Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and P2 HD

From the article;
To find out, Sony asked us to produce two pieces, a 10-minute feature-style documentary and a general assignment news story. The purpose? To show the XDCAM HD can be the camera of choice for both genres.
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I stand corrected, they didn't do the whole race. But this article doesn't mislead, so again I'm not sure why a cease and desist letter would be needed.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
I stand corrected, they didn't do the whole race. But this article doesn't mislead, so again I'm not sure why a cease and desist letter would be needed.
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I will defer to the Iditarod PR official for exact wording. The way it was discussed, Sony did nothing at all like what the P2 system is doing; Sony would leap out of a helicopter, grab a few seconds' shot, and run back to the copter, whereas the P2 systems are in the trenches for 12-16 hours per day (or however much daylight there is there right now). Night and day difference, but from what I can gather Sony's marketing and PR made it sound like they had quite a bit more involvement than they actually did, to the point that the Iditarod organization was quite displeased with the way Sony was presenting it.

There are reasons that the Iditarod chose Panasonic instead of working with Sony again. Primarily because of their confidence in how the P2 gear will perform in the arctic conditions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the other factors weighed in their decision too.

I knew this was going to come up, and I don't want to misquote him, so I asked him for verbiage that we could share here to explain their position. He's a tad busy right now, so I haven't pressed him on it, but he said a quote would be forthcoming.
 
hmm.. interesting

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Geez, this whole thing has made me want to go back to alaska and film some stuff with the HVX. Woo hoo. Just don't want to be there in the winter again. I'm a wuss about cold now. Been in the south too long.
 
Jason Ramsey said:
hmm.. interesting

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Geez, this whole thing has made me want to go back to alaska and film some stuff with the HVX. Woo hoo. Just don't want to be there in the winter again. I'm a wuss about cold now. Been in the south too long.
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To momentarily take this thread on a tangent, Jason, do you mind if I ask the town where you live? Under your avatar it says "lower Alabama", a phrase well-known to me since I live in NW Florida (Milton, near Pensacola). I have an uncle in a little town called Brewton, AL, about 40 miles from my home. Just wondering how low in Alabama you are.:-)
 
Sony did nothing at all like what the P2 system is doing; Sony would leap out of a helicopter, grab a few seconds' shot, and run back to the copter, whereas the P2 systems are in the trenches for 12-16 hours per day
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That would be how the guys who filmed it went about the filming. Sony don't usually dictate anything on shoots like that. They tell the camera guys what they want and they go out and do it. As you'll see from the videos on the website there was a little bit more to it than what you just mentioned! Primarily as pre-race shooting with a team.

Not to labour a point or to get into a pissing match, make sure you take a look at http://www.xdcamhdantarctica.blogspot.com/ a production made completely independently of Sony and PR. :) The man who shot that is now on the DVinfo forums.
 
ozduc said:
What i got from the article is they shot some footage with the XD but did not cover the entire race as panasonic is doing.
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Keep in mind we are not covering the race, we are covering th back story. The Iditarod commitee is covering the race with 5 HPX2000 and 5 HVX200. This is the first time the race has footage that can be released to the world broadcast community in HD from anywhere along the Race.

From the field, they haven't put the camera gloves on yet in spite of cold temps like -50 degrees wind chill at Fingerlake. They have uploaded mre stories and it is a pleaseure not have to work in Betacam SP which is what they used last year. Keep in mind the shooters are camping on the trail. Makes me clod thinking about it.

Best,

Jan
 
eclaire,
Right now, in Troy. 40 miles south of montgomery. 30 minutes from enterprise. My folks live south of enterprise, about 13 miles from the border, above panama city beach.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
Not to labour a point or to get into a pissing match,
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You're missing the point entirely. Take a step back and look at what's happening here. You've gone on other forums to say that "Panasonic's copying what Sony already did." That's completely not an accurate statement because a) Sony didn't do this, and b) Panasonic's not "doing" anything here. The Iditarod Committee is doing it.

Sony didn't supply cameras to the Iditarod committee, and the Iditarod didn't cover the race on Sony XDCAM cameras. A couple of guys showed up and did a few shots and ended up with a 10-minute doc. With all due respect, big whoop -- I mean, there were HDV tape cameras in Anchorage for the Ceremonial Start and at Wasilla for the restart; the XDCAM system didn't encounter anything more challenging than what people were already doing with HD100s and Z1s on tape. I even saw an XL1 there at the ceremonial start.

This year, the Iditarod committee is fielding teams with 10 cameras that are going every step of the way, all 1100 miles. Not flying down in a helicopter, jumping out for a five-minute shot and jumping back in the helicopter... these teams are going totally hardcore, spending 14 hours entrenched in 50-below (or however else the teams feel like executing their shooting responsibilities). I mean, with all due respect, you're reading an article whereas I spent a week with these guys training them and working with them. The difference between what happened last year, and what the Iditarod is doing with their P2 gear this year, is like the difference between going to the doctor's office for a penicillin prescription, and going in for all-day open-heart surgery.

make sure you take a look at http://www.xdcamhdantarctica.blogspot.com/ a production made completely independently of Sony and PR.
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Ah, now we're talkin' about copying... :) P2's been there and done that; Panasonic HVXs were at the south pole a year ago! Search for info on Mike Single... :thumbsup:

(and, to clarify: when I say "panasonic's not doing anything", I should clarify that Panasonic does have a couple of guys on the trail to document what the Iditarod shooters are going through. But the race itself is being covered and shot by the Iditarod committee, not by Panasonic).
 
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A classic case of inflating the resume. If I were Sony, I'd want to have the credential too.

In the end, it comes down to who the sanctioning body selected as their camera for the show. That is clearly Panasonic.

Too bad for Sony, because the XDCam might've been a good contender. I have an agnostic view on P2 versus XDHD, but this really does come to nothing more than sour grapes from Sony's standpoint.

They missed the boat. At the end of the day, the P2 format is there for the big event in an official capacity.

End of story.

e
 
Ah, now we're talkin' about copying... P2's been there and done that; Panasonic HVXs were at the south pole a year ago!
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Barry, this production was nothing to do with Sony.

Not flying down for a five-minute shot, but spending 14 hours entrenched in 50-below (or however else the teams feel like executing their shooting responsibilities).
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You mean like the timelapse shot with the XDCAM HD when they left the camera outside overnight taking timelapse of the Aurora and they came back in the forming to find it covered in ice and snow. Put a new battery on it and it fired up fine. Or the sled shots pre-race with the cameras attached to the sleds surviving the vibrations, or the multicamera shooting. There was a bit more to it than flying in for 5 mins. :)
 
Simon Wyndham said:
Barry, this production was nothing to do with Sony.
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Yes, but neither did Mike Single. Panasonic loaned him a preproduction/early-release HVX to try out while he was down in Antarctica, just like the Iditarod guys were given an early XDCAM-HD cam. Same thing.



You mean like the timelapse shot with the XDCAM HD when they left the camera outside overnight taking timelapse of the Aurora and they came back in the forming to find it covered in ice and snow. Put a new battery on it and it fired up fine. Or the sled shots pre-race with the cameras attached to the sleds surviving the vibrations, or the multicamera shooting. There was a bit more to it than flying in for 5 mins. :)
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Simon, I know you love your XDCAM. Nobody's dogging it. It did what it did. All we're saying is that what the XDCAM did, and what the teams are doing with the P2 gear, are not in the same league. The XDCAM got enough footage to make a 10-minute doc or whatever. The Iditarod teams are going to shoot over 150 hours of P2 footage. Sony's doc is used for marketing purposes. The Iditarod footage is being used for semi-live broadcast from the trail, it's being used for at least three hours of broadcast on the Versus network, it's being used for the official Iditarod commemorative DVD from the Iditarod organization. And from what I understand the timelapse stuff took place very early on in the race, before things got nasty. The P2 gear is going every step of the way. No matter how nasty it gets, there'll be HVXs and HPXs there to document it.

Night and day different. Night and day. It's like they say about the difference between being involved, and being committed. When it comes to breakfast, the chicken is involved. The pig is committed. XDCAM was peripherally involved. P2 is integrally committed.

Nobody's dogging the XDCAM stuff, but we are pointing out that what they did was several orders of magnitude less in difficulty. People are, however, dogging Sony for its misleading marketing. And whether you want to believe whether XDCAM could perform as well or not, we don't have a side-by-side scenario to compare. All we know is that the Iditarod committee had experience with the Sony stuff, and they could have continued to work with their established relationship with Sony and XDCAM, or they could dump them and start over from scratch with P2. Which is what they did. They're the guys in the field, they know what they're doing, and they know why they made their decisions the way they did.
 
Leave it to someone to take a nice thread about a nice event with nice pictures and turn in into a stupid "who did what" thread. I would rather hear about the experience of being there.
 
I agree, Aram. I'd gladly delete all those posts if Simon agrees, and let this thread get back on track.

As far as what was Alaska like? Gorgeous, stunning, and COLD! :) At Wasilla we were in the middle of a frozen lake, ringed with cabins and standing on acres and acres of snow and ice. It was a tad intimidating to look down and see fissures and cracks in the ice; one of the guys there said that if there had been an earthquake we'd all be dead, we'd sploosh in that freezing water and hypothermia would set in immediately. =:O

The dogs were awesome, they were the biggest group of mutts you'll ever see. These aren't thoroughbreds or purebred dogs, I mean, they're highly-trained and superbly fit athletes but, at the same time, these are good ol' mutts! :) But they're strong as a horse and happier than anything, and they sure seem to love pulling that sled. They were literally jumping up and down in anticipation. They're a tad smelly too; as the iditarod got underway there were a few times where the teams would go by and leave odors (and other material) behind...

For the most part, being there was like being in Vegas in reverse. In Vegas it's so oppressively hot that everyone lives indoors at all times; you'd go from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car and drive to your air-conditioned office, never spending any time actually outside; in Anchorage it's the opposite; heated house to heated car to heated office, but still the same basic thing. The main roads are plowed and salted and maintained very well; side roads might be under a thick blanket of ice. And I didn't get why there weren't more garages! Cars that were left outside had a foot of snow on 'em. If I had to live there, ain't no way I'd be parking my car on the street or in the driveway, it'd be in a garage at all times...

Lots of talk of climate change among the residents too. One of the shooters, Michael Caporale, used to live in Anchorage in 1967, so this was a bit of a homecoming for him. He really wanted to go to the glacier, because he remembers it being a 50' high wall of ice. When he got there he was utterly depressed; what used to be a 50' cliff is now basically a frozen lake. It's gone, all melted.

The Northern Lights were supposed to be in full bloom, but I never did manage to get out and see 'em. Flying home on the redeye did provide a spectacular sight though, looking out the plane window at 3:00 a.m. and seeing those magnificent mountains bathed in moonlight was amazing. I'm used to seeing the desert mountains of Vegas from the air, but these snow-capped mountain ranges were far more beautiful and impressive.

And the people were awesome. Very, very friendly. Reminded me a lot of "southern hospitality"!
 
Wow, sounds awesome. So.. you are saying that the dogs go to the bathroom while they are running? I guess the idea of planting fire hydrants along the path to slow them down would not be a feasible idea for those that cheat.
 
Barry Green said:
And I didn't get why there weren't more garages!
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When I was there, I don't remember to much worry about garages. It was more about whether or not there was a electrical outlet close by. We had little adapters on our cars that had a little plug hanging out. You had to plug that bad boy into the wall so it didn't freeze on ya' :)

Jason
 
hey do they make, CAR => AC adaptors? thats cool. I'd carry an electric blanekt on a string of 100' extension cords everywhere i went in Alaska.
 
Am I the only one that noticed the banner ad on that site is advertising the 16gb Card and not 8 gigs?

And that the workflow isn't up yet? =DDD

Barrrryyyy.... Jaaaaaannnn... were you guys using 16gb cards and not telling us?
 
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