Vancouver: The Vancouver-based production Robson Arms, a series leveraging new writing and directing talent, is also stretching in other ways – through camera technology from Panasonic and P+S Technik.

The dramedy anthology about the tenants of a Vancouver apartment building is shooting on digital tape, but is reportedly the first show in Canada to use a unique camera and lens format that emulates the look of 35mm film.

According to series producer Brian Hamilton, who worked with CTV to bring the show to life, the savings made by using this system have added 15% more shooting days when compared to what the budget would have been on the Super 16 film format. (The bonus time expands the per-episode shooting cycle from three-and-a-half to four-plus days.)

Hamilton worked with manufacturers and cinematographers to assemble and test several systems three months before principal photography.

The winning camera system was imported from Los Angeles for the 11-week shoot (which wrapped May 14) and has two components. The first is a Panasonic AJ-SDX900 Cinema camcorder, which shoots in the DVCPRO50 format at 24 frames per second, thus capturing the motion characteristics of film while playing back in a conventional VTR.

Meanwhile, the Pro35 lens adapter from German manufacturer P+S Technik allows the show’s camera operators to use the same 35mm lenses as on big-budget film-based drama series and features. The Pro35 focuses the image captured by the 35mm lens onto a precision-engineered piece of rotating ground glass, which is in turn filmed by the video camera – a process that recreates on digital tape the narrow depth of field and layered look of 35mm.

-www.panasonic.ca

-www.pstechnik.de

Ian Edwards