NZVN August 2014

AUGUST 2014

Vol 205

Get Your Feet a’Tapping We are in the studios of The Beat Goes On with the host, founder and bon vivant, Gerard Smith. I’m here because Gerard’s been around a long time – so have I; NZ Video News has published its 200th newspaper, but Gerard has now done over 250 weekly television chat shows, in fact, he produces the longest running chat show in New Zealand.

Ed: Gerard, you’ve been on the air for decades and you’re still looking gorgeous?

Gerard: Oh thank you Grant. If you hadn’t put that little part in I don’t think I would have continued! We’re still going … I feel like the Energiser bunny. Why do we keep going? That’s the bigger question isn’t it? We keep going because we do love having a weekly television show with all the peripheral activity surrounding that one hour of putting out a show every week – the new guests that come in, the regulars – there’s just a good swirl of happening and it keeps life interesting.

Ed: Really, to keep going after 250 shows, you must have a successful formula?

Gerard: There is a formula working.

There are basically two formulas working in New Zealand – you can go the New Zealand On Air route. That’s that journey and you go with an idea and they give you up to $50,000 an episode for 13 weeks, and away you go. But there’s never any guarantee that you’ll ever be renewed or you’ll get back on that station again. So you’re at the mercy of the whims of the constantly changing bureaucrats all the time. Most shows are stopped before they properly evolve.

The other formula, the way we do it, is that we take an idea and we get out and sell it in the hard, cold, ruthless marketplace – the place that New Zealand On Air is supposed to protect you from!

Ed: We won’t go too far into politics here Gerard, but I’m sure there are a lot of people on our side of the screen who would agree with you. But that’s it, isn’t it – you’ve got to get a return for what you do and to do 250 episodes, you must have been able to convince your

advertisers that this is a worthwhile place to put their advertising dollar. The advertisers must have seen a return?

there, and that’s how you keep your audience or you build your audience, by always being there 45 weeks of the year.

Gerard: Well, we’ve got two regular advertisers who have been with us for six years and they don’t advertise with us because they like Gerard Smith; they advertise with us because they’re getting results, and that’s what it’s all about. Companies are very careful with their money and, if it’s not giving them a result, they’re not going to come back. One advertiser is a travel company and travel is a big baby boomer product. Baby boomers retire and they’ve got money in the bank and they travel. There are some industries that we could go to and they wouldn’t even look at us, because they’re not baby boomer oriented.

We don’t operate in their demographic.

Ed: Now, the hard question is, how can you produce a weekly programme like this, which is a commercial hour, and there’s not a lot of advertising time taken off that, so it is pretty close to that hour, and you produce it for a very small budget and you do it week after week? Where do you think other people are spending excessive amounts to make their programmes?

Gerard:

“Haha”, he laughed defensively.

Ed: Well, your workplace is also your home. That’s one, a large part of your home is the studio here …?

Gerard: Well there’s a saving for a kick-off. I think the next thing is to edit the show yourself. Editing can be very expensive and, of course, to edit a show that’s 1 hour long, we’re talking 2030 hours of work, so if I edit the show there’s a big saving.

Ed: So you’re not paying yourself a huge amount for your own editing time?

Gerard: Ed:

Not really. Just a good living.

Nice desk ... did you get it new?

Gerard: Not new in fact, and a big thanks to TVNZ and their current refurbishment. We intercepted the truck on the way to the tip.

Desks, chairs, tables, all sorts.

Ed: And I must say that the lighting here … to be kind, shall we say it’s “industrial”?

Gerard: Ooh you are so cruel Grant.

You’ve mentioned that unkind word before … yes, but it does the job.

Sir Bob Jones being nice to Gerard.

Ed: Face TV is where one finds your shows and I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there who have never tuned in to Face TV, but they’re missing something?

Gerard: Of course they’re missing something Grant.

Every week they’re missing a great one hour weekly chat show for people over the age of 50.

Ed: But, having said that, the types of programme that are on Face TV really are niche programmes. It’s a small audience, but it’s an audience that you’ve captured for The Beat Goes On? Gerard: It is a small audience – you know possibly in the six years we’ve had about 150,000 baby boomers at some time watch The Beat Goes On. That’s certainly not 150,000 watching every week, but it’s maybe 1015,000 watch every week, but a year later it can be a different 10-15,000. People come and go, but what I’ve always tried to say about The Beat Goes On is what I call the “Coronation Street Syndrome” – that it’s always

Ed: It’s not what one would call “professional lighting”, but the way you’ve got it set up, I would say that anybody who watches the programme would not pooh-pooh the lighting, you know, unless you’re looking at it super critically. There is a bit of a shine sometimes on certain presenters’ pates, but …?

Gerard:

That’s my trademark. Bald is beautiful.

Ed: Okay, and now your three cameras. You bought these new, they’re high definition at the minimum level but still, for the market, for Face TV, for the level of broadcast you’re at, they work?

Gerard:

My Panasonic’s, love them.

Ed: And monitoring, I see some good old CRT monitors over there?

Gerard: Yes, yes, we are replacing them very soon by mounting large screens on the wall, but it’s one of those sorts of jobs that you mean to do every week, and you never get round to it. We have made a couple of calls to start the process.

Ed: Your headphones look very domestic, everything’s done by cable, but you are able to keep going because

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P8 Activity in the Deep South.

P16 EDIUS in Action.

P24 And the Winner is … continues.

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you haven’t gone crazy and spent a huge amount of money on equipment that you’re not getting a return on. Have you learnt from past experiences?

Gerard: No, you wouldn’t do it. It’s a good lifestyle – you meet great people, there’s a constant swirl of activity going on and it’s great to be alive.

Gerard: The less said about that the better ( he laughed defensively.)

Ed: So how does one go about getting on to The Beat Goes On as a guest?

Ed: Alright, so with the success of The Beat Goes On, this has encouraged you to branch out into other areas.

What else have you started?

Gerard: Well we’re always looking for who would be an interesting guest for baby boomers.

Gerard: We do a wedding show now, we do a show on cars – Automotive News; Shane, who was on The Beat Goes On for the whole six years, he now has his own show. It’s called Rockin’ the Planet and every week we film a band at the Commerce Club in Remuera, then they come into the studio some days later for an interview with Shane and then it’s all weaved together.

I love doing that show, it’s great, because I’m an old muso from way back.

Ed:

So are they groups that the baby boomers know?

Gerard: We rang up Cold Play and they said no. We just get very good New Zealand bands that are out there in the hinterland, playing fabulous music every week, but of course the way the television service is in New Zealand, they never get any mainstream recognition … I’m talking about groups like the Flaming Mudcats, Roundhouse, Che Orton or the Groove Diggers – absolutely fabulous bands.

You just stand there in awe and you go “Wow, here are these great bands and nobody’s ever heard about them.” But they’re out there, and they’ve got their fan base and they are the people that follow them, but they just haven’t had the coverage.

The New Zealand Television Service, which is supposed to feature New Zealanders on air, has badly let them down.

Ed: So when you look at the cost of producing this sort of show, it’s obviously prohibitive on the main channels for these smaller bands, but in the workflow that you’ve developed here with The Beat Goes On, this is the sort of show that you can do?

Gerard: Well it’s a formula – it doesn’t matter what the topic is. We’ve got a real estate show starting in July; we’ve got a Pacific show starting. When the people talk to us, we know that this is the price that we can produce a programme for and they are astounded that we can do it at such a price and yet make a very good programme for them.

Ed: But that’s not to say that all of these programmes are going to succeed long-term are they Gerard?

Gerard: Well the reality is that 9 out of 10 will work on a long-term basis.

Ed:

You can tell Gerard is an optimist.

Gerard: They do … when I say “work”, we can do runs with these programmes. We might do 20 at a time and then we regroup to resell the advertising and they’re back again the following year, because once you’ve established the two presenters that are on the show, they also become drivers of the show. So it’s not just you, it’s the people who are the presenters on these shows; they’re itching to get going again. They grow to love doing their programme.

Ed: And you’ve got to have a passion for it, don’t you.

If you’re just looking at the dollars and cents you wouldn’t do it?

Ed:

You’ve had Laila Harré on recently?

Gerard:

Laila Harré came on the programme …

Ed: Well she’ll go anywhere at the moment won’t she?

Gerard: Well this is the time to shine if you are a politician. Look, I just can’t think of all the guests we’ve had, 250 in total. There’s a guest this week, Chris Skellett from Dunedin. He has written a book called The Power of the Second Question and we’ve been asked to interview Chris, so a lot of it comes to us now. In the early days it didn’t of course; we were always looking for people, but book publishers, people who are making a CD, they want free publicity too.

When a group comes to New Zealand, the first choice of

course is to get on Seven Sharp or Campbell Live. The next choice is you get on Good Morning New Zealand … you’d love to get on The Paul Henry Show, but if you’ve missed out on all those, there’s always The Beat Goes On. In August, when this magazine’s coming out telling our story, there’s an example.

I met Chris Mullane who’s a wedding celebrant, he was on the wedding show and I happened to chat to him and I find out that he’s quite a fanatic on the First World War. Well guess what – in August, it’s the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, so we’ve organised Chris to come on the show and tell us all about how the First World War started. Now from a baby boomer point of view, that’s very interesting; I’m interested in that myself, I think that’s fascinating. I’m at the age now where it’s amazing how these things start. So there’s always something happening, and if we get to the stage of “Oh gosh, we haven’t got a guest this week” just one read of the papers and you’ll see somebody “Oh that’s interesting.”

Ed: So it isn’t a case of somebody’s written a book and they come along here for a bit of free publicity, you do select your guests. You’re not going to just pick anybody, it’s got to be of interest?

Gerard: About four weeks ago, we had Graeme Lay who’s writing a trilogy of books on Captain Cook. He

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something to watch except the News.

But I’m loving my new music show Rockin’ the Planet.

Ed: And you’ve had enough of this current crop of talent shows have you?

Shane: I don’t even watch them anymore, and I started off in talent shows, but no one got abused like they do now. I was lucky, I won mine and I moved on from there and I had a successful career.

Ed: And now you’re helping others get started aren’t you, because this is what I’ve noticed – here tonight we’ve got the Shirleybyrds, I’ve never seen them or heard of them before in my life. They’re a nice band and, through your programme, they have a chance to be seen.

Gerard and Shane.

came in to promote his second book of the trilogy. I hadn’t read the first, but we had a great interview, it was great to talk to Graeme, but then I went away and read this book in the meantime, and I found it absolutely fascinating. So I wonder, would I have ever heard about this book and Graeme Lay if I hadn’t been doing The Beat Goes On. I met Graeme Lay through another one of our shows that we do … in fact the more shows you do, the more in contact you are with the creative part of our population.

Ed: Well that’s important for you to keep going and make that 300th?

Gerard: 300 … why stop there Grant. Why stop at 300? No, I’m feeling fine and like it’s not manual labour is it, just talking to people. It’s pretty simple.

Ed: And you’ve never had an approach from the main broadcasters to tell your story there?

Gerard: The only thing we’ve had from the main broadcasters is deathly silence!

Ed: Well maybe this could stimulate a little bit of interest and we’ll see you on the big screen sometime soon?

Gerard: Well I don’t know, it’s a different ballgame.

And we have a very satisfying niche, why should we leave it.

Ed:

What’s the channel number we look for?

Shane: They’re a fantastic band and they deserve to be seen and the only way they’re going to do that is through TV shows like ours that promote local talent. You can go to all the other TV channels and, believe me, unless you have made an expensive video, you don’t get on TV anymore. There’s no old-fashioned way of doing it like “let’s have a group on and play live and listen to them and enjoy them.”

Ed:

Sort of Battle of the Bands type thing?

Shane: Not really, one band at a time, one band featured each week. I’m just trying to break new talent, as well as look after the older talent – I’m talking about people who have been around a long time, paid their dues, they’re still getting on TV. You can’t do that on our normal TV. I shouldn’t call it “normal” because it’s abnormal TV now. Overseas, they look after their acts, they’re held in high esteem, people like Led Zeppelin or whoever it is, right through all the bands from the 60s, they’re working in England and The Searchers are over here on tour soon … they work every day of the week around the world. They never stop, those guys, they’re “road dogs” and they’re still earning a huge living out of their music. But over here, the industry seems to put them to one side, their “use by” date’s over and it’s not fair, I don’t think it’s good to all our artists who have given us so much. And so many people out there, like you and me, the public, we want to see those bands. I love all those bands from the 60s and 70s.

Gerard: Tune in to Sky Channel 83 every Monday night at 8pm, repeated Friday at 10.30pm and once again on Saturday morning.

Ed:

Now within Gerard’s interview, we mentioned “Rockin’ the Planet” as one of Gerard’s co-productions with Shane, and tonight, live at The Commerce Club, we have Shane.

Ed: Do they also support these bands, the bands that appear on your show?

Ed: Shane, has this television formula been successful for you too?

Shane: Yes, well Gerard and I have been great buddies for years and years and years and we were always looking for a new way out for a show. Ever since Gerard started The Beat Goes On, I’ve been with him all the way and here we are celebrating show 252 today. You look at TV now, and like him and like me, we’re baby boomers, we’ve looked at it all. I would have 100 channels on my TV and I still can’t find

So it’s great that you’ve got a good sponsor?

Shane: Fantastic – Music Planet, nine music stores throughout New Zealand, they’ve been fantastic to us.

Shane: Heck yes, they put their money where their mouth is, but in the end they want musicians to shop at Music Planet. Loyalty goes two ways, and that’s how it all works. You know we’re creating a community with a music show and the music fraternity is all the musicians in New Zealand. Now we’re on TV we have a voice, and we’ve got our own thing going – and Music Planet want to do that, and that’s great. They see what we’re doing and they see it’s a great move.

Ed:

And it’s still good working with Gerard?

Shane: He’s my mate, we’re going to be buddies for the rest of our lives, I know that.

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Activity in the Deep South I am in Dunedin with Wayne Johnson from Pizzini Productions because, after discovering what he’s done by reading his story on his webpage, I thought “now here’s somebody who’s done a variety of things and has obviously learnt something out of it and has got some lessons for other people, including myself.”

Ed: Wayne, let’s start with the early years – you say you were in adventure tourism?

Wayne: I worked as a guide instructor, did some study and a diploma in Outdoor Recreation Management and leadership, then got into instructing at Outward Bound for several years. Over that whole time, I had a camera, which was fun to make little short films while I was going through it. So adventure tourism, I was actually a safety kayaker – that was a big part of it, four years safety kayaking, probably another 4-5 years sea-kayak guiding in Milford, so stunning.

Ed: So in that time you had a camera, you’re doing little video things and then you thought “hmmm, I’m actually enjoying this” – so what did you do next?

Wayne: I started editing at the same time, linear editing, playing round with tape – Digital8 was a big advancement in the day from my analogue VCR. I went overseas and shot a few lifestyle docs of my own, just little projects and that really pushed me forward to do some big edits, 50 minute. I didn’t actually realise what I didn’t know of course, as per usual, so I did make a professional video ( and I won’t say where ) and now I look back, “oh my gosh!” Someone came back to me and said “I can see you had a lot of passion for the project” and I was like “oh dear, what does that mean?”

Ed: And this was all paperwork, there was no practical?

Wayne: No it was practical actually – there were many different papers like screen writing which was all theory, all writing and reading and then basic camera skills; that’s like 101 Camera Skills – go out and shoot wides, close-ups, mediums handheld on a tripod, think about the light, composition. It was brilliant.

Ed: But you never actually had one on one with a tutor?

When I first started getting paid to make videos, I was at the time, a safety kayaker on the Shot Over river in Queenstown. A chap turned up with a Sony PD10 and a digital mixer. A friend and I started working for him.

Our assignment was to create a trip video for the paying guests. We had a series of shots to get on the way to the river ( the bus ride, scenery etc. ) as well as record interviews with the guests. Then jump in a kayak and race down the river filming the rafts run key rapids whilst all the time commentating ( trying to be witty and funny but not rude! ) We edited in camera so, if you got a bad shot, you had to rewind the tape and record over it on the spot. After shooting the final rapid, I would race back to base, add music and graphics then present it to the clients, whilst they enjoyed a cool ale of course. Then attempt to sell a copy or two. It was pretty bloody hectic!

Then in 2001, I started studying with Southland Institute of Technology doing a digital film diploma.

Ed: So you didn’t actually go into school, you did this online?

Wayne: I did it online and with materiel posted to me. During the day, I was managing a sea-kayak company, I had the evenings free, it’s quite quiet in Te Anau over winter so I would wrap up in a sleeping bag, hat and gloves, because of course it was a bit chilly, and start doing the assignments. I did three papers at a time, so I had quite a few assignments, up to about 10 or 12 assignments a week to hand in, so it was really busy.

Page 8

something, I’m not using my gear or editing or thinking that way, so that gave me a lot of the projects to do.

Ed: So you went on from there, gave up sea kayaking as a business and started making videos. How did that start?

Wayne: I came to Dunedin, met my wife over here and had to make a decision whether to continue working in outdoor adventure or get into filming. I took the filming option and got a job with Taylormade Media as a camera operator, and also as a creator of props. I also helped the director come up with concepts for the project which was called Super Squad a segment on a childrens programme Studio 2 for TVNZ.

Wayne in Antarctica - not Dunedin!

Wayne:

No, I never met my tutor.

Ed: And it was actually worthwhile?

Wayne: It was very worthwhile, yes. It just gave me the rules to know which ones to break kind of thing.

It showed me what the expectations of the industry were, which was brilliant and it gave me practical things to do, because I think, even now, unless I’m making

We went around the country and looked for the kind of elite athlete, the best performer, brain box and dare devil.

We went to heaps of schools, filmed and interviewed 20 students at a time, 80 for each school.

We used two cameras and then took it back to Dunedin, cut it – I didn’t cut it, Lisa Hastie cut it. We did that for a year and it was great; we had a grand finale, which I didn’t make, because I got called down to Antarctica for a trip. Missing the Super Squad finale was a shame for me because it had been a big year and we had an exciting combination of activities organised including a Triathlon in Auckland. I received a last minute email from a good friend, Graham Charles asking if I could go with them and if I was to accept the job I only had about two weeks before having to leave! I showed my wife, with our 6 month old son. I said “look at this for a lark, there’s no way I can possibly go” but she said “well, you should try” and I accepted.

Ed:

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What was your role?

Wayne: It was the first time for Peregrine Shipping to take a videographer to Antarctica and shoot a day by day diary of the passengers’ experiences. There were 100 passengers on a Russian ship and, for the size of some of the cruise ships down there, it was reasonably low key, but it was still a big ship, quite stable. The first trip was Falklands, South Georgia, Antarctic Peninsula. So I was very busy.

I filmed 3 or 4 excursions per day on shore and from a zodiac; I was meant to be guiding as well, but in the end, the manager who had come down from the Peregrine office was liking the result, so he said just keep filming and don’t worry about the guiding so much, which was a relief because I didn’t know anything about the place, I’d never been down there before. I hadn’t done any study, because I had two weeks to get organised and get out of here.

Ed: And you had to edit that onboard as you went?

Wayne: Yes, I had an iMac bolted to the cabin desk which was very necessary as we had several force 10 storms. I lived with this crazy Scotsman for a couple of weeks. He snored quite loudly, so I’d be editing with my headphones on up until 3 o’clock in the morning. I would have anything up to 45 minutes of footage per excursion that I’d have to cut back to about 4 or 5 minutes with voiceover. I would have to present a DVD to the passengers at the end of their trip.

I took with me a very cheap little fluid head tripod, a directional mic and they gave me a little JVC HD camera. I had to get creative with a zip lock plastic bag and ducktape as I had no water proof housing and only one video camera on board.

The mic is probably sitting on the shore of Elephant Island, maybe – it’ll be corroded by now. There was a

big wind and I was trying to get some shots from the front of the ship and I took the mic off and stuffed it down the front of my jacket and never saw it again.

It was a brilliant, brilliant trip though – an amazing six weeks of filming, the light, the animals. We were supposed to stay five metres away from the wildlife but there just wasn’t a chance. I had king penguins coming up to me and pecking my tripod … it was amazing.

Ed: Well it’s the kind of trip you just really don’t turn down. But now, if we come up to the present day, you’ve been doing a large project with your wife I understand. Something to do with babies?

Wayne: Yes, it’s called Wearing Your Baby and it’s an instructional DVD / downloadable files, on how to use the different slings to carry your baby. It was very popular 1,000 years ago, it was kind of the way to go really, and it’s had a comeback recently. When prams came in, people stopped carrying their babies … that’s the short history.

My wife was writing a book, she got through the history part and said “you take videos, let’s make a YouTube video” and I was like “sure, do I get a budget for a camera?” “Sure.” So I got a little budget and bought a camera. Previous to that I just hired cameras.

Ed:

And there’s enough material for a big DVD?

Wayne: Yes, well when you break down the multitude of carriers out there like Asian carriers, soft structured carriers being the more kind of pack type clip sort of carrier, a 5 metre piece of material that you wrap a baby up with, they’re called Wrap Around Slings …

Ed:

Page 10

And how many hours long is this DVD?

Wayne: Too many hours long! It’s 3.30-3.40, with a little interview section.

Ed: Three hours 40 Wayne, you’re planning to release a 3 hour 40 DVD he asked, hoping he’d misheard?

Wayne: DVD. Ed:

Well it is, it’s done, I can show you the

Oh, is that the time?

Wayne: But it is instructional, so please don’t watch 3 hours 40 of it, just pick your …

Ed:

... it’s got chapters?

Wayne: It’s got chapters – the odd chapter, so you can take it 20 minutes at a time.

Ed: But that’s the hard part isn’t it. You’ve put it all together with much care and thought, and you look at it and you say “that’s far too long, what do I do now?”

Wayne: Well yes, I looked at my director ( being my wife ), and said “yes, dear.” That’s what I did.

Ed:

He’s a wise man – not brave, he’s wise.

Wayne: Ed: Wow! safe Wayne.

Anything for you my dear.

Luckily she’ll never read this, so you’re

Wayne: She does actually! and I pop it beside the bed.

It comes in the mail

Ed: Tell her you were misquoted – that works for me.

Right, now, your cameras of choice. You’ve obviously used a very wide variety of camera over the years.

Wayne: I’ve got a GoPro and I’ve got a Panasonic GH2 which I’ve got here.

Ed:

It looks like a DSLR Wayne?

Wayne: Yes, admittedly, and it’s an old one now.

There was a bit of a movement with Panasonic GH2s 3 or 4 years ago, but why do people use them? There’s one reason, and I’m past my warranty, but this is hacked, so I can get a high bit rate up to a crazy amount – 220 megabits if you really want to go there, but I don’t see the point in that.

Ed: But before this you had a sensible camera. You had a Sony Z5?

Wayne: Yes – I’ve actually been using an EX3 recently, which was just before finishing my last job, and that’s a lovely camera too; and the Z5 is fantastic, I’ve used that since they came out.

Ed:

And you’ve still got your Z5?

Wayne: No, it was a University work camera. We had three of them, and we had EX3s in the studio, which I managed to get out in the field for a project, which was great. That was a steep learning curve.

Why have I got a GH2? How can I justify this? I like the depth of field – aaargh! I bought a little fast lens for it, it’s great in low light, it’s sharp, it’s quite a stunning image.

Ed: I guess the test is that you’ve experienced it now and you’ve found the good points and the bad points, the question would be, if you’re going to buy another camera, what would you buy?

Wayne: That’s a really good question. I’m looking at a GH4 which is 4K and I’ve already got the lenses from my GH2. So it would be either that or a video camera. I’d love to go for an EX3 or something like that, just so I get a reasonable amount of control over it, or the latest Z5 would be absolutely fine too, and probably more in my budget really. There’s no doubt that, with the GH2, I’ve got to have a lot of bits and pieces on a rig to get the camera shooting good audio and video at the same time, so a bit of a pain in the neck really.

Ed:

So then why do you persist?

Wayne: Because that’s what I’ve got and I’m on a very tight budget. I’ve just got back into working freelancing and I don’t have any money to spend on gear right now, so I’m persisting; I’ve got what I need and it’s good for me, it makes me work harder. I’ve got to light it well or use the light well and I’m getting quite a nice image out of it; I’m quite happy with it even though it makes me work harder.

Ed: Alright, so that’s one hair shirt … in terms of editing, you’ve been using Final Cut for many years, although Premiere at one of the places of work?

Wayne: Yes, I’ve always been Final Cut Pro right from the beginning and occasionally delved into Premiere. I use Photoshop in the Adobe suite quite a bit.

Premiere was good.

It was easy to step to Premiere from Final Cut and I was using that because I was working with wmv files actually and I just thought it was simpler. It just seemed a quicker workflow to use Premiere and a better result with the wmv files, and I liked it and got used to it, but I privately stuck with Final Cut. And then when Final Cut X came out, I purchased it but hardly used it in its first year; I kept the Final Cut 7 and went through the astonishment of the move that Apple made and waited for it to develop into something useful. Then the last project I did with the University, I thought “right, I’ll just dive into it” and I love it, it’s good. The magnetic timeline I wanted to turn off right at the beginning like most, and now I’m completely used to it and I’m a lot faster on Final Cut X. – mainly because of the magnetic timeline actually. It just keeps things flowing, especially when you’re cutting a lot of footage, it’s really very quick.

Ed: So it’s not limited by not being so compatible with Photoshop as Premiere would be?

Wayne: Well I use Motion a lot. I haven’t done a lot of text and graphics recently, but Motion’s fine, I can open up a project in there and edit it and relink back to the Final Cut. Basically, I usually export my Photoshop files finished.

It’s been interesting making a DVD recently because I hadn’t made one for some time. I had to go back to the old iMac and use that, and I still went back to DVD Studio Pro because it’s a fantastic application and I never really got to know the Adobe … what’s it called?

Ed: It’s called Encore, and you’re probably better off not knowing it.

Wayne: Yeah, I figured the same. I did try it; I’ve made DVDs through Encore but I haven’t since. So now in Final Cut X, I’m chapter marking everything on the timeline and I can index it through chapter marks, which was brilliant near the end – just to make quick final cuts and re-timing of graphics ( there’s a crazy amount of graphics and menu pages in our DVD.) Ed: Now you’ve also got a job during the day which pays most of your bills, and that’s at the local Polytech.

What’s involved there?

Wayne: That’s two days a week really, apart from parenting. I’ve picked up a few contracts since coming back to Dunedin ( I was away for a year working at a different job ) and I’ve had several projects, just as simple as recording a presentation with PowerPoint, to making vet nursing teaching resources. So recently I recorded a couple of Staffordshires in operations getting their testicles removed, which wasn’t particularly pleasant on the close-ups.

Page 11

Ed:

Well it depends what was for lunch?

Wayne: that day.

Yeah, yeah I didn’t have lunch, I flagged it

Ed: As long as it wasn’t mountain oysters on the menu?

Wayne:

No, no, not very filling!

Wayne: Yes, from sitting down to planning what they want to do, producing it and directing it – self directing.

I heard of something good recently – “educate your client” – I think it’s a fantastic line, because I’ve had to educate a lot of different clients.

None of them are directors or anything, but they want a video and they want it shot well and looking good.

Ed: Now the interesting thing about this though is that it’s a bit of a hybrid job because you’re not just an employee, you’re actually providing some of the technology?

Wayne: Yes I shot it with the little GH2 actually and I tell you what, brilliant, lovely.

Ed: Because you were in a studio and you had lots of light?

Wayne: No, I took some big soft lights. I have to take them everywhere; it’s a ridiculous amount of gear I’m carrying …

Ed:

... because you’ve got a GH2?

Wayne: I don’t know actually; do you reckon a Z5 would be as good in low light? We should do a little comparison.

I’m not sure … I’d love to take a Z5 in there and see how it performs, I’m sure it would be fine; it would be a lot easier.

Ed: So basically, you’re a contracted gun and you supply the technology and do the material for them?

Page 12

Ed: So you think that’s actually an important step, in that relationship with your client, that you first sit them down, listen to what they have to say and then be proactive in telling them “well, these are the good things about what you want, but these are the bad things, and this is what I recommend?”

Wayne: Absolutely. And actually give them a breakdown of what the day’s going to be like.

I think it’s so important that they don’t go in not knowing that I’m going to be stopping and starting and asking them just to hold a second, so I can get this shallow depth of field focus right.

Ed: Do you feel that some people in our industry might be a bit scared of that in that they don’t want to tell the client “no” because the client might get upset and think well this guy’s no good, and go and get somebody else?

Wayne: I think I kind of gauge what they’re like, how much they can absorb, and then from there, I’ll manage my conversation with them and tell them what’s important for them to make decisions about. I don’t often say “no, I’m not going to give you that”; I’ll just work around how we can get the information they need to be presented in a way that works for the audience.

Ed: And they’re accepting of what you tell them, more and more?

Wayne: Yes, I think the more I know what I want to do, they kind of tend to agree. If I’m making sense, they seem to follow along pretty well. I haven’t had too many clients who have told me “no, we’re going to do it this way”.

I think because I’ve worked in a variety of locations with different people from adventure tourism in Queenstown, to five years at the University, which is an institution, so you need to learn that whole process of working with 2,000 staff you know …

Ed:

And bureaucrats?

Wayne: Thank you – no comment! So working with such a variety of people was really interesting.

Ed: It sounds as though your expertise is really varied; that over the years, you’ve learned a whole lot of skills and you’re able to put together a package for a client that helps the client deliver what they want to deliver, but they hadn’t thought of it?

Wayne: Yes, ideally, you always give someone a little bit extra, so they’re like “wow, that’s a bit more than I expected”.

Wayne adds “off air” – one of the reasons NZ Video News works for me is that it is a New Zealand magazine. This makes a big difference when you’re interested in the local industry – what’s happening and who is involved. It hits the spot with current and relevant information from across the world with good humour to boot. Also, being a paper copy, I can read it where I choose and when I choose, without having to sit in front of a screen again!

Wayne with GH2 and talent.

I know from mistakes, and not asking the right questions at the beginning, I didn’t get it right, so I’d have to go back and spend a lot more time getting it right, and it was just the simple questions really; you know, “how do you see it looking at the end?”

They might not know, but once you start talking through a few things, they start getting a picture, especially if there are certain television programmes they like …

Ed:

Yes, they want Lord of the Rings don’t they?

Wayne: Ed:

Absolutely.

And they want a big dragon in this scene?

Wayne: Yes, that’s right. So I try to give them what they want. In fact, I’ve just recorded a job a week ago and I sat down in someone’s house yesterday and we looked through the footage and it was a good process.

I front loaded the meeting explaining “this is what you’re going to see here”, which was the test shoot really and we don’t always get that luxury of having a test shoot, but there’s quite a few hours in this job, so I knew we could get some B roll, we could look through it and go “right, now you can see that’s not quite in focus because you said that you wanted that ‘now’ and I turned around and shot and it wasn’t quite in focus.”

Ed: That’s difference?

Wayne: say.

where

the

Yeah, maybe.

Z5

might

have

made

a

Hard to say really, hard to

Ed: Oh well, you stick with your DSLR, you know, work hard at it.

Wayne: one too.

Ed:

Yes well that’s standard for DSLRs isn’t it?

Wayne: Ed:

Page 14

Finally a story about DSLRs – and a cheap

Yes, cheap results, right. Ha!

My work is done – we’ll stop it there!

NZVN

EDIUS in Action We are in Christchurch at the offices of AVA with Mike Symes, a tireless proponent of EDIUS and he has been for many years. Mike said “actually, the man you need to talk to is this young chap Rik Roberts.”

Ed: So Rik, you didn’t actually start with EDIUS, you came from a Liquid background?

Rik: Yes – but actually, before that was Speed Razor, which was a long time ago.

I used Liquid for many years and edited a few short films and training videos on it, and then moved onto EDIUS when it came out.

Ed: But Liquid, you loved it at the time?

Rik: Yes, I thought it was fantastic. It was pretty flexible, it had a lot of features in the integrated DVD authoring. That was a big selling point, as you could do all your editing on the timeline and then all your menus on the timeline, make the DVD and it just worked. It was really great. It had all the multi-format and the automatic saves, and everything you did saved instantly, there was no loss of work if your computer crashed or things like that.

Ed: But then, as with other software, no developments – nothing changed, nothing improved and the rest of the world moved on, so you had to move on too?

Rik: That’s right,. There were several new formats coming out as time went on and, obviously, new Windows operating systems and faster processors, but Avid Liquid didn’t seem to keep up with the changes, so you got to the point where there were massive problems. I remember getting up at 3am to check on my render, because I knew that, 8 times out of 10 it would crash halfway through, I’d have to start it again and clients are waiting for their project, so I had a few sleepless nights doing the big renders and things like that.

So enough was enough and Mike said I should try EDIUS and that was when version 4 was out. I tried it and initially I hated it. I guess it’s the same with any change – you’ve been using something for so many years and then try something new. But I persevered and thought “no, no I’m going to try it again” and basically after I did my first project with it I loved it. I sat down and just went through the whole edit of this project I was working on, and by the end of it, I was thinking this is pretty good.

Ed: And you didn’t have any rendering problems?

Rik: No, that’s the thing … and it wasn’t until I tried going back to an old project in Liquid that I realised how many work a-rounds I was doing just to get Avid to work, whereas EDIUS would just work – you start it up, load the project, and away you go. So I guess the thing that was really cool with EDIUS was that any media you want, just throw it in the bin, throw it on a timeline, real time rendering, it just works. You can even take a VOB straight from the DVD …

Ed: Oh you’re not supposed to do that though are you?

Rik: Sure, as long as you own the copyright of the material on DVD, that’s fine!

Ed: However, EDIUS isn’t well known, certainly not in New Zealand. I know in Japan it’s regarded as the editing platform of choice and I’ve certainly seen it in America in TV stations, being used as their main editing platform, but New Zealand has never really taken to it.

Do you know why?

Rik: I think there are a couple of things – the marketing of it is one big reason. If you compare it to the most talked about NLE’s, either Final Cut or Adobe Premiere, I think the reason those two are often talked about is because they are what they teach at the universities and schools; that’s what they use. It’s either going to be Adobe or Final Cut because, if you’re Mac based, then you’re Final Cut; if you’re Windows, then you’re probably going to have Premiere. And Adobe do quite a bit of marketing around the whole integration piece. A lot of people use Photoshop; a lot of people use After Effects, so it’s kind of natural to use

Page 16

Premiere too.

I’ve used Premiere as well, because I do a lot of After Effects work, but it’s not the be all and end all in terms of editing. It’s nice, but it’s not the best pure video editing platform I don’t think.

Ed: Do you think it’s easier to move from Premiere to EDIUS than it was Liquid to EDIUS? Rik: Yes. I used EDIUS before I went to Premiere and now I mix between the two and I think they’re pretty similar nowadays in feature set. In fact there was a point ( and actually I think there still is ) where the EDIUS developers were very responsive to the market; they’d bring out updates and fixes a lot more often and earlier than Premiere did. Having both installed, I’d see all the fixes coming out. So often you’d see new supportive functions in EDIUS long before you’d see them in Premiere.

Ed: Do you have to pay for those fixes?

Rik with an EDIUS pupil.

Rik: No, it’s all part of it. I mean, every now and then they do a big, like a 6 to a 7 or I’m guessing one day 7 to 8 – they’re the big “pay for” upgrades, but all the fixes and the changes in the market are included within the free upgrades as part of that dot version. So yes, mixing between the two is a lot easier, because they do share common layouts nowadays and common themes and things, but in terms of performance, EDIUS beats it hands down.

Ed: Are you able to transfer files between the two -– files that you might have created in one and thought “aah I want to take that clip with those effects etc, everything I’ve done, and bring it into the other one”?

Rik: Export them, import them, there are no problems there. They both support a lot of formats, but EDIUS seems to support them without any little quirks or little work a-rounds. I guess all the NLEs these days are catching up to each other pretty quickly, but I think the strongest feature for EDIUS is the fact that it’s just so simple and fast. Like with the whole JKL forward / more on page 20

Page 17

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reverse, it’s just so responsive. I sit there with a contour shuttle and I do one-handed editing, so I’ve got a massive one hour clip, I can just go fast forward clip, cut, cut, cut and within no amount of time at all, I’ve got my trimmed down version, whereas in Premiere, a lot more mouse work, a lot more waiting, so you hit “pause” there’s a slight delay; you rewind, slight delay.

EDIUS is just instant – and it goes back to simplicity, there’s no fancy rendering, or no requirements from a video card, it just uses the CPU. Ed: In terms of telling your clients this is the editing programme I’m using, they have never heard of it and they’d say “oh, why can’t you use an Avid” – have you never had that situation?

Rik: Not really. I guess at some of the demos and stuff I’ve done, I’ve talked about EDIUS and done demonstrations and people have asked the questions what about this feature, and what about that feature, but I think you can’t sell it on features alone – it’s the experience that I think is more key. So you have a

Ed: So Mike, is it good to have Rik here being able to do the demos for you?

Mike: Absolutely. He’s always been very generous with his time, but it’s very important that the customers can actually just give him a call and he will give them advice. He’s also doing other things too, with people who have got other platforms who have had issues and problems – he’s converted video for them, particularly in the old days with Adobe Premiere, the earlier versions with the audio issues, he’s done a lot of conversions for people in that area, so no problem.

Ed: But it’s good to have him as your “on the ground” support for EDIUS? Mike: Yes, absolutely.

Ed: Well those are great words from Mike aren’t they.

He obviously values your presence in this community?

Rik: I’ve been working for him for a long time. I remember as a kid, dad used to come here and look to buy a video camera and I’d be really excited – you know, “I get to see Mike Symes and hear about a new toy” and things and so it all started from there. You get to play with the cameras and then the editing software.

Ed: So do you have a Mike Symes poster on your wall at home?

Rik: Not quite – just the life-size cut-out!

Ed: Right, we’ll put in our order later. But that leads us onto the other side of your business, video production – what’s your camera of choice at the moment?

Rik: I’m currently shooting on a Sony EX3. I’ve had that for five years now. I really like it and it seems to be quite a popular camera, but I’m now looking to get into the shallow depth of field with the FS700, because I actually have two jobs – I work full time as an IT solution architect, but I run my business as well, Precision Studios. I’ve been making short films since I was 15. I’ve won a couple of awards, so hopefully I’m doing something right in that area.

I also create training videos, wedding videos, promotional online videos and things like that.

Rik on a stabilized shoot.

product that’s going to be extremely fast, easy to use, you do not have to do little work a-rounds, you can just work through, save your project, edit it, export it. Like in Premiere for example, you’d throw on a bit of footage and it will pop up an alert saying “your sequencing doesn’t match this format, do you want to change it – yes/no”? If you hit “yes” that means your real time playback is degraded, so more rendering is required.

Whereas in EDIUS, it doesn’t care, you just put any format up on the timeline and carry on. There are no pop ups, no warnings, it just handles it. So little things like that don’t stop your workflow, you’re just working.

When you’re trying to create something you want your tool to help you in that process, not hinder you.

Ed: So you say you’re doing demos – you’re actually a trainer for EDIUS I understand?

Rik: Yes … I wouldn’t say I’m an authorised one …

Ed: You’re the best available in the area?

Rik: I’m not sure if there’s anyone else in Christchurch, so I get quite a few calls “come round and show me how to do this.”

I can do it remotely nowadays using the Internet, which is quite cool.

Ed: So there Christchurch?

are

quite

a few

EDIUS

users

in

Rik: Yes, EDIUS and EDIUS Neo. Neo’s like the reduced feature set, the more prosumer “lite” version.

With both of those products, there are feature differences, but the experience is the same, nice, fast and simple.

Ed:

So you’re not married?

Rik: I just got married last November to my amazing wife Bridget.

Ed:

And you’re still allowed to do all this?

Rik: Yes, my wife knew what she was taking on – at least I think she did.

Ed: Time will tell. Now, shallow depth of field, FS700, how is this going to affect your workflow do you think?

Rik: I think for the more creative stuff, especially the films and the wedding stuff, it will be quite cool to have a new take on things, however for when I’m filming live events or training videos and things like that, it’s going to be a bit more work involved on the shoot day, just because you’ve got to get that focus bang on.

Ed: So why wouldn’t you use the EX3 in those situations?

Rik: I probably would for a lot of those, but I’d like to get more creative in a lot of my shots; I think I’m a bit old-school with a few of the things I do, so I want to get a bit more creative with everything really – as much as you can.

Ed: And do you think your clients will appreciate that extra effort you put in?

Rik: I think it’s knowing the client and knowing what they want, so if it’s a live event, or training videos and things like that, certainly it’s safer to stick with the EX3 but if they want something extra, or a bit of a point of

Page 20

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difference, then I bring both along, do these extra cutaways, do the B roll, show that with the shallow field.

Ed: And of course, you’ve got no concerns about any of the footage that you take being able to be edited on EDIUS? Rik: No problems at all. It will just handle it. I think EDIUS was the first to support 4K before anyone else, and the FS700 is 4K ready, so you can get the bolt-on attachments to go 4K and I’m confident that, when I get to 4K, EDIUS is there ready to handle it. I’ve been mucking around with shallow depth of field for a long time; I ended up buying those adapters you bolt onto the front of your camera with the prisms and the spinning glass and things like that.

Ed: It’s called a Letus or something?

Rik: Letus35 ... I purchased the Redrock Micro version. Cool idea, back when large sensor cameras were really expensive, but it was just too bulky and impractical to use; whereas now, for around the 10K mark, you can get a camera that’s 4K ready, large sensor, changeable lenses, and takes SD cards, so it’s pretty good these days.

Ed: So what else are you looking forward to when you go to 4K? Rik: I do a lot of interview work and with being a single camera, it’s tricky sometimes to get extra shots to make the interview not so monotonous. Having 4K means you can zoom in and crop your image and get a fake second angle out of the same bit of footage, without losing any quality. So you can still go down to 1080, even though you’ve only cropped to a quarter of your original image. So that’s quite good.

Ed: And I guess, to finish this off, since Mike has been so nice about you, do you have any nice words to say about him? You can say no if you like.

Rik: Oh I’m sure there are one or two nice things I can say. As I said before, I‘ve known Mike for many years, since I was a wee fella. Over the years, it’s been quite clear that he’s very knowledgeable about all the products and what other products are up to, so he’s always up to date and across everything. And also within the Christchurch area and beyond, he’s always talking to …

Ed:

He’s always talking, yeah!

Rik: He’s always talking, but he’s always in touch with the schools, the universities, the polytechs and what they’re teaching there and suggesting improvements and alternatives. He’s talking to clients all the time and if he sees a problem, he suggests things you can do. I guess being in touch with the market gives you that depth of knowledge that he can help a lot of his clients out. They might be struggling for weeks or months with a problem and they don’t know that this solution exists, but Mike will know.

Ed: So he’s given you some good advice over the years?

Rik: Yes, lots of golden nuggets there. He’s always letting me know about the next version of this, the upgrade to that – or the challenges this editing company is having both politically and philosophically; he likes all the new toys and new gadgets coming out and likes to share the love I guess – share the knowledge.

NZVN

Page 22

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And the Winner is … continues Phil Keoghan tells me more about why he has chosen the camera technology he has for various jobs.

Ed: Manufacturers have said, over the years, that their particular product is a future proof product, but in this case it’s really true, that a good solid 4K recording will stand the test of time and the flexibility of a range of outputs?

Phil: Absolutely and you know, I’ve had lots of conversations with people about why and when you would choose to use 4K, how much you would invest Phil at the Sony in a piece of equipment and then, consequently, the glass. The piece of glass on the front of this image capture device has such a profound effect on the end result …

press conference with local Sony dignitaries.

we were going to get and obviously we would love to go out and purchase a half a million dollars’ worth of lenses, feature beautiful feature lenses, but …

Ed: Say that again for some people who don’t quite get that Phil?

Ed: There’s just not that much money in documentary making?

Phil: Well ultimately, photography is really as simple as light going onto some device that captures that light.

What that light runs through to get to that image capturing device affects obviously the quality. So you could have the best capturing device in the world, but if you put a crappy piece of glass between the light and the capturing device, you suddenly have dumbed that image down to the weakest link which now happens to be this crappy piece of glass on the front. We were lucky enough to be sponsored by the French lens company Angénieux, who fell in love with what we were doing. They had these beautiful new Optimo lenses and they gave us a half a million dollars’ worth of their best lenses to put on the front of this beautiful F55 camera.

We were spoilt for a month and when we came back, we have our own F55, we were looking at what lenses

Phil: No, we were spoilt. Now what’s great about the 55 is that, with the different mounts, you can use different lenses and, depending on the application of what it is you’re shooting … for instance, if we’re doing a sit-down interview, I can take my Nikon lenses. I have Nikon lenses going back to 35 years from when I was a kid. I have an 80-200 2.8 Nikon lens and with the mount I can put that on, it’s a lovely long lens, I can open it right up and I can do sit-down interviews with one of my own still lenses.

Now there is a company in Los Angeles that actually will take your old lenses, like your old Nikkor lenses, take the casing off the outside and re-engineer them to be cinematic lenses, so that they have rings and that they have a nice weight in the focus and they have a nice weight in the zoom, so a very different feel from still photography where you’re not manipulating the zoom or the focus while you’re actually taking an image; you set it, you shoot. Cinematically of course, that’s very different.

But I think this whole idea of “why shoot 4K?” ... people have got to ask themselves, why? And what is the end result, where is it going to, what’s the shelf life, everybody looks at the front end, at the image and goes “Oh my God, it’s incredible, it looks so much better than HD” and that’s very true, but if you’re squeezing quality like that down through a pipe and you pump it out through a straw, like you know, it starts off the size of a football and then you squeeze it down into the size of a straw, it’s sort of like “why are you doing it at that front end?” Now if you’re doing it at the front end because you’re archiving,

Photo: Doug Jensen.

more on page 27

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because the product can actually have a shelf life and you think it could be saleable for a very long time and you’re preserving it for the future, then it makes a lot of sense because where we are right now, in 2014, we’re kind of where HD was in 2004.

One of the first productions that we did in HD – we were shooting HD before a lot of productions were investing in HD – it cost us a little bit more, but the reality is that that content is still saleable 10 years later, whereas other people who were only shooting in SD then, nobody wants a 4x3 SD image.

Ed: In the decision to shoot 4K, if you can’t afford the glass to go with the 4K, you’re probably better off shooting HD because you’re going to get a better resolution at the HD level than you would with 4K with poor glass?

Photo: Doug Jensen.

Phil: Well again, it depends on the application; it depends on what you’re doing; it depends on whether you’re going to see the quality of the lens. There are lots of different lens options – where you really see the difference in the really high quality lenses is when you’re shooting in extreme lighting conditions or where the camera is put in an extreme situation where, maybe you’re running with the camera or you’re moving, you’re panning the camera very quickly over a landscape. But if the application is still or let’s say it’s a

drama or you’re shooting a film or something like that, you can make some compromises with the lenses. It’s just that I’ve seen people use lenses that are really so inferior that it’s not worth it. But there are still lots of good lens options without having to go to say Angénieux lenses where you can get great results. I mean, you’d be hard pressed to see the difference between my Nikkor lens and an Angénieux lens; the eye, the regular person watching that in a sit down interview, you’d be hard pressed to see it. That doesn’t

Page 27

mean that people can’t see it, but it’s just that the average viewer’s not going to see that.

Ed: You were talking just then about the “run and gun” situation where you were doing quick pans, you were doing lots of movement – this brings up the question of the large single sensor and shooting progressive. How do you get around that; how can you shoot progressive in a “run and gun” situation?

Phil: You know, that might be outside my bandwidth of knowledge to know how to do that. I do know that, using the lenses that we had, and using the configuration that we had and shooting the XAVC files that we shot in HD, that we got phenomenal results.

Now I don’t know enough technically to be able to say where you’d be making compromises with that material.

I do know that the way we were set up it worked fine for what we were doing.

Ed:

So what frame rate were you using?

Phil: We went with 30p, and the reason we went with 30p is that last time we shot our film in HD in 24p, but we really could have done with those extra frames at times where we wanted to slow things down. We took with us an FS700 camera which can shoot full 2K up to 120 frames per second and we did shoot some slo-mo stuff there and the idea is that we’re going to bump that

up to 4K and it’s in slo-mo – it actually looks quite nice.

That was what we decided was the best; we tested various frame rates and for what we were doing and documenting and for many different reasons we decided ultimately that that was the best for us. Because of course, the great thing about post is, sometimes people limit themselves at the front end, when we have so many options at the back end in postproduction. If we want to spit out a 24p version of the film down the line, we can, it’s not a problem. But that’s what we started with. The primary outlet for this would be in television, so we went with 30p.

Ed:

And the primary outlet’s American television?

Phil: Well no, in this particular case it’s going to be much more of an international outlet, we have a lot of interest from France obviously because it’s a French story; I hope we get interest for it in New Zealand because it’s a New Zealand story.

Ed:

Then why not shoot it in a PAL format?

Phil: Because ultimately, the bulk of the eyeballs will be in the United States. We have our last film on Showtime right now, it was in theatres here and again, it’s not going to be a problem, we tested outputting this as a PAL format, it’s not a problem. There are so many options technically now that you’re not as restricted as you used to be in the past, with having to lock yourself in at one format – it’s amazing now what you can do.

The deliverables that we had on our last film – I think somebody said that in Avatar, James Cameron had 72 different deliverables for his film. The other thing was, a lot of the archive material that we’re working with is also at 30p, because we have archive material going right back to the 20’s.

You know, you can always look back in hindsight and say we could have done this, should have done that, but at the end of the day …

Ed: It’s what you’ve got, you’ve got to make it work?

Phil: Yes. The Amazing Race is a show that I got asked to host back in 2001, produced by Bruckheimer Television, World Race Productions and CBS. Over the years, I’ve become a co-executive

Photo: Doug Jensen.

Page 28

producer and I also write my scripts and I work with a small team to produce my pieces. I was always very interested in seeing The Amazing Race shot in HD, just because of the nature of the show – it’s in 100 countries and it’s the perfect show to show off the world.

Amazing Race right now. I mean I’m sure people pull it out and watch it occasionally, but it’s much more of a topical type of a show. It’s like a sports event, people still will go back and watch the 1989 World Cup, but really they’re interested in the latest World Cup.

The challenge for many years was shooting The Amazing Race in HD around the world is very different from shooting a show that’s based in one place, where you have access to equipment. It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t just go anywhere in the world and find an HD camera, so we would rely a lot on local equipment in various countries that we were in, and predominantly the camera of choice around the world, whether it was PAL or NTSC, was a Beta SP. So it was harder for us to make that transition than, say, another show that was shot just in one country or maybe, you know, Survivor was shot on an island and you fly all that equipment to the island and you shoot.

But cameras break, they get lost, sometimes you arrive in a country and equipment doesn’t turn up and then you’ve got to rent local equipment, and imagine if your deliverable is HD and then you suddenly can’t find equipment and you’re in Botswana or something. Now we’re shooting on XDCAM and the predominant camera now that we use is an F800.

Ed: They’re even watching Mr Ed dubbed in Maori now.

Ed:

So that’s onto a disc?

Phil: Yes. Ed: And again, XDCAM is something that has become ubiquitous?

Phil: Today that’s like the Beta SP of 10 years ago, you know what I mean. You go all round the world, you’ll see XDCAM cameras. You can pretty much find one of those just as easily as you used to be able to find Beta SP cameras and that file format makes a lot of sense for us, because of the fact that you’re shooting on a little disc. They’re incredibly durable and I actually take those discs with all my stand-ups and I do a stringer for the editor with timecode and I give him all my keeper takes. I love working bare with all the files and the thumbnails, I can go in and keeper all my takes. So for what we do it makes a lot of sense. The show has just added an F55 to shooting some of the dressing shots, but again, for right now, it’s not really an option for running and gunning with the teams.

That may change with the fact that they’ve now adjusted it, but at the end of the day, it’s very different shooting a reality show from say shooting a film, because I can’t tell you whether season 20 of The Amazing Race is still going to be watched in 10 years from now. It’s very different from shooting something where you know – like The Godfather will probably be watched forever and a day, or any of Bruckheimer’s movies. But I don’t know how many people are watching season 1 of The

Phil: Oh is that right – are you serious?

Ed: Sad but true. Well anyway, do you feel more comfortable having that optical disc than temporarily on a stick?

Phil: Well initially, yes. Initially, it was just weird to me that I would be wiping something that I’ve shot!

Initially, I was really frightened to wipe something but, having worked with this media manager that we had away with us, he was very savvy with the technology, and because we haven’t had one issue, I now feel way more comfortable. It’s one of those things, sometimes you just have to do it to sort of … you know there’s also so many pieces of software now that will protect, make sure that your files are all intact.

Ed:

But did you ever backup your optical discs?

Phil: Oh yes, we always did, but that became the first backup. The master was the first backup and then I made a copy. Now when you shoot on these SXS cards, you make a copy then you make another copy, and when you have two copies, then you go back and you wipe the original. But you only wipe the original once you know you’ve got two. So I don’t even wipe it after I’ve got one … I make sure that there’s two before that original gets wiped.

Ed:

Do you use the Cloud at all?

Phil: I’ve been shown ways to use it. I’ve uploaded files and proxies from the F800 when I’ve done News pieces, but I haven’t really had the need to do it. I can see how there might be a project in the future where I would use it, but at this stage, with the stuff that I’ve done, I haven’t really had the need.

Ed: Okay, so what’s the next step – another big documentary coming?

Page 30

Photo: Doug Jensen.

Phil: Well we’re planning on riding the length of New Zealand … a travel special.

Ed:

On bicycles?

Phil: Uh-huh – and using the cycle-ways. That’s something that we’re thinking about doing and we’d like to do it in 4K as well. I think it would be a great tourist piece for the country and that’s definitely a piece where … you see, even if you look at Tourism New Zealand’s material, they have all this incredible footage, every few years they update their footage right? They go and shoot the footage. But there’s a perfect example of where Tourism New Zealand or anybody who is into promoting New Zealand, should be shooting with the absolute latest technology every time they update that material, because they want that material to last as long as possible before they have to upgrade it, because like now all their stuff is in HD. There was a time I remember when I was sourcing stuff to do News stories, where they only had SD, then they upgraded to HD and now we’re going to 4K, so they need to be on the very edge … that’s an example where you absolutely want to be right at the very edge of what technology is available.

Ed: And that’s going to be a lot more tricky for you, because you’re not going to be able to take a motorcycle on the cycle-ways, let alone a car, as your camera truck?

Phil: Yes … we may get some concessions. We’re going to work with the cycle-way people – we’ll have to work out how to shoot it. Maybe just shot from different ways. We might have to use a different method of shooting, maybe aerial stuff, we don’t know.

There’s always a way, like Sir Ernest Rutherford said “We didn’t have money, so we had to think.” There’s always a way.

Ed:

And you’re not tempted to do anything in 3D?

Phil: No … I don’t. I could be wrong, maybe people will embrace it, but I’m not there with 3D yet. I may end up being wrong about that but if I’m not mistaken, some feature films, even though they didn’t shoot intentionally for 3D in the beginning, they’ve converted to 3D – is that right?

Ed:

Um, well, yes.

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Phil: I don’t know how they do it … I guess they offset the two images or something and create some depth, but I don’t know, I’m not convinced. All the TVs are coming out with 3D now aren’t they?

Ed: Well some have, but having seen 8K from NHK – have you seen that yet?

Phil: No but I will. Potential?

Ed:

Definitely.

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