Tampa Freelance Videography loves a good doc, so this is a quick note to be on the lookout for a particularly promising, upcoming documentary.  The Interrupters will be airing on PBS’ Frontline on Valentine’s Day.  I know, it’s a little early, but I want to put this on my calendar right away.

The Interrupters | A Film by Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz.

This is the same documentary filmmaker from Hoop Dreams, and if you remember the power of that film, you’ll be excited to see what promises to be honest and unflinching art as Steve James looks at inner city violence in Chicago, and actually works toward a solution. Please share any insights.

The BCS college football bowl games will be here very soon, along with plenty of hype.  Leading up to the Championship game, ABC wanted to interview ESPN’s College GameDay folks along with some of the writers covering college football.  The idea is to go in-depth on the path that lead to LSU meeting Alabama and the other teams vying for BCS bowl consideration.  Look for “The Allstate Road to the Bowls” on ABC Dec. 31 at 2:30pm EST.  ESPN will also re-air.

The look for the interviews was to be soft and natural, using the Panasonic HDX900 camera.  We created this look in a crowded room by using Zeiss 35mm prime lenses and the P+S Technik pro35 lens adapter. This gave us the shallow depth-of-field associated with 35mm sensors and the convenient workflow of DVCPro HD.  The client wanted to stay with DVCPro since it matched their post-production work, and they wanted to avoid changing over to digital files from HDSLR production and the short 12-minute run time of the Canon 5D. The interviews with Erin Andrews, Kirk Herbstreit, Chris Fowler and Desmond Howard from ESPN’s College GameDay were certainly more than 12 minutes and they were a great group, well worth spending the time.

The folks from Activate called to get some behind-the-scenes candid video of their photo shoot. Josh Freeman, quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is the person they want to promote their product. They’ve got yet another variation on water. This one, though, has a twist. Literally. Twist the top part to release vitamins into the water…activate, get it? Good idea, and Josh is on board.

He’s young, energetic and now, he’s clean shaven.  He’s cleaning up his look for a new round of photos.  Yes, he’s in full uniform, shaving with pads on.

The Sony XDCam EX1 comes in handy in close quarters and is perfect for their web video that will feature Josh and San Diego Chargers QB Philip Rivers.  Not sure exactly when the QB promotion will launch, but the preliminary photo mock-up looks very sharp. 

Shooting car commercials on large slabs of asphalt is a challenge on a good day…in the warmest April in some time.  Randy “Robby Bobby” Knaps and his “smokin’ hot wife” were so fun to work with. Moore & Scarry provided the creative, Tampa Freelance sweated the execution. A good time was had by all.  Really. Fun people make everything flow easily.  If you’re in Sarasota/Bradenton, you’ll be hit with the Robby Bobby onslaught soon enough.

We shot it all on the trusty Sony EX1, a mind-numbing number of commercials in a couple of days.  Lots of variations on the same theme, but it was a challenge all the same.  The heat can test your character, and Randy and Brittany stayed solid throughout as our acting talent.  We’ll have more water on hand should we attempt this many hours on the asphalt again…did I mention it was warm for April?

The Sony XDCam 700/800 cameras use the XDCam discs as their recording media.  The quake and tsunami in Japan have put broadcasting manufacturers there understandably behind schedule in most everything, include tapes and those discs.  I just spoke with a client who was very interested in putting the NanoFlash into play as an alternative.

The NanoFlash already records the XDCam 422 codec, so this would be an easy workflow adjustment for them.  I’m curious if anyone else has experienced this, and is using the NanoFlash as a solution?

Lots of hype is going into this latest draft, despite the legal wrangling currently underway between NFL owners and players.  I’m happy to report, Tampa Freelance Videography is lending a hand, giving you more quarterbacks, more Jon Gruden, and some crazy chalk talk that sounds like a foreign language.

The good folks at ESPN started Jon Gruden’s QB Camp last year, and this year it’s gaining in popularity.  Some of it’s appeal comes from the straight-forward approach of “Fired Football Coach’s Association” president Jon Gruden.  There’s a lot of tech that goes into the pared down look of the show. Have you seen that office on the show?  It’s about as straight-forward and no-frills as it gets. 

Tampa videographer Nino Giannotti executes that look.  Sure, Gruden has the place filled to the ceiling with game tapes from every imaginable team and game scenarios, that’s all legit.  But we don’t just turn on the fluorescents and hit the record button.  Nino has rigged a mini studio of Cool Lights LEDs hanging from the ceiling to provide some highlight and depth to the subjects.  They skew green so some minus green gel was used to achieve a better color balance on each unit.  There’s about a dozen.  That’s a lot of lights in a small office.  They don’t put out the heat though, and performed quite well for both seasons of the show.

We’re shooting on Panasonic HDX900s at 720/24p.  You can’t see me, I’m tucked into a small closet.  Yes, it’s filled with even more game tapes.  Really, Jon, it may be time for a bigger office.  Nino is on a dolly track.  Not for the “wow factor” of a dolly move, but so the camera can quickly and quietly reposition as needed. He also has the Sony EX1 tucked behind more tapes serving as the Gruden cam.  It started as a lock down shot, but he rigged it with a small motorized pan-tilt head that the producer gets to manipulate should Gruden drift too far one way or the other.  He’s always moving.  The HD-SDI from the EX1 feeds a NanoFlash set up to give 100Mbps.

There’s a plenty of good material to work with.  Gruden keeps moving, never letting up and crams a lot into our time in his office.

Give a look:

The good ideas are always the obvious ones. The Yankees have a long-standing tradition of allowing “regular” people to take Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, wearing the familiar pinstripes. They get to live the big league life if only for a few moments, hanging out in the clubhouse, a little batting practice and playing the game on a perfectly manicured diamond.

Brilliant

The smart folks running the camp decided to ask the ladies if they would like to take on the traditionally men-only challenge.  What a response.  Here’s a video sample of a wild weekend, filled with players ready to compete, ready to play.  This is how baseball was meant to be.  Team spirit, hard work and laughing ’til it hurts.

You’ll notice some familiar faces, as the women were coached by some great former Yanks. Look for Mickey Rivers, Bucky Dent, Mike Torres, Darryl Strawberry and “heartthrob” first baseman Tino Martinez.

Phil Celli of Pro Focus Video spent the time to edit the January weekend into these few moments. He and I shot lots of game video of each team, behind the scenes and candid moments of more than 70 women campers. The players will receive this video and more to mark the inaugural Womens’ Fantasy Camp.

You know it’s spring when the temps hit the 50s over much of country and … and pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

A beautiful day for baseball in Tampa. New York Yankees start their spring training at George Steinbrenner Field.

Another in the parade of cameras

Panasonic’s latest camera, the AJ-HPX3100 seems targeted at news gathering and little else.  This is a lightweight and smallish shoulder mounted camera, the same size as their HPX307, that will shoot in Panny’s great AVC-Intra codec.  
The important thing here is the 2/3″ CCDs, giving full-raster 1080 imaging and 4:2:2 10-bit sampling in AVC-Intra 100.  If you want to double the record time, losing 4:2:2 and dropping to 4:2:0, you can go with AVC-Intra 50. Panasonic doesn’t say they’re identical, but these are the same specs as the MUCH more expensive, full sized HPX3000 (list $48,000). And better than the also more expensive HPX2000 (list $27,000).  Those cameras have some advantages, like 5 P2 slots instead of 2, but the cost savings of the HPX3100 (list $19,950) trump them all for run and gun news gathering.

No crank?

You can shoot HD in AVC-Intra and in DVCPRO HD at 1080 in 24p, 25p, 30p, 50i and 60i, and in SD (480i/586i) in DVCPRO50, DVCPRO and DV. No 720p and no over- or under-crank for slow-mo.  I didn’t see any mention of time-lapse capability.

Format bashing ahead…

The only hitch I see is the P2 format.  I hate being tied to such a proprietary format. I only have two clients actively using it and they are willing to accept other formats since P2 isn’t universally used by freelancers. (Edit: There is no format being universally used by freelancers.) P2 media is expensive per minute of record time, with only 1 minute per GB at the highest quality option. (A 64GB card is $895) Of course, there are many work-around solutions, like the nano-flash adapters. And most clients now seem to be happy as long as you can give them some form of digital files to take home.  So, a question…are you using P2, and why?  For a production facility that goes from pre- to post-production, you can choose your own format.  For freelancers, I wonder what work-arounds are being used to accommodate clients.

Smokin’ Fast

Nikon, SanDisk and Sony announced they’re working together, developing a CompactFlash card targeted at professional photography and High Def video.  Data rates are currently at 167MB/sec throughput and would increase to 500MB/sec.  That’s a big jump.

Current CompactFlash memory cards typically have 4GB to 16GB of capacity, but the CompactFlash 6.0 specification, which was released earlier this month, allows for a maximum capacity of 128GB. The new specification proposed by SanDisk, Nikon and Sony would be a step beyond CompactFlash 6.0.
The new specification would also offer a theoretical maximum capacity of 2TB, which would be conducive to recording high-definition video.
The specification would combine high-speed data transfer with low power consumption via a power scaling system to extend battery life.

New size

The new card would be close in size to today’s CompactFlash card products, but it is expected to have a more rugged form factor.
“This ultra-high-speed media format will enable further evolution of hardware and imaging applications, and widen the memory card options available to CompactFlash users such as professional photographers,” Shigeto Kanda, chairman of the CompactFlash Association, said in a statement.
That’s all from a SanDisk release.  They didn’t give a time-table, but I’m sure we’ll hear more in January and of course at the NAB convention in the spring.  No cost projections either, expect to pay dearly now and watch the price tumble quickly.  More speculation…since the throughput is so fast, will we be able to capture video in the highly desirable 4:2:2 colorspace?  Digital video and HDSLR cameras are currently compressing output to the media, but this may allow for the cameras to bypass the compression and deliver more info at higher speeds natively to this new breed of CF card.  That will be farther down the road, but seems like a reasonable possibility.