New Spanish thriller, La Hora Fría shot on HDCAM

New Spanish thriller, La Hora Fría (The Cold Hour), is one of many European independent and mainstream features that are taking advantage of the benefits of shooting on HDCAM with the HDW-F900 camcorder or its replacement, the lighter, environmentally friendlier HDW-F900R. La Hora Fría is a genre film, a thriller combined with terror and science fiction. It is produced by Eqlipse Producciones Cinematográficas, SL, based in Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands.

A group of eight people live isolated in crumbling installations. They cannot abandon the complex and they live in a constant state of vigilance. The food supplies are running out and they urgently need medicines and ammunition, but in order to find them they must abandon the secure area. What lurks outside the area they inhabit, however, is so menacing that they dare not even speak of it.

Director, Elio Quiroga, explains why he chose HDCAM: "In the first place, we needed a versatile format which allowed us to work with light equipment (the movie requires a lot of camera on the shoulder work and Steadicam), to work most of the time with two cameras, and especially which would allow us to stay working in the digital world right up until the final transfer to film."

Director of Photography, Ángel Luis Fernández, already had experience of shooting four movies in HDCAM. "This meant that we could agree very clearly with him exactly what it was we needed from the photography," Quiroga says. "In general the movie was shot on the light side with the intention of making it easier for post production and then darkening it in Digital Intermediate (DI), after adding the visual effects.

HDCAM format works in the most difficult conditions

"The movie was going to be retouched in DI by our colourist, Régis Barbey, and around 300 frames of visual effects needed completely digitalised frames so that the visual effects supervisors Jérôme Debève and Juan A. Ruiz, from La Huella Efectos Digitales, could carry out the work." Quiroga says the shoot was particularly difficult, in very cold weather in the middle of October in Madrid in some old army buildings. But the hard work of the crew and HDCAM made the movie happen.

"The HDCAM format showed that it can work in the most difficult conditions and the HDW-F900 camcorders, with DigiPrime lenses, gave us a great result. This allowed La Huella to make a huge number of 3D trackings even with the darkest and 'dirtiest' frames, as a lot of smoke was used during the shoot."

La Huella Efectos Digitales had full responsibility for the effects. "We have more than 300 frames with visual effects, which makes us the producers of the first Spanish film to use these techniques intensively. This implies many other things, like co-ordination between departments, creation of new work connections, optimising resources."

"Now that we are working in the area of digital imaging, the director of photography's work becomes more creative, but we also see the new figure of the colourist. He or she can, during the final phases of post production, retouch the director of photography's work, relocate lights, change completely the intention of a sequence; in extreme cases it is possible to convert a scene shot by day by the cameraman into a night-time scene inside the computer. And the HDCAM format has turned out to be much more versatile than we expected."

Director Elio Quiroga and DoP Ángel Luis Fernández created an atmospheric look for the movie La Hora Fría with HDCAM.