Filmmakers used Sony's 1080i HD camera to shoot the independent feature film Seven and a Match at Fisher's Island, New York, late last year. The film is one of the first features shot entirely in the high-definition format.

The project was made by the Los Angeles-based companies Bratter Broadband, Smart Films, and Engram Digital, who have collectively formed the Hi-Def Alliance Studio Group. To market the Seven and a Match shoot, the alliance let Oak Ridge, Tennessee Internet Pictures Corporation (iPix) beta test its proprietary camera technology, the iPix Movie camera, which captures unique 360-degree, behind-the-scenes, moving footage, on set.

iPix has been creating interactive still photos for Internet and DVD distribution for a few years, which it markets to real estate clients and other industries. Now, iPix officials have developed a 35mm motion-picture version for entertainment companies. (Shortly after completing the Seven and a Match test, iPix signed a deal to produce interactive shorts with the technology for DreamWorks' upcoming entertainment site, www.pop.com.) Seven and a Match filmmakers have already posted some of the test footage on their Web site, www.sevenandamatch.com, and hope to create a behind-the-scenes DVD with it.

"The Seven and a Match producers let us use their lighting set-ups and camera positions to record behind-the-scenes imagery while they made the film," explains Bill Gubbins, senior vice president at iPix. "The system unites a 35mm Aaton film camera with our iPix Movie lens, which looks like small horse eyeballs pointing east and west. That puts two 180-degree images on each frame of film. We then put the images through a digital post process, using proprietary software, to eliminate the seams and unite the images. That creates an authentic 360 x 360 film image."

Steven Bratter, executive producer of Seven and a Match considers the iPix system a powerful marketing tool for filmmakers on low budgets. "The mansion where our film takes place is essentially a character in the film," says Bratter. "With this technology, we can give audiences a tour inside and around the mansion. By maneuvering a mouse, they can watch clips of the actors performing scenes and then move behind the camera and around the room while that is happening. It gives you a 360-degree POV inside a full-motion frame of film, which is pretty cool, and useful in creating other media material related to our film."

Seven and a Match producers concede that the ultimate test for filmmakers working in HD is whether they can they make their project look like film.

"The transfer to film is the whole key, if you shot correctly in terms of light and other things," says writer/director Derek Simonds. "We used a film DP and film grips and lit for film because we wanted to keep what you appreciate when you watch film: the physics of light on celluloid bouncing back to your eyeball. It creates a specific warmth that is lacking in naked HD. What we had to do was marry the two concepts in shooting and in the transfer."

On the transfer issue, the filmmakers say they are following the technology path of their admitted role model: George Lucas. The team plans to shoot their next two projects on Sony's 24p camera, and at press time, co-executive producer David Effress said he expected the movie's transfer from HD to film to rely on the CELCO HDR Recorder.

"We used an earlier version of the recorder for the two-minute test that we showed at Sundance and NAB," says Effress, "and we got excellent feedback about the film quality of those images."