[press release from Well Above]
The who’s who of country music and many up and coming stars recently descended upon Tamworth, in central NSW for its annual Country Music Festival.
M3 MEDIA, the Brisbane based production company specialising in live broadcasts, music festivals and corporate events, was Foxtel channel NITV’s OB Provider for the festival and together with production company Carbon Media was tasked with making a multiple venue broadcast run as smoothly as possible.
M3 Media’s Marty Hankins who was also OB Technician for the festival explained the extent and complexities of the show, “During the 10 days that M3 Media captured the festival for Carbon Media, we covered multiple events which included 6 live concerts, unplugged ‘on-set’ interviews, artist interviews, as well as B-roll and colour packages of the festival. In order to do this we used a variety of JVC ProHD equipment.
Concert footage was shot as a 5 ProHD camera live switch and a 48-track multi-track audio record. The JVC cameras also fitted with JVC DR HD100E hard drive recorders for ISO recording. We also ran tape in the camera in parallel with these hard drive units, however none of the back up tape records were ever needed. The live switch was also recorded straight to hard drive making this OB a completely tapeless workflow.”
Prior to the start of the festival production company Carbon Media had expressed to M3 the need for a quick turnaround of the footage in order to meet their delivery deadlines.
Hankins added, “This is where the JVC DR HD100E hard drive recorders became an essential part of our workflow. We were literally able to shoot the event, press stop on the cameras and within 20 minutes, via Firewire hub, deliver to the client a hard drive containing footage from all 5 cameras and the live switch ready to be edited. The more I use these hard drive units, the more confidence I have in leaving my tapes behind. The only thing better than the JVC DR HD100E would of course be the new MR HD100E which I’m eager to get my hands on.”
During each day of the festival a team of two cameramen were used to shoot interviews and colour packages of various artists. A single cameraman and on-air talent would also shoot content that would be posted to a website as a “Vodcast” of the highlights of the day. The final on-air product broadcast on Foxtel channel NITV is 10 -12 hours of content, broken down into hour-long specials and half hour shows. The shows are to be run under the banner of “IN TUNE”.
Commenting on the efficiencies of this year’s festival Hankins said, “This is the second year that Carbon Media has produced a Tamworth “IN TUNE” special. Last year the vision was shot on Sony FX1s to tape and later cut together in post. This became an issue due to the fact that there was such an enormous amount of content to get through before the programmes could be delivered.
The post production process resulted in months of work and thus a more efficient solution was sought for this year’s festival. In 2009 the workflow was streamlined to a live switch being recorded directly into Final Cut Pro via a MOTU V4HD interface and ISO’s were being recorded onto five JVC DR HD100Es.
Again, tape was rolling in the camera as a back up, but was never needed as the DR HD100Es performed flawlessly throughout the week. This workflow was essentially to create a live switch that would be used as the base vision track and the ISOs were to be used to patch up any areas that needed to be improved.”
With the fully tapeless workflow satisfying the time-sensitive needs of Carbon Media’s quick turn around requirements, within 30 minutes of the final curtain, the content was transferred from the JVC DR HD100E hard drives, via a Firewire hub, to a backup drive ready for the editors.
Hankins continued, “The live switch was used as 90 percent of the final content. This is a direct result of choosing the right crew – a great bunch of guys who got some incredible results. All the crew came from a freelance broadcast background. By the end of the first show everyone appreciated the form factor and the light weight of the ProHD cameras and upon reviewing the footage, were blown away by the image quality. I have put these cameras into the hands of many broadcast cameramen and the camera makes perfect sense to them straight away. All the switches and controls are where you would expect them to be, the lens is a real lens and operates that way. I have owned JVC ProHD cameras since the first JVC GY-HD101E was released. I have recently added a couple of JVC GY-HD251Es and have fallen in love again! One of the key benefits of the JVC GY HD251E is its ability to output HD-SDI/SDI. As a small scale, efficient OB operation, the ability to offer a complete HD-SDI/SDI camera chain allows us to be broadcast compliant and deliver a full HD tapeless workflow from camera to switcher and through to the record. The benefit of longer cable runs and embedded audio has also been a big plus.”
Hankins and his team are often asked to provide solutions that require ingenious methods and clever equipment functionality. He concluded, “While I am on the subject of things I like about the JVC GY-HD251E, the ability to setup a single camera with all the settings and then transfer them via a memory card is an invaluable way to match the cameras, but also a real time saver when doing multi-camera setups.
It’s a changing world and nothing puts more fear into a cameraman than to hand them a hard drive to record onto for the first time. With a barrage of questions and ‘what ifs’, the only thing that will calm the nerves of a ‘first timer’ is the experience of it. I too had my doubts in the beginning, but every time I save an hour of tape capture time in post, my confidence grows to the point that I am close to waving goodbye to tape forever. With over 50 hours of recording time during the week in Tamworth, driving home knowing I don’t have a week of tape capture is a great feeling.
I am quite excited about some of the newer tapeless products that JVC is bringing out: the JVC MR HD100 with meta data recording; the KA MR100G is also exciting with it’s 35Mbit SxS capability; and also the new line of cameras – the GY HM100 and GY HM700 which are completely tapeless – now that’s what I am talking about.”