Recently, I was talking with Ellen Kuras and the subject of her lengthy (more than two decades) devotion to THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) transitioned into a discussion about how technology has changed during that time. I asked Ellen if she could write about the various pieces of equipment that she used through the production of her Oscar-nominated feature:
At first, I didn't own a camera because I wasn't even a DP. At that point. I considered myself a director, a filmmaker. It was only after a few shoots that I wanted to try my own hand at creating the images and finding meaning in the images to convey a story.
At first I had rented an ARRI SR2 regular 16mm camera package with a Zeiss-10-100mm lens, and a 9.5mm superspeed with three magazines and a tripod. Interestingly enough, I am still in touch with the two people who helped me at the equipment house where I rented back in 1984. One of them - Peter Abel - has one of the most successful equipment companies that specializes in HD equipment in NYC. I rented the SR2 until I managed to find my own.
In 1986, when my friend Ellen Bruno wanted to go to Cambodia for her thesis project, I recommended the documentary cameraman for whom I had been working as an assistant at the time. About a month before the trip, the cameraman was unable to make the trip so he recommended me as a replacement. This being a small project, Ellen didn't have the money to rent a separate camera package for three weeks. I was so intent on taking this opportunity to shoot what would be my first documentary, that I called everybody I knew in the states and in France to find and buy a used camera. What must have been a stroke of fate, I happened to be at a small get-together where friends from the Maine Photographic Workshop invited. I mentioned to them that I was looking for a camera.
A friend pointed out a stranger in the corner, "Go ask that guy, he has an Arri SR2 to sell." To my great fortune, that person was an equipment broker who had a brand new Arri SR2 camera from a company that specializes in making medical films. After buying the 16mm camera, they shifted shortly thereafter to shooting 1" video.
I called all of my family members to borrow the money to buy this camera. The kit came with a stellar 10-100mm Zeiss zoom lens, and a 9.5 superspeed prime. I later added an amazing 9-50mm cook zoom lens that Pete Abel had found for me. This camera package soon became an extension of my body! It also later enabled me to shoot feature films like SWOON, POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA, ROY COHN/JACK SMITH, amongst other films.
Moving into 35mm exclusively in the early 90's and not shooting as much on THE BETRAYAL, I sold that camera so that I could support myself for a few months without working in order to have some time in the editing room on THE BETRAYAL. Thereafter any filming that I did was on either an Aaton or an SR3 that I rented or borrowed from friends.
THE BETRAYAL was primarily shot in 16mm - regular 16mm - even the last interviews of Thavi's mother which we shot in 2005; I wanted to keep the format of the interviews consistent. I also shot super 8mm (an old Canon that I had had for years) and hi 8mm (Mini DV didn't exist at that point in time) for the memory sequences. I also shot VHS for one of the scenes where we were helping a family to escape the gangs and had to grab the closest camera at hand -- with a used tape I might add. I believe that all of the films stocks that I've tried over the past 23 years on this project constitute a mini history of Kodak fimstocks! And the negatives held up amazingly well.
I began editing the film on a 6-plate Steenbeck. At that time it was necessary to develop the negative and make a positive work print to work off in the editing room. For those who don't know, editing on the Steenbeck is linear editing. We actually cut the film with a splicer and taped the pieces together (now ancient history!) The sound was transferred onto magnetic tape which was usually edited onto different magnetic tracks.
Sometime in the early 90's, Thavi (Kuras' subject and eventual editor/co-director) was interested in editing and wanted to try to teach himself on a nonlinear system. We shot the film onto BetaCam tape right off the Steenbeck (I couldn't afford to do a real film to tape transfer of all of the footage) and used a D/Vision editing system to be able to cut a rough assembly together. I still kept the Steenbeck in the basement though, and two years ago, when we were finishing up the post production, I told the assistant editor and the post-production supervisor that I still had a Steenbeck in my basement. They both gasped in awe, "Oh we've never seen a Steenbeck, can we see it??"
We stayed on the D/Vision editing system for a few years. In 2000, there was a flood at the storage facility where DuArt had stored all of our negatives along with the negatives of other filmmakers, such as Fred Wiseman. Fortunately, only a small part of our negatives had been affected. But this compelled me to do a film to tape transfer for two reasons:
1. To assess the damage of the negatives, and
2. To finally get the film onto the digital format in a real film to tape transfer (before I had shot the film off the Steenbeck, recording the sound from the synched-up material off of the two track mag sound on the Steenbeck).
From that point on, because of cost, I transfered the film - MOS-only - onto BetaSP, because the match back to sound would have been too expensive. I knew that we could match the sound back in the editing room.
Thereafter, we moved to Final Cut Pro and then, when I got very involved in shooting a number of features one after the other, we stopped the project for more than a few years. When I decided to go back to try to finish the film in 2005, we took all of the material - the BetaSP, the VHS, the Hi8, the 1/4" sound, the cassette sound, the Super 8 footage, and the 3/4" that had been shot over the years and brought them to PostFactory where editor Angelo Corrao and his assistant Russ Green entered all of the various formats into the Media Composer. It was great to be at Post Factory for a number of months . We then moved to my attic where I had a Avid Express Pro Editing room setup.
We finished the edit on the Avid Express Pro. We transferred all of our negatives on the spirit Telecine at Company 3 to HDSRs and then Deluxe Toronto upres'ed all of our video format footage (VHS, BetaSP, Hi8, 3/4") to HD and then there in Toronto I did the online to produce an HDSR with 5:1 audio tracks.
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