By Peter Caranicas, December 19, 2007
"Filming in Darfur was, without question, the greatest professional challenge of my life," says Ted Braun, director of Darfur Now, the documentary that has stirred audiences at film festivals, screenings and commercial theaters alike.
It's easy to see why. Braun and his small crew spent several months in Sudan earlier this year, capturing the violence in that African country's Darfur province that some describe as a civil war, others as genocide. Darfur Now explores that struggle by focusing on its victims, and also through the eyes and experiences of six individuals who are trying, in different ways, to stop the mass killings and resolve the region's tribal and ethnic conflicts.
Needless to say, daunting obstacles tested the filmmakers as they sought to meet several ambitious goals.
First, they had to shoot in the middle of a dangerous war zone in a country hostile to outside interference and suspicious of Western media. This dictated traveling light and inconspicuously, carrying equipment inexpensive enough that its loss would not set back the budget, and compact enough that it could be kept under wraps when not being used.
Next, they had to meet the high technical standards required of a film destined for 35mm projection at cinemas worldwide. Finally, they wanted to create a film that would accurately capture not only the size and scope but also the personal stories of a humanitarian tragedy.
"We had a theatrical release guaranteed through Warner Bros.," Braun explains. "Knowing that, I wanted to be sure to shoot the film in a way that would hold up on a big, wide screen. But at the same time, I also wanted to bring audiences into a very intimate relationship with the subjects of the film. Human intimacy and sense of scale were two principles governing how we operated."
The HDV format-with its ability to record high-definition content onto small MiniDV-size cassettes using MPEG2 compression-emerged as the obvious choice for the project. The filmmakers deliberated over the format's several flavors and, after evaluating various options, Braun and cinematographer Kirsten Johnson decided to go with the JVC GY-HD110U camcorder, which records at 24p using three 1/3-inch CCDs.
In order to meet Darfur Now's visual benchmarks, Johnson says she equipped the camera with two lenses that are not part of its standard package: the Fujinon HTs 18x4.2 BRM high-definition zoom lens and the Fujinon Th 13x3.5 BRMU high-definition wide-angle zoom. "The 18 x 4.2 was the lens on the camera most of the time we were in Sudan," she says. Boston-based AV rental house Talamas Broadcast supplied the equipment.
This lens combo allowed Johnson and Braun to capture breathtaking wide shots of the sweeping vistas of Sudan's arid landscapes, yet switch at a moment's notice to intimate scenes and close-ups of the people of Darfur, who tell their stories in their own words-as well as interviews with the six people whose efforts to stop the human suffering in Darfur give the film its element of hope.
(For the record, the six are: 24-year-old Adam Sterling, whose activism in California helped spur a bill that keeps state funds out of Sudan; Ahmed Mohammed Abakar, a displaced Darfur farmer, now a refugee-camp leader; Luis Moreno-Ocampo, World Court prosecutor; actor Don Cheadle, who learned of the Darfur catastrophe when filming Hotel Rwanda; Pablo Recalde, a leader of the World Food Program team in Darfur; and Hejewa Adam, a mother whose infant son was beaten to death in the violence and who has joined the Darfur rebels.)
The film crew was small. In addition to Braun and Johnson, it comprised sound recordist Wellington Bowler, a field producer who also handled security issues, and a translator who was recruited locally.
The first issue Braun faced was just getting into Sudan. "It's a sanctioned country," he explains. "The U.S. does not allow its citizens to go there freely and we had to get a license just to travel there."
Another obstacle turned out to be insurance, which was "the single largest line item in our budget," according to Braun. "Insurers don't like people to go to Darfur."
Braun first arrived in Sudan in January, 2007, and spent a month there alone exploring locations and finding people he wanted to include in the film. The rest of the crew arrived about a month later and they shot through March. They returned to Los Angeles for a three-week break, then went back to Darfur to shoot from mid-April to mid-May.
Looking back on the shoot, Braun is delighted with the choice of camera. "Our JVC held up remarkably well," he said. "It turned out to be the camera best suited for what we wanted to do because of its image quality, the fact that it shoots in 24P, and that it has interchangeable lenses. It was important for us to have good glass and have as much range in terms of focal length on the long end and on the short end as we could possibly get."
Were camera and crew at any time in danger? "By and large we were safe," says Braun, although when shooting in the field they "always went to great lengths before we took out the camera to make sure that everyone understood what we were doing and was apprised there was going to be a camera and a mic there.
"Misunderstandings can be catastrophic," he continues. "One time, at a place where we thought we had good relations, we were more loose and all got out of the car at the same time, with the camera and tripod out of their bags. The guards at that place threatened to grind the glass of the lens to dust under their heels." They were persuaded not to do so, and there were no other such incidents.
Post-production took place back in Los Angles, driven by a double sense of urgency. Braun acknowledges that the investors behind the picture wanted to get it released early enough to qualify it for an Oscar in the 2007 race. "But primarily," he says, "we wanted to get the film out so it could play a role in the world conversation about the Darfur crisis. We wanted the film itself to help participate in bringing an end to the conflict. The longer we cut the film, the longer we were outside of the conversation."
Veteran editor Edgar Burcksen met not only the challenge of time, but also the special requirements of editing HDV footage, since the HDV format compresses data both within each frame (intraframe compression) and between frames (interframe compression).
Burcksen used Avid systems throughout the process, doing the actual editing work at 30 frames per second and only afterwards matching back to the 24 frames required for film projection.
"The JVC HDV camera turned out to be outstanding," says Burcksen. "It really does work for the big screen. We took our list and created what essentially would be a negative cut list [based on] 240 hours of footage. We went to HD D5, put the D5 into an Avid Adrenaline system, and then we rebuilt the entire film in four days. It was a crazy schedule."
Working at JuRiFilm, a fully Avid-equipped editing facility in the Culver City area of Los Angeles, the editors started out with one Avid Media Composer at first. But then the project grew in complexity so they went to a second Avid, then a third, and finally a fourth.
"We had nearly 16 terabytes of storage," says Burcksen, of which 8 terabytes consisted of the actual footage and 8 terabytes held mirrored material in case of a problem. "It all worked perfectly," Burcksen adds. "There were no breakdowns."
Rich Evirs, lead assistant editor who worked with Burcksen, has become a strong believer in the validity of the HDV format for making theatrical films. "It looked great on a giant screen," he says. All the details come out. HDV is not true HD, but it does the trick and cuts the budget immensely."
Final color correction for Darfur Now was done in-house at Warner Bros., whose Warner Independent unit is the film's distributor.
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