There is an alternative to video: DV35K - a hybrid system

by Matthias Fleischer (article in 11/2001)

Not only the slim budget was a tough task for producer Rima Schmidt and her co-producer Florian Rothenberger - the film KIKI & TIGER, a final exam project at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg of swiss-born director Alain Gsponer should extend to some 45 minutes based only on a rough treatment with full room left to improvisation.
From the beginning the script's story demanded a realistic, sometimes even documentary-style visualization. The film tells the story of a close friendship of two young men, serbian Tiger and albanian Kiki living in germany in 1997, turning slowly into dependence. After each being sent back to his home part of former yugoslavia the balcan war splits the country irreparably and everything changes.

The expected high count of shooting takes due to the improvisational style of directing adds up to the planned length of the film, so at a very early stage of preproduction it seemed obvious that shooting on film would be too expensive - despite good sponsoring contacts.
Ordinary digital video was not a choice for me, because Alain and me were opting for a film look. I pointed some criteria as key necessities for a filmic perception: 25 frames per second with a 1/50s exposure time (electronically a real full frame mode with 625 lines resolution, no interlacing); a precise and rich color rendition; choice of lenses (i.e. with better geometrical-optical quality); handheld ability, high exposure index - and a shallow depth of field. The last criterion excludes even the HD24p because of its small 2/3" chip set and its large depth of field.

There are already solutions for the depth-of-field-problem using constructions to adapt 35mm film lenses to the Canon XL1 and bring in a 35mm groundglass to create an image with shallow depth of field seen by the small chip set. Most rental houses offer a set with the former XL1 (not the 's') version, which has a lower light sensitivity adapting with a non-high speed optical connection to the groundglass and the film lens. Additionally the Canon 'movie mode' (should be a full frame mode) seemed to work not very convincing and the whole 'construction' is far away from an ergonomical solution for handheld work. The viewfinder position is way back and the light video camera and the heavy film lens sum up to a bad balance - by the way the rental prices for 35mm lenses are not neglectable.

So I remembered my very first experiments to use the at that time newly introduced IVS as a camera mounted on a running ARRI 435 to create a flickering film feel; or the attempts to construct a Super8 video assist system experimenting with video cameras filming through 35mm still cameras. After that I went for a solution to combine a video camera (fulfilling the criteria above) small enough to be able to shoot through a Nikon F3 viewfinder with exactly this still camera. Getting a hint by Philipp Hansen und Charles Bals, two colleagues at film school, to use a special F3 sports viewfinder at least the vignetting problem was solved. I used a steadicam baseplate to mount both cameras in a row, and a selfmade kind of bracket served to keep the cameras in position. With the F3 motor winder and its ergonomic handgrip the system was small and easy to operate handheld. My choice was a Panasonic MX300 for a very pleasant color rendition, a real full frame mode, a foldable monitor to operate in small spaces.

Even shooting a night exterior of a shopping street at available light was possible due to the high exposure index of the MX300. Only a china ball on dimmer gave some fill light on the actors. Thanks to our sponsor Nikon Germany who provided high speed lenses to complete my set. With the handgrip operating was easy and the camera system worked well during the 15 days of principal shooting.

Obviously the DV35K doesn't replace 16mm or 35mm film - PAL resolution and color compression really have a different look, and the fiberoptic Nikon groundglass adds a bit softness and texture, too. So what we got was a very own, new and moody look (comparable to 35mm film being transferred to PAL and copied non-digitally) well corresponding to our sujet .