Digital Video magazine — November 2012
‘West of Memphis:’ Chronicling the Case in Amy Berg’s Cinematic Documentary

With a Christmas Day release date, this month’s must-see film is the documentary feature West of Memphis, which details the celebrated case of the West Memphis Three — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley — three young men falsely convicted and imprisoned for the murders of three young boys in rural Arkansas in 1993. Fueled by a combination of poverty, corruption, religious bigotry and political ambition, the story is an all-too-common tale of the American justice system gone awry.

Produced by filmmaking team Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, and directed by documentary filmmaker Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil), West of Memphis, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance, was shot by DPs Maryse Alberti (The Wrestler, Happiness) and Ronan Kileen (Smash This Camera). Alberti, a multi award-winning cinematographer and photographic artist from France who has shot a number of political documentaries working alongside long-time collaborator Alex Gibney, teamed with Kileen in 2010 to begin filming formal and impromptu interviews and cinéma vérité sequences for the project.

Making countless trips to West Memphis, Arkansas, Alberti and Kileen shot footage with a combination of Sony PMW-EX3 and PMW-F3 camcorders supplemented with Canon EOS 5D and 7D digital cameras, augmenting previously acquired material captured with Red One and Canon EOS 5D and 7D cameras.

“This really is a film of its time,” Kileen comments, noting that at least five different cameras were used during the two years he spent on the production, a period marked by rapidly changing technology. “Amy (Berg) likes to have a lot of coverage to edit with, she likes to find alternate angles or perspectives, so there would always be two if not three cameras rolling. She was never very explicit in terms of describing a style but once you start to work with her you realize she wants her documentary films to feel cinematic.” (Read more…)