The Producer Report: Location shoots
New horizons:
extreme locations
Armchair spectators are a demanding bunch and have come to
expect pictures that place them in the heart of the action, whether
from a 200mph racing car or inside the boiling crater of a volcano.
Adrian Pennington reveals how Sony cameras make this possible
Patrol, a 6x60-minute ob-doc aboard HMS Grylls in the Moroccan Sahara, “where there was
Endurance, on deployment to Antarctica. a strict rule against any tape playback, which if
Temperatures were going to drop below -20C during stretched, could fold over and stick.”
the 16 week shoot but it was a tight turnaround for
Five and National Geographic and the tighter EXTREME HEAT
confines of the boat that presuaded Kemp to hire the HDCAM was Farish’s preferred format for his
camera plus two EX3s from Procam. toughest assignment yet, a visit to The Hottest Place
“Professional Discs allowed us to build our edit on Earth – Ethiopia’s Danakil desert – for
suite around a laptop and a couple of 2TB hard BBC/Discovery and Lion Television. “The
drives with a Blu-ray burner as back up,” he says. incredible landscape meant going hi def was a no-
“We then used the PDW-700 to digitise rushes, brainer,” recalls series producer Rupert Smith.
instead of taking an extra HD deck or storing “But the harsh conditions meant we had to be well
volumes of tapes.” prepared if our kit was going to survive.”
Making the correct camera choice for the job in Farish’s company, Expedition Media, advised
hand is essential, says Richard Farish, a lighting Lion to take an EX1 and three HDW-750Ps,
cameraman who has specialised in providing kit, supplied by HotCam, with special covers built from
crew and expertise for adventure television. “It’s a the silver material used by firemen in super-hot
genre that’s been opened up by advances in rugged infernos. “What I had to bear in mind was that the
and portable technology,” he says. “We can get to kit would be transported in a variety of ways. First
places which were until recently off limits.” Farish by plane, then 4x4 and finally by camel,” explains
assisted Ben Fogle in Libya and Guyana filming Farish. “This meant organising the weight
Ricochet’s BBC2 production Extreme Dreams (using distribution equally, packing everything in
a Sony DSR-450) and Diverse TV’s 4x60-minute protective cases and clearly marking into three
C4 series Escape to the Legion (2005) featuring Bear units (for each camera crew).”
Summer 2009 theproducer 31
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