(SECAUCUS, New Jersey--November 16, 2007) Award-winning Director/Cameraman Bill Mills recently added Panasonic’s new AJ-HPX3000 native 1080p one-piece camcorder to his growing collection of the company’s high-definition camera packages. Mills, President of Florida Film & Video and BMA Production Services, Inc. (both of St. Petersburg, FL), is currently utilizing the HPX3000 on a production for the U.S. Marine Corps.
“I made the decision in September to shoot this dramatic training program using the HPX3000 as our ‘A’ camera and our trusty VariCam as the ‘B’ camera,” Mills said. “We added the AJ-HPM100 P2 Mobile (10-bit, 4:2:2 recorder/player) to our HD package, which is making our tapeless workflow much more efficient.”
“Our goal with this production was to create a network style episodic television look. It was imperative that the production have that 35mm film style and quality,” he added.
Mills, one of the first cinematographers in Florida to move into HD production (in 2001), has been recognized with Six Emmy awards and a Primetime Emmy® nomination (for Tigers of the Snow, National Geographic Special for NBC), and has been presented Cine Golden Eagle, Kodak Vision and Telly Awards. A veteran shooter of Panasonic 24p cameras, he also owns the VariCam, AJ-HDX900 and AG-HVX200 HD cameras.
“I shot the main segment of the Marine program in 1080/24p DVCPRO HD, giving us a look that I would describe as a notch up from the VariCam’s 720p,” Mills said. “The HPX3000 offers a number of gamma settings that emulate VariCam’s Film-Rec look. Having only had the HPX3000 a short time, I’ve barely scratched the surface of its capabilities, but the advantage of shooting true 1980x1080 full raster images is very much akin to comparing 35mm film to Super 16. Without a doubt, the HPX3000 will become our flagship for HD production.”
“I’m particularly excited about using the HPX3000 in the new AVC-Intra 100 mode once that codec is fully supported by Apple and AVID,” he continued. “From the initial tests we’ve done in AVC-Intra 100, I believe it will set a new standard for high-end HD production.”
“Our initial first week of shooting on the Marine project netted more than nine hours of ‘A’ camera footage, which traditionally would have taken two-three days of digitizing in the old tape world,” Mills said. “I was able to bring the media into our Final Cut Pro HD suite in less than seven hours.”
“P2 skeptics complain about the cost of the P2 cards, but coming from a film background I think of the cards as film magazines,” he added. “The 16GB cards hold 16 minutes of DVCPRO HD content (shot in 1080), whereas my old Aaton mags would only carry 10 minutes of raw film stock. The film mags cost more than $5000 each and a 16 GB card is about $800. Once content creators truly understand the workflow and realize the cards are not their masters, but should be used to move the media to mass storage drives, I foresee wide acceptance of the format and the attendant workflow.”
“One of the most impressive selling points of P2 is that it is not format specific --the cards don’t care what format you are shooting and will record various formats of HD and SD,” Mills noted. “Initially, I made the same mistakes many people make in terms of offloading the P2 material. After popping the cards into my Mac, I would just import the clips through Final Cut Pro, and then reformat the cards. My backup was just copying the clips to another portable drive. However, in this manner you are losing the original metadata that exists with each downloaded card. The P2 Mobile and programs like HD Logger make it more user-friendly to actually ‘mirror’ the P2 card onto a larger storage device for archiving.”
“In general, our final program deliverables continue to be tape-based, but on a recent underwater project for National Geographic (shot on the HVX200) we simply shipped a portable hard drive with the P2 media to the network’s edit facility in Washington, D.C.,” Mills explained. “Once they offloaded the media, their editor just sent the drive back to us.”
Mills has acquired all of his Panasonic HD cameras, both tape-based and tapeless, from Abel Cine Tech (New York, NY). “My relationship with Able Cine Tech goes back to my Aaton days, and the company’s sales support has been instrumental in our transition to HD and now P2 technology,” he said.
Florida Film & Video and BMA Production Services, Inc. are full-service film, video and multimedia companies managing the production process from script to screen, shooting, producing and directing. In business since 1984, the companies’ clientele has included advertising agencies, independent producers, Hollywood studios and corporations around the world. For more information about Mills and his production services, visit www.flhd.tv or www.floridafilmvideo.com.
About the AJ-HPX3000
With three 2/3" high-density 2.2-megapixel CCDs, the HPX3000 captures cinema-quality images in full-raster 1920 x 1080 resolution with 4:2:2 10-bit sampling, utilizing the powerful, new AVC-Intra codec. Designed for episodic television, filmmaking and commercial production where mastering quality is essential, the HPX3000 records in industry-standard DVCPRO HD at 1080 in 24p, 25p, 30p, 50i and 60i, and in AVC-Intra. AVC-Intra, the industry’s most advanced compression technology, provides high-quality 10-bit intra-frame encoding utilizing the Hi-10 and Hi-422 profiles of H.264 in two modes: AVC-Intra 100 for full-raster mastering video quality and AVC-Intra 50 Mbps for DVCPRO HD quality at half the bit rate, thereby doubling the record time on a P2 card. For added flexibility, the HPX3000 can also produce standard definition recordings in DVCPRO50, and is 60/50-Hz switchable for worldwide use. For more information on the HPX3000, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
About Panasonic Broadcast
Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast and professional video products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North America. The company is the North American headquarters of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) of Japan, and the hub of its U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, access the company’s web site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
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