El Papel Buzz Starting

[Jonathan Ames]

Shooting began in earnest this Monday, a full month behind schedule which, as Hollywood goes, really isn't that bad considering we've been asked to add an entire new pilot...in Spanish! El Papel (see story in last issue) is now being produced in both English and Spanish for local and international distribution. Now, this might not sound like much but consider the fact that the second pilot is not just subtitled and the casting involved more than 400 people of which three main and four secondary characters were selected. And although each of them looks Latino, each spoke his or her own dialect of Spanish in much the same way we speak English with a northern, Canadian, southern, "Valley", Boston, New York and other accents. So the challenge was to get everyone sounding like a family because that's what they are portraying. Then there were the line changes that you'll understand when the picture comes out but, suffice to say, 30-days was record time to add what amounts to a whole other production.

I wanted to share a couple of things with you all. The first is the fact that I continue to be amazed at the dedication and raw talent the production team, each of whom was pulled from this DVXInfo board, exhibits along with the speed with which they are learning and accomplishing things. We set out with 2nd-Unit.tv to bring behind the scenes shows to you via board members and its success led to crewing this new television show with the same talented yet non-professional people and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. The second thing I wanted to share with you is the performance the new Sony XDCAM is capable of. When we were considering the cameras for this project, I was skeptical of a 1/2" camera being able to give me the performance necessary to carry off the scenes of a drama, the pilot episode of which is set predominately at night and contains interiors where the electricity is out and performers are acting by candle light. That type of setting is exceptionally demanding on cameras as you all probably know and while Paolo, Scott Chambers and John Salamme are providing lighting that is certainly key to success, without an outstanding camera, no matter what kind of lighting you do, alot of things happen, all of which are bad. The Sony, however, has proven to be more than up to the challenge as greys are effectively separated from the blacks of darkness and the perceived blues of night are removed from the various other hues of the evening, all this while the colors of the streetlights and candles, oncoming cars and retreating brakelights are providing a depth and third dimension to the scenes and the characters so necessary in compelling photography.

I've attached a 1080X720 daily from yesterday's shooting for your consideration, the parent clip of which was a 15-second, uncompressed, 1920X1080, 10-bit series that was 1.5G in size. The compressed result is about 10M in size and loses some depth and other assets because of the compression but still shows what the camera is capable of. I hope you enjoy it and I certainly welcome your comments and thank you for your continuing interest in 2nd-Unit.

http://www.paolociccone.com/videos/ElPapel-test01.mov

[Chris Hocking]

I agree! The XDCAM is really amazing!

Just look at the 2006 Australian movie 2:37. All shot on XDCAM - and the results are fantastic. The workflow, from what I hear, is also quite simple thanks to Apple and Sony.

Good luck with the shoot!

[Matt Garrett]

It's looking good Jonathan!