Searchers 2.0

Alex Cox's HDV western, mentioned in an earlier post, will be broadcast in the UK on Monday 16th of June on BBC4 at 10pm. The movie was shot with Sony Z1s in 1080i mode and premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.

Alex Cox has apparently recorded a special "Moviedrome" style intro for the film, as well as for some other classic westerns showing this weekend.

Feature film making in HDV

ALex cox's latest film Searchers 2.0 is a comedy road movie, with nods and references (as usual with Cox) to Hollywood's past, especially westerns. It was filmed in Monument valley, but most interestingly was made in 50i HDV on a sony Z1.

The budget for the film was a measly $175,000 (less than £100,000) but this was a fully professional production, with veteran DOP Steve Fierberg head of the camera department, in a production that was backed by the BBC and low budget legend Roger Corman, and produced Robocop/Starship Troopers producer Jon Davison.

An interview at DV.com with Fierberg and gets the lowdown on why the Z1 was chosen over other more glamorous cams like the JVCs and Canons, and how the Z1 performed (quite well, apparently to the DP's surprise). One useful tip, to judge exposure, Fierberg set the zebra stripes to 105% and then tried to get everything under that, skies were darkened with a polarising filter and the final show was colour corrected in Avid Nitris. Cox also spills some of the beans on the production in an interview on his own website. He also talks about the production on his blog, though there are no links to the relevant articles, so you have to scroll down articles around mid 2006 and ending about 2007 for the relevant entries. One encouraging quote on the film's 2007 Venice Film Festival showing, "The screen is huge, and our film - shot on my funky Z-1 video camera - is in perfect focus, and the film sounds ten times better in the larger space."

Fierberg has also written about the film in the April 2008 edition of American Cinematographer, though the article is not available online.

The BBC will broadcast the movie this June, as it's a BBC co-production, hopefully it will also be available online via the iPlayer.

Another feature shot on the Z1 in 50i was the Irish low budget (€100,000) hit Once.