Discovery HD commissions HVX200s

[John Caballero]

By the way, did Fuji, I believe it was, announced their P2s?

[William_Robinette]

Yes they did.

[Indywannabe]

Quote:
Original Productions fielded a crew of 19 in Alaska, including seven camera operators, three field producers and three associate producers, all armed with an HVX200 (the rest of the cameras were used for pick-up shots and back-up)... The production shot in 720pN mode, which fully utilized the recording capacity of scores of 32GB P2 cards.

So I'm guessing 720pN with a 30p frame rate and HD Norm for a video look?


Not surprising for this project:

1. Solid state recording in the extreme environment (pN recording times good)
2. HVX200 already proven in that environment
3. 720 ok for HD TV

What really shows that producers are progressing in their thinking is the "acceptance" of hard drive delivery. Soon it will be a "requirement".

It is also a comfort to know that CONTENT IS KING, regardless of the technological hurdles.

[Joseph Stunzi]

I think someone should make DVXuser shirts with the phrase... "Discovery thinks they're so original, we know we're unique" well it sounded a lot punnier when i thought of it!

[mdifilm]

I was reading DiscoveryHD's spec and it did say this:

720P Camera Masters:

720P material is acceptable, only with a pre-approved post production path and budget. Delivered Master must be at 1080 resolution. Footage may not be converted from 1080i to 720P for post and converted back to 1080i for mastering. We cannot allow multiple resolution changes on material. If you have an editorial need to use mixed resolutions, please discuss this with us.

Which means probably it is still under their 'standad specs' requirement.

[tmnt]

I don't know... It's kinda like if Spielberg went into a studio and said "I want to film ET 2 in Hi8". I'm pretty sure they'd say yes.

Would be really great if we did start to see some smaller companies getting the greenlight with HVXs.

Bet the crew of this one would have killed for the 170 in that situation.

If someone remembers, can you pm me when the show's on DVD please?

Ian

[Jan_Crittenden]

The Original Production guys will also be using the 100+ hours of footage that the Iditarod Trail Committee shot with the HPX500s and the their HVX200s. I imagine though based on the storylines, that the Iditarod footage might be more of the compelling establishing shots and landscapes. Based on how they went up the trail, they always come in with some of the most gorgeous stuff. It will be interesting to see how they handle the edit.

Original was working on an Avid system and the Iditarod Trail Committee was on FCP, so they changed their methodology this year and used Raylight to import the footage. That still gave them the opportunity to edit quickly and put it up on the internet and yet save the MXF for the for the cross platform compatibility. The ITC also made a very cool use of the metadata and Raylight. Metadata files were created to correspond with the many checkpoints across the trail. There are 10 cameras and6-7 shooters out there filling up cards, As each shooter enters a new checkpoint they load the next Metadata file. So when the cards are ingested with Raylight, Raylight sorts the clips into the appropriate folders according to checkpoint, regardless of shooter or camera. Now when the editor sits down to edit they are organized for the edit, they know the story, and where it happened, and they know where the clips are. Pretty cool. Now this is what the ITC, Original orgainzed by shooter, and that may be more appropriate for their production as certain folks were assigned to certain mushers. All-in-all I think that this is the most footage collected on a singular subject, except Olympic coverage and that isn't quite the same, in the world of P2HD production.

Original identified 6 mushers and each episode will be about that musher. Should be pretty cool. I'll bet they play Lance Mackey last. (For those of you that don't know, Lance won, by about 45 minutes) It was a very techno-savvy race this year as they had GPS devices on the 20 front runners and you could down load a map at any given minute and the GPS would show you where they were in relation to each other. Lance was neck and neck with Jeff King for the last days of the race.

I did watch the Versus show on the race. It was interesting but they downconverted for release, or maybe they downconverted for the edit and released. That was a little disappointing. Still they made a good story.

Hope that adds to the story,

Jan

[watson]

I like what Indywannabe said - i think this just goes to show that its about the story and not the camera... something a lot of people forget.