Projects


Cameras for all occasions


X


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The challenge for So Television’s BBC children’s comedy series Pixel Face was shoe-horning a 26-part show into a 10 week shoot. Producer Jeremy Salsby explains: “That’s 15


minutes a day, so there was no room for error, so we needed to be in a studio where the director could direct from the floor. We were committed to one, two or three takes per shot and just walking to and from a gallery was a luxury we couldn’t afford.” The solution was to set up at Twickenham


Studios, a traditional film studio with no gallery facilities. This brought down the hire costs, with hire company Procam Television building a gallery on the studio floor right next to the set. Production manager Piers Read contacted Procam Television a full 12 weeks prior to shooting to decide on the workflow. Four shooting formats were tested before deciding on XDCAM HD and the 700


PIXEL POWER How the PDW-700 saved time and money on the studio shoot for So Television’s children’s comedy Pixel Face


fitted out with control units. Procam Television md John Brennan comments: “Alongside DoP Johnny Morrison we looked at solutions that matched the style of the show. The sets were bright and punchy, so crisp clean images were needed. It was obvious that XDCAM HD handled the bright colours best. Shooting at 50Mb/s, working with Professional Discs saved money in post with ingest being much faster than tape.” Salsby admits to being nervous about many aspects of the production but not about shooting tapeless HD for the first time. “Because we were shooting in a very condensed period of time, we needed to be able to track everything we were doing instantly and XDCAM HD just seemed the quickest and most efficient way of doing just that. I was more nervous about an actor getting a cold, or being late to the studio floor.”


Winter 2011 theproducer 23


XDCAM


Sony’s XDCAM camcorders are nothing if not versatile, which has made them first choice on a wide range of projects


DCAM is becoming an increasingly popular solution for producers tasked with bringing quality to the screen on a


budget. 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 PMW- EX1 (and the updated model, the EX1R) and EX3 offer a more compact solution, shooting to SxS Pro memory cards. Here we profile four productions that have used XDCAMto good effect. In ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex and CBBC’s Pixel Power the fast


ingest of Sony


Professional Discs was important while the compact flexibility of the EX1 and EX3 made a compelling choice for shooting live music and the Post Office’s 1,000 mile charity challenge.


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