Le Ride
T
his was no ordinary production. We were shooting 4K video with a pair of relatively unproven Super 35mm cameras and cinema-style lenses in a run & gun documentary production that would typically be better suited for 2/3" shoulder-mount ENG cameras, such as the PDW-F800. In addition, we were recording onboard the cameras with a new 10-bit XAVC video codec that nobody on the crew had used before. And to make things even more complicated, not only did we want to capture the highest quality 4K images that could be used for editing of the final film months later — but we also had to be able to edit a daily 5-7 minute highlights video and upload it to CBS every day.
Everyone on the crew wore many hats covering all aspects of production to get the job done under extremely challenging conditions. The principal assignment for our media manager/editor (Doug Jensen) was to ingest and safely backup all of the 4K footage from both of our F55 cameras at the end of each day, then edit a 5-7 minute highlights video of the day’s ride and upload it to CBS. We called these short videos “blogs,” but ultimately they were far more elaborate. We all put a lot of effort into these videos and they turned out more like feature stories. As a PMW-F55 owner Doug was able to help us to create a “look” for the cameras and determine the best menu settings prior to leaving for France. After conducting some shooting and workflow tests, it was determined that we would program the cameras to record S-Log2 gamma and S-Gamut color — plus a few other paint menu modifications to fine-tune the look and camera performance. After finally deciding on all the menu settings we were able to email the file settings to the cameramen so they could load them into our cameras before France. This pre-planning worked perfectly and the result was that the cameras were ready to roll the minute we arrived in Paris — essential since we only had about 4 hours for prep before shooting began. A unique feature of the F55 is that the camera is capable of recording two separate video files simultaneously on a single SxS memory card. That allowed us to record both a high-quality 4K XAVC file that could be set aside for use later during online editing — and a more manageable broadcast-quality XDCAM HD422 file that could be used for the daily blog editing and eventually the cutting of the documentary. The two files always had matching file names, in and out points, and timecode. This dual-recording capability of the F55 worked flawlessly during the entire four weeks and in some ways is what made the whole production possible. We couldn’t have done this same production with any other camera. 57
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