The first European film to be shot using a alfa version of the SI-2K digital cinema camera, the same camera which was later on used to film
Quisiera ser millonario (2008). In fact footage from this film was shown to the crew of Slumdog Millionaire as a sample of cameras visual quality. The production company was able to acquire only the SI-2K mini and not the full camera, since the full body camera was still having heat related issues. The mini unit of the camera, or the brain, was attached to a laptop for capturing purposes.
While filming in south Albania under 42 degrees, the laptop was kept in a tent, with two ventilators blowing from each side. After 12 days of filming, the editor realized that the camera was capturing at 24 fps but flagging the movie files as 25 fps. Since neither Silicon Imaging (the camera producer) nor P+S (european distributor) were able to offer any technical solution or advice to the problem, it was decided to start filming using 25 fps. Thus, the first 12 days of footage remained an issue to be dealt with at a latter stage.
During the 30th day of filming, the camera chip showed signs of damage, thus it had to be repaired or replaced in Germany. P+S replaced the camera but then mistakenly kept the PL Mount in their lab. The camera flew back to Albania with-ought the proprietary PL Mount. While a PL mount was being arranged in Tirana, 5 hours away from the set, the hard drive and the laptop charger of the macbook pro which was used for capturing, broke down due to high power and unstable electricity. Luckily, a apple store had started operating in Tirana just few days ago, so the charger and the proprietary PL mount could be arranged within a day. After 3 days of fluke, filming continued. The offline editing was done on Final Cut Pro. P+S expressed their wish to know more about the work-flow and the experiences of the editing, but the editor refused to share any information since he was upset and angry at P+S for not taking the responsibility for the first 12 days of filming. Cineform codec, used by the camera for capturing the raw data, was available for Final Cut only as a beta version.
