VIDEOGRAPHY — JULY 27, 2006

Who Killed the Electric Car?: Plinyminor's New Model for Production and Post:

Before the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? got underway as a production, filmmaker Chris Paine set out to investigate the question of why General Motors' EV1--an electric car that had succeeded both technologically and economically--was being taken off the road against the wishes of many satisfied owners. What's really going on? he wondered. Why, when there was demand for these environmentally friendly machines, were they being recalled by the manufacturer? And what was GM doing with them? It was a mystery--a murder-mystery, it turns out. Paine had no idea when he began that his search, which resulted in thousands of hours of material, would become a compelling documentary feature.

GM launched the EV1 electric vehicle in 1996. It was a revolutionary modern car, requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers and only rare brake maintenance. Only about 800 EV1 vehicles were available for consumer lease ($400-$500 a month). Director Chris Payne received his EV1 in 1998.

According to the film's timeline of events, GM announced in April 2003 that it would not renew EV1 leases--the same month that California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate was revised so that fuel cell vehicles, gas-electric hybrids and PZEVs (Partially Zero Emission Vehicles) would be counted in fulfillment of automakers' requirement that their market share include a certain percentage of low-emission vehicles. GM further stated that it intended to reclaim all EV1s from consumers by the end of 2004. Payne's EV1 was confiscated in 2003.

Rumors had been flying that these EV1 cars were being recalled using arcane technicalities in the lease and then being taken out to a remote desert location to be crushed and shredded. On his own, Paine interviewed a GM exec who categorically denied this claim. Shortly after this discussion, the director received a tip that the cars were being trucked to GM's Arizona proving grounds for demolition. If he could get footage of EV1s being crushed and destroyed to juxtapose with the on-camera denial, he'd have a very strong foundation on which to build a compelling documentary.

It was at this point that Paine's business partners at production company Plinyminor--executive producers Richard and Tavin Titus--joined the project. Richard Titus had been a founder of new media agency Razorfish and other technology-based companies. His wife, Tavin, had worked in a production capacity on Hollywood features for people like Dean Devlin. The Tituses realized that Paine was onto something that could have wide appeal. Though Plinyminor was established as a production entity for low-cost genre features, the company's mandate was expanded and it became the production entity for Who Killed the Electric Car?.

"One of the rarest things in the documentaries I've seen is a real smoking gun," Richard Titus notes. "You never get a smoking gun in a documentary."

Plinyminor rented a helicopter in December 2004 and Paine flew over the secret location with DVCAM equipment and a digital still camera to capture the destruction. "This was happening on New Year's Eve," Richard Titus notes. "The staff at the plant was in such a hurry to go home that they hadn't tarped the area, as they usually did. So it was out there in the open for anyone to see. There was a lot of subterfuge to this process. They did not want people to know these non-polluting cars that customers wanted to keep were going away, and they definitely did not want people to know they were being shredded."

The Plinyminor crew included those with technical prowess and an understanding of the entertainment industry, but once Paine and the Tituses decided to tackle this controversial and undocumented political issue in earnest, the producers knew they would need the input and guidance of someone with impeccable journalism credentials. They turned to Jessie Deeter, who had built his journalistic documentary reputation with the respected PBS series Frontline. "Jesse's guidance kept this movie on a course that allows people to leave the theater not questioning whether what they're seeing is true or false but knowing that it's true and then being able to decide how they want to respond," says Tavin Titus.

From here, Paine and the producers brought on Cinematographer Thaddeus Wadleigh to shoot as many interviews as the production could line up. Interviews were all shot in the HDCAM format. They gave themselves seven weeks to get as many instrumental players in this story as possible. Many declined. Many more agreed and then cancelled at the last minute. Concurrently, the filmmakers sought every scrap of tape that could be useful in telling the story. There was precious little stock of the EV1, but there was plenty of home movie-style footage that activists and fans of the car had recorded themselves on every possible format.

The film is made up of HD, DVCAM, Mini DV and older VHS and Hi-8 formats. "About 25 percent is found footage: something an activist shot with Handycam, something someone shot at a demonstration, news archival footage," explains Richard Titus. "The activist's stuff was done with cheap cameras, but some of it is also the most riveting footage in the film. None of the footage of the [pro-EV1] protest was shot on a good camera. It was all something someone happened to have for their kid's birthday party or something that they took along."

This inconsistency of format and resolution presented some serious postproduction challenges that the filmmakers took to Hollywood-based Plaster City Digital Post, in great part because of that facility's dedication to working in an entirely tapeless environment.

Tavin Titus' goal in choosing a post facility was to find one that could handle all the formats employed in the investigation of the death of the EV1 electric vehicle. "I knew that so many pieces would come in and out through the process of making this movie, so I needed to find one facility that could handle all the formats seamlessly."

Plaster City Digital Post would confront these post challenges with its arsenal of Macintosh/Final Cut Pro (v5.1) workstations and collection of one of just about every kind of video tape deck there is. Material was transferred from tape and imported onto the company's 32TB SAN, where it remained throughout production and post. Most material remained in its native format throughout the process, leaving upconverting and resizing for the very end. (The exception was material recorded in a format that doesn't lay down SMPTE timecode. That footage was upconverted to DVCAM with timecode and remained in that format until the final mastering.) Thanks to Plaster City's SAN and Final Cut Pro workstations, editors Michael Kovalenko and Chris Peterson could cut the show together without ever having to worry about whether a piece was on PAL or VHS, Hi-8 or Mini DV.

Says Tavin Titus, "This technology let us work tapelessly and focus entirely on creative choices without having to constantly convert formats. We were able to import all our footage and never remove it from any system, even through online. Not having to go back and forth to tape saved a production like ours a tremendous amount of money."

When all the editorial decisions had been made, Plaster City's Ian Vertovec performed color correction using Silicon Color technology. Plaster City delivered the final product in the HDCAM SR format to EFILM, where it was recorded for theatrical distribution with ARRILASER.

The film has been well received thus far, the Tituses contend, because of the scrupulous journalism--led by Deeter--that went into the film. They credit Deeter's tireless demands for sourcing and corroboration on every point. "We knew from the beginning that people would try to take it apart," says Tavin Titus. "It was very important in the filmmaking to present facts that are undeniable. I'm used to one attorney being on a film. We had five."

But it's not just the presence of cold, hard facts that resonates with audiences, Richard Titus maintains. There is also something very timely and even quite emotional in the story the film tells. "There were only about 800 EV1s on the road at any one time," he says, noting that other clean and hybrid vehicles are also being yanked off the road against their owners' wishes. "Look at the Ford Ranger [which Titus drives]. There are very few of these vehicles left, and those are only still out there because people fought, sued, protested and did everything else they could to hold onto them. I've seen people crying in the theater over the EV1, and this tells you this film is about more than a car. It touches people in a way they hadn't expected."