NZVN February 2016

FEBRUARY 2016

Camera Evolution We begin 2016 at DVT in Auckland with Stuart Barnaby and we’re discussing camera evolution because, as a new camera appears along, it generates a gap in the market.

Sometimes, the competition fills it or the manufacturer later comes out with another camera that fits in that slot.

Now it looks as though we’ve found a new area where there was a gap that has now been filled, and it’s in the 4K market.

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Stuart: Absolutely, just as HD was when that came out. It wasn’t a question of how soon HD would come in or whether it would come in. Inevitably it has, and HD became the standard, and 4K is now rapidly moving that way as well.

Ed: What are we looking at here Stuart?

Stuart: There’s been a bit of a hole in the 4K market for a while.

When 4K first came out, it was on higher end cameras that required interchangeable lenses and complex rigging to set them up – whether that was driven for the DSLR market or from the more cinematic 35mm market – there were 4K options in both of those fields but they were quite complex systems.

But what’s happened lately is that 4K has now well and truly come into the standard handycam style of camera.

Ed: And 4K is being supported Chris and Stuart with some of the camera range available at DVT. right through the workflow in so many areas. It’s not a case of just futureproofing by recording in 4K, you actually have the The other real key thing that makes 4K easy is that purchasing 4K technology today is no more expensive ability to record adequate amounts of material on cards and you have the possibility to edit it and even release it than purchasing HD technology was 2-3 years ago; just as purchasing HD was no more expensive than SD on the internet. So 4K is a standard that’s here to stay?

technology 5 or 6 years earlier. So the cost of these 4K handycam style cameras is no more expensive than the HD or SD handycam style cameras we have had in the past. One of the really good things is that the cost to shoot, edit, grade and deliver 4K is a significantly easier transition from HD to 4K than it was going from SD to HD. So there’s really no reason to be concerned about 4K as far as cost implications with post production. 4K is a wonderful production and post production tool to be able to use.

Then of course, you can always downconvert for the particular delivery platform that you’re working with – whether it’s SD on DVD or YouTube delivery or web delivery or for broadcast.

Ed: With 4K in the handycam biggest difference has to be in the the HD era, and even in standard was the way to go. But with 4K, option?

style camera, the sensors. I know in def, having 3 chips 3 chips are not an

Stuart: Just as we saw changes in image sensor technology in the past with the change from CCD image sensors to CMOS image sensors – and there were some issues with CMOS image sensors with the rolling shutter issues and other things that we all had to grapple with – there’s an inevitable change in technology as we move from HD to 4K. It requires different image sensor technology. All 4K cameras have a single larger image sensor, but with these handycam style 4K cameras the image sensors are not 35mm image sensors – most of them are typically 1 inch so it gives you a slightly shallower depth of field over what would traditionally be a 3 chip, 1/3rd inch camera. But it’s not super dramatic – it gives you a few more creative opportunities – you can get a slightly shallower depth of field in interview situations, but it’s certainly got a big enough depth of field to do “run and gun” type productions, which these handycam style cameras are ideal for – whether it’s wedding or event videography or you’re doing corporate, product or training videos, and you want to put these sorts of cameras in the hands of people that aren’t necessarily experts in high end production, but can just get out there and shoot some really good pictures.

Ed: So a 1 inch sensor is equivalent to 25mm, so 25 as opposed to 35 – you’re looking at about two-thirds the width of that sensor. I know in some of the smaller handycam HD cameras, there was interpolation going on, so the actual pixel array wasn’t full HD such as with the HDV format … are these 1 inch sensors a full pixel array?

Stuart: Yes absolutely, they’re full 4K no holds barred image sensors.

As everyone knows, 4K technology has now been around for quite some time.

Manufacturers of 4K image sensors have been doing it long enough now to be able to bang out appropriate ones for these more handycam style cameras. What these cameras give you that some of the other options don’t is just simple ease and convenience of use. It is that “run and gun” type thing, you can pick up the camera, turn it on, all the audio options are there, the control of it is all there, it’s an integrated lens, so you

don’t have to change lenses or worry about any of the lens mounts or any of that sort of stuff. So it’s simple, convenient, but the quality of all of the components involved in this new range of cameras is extremely high – they have good quality lenses, really great recording mechanisms, very simple ease of use operation, menu systems that we’re all familiar with as well.

Ed: Now one of the points that I’ve often made about the 4K cameras that have been out before these, was that they’re really cine cameras – and I would define a cine camera as one that has a very shallow depth of field. Now I know it’s not just me who bangs on about this and I’ve certainly heard from cinematographers who say they’re great if you know how to use them, but it is quite a learning curve, they’re not video cameras where everything can be in focus all the time. You do have to work with them, you do have to be more careful how you shoot, otherwise you’re going to waste footage. With these handycam 4K, you still have the ability to have a shallow depth of field, but it’s less difficult to take everything in focus all the time?

Stuart: Yes, people need to be skilled in the operation of their tools, and cameras are no different.

For example we’ve had an HD camera, the Sony PXWX160 which has a 25x optical zoom lens. When you zoom in on that, you have to pay attention to your focus because it’s very, very shallow when you get that long on the lens. With these 4K handycam cameras you need to work on focus as well, but it’s no harder to focus these cameras than it is a PXW-X160. So you know they’re very simple and convenient, but the depth of field you get out of them is nowhere near as shallow as you would out of a 35mm camera. It’s nothing to be too concerned about but absolutely, we would make sure that all of our customers are paying attention to focus and we’d also make sure they’re paying attention to exposure, audio, white balance and everything else that they need to do to drive the camera properly.

Ed: So this is a very easy transition for someone who’s got an EX1 or an EX3 – would that be right?

Stuart: Absolutely, very, very simple.

It’s a camera with a card that you record onto; everyone’s familiar with those workflows. The overhead in terms of

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post production is not too dramatic if you have a modern system. The cost of storage has dramatically plunged over the last couple of years, so it’s very easy and convenient to get plenty of storage to be able to manage these things. And then the results that you get by being able to say “well actually, I can shoot, edit and master everything in 4K now” which means you build a library of content that’s available for all future use and, as we know right now, when you go and buy a big screen tele, they’re all Ultra HD. It’s not like it’s the chicken and the egg thing, the screens are already in people’s houses now, so this is just really a question that, if you’re a video production professional, then you should use the best equipment you can for the job.

Ed: If you are transitioning the Sony way from an EX1 or an EX3, what’s the model that we’re looking at here?

Stuart: For example Sony have the PXW-Z100 4K and PXW-X70 ( 4K with a paid upgrade ) handycams.

When you look at these cameras they are very similar to all of Sony’s recent HD range of cameras, so in terms of the operational capability, controlling the audio, putting cards in, formatting them, recording – all of those functions would be almost second nature to anyone who’s come from a previous Sony camera.

Ed: So for someone who is progressing to this 4K camera, they could, if they were doing an HD production, easily mix and match their EX1 or EX3 with this?

Stuart: Yes that’s right. If you’re doing a live production, these cameras will all shoot HD just as well as they will 4K. So in that regard, you can actually record 4K on the camera and output HD through an HDSDI cable live into a production switcher if you need to, so plenty of options.

Ed: But along with the 4K, what other improvements have there been in the camera?

Stuart: Apart from the fact that they shoot 4K, a lot of the other operational capabilities of the camera are very similar. Each camera has its own unique features and we discuss these in detail with customers to ensure we are able to assist them to get the right camera for their work. However, the big thing is simply the familiarity and ease of use that comes with the handycam style body and single fixed lens camera.

Ed: So in fact, it really is an easy transition because you pick it up and you know instantly how to use it, if you’re a Sony user?

Stuart: Absolutely. Anyone stepping into the 4K camera from the EX1 all the way through to the current range of Sony cameras, would be almost immediately at home.

The main difference is really around the recording formats, so this uses the far more modern XAVC type recording format versus the older MPEG-2 of the earlier Sony cameras. And then obviously you can shoot in 4K modes as well as HD modes so there’s a little bit to learn around that, but it’s not a hard learning curve at all.

Ed: Now from Panasonic – their HD camcorder, what would they have used at that point?

Stuart: Well it might have been an AG-AC160 HD camera for example, or an older AG-HMC42 or AGAF102.

Ed: … and now?

Stuart: And now you can look at the AG-DVX200 which again is a handycam style 1 inch image sensor 4K camera that can also shoot HD. Ed: So the Panasonic transition – buttons pretty much in the same place?

Stuart: Yes very similar in style.

Existing Panasonic users will find the menu system’s similar, all the buttons pretty much where they always have been.

Things like audio on these cameras is identical across just about every Sony, Panasonic and every other camera on the market, so there’s not a lot of change when you come from one type of technology to another, it’s really good. But of course there is that ability to shoot 4K and be able to master in 4K and do productions that way.

Ed: So it looks as though the camcorder market is certainly sorted – the smaller, perhaps you’d call them “mini handhelds” have been out for some time right across the range and some of those are even available in 4K if you want it?

Stuart: Exactly. Sony have had a PXW-X70 camera available in the market for quite some time. It’s got a 1 inch 4K image sensor in it, but when they launched the camera, they only had it available in HD. Now you can buy a firmware upgrade to it to convert it into 4K and that’s got a very small consumer handycam style form

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factor. It does have an audio adapter and handle that you can bolt onto the top should you wish to have a shotgun microphone mounted on it as well as balanced audio inputs, so you can make it a bit more flexible for better audio. But if you just want to shoot really good 4K pictures and you want something really small and compact and portable, you can take the handle off and run around and do some great shooting with it.

Ed: Well I think this is a big leap forward because I’ve never been totally convinced that the cine style cameras were the way to go for everybody. I could see that, for those who are serious shooters, who have the time to set up their shots and really just concentrate on the image of a production, then yes, they’re a great tool. But for those of us who are involved in getting the shot, setting the frame, getting the lighting right, recording the audio and all the time listening to what’s being said so we know that we’re actually getting the content we want, these camcorder style 4K cameras have been long overdue and it’s great to see them here.

Are you getting a lot of interest in these Stuart?

reaction from the student or do event videography and you want something simple and compact but with all of the professional functions that you’re used to, that’s where these handycam style 4K cameras really come into their own. So I think it’s about now where you actually have choice across the range, regardless of what sort of application you’ve got, it will fit your needs perfectly, and you no longer have to sort of shoehorn yourself into a particular type of camera whether it’s a DSLR or a bigger F5, F55 style camera, if you want to shoot 4K. If you’re doing more event videography, corporate, product, training, educational videos – that style of video and you want to be able to do it for longevity so that you can preserve that content, make it available on Ultra High Definition teles which are now the standard, whether that’s around your campus or your clients want to have it in their foyer and have these beautiful 4K images playing on it – these sort of 4K handycams allow you to go out and get those images with a minimum of fuss.

They make 4K acquisition very easy and convenient for anyone.

Stuart: Yes absolutely. Bigger 4K cameras were the first to come out – and there was a lot of buzz about the F5 and the F55 and the Canon C300 and C500 and that style of camera, and more recently the FS7 and now the FS5 coming along – these cameras are wonderful and they shoot beautiful pictures and if you’re doing a TV commercial or a high end documentary or a short film or a feature production they’re wonderful tools for doing that sort of work. Or if you’re doing high end interview work with some people, they’re great cameras. But when you just want to be able to grab a camera and quickly and conveniently go out and record an interview with a teacher and the

This leads us nicely onto a follow-up story to Stuart’s visit in September last year to the Cook Islands.

Ed: Stuart, they must be happy with you because they asked you back?

Stuart: Yes, the second trip to the Cook Islands in one year … it’s great, really, really good.

Ed: But you didn’t spend much time on the beach this time did you – I mean after that last episode with the grass skirt, etc?

Stuart: This time I have real photos for you so you don’t need to resort to Photoshop Grant. They are quite effective at putting me to work when I’m up there, which is good and it’s very enjoyable. The focus of this trip was that they’d finished their Broadcast Centre in the National Auditorium, so we had to move the gear into that, plus it was a great opportunity to do extra training for their staff.

Ed: What were you training them in, camerawork?

Stuart: Training them in the various aspects of doing full production, so everything from the camera technology and how that works and going more in depth into that – explaining to them exactly how the ins and outs of cameras work, plus the live vision mixing …

Ed: But with the cameras, you supplied them some what I would call “video cameras” and some cine cameras. Were you explaining the difference to them?

Stuart: Yes absolutely. They basically had 3 different types of camera – the PTZ cameras that were mounted permanently inside the auditorium; they had some FS7 cameras that they’re using to tell the stories of the people of the Cook Islands in a more documentary sort of style; and then they’ve also got some Sony X160 cameras which they’re using for live events. They’ve got a great long zoom lens on them, very good for event videography as well as doing parades or sporting events – that sort of thing.

So with the training, we were explaining the different aspects of those cameras, but predominantly, it was more fundamental camera understanding about how to control exposure, how to control the focus, how to

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compose shots, how to look after lighting and the audio – all of those basic capabilities of the cameras.

It was fascinating to watch a reasonable group of people who had moderate to low camera understanding, but by the time we’d gone through those camera training courses, they all came out the other end understanding the various places where you would use the different cameras.

Also, there are far more similarities between cameras when you look at them from a fundamental level, than there are differences. So obviously, the shallower depth of field that you get out of a large format image sensor camera like the FS7 – they understand that they’re great for interview work, great for doing documentary short films, you know, telling the stories of the people of the Cook Islands. It’s a great camera for that job, but if it’s for a fast paced parade that’s going down the road or they’re chasing sports action or they’re wanting a really good long lens for shooting people on the stage in the auditorium, then that’s what a good old high quality HD camera like the Sony PXW-X160 is really good for. Plus PTZ cameras are awesome – one person controlling 3 cameras with preset positions, exposures and focuses.

It’s a phenomenal way of having one person man 3 cameras and getting multiple shots just at the push of a button.

It was really great to be able to train them up into having a good understanding of all the different aspects of those cameras.

Ed: Do you think there’s a possibility of doing such a training course here in New Zealand – a day course for example?

Stuart: Potentially there is – a lot of our customers have got experience of cameras, so whether we’d do that fundamental stuff, but yes we’ve certainly done camera training in the past.

Ed: Well as a refresher. There are people who have been in this industry for a long time and haven’t had exposure to the modern cameras, so as a refresher 1 day course, do you think it’s possible?

Stuart: Oh absolutely, yes for sure. If we get enough interest we’d be more than happy to do it.

Ed: Excellent, so email Stuart and we’ll put his email here for you to give him an email to say “yes, we’d potentially be interested.” Now the other aspect of the training was the stage work, because there’s a bit of a difference in “stage for stage” and “stage for tele”?

Stuart: Yes, they were doing a live international broadcast event while I was there, the Miss Pacific Islands contest, and this is more a management thing from the guys who are actually producing the show – they needed to understand that, first and foremost, this isn’t a stage show, it’s a TV show. This means that you can’t stop halfway through while you rearrange the stage and then carry on again. The audience in an auditorium will understand that, if you close the curtains and say “we’re just having an intermission,” that’s fine; but of course in a live broadcast you can’t do that every 5 minutes. So we were working hard with them to just change their mindset into thinking that, when it is going out live to 4 countries, it needs to be thought of first and foremost as a TV show. So if they do need to do things behind the scenes to get organised for the next section, they will need something to fill that in – a bit of pre-recorded content that was shot earlier in the week out in the field can cover that; you could

have an MC covering it, talking about what’s coming up next … those various things. It’s just that change in mindset, plus also the differences in the stage lighting as well. When you’re lighting it up for a stage show and not thinking about the camera, you’d light it quite differently to the way you would when you’re looking at a camera’s view. So again, we were working with the lighting people in the auditorium to make sure that the lighting was set up correctly so that it was primarily for the cameras, because the bigger audience was actually the ones viewing television, not the ones in the auditorium itself.

Ed: Did you get a spot as a guest judge?

Stuart: I did not, no, but I got to see quite a bit from the Broadcast Centre upstairs.

Ed: That’s good that you saw quite a bit.

Now, lighting … you didn’t manage to supply them lighting kits. What are they doing for lighting?

Stuart: Well they’ve obviously got plenty of lighting inside the National Auditorium which was their primary focus. Out in the field, you’re talking about Rarotonga which has got plenty of light and quite often it’s more a question of providing them some expertise in how to take advantage of the natural light that they have an abundance of, to ensure that if they are filming things like parades or sporting events, there’s not much you need to worry about. But if they are doing interviews outside and they need to be able to manage the talent that they’re filming, there are very simple techniques that you can use to pull those people into the right spot wherever you are, to just make sure you’re making the most of the natural lighting that’s around you, without having to carry lighting rigs around or even bounce boards. There are tricks that you can use to get away without even bounce boards, if you just ask your talent to move. Funnily enough, if you’re standing there with a camera and a microphone, you have this air of authority and most people, if you ask them to, will quite happily move.

Ed: Now this was another event where the TriCaster was the centre stage because of the international broadcast.

Was this the first time or perhaps the biggest audience that you’ve been involved in with the TriCaster?

Stuart: Yes. The first time we were just providing a video output to the local telco up there which was BlueSky and they were taking care of the broadcast to

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and again, we were able to successfully do that where the signal was coming from the TriCaster via the internet connection given to us by BlueSky via satellite to Livestream servers in America and from there via various methods out to the Pacific Islands.

That was successful as well, so it’s a good opportunity to test that next layer of livestreaming, both to TVNZ’s streaming servers and internationally.

Ed:

Studio with TriCaster.

the outer islands. On this event, we were doing a live international broadcast and earlier in the week, we tested a few different ways of streaming. We managed to successfully test a live link directly from the National Auditorium in Rarotonga back to TVNZ’s streaming servers here in Auckland. TVNZ act as the Pacific Broadcasting Hub for many of the South Pacific Islands, so if you can get TVNZ in Auckland, you can pretty much get it anywhere in the South Pacific. So that was a good test to do and that would stand well for them doing future events if they need to do that. But the technique we used to send this Miss Pacific Islands event live to Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea was using the Livestream service

So what’s left for the third trip?

Stuart: Well the other aspect of this was to provide more in depth training to their staff on all of those aspects.

When you look at something like the TriCaster, it’s not just how to do vision mixing, it’s how to get pre-recorded content onto the TriCaster, how to take what the TriCaster’s recording off of it, how to do editing with that, how to create motion graphics for the TriCaster as well, with images and text and all of those sorts of things. There was quite a bit involved in that.

So it was a really good opportunity to do that, plus the in depth camera training that we talked about earlier on, now sets them up in a really good position to be able to move ahead and they’ve got a good body of people trained up. I’d love to go back if they need some more advanced training, but it’s nice to know that every time I go we’re bringing them leaps and bounds ahead of where they were before we went the last time.

Ed: Excellent – so send your emails in to Stuart and perhaps we can have a training session here in Auckland to explain the latest technology and camera techniques. Email stuart@dvt.co.nz with your training NZVN request.

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Stand and Deliver!

Delivering your programmes or live signal is becoming easier and cheaper with improving technology but when quality and reliability are paramount, you need professionals doing the business for you. Signal delivery providers Kordia are broadening their range so I met with Dean Brain and Alan Pond in an inner-city Auckland carpark. We start with Dean.

Ed:

Now Dean your title is?

Dean: I am the head of Content Services which means that I’m responsible for all of our occasional use video linking as well as Parliament TV and a few other bits and pieces of the Kordia business – mainly the legacy linking side of the business.

Dean and Alan from Kordia.

Ed: And Kordia we know from years back came off TVNZ? Dean: Well it was the transmission arm of BCL or the transmission arm of TVNZ, which was turned into BCL many years ago and then about 5-6 years ago, changed its name to Kordia. Now we are a lot more telco focused as well as broadcast focused.

Ed: NZ Video News hasn’t really covered signal delivery much at all because, up until recently, you’ve been there with the big players who have been involved in delivering material from the ground to satellites and that continues to be a major part of your business. But recently, things have changed and now you offer services pretty much right across the board. But let’s start off with your main business?

Dean: Our main business is looking after the linking for Sky New Zealand. We’ve got a contract with Sky that basically has our vehicles chasing their HD vehicles round the country for all the sporting events that they may do, or any other events actually. That keeps us pretty busy – we’re doing close to 360 outside broadcasts a year with them, and that means that we’ve had to outlay quite a significant amount of investment to keep up with improving technology. We provide diverse circuits for them and diverse paths for them, so there’s always a backup circuit running on pretty much all of their events.

Ed: That begs the question, “why don’t Sky do this themselves … why don’t they set themselves up with a transmission arm?”

Dean: There are two reasons – one is that transmission is a real black art.

It’s not as easy as it looks. They’ve certainly got the ability there to do it; their engineers are very clever people, and secondly, a lot of what we do for Sky is based on our fibre network. You have to own a network and we’ve got a fairly large and very expensive nationwide network that we use to utilise that service on.

Ed: So it’s not all satellite?

Dean: No it’s not all satellite, no, no. A small part of it is satellite but the majority of it is fibre running on our

Kordia backbone network which has grown out of the distribution of television content and other services round the country. We’re all IP based, so we do a lot of our transport streams on IP; we’ve got diverse fibre right down the full length of the country as well.

Ed: But there are other people with fibre networks aren’t there?

Dean: There certainly are, yes.

Ed: But this is where the “black art” comes in?

Dean: Well that’s right.

Our pedigree is broadcast; we’ve got people here who have had years and years of experience of broadcast delivery and understand that, if something goes wrong, it’s got to be fixed now, not in a week’s time.

So there’s a lot of experience in this team and certainly with Sky running Dolby E, that can be a tricky thing to get through. It loses lines or will change lines so there’s a real art involved in making sure that we get that delivered in the correct way it needs to be.

Ed: I have seen a Kordia truck onsite with a Sky presentation and the chap there was constantly looking at monitors and scopes and was ready to react as soon

They certainly draw the crowds at some venues ...

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Dean: That’s absolutely correct.

We can partition that off and make sure that the 20 MEG, 50 MEG whatever we’re doing – 2 MEG – is there constantly, ready to go all the time.

Ed: Is that an expensive service?

Dean: It’s probably price comparable with what’s out on the market at the moment.

Ed: So you’re offering a broadcast service and a streaming service?

… but other locations can be quiet.

as something went wrong, but luckily over the – I think it was 3 hours continuous – nothing went wrong.

Dean: It’s quite funny actually – over the 7-8 years we’ve been doing it for Sky we’ve had virtually no outages at all based on what we deliver for them.

There’s occasional little RF issues that just come with going 36,400 km into space to a satellite, but generally, all in all, I would say we’d be 99.95% reliable for Sky. Ed: And none of that’s influenced by people’s cellphone usage or radio microphones not being compliant?

Dean: No … there’s a lot of that around isn’t there? I think we’re more of a nuisance to those people than they are to us to be honest with you.

Ed: What, because your signal’s stronger?

Dean: Yes, we’re offering a broadcast service and a streaming service for one of our biggest corporate customers. We provide receive sites off the satellite, but off a different satellite to what your domestic users use, at 6 or 7 of their offices round the country. So when they do a corporate announcement or any production, we will go up on the satellite and then drop it down into their buildings rather than using their internet network to do that.

They have an internet infrastructure that goes out through their head office in Auckland and that can get quite congested if all their staff go to look at video internally.

From that, we will stream it for them as well, so if there are people out in the field, or somewhere that isn’t serviced by this satellite service, then they can go in and view that there. From our point of view, we don’t accept failure, and the reason we don’t accept failure is because we believe we do it the proper way.

Ed: Can you tell us why a major New Zealand travel company chose you as a provider rather than doing it the way they used to do it?

Dean: Exactly, yes – and we own the frequencies I suppose. It’s all part of it!

Ed: Right. Now let’s talk about the corporate work.

In our recent pages, we’ve certainly covered many stories about streaming as a way of not spending huge amounts of money on broadcasting your programmes or your channel, so people have moved to streaming.

What is it that you offer that would give people a better deal?

Dean: Because we own a network and because we own trans-Tasman capacity across to Australia and then further afield, we have the ability to provide noncontestable streaming for many of our clients.

Ed: What do you mean by “non-contestable”?

Dean: Non-contestable is that we can virtually guarantee someone a VPN service across our network.

It means that when the school kids come home at 3:30 in the afternoon, people start to go on the internet to look at content or whatever, that’s when your buffering comes, the internet becomes quite congested. We can offer an outward going service that isn’t going to be affected by that. We can’t control what’s happening at the end user’s end – we just don’t know what connections they’ve got – but a lot of our clients will have a Kordia network going into their building anyway – we provide a lot of telco services to a lot of organisations and we can go into the back of that and put a VPN directly into a client.

Ed: So really, if you’re big enough, you can actually have your own dedicated line that is not subject to OTT – the “over the top” service that many people get with their internet?

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Dean: It’s a classic example of where they did a video conference to their staff internally through their internet connections and when the staff hooked in, the capacity to the world reduced and they had some significant issues with other parts of their business operating at the same time – that’s why we’ve put different infrastructure in place to take it away from that part of the service.

Ed: I can add to this with my own anecdote that many, many years ago when I was working for The Warehouse, we did a presentation and we brought in broadcast trucks and delivered to 3 different venues. It was supposed to be a great event where everyone could see everyone and they could share information backwards and forwards, but one of the venues was

totally disconnected and one of the other ones could get a feed one way only. So pretty much half of the country was not covered and the whole cost was about $20,000.

That was 20 years ago.

Is it now considerably more for the same sort of service that you’d provide, but with 100% coverage?

Dean: Look, if we got $20,000 I’d be dancing off the trees! That certainly would be a huge event if we ever did one for 20 grand. It’s quite a bit less than that these days depending on the requirement.

Ed: Now in the corporate area – you have some are big players – can you also offer this service down the line where you’re bringing in or providing a service to production houses, or you’re doing it all yourself and bringing in freelance cameramen?

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Dean: Yes, that’s exactly right.

If we’re doing a bigger production, we might partner with OSB, bring in one of their trucks or one of their small OB light trucks.

We have a really good partner-ship with them via our Sky contract. If it’s a bit smaller than that, we might just, as you say, hire in a local cameraperson. All we need is embedded SDI and video production companies will provide that to us. Where they have a skill shortage is probably delivering it from A to B and that’s where we come in. We’re working quite closely with a lot of those video production houses to help them come up with solutions for this side of the business. We’ve done events from a small church in Naenae, Lower Hutt, taking a signal out from a preacher there all the way to Africa and delivering it down in many churches in Africa. We’ve done quite a bit of surgical work at Auckland Hospital – New Zealand still leads the way in heart surgery in the world, and there have been some procedures where we’ve worked with a third party to get their pictures and deliver them to – believe it or not – steak restaurants right across America, filled with surgeons sitting there eating their steaks and watching operation procedures here from New Zealand up on the big screens. So we can scale; it was scalable and we understand everybody’s got a budget and we can work to their budget.

Ed: Not colonoscopies over dinner I hope?

Dean: No, we haven’t done any colonoscopies at this point, although there’s a few guys in my team that probably think I deserve one from time to time!

Ed: It sounds like Kordia is getting close to being a one stop shop, because as well as all this, you have a very close relationship with Freeview and an internet version of that?

Dean: Yes, we do run the Freeview transmission on behalf of Freeview; it’s on the transmission arm of our business.

We have the ability to put popup channels up on Freeview and that is something that we’re working to, moving forward, especially for things like educational TV or church services, corporate things – if people want to go out with a message to the masses that can happen.

Alan checks the gear.

Alan: I go out with the trucks, I do a lot of planning as well.

At the moment I’m involved in figuring out how to get golf from Queenstown to Japan in March which is a bit tricky. So, yes, those sorts of services … and that scalability that Dean talked about where we can go out on the satellite and stream as well. An example is Parliament TV which we broadcast and then, last year, we started streaming that for them as well.

We’ve now got our own CDN system for streaming so if people don’t want to go on Freeview, they want this from the internet, we can provide that. They don’t have to go off the American YouTubes, they can come to us.

That’s a part of our business we hope to build and it’s my job to figure out the scalability of it and to make it reliable. My buzz word is “we’re not the cheapest but we are the best” and I’m proud to make that really happen.

Ed: Well there are certain things in life that you don’t want to fail like going to the dentist. You don’t want

We used to be involved with TVNZ OB in the early days doing the big Fonterra productions, which were massive. They were huge, they really were – 9 locations round the country, two-way communication back to a central point. So that’s one end of the scale; the other end of the scale is one camera, one uplink going up to the satellite, going to one computer. Believe me, that’s happened; we’ve actually done coverage of a soccer game in Wellington that went out to a country in the middle east for one person to view in his house.

Ed: It’s a nice job if you can get it?

Dean: Yes, right.

Ed: Now Alan, you’ve been very quiet in the corner … your role in all of this?

Alan: I’m the assurance manager.

Dean will go out and “sell the sizzle” to customers then my job is to make that actually work.

Ed: Do you actually go out with the trucks?

Setting up near some burrows in Matamata.

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“Action!”

something to go wrong and I guess, when you’re transmitting something like the Soccer World Cup this year, you don’t want things to go wrong on transmission?

Alan: No that’s right, so what Kordia does is to put all that new technology to get the signal there, but quietly in the background, we will put the old network into play as a backup. No one else can really do that and sometimes every now and then, like the tennis a couple of years ago when someone put a spade through our fibre, our old-fashioned radio link gets us going.

Ed: Now Alan, just expand on this “one stop shop”, because I understand you’ve got a particularly major job coming up for the Japanese?

Alan: Well I’m off to Samoa tomorrow morning for the Parker fight in Samoa, so that’s got its own challenges as well because we’re going up there for Saturday for the “pay per view” on Sky and it’s not something you want to fail because you’ll be paying $50 to watch that. Then, as you say, we’re planning for NHK and other overseas companies coming here for the TPP signing as well as golf coming up in Queenstown.

Ed: But what was the brief from NHK – basically they don’t want to project manage the production here themselves?

Alan: Yes, the one stop shop. When they come to New Zealand, they don’t want to have to hire you as

a cameraman, someone as a soundperson, sort out locations and how to set up a link. So our good salesman Merv is trying to offer them a one stop shop where they can just call one guy and focus on that, and he can arrange all the individual components of the signal and whatever service they need. Then they don’t have to blame that person for that link, or that person for that camera, or that person for not turning up … it will all be Kordia’s responsibility.

Ed: So what happens when the management says “now we want to go 4K” – do you run screaming from the building, or simply say “yes we can?”

Alan: I’m a technologist so I look forward to that day – the more complicated it is, the better it is I believe for Kordia and our business going forward. Anyone can stream, but if you want to do 4K and you want to do 20 channels of audio and you want to get it across the world and you want it to be reliable, that’s where we come into it really. So no, I’m looking forward to 4K. Ed: Brave man. So we’re now going to have a little competition here on what the future is and we’ll get Dean to go first.

Dean: Thank you very much … I was hoping that Alan could go first and then I could just agree with him, but it will be the other way round. What is the future?

The future of OB is a question that you’d probably need to ask the likes of NZ Live and OSB. From where we sit, I think that the market trend internationally is that the bigger sporting venues in New Zealand will have infrastructure built into them and possibly send camera control and camera feeds back to a purpose built production facility somewhere either at Sky New Zealand or NZ Live, depending on who is doing it at the time; so therefore eliminating the need for a full OB truck onsite, and I think that that is definitely something that is coming. We’ve certainly got the ability to carry that data and that information across our network and I think what it will mean is that there’ll be more smaller nimble agile OB trucks running round with the traditional side of cameras …

Ed:

Where there isn’t a fibre connection?

Dean: That’s correct, or smaller venues – schoolboy rugby, schoolgirl netball or any of those sorts of sports that Sky or whoever’s got the contract with those suppliers or those sports wants to supply. That’s my gut feeling on the OB production thing at this point.

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But we’re in a real fast changing industry.

This industry changes minute by minute and so there could be something else coming down the road real fast.

Ed: And what do you think that is Alan?

Alan: I believe that it’s going to change a lot as Dean says so I think Kordia needs to be as open as possible with equipment.

When you’re talking about 4K, I believe that quality is going to be a major driver because 4K TVs are getting cheaper so people are going to start demanding not highly compressed YouTubes but high quality stuff.

… and the signal is delivered.

I believe that 4K has got a future for us, so that is going to be the next thing – higher quality and more screens and more abilities back.

that could be a game changer for us if we can do that, so we will be able to do OBs and things straight back to Sky or back to other clients. That will dictate whether we have an OB van there or not.

I also think that, because of bandwidth getting cheaper around New Zealand, we might be able to put uncompressed video back to Sky and to other clients so

It’s very hard, as Dean said, to see which way we’re going, but we have to be ready for everything and see which way it goes.

NZVN

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Filthy Rich on Set Many thanks to the New Zealand Cinematographers Society for inviting me to attend an evening on the set of a new drama series for TV2 called ‘Filthy Rich’. Dave Cameron ACS is the cinematographer for the show and was the presenter for this event.

Some of the questions are mine but others are from knowledgeable audience members.

Dave: The idea from the network was a fresh new drama series that could compete against shows like Masterchef and X-Factor.

‘Filthy Rich’ set visit inside the Mansion Courtyard. Dave at right.

They wanted to create a is mainly handheld, so you follow the actors around and multi-night drama series that you watch back to back you actually feel you are participating in the scenes – on say, a Tuesday and Wednesday, with a cliff hanger which is really exciting. We thought, “Why don’t we each night so that you keep coming back. It is kind of a take that approach? Keep the camera moving, keep the “hyper drama”. actors moving, try and tell more story with less shots, My first port of call was meeting with Pete Burger who as a way to make it more interesting.” is the lead director and executive producer of Filthy Then came the challenge of lighting. We knew that if Rich. He has been a key driver of the show from the you are doing a standard scene, you would block it, beginning, directing four blocks in total. He said he decide on the coverage, light the first shot, shoot the wanted the show to have energy and momentum, and shot, and then turn around and light the next shot. But he also talked about the schedule – which was going to we were never going to have time to do that. So I be very tight. decided to create lighting “environments” with no Most one-hour TV dramas I’ve worked on, take about hardware on the set – there were no C-stands or seven to eight days to shoot an episode, but this was lighting stands or cutters or gear in the way. The actors going to be six days. Also, we had less money per could move around knowing they were taken care of episode than most other dramas, so it was really kind of anywhere they went. It opened it up to the actors and stretching things out further than I was used to. directors to use the space as they wanted.

Usually, having less time and less money can make a Once I sold Pete on that idea, we tried to use only show visually dull because to keep things moving at a practical lighting sources for the show, which is fast pace you have to keep things static. But Pete and I something I became a big fan of after I did a telewanted to stay away from that kind of static approach feature – The Monster of Mangatiti – earlier this year. completely.

Essentially, I had this cabin location and there was supposed to be no electricity in the cabin, so we chose Pete had two reference points for Filthy Rich – one was more on page 21 a show called Empire which is a big, glossy American series, which Pete liked for the tone of the performances. However, we knew we were never going to be able to achieve the visual style of Empire, because in that show every actor has the perfect backlight and the perfect hot slash of light across their body – they had lots of money to throw at it.

Pete’s second reference, which was more about the look, was a series called Boss which is a little rougher around the edges, a little more real, but it’s a great series; I recommend checking it out.

The thing I love about Boss is the momentum of the camerawork. It

Candlelit scene from ‘The Monster of Mangatiti’.

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to light the night scenes purely with candles. During the daytime we didn’t use any lights at all; instead we just used the natural ambience coming through the windows. So, again, that is going to open up your set so that both the actors and the camera can move through it and not run into hardware.

could look at it during preproduction and go “oh that’s awesome,” or “we hate that,” rather than saying that during the first week of shooting.

It would have been traumatic stuff because everyone was on last thing we wanted was the we all talked about it, but we to look like that.”

to go back and reshoot a different page, and the network saying “I know didn’t think it was going

We extrapolated that lighting concept into the studio environment and built it into the set design. I spent about four weeks with John Harding, the production This was a two-camera shoot? designer, making sure the sets were laid out in a way that was going to work for us. I wanted to make sure Yes, we shot two cameras on virtually everything, every room had windows that would bring light in the because we get so much more gold if we do it that way. right way, and also that throughout all the sets there Grant McKinnon, my B camera operator ( and gaffer ), would pop out from behind something and grab these were practical lights, like desk lamps and bedside lamps, that did good work as actual lighting sources – little magic moments – again, because the show has got they weren’t just dressing in the back of shot. The only a real momentum to it, and having those extra little cuts, those interesting shots that spice up the scene, things we sometimes brought on set were a piece of poly or small battery powered fixtures that would add really makes a big difference. eye lights or little accent lights.

Traditionally I am a DP who likes to light, and this show was a real exercise in restraint for me, as I tried to just augment what was there naturally. It was incredibly exciting, because the more I worked that way, the more excited I got about it, and we just kept pushing it further and further throughout the series. I think now we are probably far better at it than when we started, because we all really embraced it. But it was the work I’d done on The Monster of Mangatiti that gave me the confidence to know that, as a concept, this would work.

A “found moment” from B camera operator, Grant McKinnon.

How did you light these sets?

Initially I had planned for 10Ks for all the windows, because some of the window openings are quite large and I thought we needed 10K faces to fill them. That would have been great, but the cabling and lamp hireage alone was going to be way too expensive for the whole series, because we are talking about 25 weeks, so multiply everything times 25 and it starts stacking up quite quickly. In the blink of an eye, we went from 10Ks to 5Ks, and then boosted our camera ISO from 800 ISO to 1280 ISO. But again, I’d shot a lot of stuff at 1600 ISO in candlelight for The Monster of Mangatiti and the results were really good, so we knew it was going to work. On Filthy Rich our focus pullers were under immense pressure, because by opening up the sets to the actors and the directors, essentially we were shutting those guys out of the set, so they were sitting in a separate room, pulling focus off the little monitor, with a layer of image noise because the camera has been cranked up to 1280 ISO, plus we were shooting with our lenses wide open most of the time!

I was a little bit nervous about whether we could pull off that level of critical focus throughout a long job under those conditions, so one of the things we did was a full test shoot. I had done it before on another show and it was invaluable for figuring out your visual language, and then trying out that methodology on set. By taking a scene from shooting through to editorial, to grade, and then presenting it to the network, it meant they

How did the low levels of light affect your choice of lens?

The ARRI AMIRA cameras and the Master Prime lenses were signed off really early in preproduction, because I knew I needed them. On The Monster of Mangatiti I had an “Ah hah!” moment when I realised how much this camera and lens combo opened up opportunities for me to work in a way that I had never been able to before.

In what way?

It is the sensitivity and dynamic range. The camera sensitivity, combined with the speed of the lenses, means that you can work with incredibly low light levels, and still get a healthy exposure.

With the camera at 1280 ISO and the lenses close to wide open, a 60 Watt bulb in a lampshade starts to do the work of lighting a scene, rather than having to supplement things with film lights all time. And then there’s the amazing dynamic range of the camera too. The AMIRA handles highlights so well that when you get windows or hot practicals in frame, rather than burning out in a savage way, they just bloom nicely.

But you’re also going to need quite a depth of field aren’t you, with all these large sets?

Well no, we went against that. We wanted very little depth because we knew it would give us a look, and to be honest, we didn’t have any other option, because of

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the lighting budget. But that became part of the style of the show, because I originally planned to shoot with a lens aperture of maybe T2, and then when all my 10K lights became 5Ks, we opened up to T1.4 which of course reduces the depth of field even further. But then, things start looking pretty sexy with a depth of field that shallow. It made it hard for the focus pullers, but they did a cracker job, and we had the look.

So you didn’t lose a lot of footage because it was out of focus?

You’d think that but no.

My focus pullers Sam Matthews and Dave Steel are amazing, and to be honest I actually don’t know how they did it!

Sometimes focus comes and goes, but again with the energy of the style of our show, you can get away with it. There was a shot the other day that is a great example of the kind of pressure these guys are under.

It was our B Camera 1st AC Dave Steele who was at 500 mm wide open on the 45-250 mm zoom with a doubler.

He had no rehearsal with someone walking directly towards the camera – one take, bang, done.

So, in the second series, if they would double your budget, what would you do differently?

I would get 10K lights because it would allow us to work at 800 ISO rather than 1280, which would help the focus pullers straightaway. These guys are looking at white noise on top of the image on their monitors and because the noise in the picture has also got peaking added on top of it, it makes it much harder.

The other great thing about Filthy Rich is that we had only three directors for the entire series, so everyone took ownership of the show. It wasn’t as if someone came in for a block, did their thing, and then walked off.

They all started getting the feeling of the show and then wanted to push it further and experiment more, because they’d already done a block and learnt some things. So they got more and more adventurous which was great, and it kept it interesting for us too. This was vital, especially when you think about doing a predominantly studio based show for 25 weeks, where the actors have a lot of dialogue and you have got to try and keep it fresh and interesting all the time, and not just go: “Okay actors, walk in, sit at the table, and we’ll shoot a wide shot and two close ups and move on.”

During prep, I said to the directors, “If you want the actors to look a certain way, you’re going to have to block them to make that happen”, and they were into it.

But, funnily enough, as the show progressed, it became less of a concern. Or if it was thought about, it was almost subconscious, because you know how someone will look if they are back-lit versus side-lit, versus frontlit. Sometimes there was a little bit of finessing – we would want things to be moodier, so we were not blocking the actors so their key light was coming from directly behind camera.

Instead, we would flip it around and play with back-light or flares. But that is a good question because that is where the layout of the sets really comes into play.

John Junior’s set is a pretty simple example of this because it’s essentially a long rectangle shape with windows running right down one side and then a large window at one end. With this kind of layout, you know you can’t go wrong, because an actor can move pretty much anywhere and their lighting will still have shape.

But if we had windows, say, running down both of the long sides, we were going to end up with a light sandwich which is never going to look good. That is where, in a studio environment, you can make good decisions up front that are going to help you all the way through.

Another set is the Truebridge Corporation, which is one of my favourites because it is really long and narrow and has full ceilings. It was a little tough initially because we had 5K lights through the windows instead of 10Ks. When we first did camera tests in here, we didn’t have enough level coming through the windows, so to fix this we had to drop the lights down low enough that they would reach in and hit the actors directly, which meant that the light coming from the windows was harder than I wanted. But then, the overhead strip lighting in the ceiling looked great on camera, but had to be dimmed down so it didn’t overpower the window lights.

However, when you dim down tungsten lamps the colour temperature goes warm. So all of a sudden, we had to correct for that. It was a real balancing act! The biggest challenge was the mansion courtyard because of the diffusion material we used for the ceiling. This

You said there were three different directors that would come in – why have three?

Logistics really, because you’ve got a director prepping, a director shooting, and a director cutting.

And there is no lag time.

Once they’ve finished editing, they go straight into prep for the next block. So you could have more, but then they’d be standing down for a block waiting for their turn to come back up again.

Given that you’re using windows for lighting, does that mean you’re blocking relative to windows?

Long office set.

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was essentially the cheapest vinyl with the biggest span that we could find. The light that comes through it is beautifully soft which is great, but it adds a colour cast which meant we had to gel all our 5K exterior lamps warmer to balance that out and get skin tones looking normal, otherwise all the cast were going to go orange. If you had cast with heavy layers of make-up in these scenes, one actor might look amazing, while another would pick up that extra warmth in the light and start to look unnatural. Yes, colour temperature was a challenge, but we got there.

What made a huge difference was that I managed to grade a bit of footage from every set using our LUTs ( our pre-set looks ) before we actually started shooting, so I knew we were on track. But I varied colour temperature as the show went on. The look has developed too, we pushed it further in the grade, and then we started liking the blues more and more, so we started cooling things down more on set to kind of hit that road early on rather than having to dial it in later. I’m a big fan of trying to get your images looking as close to the final product on set, rather than leaving it all to post production.

How did you collect the audio?

Carpark scene.

Loads of radio mics. The sound department would radio mic the actors as a starting point and then try and boom where they could. For example, the pin ups set is a tough set for sound because it is all top light so it’s hard to get in there without casting shadows on everything, especially if actors are right underneath the light. Radio mics also meant we could do wide shots and tight shots at the same time.

Luckily, our sound recordist Richard Flynn is really cool and he understood what we were trying to do with our fluid shooting style. Then there is the rain which led to a bit of ADR, but surprisingly little considering this is

Page 23

had to paint the environment a little bit, but in terms of the key lighting of the scene, it was done with the headlights and the LEDs, which again is a testament to the lenses and the camera.

Those are the opportunities I’m talking about, where the props you’ve got on set are actually doing a lot of the work rather than having to light the scene from scratch.

When you pick up these battery lights and move them anywhere with no cables and nothing else in the way, it means you can move really quickly, and we had no other option – we had to move fast.

Boxing scene.

not a soundproof imagination.

studio

by

any

stretch

of

the

What about lighting the scene in the abandoned carpark?

That scene was primarily lit by a couple of battery powered 1x1 LED tiles and the headlights of the cars.

We lined up a couple of cars, one was Snake’s car pointing one way and one was Karl’s pointing the other way, and we just put a diffusion frame in front of one of them to soften it off a little bit. Sure, we had some of our lamps striking detail in the background, because we

For the boxing scene, there are a lot of different shots in there. How much did you storyboard out your composition and your lens choice beforehand, and how much did you just make it up as you went along?

Usually there’s no time to do any specific storyboarding for scenes, because my prep time is limited. So it was about blocking it out and seeing what feels natural for the actors, and then finding a way to cover it. There was only one sequence in the whole show that we storyboarded out because it was quite complicated, and that was in the first episode. It was part of the opening sequence where we had to drop a stuntie on to the

Page 24

could handle hot windows or areas where we weren’t going to be able to control the light all the time.

All of these things combined with fast Master Prime lenses, meant that we could go places and shoot things that we would normally have to spend a lot of time lighting and getting right.

We could just use what existed and I thought the results were really beautiful.

A brace of AMIRA’s with all the trimmings.

bonnet of a car, and because the rig that did that was quite cumbersome, we really had to know what our shots were going to be.

As the time to air on TV2 approaches, I follow up with Dave Cameron in the sun on the Te Atatu Peninsula.

Ed: Dave, it was a wonderful evening with the New Zealand Cinematographers Society and I guess the major impression I got out of your presentation was that you’re not interested in pretty pictures per se, you’re interested in pictures that tell the story?

Dave: Yes, with Filthy Rich, we had so many constraints time-wise and financially that I thought, we have to make sure we keep the show visually interesting, and also make sure it is all about the performance, because if those performances aren’t fantastic, then nothing’s going to work.

In saying that, there’s a certain responsibility to maintain a level of gloss in a show about super-rich people, but the primary focus was to try and allow the camera to move freely, allow the actors to move freely and not be too fussy with the lighting.

Ed: Let’s come back to your choice of camera – was it your choice of camera to run with two AMIRAs? Dave: Yes, of course. I chose the ARRI AMIRAs and Master Prime lenses well before anything else.

That was based on my experience with a tele-feature I’d shot earlier in the year where I’d used the same combination of lenses and camera and had great results, so I wanted to head down that road again.

Ed:

When you say “great results” in what way?

Dave: First of all, they’re a great camera ergonomically, so they are really comfortable to operate, and the sensitivity of the sensor, in terms of light sensitivity, meant we could shoot with candles, or we could shoot with practical household bulbs or we could shoot with car headlights – those kinds of things.

Coupled with a great dynamic range, that meant we

Ed: But there are other cameras that are lighter and have more dynamic range and perhaps go up into that 4K mode – they weren’t an option?

Dave: No, I really enjoyed working with the ARRI AMIRA and Master Primes – they’re my “go to” gear at the moment. I like the images that come out of them; I like how comfortable they are to work with – it’s a really fast camera to use in terms of the menu structure, I can get in and change things quickly whether it be ISO or ND filtration, which is built into the body so you’re not having to chuck pieces of glass in front of the lens all the time.

And in my opinion, I think the images out of the ARRI cameras have yet to be beaten in the digital world.

Ed: You’ve used the ARRI ALEXA before, but in this situation, you wanted the AMIRA? Dave: Yes. I used the ALEXA for the first time, I think, on Go Girls series five. That was the first time I got that camera on for a drama series and it was reasonably new in New Zealand at the time. I think the rental house bought them all brand new specifically for that job. Again, I loved the images out of them. I suppose they’re a little bit heavier than, say, a RED Epic, but the pictures were superior in my opinion.

The ARRI AMIRA was the next step – a smaller version of the ALEXA that is lighter, easier to throw on your shoulder, and also a little bit quicker to work through the menu structure if you were going to manipulate things on the fly.

Ed: Because it’s all in one piece – you were using the on-board recording capability?

Dave: Yes. There are two CFast 2.0 card slots in the body and it meant that, when our camera was built up in its full production mode, it was still small, light and mobile, and we had a video sender as well so that we could keep completely wireless.

Ed: But all the production footage was taken from the cards on-board?

Dave: Yes, all recorded on-board which is really the norm – the ALEXA does the same thing.

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you’ve got a 1920x1080 HD delivery.

Some people might use it for special applications – like cropping in or digitally zooming within the picture, but for us, we were focused on shooting reasonably straightforward drama, capturing performances and trying not to let technology get in the way of that.

Ed: And so now we’re going to see it on our screens either as this publication goes out, or very soon after – is this a nervous time for you?

Scene lit by practicals alone.

Ed: Well there’s a lot of people who don’t trust those on-board recorders and they like to take stuff off-board into other fancy recorders.

Dave: I think that tends to be with the lower spec’d cameras where the on-board recording is actually highly compressed, but some of those same cameras will allow you to output a higher quality stream of data which you can capture with an off-board recorder.

Ed:

Which would have enabled you to go to 4K?

Dave: Well we could have done that anyway. The ARRI AMIRA has got an Ultra-HD option in it, so it will allow you to shoot, in theory, 4K or what they call 4K Ultra-HD. Ed:

Dave:

The thing is, once it is finished you can’t do anything to make people like it more.

You’ve just got to hold true to the reason why you shot it a particular way, and believe in the motivation behind the whole thing.

If people like it – great; if they don’t, well it was the choice you made on the day, and as long as you still believe in that choice, then that’s all you can do.

Watch Filthy Rich on TV2 starting February 15.

I like that “what they call 4K”?

Dave: Well the sensor is 3.2K and then the camera up-reses it to Ultra-HD. We looked at doing that because going down that road would open up a few features in the camera that would have been quite good, but the data involved was going to cause our post budget to blow out.

This is the site for ‘Filthy Rich’ on TV2, which started on Monday 15 February.

See more of Dave Cameron’s work at http:/www.davecameron.co

So we decided to go with 2K and the results are great. In my mind, especially for television, it’s not all about resolution.

Dave:

express

Yes.

There is an obsession with resolution – or there was, I think it’s changing a little bit now, but it’s not necessary to shoot 4K resolution when

Dave Cameron on set.

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NZVN

http://tvnz.co.nz/filthy-rich/index-group6433880

You know, we’ve got two cameras shooting for 125 days so the amount of data starts getting exponential.

Ed: Really?

(I mock surprise).

Oh no, this is the

exciting time.