The Briefing Room

SECAUCUS, NJ (October 2, 2008) – Fireproof, an action-packed love story about fighting fires and marital demons from Sherwood Pictures (Albany, GA), opened last weekend with little advance marketing and went on to earn $6.8 million and the number four slot at the box office.

Reprising the filmmaking team of the 2006 hit, Facing the Giants (writer/director Alex Kendrick, producer/assistant director David Nixon and Director of Photography Bob Scott), Fireproof was shot with Panasonic’s AJ-HDC27H VariCam® HD Cinema camera. Already the year’s highest-grossing film playing in under 1,000 theaters, the movie is being distributed theatrically by Samuel Goldwyn Films in association with Provident Pictures.

Fireproof stars Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains) as Captain Caleb Holt, a firefighter trapped in a flailing marriage. Challenged by his father, Holt and his wife begin a 40-day experiment known as “The Love Dare” in an attempt to save their marriage. The movie was shot on location in Albany, GA over the course of six weeks late in 2007.

Scott, a veteran VariCam shooter and owner, shot Facing the Giants with that camera. He has served as Director of Photography for the official documentary retrospectives for the past several Olympics Games, produced by Bud Greenspan’s Cappy Productions (New York, NY). Notably, Scott also shot football sequences for such major theatrical features as The Express (as DP of second unit), Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights, Too Fast, Too Furious and The Replacements.

With distribution in place in advance, the Fireproof filmmakers were guaranteed a film-out. Therefore, Kendrick and Scott decided to take full advantage of the VariCam’s imaging capacity and record (via an HD-SDI feed from the camera) directly to an on-set Mac using Final Cut Pro and Blackmagic’s DeckLink HD video card. The video stream was encoded using Apple’s ProRes 422 at a 220 Mbps data rate. Scott also recorded to DVCPRO HD tapes for back-up.

Fireproof was predominantly a one-camera shoot, and Scott outfitted the camera with a Pro 35 lens adapter and Zeiss super-speed lenses. “We wanted to emulate a film look as much as possible, and those accessories gave us the same characteristics as 35mm from the lens standpoint, with a shallow depth of field and film-like grain.” The DP used two AG-HVX200 P2 HD camcorders for some extreme action shots, including shooting out of a fireproof box in the middle of a fire.

“The combination of the motion picture lenses and the VariCam’s CineGamma settings produced a true film feel: it’s hard to find a video camera that does that better than the VariCam,” Scott said. “The camera delivers an incredible look, and the way it ‘sees’ the world is very filmic.”

“During several days of shooting, we were dealing with intense smoke and humidity, and the camera stood up very well to punishing sequences shots on moving trucks and trains, not to mention in burning buildings,” he continued. “I felt my greatest challenge on this shoot was lighting for fire. Fire is so bright that you need a certain exposure so the image doesn’t wash out. I’ve had a lot of experience shooting tricky lighting conditions with the VariCam, and I was able to dial in a range that I was very happy with.”

Fireproof was edited in-house at Sherwood Pictures on Final Cut Pro. The color correction and film out were done at PostWorks (New York, NY).

About VariCam

Panasonic’s AJ-HDC27 VariCam replicates many of the key features of film-based image acquisition, including 24-frame progressive scan images, time lapse recording, and a wide range of variable frame rates (4-fps to 60-fps in single-frame increments) for “overcranked” and “undercranked” off-speed in-camera effects. The AJ-HDC27 VariCam also features CineGamma™ software that permits Panasonic’s HD Cinema camera systems to more closely match the latitude of film stocks.

About Panasonic Broadcast

Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast and professional video products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North

America. The company is the principal North American subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation (NYSE Symbol: PC) the hub of Panasonic’s U.S. branding, marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast.

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EDITORIAL CONTACTS:

Stacy Moore or Pat Lamb

(201) 392-4458 (518) 692-8150

moorest@us.panasonic.com patalamb@aol.com