(Secaucus, New Jersey--February 17, 2009) WINDOWSEATpictures (El Segundo, CA) recently shot four one-hour programs documenting the celebrated Vans Triple Crown of Surfing (men’s and women’s competitions) with several Panasonic P2 HD solid-state camcorders.
The first installment will air Monday, February 16 on Fox Cable Networks’ Fuel TV at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The shows will subsequently appear on VOOM’s RUSH HD network.
Installments two through four will air on Fuel TV on February 23, March 9 and March 26, all at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Shot with AG-HPX170 and AG-HVX200 handhelds and the AG-HPX500 shoulder-mount P2 HD camcorders, the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing is a Hawaiian specialty series of professional surfing events, all staged on the North Shore of Oahu, a coastline world-famous in surfing circles for its clockwork winter swells that reach 50 feet in height. The Vans Triple Crown, second in prestige only to surfing's world title, is considered the ultimate test of a surfer's ability to master the big waves at three unique and challenging venues: Haleiwa Ali'i Beach Park, Sunset Beach and the Banzai Pipeline. (NB, the women’s third round of competition was off-island at Maui’s Ho’okipa Beach Park.)
WINDOWSEATpictures, a production company specializing in action sports programming, numbers Vans shoes, Monster Energy Drink, General Mills, Mattel, Anheuser-Busch, Fox Sports, NBC and CBS among its clients. For the past several years, WINDOWSEAT has shot award-winning campaigns featuring snowboarding, skateboarding and other action sports with HVX200s (the company owns three), occasionally renting an HPX500 for long-lens work. Last fall, WINDOWSEAT purchased two HPX170s, specifically for the seven-week Vans Triple Crown shoot.
“As crucial as the HVX200s have been to our signature shooting style, we were eager to invest in the HPX170s,” said WINDOWSEAT executive producer Moz Mirbaba. “With no tape drive, the HPX170 is significantly lighter, an obvious plus for our type of work. The camera has an improved sensor, which means a lower noise floor and better light sensitivity, key advantages to our cinema verite shooting, where so many events are spontaneous, with unpredictable lighting conditions.”
WINDOWSEAT took seven P2 HD camcorders on the Vans Triple Crown assignment: four HVX200s, two HPX170s and an HPX500, the last rented from EVS (Glendale, CA). The HPX170s were the main interview cameras, the HVX200s outfitted with Century Optics doublers were the chief “surfing” cameras (with shooters in Jet skis operated by the Hawaiian Water Patrol capturing footage of the competitors as well as free surfers), and the HPX500 was used as the master contest camera shooting the master shots (sunsets, huge waves) with long lenses that could “see” ¼ mile out into the ocean.
“The Triple Crown is the ultimate testimonial to the advantages of P2 solid-state shooting,” Mirbaba said. “We experienced more than 40 days of humidity, rain and extreme heat, with not one camera failure.”
“The HPX170 exceeded our expectations,” Mirbaba added. “A director and DP were each equipped with an HPX170 and, while waiting out the perfect surfing conditions for the competitions, they would bicycle with the cameras all over the North Shore to shoot interviews with surfers and locals, as well as capture general lifestyle coverage. As we’d anticipated, the results are exceptionally cinematic.”
“We outfitted the HPX170s with the new Redrock M2 cinema lens adapter for 35mm lenses, and it worked superbly with the cameras,” said Matt Devino, WINDOWSEAT’s lead editor on the Triple Crown shoot. “A simple switch changes the focus ring to iris; the camcorder doesn’t de-focus, which mean set-ups are a lot faster.”
WINDOWSEAT had 30 32GB P2 cards on location in Hawaii. The production elected to recycle cards out one at a time as soon as they were at capacity. “We had assistant editors and media managers on site to offload material,” said Devino. “Each camera was assigned to a PowerBook G4; each G4 had two FireWire drives attached to it for double back-up of footage. We created QuickTime files on one of the back-up drives, and sent the second drive back to Los Angeles, where it was backed-up on our server as a triple safety.”
Since all four Triple Crown programs will air on Fuel TV in first quarter 2009, post-production had to be initiated immediately. WINDOWSEAT set up two MacPro Eight Core workstations on the island, and ran five Eight Core machines back at its Los Angeles office, all tied into a SAN server. Color correction and the final master lay-offs are being handled at an outside post facility. Material is archived on mirrored SATA drives stored on-and off-site.
“Beyond the P2 HD camcorders’ portability coupled with compelling image quality, the price point of these cameras is significant,” said Mirbaba. “Panasonic has made it affordable for an independent production company such as ours to transition to HD. Our clients want the look and feel of HD in their projects, and with our P2 HD cameras, we can do that for not much more than the cost of standard-def acquisition.”
Prior to the production team’s departure for Hawaii, WINDOWSEAT utilized the HPX170s to shoot a web campaign promoting a user-generated video contest for General Mills’ Totino’s Party Pizza brand. The You Tube-centric campaign, starring Olympic snowboarder Danny Kass, was among the top 100 trafficked videos in You Tube history. Next up for the HPX170s is a web campaign to launch a new Mattel toy product.
About WINDOWSEATpictures
Founded by Creative Director/Director Bill Kiely and Executive Producer Moz Mirbaba, WINDOWSEATpictures is a full-service production and editorial facility with a unique vision. Focusing on storytelling through various forms of cinema verite filmmaking, WINDOWSEAT'S inventive take on production has garnered the appeal of major brands such as: Vans, O'Neill, REEF, Billabong, Anheuser-Busch, General Mills, Monster Energy Drink, Mattel, US Air Force, Maloof Money Cup, NBC, CBS, FUEL TV, and Fox Sports to name a few. For more information about WINDOWSEAT, visit www.windowseatpictures.com.
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