Long Record Times in the style of DEADLIEST CATCH?

L

LukeWarm13

Active member
Hey, everyone. I'm starting a new project in the coming months and have a couple questions about how to pull off a couple things. First of all, the shoot will take place out in the elements with the possibility of getting rained on. We will be filming an outside event that will take place over the course of several days for around 12 hours a day. We will have two roaming cameras and will need 3 Stationary Mounted Cameras. The 3 stationary cameras will be positioned in specific locations to capture any action as it happens. Since the action will happen without notice we can't afford to miss anything. We will also need shotgun mics to record audio from stationary locations during the event as well. Maybe the microphones need to go into a mixer first? I guess it is similar to what they do on DEADLIEST CATCH in a way. They have cameras and mics that are continuously recording so that nothing gets missed.

We wont be able to stop what we're doing and change tapes or media cards so some type of hard drive recorder would be ideal. I'm not familiar with this type of equipment so any suggestions would be great.
 
-There is no budget HOWEVER I'd love to hear a couple ideas for high and low budgets.

-1080p24p would be ideal.

-We'll have all the cameras within approximately 50 feet.

thanks for your thoughts on this.

-Luke
 
I dont know what you want to film, but if its wildlife you can go with Infrared triggers, recording non stop in HD is as good as impossible due to the overwhelming. If you want to record nonstop then maybe go with a camcorder with harddrive.
 
Actually, as I recall, the first years of DC were shot on HDV tape--I remember a "behind the scenes" special showing them throwing a Pelican case full of tapes overboard for the "chase" boat to pick up. I'd be surprised if they haven't gone to solid-state by now, though.

If you don't have cameras yet, one thing you could look at would be Panasonic's new AG-AC130 and AG-AC160 cameras--these have dual SD card slots for relay recording, so that would double your record time (and this is just a guess, but I would think you change a full card out while still recording on the second card, so you wouldn't have to stop shooting to change cards). (And there may be other cameras that can do this, these are just the first ones I thought of.)

As far as your mics... I would think that you'd want a system where each mic was recorded to its own isolated track, but what you're going to need would depend on how many mics.
 
Wow, I was not familiar with those cameras before, which is kind of sad because I work for a company that is supposedly a Canon reseller... but now I really want a G10. Thanks for that, Peternap. :)

Seriously, though, the record times capable with these cameras, given that they not only have the dual record slots but also some internal memory, is quite impressive. The XA10, for example, can record almost 6 hours at the maximum AVCHD quality (24Mbps) just on its 64Mb of internal storage, or over 8 hours at 17Mbps... and then you could theoretically triple that with two 64GB SDXC cards... Of course, Canon only estimates a "typical" record time of 200 minutes for their biggest battery in either of these modes, so there's a problem for the OP. But it's certainly something that he needs to consider anyway...
 
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