Interview with Bill Rogers (continued)

SeacoastNH.com
Is this how Flying Downhill Productions came about?

Rogers
In forming a for-profit venture Coruway becomes an investor, holding interest for its contribution of the film. Should the film be financially successful Coruway will use the funds to continue fulfilling its mission of educating the public.

SeacoastNH.com
What kind of equipment did you use? Can you offer some behind the scenes shooting and editing info?

Rogers
We shoot on HDV these days, but much of FLYING DOWNHILL was shot on DVCam and mini DV with a Sony DSR-500, which is a native widescreen broadcast camera. We've also shot on many Sony cameras from the mini-sized PDX10, to

We shot all widescreen because I like the cinematic look of it and because it would conform to HD (high definition). When we began the movie in 1998 HD was a bit in the future, but it is certainly with us today.

SeacoastNH.com
How about post production?

Rogers
We have cut on Final Cut Pro. It's good. It works. Final Cut Pro and DV are part of a revolution that put potentially high production value in the hands of consumers and professional/consumers. About ten years ago we bought a small camera and edit system for nearly the same price as renting those same services. Instead of hiring an editor, I became one.

Those two (DV and Final Cut Pro) have brought 400 hours to the project, captured on many firewire hard drives, finished on a DVD, and ready for 

SeacoastNH.com
This allows you the option to drop hundreds more hours into a project from your own time. But is it safe for the writer/ producer / shooter to also get his hands on editing?

Rogers
The advantage of being able to do it yourself is that you can stay with your own interests and knowledge of the material. You can more directly flesh out the point-of-view of the original footage and get that perspective into the edit. The downside of that is that you can be too close to the footage, and that you see things in the footage that the audience won’t see or fully understand. In that sense it can be helpful to bring other eyes to the project.

To bring other perspective to the project we did hire an editor, Aaron Vega who worked in our office. Aaron had cut his teeth as an editor with Ken Burns and Ken’s lead editor, Paul Barnes. Arron worked with us for about six months at which point we tested the film out and found that people thought the film was "very good."

Then came the 2004-2005 season and Bode went far beyond – in terms of race results – what he had previously accomplished. We rolled that into the film.

For the final edit we worked with Moody Street Pitcures in Waltham, Massachusetts to bring that very good pictutre into something more than very good. Michael Yip worked as a producer at this stage to help flesh out the essential story and David Bigelow edited. It’s not simply an incremental improvement, of cutting a bit here and there, but is the case of looking at every image of the film and adding and cutting to make sure the film brings the audience to the place you want them to go. I focused not on making the film better, but on making sure it was always fascinating, compelling, and just plain cool. I wanted people to say at the end of watching the film, "Wow! What a trip! What a guy!"

CONTINUE with Interview about Bode Miller