Recordable Media

An Interview with Lisa Wiegand, Award-Winning Cinematographer

Lisa Wiegand has won the ASC's Karl Struss Heritage Award for excellence in cinematography. She's shot on 35mm, 16mm, High-Def, DVCAM® and Mini-DV formats. And she has a definite opinion on DV and DVCAM tape.

"When you're shooting film, of course they're going to ask you what film stock you want to use," Wiegand says, "because they know that that makes a big difference. But they think that 'tape is tape' and it doesn't really matter. But it does."

"A higher grade tape is obviously going to give you fewer problems. I've even had experiences with lower grades of tape where the tape just won't record properly, where it just doesn't work. Or where you play it back and there's all kinds of dropouts. It's just for some reason not recording correctly. And you lose a whole tape. So you have to have lots of extra tape with you, just to make sure you have a tape that works."

"I haven't had many problems with dropouts with Sony Digital master tapes. And when I shoot that higher grade tape I feel more confident that when we get something-when we shoot a take and get a really good performance-that it's going to be there. And we don't have to keep re-creating it, to get the actors to do it the same way to have a "safety" or backup. That really affects how it goes on set."

"Sony Digital Master tape performs really well. It helps give me the confidence that the image that I record and the choices that I make on the set are going to be preserved and are going to be there. You don't have to worry about that."