Digital Video - November 2008 - (Page 26)

Setting the frame for a RED ONE Steadicam move, producer Dean Devlin directs an episode of his series Leverage. INTERVIEW BY JAY HOLBEN PRIME MOVER PRODUCER DEAN DEVLIN DISCUSSES HOW HIS UPCOMING SERIES LEVERAGE BENEFITS FROM AN ALL-DIGITAL PRODUCTION PATH POWERED BY THE RED ONE CAMERA. I n the pantheon of big-budget extravaganzas, the films Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and Eight Legged Freaks are standouts in terms of their pioneering use of digital post, but the writer and producer of these Hollywood hits, Dean Devlin, has since moved into digital production as well. An avid technology aficionado, Devlin began his transition from film-based image capture with 2004’s The Librarian, a TNT project shot with Sony CineAlta F900s. After expanding his knowledge of the capabilities of the technology via a series of other all-digital TV projects, he followed up by shooting his first digital theatrical feature, the 2006 World War I adventure Flyboys, which was shot with Panavision’s Genesis camera. This year, through his company Electric Entertainment, Devlin is working on Leverage, a sci-fi-flavored caper series for TNT (making its debut on December 7 and starring Timothy Hutton) that is being shot primarily with RED cameras that Devlin’s company purchased specifically for the production. DV caught up with the busy filmmaker on the Leverage stages in Los Angeles for a discussion about his evolution as a digital filmmaker, the capabilities of the RED ONE, and how his creative process has been changed. DV: What was the last straw for you, so to speak, the realization that you were going to go all-digital? It was actually about 2004. We were about to start a movie for TNT called The Librarian and I kept thinking “We’re gonna be going all- digital soon. I’d rather be on the front of that curve than behind it.” So I said we should shoot this thing digitally, and everyone said, “Yeah, but this is a show with a lot of action, in the daylight, in the jungle, a lot of hot spots — this is going to be a nightmare.” And I said, “Yeah, but if we’re going to fail, let’s fail on a TV movie rather than a feature when we don’t have to go back to film — it lives in the world of video anyway. This is where we can, at least, learn.” We got to the jungle, we set up our cameras, we started to shoot, and the first day of shooting, sure enough, I’m seeing these big white hot spots and it’s blowing out where the sun is, and when I’m panning too fast, I’m getting strobing, and I said, “We’ll just have to find a way to turn it into a style to hide it.” Then, two days later, a friend of mine who is a DIT showed up to help out on second unit. Literally, as he’s walking to second unit, he passes by the monitor and asks me, “What’s with these hot spots?” And I said, “Well, it’s HD,” and he goes, “You don’t have to have hot spots!” He walks over to the camera and my other DIT says, “You can’t touch the camera!” He says, “Get out of here!” [Devlin mimes fiddling with camera controls.] And poof! Hot spots gone! My DP asks, “What else can you do?” And my friend says, “What else do you want?” Suddenly, we realized there was nothing you couldn’t do if you had the guys who knew how to do it. From there, we did the second Librarian and the six-hour miniseries Triangle. When we went to shoot Flyboys, that’s when the Genesis camera came out. I told my DP, Henry Braham, we should use the Genesis, but he didn’t want to shoot digital. He said, “We’ve www.dv.com 26 dv november 2008 http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - November 2008 Contents AG-HMC150 Camcorder I-Cuff Eyepiece Protector Instant Expert Avid Media Composer 3.0 DT-B9L 1DU Monitor Flolight LCD500 Dark Red Close-Up: Chop Shop Socky Prime Mover Tools & Technology: DV Expo Toolkit Click to Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - November 2008

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