Projects
Sharp shooting on tapeless
FILMING FAST FOOD ON THE FLY
The PDW-700 went down as well as Ching-He Huang’s chinese food on Blink’s Chinese cookery series for Five
Rather like the food in Five’s advertiser-
funded cookery series Chinese Food in Minutes the
13x30–minute production from Blink Films was nothing if not rapidly made.
Series producer/director Amanda Fidler was brought on board in November, the series was in production in December and has been transmitting since February. “I’ve done a lot of fast turnaround stuff before,” says Fidler, a veteran from shows such as
Antiques Roadshow and Scrapheap Challenge. But
Fidler readily admits she was less experienced with the two PDW-700s, supplied by CVP Mitcorp to hire company Shift 4 for the shoot.
Rule number one for Fidler on fast turnaround series is to work with experienced crews who know each other. “That way you can make sure they are not filming the same stuff and you can make every shot count.” The challenge for Fidler and her crew headed by senior
cameraman/lighting director Mike Craven-Todd was making the food prepared rapidly in woks by Chinese chef Ching-He Huang look tasty and appetising whatever the conditions. “Mike recommended the PDW-700s because they are robust and able to perform in a variety of light conditions” says Fidler. This was important because some recipes were performed in daylight, others at night with a lighting rig and others in a studio. Shooting down into deep, black woks needed a camera that could offer a big dynamic range, says Fidler, who adds: “The cameras needed to be manouverable enough to follow the action and get nice, crisp, pictures that we could grade.” Overall the 700s performed well and were popular with the crew, she reveals. “They liked it because it’s a proper, grown up intelligent cameraman’s camera rather than a self-shooter.”
Camera systems such as the PDW-700 and PDW- F800 are fulfilling the need for high quality file based production at acquisition rates of 50Mb/s while models such as the EX1 (and the updated model, the EX1R) and EX3 offer a more compact solution shooting to SxS Pro memory cards. Here we profile three productions which have used the PDW-700 to good effect, taking advantage of the convenience of its dual layer disc recording, which provides the added bonus of a cost-effective storage option. Operators praise the camera’s ability to produce quality results in a wide range of challenging lighting conditions. Plus we report how the EX1 came into its own on a trip to Burma with BBC2 series Tropic of Cancer, where memory cards and low power consumption were key.
X
XDCAM
Cost effective and versatile, Sony’s XDCAM range is proving its worth to producers who need to acquire good looking images on a budget
DCAM is becoming an increasingly popular solution for producers tasked with bringing quality to the screen on a budget.
Above: XDCAM EX models record onto SxS Pro cards. The 32GB version stores up to 100 minutes of full-HD at 35Mb/s or 140 minutes of 1440x1080 video at 25Mb/s. A mobile storage unit, the PXU- MS240, can be used to off-load data from the cards. It stores onto
removable 240GB hard drive cartridges. XDCAM HD models record to Professional Disc. Dual-layer 50GB Professional Discs store 145 minutes of 1080i HD video at 35Mb/s or 250 minutes at 18 Mb/s.
Spring 2010 theproducer 23
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