Most movie theaters and film festivals haven't bought expensive digital video projectors yet, much less pure digital projection systems, so they can accept media only in the form of big old cans of celluloid. You can keep the film digital throughout and create something worth blowing up to 35 mm. Besides, film is heavy. Audio, says Miller, is a big part of DV cinema. Sound quality has to be on a par with what moviegoers are used to, since the image quality still looks a little different.
Some filmmakers record on a separate digital audiotape recorder, syncing soundtrack to image later.
Miller chose to use the camera itself as the recording device. He bought an attachment for the Sony, the BeachTek 160, which provides balanced inputs, along with a high-quality Lectrosonics wireless setup and a Sennheiser microphone. The result speaks for itself. Onscreen, even though Levitch stands a good dozen feet from the camera in one scene, you can hear loud and clear every detail of his argument with a bus-company dispatcher. Miller shot more than 80 hours of footage for The Cruise.