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DP Rich Lerner has wrapped director James Seale?s dramatic thriller, Juncture, which he shot with a pair of Panasonic AG-HVX200 solid-state HD camcorders. The 30-day shoot took Lerner from the feature?s base in Colorado to San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia with locations including a roller coaster, the Golden Gate Bridge, a dingy tenement, a high-rise corporate boardroom and a moodily-lit bar.
?Juncture was the first true outing for my HVX200,? says Littleton, Colorado-based Lerner, who only had time to shoot some time-lapse footage of clouds and sunsets for Documentary Channel interstitials with his new camera when Juncture got underway. ?I jumped right into a five-week feature shoot. It was a real test for me and the HVX200.? A test both passed with flying colors.
Lerner had previously shot Seale?s feature Throttle with his Panasonic SDX900 camera. ?We proved we could make a successful feature with the SDX900, but Jim felt we had to shoot this next picture in HD because distributors are looking for a higher-quality format. I thought we could rent a VariCam. But Jim had read about the HVX200 and was interested in it--and I had an HVX200 on order.?
The HVX200 uniquely combines multiple high definition and standard definition formats, multiple recording modes and variable frames rates, and the vast benefits of P2 solid state memory recording in a rugged, compact design. The DVCPRO HD P2 camcorder offers contribution-quality HD with independent intra-frame encoding, 4:2:2 color sampling, and less compression, making HD content easier and faster to edit and more able to stand up to image compositing versus long GOP MPEG-2 systems.
Lerner?s HVX200, ordered from Abel Cine Tech, arrived in time for Juncture; the DP shot tests for Seale in some of the environments they?d be capturing for the feature. ?We looked at the footage on Jim?s 30-inch Apple Cinema screen and were blown away by how great everything looked,? Lerner reports. ?We felt we could do this.?
Lerner is a veteran DP and camera operator with feature films, TV movies, documentaries, spots and music videos to his credit. He was DP for the Academy Award-winning short documentary, A Story of Healing, and DP on the national Emmy Award-winning documentary, The Urban Elephant, for the series Nature. He was also part of the special unit for the TV movie Switchback and the NBC miniseries Asteroid and has shot documentaries for NOVA, the BBC?s Horizon and The Discovery Channel.
Lerner is a longtime Panasonic 24p camera owner. ?I started with the DVX100, and then added the SDX900, which has been an unbelievably remarkable camera,? he says. ?I shot Throttle and two other features, Descansos and Seclusion, with the SDX900, as well as many documentaries and the recent series of Fathead sports poster commercials. I?ve also rented VariCam for projects including Hunt for the Supertwister on NOVA.??
He upgraded his DVX100 to a DVX100A when that model was introduced. ?I?m a big fan of the 100A; I?ve used it as the B camera on all three of the features,? Lerner notes. ?I don?t think people can pick out the shots I used it on.?
So, the DP says, ?it was a no-brainer? to add the HVX200 to his camera roster. ?Panasonic delivered everything they said they would on the DVX100, and then improved on it with the 100A and 100B. With the HVX200, I?m now able to tell clients, ?This is real Panasonic HD.? I like to call it a baby VariCam.?
For Juncture Lerner used his HVX200 as the primary camera, acquiring a second HVX200 from Wyndham Hannaway & Associates in Boulder as his B camera. He tapped his SDX900 as the C camera.
Lerner?s A camera package consisted of a Chrosziel 4x4 matte box and filters, O?Connor and Cartoni fluid heads, a video transmitter for the director?s viewfinder, a Glidecam sled for Steadicam-style photography, a Micro Dolly Flo Pod microjib, Sticky Pod car mount which he used instead of a Hollywood-style camera car, and a Camera Turret Company electronic remote head for panning and tilting on the microjib. Lerner has also developed his own device, dubbed the Pro Camera Balance Beam, which enables him to use the HVX200 on his shoulder with a counterweight.
Lerner owns five 4GB P2 cards and a Panasonic P2 Store. He shot DVCPRO HD 720p/24pn for Juncture, which allowed him to record 10 minutes on a single 4GB P2 card.
?At first I was intimidated by the whole notion of P2 recording,? Lerner admits. ?I was concerned that I wouldn?t have an original piece of media to turn over to the client at the end of the day. Moreover, on any given day I might shoot more material than I had cards. I didn?t want to erase a card and not have that material.?
So Lerner and Editor Peter Morgenthaler established an on-set workflow featuring Lerner?s P2 Store and PC-based P2 Store Manager software. ?I?d fill a 4GB card and shout, ?Magazine change!? Then I?d take it out and pop another one in,? he recalls. ?I handed off the card to our ?lab? person for on-set ?processing.? He copied it into the P2 Store, removed the card and put it aside. Then he plugged the P2 Store into a Mac G4 laptop and copied the file directly onto the FireWire drive connected to the PC via P2 Store Manager.?
Next, the contents of the folder were copied from the FireWire drive to Lerner?s own G4 laptop where they were burned to DVD using Titanium Toast. ?At the end of the day the material lived on the FireWire hard drive, inside my G4 hard drive and on DVD,? he sums up. ?Every night the editor verified that every shot was protected and archived so he could erase the P2 Store and cards and send them back to the set. We only had one pilot error but otherwise everything worked flawlessly. I think we came up with an elegant solution for a feature.?
Lerner says he found the HVX200 to have a very pleasing dynamic range. ?We tested the camera thoroughly and came up with a look that gave us the best the camera has to offer in dynamic range, tweaking certain scenes for low-light situations,? he notes.
Night helicopter aerial photography in San Francisco and Chicago reinforced Lerner?s observations about the camera?s ability to perform well even in low light. He used the HVX200 on his Pro Camera Balance Beam to shoot an establishing shot at the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn and track the lead character?s car coming across the bridge into the city. In Chicago, he followed the same character riding an elevated train.
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