Latin America. Panasonic's VariCam 35 4K line of camcorders was used by photographer Bobby Bukowski (Weeds, Arlington Road) during the filming of Gypsy, the new Netflix original series.
Gypsy is a psychological thriller that tells the story of Jean Holloway (Naomi Watts), a psychotherapist who begins to become intimately involved in the personal lives of her patients, hiding under the pseudonym Diane Hart. This leads her to live dangerous and extreme situations that put at risk her profession, her own life and the relationship she has with her husband Michael (Billy Crudup).
With the need to capture footage in 4K RAW resolution that met Netflix's quality standards, Bukowski decided to use two VariCam 35 camcorders equipped with high-speed 4K recording codecs without compression, and thus guarantee the highest resolution, without losing the cinematic look that distinguishes his work and other productions of the chain.
Bukowski's visual proposal was to use mainly ambient light when shooting indoors, to achieve realistic sets and more natural scenes. To achieve this, the photography crew exploited to the maximum the high-tolerance ISO system of the VariCam 35, which remained at 800 or 1250 almost all the time, but sometimes opened up to an ISO 5000 to take advantage of the existing light.
"I was very impressed by the performance of ISO 5000 – I had much less noise than I had anticipated, and the little there was was quite pleasant, beautifully random, like the grain in a film," said Bobby Bukowski.
Capable of shooting in a variety of formats, with and without compression, the Panasonic VariCam 35 camcorder is a favorite of directors and photographers for its size, flexibility and versatility. From 4K event broadcasts to HD TELEVISION productions, the VariCam 35 offers a wide range of options for filmmakers to capture exactly what is visualized in pre-production.
The gypsy series is available to the public through the Netflix platform.
