Rod Serling's sci-fi tale A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST is brought to life as an atmospheric television movie shot on Digital Beta.
Set in a bleak futurescape, A Town Has Turned To Dust depicts the imminent collapse of Earth's ecological system: continents are turning brown, and any precipitation is the exception rather than the rule rain hasn't fallen in 300 days. Penned by the late visionary Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone and The Night Gallery, the cautionary tale is a character study centering on the inhabitants of a town called "Carbon" in the year 2215.
This USA Network Movie of the Week is the fourth collaboration between director Rob Nilsson and myself. I first met Rob in 1992 at a warehouse in San Francisco's South of Market area, where he was interviewing cinematographers for Chalk, his movie about a dysfunctional family that runs a pool room. The film's unusual casting brought homeless people into the world of filmmaking; it was an intriguing project, and Rob and I connected very quickly on matters of social philosophy and photographic style.
When Rob asked me to shoot Dust, a question arose about whether to shoot on film or with video. The network and the production company had only shot film for its narrative projects, and although my background is in film, Rob and I had shot with video for Chalk, which was captured on BetaSP and framed for 1.85:1 (always keeping in mind the eventual 35mm blow-up). We resolved to shoot long takes while searching for what the great still photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once referred to as "the decisive moment."
[Ed. note: Not incidentally, Nilsson helped pioneer the notion of video-shot feature production in the 1980s with his documentary-flavored films Signal 7 and Heat and Sunlight.]
Given our modest budget, various economic considerations had to be taken into account. Without getting into the worn-out arguments of the film versus video "look," I asked myself about the cost-saving comparisons between the two mediums. I generated a budget based upon a weekly breakdown comparing the 35mm, Super 16mm, and Digital Beta formats. The budget criteria entailed camera rentals, raw stock, processing and workprinting 85 percent of our footage on a weekly basis. For Digital Beta, we had to factor in submastering on BetaSP to enter into the Avid instead of processing and workprinting.
The costs broke down as follows: 35mm $37,490 weekly; Super 16mm $21,890 weekly; Digital Beta $7,412 weekly. The respective raw stock prices were $55,000 for film and $1,500 for tape. Intrigued with the new technology, economics finally enticed the production company and the network to shoot with Digital Beta. My recommendation was that the finished result should go through a film-look process for broadcast. Among the advantages of shooting Digital Beta were the following: the footage seen in the monitors was what was actually being recorded; I would have the ability to "light by eye" and confirm the results on the monitor without having to pull out a light meter; takes could be of longer length, thus eliminating worries of an interrupted performance; and we would all have the opportunity to gain experience using leading-edge technology.
My instincts for composition, camera movement, and lighting remain the same whether shooting film or tape, despite the visual differences between the chemical and electronic mediums. The tape-based format does have its shortcomings, however. There are inherent drawbacks in the cabling required by video; limitations abound in the choice and quality of video lenses; electronic lighting latitudes are not as broad; and the hardware has yet to be designed for long-form dramatic work. In the film realm, there are dailies of "circle takes" shown either in workprint form or on video the next day. If we shoot eight or nine takes and print just one or two, then our viewing time for dailies is concise and efficient. While working with the timer at the lab, you can communicate the aim for moods and subtleties. In video you "print" or dub everything over to a viewing format such as VHS and view your dailies. The poor quality of a VHS viewing copy after originating on Digital Beta can defy description colors shift, contrast builds, and the subtleties are gone. Making decisions for the finessing of imagery is difficult; therefore, establishing and confirming one's images while shooting is extremely important.
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