When assembling the crew for Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, filmmaker/director Morgan Spurlock chose Daniel Marracino as the DP based on the work the two did together for What Would Jesus Buy?. “I loved this guy’s energy, his outlook, his personality,” explains Spurlock. The director knew his latest documentary was going to involve long and arduous hours with a lot of travel. In order to capture the 900 hours of footage, there were times when they were shooting 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Marracino shot nearly the entire movie handheld on a Sony HDW-F900R CineAlta camcorder. “I needed equipment that would look great in a film out, and I needed something that would be manageable considering the sheer volume of what we’d be covering,” explains Marracino. When shooting in volatile countries, the crew consisted of Spurlock and Marracino. The DP would also have to attend to the sound. In more favorable conditions, they were able to bring a sound man.

They started production in July of 2006 and shot until the end of that year. Some pick-up interviews were conducted the following year. “We started talking about this in summer/fall 2005 and started really working on it January 2006. And now we’re premiering the film at Sundance in ’08,” notes Spurlock.

For this project, the CineAlta offered the highest sampling resolution available, 4:2:2, that goes to tape. “The tape aspect was important because in many scenarios I didn’t have assistance to download digital footage in the field,” says Marracino. He would shoot an average of 10 tapes per day--almost all handheld. The DP would use a tripod only for the time-lapse shots and Spurlock’s video diary.

As the single camera operator on this documentary, Marracino had to capture the whole of a scene. “If Morgan was interviewing somebody, not only would I be responsible for shooting the interview, but I’d also have to--in real time, live--swing around for reverses of Morgan while he’s asking questions,” explains Marracino. “Getting reaction shots, going for wide shots, getting artistic shots--handheld was the only way to do that.” Marracino also used a Panasonic AG-DVX100B camera on occasion for situations where he needed to be stealthier than usual. The Sony CineAlta weighs more than 20 lb., while the Panasonic 100B weighs in at 3.7 lb.

Marracino exclusively used a Fujinon HA13x4.5, an HD zoom lens that goes very wide to medium long, 4.5-59mm or 9-119mm with 2x extender. “It’s a great documentary lens,” he notes.

When it came to light, the first choice for the project was always natural light, if possible. “I found that when you start lighting documentary subjects, they start to lose their realness factor and they get self-conscious,” notes Marracino. In the rare cases at night when lights were necessary, he used a 1x1 LED LitePanel. “I picked up a 62-pack of daylight flood from Abel Cine Tech in New York with a battery adapter, so I was free of inverters and extension cords for the whole trip.” Consistent with the philosophy of traveling light on this shoot, the same battery used for the camera was also used for the lights.

“My average lighting setup time with windows was almost nil,” says Marracino. “With the panel lights, it was about three minutes. Speed was important because a lot of days I’d be up in the morning to shoot before dawn for the time-lapse shoot.”

Another way to address lighting was within the camera itself. “The main tool that I used to address natural and practical lighting-based conditions were scene files that Jesse Rosen at Abel Cine Tech created for me,” adds Marracino. “I had a variety of scene files I could dial up in the camera to meet the lighting conditions at hand.”

The Tapes
Spurlock and Marracino watched dailies diligently in the beginning, but when the schedule got to the point of shooting nine or 10 hours a day and they were constantly on the go to another country, it was impossible to watch everything. “We got to the point where we were just spot-checking for the framing and sound,” says Spurlock. The production team was shooting an average of ten 50-minute tapes per day.

For the more important material, couriers picked up tapes from wherever the present shooting location was. Otherwise, Spurlock and Marracino would fly someone out of the country to meet a courier elsewhere.

The tapes were sent to Spurlock’s production office in New York, which employed full-time transcribers for logging. “Not only did we have transcribers typing just the English footage,” explains Spurlock, “there were people who were translating and transcribing at the same time.” Spurlock went to about 25 countries over the course of the film and ended up capturing nine different languages.

The producer in London was Stacey Offman. She handled the logistics of the overseas shooting. Producer Jeremy Chilnick, based in New York, co-wrote the screenplay with Spurlock. While Spurlock and Marracino were shooting on location, Chilnick screened the material and helped farm it out to the transcribers. The editors had started to shape scenes while production proceeded.

The screenplay didn’t begin to take shape until Spurlock had made it back to the States and they got into serious postproduction. “I was gone for about two months when the editing started,” says Spurlock. “The editors were already on board for about two or two and a half months by the time I got back.”

Subjects
Locations for and possible answers to: Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece and all over the United States.

The crew was greeted with a variety of reactions in the more isolated territories. “Some were very interested in talking to us,” notes Spurlock. “Some people had never seen a camera before. Some had never seen an American before. Some had great hostility. Some had great interest.”

Along the way the production enlisted many “fixers.” “They’re field producers essentially,” explains Spurlock. “These are people who have the relationships. They have the knowledge on the ground in order to get you from A to B safely. They can get you interviews with people no one else can. They can get you into places no one else can.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) provided information about fixers they could talk to in each country. “We spoke to people who had filmed within some of these countries; they gave us names of their people and we went from there,” notes Spurlock.

Fitting In
“You never knew what was going to happen,” says Marracino. “We were in strange lands. Morgan was asking some pretty sensitive stuff like, ‘Do you know where Osama bin Laden is?’”

Marracino and Spurlock grew beards and would often wear the local attire in each country. “At first, my stomach turned upside down,” notes Marracino, “but overall, Morgan was able to be friendly with people and respectful at the same time. He was well liked. But you just never knew how people were going to take it. Every minute was a waiting game to see what was going to happen.”

In addition to the challenges of safe passage, another difficulty for the camera operator was that, in the Middle East, everyone likes to sit on the floor. “As everything was handheld, I also had to sit on the floor,” says Marracino. “At the same time, I had to get up and do reverses and wide shots and close-ups, and after several hours of sitting on the floor, my knees were not feeling great.”

PostWorks for Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Postproduction for Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? was handled at PostWorks and its sister company, Orbit Digital, in New York City. Orbit's Brian Boyd, the conforming editor and colorist, used an Avid DS Nitris. HD material was projected at Orbit through an NEC iS8-2K DLP projector for color grading.

The post team used a Teranex Xantus unit to up-convert and cross-convert stock footage, which played an important role in the documentary. “We received visual effects as either uncompressed HD QuickTimes or uncompressed TIFF sequences, depending on the situation,” explains Boyd. “For projection, we use Rec. 709 color space. For the film-out, we have an HD-to-log LUT.”

Since it is a documentary, the project didn’t require a very stylized look. The intention of the color grading was to bring out the best in each shot and connect the look from shot to shot. “The bulk of the film was shot on HDCAM and anamorphic DV,” explains Boyd. “We did some tests with the Teranex and color grading to mix these formats seamlessly.”

Any visual effects Boyd did on the DS were basically technical fixes, including dust busting, boom removal and secondary color correction. For the DI at Orbit, Spurlock was hands-on. He knew what he wanted to accomplish and gave clear direction. “Morgan was a pleasure to work with, as well as the rest of the editorial staff and post crew,” adds Boyd.

The film was cut in a 29.97 project. Boyd received bins from editorial that had to be made into 24-frame EDLs. These EDLs were then conformed on the DS. “For reference material from editorial,” says Boyd, “I would have to apply a 3:2 contract to get it within a frame of my 24-frame EDL. My project is a 1080 23.98PsF.”