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In Production
Mix to Pix
Cinematographer uses Recording Technique to Shoot Music Video
 Director of Photography Suny Behar chose a cutting-edge recording technique to shoot a music video for alternative rock band People in Planes. For the shoot he used a Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera recording directly to a portable AJ-HPM110 P2 Mobile solid-state recorder.
The video, which promotes the first offering, “Pretty Buildings,” from the band’s forthcoming CD release, “Beyond the Horizon,” (Wind-up Records) recently premiered on www.purevolume.com.
Behar’s background as a freelance director and cinematographer encompasses camera layout on Pixar's animated feature, Cars; shooting many live in-studio rock bands for Digital Planet; and shooting numerous short narrative films, feature films, and commercials. He has worked extensively with the VariCam.
“I specifically chose the combination of the VariCam and P2 Mobile because the music video called for a lot of variable speed ramping from 24 fps to 60 fps and back,” says Behar. “Currently, if you record those ramps to tape on the VariCam there is no way to see them in real time, played back at 24 fps, without the use of a frame rate converter box. And even then, you are recording to the box with DVCPro HD encoding, and then having to play out via HD-SDI and recapture the frame rate converted footage back again into your NLE or onto another tape. Now with the HPM110, you can record straight to P2 solid-state memory, and play back your off-speed clips immediately after recording them. And all that at a higher quality than the camera itself is able to record.”
The Pretty Buildings video, directed by Walter Robot, was a one-day shoot that took place last month on three separate sets at The Escarpment, a multi-purpose soundstage just south of downtown Los Angeles. Equipment was rented from Birns and Sawyer, Hollywood.
Behar outfitted the VariCam with P+S Technic’s Pro35 film lens adapter and a complete set of Zeiss Super Speed lenses.
“We used this gear to achieve the same depth of field control that you would get from shooting on 35mm film, which would otherwise be impossible shooting with a 2/3-inch CCD sensor,” he says. “The camera pretty much resided on a Steadicam all day, as all the shots required this ‘floating’ kind of feel to match the mood of the song track.”
“We recorded full-raster, 10-bit AVC-Intra 100 onto the HPM110,” says Behar. “The camera has a full 10-bit signal path coming out of its HD-SDI port, but with no ability to record it onto tape, as the DVCPro HD deck runs a native 8-bit codec at a raster of 960x720. By connecting the VariCam to the P2 Mobile, I was able to take advantage of the very high quality imager that resides in the VariCam.”
“We had one 32GB card and four 8GB P2 cards, which were more than sufficient to keep the most amounts of media viewable for review in the P2 Mobile,” he says. “In terms of workflow, we had a media manager on set [David Colclasure] who reviewed all the takes on the P2 Mobile’s screen during record to ensure that there were no drop-outs. He would monitor the capacity of the cards in the P2 Mobile (all five cards were loaded at the same time), and decide when cards needed to be offloaded. For offload, we had a PowerBook G4 on set with P2 Genie software. The cards went straight into the G4’s PCMCIA II slot; P2 Genie would automatically detect the card and start the transfer to two simultaneous back up hard drives, a FireWire 800 drive and a USB 2.0 drive.”
In addition to the recording potential, Behar says pairing the VariCam with the P2 Mobile was cost-efficient.
“There was no need to rent an extra FRC to see the slow-motion played back. Once we were done shooting, we could immediately begin the post-production phase of the show without the need to rent an HD deck and pay someone to log and capture all the footage shot,” he says.
The People in Planes music video was edited on Final Cut Pro 6.0.2, with compositing work handled in After Effects.
“One main reason for wanting to shoot AVC-Intra 100 is the ability to take the footage in 10-bit full raster into After Effects for all the composite work,” Behar says. The deliverables to the record label were a full resolution QuickTime movie in Apple’s ProRes HQ, and a smaller QuickTime movie for YouTube distribution. Teaming the VariCam and the P2 Mobile offers a tremendous amount of on-set and off-set flexibility that you can only really get from a completely tapeless workflow.”
Panasonic www.panasonic.com/broadcast |
