Stieber also notes that the filmmakers were heartened by the vast improvements they noticed while examining recent tape-to-film transfers done in the U.S. and Europe, which assured them that their end product could be transferred to film at high quality. "You want the flexibility to collect as much information as possible, and tape is simply the most affordable way to do that," notes Stieber. "The Digital Betacam format allowed us to achieve both quality and quantity. The PAL standard — without knocking NTSC — was the icing on the cake. We didn't have to deal with 3:2 pulldown, and the color process was better."
In addition to a Sony Digital Betacam camera, the production also took along a Sony DVX-1000 DV-format camera as backup. "We were only on the set a week or so at a time," Stieber points out. "The thought of losing even a day of shooting evoked panic. Our insurance policy was this small camera."
The "insurance policy" seemed even more important when Stieber was dismayed to learn that there are five words in Moroccan Arabic for "dust." Fortunately, the filmmakers never encountered enough dust or other harsh elements to knock the Digital Betacam camera out of commission.
The Sony DVX-1000 camera proved quite useful for the film's intimate scenes in very tight interior sets, such as a tent where the young Dalai Lama runs under a monk's robes. "That was as tight a set as you could imagine, and it was pretty dark as well," recounts Wilson. "Sometimes Roger [Deakins] was on the edge of darkness. I had to go with whatever lighting Roger had put up. There was no way we could make changes or add lighting. That's where it was really good to have the Sony DVX-1000, because it's not cumbersome and it's easy to operate in very tight settings, even with very little light. I was very impressed with how the DVX-1000 held up in low-light conditions."
When the set was so cramped that only one person from the documentary crew could go in, Wilson occasionally shouldered the camera himself. "The DVX-1000 gave us so much freedom," he enthuses. "You don't have to think about the camera, just the situation you're filming — which was so refreshing. I'm not a cinematographer, but there were moments when I had to handle the camera. Even a total non-professional can handle that camera and focus on what he's filming, rather than worrying about the camera itself."
Another unique twist in the production was the Canal+ requirement that the documentary be shot in 1.77:1, an aspect ratio Wilson says he "immediately fell in love with. It's a nice-sized canvas, especially when you're shooting in a place like Morocco, where you've got a lot of space around your characters. Also, 1.77 has a nice, painterly quality that 1.33 may not have. It's not quite the widest format, but it's a nice compromise. People [in the U.S.] haven't been exposed to it, but I'm hoping the format will make an impact in this country."
The budget didn't allow the documentary crew to stay in Morocco for the duration of the Kundun shoot, so Wilson had to choose his moments carefully. By reading the script, he zeroed in on key points in the story that would need to be highlighted in the documentary — particularly scenes with the Dalai Lama as a two-year-old, a six-year-old and a young adult, including his confrontation with Mao Tse-tung. After Scorsese sent Wilson his shooting script, the documentarian broke it down into three periods, later adding a fourth (a re-creation of a Tibetan opera) when Scorsese urged Wilson to cover it. "The opera was easy to miss, because it was only one-third of a page on the script," explains Wilson. "But Marty had seen the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts perform some [of the opera] in Dharamsala [India], so he knew it would be spectacular, and he knew how important it was in Tibetan culture."
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