Mixed Digital and 35mm Material Underscores Multi-Layered Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire, the latest film from director Danny Boyle, is touching hearts and racking up awards worldwide, including this year’s Golden Globe award for Best Drama. Set amidst the slums of Mumbai, the film tells the tale of an impoverished 18-year-old Indian boy, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), who hits the big time on the Hindi equivalent of the U.S. game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But all is not as it seems. When the teen is accused of cheating his way to success, the plot slowly unravels the events that brought him to his 15 minutes of fame.

The layered and nuanced tale defies easy categorization. “When I read the script, it felt like a coming-of-age film  an epic story of growing up in Mumbai,” says editor Chris Dickens, who has received ACE, BAFTA, and Academy Award nominations for his work on the film. “Then as we worked on it, the love story became stronger. Still it has other strands  in a way it’s a bit like a modern day Oliver Twist, and in another way it’s like a sports movie, something like Rocky. It’s very hard to pigeonhole.”

The complexity of the film was precisely what attracted Dickens to the project, which was shot on location in India. “It was a complicated story with so many opportunities. I thought an editor could really make a difference, interweaving all of these multiple storylines and flashbacks  all held together with the [timeline of the] game show.”

We chose Avid [systems] for their familiarity and reliability. We were going to India  a place I had never worked before. I wanted to go with systems that were solid .- Chris Dickens, Editor, Slumdog Millionaire

Easing a Complex Workflow

A series of flashbacks illuminate the boy’s earliest years and the poverty that shaped him. Boyle wanted these sequences to have a certain unrefined energy and roughness that was distinct from the more contemporary sequences shot on 35mm, so he shot the earlier scenes using a custom SI-2K MINI digital camera. The compact cameras fit in a backpack and could easily capture the ambience and liveliness of Indian culture on the streets. Because the cameras were so easy and inexpensive to operate, up to five of them were used simultaneously on some sequences.

With volumes of footage that included conventional film and digital tape from a source he had never used before, Dickens arrived in India two weeks before the shoot to test the editing workflow and ensure a smooth outcome. He and two assistants used two Media Composer software stations connected to an 8 TB Avid Unity setup, supplied by U.K.-based rental house Gearbox Sound and Vision.“We chose Avid [systems] for their familiarity and reliability,” says Dickens. “We were going to India a place I had never worked before. I wanted to go with systems that were solid. While we were there we had power [outages], camera problems  all kinds of issues. But we never had any problems with the Avid systems.”

Dickens and his team also needed an expandable workflow, adding a third Media Composer system in London where postproduction was completed. “We knew we’d have a lot of systems running and be up against hard deadlines. We had to have a setup where we could easily add workstations when we needed to. The [Avid Unity] was perfect for that,” he says.

While Dickens had considered using an HD workflow on the film, he was uncertain about the depth of HD support available in Mumbai, so he opted to edit in SD. The editing team eventually settled on a workflow that included the ingest of 35mm material from telecined DigiBeta tapes, while digital media was copied from the camera’s disk as Windows Media Files (WMFs), which were then brought into the Avid Media Composer system.

This workflow produced some color challenges. “The digital camera would put a temporary grade on the files, but we couldn’t get it to carry over to the WMFs, so we had to put grading on them ourselves,” says Dickens. The editing team was able to handle this issue using the Media Composer software’s real-time color-correction capabilities. Color templates were created once for each scene and quickly applied to all of the shots in a scene to create consistent, accurate color palettes for editing and screening.

The Avid editing solution was also instrumental in enabling Dickens to easily mix multiple formats and resolutions on the same timeline, including some slow-motion frames, which were notably used for one of the film’s signature scenes of the female lead, Freida Pinto, standing on a train platform, smiling.

The flexibility of the workflow was further enhanced by the use of a software-only Avid solution, which was used by one of the assistants for editing on the road or at home on a laptop. The laptop was easily connected to the Avid Unity setup in the editing suites to update media instantly, keeping everyone’s cuts in sync.

It was quite a complicated story with so many opportunities. I thought an editor could really make a difference.”- Chris Dickens, Editor,Slumdog Millionaire

Capturing the Spirit of India

The ability of the Avid Media Composer system to handle whatever came along was essential given the quick, creative pace that was set by the director. “This was the first time I had worked with Danny Boyle. He is a very energetic person and quite collaborative,” says Dickens. The Avid systems were essential for quickly turning out cut after cut, particularly in India where Boyle liked to screen scenes right away to ensure he was getting just the right coverage.

With so much footage, the filmmakers often revisited sequences, adding more and more material over time. “The thing about India is that wherever you point a camera, there is something interesting to see,” says Dickens. “We kept adding things in, especially in the scenes where kids are running through the slums in the film. We would add wider shots of the slums or more shots of kids running or more shots of the cricket games.”

The editing team provided as complete a cut as possible for review and made full use of the Media Composer software’s built-in visual effects tools for handling as many as 300 visual effects shots, primarily for the television screens used in the game show sequences. Dickens also created an extensive soundtrack with music and sound effects, taking advantage of the system’s 24-track audio capabilities. Digidesign Pro Tools systems were used by the sound team, further streamlining the workflow by enabling a quick exchange of digital sound files.

While the filmmaking pace was a bit dizzying, it appears to have creatively fueled the final product, which has garnered four Golden Globe Awards,  as well as 11 BAFTA and 10 Academy Award nominations. “We tried a lot of different ideas in the storytelling, playing to the strengths of the script. We tried things quickly to see if it changed the film. This approach gave the film energy. We didn’t fuss too much over the details. We just put our best creative foot forward,” says Dickens. “It was hard work, but very satisfying. Danny has a way of getting you to give more of yourself. He really is very open to ideas. You feel you are doing it collectively. We really did it, all of us, together.”

CREDIT: Photo credits: Ishika Mohan