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MillimeterFormat Freedom with P2 Documentary
Jun 10, 2008 10:48 AM, By Michael Goldman
The steroid documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster gained attention at the Sundance Film Festival for its topical subject matter, and was eventually purchased for distribution by mogul Mark Cuban. But from a technical point of view, it has much to interest digital filmmaking aficionados. The project, after all, used a digital workflow using principal photography captured onto Panasonic P2 cards, managed as data throughout the postproduction process and then combined with reams of archival imagery in a wide range of formats—imagery that was all eventually mastered to HDCAM-SR tape, which is how it was screened at Sundance.
As documented in the July/August issue of millimeter, it all started with cinematographer Alex Buono using a Panasonic AG-HVX200 camera system to record interviews onto a series of 8GB P2 cards that were then downloaded to a Mac Powerbook. (The production only used the P2 store to reformat cards—they backed up each day’s footage to G-Tech drives.)
Buono says the whole key to working in this fashion is designing a system for managing data from download onward that does not limit technology choices for getting the work done to the satisfaction of filmmakers, and he was particularly pleased with the methodology used on this production.
“Shooting with P2 by yourself would be hard to do,” Buono says, adding that his crew had “a great experience” with the camera. “You need to have someone else managing the cards. Once we had a system down, it kind of became routine and became much simpler than carrying tapes and logging tapes.”
The workflow also had the advantage of a QuickTime-based review and approval process, which was invaluable on a project where a lot of people had to see and/or catalog a lot of footage.
The production used an Avid-based system to edit the piece, largely because of the complex collection of assets and the superior media management tools they felt they had in their Xpress Pro HD systems. At the same time, they liked Apple’s Final Cut Pro/Color technology for the online/color correction phase. They rave about the fact that they now labor in a technical universe where they can use both Avid and Apple systems on such projects, rather than having to choose one over the other. Over the course of the project, they emphasize, extremely complex Avid edits were efficiently translated into Final Cut Pro in ways that were not possible even in the recent past.
“[Editorial house] Mind Over Eye (Santa Monica, California) has an incredibly fast and accurate conversion workflow (achieved using a sophisticated EDL/AAF/OMF-to-XML proprietary conversion process),” says Buono. “All of the Avid to (Final Cut Pro) files converted in a day.”
For an in-depth examination of how this process worked, see the July/August issue of millimeter.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
