Two films, Like Crazy, directed by Drake Doremus, and photojournalist Danfung Dennis’ Hell and Back Again, took top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.

 

Like Crazy, shot on a Canon 7D with cinema lenses, earned the Grand Jury prize, and as can be seen in the still below, it expresses the compellingly strong DSLR cinema look.

 

 

Danfung Dennis shot To Hell and Back Again on a Canon 5D Mark II and earned the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in Documentary, as well as the World Cinema Cinematography Award for Documentary Filmmaking. This article will focus on Dennis’ film, with a hopeful follow-up later with Like Crazy.

 

 

Mark Olsen, blogging for the Los Angeles Times from Sundance 2011, writes about Dennis’ cinematography:

“Hell and Back Again” has a surprisingly glossy, cinematic look, be it the bright sun of Afghanistan or the neon and streetlights of North Carolina. For his time in Afghanistan, Dennis designed a custom steadicam rig for the Canon camera he was using to capture video — the shadow outline of the compact camera system can be seen in a few shots — and he served as his own soundman.

 

The film has an intimacy and directness that brings a heightened sense of emotion to such everyday things as going to Wal-Mart or ordering take-out, as the rigors of fighting are contrasted with the commonplace struggles of daily life. The film cuts directly from images of the firefight in which Harris was wounded to a drugstore parking lot at night, a transition that is shocking and disorienting, just as it must be for soldiers returning home. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/01/sundance-2011-at-war-and-at-home-in-to-hell-and-back.html

Left: Danfung Dennis setting up his shot with Echo Company in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Danfung Dennis.

 

Jada Juan, writing inNew York Magazine’s Vulture, said this about Dennis’ film:

Former New York Times photographer Danfung Dennis won both the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Award and World Cinema Cinematography Award for his remarkable Hell and Back Again. The film follows a Marine from the start of his tour in Afghanistan through his disturbing recovery from a bad injury and then back home. Dennis risked his life to make the movie, and invented a special camera setup that will likely make a lasting impact on how documentaries look moving forward. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/01/sundance_2.html

Here’s a large excerpt from an interview I conducted with Danfung Dennis back in Oct. 2009, published on the DocumentaryTech site, back when the film was going to be called Battle for Hearts and Minds:

Danfung Dennis shoots HD video in war zones with a Canon 5D mark II, adjusting aperture in the middle of firefights and explosions—“when [an] IED exploded and dust filled the air, I was thinking about correcting the exposure as it had become much darker.”

 

But even under fire, Dennis has his priorities–keep your head down: “The first thing I am thinking about is finding cover—mud walls, ditches or berms—to protect myself from incoming fire,” he mentions in an email interview. After getting low, he gets the shot: “I simply focus on working the camera and doing my job.”

 

The London-based Dennis came out of Cornell University in 2005 with two degrees—not in journalism and photography, but in Applied Economics and International Agriculture. However, it was the “tremendous impact” of “images from past wars and conflict” that eventually drove Dennis away from his planned field and into war photography and video. He also “felt compelled to also bear witness to the wars of [his] generation and show others an honest picture of what is happening.” So he bought some equipment and “I trained myself as best I could,” he says, “before simply stepping on a plane to Kabul.” Adventure didn’t wait. “The second day I was there, I was nearly killed by a rioting mob, but I also got my first pictures published in The New York Times.”

 

Three years later, Dennis embedded with Echo Company in the 8th Marine Company’s 2nd Battalion, covering their July assault into the Helmand River Valley. He wanted to “open a window into [the Afghanistan] war to bring it closer to home.”

 

Intense footage from Dennis’ Afghanistan exploits can be found in the opening sequence of the Oct. 13, 2009 broadcast of Frontline, “Obama’s War” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/view/).
In combat, trust has to come easily for Marines, but for a civilian in combat gear, “There is always an initial ‘checking out’ period where the Marines or soldiers see if I have the right gear, can keep up and stay out of the way,” Dennis notes. However, once they know he’s not in the way and they see him “going through the same difficult experiences, trust builds quickly.”

 

Because of his closeness to the Marines during shooting, Dennis can convey what it’s like to be there when editing his footage. “I am trying to convey what it feels like to be a US Marine fighting a ghost-like enemy or an Afghan villager as their house is raided.” He hopes that this will help offset the numbing effect of Americans receiving “the steady stream of casualty and bombing headlines” during “eight years of war.” Thus, when he edits, he keeps in mind his first priority–to “convey emotion, then the narrative.”

 

At the same time, Dennis doesn’t want his focus solely on the Marines and miss the big picture of the war. “When embedded with the US military, one gets a very narrow view of the conflict,” Dennis explains, “so I spend about half my time working independently, simply traveling with an translator and driver.”

Congratulations to both filmmakers for their awards. It reinforces the fact that HDSLR filmmaking isn’t just a fad or that these cameras cannot be used as cinema and documentary cameras. That’s already been proven wrong over the past two years. It also reveals how HDSLRs are strongly cinematic when used in the right hands and that filmmakers on a low budget can create a look just as powerful as those costing thousands more.

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