Francis Ford Coppola on HDTV and the Dream of All-Electronic Cinema
Summary
At the 1991 NAB Convention, Francis Ford Coppola recounted his 1975 vision of an all-electronic cinema future, sparked by using Sony Betamax on location during Apocalypse Now. He described his early meetings with NHK's Dr. Fujio, his questions about the 1125-line standard, and his investment in a Los Angeles studio to prepare for electronic filmmaking.
THE PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE SERIES
HDTV AND ELECTRONIC FILM MAKING
Remarks at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention April 15, 1991
by Francis Ford Coppola
 ike Tucker; The Man and His Dream, high definition television for me is a little bit of a story of my dream. When I was in the Philippines for Apocalypse Now around 1975, I was living in a beautiful house in the jungle I would use my Sony Betamax recorder. It was very early to do that type of thing and it was very practical because where I was it was very difficult to be able to see the dailies any other way. The system worked so well that soon I was looking at the material from the two Godfather films on my Betamax, as well.Maybe it was the solitude-or whatever, but it came to me around that time that the future of the movies was electronic, that one day all movies would be made electronically. It came to me full blown like that partly because I saw how easy it was to work with images and sound on my little Betamax recorder. Right after  Apocalypse Now I visited Japan. On my way home I began to really think the creative process, this spatial process. We do not work in a mechanical way when we dream up a piece of art. Usually it is a series of thoughts and impressions that kind of come out all at once, not in a one, two, three, four, or five manner. It's almost the way a polaroid picture develops right before your eyes. If that is the way creative work is, what if there were a system of making films liberated from the mechanical tools that we use?Of course film was a mechanical invention of the Industrial Revolution. Films were still being made in 1975 in that way, but there was a missing link. The missing link was one high quality video image. But for editorial and other work, it did not matter if the image quality was pretty crummy. I viewed it as though it were the gunsight of a tank. It did not matter if it was a good image, all I wanted to know was what was coming after me and what I was coming after. Editorially, the low level compared to what a film maker is used to was of no matter. It did not matter because I could just edit in that medium. We could, of course shoot on film and then when we were all done with our creative process we could just conform the video to film and that would be that. But I thought, what if ultimately the medium we were working with could actually become the finished film? And I began to inquire what work was being done on a high quality television that could actually become the finished film so that what you had done would be the work. I learned of some work at NHK and in 1975 met Dr. Fujio who he showed me the first high definition down in the basement. They had a monitor and projection system and camera all wired together. I was very interested to learn of the 1125 standard. Of course the first thing that I said was, is that enough? Shouldn't it be 2000 lines? Why is it only 1125 if it is one day going to replace film? Shouldn't we shoot for the highest possible standard we could? I was satisfactorily told this standard was arrived after a lot of calculation, and it was related to compatibility with other systems. Perhaps this would become the standard to rid the 'tower of babble' of television. I used to visit Dr. Fujio every time I went to Japan to see how the new television was coming. Of course this was high definition at its infancy, and this only fueled this fantasy I had about all-electronic cinema. I tried to explain the many confines that we work with in film, the mechanical nature of it, the basic hand-work of pre-production and post-production that made me want a system with some kind of computer to control the motion picture process. I was interested in the actual creative experience itself, working in harmony with the electronic system for making films. A few years later I bought a small movie studio in LA. that had nine stages. I was so sure of this electronic revolution in my industry that I began preparing for what I thought would be the studio of the future. I proceeded to buy three or four early Xerox Star computers, big things that looked like giant Macintoshes, and we were full blown in to our work. Even though the high definition product was not ready yet for the public, we could still learn how to work with it so when it was ready, we would already have ten or fifteen years experience. It sounded crackpot at the time. I remember talking about it with great enthusiasm and people walking away saying he's a little exotic. Crackpot then, but now it is happening. Throughout the motion picture industry there is rarely a shoot without a videotap on the camera. All kinds of exciting software became possible primarily through the pioneers of the music industry who were using Macintoshs. It looked as though a lot of my dream would in fact actually happen. Even to this day, when motion picture production is considered where every penny counts, say in the movie-of-the-week business for television, you will find that probably all of them are shot on film and edited electronically because it is basically faster and cheaper and a more creative way to get your result. The reason I say pre-production, production and post-production is because it still happens, but not in that order. For example I am working on a film right now in which this first week of production I put ten actors through a little cabaret and they read the script and we recorded it. We put that sound track basically on videotape without pictures so we now have a movie without pictures. Then we took hundreds of paintings and pictures that sort of sum up the feeling of the story and added these on to the videotape and we are now editing in the first week. Well, we are not going to shoot for three months, but I already have something that I can look at, that I can show my collaborators and that can go on gathering ideas and changing every week. This is a example of what I am talking about. How in-depth these tools are in helping the creative person! So also, in the last seven or eight years with the advent of the personal computer, so inexpensive and with so much software available that I am finding there are, even beyond what I originally thought, ways to help even writing and storytelling in those early phases. Well, HDTV of course emerged and I was very thrilled. But the first phase of it, for me was to gain an acceptance as a world standard. I was involved in helping Joe Flaherty going to the Ministry of Industry in France and certain important political people because it was clear that the telecommunications union was going to be involved in a vote to try to adopt a world standard. I realized that the high definition television was a hostage of many trade and political interests. In fact I had a meeting with a extremely highly placed person in France who frankly they told me, "Listen we have 24,000 people making television sets. We are not going to risk that even if it means the world standard because we just can not". I felt years later that high definition has sort of missed the boat because it is a technology already fifteen years old. They did not agree on a world standard, maybe we ought to start thinking now of a new world standard that represents a 1991 technology. I talk about the 2000 lines and people laugh at me. Most people who are arguing against high definition are really not arguing to make it better, they are really arguing to make it worse. They are saying it is not necessary that it even be as good as it is. As a film maker, I am saying it is just on the edge of being good enough. Separate high definition from its broadcasting aspects. For movies and for many aspects of television, we can use HDTV right now because companies like Sony and Ikegami immediately became involved. I was there at those first demonstrations when Sony announced it. I watched and I had the opportunity to discuss the cameras and the technology from my point of view. I realized that my theory was still acceptable. I could proceed to do my so-called new style creative process. We would release in film up until such a time that high definition could be available to us. Since we do not have the problem of worrying about broadcast it would be very acceptable. Very acceptable also because soon we are going to put performance back into television. There is going to be more and more desire to do live broadcasting once again, even live two hour broadcasting these programs like Playhouse 90. Of course high definition of today could be the archive for that making it feasible because no one is going to allow us to explore ambitious live programming without the ability to archive it and sell it later. For me, the studio of the future is still linked with high definition technology, electronic technology. For the very simple reason that the talent of actors and of writers is the petroleum of my industry. You might be able to hire Bobby DeNiro for a giant amount  of money for eight months. Very soon you are not going to be able to afford that any more. It will cost you the same amount of money to get him for eight weeks. You cannot afford to have him sit in the trailer waiting for the next shot. So I imagine that even movies of the future are going to be much influenced by methods that we used in the era of live television where they would rehearse for two or three weeks then actually do the show in a few days. It would seem to me that in the modern entertainment industry, certainly in the film industry, that that quickness of being able to use your talent and get the best of your talent in a reasonable amount of time is going to become economically very essential. Even if people want to use the old techniques they are not going to be able to afford to. I fantasize this style of working being based partly on the techniques of live television and the techniques of the recording industry with sound-on-sound. Partly on the tradition of the theater with their rehearsal and partly on the cinema with its great advances in editing. We are going to have a kind of super television that functions more taking the best of all of these mediums. So the studio of the future be a place very conducive to talent where talent meet and writers and actors meet and generate ideas then helped by some sort of UNIX type of network assisting carrying all the functions writing, designing, and budgeting would ultimately merge as a potential film and the talent, the actors, the other talent would work in a way so that the finished film would come out pretty quickly.Recently, we made the Godfather Part 3 and I made the decision to do all of the post-production all electronically. This was the first time that I have tried that on a big film. I had used electronic editing on ApocalypseNow, but it was more of an off-line sketch book. On the Godfather, we developed a whole system and protocols for the videotape that arrived from the set and we used a Montage editor. What was different from other experiments on other films was that we were not really running the film everyday conforming it so it could also be seen on film, we made the whole Godfather picture with a very short schedule because it was a big rush to get it out. We did it all in the electronic environment and only in the last three weeks did we conform the film. I did not do it because there was not a machine available that could really handle such a big picture, such a big project. In fact we were using our technology to its very limit, but it illustrates the need for such technology. This was an editing machine that could really handle and it showed that it was very practical to do in a regular movie making schedule and it is the prototype of how we would like to proceed in the future. Again, I consider high definition a missing link. One day we will be able to do all of that pre-production and post-production and the creative work without having a team of people down there looking for edge numbers and putting the film together. The actual film will emerge as a finished film in a high definition format. I am thrilled to see that there is so much available that can be used now and I would like to fill you with my assurance that you know that the cinema is going to be electronic. These tools are going to make the movies of the future. Hopefully our little studio in San Francisco in which I just finished the Godfather will continue with these experiments and trying to make it clear that this is not a crack pot thing, but a very viable future. Biography
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