Digital Video - October 2007 - (Page 40)

CALL OF THE work’s universe. (It went well, too, with viewer levels up a whopping 40 percent this year.) Stroud was also touting season two of Survivorman, which premiered Aug. 10 in the U.S. on Discovery with the digital filmmaker running out of gas in the middle of Africa’s Kalahari Desert. (Other second-season adventures include a canoe trip in the Amazon, dog sledding through frigid Labrador, a contrived hot-air-balloon crash in the South African plains and a simulated plane crash in northern Ontario.) Just back from the Alaskan wild and set to soon strand himself in the South Pacific, Stroud was in the midst of going back into survival mode, and time was short. Surprisingly, however, access to him to discuss the task of digitally capturing his harrowing survival adventures was easy to get. Indeed, one can only answer so many questions about eating scorpions and what his fail-safe procedures are (he freely admits to carrying a satellite phone in case things get really bad out there, but he’s otherwise isolated from his safety crew). What folks often miss is that he’s also a filmmaker. “I’m supposed to be out there surviving—but 60 percent of my time is spent changing batteries, cleaning lenses and setting up camera angles,” Stroud says, with a hint of indignity one might feel when a proud trade is so often overlooked. He’s also a musician—besides adding his harmonica to the Survivorman soundtrack, he composed the show’s score himself. “Originally, I was a rock-’n’-roller,” notes Stroud, who upon graduating from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, worked as a music video producer for Canadian cabler MuchMusic, while writing songs for his band, New Regime. “I would play around in the editing room at night, and that got me into filmmaking,” he explains. “I found that I had an affinity for things visual and that I enjoyed it.” On a canoe trip in northeastern Ontario in 1987, Stroud found yet another affinity. He soon switched career trails, opening his own river-excursion company. A relationship with a pho- WILD “CAMERAS HAVE ALMOST BECOME DISPOSABLE TO ME.” 40 dv october 2007 tographer and fellow wilderness enthusiast, Sue Jamison, burgeoned right along with his bond to the outdoors; by 1994, Stroud and Jamison were on a year-long primitive-living honeymoon in Ontario’s remote Wabakimi region, equipped with little more than some Hi-8 camera equipment he’d brought along to capture their adventures. (The footage wound up in a onehour documentary entitled Snowshoes and Solitude.) Upon returning to civilization, Stroud and Jamison settled in Huntsville, Ontario, opening an outdoor instruction outfit and a small film company, Wilderness Spirit Productions. All was quiet until 2000, when Survivor became a big hit, and Stroud got to thinking. Production of each Survivorman episode starts with Stroud carefully packing five cameras, 45 digital tapes and other filming essentials into two Pelican cases. “I take out all the foam padding, and I pack everything so that gear becomes padding for other gear,” he explains. Standard equipment now includes two Sony HVR-Z1Us, which handle the bulk of the footage, as well as a single Sony HDR-HC3. “We wanted to up the ante in terms of quality,” notes Stroud of his recent high-def upgrade. “We saw our shots from the Amazon, and we knew it was the right thing to www.dv.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - October 2007

Cover Contents Letters DV Update R&D Fest Circuit Light Brigade Follow Focus Shootout Image Conscious Instant Expert Close-Ups Eastern Europe Exploit Call of the Wild Four Principles of Storage Storage Media Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2007

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