Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Chusy Haney-Jardine: Straight Shooter

As if producing a short in four weeks wasn’t daunting enough, we had no idea how we were going to build a camera department from 600 miles away. Luckily, Perla’s father, Chusy Haney-Jardine, generously offered to serve as our Director of Photography and loan us his equipment for the shoot. Chusy, a multi-talented artist who might best be described as a Venezuelan Sean Connery, is actually an accomplished filmmaker himself. His film ANYWHERE, U.S.A. (co-written with his wife Jennifer MacDonald and featuring Perla) received a Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

We originally planned to shoot on an HVX camera with a 35mm lens adapter to give our footage a film look; however, we couldn't get our hands on an adapter that would match Chusy's lenses. But when we arrived at Chusy's little bungalow-studio, he had another trick up his sleeve: the Canon 5D, a 35mm still camera that also shoots 1080i-HD video. After watching some of his footage, we couldn't resist. While using it meant we had to record sound separately (and synch it up later), it was fantastic in low-light situations and made our images pop in an exciting way. In the end, it gave SAVE THE FUTURE a more “commercial” look befitting the style of a PSA and was well-worth the extra hassle.

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