Discovery HD commissions HVX200s

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Barry_Green

Moderator
Okay, amidst all the other press releases out there, I think one of 'em may have snuck below the radar, but upon reading it, I think this may actually be rather huge:

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Award-winning television production company Original Productions (Burbank, CA) recently documented the exhilarating and grueling 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race with 21 AG-HVX200 P2 HD handheld camcorders. A six-part series profiling the exploits of eight mushers (including the race winner Lance Mackey) will air on the Discovery Channel in the fourth quarter of this year.
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Okay, so follow me on this: Discovery, the channel that has the most stringent requirements of any cable or broadcast network, has just hired Original Productions to produce a show for them that was shot on HVX200s. You see what this means, right?

Original is no small player.
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Original Productions, founded by CEO and Executive Producer Thom Beers in 1999, is known for the hit Discovery Channel series
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[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Monster Garage, Monster House, Biker Build-Off[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] and the Primetime Emmy-nominated [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Deadliest Catch[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]... [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Original’s list of hit shows on the air also includes [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Ice Road Truckers[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] and [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Ax Men[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif] for History, as well as production of a forthcoming prime-block for NBC.[/FONT]
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So this huge company that supplies massive amounts of programming told Discovery that they wanted to shoot an HD series, and they wanted to use nothing but HVX200s (21 of them, in fact) and Discovery APPROVED IT!
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]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)... [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The production shot in 720pN mode, which fully utilized the recording capacity of scores of 32GB P2 cards.
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[/FONT]And, get this bit:
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The series (as yet untitled) will comprise six one-hour episodes. Original Productions will edit the production on Avid Adrenalines, and the deliverable to Discovery will be on a hard drive.
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Delivery on a hard drive?! No more requirement that it be delivered on tape? Awesome!

I don't know if this means that Discovery has officially approved the HVX200 for unlimited acquisition, but it certainly seems to be promising. And eliminating the tape delivery requirement opens the floodgates for a lot more tapeless productions without incurring massive expenses to dub all the footage over to tape.
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That IS impressive, especially since the Discovery Producer's Specs, before this announcement anyway, stated that the HVX would only be accepted for 10-15% of an HD program.

Wow.
 
Barry,

This is most excelent news :):)

Maybe they will take a look at my storm / tornado doc when I'm done. It's kinda like a "Planet Storm"... I have captured some increadible images on this camera and can tweak it so well 99% of viewers would NOT be able to tell it apart from a varicam...

I was going to rent a varicam or RED but had to go with the HVX 200 to get the action run and gun style shots I wanted. I could never make this doc with a camera bigger than the hvx200...
 
Postmaster said:
I told you guys they don´t care if they like the material.
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Yeah, but here's the difference: Discovery COMMISSIONED this project, unless I'm totally wrong. They knew full well that it was going to be shot 100% on HVX200s and they funded it and are airing it. So it's not a case of "shoot on a cheaper camera behind their back", it's a situation where Discovery said "sure, go ahead, use it."
 
The HVX shoots beautiful images and the more the big guys see from it the more accepted it’ll become. They always want see to believe and lots of very impressive and high end material from it is getting out there.
 
That is very impressive if that is for a commissioned show. As a matter of fact, that is groundbreaking, I don't think that Discovery has ever commissioned a show on the HVX only, although I think that almost all of Deadliest Catch is on Z1s, which don't look nearly as good as the HVX either.

Perhaps the tide is turning and us poor producers won't have to spend $30,000.00 to $60,000.00 to buy a suitable camera for television.

Dan
 
Quote:
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]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)... [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]The production shot in 720pN mode, which fully utilized the recording capacity of scores of 32GB P2 cards.[/FONT][/FONT]

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.
 
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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!
 
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.
 
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
 
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
 
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.
 
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