Projects

BREAKING INTO BURMA

Documentary cameraman Jonathan Young explains how the EX1 proved its worth on a daring trip into Burma

Sony’s lightweight EX1 was the camera of choice for Jonathan Young, cameraman on BBC2’s six parter Tropic of Cancer, which features, among other things, adventurer Simon Reeve’s latest intrepid exploration of the remote jungles of Asia.

On one covert two day trip across the Indian border into the Burmese jungle to interview a Burmese human rights activist, the chances that the three man crew, including Young, Reeve and producer/director Andrew Carter would run across a Burmese army patrol were pretty good. This meant tape-based recording was out. “We would have been searched and the tapes would have been taken off us,” explains Young. “We decided to shoot onto 16GB SDHC cards and offloaded our material every few hours onto a portable Nexto storage device. We used the cards like tapes, but they are so small we could hide them on our clothing.” The EX1’s low power consumption was another big

24 theproducer Spring 2010

plus. “There was no electricity - which meant that we had to carry enough batteries, so a file-based camera with minimal power consumption was critical,” declares Young. The trio would also be traversing rivers and jungle to get to their destination and needed a camera which could withstand humidity and condensation during the colder evenings. When they arrived at the village, they discovered that time was short. “An army patrol was on its way so we shot on the EX1 during the afteroon, switching to the A1 for night shooting by candle and firelight and then left in the middle of the night because the safety of our human rights activist was paramount,” explains Young. “If we were discovered we would have been arrested and there might have been a major international incident but she would have been taken to Rangoon and that’s probably the last anybody would have heard of her.” Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36