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MillimeterBusting Reality
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Darroch Greer
MythBusters has reinvented the wheel for reality television production—busted, plausible, or confirmed?
To replace the lipstick cams, which couldn't hold up to the HD resolution, the team uses Sony HDR-HC3 HDV cameras, which they must pack in Pelican cases to avoid dropouts from such things as impacts and explosions in the field.
The cameramen shoot a lot of material. A typical myth will take about six days of shooting and fill up eight to nine 1-hour disks. “Some stories have got quite complicated builds, and you have to build apparatus to test them,” Heap says. “Whereas other experiments are fairly straightforward and don't require a huge build as much as the actual experiment, and those stories tend to be a little shorter.”
A casualty of the bump up to HD has been the much-vaunted lipstick camera; its resolution couldn't stand up to the HD material. But the all-in-one profile of the Sony HDR-HC3 camera that replaced it proved to be a boon. “It's really convenient having the recorder built into the same body, instead of having wires go to a recorder somewhere else,” Heap says. “Those wires can get tripped over or pulled out. There are two sets of batteries to go flat instead of one — one for the camera and one for the recorder. So we've found having a little camcorder has really simplified for us.”
However, the mini HC3 cameras have not been trouble-free, and Tapster says he is looking for some help with this problem. “We're kind of known for putting cameras into incredibly dangerous situations, so very close to bombs that are exploding or in cars that are crashing. It was exceedingly difficult to find something that was HD-compatible,” Tapster says, adding that the HC3s are close but not ideal, under the circumstances. “They do have a rather frustrating habit of dropping out if there is a big impact on them. And because of the way they film — and forgive me; I don't quite understand this — but because of the way the signal gets transmitted on to the tape, the picture actually drops out before the thing that made it drop out.”
Heap explains in detail. “I think what is happening is that with standard definition, you would lose one frame and that was all, but with HDV, there's a lot of compression across what they call a group of pictures, which is 15 frames, so instead of losing just one frame, you end up losing 15, and that can include three or four frames before the thing actually happened,” he says. “So it's been something of a problem for us. When we're doing big explosions like that, we'll plug a FireWire cable into the little cameras and record them onto an HDV deck, which we'll pack inside a Pelican case with lots of shock absorption. Usually, we've been able to get around that. And we've found packing peanuts extraordinarily good for absorbing impact. Go figure.”
The MythBusters team has been doing drop tests on some Sanyo cameras, which they have used for some of the shoots, but they're still not entirely pleased. “There are a few cameras with CompactFlash cards, but we haven't been entirely successful with those either,” Heap says. “And we've done a fair bit of testing, and being MythBusters, we don't just say, ‘I think this will work.’ We actually get the cameras and we drop them to see if they'll do what people tell us they do.”
The team has even considered going low-tech. When they were testing whether or not a rocket-propelled car might take to the air, they considered using a Bolex for the driver's POV to withstand the jolt predicted when the strapped-on rockets ignited. “But, in the end, we opted for the Sanyo,” Tapster says, “which was good, actually, because as it turned out, the moment the rockets ignited, the car blew up. It actually flew through the air, then exploded into a ball of flame. We were quite glad it only had a $500 camera in it rather than a couple-thousand-dollar one.”
Still, Tapster says that if any of DCP's readers know of an HD-compatible camera that can be dropped and will keep recording, he'd love to hear about it. When asked how many cameras have become casualties since the first season, Tapster says the team stopped counting after 20.
The biggest improvement to the MythBusters quiver has been the high-speed NAC Memrecam fx K4 camera, which can shoot up to 3,000fps. “Quite often we'll carry out an experiment, and you're not exactly sure what you just saw,” Heap says. “They happen so fast. It's a really good tool for analyzing what occurred. Also, it looks great in the show — explosions in slow motion. We run lots of those.”
“The operator of that is a guy called Scott Sorenson, and he has recently just taken that to a whole new level,” Tapster says. “Previously, it was a camera we only had locked off, and we only had one of them. Now, we've got two of these cameras, and Scott has worked out a way — the camera has a monitor that is out of sync with realtime; there's a kind of delay on it — he worked out a way to bypass that and pan with cars that are driving very quickly, or he can do little pull focuses on things. … When MythBusters started using this camera, a lot of other productions did too. But I feel that, thanks to Scott's work, we've really been able to stay at the very forefront of that technology.”
Initially, Tapster says he was concerned that the move to HD would take the show out of its context. “I was slightly concerned that when we went to HD it would look too polished,” Tapster says. “But, as a result, we talked to the camera team and made the decision to pretty much throw out the tripod — have everything off the shoulder — and for them to feel free to wander around and keep getting the crash zooms and everything. As it turns out, in my opinion, the show now looks better than ever. It has kept that independent feel that we crave for, but now it does also look really, really slick, so we kind of have the best of both worlds.”
In turn, Heap says he loves his job and the fun challenges he faces every day. “We did a shoot recently where we had a 747 on a runway, with two of the engines turned up full and drove a taxi into it to see if it was strong enough to flip the taxi. We had the cameras inside the car and the recording decks inside the trunk inside the Pelican cases and surrounded by bags full of foam peanuts, and we thought, ‘That should be fine,’” he says. “I won't say we didn't think about the 55,000lbs. of thrust — we did — but never having dealt with anything quite that strong before, it took us by surprise. It was working beautifully until the trunk was completely blown open, and in our high-speed shot, you see our two HDV decks in their Pelican cases spiraling through the air for about 50ft. before they go crashing to the runway. That was disappointing. It was going to be a fabulous shot from inside the car — but we lost that shot.”
At the risk of sounding off the cuff, Heap is quick to point out that they are very practical, and that safety is always their first concern. (His only injury was tripping on a low wall while carrying the camera and landing on his elbow.) “We're pretty good at anticipating what's going to happen,” he says. “There are so many variables, and they are always things you've never done before. It's always easier the second time around, but for us, we've got to figure it out the first time around — whether that's exactly where the action is going to take place. Will it be a big explosion or a small explosion? Will it take 5 minutes or a half hour before it goes off?”
To comment on this article, or if you know of an HD-compatible camera that can withstand the forces of MythBusters testing, email the Digital Content Producer editorial staff at feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com.
Answers to the myths:
- Water can protect you from bullets at varying depths.
- A penny can't penetrate human skin, even when fired from a rifle.
- An unaided voice can shatter glass.
