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The Technique of Documentary Film Production
by W. HUGH BADDELEY, F.R.P.S., M.B.K.S
with a preface by PAUL ROTHA
Second Revised Edition
CONTENTS
PREFACE by Paul Rotha 7
INTRODUCTION 9
- PREPARATION OF THE SCRIPT 13
The Film Treatment 13
Subject Research 15
The Shooting Script 16
Script Terminology 17
Scripting the Unpredictable 20
- THE BREAKDOWN SCRIPT 29
- BUDGETING A DOCUMENTARY FILM 32
Cost of Materials 35
Travelling Expenses 37
Music Royalties 38
Hire of Equipment and Facilities 38
Insurance 39
Production Time 40
Overheads 41
Margin of Profit 42
Submitting the Quotation 42
Checking the Cost 43
A Typical Budget 43
- PLANNING A DOCUMENTARY 46
Colour or Monochrome 48
Lighting 48
Personnel 50
Obtaining Outside Services 53
Hiring Actors 54
Costume 55
Wigs, Beards and Moustaches 55
Make-up 56
Studios, Sets, Furniture and Props 56
Hiring Commentators 57
Library Material 58
The Shooting Schedule 59
- CHOICE OF CAMERA EQUIPMENT AND FILMSTOCK 62
35 mm. or 16 mm. 62
Choice of Filmstock 64
Negative or Reversal? 64
Choice of Camera 66
The Continuous Reflex Camera 66
Cameras for Use in the Field 70
Choice of Lenses 71
Focal Lengths 72
Aperture 73
Selecting Filters 75
Filters for Colour 76
Filters for Black-and-White 79
Polaroid Filters 81
Exposure Meters 82
Tripods 84
The “Spider” 87
Reflectors Other Accessories 87
- SHOOTING
Rules and Conventions of Film Assembly 89
Division of Subject-Matter into Separate Shots 90
Sequence of Shots 92
Planning Camera Angles 95
Continuity Between Shots 97
Condensing Time 98
Directing People 99
Liaison During Production 101
Conventions of Movement 102
Overlapping Action 103
The “Cut-Away” 104
Breaking the Rules 106
Dope Sheets 108
Exposing the Film 110
Choice of Lens 111
Camera Angle and Viewpoint 111
Use of the Tripod 112
Camera Jams 113
- SHOOTING A DOCUMENTARY OVERSEAS 114
Production Hazards to be Considered 115
Customs Requirements 117
Health Considerations 118
Dispatching Rushes 118
Safeguards Against Tropical Conditions 119
Problems of Extreme Humidity 120
Budgeting a Film Overseas 121
- LIGHTING ON LOCATION 123
Four Types of Lighting 123
Lighting Contrast 126
Use of Reflectors 127
Light Units and Their Use 127
Overrun Photographic Lamps 129
Tungsten-halogen Lamps 129
The Problems of Mixed Light 129
Filming with Very Limited Light 131
Working on Remote Locations 132
Achieving Colour Balance with Artificial Lighting 133
- SOUND RECORDING 135
Development of Sound-Recording Methods 136
Magnetic Sound Recording 137
Problems of Synchronizing Magnetic Tape 137
Perforated Magnetic Film 140
Mixing Sound Tracks 140
Recording on Location 142
“Wild” Recordings 143
The Problems of Extraneous Sounds 144
Placing the Microphone for Synchronous Shooting 145
Problems with Acoustics on Location 146
Assessing Acoustic Qualities 148
When Acceptable Results are Impossible to Obtain 149
Choice of Microphone 149
Retarding speech 151
Recording Music 152
Single-Microphone and Multi-Microphone Techniques
Methods of Synchronizing Sound
Recorded at the Same Time as Picture 154
Recording Synchronous Sound with an
Independent Recorder 156
- ARTWORK AND ANIMATION 157
Titles 157
Filming Titles 158
Superimposing Titles 158
Adding Fades and Dissolves 160
Stop Action and Animation 160
Cartoon-style Animation 161
Simple Animation 164
Stop Action 166
Filming Stills, Drawings and Paintings 167
Camera Movement as a Substitute for Animation 169
- EDITING 171
Obtaining a Work-Print 171
Footage Numbers 172
First Assembly 174
Screening the Rough Assembly 175
Assembling Picture and Synchronous Sound 176
Marking Up the Work-Print 179
Marking Up for Opticals 180
Master Matching 181
Preparing the Master for Opticals 183
A and B Roll Assembly 183
“Chequer-Board” Printing 186
Cueing for Release Printing 187
Leaders 188
Marking Up for Printing 189
- THE SOUND TRACK 190
The Commentary Script 190
Writing Commentary to Picture 191
Basic Rules of Commentary Writing 192
Style in Commentary Writing 193
Blending Commentary with Visuals 194
Integrating the Commentary and Visuals 197
Recording the Commentary to Picture 197
Cueing the Commentator 198
Cueing the Work-Print 199
Cueing by Footage 200
Placing of Commentary in Relation to Picture 201
Avoiding Paper Rustle Dealing with “Fluffs” 203
The Commentator’s Style 203
Need for Rehearsal 205
Handling the Recorded Commentary Track 206
Post-Synchronous Recording of Dialogue to Picture 206
Recording to Picture Loops 207
Laying the Commentary 207
Using the Synchronizer with Track Reader 209
Bringing the Commentary and Picture into
Precise Synchronism 210
Cutting in Retakes 211
Running Double-Headed 212
The Music Track 212
Library Music 213
Laying Magnetic Music Tracks 214
Mixing Music from Discs 215
Music Royalties 217
Effects 217
The Sound Effects Library 219
Mixing the Various 219
Sound Tracks Sound Loops 221
Simpler Methods of Mixing 221
Checking Synchronism During Mixing 222
Producing the Optical Track 223
Characteristics of Optical Tracks 224
Cueing for Printing 225
Blooping Joins in Optical Tracks 226
Checking Track Quality in the Print 227
- OBTAINING PRINTS 228
Checking the Grading
Checking Colour Quality 229
Joins in Release Prints 231
Sound Quality 232
Obtaining Release Prints 233
Printing from Dupe Negatives 233
35 mm. Colour Release Prints 235
16 mm. Colour Release Prints 236
Comparative Costs of Different Methods 237
Fragile Emulsions 238
Release Prints on Both 35 mm. and 16 mm. 239
Magnetic Sound Prints 240
8 mm. Sound Prints 241
Spooling Up 241
- DISTRIBUTION 243
Cinema Distribution 243
Selling Films to Television 244
The Non-Theatrical Market 247
Distributing the Sponsored Film 247
Setting Up the Sponsor’s Own Library 248
The Sponsored Film in Education 249
- CONCLUSION 250
GLOSSARY OF TERMS 252
INDEX 259
PREFACE
Having just finished making a feature film, it seems odd to be writing a piece to preface a manual of documentary film production. Yet on reflection the two genres of cinema have much in common: it is wholly the matter of approach, and even this can have common interests. Some years back I drew the close parallels between Flaherty’s magnificent documentary Louisiana Story and De Sica’s equally fine so-called fiction film Bicycle Thieves. What has happened since then to make cinema really alive and exciting again is that the most perceptive of makers of feature films have learned ever more deeply from documentary cinema in the pursuit of the “creative interpretation of reality”.
Mr. Baddeley’s manual, and he makes this most clear, is not concerned with the aesthetics and/or social approach to the documentary film. He does not deal with the poetic, the humanistic or the sociological attitude of the documentary film-maker. His is a book—and to my mind a most useful and valuable one—about what we may call the craft offilm-making, if you can apply that term to a highly-industrialized and mechanized medium. I find his work all embracing and, lam sure, most accurate.
In the past year or two, some European, British and American filmmakers of what is pretentiously called the nouvelle vague have, it would seem, cast aside the technical niceties and skills of our medium in an effort to become more “free”. They have rebelled, as the Italian neorealists and British documentary movement did before them, against the confined restrictions of the studio-made film. They have let their cameras and microphones roam the streets and houses of today’s life and, aided by recent technical improvements of film stock, light portable movie-cameras and magnetic sound-recording, have given some exciting work far closer to pure cinema than anything from the conservative commercial entertainers.
Personally I much welcome and applaud this freedom—it has a fine freshness to it—but at the same time it has often shown a disrespect for the craft of film-making about which I am not happy. Somewhere between the two must lie a middleway in which freedom of technical means can be equated with the skill of fine craftsmanship. Out-of-focus shots, a wavering hand-held camera and sound-recording in which the dialogue is inaudible are the privilege of the rank amateur. Film-making is a professional task.
In commercial cinema, on the other hand, due I fancy mainly to the frustration of being compelled to make worthless subjects dictated by the industry’s ideas of ”entertainment”, many talented film-makers have become fascinated by the perfections of the technique per se, thus film after film is a hollow shell of glittering technique. Such striving after perfectionism is, however, very expensive and is one reason—but not by any means the only one—for the high cost of commercial film production today in England and America.
To those of us who started in thirty odd years ago with the documentary world, Mr. Baddeley’s book is obviously alarming. In those days, mainly due to the sheer lack of money with which to obtain good technical facilities, we had to make do with the most primitive equipment, a minimum allowance of film-stock and public transport was the rule for travel. Imagination and improvization were our saviours.
But I am not one of those people who believe that an artist must triumph over the poorest of tools and materials, especially in a medium like the film which depends so greatly on mechanical instruments, but I do believe that an over-abundance of technical aids can confuse the film artist’s direction of purpose. I once recall watching a distinguished documentary director, who had been given an elaborate camera-velocilator to use for the first time, spending all morning in deciding how to shoot a simple “insert” of a map pinned to a wall. Without the many variations made possible by this intriguing piece of equipment, I am sure this director would have shot the map perfectly adequately in five minutes. The results would have been just as good.
Nevertheless, in spite of my reservations, all kinds of film production have become infinitely more complicated—and more expensive—since the war years. Thus it becomes more and more important for the film-maker— whatever his particular talent as a director, cameraman, editor or so on— to know and master the tools of his craft before he can afford to take risks and discard them. To this end, Mr. Baddeley’s book will be a tremendous help, and it may lead its readers perhaps on to a more specialized study of works devoted to the various branches of production.
At the same time, I must record that I still believe that knowledge is best gained by the hard way of trial and error in practical experience: but even here this book can have its place of reference.
February, 1963 PAUL ROTHA
