Adam is an unconventional romantic comedy from Fox Searchlight starring Hugh Dancy as the title character and Rose Byrne as Beth, his love interest. Like with many films about love, the different ways men and women communicate and fail to communicate are often the crux of the narrative. In this case, the challenges are confounded because Adam has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism that is marked by an inability to read what other people are feeling. Rather than making Adam simply about Asperger’s, the film is a funny, charming twist on what happens when boy-meets-girl. At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

Shot in 24 days over the winter of 2007, this low budget independent film utilized the ARRIFLEX D-20 camera from rental house ARRI CSC, going tapeless with S.two data recording. All D-20s have since been upgraded to D-21s with improved features, but Adam remains to be a notable film in visual design as well as a captivating story.

Post production was handled by Digital Motion Picture Company in Los Angeles. The filmmakers shot in real locations around New York City to keep the budget low and to convey the character of the metropolis in a realistic manner.  The motivation to shoot with the D-20 likely began with Cinematographer Seamus Tierney, whose earlier experience with the camera system on The Narrows proved to be very positive.

For co-producer Gary Giudice, the chance to employ a tapeless workflow with the D-20 was an exciting premise. “When I found out about the opportunity to record to hard drive — that was something very interesting to me. When involved in a great project, I always like to find something unique and interesting on another level that gets me excited. So for me, recording to hard drive and being at the cusp of technology was extremely appealing.”

Aside from the camera’s workflow, the filmmakers had to be confident about how the images would convey the story. Notes Giudice, “Given the visual success of the previous project that Seamus shot with the D-20 on The Narrows, there was a lot of comfort that we could create high production value and the look that we wanted with this format.”

There are hundreds of independent features made each year with the hopes to attract distribution and Giudice contends that the D-20’s filmic style definitely helped with Adam’s marketability. “From my standpoint, I was very, very pleased with the way the film looked,” says the producer whose credits include Familiar Strangers and Turn the River. “Certainly I think that is one of the contributing factors to the movie getting picked up [by Fox Searchlight]. In addition to the great story and great acting in Adam, I think you do need to have production value that’s equivalent to what is out in the marketplace of $10-$20 million films.  I think that the beautiful look can certainly be credited to both the D-20 and also to Seamus’ talents.

Adam is now in select theaters July 29.