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In Production
Shooting Sibling
Viper Camera enables Filmmakers to easily create four Distinct Looks
 When it came time to prepare to shoot his new independent feature Sibling, Matt Farnsworth decided he wanted to try shooting it digitally. “I love film but I wanted to try something different,” he says.
He had tested shooting his first feature Iowa in HD four years ago but was not pleased with the technology that was available. “It was good but not as inviting as film,” he says. “It wasn’t the quality I wanted. When he tested a Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera before his recent shoot he was pleased with what he saw. “It’s basically four cameras rolled into one because of the various shooting modes it offers. We were able to create [the look of] different time periods with the look up table feature.”
 Sibling tells the intense story of a brother and his younger sister, whom and at a very young age witness their parents’ violent murder. The girl is adopted by a caring and loving family while the brother is left to languish in an orphanage where he is abused. Reflecting the violence he experiences at such a young age, he becomes a monster and has to be institutionalized. He waits patiently for the chance to escape, and when he does, seeks against those who made him who he is.
The feature is crafted with a number of color schemes – ranging from brilliant and saturated to stark low light – in order to capture the emotional tone of the phases of the character’s lives. When they are young, set in the Eighties, the film has a rich, saturated look. The contemporary scenes are really dark, leveraging the Viper’s unique (and Emmy Award-winning) Dynamic Pixel Management of its CCDs to portray small details in extremely low light creating a tense look to capture the suspense-driven narrative.
“I chose to use the Viper after our first test and saw its dynamic ability to capture a full range of information and color within the 4:4:4 RGB signal,” says Farnsworth. “I shot my first feature Iowa on Kodak Vision Super 35 mm stock. Now that we are in post-production, I can easily say the Viper stacks up and even surpasses film on multiple levels. I was also able to shoot 2:37 aspect ratio easier than I could on film. The image is so clean, I feel like I am really inside the film. I have the feeling people will be talking about Sibling for a number of reasons. The fact that we shot with Viper is already proving to be one of them.”
Farnsworth says he looked at all the available digital cameras on the market before settling on the Viper. “Red was a big consideration,” he says, adding that, “I even thought of buying one.” But the overall quality of the Viper, and in particular its track record convinced him. He cited the work of directors Michael Mann and David Fincher, acclaimed artists both of whom shot successful features with Viper, as critical influences.
Director of Photography Aaron Medick had used the Viper on a previous project and was insistent on using it for the Sibling shoot. During production he worked with film engineer Dave Satin (of New York-based post facility Mega Playground) to create a series of look up tables (LUTs) in order to create a specifically defined look for each period in the characters’ turbulent lives. During the post process these LUTs allowed the project’s colorist to immediately recognize the vision of the director and DP and helped maintain a consistent look across the entire picture.
The production was shot in FilmStream 4:4:4 mode with a single Viper camera and recorded to tape using a Sony HDCAM SR VTR, with the equipment supplied by Plus8/Panavison in New York City. Much of the principal photography (in a public school and municipal buildings) was completed in Union, New Jersey over 35 days. Other scenes were shot in and around NYC as well.
While Iowa, which was shot with a Panavision camera was not “a huge commercial success,” Farnsworth says, it was accepted in the Tribeca Film Festival and was shown in theatres in several cities including New York and Los Angeles. “It was a great experience,” he says.
Farnsworth says one of the best features was the ability to preview a shot on location before committing to shoot it. He adds that the camera is extremely sensitive to light and, as a result, it requires fewer lights. That, in turn, maximizes set up time.
As an example, he described shooting on New Jersey streets and says, “We didn’t have to light up a whole city block.” There was one scene in a dark, abandoned hospital boiler room that didn’t require any additional lights at all. “It’s a fairly light camera,” he says.
“For an independently made film like ours, we were able to get the look of a major feature costing many times more,” said Ian Moore, co-producer/production manager for the production. “We’re very pleased with the results.”
“You don’t need a big budget to get a big budget look on independent features,” says Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of Thomson’s Broadcast and Professional Solutions business unit. “The Viper FilmStream Camera gives smaller budget productions the ability to look like a major Hollywood feature due to its dynamic range and superb image quality. That’s why big-budget films like Zodiac and Miami Vice use Viper and why Siblings used Viper as well.”
“There’s no doubt that we were able to capture a staggeringly beautiful film because of the camera’s capabilities,” says Moore. “And because they contain so much picture information, the Viper images recorded to the master HDCAM SR tapes can be used for a variety of distribution outlets when necessary,” adding that the LUTs were employed during processing to maintain a consistent look for all deliverables.
Farnsworth owns an edit facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Initial editing took about eight weeks. At press time, Farnsworth was scheduling three to four days of shooting to pick up insert shots to serve as transitions in some scenes. He plans to finish sometime in May and then look for a distributor.
Sibling www.sibling.com
Thomson Grass Valley www.thomsongrassvalley.com |
