Feature Films Shot in DV: The Orville B DeVille Film Institute

WIKIPEDIA: Full Frontal
Full Frontal is a 2002 film by Steven Soderbergh, about a day in the life of people in Hollywood. The film stars Catherine Keener, David Duchovny, Julia Roberts, Mary McCormack and David Hyde Pierce was shot on digital video in under a month using the Canon XL-1s. The film blurs the line between what is real and what is fiction in its depiction of a film within a film (and possibly within another). It is in the loose structural style and narrative ambiguity of the French New Wave, and it received critical notice for this style.

[Soderbergh edited Full Frontal on Final Cut Pro.]

WIKIPEDIA: Dancer in The Dark:
. . . It was shot with a hand held camera, and was somewhat inspired by a Dogme 95 look.

Dancer in the Dark premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to standing ovations and controversy and was awarded the Palme d'Or, along with the Best Actress award for Björk. The song "I've Seen It All", with Thom Yorke, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.

. . . The musical sequences were filmed simultaneously with over 100 digital cameras so that multiple angles of the performance could be captured and cut together later, thus shortening the filming schedule.

WIKIPEDIA: The Anniversary Party
Because of conflicting schedules, there was a period of only 19 days in which the entire cast-consisting of friends and actors with whom Leigh and Cumming previously had worked-would be available for filming. This prompted the decision to film using digital video, which Leigh felt also added a sense of immediacy and intimacy that would draw the audience into the action as party guests observing everything from the sidelines.

EM: How did you decide on the rough look for Center of the World?

WW: Center of the World was a relationship between two people, which in the beginning was very formal because they hardly know each other. Slowly, through the three days and three nights, it disintegrates. I always start with the one line description of the film's through-line and use that to determine the visual aspects of it. Since we were shooting in digital video, we started with the digital camera that is closest to film-digital beta, on dollies, shot in a very formal way. By the end of the first night when she starts the strip, and the first sex scene with him, things were beginning to get hot. We switched to hand held with these bigger cameras and went a little rougher. The second day, we went to the mini consumer DV cameras and just said forget the controlled look; let's really break loose, even if something is out of focus and bleached out. We broke it up that way. The third night, when the relationship got really intense and finally got very cold, so to speak, we switched completely to a no color digital grain.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Angelina Jolie.
Much of A Mighty Heart was shot with a Panasonic DVX100.

[Aaron] Katz's breakthrough came in 2006 when his first feature Dance Party USA, premiered at the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival. Katz wrote and directed the film for around $2,000 and shot for two weeks in his hometown of Portland with a small crew of friends. The film went on to play at numerous festivals all over the world and was listed as a top ten film by the New York Sun.

Reviews were mixed, with praise being given to Katz's subtle direction and the naturalistic performances of the cast. The New York Times stated that "Dance Party USA is a remarkably delicate construction, directed with extraordinary empathy by Aaron Katz." In addition, The New York Sun placed it at number nine on their Top 10 Films of 2006 list.

[Dance Party USA was shot with a Panasonic DVX100]

Directed by Steve Buscemi and starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler.
WIKIPEDIA: Lonesome Jim
The film was originally a part of a deal with Universal Studios and had a proposed budget of $3 million. However, the deal with Universal was unexpectedly cancelled and Lonesome Jim then ended up being shot and produced on a meager budget of $500,000 with the original filming schedule being reduced from 30 down to 17 days. As a cost saving measure, screenplay writer James C. Strouse, a native of Goshen, Indiana, employed two of his nieces as actors in the film, another family member as location manager, as well he used his parents' home and factory as a location for Jim's parents' home and factory. More money was saved by recording the entire film onto a mini-DV digital video camera rather than a film camera. [Panasonic DVX100]