Studio HD production with digibeta cameras?

1. Running Digital Betacam "through an HD deck" won't make it HD, even if you could do it without up-converting it first. If you start will Digital Betacam quality, nothing you do to it will make it better, only worse. Yes, up-rez of DB is not as good as straight DB.

2. HD won't make anyone look bad, but poor cinematography certainly will, regardless of format. Let's face it, the better quality medium you use, the easier it is to make pretty pictures. I had to work hard to make DB look great and harder still to do the same job with SP; on the other hand, 35 MM was always a piece of cake and HD is almost as easy. In some important ways, HD is actually easier than film because you have the HD monitor to guide you.

Good luck,
Leo

Now that's a great question!

Many maintain that HD shows a lot more than even 35 MM film, so sets, wardrobe, makeup, and wigs, etc. have to be better. While I do believe this is true to a certain extent, we must remember that HD has 2.5 times greater depth of field, and that accounts for much of the need for better sets.

Certainly makeup must be "better" if you're shooting HD as compared to SD, but really this just means that the makeup must be more transparent. That is, a rather poor job that won't show on SD, might well be obvious on HD. I don't allow makeup that is easily detectable by eye anyway, so it's not that much of a problem for me. Also, I tend to light relatively softly on people and I keep my detail circuits set to the lowest level, so that helps as well.

I've never had a situation where the makeup artist had to change anything for HD, but I'm lucky enough to work with some really talented stylists.

One more thing that should be noted, is that we frequently shoot gentlemen with no makeup whatsoever, and they look just fine.

Good shooting!
Leo