Digital Video - September 2007 - (Page 15)

fest circuit Viking Spirit The digital feature Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America shines in the heart of Hollywood. BY DAVID E. WILLIAMS T he Los Angeles Film Festival (June 21-July 1) offered an impressive array of big-budget hits (Transformers), cool revivals (the 1978 crime pic Straight Time) and celebrity programmers (director Curtis Hanson and hip-hop impresario Pharrell Williams)—but one curious inclusion in this heady mix was the world premiere of the MiniDV-shot feature Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America. Written, directed, produced and edited by New York City native Tony Stone, Severed Ways documents the lonely adventures of Volnard and Orn, two Norse visitors to North America more than 1,000 years ago. Left behind after their Viking party is attacked by Native Americans, the duo must rely on their survival skills and memories of home to help them through the arduous journey. Presented in widescreen to impressively present rugged locations found in upstate New York, Maine, Vermont and the authentic Viking settlement ruins of L’anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Severed Ways was shot by directors of photography Nathan Corbin and Damien Paris with two Panasonic AGDVX100 cameras. “It was just the best MiniDV camera I’d seen at the time we started production,” Stone says, noting that he ended up with almost 300 hours of footage shot over a period of three years. “Not only was the 24p remarkable, but the DVX100 image just has its own look and character, its own interpretation of the image. And that’s something I still love, even after shooting other projects on HD. The way the data rate on the DVX100 absorbs the image is unique. It’s almost an analog look, in a weird way, especially in terms of the color saturation and the resolution grain.” Taking some cues from Dogma ‘95 filmmakers Thomas Vinterberg and Lars Von Trier, Stone used no supplemental lighting while shooting—even in nighttime campfire-side sequences in which the Vikings offer revealing bits of key dialog (in Old Norse, naturally). “That was a lot of ‘stoking the fires’ and having large amounts of wood on hand,” the filmmaker remembers with a laugh. “But that was part of the rules we set for ourselves: to try to do everything naturally. But out on our isolated locations, we were totally living off the grid, charging our camera batteries by solar power. No plumbing. We were living like Vikings. And I think that shows in the film.” Other key visual influences for the Bard College grad on this project included Ingmar Bergman’s jarring 1960 fable The Virgin Spring, shot by Sven Nykvist, ASC. Stone edited his 107-minute project in Final Cut Pro, and while he has investigated making a 35mm film print of Severed Ways for festival exhibition, he thinks that under the right circumstances, “the finished HD Cam image coming off a good digital projector will look a lot better than a 35mm print—and without the artifacts that film brings. In fact, I think a fully digital presentation of this story lends something to it—the way the video mixes with the period.” For its world premiere at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum, the picture was presented digitally via a Hughes/JVC 230 projector. The irony of using technologically advanced production tools to depict an ancient tale is not lost on Stone. “I really wanted to shoot a period piece on video,” he attests. “That was a goal; to get out there and have the freedom and mobility offered by these tools. There’s usually a certain stiffness to period films, and the DVX100 really helped me avoid that. There was an intimacy with the story and the setting that we would not have had if we had been shooting film.” ■ above: Director Tony Stone used no supplemental lighting while shooting Severed Ways—even in nighttime campfire-side sequences. WWW.DV.COM DV SEPTEMBER 2007 15 http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - September 2007

Contents News AG-HPX500 HD Camcorder First Look: Color V8000HD 8" LCD Monitor Shoulder Mount System Instant Expert Close-Ups Fest Cercuit Q&A Flight Plan Cutter's Way Imagination in Action Motion Graphics Production Diary

Digital Video - September 2007

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