This is my personal philosophy on why to capture all footage in raw format when possible. Depending on the type of content you shoot, your needs may vary. Over the years I’ve collaborated with countless well respected industry professionals in production and post-production. For the past twenty years, I’ve worked in advertising and marketing, this blog is a distillation of much of that knowledge…
Since college, I have focused on crafting content that is 3 minutes or less. I grew up in an era where motion picture film still existed. It was expensive to shoot and even more expensive to process. Before the advent of 4K, 5K, & 6K digital cameras, film was the standard for professional capture. 1000 foot rolls were the largest magazines you could mount on a camera. This meant you could roll for seven minutes and then you had to “cut”. Today we have the ability to record in an unlimited fashion. Back when we shot film, actors were allowed to take a break every time we changed mags. The cadence was different. Limitations are a good thing, they force us to be creative.
Four Reasons to shoot raw.
1. Discipline.
2. Quality.
3. Intention.
4. Archiveability.
In time my hope is that you begin to understand, limitation is often what makes us a better filmmakers.
Discipline = Vision
Raw files take up a lot of storage space, limiting the amount you can shoot on any given day. So why limit your shooting ratio or encumber your ability you shoot footage?
Having limits forces you to plan things out to focus on your VISION, it also instills a bit of discipline. These days the amount of footage you can capture is virtually unlimited limited only by storage and compression you choose to use. Unlimited takes can burn out your talent. Shooting unnecessary footage takes up a lot of space that someone ultimately needs to review, store, edit.
The consequence of large file sizes instills discipline when shooting. Rather than rolling every second of your shoot day, what if you stop for a moment to frame up, before you press record? What if you really think about what your looking for in that variation from take to take.
You learn to respect the number of takes you can do with your talent because, just like time, your storage is finite. This ultimately has a bearing on your overall shoot because the focus shifts to capturing quality from the beginning to the end of the take.
I’ve seen productions where they put extra cameras in different formats everywhere (if is capturing a one-take live stunt, I can see how that make sense). But if your shooting a more narrative cinematic style, putting up too many cameras can quickly muddle up the vision. Capturing too many perspectives can yield vanilla in the edit room.
Quality
Capturing the entire latitude your sensor is capable gives you & clients the flexibility to grade and experiment with tone. Having the ability to mold your footage visually can take your work to new levels. With filmmaking you’re already spending the time and money to point your camera to capture something worthwhile whether it’s actors or B-roll. Why not capture the most information possible?
Folks spend so much money and time acquiring the latest and greatest camera technology, only to hamstring it by capturing compressed footage with limited archival potential?
In five years, when debayering algorithms continue to improve, your footage has the ability to look better because you made the wise choice of capturing all that your camera could offer. If you shot something raw, it still has the potential to look great 10-20 years later.
Intention
While shooting countless hours has become cheap. Digital also allows us to shoot hundreds of takes continuously without resting talent. What are you really looking to capture? Editors have to look at all of these countless hours of footage. As filmmakers are we serving up more quality footage, or is it just more of the same?
My system is limited to 4 Terabytes of SSD storage, which is roughly 4 hours of raw footage at 4K. It’s not a lot of space, but it keeps me organized. My projects tend to be 2 minutes or less. So my shooting ratio is about 4 hours for two minutes. Once I finish a project it forces me to clear it out and keep things moving.
My goal is to capture enough footage for a 2 minute story, at the highest quality possible. Depending on your deliverable this might not work for everyone.