Perfect Woman
Most crews - film or otherwise - would be in a rush to create ‘the perfect woman’. But one week? That was the challenge facing Olympus Productions recently, and High Definition provided the answer . Neil Johnson, the Supervising DoP, looks back on “mission impossible” with a certain fondness...
“The original brief was to make a feature in one week, shooting four units with eight cameras. That was because producer Matthew John reckoned this was the longest you could ask good crew to work on deferred payment. As the budget came in and we prepped I managed a compromise - 3 units and six cameras . Even the script was tweaked as we were shooting. We only ordered the equipment three days in advance, but thankfully Guy Moore at VMI pulled out all the stops to fulfill the order.”
“We considered film, but knowing we were going to need a lot of correction in post to get it all to match, it made sense to originate in a digital format, so HD seemed ideal.”
“We chose Sony 750 cameras with Canon zooms; and used 25 Pi rather than 23.98, doing the conversion in post. I decided the ‘look’, did the prepping , and then instructed the DoPs in the house style .”
“The action centres on a TV reality show set in a castle; which is simply a front for its producer and a mad doctor, who use the show to acquire body parts to enable them to create ‘The Perfect Woman’, played by Caprice. Dave ‘Darth Vader’ Prowse plays the doctor’s henchman.”
“To reduce the difficulty of balancing the looks of six cameras , I told all units to act like a second unit, working to a preconceived plan and shooting reasonably straight ,without changing the camera menus.”
“I kept filters to a minimum - a 1/8th Black Promist on the back of each lens, to subtly lower the contrast and add a touch of softening. Because we wanted to end up with a cinema print, we used a 16 X 9 frame, to give us the best range of options in post.”
“We monitored with High Def monitors on set, checking some of the exposures and rushes with a vectorscope, aiming for a well-lit , expensive-looking feature, rather than one shot cheaply with available light and that is the look we achieved.”
