What a Witch was filmed on Mini-DV with the Canon XL1S. The XL1S has had a great effect on the low-budget independent filmmaking community. Brought out in 1998, the prosumer camcorder with switchable lenses was immediately adopted by the independent filmmaking community as the affordable digital camera option. Thousands of independent filmmakers, whether students at film school or just individuals with a creative spark, have used the XL1 to turn their projects into reality. Filmmakers worldwide turned to the XL1 and the XL1S as an affordable alternative to film. Movies could easily be made for under $10,000 or even $5,000 - amounts which wouldn’t purchase more than a few seconds of conventional 35mm or 16mm film. The XL1 enabled new filmmaking projects that would have otherwise been unfeasable.

So did What a Witch, just that it was made with an amount of £500.

Lens versatility has been the cornerstone of the XL1’s success. At the time of its introduction, the XL1 offered the best level of quality of any camcorder below $5,000. At the time, MiniDV was not a widely accepted format, and there were many full size Hi8, 8mm, and other professional-format camcorders which were competing with the XL1. Although today digital is accepted industrywide as the superior format, the original XL1 marketing brochure from 1998 had to describe the benefits of MiniDV over analog.

The camera is built on a magnesium alloy frame and is larger than other camcorders in its price range. Some users criticized its awkward shape, complaining that it was too big to be a handheld camcorder, yet too small to be a shoulder-mounted camcorder. Canon solved this problem with a shoulder mount that attached to the back of the XL1. It seems to have done the trick:

Possibly the most famous use of the XL1S was in director Steven Soderbergh’s feature film, Full Frontal. Soderbergh is an acclaimed director who has directed many feature films, including Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven, and also won an Academy Award for directing Traffic. Shot in 2002, Full Frontal is a comedy set in Los Angeles about the people in the movie industry. Soderbergh didn’t pick digital video for its low cost; rather, after exploring various different digital camcorders, he decided he wanted the DV look for his film. Soderbergh picked the XL1S partially because of its optical image stabilization, as this enabled the filmmaker to shoot the entire film handheld.

The XL1S was also used in Danny Boyle’s horror feature film, 28 Days Later, released in 2003. Director Danny Boyle explained that one of the reasons they chose MiniDV as a format was the quick set-up for lighting when compared to conventional film. In the film, there are multiple wide shots of a completely deserted London. The police and authorities limited the amount of time that they would give Boyle and his crew to film these shots because they required shutting down all traffic in certain areas of a very busy city, so they needed to do it as quickly as possible. They used multiple cameras - six in one shot and ten in another - and filmed them in as few takes as possible. Boyle said that it would not have been possible to film the shots which made London seem abandoned without the DV camcorders.

Also Cinematographer Claudio Chea used both, the XL1 and the XL1S, for his independent films. Chea used an XL1 for Pinero, staring Benjamin Bratt, and an XL1S for his most recent work, Washington Heights.

For What a Witch we took the opportunity to add lenses and adapters. But as is always the case when shooting a film, unpredictable issues arise. Suddenly the look of the picture was bewitched: