film stock?

[joan]

Hi! does anyone know what Shane shot DMS on? did he use dv at all? was the black and white fottage shot on something different?

[RydCook]

Well i definately think it was shot on film, dunno about the black and white footage but i'm sure that'd probably film too. i could be wrong, anyone know the ins and outs?

[fattaxi]

theres already a thread about this somewhere, Shane goes quite into detail!

[PatrickCoyle]

I'm not sure of the exacts here or the process, but I think (I could be wrong) it was shot on S16mm and then mastered digitally and the eventual prints were blown up from that.

In the commentary, I think they said the old home movie footage of Richard and Anthony as kids was actual footage, I think from producer Mark Herbert's family.

The black and white stuff was shot, as far as I know, on the same stock as the rest of the stuff, and was meant to be edited to the same kind of look as the home movies - but Shane couldn't find a decent filter for that look in Final Cut Pro, so he went with the black and white.

Sorry I'm not more confident on these. I know DMS was definitely shot on film - in London last week, Mark Herbert said that they were willing to go the DV route. They just wanted to raise whatever money they could, and make the film quickly with that. And they actually got more money than they needed, so I guess the scale of the production increased with that.

[RichK]

Yep, 100% it was shot on 16mm - also the flashback footage was on 16mm - but the old home movie stuff from Mark's auntie was super 8 I think. The 16mm gets blown up to 35mm for projection, I think. The stock was something new that works well under low light conditions.. I don't know the details but I do know it meant we shot quite a few night exts without the usual paraphenalia of cranes with f-ing great lights on them. Which was nice.

[PatrickCoyle]

What was the lighting setup for DMS, if you don't mind me asking, Rich? I'm sure on the commentary at one point Shane said you just had a light mounted on the camera, unless I've made that up and attributed it to the commentary... Maybe it was just during one particular sequence?

[RichK]

Lighting department consisted of a bit more than a camera light (never used one of them) but it was still the smallest amount of lighting gear I've ever worked with - we had a long wheel-base van with a number of small lights and stands, a few "flags" "gels", and some poly-board. All the lights were able to be plugged in to normal plug sockets (on most projects we have a large generator truck) - and we made use of practical lights where possible. "Practicals" are lights supplied by the art department, table lamps etc that can be seen in vision as part of the dressing. For the night exterior outside Tuff's flat, just after the "elephant man" encounter, we bolted a halogen security light to the wall, it really was that lo-fi. For the record "This is England" used more in the way of lights but still nowhere near as many as the average 16mm tv dramas I work on.

[joan]

awesome thanks guys, much appreciated.