New HD110 feature film premiere

[Steve Downer]

I thought you might be interested to know that a British independent feature film, NADINE, that I worked on as Director of Photography and Cameraman last year, and which was shot entirely on my JVC HD110E camera, has a European premiere this month.

The film is one of 11 chosen to screen at the Cinema l'Odyssee in Strasbourg, France, for the Cinema Britannique season between June 27th and July 17th. The other films are The Queen, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Notes On A Scandal, An Ideal Husband, My Beautiful Launderette, Cashback, Red Road, United 93, Isolation, & Keeping Mum so the JVC has held its own amongst some very distinguished films that originated in 35mm.

NADINE is the gritty and disturbing story of the final day in the life of an abused teenage girl and was shot entirely on location in Roehampton, south London, over a four week period in autumn 2006. The film was shot on the JVC HD110E in HDV720p/25 using the standard Th16x5.5BRMU lens and WCV-82SC wide converter. As the final look and destination (35mm filmout/tv/digital projection) hadn't been decided when we began shooting, I set up a scenefile based around one of Tim Dashwood's recommendations (Thanks Tim) that I thought would give the editor room for manouvre during the edit. I wasn't involved in the post production as it was done in France and I was on another project, so my first viewing will be at the premiere next Wednesday, but I'm told the colours have been desaturated in keeping with the mood of the story.

For those interested, my settings were:
Master black. Normal Color Gain. Normal
Black Stretch. +1 Color Matrix. Normal
Detail. -6
White Clip. 108%
Knee. Manual
Level.80%
H Frequency. Middle
V Frequency. Low
Shutter speed kept at 1/50s throughout the shoot and ND filters used to reduce depth of field. I rarely shot at apertures smaller than f5.6.
Tape. JVC ProHD
Edited on Avid Adrenaline.
Converted to DVD for digital projection - the cinema doesn't have a HD projection facility and the budget so far hasn't allowed for the hoped for 35mm filmout. The producer tells me the image looks great on a big screen.

You can find more about NADINE and the film season at the websites www.nadinethemovie.co.uk and www.cinemaodyssee.com and a short trailer (not the final look of the film) is at www.artstrike.eu

NADINE was the first outing for my HD110E, and a departure from my usual work as a freelance wildlife cameraman. Since then it's been put to use on a number of UK broadcast and non-broadcast productions. In SD configuration I've used it to shoot spiders for the BBC's Springwatch nature series and a music video for a heavy metal band. In HDV configuration I've shot a short film, Last Chance Romance ( currently in post production ), big close ups (using Nikon MicroNikkor macro lenses) of freshwater insects for the BBC's forthcoming Alan Titchmarsh series Nature of Britain, and most recently have used it in Burma to film the babies of the world's smallest mammal the Bumblebee bat ( the first time the young of this species has ever been filmed ) for a forthcoming Discovery High Definition series Animals on the Edge. The series is being filmed in full size High Definition, but because of the political situation in Burma it wasn't possible to take such equipment in to the country. The alternative I suggested, to use my HD110 broken down into small parts and put in to a small rucsac (I removed the microphone, mike holder, earpiece, and the handgrip from the zoom lens as these weren't needed and left them in the UK) worked perfectly and the editor has described the images I brought back as "superb". I was amazed at how well the camera coped with the extreme humidity in the caves where I was filming and it worked faultlessly.


STEVE DOWNER

www.stevedowner.co.uk
www.wildlifefilm.co.uk