Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 30)

DV 101 BY JAY HOLBEN ALL IN THE CARDS WORKING UP THE WORKFLOW ON MY FIRST TAPELESS FEATURE. lthough I’d worked with the Panasonic AGHPX500 for a DV review (see Sept. ‘07), I had yet to work in an entirely tapeless workflow on a major project until I used the AJHPX3000 to shoot the feature comedy Two Million Stupid Women, for which I served as producer and director of photography. Although I was open to the concept, it was an education, for sure. Through Birns & Sawyer in Hollywood, where we rented one of our two AJ-HPX3000s, we were provided with 10 32GB P2 cards for the production. I had an additional five 8GB cards from the second HPX3000 review unit from Panasonic. We only used the 8GB cards once on a heavy day when my DIT and camera assistant, Matthew Kuborn, didn’t have the time to download the larger cards. Matt, who came aboard on the recommendation of my fellow director of photography, Jayson Crothers, was the savior of the show, data-wise. He defined the workflow for us and personally wrangled all our data. “We started by formatting the P2 cards and labeling them both physically and within the file system,” Matt recounts. “I used the Panasonic P2 Formatter software to label each P2 card with a sequential camera designation so we had ACAM1, ACAM2 and BCAM1, BCAM2 and so forth. I also labeled the cards physically with the simple P-Touch labeling system so they’d be quickly identifiable. “Each morning, I’d load the empty cards into both Jay and Jayson’s cameras, and then, during the day, I’d download them as they filled up. As I was also working as an AC, I didn’t really have the luxury of sitting at my computer all day and data wrangling, so I had to download them when I could on the fly.” Matt brought his own system to the set, an Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro laptop with a DualAdapter PCMCIA-to-Express card adapter to connect the P2 cards directly to his MacBook. “Initially, we were advised to use the HD Log software to download the cards to our drives as it incorporates a verification feature to check the transfer, but for some reason once I labeled the cards in P2 Formatter, the program wouldn’t recognize them as P2 cards anymore. As a result, I wound up using the Mac operating system to copy files from the cards to our FireWire 800 drives. I would just drag and drop the files from the card to the drives 30 dv august 2008 A and then compare the file sizes of the folders on the drive to the folders on the P2 card to make sure they matched.” Matt kept all the footage organized by shooting day and by camera, so that each day would have an ACAM folder and BCAM folder and within each folder would be individual folders with the data from ACAM1, ACAM2, BCAM1, BCAM2 and so forth. Once the data transfer was verified, he would again use P2 Formatter to reformat the cards, thereby erasing the footage, and return them to the cameras for more shooting. For Jayson and me on set, the process was seamless, and I rarely ever knew when Matt had pulled or replaced cards. Once the data was offloaded onto one of the FireWire drives, dubbed the “On Set” drive, Matt would then immediately clone THE MORE WE LOOKED INTO THE CREATION OF “DAILIES,” THE BIGGER THE PROBLEM BECAME . that information onto a second, redundant, drive, affectionately dubbed the “Transient” drive. At the end of the shooting day, I would take the Transient drive home with me and clone that information onto a third drive (the “Vault”). When we filled one set of drives, the Transient drive would go home with executive producer, Steven Bordelon, and we’d start the process over with a set of three new drives. The triple redundancy, combined with the geographic separation of the redundant drives, kept us protected for any catastrophic loss of one of the drives. At the end of the day there was never a data failure either from the P2 cards or one of the FireWire drives. There are certain considerations to keep in mind when shooting P2. One of the first was that every time you start and stop the camera a new clip is formed, and there isn’t necessarily any direct association with the clip that precedes or follows it. This means the concept of “bumping slates” is out the window. When you’re shooting on a linear format, such as film or tape, and you www.dv.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - August 2008

Digital Video - August 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Close-Up Wristshot HV30 Camcorder Tiffen DFX Bench Test PCM-D50 & R-09HR Recorders Camera Cradle Instant Expert My Passport Elite High School Confidential The Ultimate DIY Raid DV101 Click to Play Production Diary

Digital Video - August 2008

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