Traipsing Through the Indian Jungles with DV Cameras and a Will to Live
By John Virata
DMN Senior Producer
 
Will to Live is First DV film by Ruby Pictures

Will to Live logoIndia has one of the largest film industries in the world, so much so that Bombay is known as India's version of Hollywood. The Indian film industry is easily one of the top five consumers of traditional 35mm film stock. Digital video technology may change that. The advent of the DV format has enabled and oftentimes emboldened filmmakers from all over the world to make the films that they want to make with the resources that are available to them.

On the set of Will to Live in IndiaOne such filmmaker is Ruby Pictures, which just completed post production on Will to Live, an English-language feature film shot with DV cameras in Calcutta, the Indian jungles, and in Southern California. The film tells the story of a cancer stricken 10-year-old American boy, Will Broderick, his father’s life-threatening search for a legendary life-saving ayurvedic herb in the Indian jungles, and his battle against multi-national companies attempting to stop him.

The idea for making the film stemmed from executive producer Amrit K. Das’ personal family tragedy. Das’s wife had recently died from cancer. Das himself conducted a long exhaustive search for a cure driven by frustration with what he perceived as western medicine’s myopic perspectives on cancer treatment.

The cast and crew are a remarkable mix of Indian and American: The stars include Indian actress Anusha Singh as an Indian biochemist, Geoffrey Broderick as Will’s father, Geoffrey, and Erix Altemus as Will.

The Tools
Will to Live was shot with two Fujinon lens-equipped Hitachi Z-3000W DV cameras with Panasonic DVC Pro 50 AJD-90 recorders (50 mpbs), in the 16 x 9 aspect ratio. Other equipment included a Sony HR Trinitron monitor and a Panasonic SV-3000 DAT recorder. The company chose to go with the DV format rather than HD mainly because of the cost issues involved with HD.

"We chose DV over HD because of the equipment costs," said Charles Sleichter, one of the three principal directors on the film. "We own all of our equipment rather than rent. The Hitachi Z-3000W provides 16:9, and we wanted the Panasonic 50Mbps resolution to stay in this domain from shooting to final post."

Sleichter said the cameras afford flexibility of color correction within the camera without having to worry about different film speeds or film tests.

Some of the other factors that Sleichter says are benefits to shooting in DV include shooting and lighting efficiency and speed of scene change (smaller crew size and lighting package); portability, nimbleness and less equipment (particularly in the remote jungle locations); low-light advantage in remote and interior locations; And instant review of takes. Another contributing factor to the benefits of DV was the capability of the executive producers to review the digital files instantly over the Internet at any time and any place with an Internet connection.

Shooting is a hot and humid climateShooting in a hot and humid climate that can be found in certain areas of the country can be challenging. Ruby Pictures, however helped to eliminate some of those challenges by shooting during a certain season, avoiding the monsoons. "We had no problems associated with the humidity in either the jungle or Calcutta," Sleichter said. "Location shooting was during April prior to the rainy season. This was the first time the Indian crew had shot anything other than film. There was some continuing adjustments by the DP and the lighting director to the DV technology."

Video post production equipment included a Dell Dual 500MHz Pentium III system with an 800GB hard drive, a 17-inch Dell monitor, a Panasonic AJ950 deck, and a Mackie audio mixer. Editing software included Incite and in:sync's Speed Razor. The artists at Ruby Pictures also performed some extensive blue screen effects with Adobe After Effects on the Macintosh. After Effects was used in conjunction with the Ultimatte plug-in to clean up the edges and blend with the scene.

Set in the mountains"We used After Effects on the Mac with the Ultimatte plug-in because it offers the greatest latitude and adjustment tools available for compositing reality-type effects," said Sleichter. "Although others were considered, After Effects allowed the project to be completed and rendered at multiple levels very quickly and with outstanding results. "We view the Mac as the best and most reliable platform available to the cost for working with film or video compositing at this time."

Will to Live was produced by Das and directed by Charles Sleichter, Paul Emani and Biplab Chatterjee. Sleichter, Alec Doyle and Sudeshna Roy wrote the screenplay from a story by Kelli Groenveld, Santanu Das and Sharmi Das.

Soumendu Roy served as Director of Photography. Roy served as D.P. on several films made by the renowned Indian director Satyajit Ray, including Home and the World, Days and Nights in the Forest, The Adversary, Chess Players, and Two Daughters.

Das, who is also the CEO of netGuru, Inc., a Southern California and Calcutta, India-based Internet and software technology company, produced the film in the DV format in an effort to introduce DV feature production into India and to ease the challenges of shooting in remote Indian jungle locations.

Ruby Pictures logo“As the world knows, India has an amazingly robust film industry,” said Das, “and I wanted to make the first digital video feature film there to stimulate production with the new technology. I felt digital equipment offered great flexibility for a film that required speed, economy and superior image quality. Although none of us had previously shot a film on digital video, we have ultimately produced a film we, and India, can all be proud of.”

The film was produced out of guruDigitalmedia, a state-of-the-art digital production/postproduction and animation facility recently opened by netGuru in Calcutta.