Excerpts from an article by Paul Kunkel in Sony Style magazine - Fall 1999 issue: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Amid a vast and forbidding landscape, we see four tiny figures. As the camera slowly pans, we watch them trek through a seemingly infinite space to a lake bed, where they pitch their tents. As they shovel what looks like dirty snow into hundreds of piles, they sing to the gods to ensure a plentiful supply of the white substance, salt.
This scene, captured in the epic film The Saltmen of Tibet, by German documentary maker Ulrike Koch, could have been filmed in 35mm, like most hollywood movies. Instead it was recorded with a camera simple enough for a child to use, a Sony DCR-VX1000, the world's first "prosumer" digital video camcorder. The documentary was then edited on a desktop computer and transferred to 35mm for theatrical release. Winner of five international awards, Saltmen is one of the first feature-length movies shot on digital video. Yet most viewers have no idea that the gorgeous images they see on the screen were achieved with, essentially, a home video camera.
"With film, working in such harsh conditions would have required a large crew," says Koch. But the camcorder allowed her to shoot with only three other people. She could check the sound and image in the field by simply playing back the tape and had no worry about the cost of film. "More important, the camcorder's small size and light weight made our presence inconspicuous," she adds.
By eliminating the crew, lighting and sound equipment, and support personnel that conventional film projects often require, Koch achieved a more intimate relationship with her subjects. "the saltmen soon forgot we were shooting a film," she says. "There was no acting in the usual sense, which makes the film quite moving to watch."
"Right now, DV is a runaway train plowing through the filmmaking industry," says writer/director Philip Dolin, who has produced nearly 60 music videos and has just completed a feature titled B Movie using the VX1000. "Because of its high quality, low cost and ease of use, DV is changing the art of moviemaking in the same way that personal computers and desktop publishing changed the book and magazine business a decade ago," says Dolin.
As with any new medium, the most interesting work comes from those with the fewest preconceptions, such as first-time director Bennett Miller, who met a garrulous tour bus guide named Timothy "Speed" Levitch in 1994. Fascinated by Levitch's eccentric demeanor, encyclopedic knowledge of New York City and penchant for insightful self-revelation, Miller picked up a VX1000 and began shooting The Cruise. As Levitch baffles tourists aboard his bus with a blend of fact and fantasy, Miller's camera reveals a character no writer could create, and obsessive who rails at life's injustices from atop the Brooklyn Bridge and spins himself in the plaza between the World Trace Center's twin towers until he collapses from dizziness. With no script, no film crew (except for Miller) and just two characters - Levitch and the city itself - the effect is riveting.
Miller had his video transferred to 35mm film at the Sony Pictures HD Center in Culver City, Calif. and caused a sensation when The Cruise appeared at the 1998 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, thereby becoming the first DV auteur to receive national theatrical distribution. Both Miller and Levitch credit the film's success to the intimacy of the DV medium. "With DV," says Levitch, "we play with the deepest recesses of our being. DV lets us cross over to the dream world with very little effort."
For Miller, the camcorder gives the movie an intense, graphic quality. "Since background detail in DV can often appear jagged," he says, "I overexposed the backgrounds by adjusting the aperture on the camera and enhanced the contrast during computer editing" to emphasize the effect.
Philip Dolin's B Movie is a humorous tale of two park rangers who discover a secret utopian community in upstate New York. Using a VX1000, Dolin shot the film in just 12 days on a budget of $17,000. According to actor David Simonds, who appeared in B Movie as well as in such Hollywood films as Conspiracy Theory, the pace on a DV project is much faster. "On a film project, you can wait for hours between takes for the crew to set up the camera, lights and sound equipment," he says. "But DV is so simple, one scene flows into another. And DV is a low-cost medium, which encourages experimentation."
By taking the camera off the tripod, for example, a director can choreograph the camera's movements to work with the actors and subject matter. To demonstrate, Simonds moves his arms and body through a series of t'ai chi-like poses. "The goal is to move the camera in a fluid manner," he says. "With DV you can let the camera run, play scenes in different ways and change the camera angles, since setting up takes only a few minutes." As a result, a two-hour film can be shot in a matter of days rather than in weeks or months. "Producers live it because costs are lower. And directors and actors love it because video allows us to improvise and create the cinematic moment while the camera is rolling, not rehearse it to death in advance and try to recreate that moment on the set."
New Jersey's Pine Barrens is the setting for The Last Broadcast, a docuthriller by Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos. The pair shot and edited the 87-minute DV movie, uplinked the data to a satellite and made history by beaming the signal to digital projectors in five theaters across the U.S. in October 1998. Since then, Weiler has refused Hollywood offers to reshoot The Last Broadcast on celluloid, preferring to spread the word about the digital movement "and put a human face on the new technology so that kids can look at us and say, 'I can do that too.'"
With hundreds of DV auteurs shooting projects for a screen of Website near you, Weiler considers digital video a return of the American dream. "You don't have to sit around and talk about making a movie anymore. With a small investment, you can shoot and edit your own story and reach an audience in theaters, at festivals or over the Web. But the future belongs not to those who just talk about it. It belongs to those who do it."
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