Before RED and digital dailies, there was experimental HD. Myrl A. Schreibman looks back at one of the first creative uses of high definition video.
High definition, 24p, 3D, the Red, the Scarlet, digital dailies, and digital intermediate are the words of today’s technologies, and filmmakers are using the technologies to tell their stories. In 1980, I was at Paramount Studios producing a movie for television titled, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything. My first “studio” project. It was based on a John D. MacDonald novel of the same name and is the story of a man who inherits a pocket watch from his crazy, eccentric billionaire uncle that allows the holder of the watch to stop time. The project was being made for the “new network” which was called, Operation Prime Time, and later became the Fox Television Network. This was before we ever heard of CGI. Before we ever heard of high definition, everything narrative on television was shot on film. The film had a cut negative, and the negative was transferred to one-inch tape for airing on television. Pretty prehistoric to what we do today.
The budget of the movie was $1.6 million dollars, which was the exact licensing fee given by the network for a two-hour movie, and I was faced with making a movie that was going to air during sweep week that spring. I wanted to be somewhat true to the novel and show scenes where our hero Kirby Winter (played by Robert Hays) or our heroine Bonny Lee (played by Pam Dawber) could stop time and move and do things with people frozen in time both in interior and exterior locations.
The story had effects sequences that involved images like floating Charla O’Rourke (played by Jill Ireland) out of a yacht onto a marina dock and into the back of an open truck full of sailors; and Bob jumping out of the truck and starting time again as it drove away. Pam being frozen in time just as she is about to punch out actor Ed Nelson; and floating off the yacht to the safety of a bench on shore. Pam stopping a beach volleyball game and untying the top of a bikini of one of the female players and starting time again so it fell on the sand to everyone’s surprise. And Bob stopping a bullet in mid-flight and redirecting it to hit the wall of a stateroom. All sequences that people had not seen before in a movie made for television.
The studio “experts” told me that the script had to be rewritten because their budgeting department broke the script down and determined it would cost $2.2 million dollars. They said the effects alone would cost $500,000, and they were not going to deficit the project. They wanted the script rewritten so everything could take place on a soundstage and could be shot like the series Bewitched using a locked off camera. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be true to the story.
Now a budget for a studio picture must be signed off by the producer before it can be made. In other words, the producer is warranting that the project can be made for that amount of money, and the producer has the responsibility to keep it within that budget – regardless of who prepares the budget. So, ultimately, I had to know what the picture would cost if we were going to shoot the script that the network bought. I broke down and boarded the same script and did my own budget. A budget for $1.6 million dollars. The Executive Producers believed in me and the project, and after assuring them it could be made for that budget, they ran interference with the studio suits. That’s all the money I had, so I needed to find a way to do the picture for that amount of money without changing the screenplay. I needed to find a way to do the “money sequence,” which was the stopping of time and the characters moving within it.
Being a producer/director who worked both in film and tape in those days, I knew that my friends Leon Silverman and Emory Cohen at Compact Video in Burbank, California, (they later left to form Lazer-Pacific Video) were experimenting with a new form of video recording in which the image would record at 655 lines (as opposed to NTSC standards of 525 lines) at 24 fps (as opposed to 30 fps). This was the beginning of what later became high definition television. With the storyboards of the effects sequences hanging on the wall, I invited Leon and
Stay True to the Story and Get the ‘Money Sequences’
Emory to my office along with Bob Ringer of Image Transform. After a nice cup of coffee and a few bagels, I said to them, “Gentlemen, how do we do what you see on that wall and keep it in line with the budget? Can those sequences cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000?”
It was that day in January 1980 that gave birth to the first film project to ever do shots in scenes using video tape (655/24), transfer it to film and intercut the negative of that film with original picture negative of other shots in the scenes. That day we figured out which shots needed to have the marriage of live action with frozen action in the background or foreground and which shots did not. It was that day the studio said what I was going to do had never been done before and I was crazy to do it. And it was that day I decided to take a gamble and told the disbelieving studio suits not to pay me my salary until I delivered the project. I believed in the creativity of my friends, and they believed in my vision. Because it hadn’t been done before didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.
And this is how we did it. We shot the background/ foreground plates for each of the shots in film. We then transferred the film to video using the, then, new technology of 655 lines at 24 fps keeping the electronic focus off and selecting the exact frame we wanted to freeze in the action. Then we went to a blue screen stage with a Compact Video truck and its 655/24 camera and video deck systems, and the director of photography Jacques Haitkin determined the match of the depth of field of the television lens to the depth of field of the film lens that was used to shoot the background plate. Once that was determined, using electronic chromakey out of the truck, we married the frozen frame of the background/ foreground plate with the live action of the blue screen elements. Only the blue screen image was being recorded in 655/24 with the electronic focus off as well. By staging each shot we allowed the actors to watch the married images on the floor monitor so they could improvise and add character story traits to their performance. Once we had the final married image electronically in 655/24, we then transferred back to film putting the electronic focus back on at that phase of the process. The negative from that image was then intercut with the original picture negative, and because the world in stopped time needed to have a different feel, we chemically color timed the picture red in the film laboratory which neutralized any inconsistencies that might have appeared. It was sort of like putting a red filter over the sequence. I allowed only foley to be played over the scene and added the ticking of a pocket watch to enhance the reality of that world.
The screening room was packed the day I showed the answer print to the suits. The lights went out in the theater. The movie played through. At the end of the screening, I stood at the exit saying nothing as the suits left the theater. They each passed by and shook my hand. Gary Nardino, President of Paramount Television, was the last to leave. “Come and get your check,” he said with a smile.
That was 1980. Today whenever Leon Silverman and I get together, we speak about that day in January and how we would do it differently today!
By the way, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything aired in prime time and was the highest rated show the week it was on the air.
Myrl A. Schreibman is a Producer/Director, professor at UCLA Film School, and author of the books, “The Film Director Prepares, A Practical Guide for Directing Film and Television” and “The Indie Producers Handbook: Creative Producing From A to Z.” His website is www.indieproducing.com.
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