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MillimeterPondering P2’s Potential
Jun 13, 2006 8:00 AM, By Michael Goldman
During NAB, cinematographer Bob Scott gave a presentation on how he and his crew used Panasonic’s AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 handheld camcorder as a supplemental camera to Panasonic’s AJ-HDC27 Varicam while capturing footage for Showtime’s upcoming 2007 documentary on the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy. Among the points Scott made during that presentation was the fact that the availability of the HVX200 permitted his team to capture behind-the-scenes footage at various venues that would have otherwise been impossible to acquire, due to size and space, and severe access limitations at the games.
But Scott emphasized the New York-based Cappy Productions team was an early adopter of the HVX200 system, literally using it out of the box after the camera arrived in Torino on the first night of the games. The workflow adopted to incorporate P2 cards into the project’s larger pipeline was therefore not representative of the system’s tapeless potential, he explains.
“One of the big selling points of the system is the solid-state memory—the P2 card to store HD footage on,” he says. “But for us, because we did not get the camera until the last minute, we didn’t have a full workflow set up. We had to figure out how to make this work with six 4GB cards, which basically meant we could use them to capture about 45 minutes of material before we had to offload it from the card. So our challenge was, what was the best or quickest way to save all this material, since we wanted to offload and re-format the cards in time to use them again the next morning.
“The easiest solution was, in a sense, backward thinking, but it worked well for us. We had a DVCPRO HD 1200 deck, and we simply connected the HVX200 via FireWire to the HD deck, and we then downloaded the P2 cards directly to HD tape. All our other cameras were recording to tape anyway, so this proved to be a viable solution, to have everything on tape, and then, when we got back to New York to start the editorial process, we could go through all the material and keep it safe. But that is not the approach that was envisioned for this technology. With more time and preparation, of course, we would design a workflow that would permit us to download from the P2 cards directly with no tape involved.”
Scott tells Millimeter that he fully intends to make use of the technology again on future projects, including Cappy’s expected work creating a documentary for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Panasonic, in fact, recently announced it would be providing a wide range of P2-based recording tools to the primary broadcast entity at that event—the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting Company.
One of the primary lessons Scott said he learned using the P2 camcorder in Torino, however, was the realization that the HVX200 has the potential to serve as “a perfect ‘B’ camera” for Varicam productions, and even with other types of HD systems. That, he suggests, “might be the biggest benefit.”
“It certainly made a perfect ‘B’ camera for what we were doing—we got shots we haven’t been able to get for the last three Olympic Games (Scott has worked six consecutive Olympics for Bud Greenspan, who directed and produced the documentary),” he says. “I would definitely use it with other cameras, certainly with the Varicam. It wouldn’t work as the ‘A’ camera, because you need a great long lens to reach 70-plus yards to get a decent closeup of most of the events during competition, but for certain applications, this would be a great solution.
"It would work great in a windshield for a drive-along shot, or handheld running alongside someone. Any kind of athletic competition or documentary would benefit from using it. You can match the format to other HD material, and you can go entirely digital, with solid-state recording. No more loading tapes. You go right to hard drive and start editing—it’s a great way to move quicker with a great image.
"It’s a pretty sensitive camera with good dynamic range, good in low-light, and not too much noise. It is not a film camera, obviously, in terms of dynamic range, but it is very close to the Varicam. Our bottom line is that we shot with it pretty much out of the box, but in terms of dynamic range and 4:2:2 color space, it looks pretty good.”
