ARRICAM IN-CAMERA SLATE SYSTEM SAVES 'MILLIONS'

Millions is the latest production of Director Danny Boyle's (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary & The Beach among others), currently filming on location in Liverpool. The DoP, Denmark based Anthony Dod Mantle, is using two ARRICAMs; one Lite and one Studio. The story is centred around two boys, aged nine and twelve, who stumble upon a hidden stash of one million Pounds in cash. It is set some time in the near future and supposes that the UK has decided to convert from the Pound Sterling to the Euro. Because the date of currency transition is looming, the boys only have a few days to spend their find before it becomes worthless. The film revolves around the adventures that unfold in the course of their attempt.

Due to the tender age of the lead actors, the Production team was worried that the use of a traditional clapperboard would be too intrusive and off-putting. During the usual pre-shoot planning, Arri Media suggested that the ARRICAM system with the In-camera Slate seemed the perfect answer: The camera could be started discretely at any time without any fuss or risk of distracting the young actors. As a result, Danny Boyle, Anthony Dod Mantle and the Producer, Tracey Seaward came into Arri Media to look at the ARRICAMS and the In-camera Slate system.

Suitably impressed, tests were then conducted to prove the system and ensure things worked as expected. The crew shot a few scenes on location with the soundman, Dennis Cartwright, and the ARRICAMS equipped with the In-camera Slate Box (ISB). The rushes were sent to Technicolor who developed the footage and struck a print for viewing on a Locpro.

From here, the sync test took two different routes. One was to produce sync rushes for the Avid via a telecine. This was done by Jim Guthrie at Arion, who used the man readable time code of the In-camera Slate system to synchronise to the sound.

The other route used the print to produce sync rushes for location viewing on the Arri Locpro. This was done by a company called Synxspeed on a traditional film synchroniser, who again employed the man readable time code.A 24 fps time coded DAT was copied from the synchronised sepmag. This DAT was played back in a player chasing the time code output of the Locpro to prove the sync rushes projection route. Both routes of the sync test worked faultlessly and, at the time of writing, the production is in its last week of shooting, having used the In-camera Slate system throughout.