Slumdog Technology Convergence

"I had to find a camera set up that would be ergonomic enough for me to throw myself around the slums chasing the children whilst, at the same time, withhold as much detail in the shadows and highlights” says Anthony Dod Mantle. Our producer, Chris Colson, had hoped for Danny and Anthony to repeat the efforts on Mini-DV”. This was all well and good, except for the monumental difference between shooting multi camera fiction on sets where I could light, sometimes quite heavily. We needed a digital camera with enough latitude to hold highlights and something very small so we could enter the children’s world at their level. “Slumdog Millionaire” needed a completely different tactical approach.”
They found the right combination in the innovative IT-centric Silicon Imaging SI-2K Digital Cinema camera. It delivered over 11 stops of dynamic range, flexible connectivity and film-like digital content, which could be easily inter-cut with traditional film footage. Unlike modern HD cameras, which develop and compress colorized imagery inside the camera, the Silicon Imaging SI-2K streams 2K (2048x1152) data as uncompressed raw “digital negatives” over a standard gigabit Ethernet connection.
An Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based computer embedded in the camera or tethered to a laptop up to 100 feet away, processes the digital negatives, where they are non-destructively developed and colorized for preview using the cinematographer's desired "look" for the scene.
 The digital negatives and "look" metadata are simultaneously recorded to hard drive or solid state disk where up to 4-hours of continuous footage are captured on a single 160GB notebook drive; this is the equivalent of 14-reels of 35mm film which has an associated cost exceeding $25,000 for materials and processing. The recorded files, can be immediately played with the target color look at full resolution, without the need for film scanning, tape ingest, format conversions or off-line proxies.
A customized camera support and recording package had to be built to meet the unique form factor demands of the Slumdog shoot. . They enlisted Pille Film, of Wiesbaden Germany, to create a custom solution which included a gyro stabilizer for the base of the SI-2K Mini. Instead of using the traditional film-style camera body, they elected to use Apple Mac book Pro notebook, running Windows XP, for the recorders, and built them into ruggedized backpacks, to be worn inconspicuously.
Stefan Ciupek, the show’s technical supervisor and additional camera operator, coordinated the design and modifications of the camera system with Wolfgang Damm of Pille, whose team worked around the clock to get the 2K Mini rigs built.

Slumdog Millionaire Statistics

Slumdog Millionaire - Statistics
Scripting	Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (British) wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup.
Directors and Producers	Danny Boyle (British - Danny Boyle has built up a reputation for highly stylised cinematography and fast cutting.), Loveleen Tandan Anthony Dod Mantle (Danish), DoP on Slumdog was with Boyle when he experimented with early digital cameras on UK television films in 2001 British director (Danny Boyle), producer (Christian Colson), screenwriter (Simon Beaufoy)
Music	A.R. Rahman (Indian) – soundtrack Sound Recordist - Resul Pookutty Remix of Jai-Ho with the Pussycat Dolls
Casting	Casting in Mumbai One UK actor Stars of Bollywood and parallel cinema Non-professional actors cast in India
Crew	Almost entirely Indian cast with the lead being English star Dev Patel Indian Film Crew with UK Heads Shot in India, editing in the UK
Awards Won
Sets
Finances	Warner Searchlight Pictures (USA) - $5 Million offered
Production Companies	Celador Productions – (Who Wants to be a Millionaire) Film4 Productions -
Distribution	Originally to be distributed in North America by Warner Independent Pictures. Jointly distributed by Fox Searchlight and Warner Bros -      Fox Searchlight part of Fox who are in turn owned by Newscorp -      Fox has recently signed a deal with Star Studios to become Fox Star United Kingdom: Pathe Pictures - A British/French distributor in the UK and France An Indian subsidiary of a Hollywood studio as distributor in India Warner Bros Icon Pictures – Distributor in Australia (owns by Fox Searchlight) Prokino Filmverleih GmbH (German Distributos) Icon Entertainment International, Lucky Red, Myndform, 20th Century Fox International, Gulf Film, Celador Films, Distribution Company, Acme Film, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Forum Film (Bulgaria), Volga, Filmladen GmbH, Bontonfilm, FS Film Oy, Silverbird Cinemas, Svensk Filmindustri Norway, Monopole Pathe Films AG
Revenues	US $100 million UK $37 million After these, the biggest markets have been France, Australia, Italy, Spain India (Hindi) $2.6 million India (English) $3.4 million (Note that the film has not been a big hit in Hindi markets, but has done very well in English language markets (don’t forget it is still a third Hindi in the English prints). Since tickets for Hindi halls are generally likely to be lower priced than the English language screens, it still means a sizeable audience of around 8-10 million Indians)
Languages	Filmed in English and Hindi
Subtitles	Released in English and Hindi in India and to NRI
Tropes	The rags-to-riches, underdog theme underlying the film was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s Fantasy sequences Montage sequence where "the brothers jump off a train and suddenly they are seven years older" Canted Angle Shots
Influences on	Salim Javed Salaam Bombay Satya (1998) (screenplay co-written by Saurabh Shukla, who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire) Company Black Friday (2004) (adapted from S. Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings) – Chase scene Deewaar (1975), which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema", is a crime film based on the Bombay gangster Haji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire.

Slumdog Millionaire

• It's already the most talked-about film of the year – and it's set to sweep the Oscar nominations tomorrow. But there's a lot that went on behind the scenes. Tim Walker has the lowdown
• 'Slumdog Millionaire' was all set to go straight to DVD after the film's original studio backer, Warner Independent (a division of Warner Brothers), closed down in May 2008. Luckily, the Fox studio's indie film division, Fox Searchlight, picked it up for theatrical release.
• During filming, Azza, the Mumbai boy who was cast as Jamal's brother Salim, had his house bulldozed by the city council – a common occurrence in the slums where much of the shoot took place. The crew found him sleeping on a car roof.
• The three youngest child leads, who were all cast from the Mumbai slums, are now having their schooling funded by the film's producers. With the promise of a trust fund should they pass their exams at 16.
• Anil Kapoor, who plays Prem Kumar, the host of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' in 'Slumdog', donated his fee to Plan India, a child development NGO in Delhi, devoted to raising awareness about child abuse, trafficking, education and rehabilitating deprived children.
• Kapoor has starred in almost 100 Bollywood films. The real Indian version of the gameshow, 'Kaun Banega Crorepati', has been presented by two of his fellow Bollywood superstars, Amitabh Bachchan (who also features in 'Slumdog' as young Jamal's celebrity obsession) and Shahrukh Khan. Khan turned down the role of Prem in 'Slumdog' after deciding that the character was too negative.
• Director Danny Boyle almost didn't film the now-famous lavatory scene, in which young Jamal crawls through a cesspit to get an autographed photo of his favourite star, because it was too similar to a scene in 'Trainspotting' (1996), in which Ewan McGregor climbs into a loo to retrieve opium suppositories.
• Lead actor Dev Patel's 'Slumdog' audition was only his second ever. His first was for Channel 4's teen series 'Skins', where Boyle's teenage daughter Caitlin talent-spotted him for the role of Jamal. Last week, he was nominated for a Bafta for best actor. Not bad going.
• Bollywood composer AR Rahman, who wrote the score for 'Slumdog', has worked on British productions before. He composed music for 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (2007), and in 2002, he composed the musical 'Bombay Dreams'.
• Boyle was slightly uncomfortable with the film's marketing campaign, which features posters of the two leads grinning in a shower of confetti with a quote calling it the "feel-good film of the decade". Considering that the film features poverty, torture and murder, says Boyle, "You can't go in expecting it to be 'Mamma Mia!'"
• The budget for 'Slumdog' was the smallest of all the nominees for the Golden Globe 2009 award for Best Picture – Drama, which it won. 'Frost/Nixon' cost $25m, 'The Reader' $33m, 'Revolutionary Road' $35m and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' a whopping $150m, 10 times Slumdog's $15m.
• Mercedes-Benz asked for its logo to be removed from any scenes shot in the slums. According to Danny Boyle, the car-maker feared that such an association with a poverty-stricken area would dent its image as a luxury brand.
• Two of the film's climactic scenes were shot in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus station, which was formerly Victoria Terminus, and is commonly called Bombay VT station. It is the scene of one of the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai on 26 November; a pair of gunmen killed more than 50 people in the passenger hall. Boyle now says he believed "you should never talk about the film in terms of the attacks, because one's an entertainment and the other is a tragedy. But the scene in the station [is one] of unapologetic romantic love... It's utterly naive, and it says love conquers all. And [I'm] proud of that. It's unintentional, obviously. But it was the best thing I could possibly say."
• The scene in which Jamal is tortured was meant to be funny, says Boyle. "[It] was written as comedy, which is how I thought I'd directed it. When the scene plays in the West, everybody thinks it's about Guantanamo, but in India torture is accepted as part of the culture, like bribery." Sergeant Srinivas, the police officer, is played by the Indian actor, writer and director Saurabh Shukla.
• Simon Beaufoy, who adapted the screenplay for 'Slumdog' from the novel 'Q&A' by Vikas Swarup, made three research trips to India to interview street children. He says he wanted to convey the slums' "sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community". Boyle wasn't interested in directing a script about 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' until he heard it had been written by Beaufoy (who also wrote 'The Full Monty').
• One of the film's opening scenes is a chase through Mumbai's Dharavi slum – the largest slum in Asia. Boyle says it was based on a 12-minute police chase in the Indian film 'Black Friday', about the 1993 Bombay bombings. One of his other reference points was 'Satya', a 1998 film about the Mumbai underworld, written by Saurabh Shukla (who plays Sergeant Srinivas in Slumdog)
• Boyle "fibbed" to his US producers that he wanted to translate about 10 per cent of the dialogue for 'Slumdog' into Hindi, then translated almost a third of the script.
• 'Slumdog' will be released in India on Friday. The film has not been universally praised by Indians. A debate started by commentators on Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan's blog included criticism of the film's depiction of India as a "Third World dirty underbelly developing nation".