13 countries in 13 days! Marathon shoot

[Rygh]

A new project I will be doing here in 2 months time. Shoot 13 countries in Europe in 13 days. Why? Don't ask. The problems I am faced with today are three-fold.

1. Having two HVX200's and no cineporter coming out anymore, I am faced to look somewhere else.

2. No 16gb have been released, nor does anybody know when it will or if they will have enough for all the requests.

3. I have two firestore drives, only used them twice. (Got burned on a shoot with one of them, could be user error, but I will no longer use them. If anyone wants to buy them with an extended battery, I will sell)

So If I am to run all over Europe shooting for 16 hours a day, then getting up and doing it all over again. Would it be better just to get a HDV camera for the running segments? The costs will be better in the long run and with the new open source timeline in FCP6, these two formats should work nice.

Is there something I am missing, or is this the best choice? If so what is a good small HDV camera?

Also for those of you who already did Europe, what was your setup? What should I look out for?

Thanks

[mjjason]

Just out of curosity, is it 13 consecutive days? If so will it mostly be footage of train stations cause I can't see how you will have enough time to record anything else.

[THoff]

2. No 16gb have been released, nor does anybody know when it will or if they will have enough for all the requests.The 16GB cards are out and people are able to buy them.

[Vincent Pascoe]

in recomending a camera theres lots of questions to ask your self....



are you shooting in available light?

are you doing interviews and b roll or folowing someone/something around for 16 hours a day?

I've been burned by firestore too do you have the latest firmware on the firestore?

what style/feel do you want the footage to look like? more 24p cinema style or more reality tv footage?

what requirements does your client have of the footage? ie does it have to be 1080i HD?

[Rygh]

Yeah, all good questions Vincent.
1.We are shooting in the available light with a camera mounted light just in case it gets to dark, but we should already be on our way to the next stop before it gets too dark.

2. We have another crew that will lag behind shooting with the HVX200 of all the broll of the area and a little history. Since they have more time P2 card issues are not a problem. (THoff: You got to tell us where you can buy the 16gb cards right now, and not just leave it at "You can buy them now".)

3. I stopped the upgrade for the firestore a while ago since I never touch it anymore.

4. I want to have something that will get as close to the 720/24p look that the HVX will do, since they will be a primary camera as well.

5. The requirements are to keep this show in HD. Again 720/24p.

I would like to throw the talent a little HDV hand held consumer camera, so that he can record his thoughts on the train rides in the middle of the night. And have the two camera crews that are following him, not have to worry about ingesting footage to a drive for at least 5 hours of shooting. (I can't risk them running out of cards when the shoot is not completed.) We have the P2 Store also, and I have been burned on those too. Don't trust them. So it seems like the cost would be cheaper to buy a couple HDV cameras for this talent.

[Vincent Pascoe]

I just dislike the P2 store. to slow to small etc....how did you get burned by it?

on AFI we used a very small SOny HD AC3...hdv camera, not many profetional options but seemed easy to use...but the new Pansonic one that shoots to SD card would be interesting to look at as well...


your coment about FCP and the 422 codec is interesting because I'd like to see HDV footage run though that codec compared to running the HDV Footage through a Terenex type system...(which is very expensive but looked really good)

are you going to have an AC at all to help dump footage/orginize tapes?

16GIG cards =40minutes of footage 8-20 minutes to download that would help you a lot

VP

www.vincentpascoe.com (http://www.vincentpascoe.com)

[alexdias]

Rygh got burned with the Firestore not P2Store, which is my suggestion to make this thing happen. Even with all the speed and storage limitations...

[HD Studio Belgium]

Hi Rygh,

In 2002, we casted an Irish contestant that had to travel through 12 countries in 12 days ... WITH NO MONEY ... and so did the crew in a following van NO MONEY ... We did 10 countries and ended up in Portugal were, Irish people were about to pay his tickets to fly to Athens and helsinki. What started as a low budget reality show ... ended up as a hit in 9 countries.

For over 12000 km he begged for food and accomodation ... being Irish and his gift of the gab was all he had as bargaining power.

The fact the contestant was Irish and could rely on a lot of Irish help (e.g in Irish Pubs) along the way made this a very unexpected success. He slept in castles, in bridal suites, on a bench ... and so did we ... the crew that followed him ... all four of us.
It was shot on a couple of PD-170 at the time ... DVCAM. If that was good enough ... I am sure an actual Z1 from Sony would be even better ... The HVX and the card problem doesn't seem to be the ideal solution for this kind of work ... we own 2 HVX-200's ... but don't use them for this kind of ... shoot.

Good Luck.

[Rygh]

Hi Rygh,

In 2002, we casted an Irish contestant that had to travel through 12 countries in 12 days ... WITH NO MONEY ... and so did the crew in a following van NO MONEY ... We did 10 countries and ended up in Portugal were, Irish people were about to pay his tickets to fly to Athens and helsinki. What started as a low budget reality show ... ended up as a hit in 9 countries.

For over 12000 km he begged for food and accomodation ... being Irish and his gift of the gab was all he had as bargaining power.

The fact the contestant was Irish and could rely on a lot of Irish help (e.g in Irish Pubs) along the way made this a very unexpected success. He slept in castles, in bridal suites, on a bench ... and so did we ... the crew that followed him ... all four of us.
It was shot on a couple of PD-170 at the time ... DVCAM. If that was good enough ... I am sure an actual Z1 from Sony would be even better ... The HVX and the card problem doesn't seem to be the ideal solution for this kind of work ... we own 2 HVX-200's ... but don't use them for this kind of ... shoot.

Good Luck.

That does sound like an exciting program. And you are right, as much as I love the HVX (I have 2), it does not work for scenerios like this....yet. Different productions require different equipment. I have accepted this.

I will still use the HVX for the set-ups and broll. But for the cameras that run and gun with the talent will have to be light weight, small, records to tape, and in HDV. Trying to find out what HDV camera will complement the HVX's footage (720/24p) and work on FCP6 has been a chore. Every camera has its little problems. The Sony HVR-V1U is two stops lower than the HVX, and there is no support on FCP yet. JVC HD-100/200 is the best match, but with interchangable lenses, it is not so light weight and unasuming. Which leaves me with the Canon XHA1. FCP reads it, small, light weight, XLR adaptors, but 24F. People assure me it looks good, so I think that is my choice.
I will buy a couple of the DV Multi Rigs (light weight, folds down to pack). Batteries, Chargers, multi adaptor, tape stock, camera light, wireless mic, and shotgun mic. Hopefull the cameraman wont be so weighed down as to not think about filming.

Has any of you any knowledge of the camera package the cameramen working on shows like Amazing Race, were hauling around?

[HVXguy]

Canon HV20 - I have seen plenty of this footage and it is pretty good.
You just have to figure out how to control it for best results.

[ppfeiffer]

As for your footage storage you could use lacie rugged drives currently at 160 gig. I built my own power supply so the drives ran off a panasonic battery. I filled 2 drives on less than 1/2 of a 5600mah battery. Download times were 12 mins per 8 gig card with verification on. If you had time you could do duplicate backups say a Drive A and a Drive 1. Double dump each card before reformating. All of this will be dictacted by time and funds of course. For me I was away for 10 days and did around 30 dumps of 8 gig cards and the system never failed once. I came back duplicated the drives and stored the originals. I even had to turn verification off a few times because I was under pressure to keep going in the end no problems.

Best part is no laptop needed. Worst part I could not review the footage on the drives until I got back.

Good Luck

Paulp