Adventures in filmmaking
By Douglas Wu

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Over the summer I was a part of 3 Easy Payments, a production of The Ohio State University’s Reel Buckeye Productions.

It is ambitious film project. Simply to capture the live-action, the cast and crew put in 14-hour-long days over a two-and-a-half week period.

Just as I was in an earlier Ohio State University film production, I again served as a production assistant. During the shoot I helped out where every I could and I had the opportunity to observe how a film is transformed from words on a page to actual scenes.

Prior to the start of 3 Easy Payments’ filming, seniors Adam Rex and Amira Soliman, the film’s director and producer, respectively, mapped out the goal of improving upon Detachment, a film produced in 2004 by Buckeye Searchlight Productions. To that end, Reel Buckeye Productions made an effort to select a more contemporary screenplay, select an experienced cast of actors and actresses, and increase the level of professionalism on the set.

First a little history about student film making at Ohio State University. Buckeye Searchlight Productions in association with Studio 35 Cinema premiered Detachment 7 p.m. December 10, 2004 in the Thurber Theatre of the Drake Performance and Event Center on the campus of OSU.

Buckeye Searchlight Productions overcame many obstacles to present its first feature film, Detachment, to audiences everywhere. The group emerged from a challenge issued by a film studies professor to two aspiring filmmakers in the fall of 2003.

One day Buckeye Searchlight Productions co-founders then senior Nate Hahn and then incoming freshman Mark Laivins were in the film studies lab of the Drake Performance and Event Center when the professor entered and challenged the pair to make a short film with grant funds.
Hahn and Laivins quickly designed the Buckeye Searchlight Productions logo and then blanketed the campus with 5,000 fliers asking fellow students to join their quest to make a film.
Soon, the two organized a meeting and from the meeting emerged a screenplay writing competition modeled after cable television’s Project Greenlight.

The project quickly attracted interest from screenplay writers attending OSU and colleges and universities across the country.

The Buckeye Searchlight Productions team selected Detachment in the spring by then senior Sheryl Mascarenhas. Currently, she is pursuing graduate studies in medicine.

After selecting the screenplay, the team quickly changed into pre-production mode with the goal of a summer shoot. During the pre-production process the team finalized the film's key elements including: the cast, digital camera selection, set designs, locations, costume designs, sound designs, lighting designs, storyboards and the shooting screenplay.

The production team also experienced changes in Detachment's director when Laivins decided to transfer to Florida State University and enter its film school. Hahn, Detachment's assigned producer at the time, stepped into the director's chair and the team reorganized its key management roles.

Into the producer's chair stepped Kara Ulseth, then a student at OSU. Ulseth now works for DreamWorks Animation. Ulseth co-produced the film with the assistance of Rex. Soliman, a sophomore at the time, took on the role of the film's production coordinator.

Detachment is the story of a young woman undergoing psychological analysis to understand her dreams. Her dreams are becoming increasing realistic and frightening and threatening her grip on reality.

Sarah has experienced a frightening series of events in real life and is reliving them in her dreams. Sarah desperately tries to make sense of her dreams in one-on-one counseling sessions and in group therapy sessions as her sense of detachment grows following each dream event.

Yet, the doctor leading her individual and group therapy sessions and the patients in her group therapy sessions are not who they seem. Will Sarah figure out what has happened to her before her growing sense of detachment overwhelms her? Or is she being manipulated by outside forces after her life?

As in Detachment, a Panasonic AG-DVX100a captured 3 Easy Payments’ actors in actions and their surroundings beautifully in a number of trying environments and trying light levels.
The camera’s wide range of features and capabilities are evident in each and every frame of 3 Easy Payments. However, probably the most important aspect of the Panasonic AG-DVX100a was its reliability throughout the shoot.

One of the Panasonic’s biggest assets is its ability to shot at 24 progressive-scanned frames per second, the same speed as a film camera. The result is the production looks as if it was shot on film, a medium that exceeded the production’s budget. The camera also can capture footage at 30 progressive-scanned frames per second and interlaced footage at 60 fields per second (30 frames per second).

Another asset of the Panasonic AG-DVX100a is its ability to shoot in low light conditions. The camera’s minimum luminance is 3 lux (F 1.6, +18 dB gain, 50 IRE video output). A number of film’s scenes take place at night. Thankfully, the camera’s array of 3 4X3 CCD’s and its 10X zoom lens, F 1.6, were up to the task. In other situations, an aftermarket wide-angle lens helped capture the action.

Shooting 3 Easy Payments with the Panasonic will allow for a smooth transfer from digital video to film in post-production though the camera cannot shoot in the 16X9 frame format. The professional-grade digital video cameras, $20,000 and up, array, their CCD’s and electronics and software to produce a 16X9 frame, a frame size that is ideal for transferring from digital videotape to 35-millemeter film stock.

However, the Panasonic AG-DVX100a’s 4X3 frame size can be digitally squeezed to the 16X9 frame size. The resulting image is hard to discern from the professional-grade digital cameras able to produce the 16X9 frame size. The Panasonic’s resolution is 380,000 pixel elements.

The camera has three matrices setting: Normal, Fluorescent and Cine-like. Also, the camera has three different gamma curves to control exposure and three different Cine gammas to simulate the exposure levels required for film. The camera’s built in color reproduction instruments and exposure graphs allowed 3 Easy Payments’s production team to place the lights anywhere they wanted to on the set without fear of overexposure or color reproduction problems.

Considering the technology used to capture the film and the quality of the script and acting, I am looking forward to the premiere of 3 Easy Payments this winter on the campus of Ohio State University.