The making of Madagascar

Madagascar's national carrier, Air Madagascar, entrusted TV and video production company "blurr productions" and its Malagasy-born director, Harry Ravelomanantsoa, to produce a 30 second cinema commercial that is aimed at theaters around the globe.

blurr productions is a Johannesburg-based company started in 2000 by Ravelomanantsoa with the idea of using Final Cut Pro as a platform; one that had not yet proven itself in the television industry, especially in conservative South Africa: "We started with the very first version of Final Cut Pro on a dual G4 workstation using Aurora's Igniter breakout box on Mac OS 9.It was virtually impossible to get this set up in South Africa at the time, but we shipped the whole system from London and hooked it to a BetacamSP player/recorder for broadcast quality purposes."

After nearly five years of editing corporate videos, shorts, music videos and TV and cinema commercials on Final Cut Pro, blurr productions finally got the opportunity to work on Madagascar: "Showcasing my country is a dream come true for me and I believe that, thanks to today's technology, making an impact doesn't depend on the size of your production house anymore."

The commercial is to be shown in 11 countries, starting with France and Belgium and the campaign will be translated into five different languages including Thai and Italian.

Harmon Cusack (a member of the South African Society of Cinematographers) is director of photography, with Dominique Werth (blurr productions), as line producer; Anton Wehmeyer as camera assistant; and Andrew Bannister as photographer.

The 5-man crew spent a total of 10 days on the island with more than half a ton of equipment and plenty of logistical problems.

Together with the Sony 750i HD camera, the crew also took a Sony HDV camera for "making-of material" which made editor/director Ravelomanantsoa equally comfortable knowing that his FCP HD system would be able to drive this project home without hiccups: "I'd read about HDV before the shoot but never had the chance to work with it. I am quite impressed by its quality compared to BetacamSP or even DigiBeta.

"As for our full HD material from the 'big' camera, the quality was impeccable. The workflow between FCP HD and online systems such as Discreet Flame and Lustre worked beautifully."