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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Using 35mm Panavision Cameras in Indie Films

Miguel (our DP) looks through the Panavision eyepiece

Most filmmakers don't believe they can use 35mm on an ultra-low budget film. So when my director Sean Ackerman on The Diary of Preston Plummer said he wanted to use 35mm for a portion of the film, I thought, that sounds expensive!

And it may have been if Panavision weren't so supportive of new filmmakers. They go out of their way to help indie filmmakers afford to use their cameras. They have a New Filmmakers Program that allows you to check out their 16mm and 35mm cameras and use them for an extremely low check out fee. When I say low, I mean low.

So for Diary, we were able to shoot 35mm. Panavision worked closely with us to provide the camera and they even called up their friends at Kodak and helped us get film stock at an extremely deep discount. We had the camera shipped from Panavision NY to our location in Florida.

It was pretty incredible and our camera crew was over the moon -- geekily and lovingly using the camera each day on our 4-week shoot.

Panavision even sent us T-shirts. I have never seen a film crew scramble so fast to scoop up schwag. And we wear them proudly!

Thanks Panavision for allowing our tiny film to look so beautiful. Here is some raw footage as it came out of the camera (no color correction) with some commentary from Sean (our director). Enjoy!


2 comments:

Amazon Sage© said...

Thank you for the post, Jane. The visuals are beautiful and it's nice to hear Sean's voice again.

Douglass Gibran said...

Cool guys...you rock...Panavision Rules..I love the New Filmmakers Program...
ECANUS Entertainment Syndicate LLC.-Douglass Gibran (Director,Writer, & Producer)