Shooting with Panasonic EVA1: Experiments with light and a worthy film-like image

“The Film Poetry” is a project created and produced by famous Russian actor Anatoly Bely, which explores unusual means of expression, through newly-designed technical means. Its most recent episode, a mini movie on Ivor Severyanin's poem, was shot using Panasonic's AU-EVA1 camera.

Anatoly Bely (AB) the creator, producer and actor of The Film Project, Alexander Hunt (AH) director on set, and Anton Zebin (AZ) the DOP of the project, all spoke with Panasonic for an explanation of the cameras use on set.

Q/ How was the idea of “The film poetry” project was born? What is the special about the time of work in the genre of the poetic mini-movie?

AB: “I have always been fond of poetry. I love it, and read a lot of it when I am on stage. In fact, I always thought that the interpretation of poetry in a movie is natural.

Two years ago, I embodied my thoughts in “The film poetry” project, with the use of poetic mini-movies. Although this genre of artwork has been explored in the past, it still fails to exist as a permanent genre in the cinema art, at least in our country. Therefore, I was excited to begin the project, which I believe has the right to exist alongside the feature, documentary film, music clip, and video art.

For a film director, the essence of the genre is to create a specific appearance in a short film with a duration of three to five minutes. We don't have script writers, but instead the video, sound, music, and reciting on or off camera all creates an environment which reveals the poem.

In my opinion, it is all of these aspects which make “The film poetry” a modern project. The visual quality makes it well suited to the young people whom the project is directed, and in doing so we hope to bring our great Russian poetry closer to modern people and show them that poetry is not boring, but wonderful and reflects our time.”

Backstage on “The Film Poetry Project”

Q/ Can you expand more on the part of the movie based which recites Igor Severyanin's verses "When the nights are very quiet": How did this story appear?

AB:“Severyanin's verses were rather a special case. The offer and conceptual idea came from Alexandra Nelyubina, the creative producer of Amediateka Home of HBO. In the past year we had already worked together, with Amedia TV service and channels now showing our content. At some point, they decided not only to show regularly our movies, but also to participate in production. The embodiment of the concept undertook the 1147 PRODUCTIONS and invited us to cooperate in the project of Panasonic – and shooting became in fact the testing of the AU-EVA1 cine camera. Since then, the project has become a real experiment in which we had to find proper solutions for “The film poetry” and tried to find out the capabilities of the camera.”

We created with Alexander Hunt, the director, an imaginary story – poetical, metaphoric, with good, correct, and meaningful effects. Using light and environment we wanted to show the different states, and in my opinion, the solutions found by Anton Zhabin, the DoP of this project, worked well.”

Q/ (To Alexander Hunt, the director on set) Alexander, what attracted you to the project and how did you become a part of it?

AH:  “After Anton Zhabin, the cameraman and the rest of the team agreed to take me, I was immediately interested in the project. There was no standard format, but an agreement that the story should not be told by means of a clear narrative, but convery the internal condition of the hero based on mood, feeling, and atmospheric shots. It was an interesting challenge for me, and I was excited to be a part of it.

During the editing I had a feeling that we had found the right approach to the story, and had already got the desired image and metaphor we needed.”

Q/ The camera has two sensitivity settings – 800 and 2500, what capabilities does it give?

AZ: “2500 is an emergency sensitivity, and it does not make any sense to use it in staging. It would work great in a documentary where there is no opportunity to highlight the scene. The sensitivity is so high that any smallest light source will be enough to get the proper exposure. In tests we have convinced that it works well. But in our project such high sensitivity was not used. This is an interesting and important capability for documentary films.”

AH: “To my impression, the camera gives a soft image, even in such a totally artistic space that we have created: studio with smoke, minimum of light, and smooth transitions.”

AZ: “But it turned out that there was a limited possibility of high-speed shooting in low-light conditions.”

AH: “When we switched to 120 frames per second, we got a cropped picture, and the camera noise has visibly increased. We shot several clips, and had to seriously process the video signal with a noise reducer.”

AZ: “In slow motion the recording parameters change, the bitrate decreases, and there are problems with noise in shadows. This should be corrected in post-production. But in basic mode of 25 frames per second the noise is minimum, and using the noise reducer was not necessary.

Again, under high-light conditions – for example, when shooting on location – I do not think that it will be the problem.”

Q/ That is at the stage of colour correction you managed to get the desired image?

AZ: “In post-production we wanted to get the contrast and image quality matching our idea of art impression. The most important for us were details – whether we can work with them, change colour, light, and contrast. In fact, we got such opportunity both in high-light and low-light areas, and we never lost details and texture.

The movie part of “The film poetry” project based on verses by Igor Severyanin “When the nights are very quiet..."

Q/ Anton, what is your impression as a DoP of working with Panasonic EVA1 as a whole?

AZ: “The overall impression is positive. A big plus is that the camera has built-in ND filters. The closest analog with built-in ND filters is ARRI Alexa Mini. This is extremely useful when you can quickly, without using external fixtures select the required glass filter.

EVA1 is initially equipped with EF-Mount for corresponding lenses, including Canon (adapters from EF bayonet to PL for EVA1 camera are already available from different companies, such as Wooden Camera, MFT – ed. note). There is a rather large line of Canon lenses. We have used the Canon Cine kit which was specially developed for the film shooting. Of course, if the camera were initially equipped with PL bayonet, I would use the classical cine optics, such as Cooke or Zeiss.

It may also be noted that the camera is light and compact.”

Q/ Is this camera good for documentary films?

AZ: “The camera has excellent colour rendering, dynamic range, it behaved good in colour correction and made it possible to achieve film-like images – you could take various colours and change them in post-production. The camera is perfect for this task. Also, it is compact, convenient, and can record sound. I would say that the Panasonic EVA1 is the ideal camera for the genre of documentary films.”