Making Ugly was shot on the Sony EX3 and was all handheld. Director Andrew Niblo and Producer Mara Adina and Dara Carroll

Her is its IMDB profile:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1909802/

The menu and buttons are pretty much the same as an EX1 and EX3, so no need to re learn a whole manual to set up your personal profiles for those specific jobs.

The technical bits:

Sensor: super 35mm

The F3 in HD records at 4:2:0 35mb/s and shoots the 24p/25p/30p and relative interlaced options.

At 720 50p and 60p and overcranks and undercranks in 720p from 1fps to 60fps.

However, you still wil require a Nano-Flash or Ki-Pro to get up to the 50mb/s  4:2:2 for Broadcast standards.

The camera has a PL mount with adapters being available for other mounts. Apparently Sony will be releasing a package with a 35, 50 and 85mm lens. But this will set you back £14,000

Apparently there is also a feature to sync two f3s together for 3D if that is your bag.

Here are some films shot on the F3:

Directed by Martin Scanlan and filmed by Steve Lawes

By Thomas Ozoux:

By Jason Wingrove

Because of the cost of this camera I can see it as being a Rental favourite for productions with a reasonable budget, Visual Impact are currently quoting £250 per day for camera and basic lens package.

Downfalls though: Still operates at 35mbs so you will still need nano flash etc to get up to that 50mbs. The viewfinder is of the poney tail variety (Hanging off the back), so an exteral monitor is required for shoulder mount. The balance and design is not really for handheld/shoulder so will require a seperate shoulder mount and even then the weight is really pushed forwards. It costs £10,000, without lenses.

I love the feel of this camera it has that solid Sony feel and surely will become the preference over the RED ONE if you work around the 35MBS by recording externally.

Also watch out for the Sony AVCHD NXCAM coming out next year. and the Panasonic AG-AF101 which is aimed at those with smaller budgets, these are aimed diectly at the DSLR users amongst us.

I acted as Director of Photography on this feature film for the London Unit. Shooting on the Sony EX3 we filmed in and around some of East London’s most atmospheric locations.

http://makingugly.com/

Making Ugly is due for release in 2011.

Using the EX3 handheld it gave a great grittiness to the feel of the film.

The film has since been doing the festival circuits.

The films production:

Initially this film was scripted and was to be based around the first boy that appears in the video. However, while filming I learnt that a family was coming to pick up their son. I had to then make the decision to switch the film around and focus more on this boy.

Here is the story of that boy:

At the age of 12 his father died and he was pulled out of education so that he could earn money for the family. He could not handle this responsibility and ran away to Mumbai. Here he begged at the station and was picked up by an orphanage.

At the orphanage he was sexually abused by older children and ran away again to the station. At the age of 14 Saathi finally got involved with his case. After much effort and building up of trust he told Saathi his story and where he was from, he did not want to return home because of the shame he would face.

Saathi then became the middle person, coaxing him that being with his family was the best thing for him, he then agreed to return home and Saathi made contact with his family. What you see in the film is his mother, sister, uncle and grandfather coming to pick him up.

When he returns home Saathi will monitor his situation and ensure that he returns back into education. A happy ending to this story, but without the help of this scheme, many young children end up living on the streets and endure a life of malnutrition, poverty and abuse. Without proper guidance they are venerable and many become the victims of sexual abuse and resort drugs, glue sniffing and alcohol to hide their pain.

This is why early intervention from organisations like The Railway Children and Saathi is so important.

The films production:

The brief for this film instantly presented a minefield of filming problems. It had to show both the trainers and the children undertaking module 4 of the program and had to present them both before and after. Because of the nature of the modules, much of it was repetitive: colouring, drama, meditation etc. and to make matters worse it was all in Hindi. It took 8 days of patiently waiting and filming key moments, 2 days to design a paper edit and then a further 5 days to edit. In the end interviews were cut out in favour of using a voice-over.

The film is going to be used to encourage more of Railway Children’s partners to use the program and raise funds to develop it for distribution to agencies around the world. It is hoped that every child that undertakes the program will be in a stronger position to face their own trauma and protect themselves from abuse; whether this be mental, physical and sexual or drug abuse.

The film was quite dry in its content, so it was decided to use outtakes within the film itself to make it more human and build the character of the children who were doing much of the interviewing and filmwork.

The film has since been used to promote the FilmWorks Trust and gain funding for other films that that the children of Westminster are involved with.

It was decided that the best way to explain what the charity was about was to use the story of one boy that I met while filming out in India.

Deepesh Ran away from home at the age of 12 after his father died. He lived on the stations until he was picked up by an orphanage. At the orphanage he was sexually abused by some older boys and ran away to the stations again to beg for a living. The Railway Children finally picked him up an re united him with his mother. He had been on the streets for two years.

I was fortunate enough to be there when he was re united with his mother.

Deepesh is now back at home with his mother and is happily attending school.

The video has since been used at many promotional events and was used as part of a successful pitch to gain funding from Comic Relief.

Dir: Marcio Delgado