess, all of it, in the post with a skilful colorist. In terms of shooting films on video, the process is getting better and better, but it is still a new field for lot of us, a very exciting process of translating the digital picture to the old style film/chemical one.