Projects
THE DEVIL’S WORK
How the F35 coped with rigorous testing to become the camera of choice on zombie movie Devil’s Playground
When looking for the right digital cinematography camera for Devil’s Playground, an action horror feature set for release this autumn, director of photography Jason Shepherd set the bar particularly high.
Shepherd and director Mark McQueen were looking for a camera capable of producing cinematic images but that would also stand up to a rigorous fortnight of testing. “What we do with a camera is to try and break it,” reveals Shepherd, who trialled a range of high end digital cameras from Sony’s F35 to Genesis, Red and D21. These were then tested with scenes from the movie which the duo knew would be tough for a digital camera to handle. “The film has a lot of panning shots of people running around at speed, which are a challenge for any digital system,” insists Shepherd. The footage from the cameras was then examined for the quality of colour
rendition. “We took the images to Prime Focus’ grading theatre and thoroughly tested them in a grade.” The camera which came through with flying colours
was Sony’s flagship F35 CineAlta, with its film-style PL mount lens and super 35mm size CCD. “It’s pretty much the Rolls Royce,” admits Shepherd, who adds: “I know for a fact that Mark [McQueen] was pretty impressed with the picture quality.” The $2m film which stars Danny Dyer as a man
searching for a cure to a global plague of zombies was shot onto HDCAM SR tape and has a fully digital production and post production path right through to print and distribution. “We shot to HDCAM SR tape because we knew that it would work, and also because HDCAM SR makes for an extremely cost effective duplications system – particularly now that Sony has reduced the price.”
Spring 2010 theproducer 21
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