The five-part Sundance Channel documentary series Brick City was shot entirely with Sony PMW-EX1 and EX3 XDCAM EX cameras. Brick City explores the fight by Newark mayor Cory Booker and other city leaders against gang wars, corruption and poverty in the New Jersey city.

	Newark mayor Cory Booker gives an impassioned speech at the Newark Police Academy graduation ceremony.

Brick City is executive produced by Forest Whitaker. Filmmakers Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin and Director of Photography James Adolphus chose the EX cameras for their size, image quality and HD resolution, as well as their use of ExpressCard-based SxS PRO recording media.

The production team shot the series in a typical run-and-gun style, which often means recording takes place in less than ideal lighting environments. While shooting more than 500 hours of EX1 and EX3 footage during the seven months of principal photography (May to November 2008), the team did not use a single light or tripod.

“We were on the move constantly, from bright sunlight to extreme low light at night,” Benjamin says. “I didn’t want to ruin a mood with too many lights. I wanted to shoot it naturally, and with this camera, you can achieve very interesting moods.”

	Jayda, Blood gang member and youth mentor, and Creep, Crip gang member and youth counselor, in Brick City.

He adds that the camera’s memory-based recording format—the SxS PRO cards—significantly enhanced his workflow in the field. “The production would not have turned out the way it did without this camcorder,” Benjamin says. “We were able to discreetly capture even the smallest details that make the footage come alive on the screen.”

Benjamin notes that Peter Abel of New York City-based dealer Abel Cine Tech played an invaluable role in helping him and his team choose the right cameras. “He got us the first EX cameras that were available in New York and worked with us to determine the right workflow.”

In the five one-hour episodes of Brick City, the lives of Mayor Booker and Police Director Garry McCarthy intertwine with Jayda, Blood gang member turned youth mentor who lives with her Crip boyfriend, Creep.

Brick City premiered on Sundance Channel on Sept. 21 and runs for five consecutive nights through Sept. 25. Sundance Channel will broadcast encore airings of the series through Oct. 31.

Directors’ Statement: Marc Levin & Mark Benjamin 

"It was just a feeling, an intuition. We sensed a sweet spot in Newark and hit out, going for the fine line between documentary and narrative. For years the real and the unreal—fiction and nonfiction worlds—have been colliding, overlapping, borrowing from each other and fusing in new hybrids.  Now we could see the outlines of something fresh and original emerging.

"We have been doing this together for more than 30 years. Chasing the action all those years has given us our own language and style. Plus, we had developed a new generation of filmmakers who had come up under our tutelage, so the idea of a nonfiction novelistic TV series—of shaping real characters and scenes into more dramatic structures and storytelling conventions like fiction TV series or movies—was something we had been thinking about for a while.

"For us, this meant something more than bringing show-biz glitz, game show gimmicks and celebrities into the picture. We’re genre busters who like being in the trenches and on the front lines, going gonzo in hand to handheld production combat. Could we preserve the authentic, the spontaneous, the unscripted, and yet shape the production like a good TV drama? Could we shoot a reality series that felt like The Wire meets The West Wing?

"Our running gag line was, We want to put the real back in reality.

"We were pretty confident we could get the action and the drama—after all, we had been magnets for characters for years. But capturing the convergence, the random intersections and spontaneous combustions between our key characters  and stories—that was the real challenge.

We have another mantra we often repeat: 'God is our gaffer.' Like jazz musicians, we approach production ready and anxious to improvise.  Like athletes, we train to make the unexpected and the unscripted an essential part of our repertoire.

"We call it 'the jazz of the real.' This approach toward improvisation, coincidence and accidents is not only our guide to directing but also to editing. Finding the weave and the rhythm of the story to create an organic mosaic means the jamming never stops. It requires true production and postproduction teamwork. The footage tells us where to go. As we discovered, it led us to places we never imagined."