SlamDance Co-Founder Shoots "Open House" Feature Film with Panasonic AG-DVX100 MiniDV Camcorder
Page 1 of 1
SECAUCUS, NJ (Dec. 09, 2002) -- Los Angeles-based independent filmmaker and Slamdance Film Festival Co-founder Dan Mirvish recently wrapped principal photography on his new feature film entitled “Open House.” The feature, a real- estate musical, is one of the first to be shot with Panasonic’s AG-DVX100 mini-DV 3-CCD camcorder. The AG-DVX100 incorporates exclusive CineSwitch™ technology that supports 480 interlace/60 fields per second (NTSC) 480 progressive/30 frames per second, and cinema-style 480 progressive/24 frames per second image capture in a multi-format single camera.
“Open House” follows a larcenous group of people as they make their way through a series of real-estate open houses on a Sunday afternoon. The film is based in part on a short that Mirvish produced last year as part of the Seattle Film Festival's “Fly Filmmaker” series. The project was produced by director Mirvish and Stephen Israel (Executive Producer, “Swimming with Sharks”) under their respective Bugeater Films and Neofight Film banners. Mirvish co-wrote the screenplay with Lawrence Maddox. Yasu Tanida was Director of Photography, with Joshua Tunick serving as second camera operator and second unit director. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
“The AG-DVX100s shoot 24p, but they use the inexpensive and easy medium of mini-DV to capture the image,” said Mirvish. "For the low-budget filmmaker, I think this will be a revolutionary product.” For “Open House,” the director used two AG-DVX100s recently purchased by Sunstone Entertainment (Las Vegas, NV), a production company that specializes in independent filmmaking.
The three-week shoot took place in and around Los Angeles in October and November; the musical features a large, multi-generational ensemble cast that includes Oscar-nominee Sally Kellerman (MASH), Kellie Martin (ER, Life Goes On), Anthony Rapp (A Beautiful Mind, Broadway's Rent), Ann Magnuson (Panic Room), James Duval (The Doom Generation, Donnie Darko), Jerry Doyle (Babylon 5), Ian Whitcomb (The Cat's Meow), Robert Peters (Ocean's 11), Hedy Burress (First Monday), Jenna Leigh Green (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and Branden Williams (Can't Hardly Wait), among others.
Panasonic’s AG-DVX100 offers entirely new features and price performance levels, and is carefully engineered to give shooters a single camcorder that captures in 60i to acquire standard video projects and in 24p to add the “look and feel” of film to their productions. To acquire stunning digital pictures, the AG-DVX100 is equipped with newly-developed 1/3”
 |
| The Panasonic AG-DVX100 MiniDV Camera was used to shoot "Open House" |
progressive-scan 410,000-pixel 3-CCD imagers to deliver more than 500 lines of horizontal resolution (a 25% picture quality improvement over analog), low smear and flare, a low light performance of 3 lux (at +18dB) and a high sensitivity of f 11 at 2000 lux. The native progressive CCDs eliminate interlace artifacts including horizontal jaggies and motion-edge tearing.
Unlike most recent big-budget Hollywood musicals, “Open House” uses all original music and the actors sang live on set, rather than lip-syncing to prerecorded music. Mirvish said, in style, “Open House” is somewhat akin to Woody Allen’s “Everybody Says I Love You,” an “intellectuals in Manhattan musical.”
“I’d heard about the AG-DVX100, and its great appeal was that 24p looks and feels like film--and the camera is small,” the director commented. “24p HD wouldn’t have been an option for us. The equipment is bigger, and we wanted to work hand-held. We needed the coverage of two cameras because it’s a musical. On our budget, we couldn’t have afforded the HD tape stock, and post would have been inherently more expensive. Also, the AG-DVX100 presented no technical production challenges--it looks and feels like a DV camera--and we wanted to concentrate on the audio challenges we knew the musical would involve.
“The cameras have such an ease of use and familiarity for anyone who’s used a DV camera that there were a few times where we had the actors operate the cameras themselves.”
Mirvish said he shot approximately 58 hours of footage, all in the camera’s 24p advance mode. “You immediately notice the difference from other DV cameras,” he said. “Given the combination of the frame rate and progressive, the image quality is film-like in that it doesn’t have the unnatural blurriness of NTSC video. And there seems to be an intrinsic grain, also like film.
“The style of ‘Open House’ is very realistic, almost in a documentary vein. We were able to use natural light, with little supplemental lighting. The cameras have great mics, which provided a valuable back-up to our recording eight tracks of digital audio on a TASCAM DA98. The AG-DVX100 mics allowed us to get some nice nuggets of sound, especially when we had lots of people on set. We kept a good eye on the audio levels right on the LCD screen--a great reference in syncing dailies.”
Mirvish added, “What was crucial to the project is that we achieve a consistency in sound and picture, and that there be seamless transitions between the actors singing and not singing. The cameras worked incredibly well to serve that creative imperative.”
Second unit director/camera operator Tunick is himself a filmmaker, whose “Naked Pavement” premiered at Slamdance in 1998. “I’ve shot a lot with DV cameras, and the AG-DVX100 produces an image quality far and beyond what the best cameras at this level do,” he said.
Tunick continued, “The camera’s built-in presets are very good, plus I was able to play around to get a very nice look. With most of the DV cameras, you can’t deviate from the presets, so with the AG-DVX100 I had more control. I worked with the gamma, and achieved a very saturated, filmic look. I liked the settable zebras and the audio controls, and the manual zoom ring and auto focus were most welcome in this level of camera. It’s hugely important in film work to be able to pull focus and have a shot be accurate and reproducible--none of the other DV cameras do that.
“The camera offers really good display options; for example, zoom and focus show up in the LCD display as a number, facilitating a repeat shot. The placement of the controls is very well thought out. I was able to get funky shots. At one point, I even crawled up in a tight space in an attic and could get the shot handily.”
Both Mirvish and Tunick noted the value of being able to screen dailies on an ordinary television set, as the AG-DVX100 does an automatic conversion to 30-fps.
Mirvish said that he’s begun to edit in 24p with Final Cut Pro 3, and is using DVFilmmaker software to remove and restore the pull-down effect. He plans to make the festival circuit with “Open House” in summer 2003. “The AG-DVX100 is truly a milestone product,” Mirvish concluded. “It produces a transforming look--more like film than any other NTSC DV camera--and at a reasonable price with highly affordable tape.”
The well-balanced, ergonomically-designed AG-DVX100 features a precision wide-angle zoom lens (4.5mm to 45mm with a 56-degree viewing angle) and a host of manual controls to make subtle picture adjustments. The wide angle lens allows a shooter to be “one step closer” to the action without the added expense, weight, distortion and inconvenience of an add-on adapter. Manual controls include Servo/Manual Zoom (with stops and barrel markings), Auto/Manual Focus (at f 1.6) with 72mm filter size, and Auto/Manual iris. The ultra-compact 4.2-pound camcorder can capture pictures in the conventional 4:3 aspect ratio and 16:9 aspect ratio letterbox modes. Its advanced optical image stabilization delivers superb picture quality and minimizes jitter, so hand-held shots and video taken from moving vehicles appear smooth and steady.
Shooting with the AG-DVX100 is a breeze from overhead or from low angles with its two, easy-to-view displays – a large, centrally-located pivoting electronic viewfinder for left or right eye use, and a flip-out, 270-degree, 3.5” LCD panel. Superimposed audio metering is available on both the panel and viewfinder. The AG-DVX100 offers a comprehensive list of standard performance features including six scene files and two user-assignable functions; and interval (time lapse) recording with adjustable record duration and interval time to capture events like flowers’ blooming or sunsets. Its lightweight and compact size make it ideal for use on dollies, cranes and jibs. For more information on Panasonic’s complete DV Cinema product line-up, visit www.panasonic.com/dvcinema
Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast, professional video and presentation products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North America subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC), one of the world's leading producers of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use. For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, access the company’s web site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast For “Open House” information, visit www.slamdance.com/mirvish/open.html; e-mail: bugeater@slamdance.com; or call 310-839-2569.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
