Digital Video - January 2009 - (Page 22)

ALL PO WERED UP Berner confers with an Electric Company cast member. “I’ve known David a long time. He knows my taste in pictures, so he’s become a second set of eyes for me,” says Berner, who often does double-duty as the “B” camera operator. He keeps an external Panasonic 7” widescreen BT-LH80W LCD mounted to his “B” cam with the standard-def input of “A” (operated by Aaron Medick) on a separate input, allowing him to check framing at the beginning of each shot. Still, “Because I’m always on set and I’m operating, I don’t have as much of a chance as I would like to have my eyes on the ‘A’ camera, so it’s incredibly important that we have an extra set of eyes that I trust looking at picture,” he adds. Satin’s responsibility is to make sure that all the cameras match. The production will occasionally employ the HPX500 for slow-mo shots, and sometimes even an HVX200 for shots with a home video feel. Berner was so impressed with the HPX3000 in testing that he purchased one for himself and rents it to the production, while the second HPX3000 and HPX500s are rented from Liman Video Rental Co. in New York. Berner is also shooting with two different 2⁄3" cine-style video lenses: a Fujinon HAc 13x4.5B (4.5-59 mm) on the “A” cam and Canon HJ21x7.5B (7.5-158 mm) on the “B” cam. “All lenses resolve the color white differently,” Satin explains. “Prism optics will sometimes cause the white light in one lens to refract at a slightly different wavelength than another lens. The trick is to get both cameras to see the same shade of white.” To conform the disparities between the two lenses, Satin sets his scene files using Labsphere’s integrating sphere, a device consisting of a hollow cavity with a white interior coated for high diffuse reflectivity. “It’s like a white card,” he describes, “but it ensures an even color temperature and intensity both horizontally and vertically.” Satin is also responsible for making sure that all tapeless workflow systems are always working, as well as overseeing media management. Berner notes that in this respect, the role of the DIT may not be so far of a jump from the original Electric Company’s days of technical directors and tape ops. “There have always been video operators,” he says. “The biggest change is that the DIT is downloading the cards to the external hard drives and getting reports back from post that they were able to get the footage ingested successfully.” Each HPX3000 is equipped with three P2 cards: two 32GB and one 16GB. “We treat the cards like videotape rolls,” Satin explains. “I back up the cards on two G-RAID drives. I copy the files using the DUO PCMCIA adapter plugged into my MacBook Pro’s CardBus slot, and the G-RAID is connected via FireWire 800. I routinely get transfer speeds of over 280MB/s, which means a 32GB card is backed up in 18 minutes.” The Electric Company is edited at Sesame Workshop with Final Cut Pro in Apple’s ProRes 422 codec and is delivered to PBS on 1080i/59.94 videotape. PBS will air the series in both HD and SD (letterboxed), which allows Berner to utilize the full 16:9 frame. “The HPX3000 provides a beautiful, filmic look to The Electric Company,” he says. “The camera has excellent dynamic range, signal-to-noise and colorimetry. I love the fact that we’re recording 1920x1080 AVC-Intra at the chip, so there’s no upscaling of the picture. What we’re recording is what’s getting laid down.” DV www.dv.com 22 dv january 2009 http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - January 2009 Contents First Look: D90 Camera Sonicfire Pro 5 You Pod Instant Expert Muse 2.0 FXFactory Pro 2.0.5 Motype Fxpack DV Product Directory All Powered Up Creating Your Own Sun DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - January 2009

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