P2 Safari

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dereck Joubert and his co-producer, wife Beverly Joubert, are shooting a feature about lions with the Panasonic AJ-HPX3000 using the AVC-Intra 100 codec.

Graham Cooke has been doing technical and post support for Dereck Joubert for years, so he's got a good sense of what trouble looks like for a wildlife filmmaker.

When Joubert decided to shoot his current National Geographic project about lions on the Panasonic AJ-HPX3000 (using the AVC-Intra 100 codec at native 1080p), Cooke got that troubled feeling. Specifically, he tried to imagine Joubert on Botswana's Duba Plains, offloading his P2 cards at the end of one long day in preparation for another. He also knew that with viewing support not yet available (at the time) for the new codec, Joubert would initially have to send the files to Cooke sight unseen. (He's now able to view in the field.)

Cooke might have underestimated the renowned filmmaker's desire to leave the film workflow behind. Already a Varicam veteran, Joubert was keen to up the ante for a high-quality film out. (The lions project is a theatrical-release feature.)

Joubert was also willing to trade one set of tasks for another. Yes, he had to log and offload the cards to RAID 1-protected LaCie drives (about 8 hours per drive) and ship them to Cooke at G-Vision in South Africa. But he didn't have to change film magazines or tapes in the field, and he estimates his P2 cards hold 5 hours of footage. He can now stop wondering about the end of the media (although a cinematographer's thoughts must turn to battery life).

Both men gave the codec glowing reviews. Joubert praises it as “sharp and crystalline — but not too much so, still with a warmth and roundness.”

“We think it's incredibly good — probably on a par with some of the mastering formats we've come into contact with, even though the bit rate is quite low,” Cooke says, adding that the post was relatively painless for a shop accustomed to multiformat workflows.

Post workflow was relatively straightforward considering there was already some Varicam 720p footage in the mix that had to blend with the new 1080p footage and potentially some film archival. At G-Vision, Joubert's LaCie drives were backed up as ProRes 422 (which would also go into the Autodesk Smoke for online and grading) and, for offline batch, converted to DVCPRO 1080/23. The Varicam footage was DVCPRO 720 23.98/60, “which coexists on the timeline quite happily,” Cooke says (a timeline supported by a 60TB SAN). The drives came in three at a time, carrying maybe 18 hours to 20 hours of footage; Cooke estimates two and half days to get it into the system and 12 hours to 24 hours for the DVCPRO batch convert. They'll master to HDCAM SR or D-5 for film out.

Joubert used Fujinon 44X and 25x16.4 lenses and captured to P2 cards; he transferred to 1TB LaCie drives and shipped the footage to Graham Cooke at G-Vision. Cooke offlined in Apple Final Cut Pro (DVCPRO 1080/23), onlined and graded in Autodesk Smoke (ProRes 422), and will master to D-5 or HDCAM SR for film out.

Meanwhile, back in the field, the camera was heavy. Joubert says he missed the Varicam's variable speeds (solved with the purchase of a Vision Research Phantom HD). And there were the power considerations. Yet he says the HPX3000 drew less than the Varicam, so it was just a matter of over-preparing, like a warrior packing ammunition. (Click here for a detailed, shooter-to-shooter account of his problem-solving.)

While he welcomes the liberation from film workflow, Joubert says he still essentially follows film disciplines with the 3000 (carrying Fujinon 44X and 25×16.4 HD zoom lenses). “I'm not a videographer, and I never have been very good at that,” Joubert says. “I like to create images as a cinematographer.” He still shoots for the highlights and lets the blacks take care of themselves, still acknowledging the 3000's latitude.

Yet there are differences too — the kind of creative storytelling that serious cinematographers now bring to the refinement of digitally shot images as they balance the pristine detail of HD against the aesthetic vocabulary of film.

“When we look at the savannah with the human eye, we see detail, but what we're used to seeing with film on long lenses is no detail. Those details fall in between the grain,” Joubert says. “With HD, that's the opportunity to say to audiences, ‘Sit back; what are you really seeing?'' Same thing with aerial photography — for years so disappointing on TV and in theaters. Now it's bright and vibrant and your eye can look around the frame. It's not unreal because of the mass of depth of field — all that detail in that same plane from corner to corner.

“The big temptation then is to look at the depth of field we can do and throw it all out there, but that can feel awkward. I stayed around 5.6 or .8 to recreate the look that I was getting in film.”

And while Joubert honors film conventions, he bends them too. “Here's a big difference between film and HD,” he says. “In the big, grand HD vista where I've got the subject (say, a lion) walking towards me across this detailed savannah, the audience's eye will take some time to find him — more time than they would on film. Their eyes will be searching for what I'm trying tell them. My response is to hold that vista and let them enjoy the experience of finding the clue within that.”

The things that don't change with a digital camera are the weather, the mud, the gear and food that gets trampled, the vehicles that fail, and the surprises — good and bad.

“We are experiencing; we are not recording,” Joubert says. “We are not cobbling together a version of Africa that isn't true. The only way to be truthful is to have gone through the process, enjoyed the difficulties, the agony. Those things don't go on film, but they do actually.”

A few days before leaving for Uganda, National Geographic veteran and DCP contributing writer Barry Braverman posted these questions to Explorer-in-Residence Dereck Joubert in Botswana.

DCP: The camera is heavy—10.5lbs. (4.8kg) out of the box before battery, lens, viewfinder, etc. Did this affect your workflow in any way?

Joubert: Heavy? You have no idea. I add a large Anton Bauer battery and a 44X Fujinon lens, which takes it to around 26lbs. (12kg)—and I have it housed in a box next to me, so each time I need it, I reach over and lift it out and across to the tripod mount. I went to a chiropractor recently for a rib I broke, and he looked at my back muscles and noted that the right side is overdeveloped. I know why! The only workflow change is that I leave the camera mounted as long as I can before taking it down, which means that come rain or heat, the camera stays largely in place and I cover it with rain jackets or insulation.

The AJ-HPX3000 has no variable speeds. Was that an issue for you?

Yes that does irk me, it seems as though with little effort Panasonic could have found a way to add the variable speeds that they became famous for. The result is that I have bought a Phantom high speed camera as well. It was only when I didn''t have the variable speed that I realized just how much I use it.

Did you routinely shoot 60fps?

Pretty much in every scene, I began to realize.

How did you deal with the high power consumption?

Not particularly. My batteries last quite well. I find that the 140s last 2 hours quite happily. I was initially struggling with power, especially given our base camp is solar and can take regular slow loads but doesn''t like a sudden massive draw. So mitigate by having 10 batteries on hand, as well as a battery belt I have had made up.

How did you change batteries? What size did you use and how did you transport them given the new airline limitations on transport of lithium ion batteries?

I don''t fly on airlines with my gear. I pilot my own plane and find that the pilot is more reasonable, less neurotic, and not at all worried about a hijacker sneaking on board unnoticed. I have two seats in my Cessna; the rest have been removed to fit gear into.

I'm curious about detail settings in menu setup.

Nothing special by way of menus; the new 3000 is much the same as the Varicam. Some people like to add black stretch out here, to get in under the shadows, and I have used it before—but with the 3000, I find that the latitude (sorry, film term) is high enough that I don''t need to alter the contract in a negative way by eroding the blacks.

Did you use the pre-record function?

At first I thought it was a gimmick, but I started using it a little at maybe 2 seconds. What is interesting is that my editor, being used to my other material, was a little traumatized by this because she thought that something was wrong. She is used to seeing shots that are usable from the first frame, because I set it up, then roll. Now she is seeing the 2 seconds of setup, that last-minute adjustment and focus pull, and it looks sloppy. I tried to explain that it isn''t me, its the preroll, but she isn''t buying it.

How about time-lapse or loop recording capability?

I have not used that. I am not big on time-lapse—either you do it or you don''t, and adding a random time-lapse of clouds to indicate time passing is a little like showing calendar pages flying off in the wind!

What lenses did you shoot with? Was CAC (chromatic aberration compensation) a factor in their lens choice?

Yes it was a factor, and our film lenses did not look great. I chose Fujinon, 44X and a wider 13X lens as my two workhorses. I have a range of other lenses.

What kind of support/tripod did you go with?

I have always liked Ronford. I don''t know why, maybe old man Ronford was a down to earth, non-factory style craftsman—and even now with a factory, Ronford heads still feel solid and right to me. All the others in this range have always seemed flimsy and plastic.

Why did you choose to go with AVC-Intra? Did it meet your expectations?

I think it did. The material is the true test—and it is breathtakingly crisp, but not in a way I have seen from Sony and other makes. It doesn''t have those slightly video ringing sharp lines. I call it a roundness, rather than a sharpness in an attempt to describe what I see in these images (round rather than soft for example).

How did you review the AVC-I 10-bit footage?

Basically via Final Cut Pro in the field. I had one of those laptop-like viewer/editors for a while, but it was too clunky and took more power than I wanted to dedicate to it.

Did you record and maintain ample metadata? What tool or tools did they use to maintain metadata? HD Log? P2 CMS?

I did record metadata because it helps me with other information, for research later, and that went onto P2 CMS.

How about offloading the P2 cards? To HDD? What kind of redundancy? Did you send a set of drives back home perhaps? Did you offload to a RAID drive?

The workflow everyone reported sounded like a nightmare to me, so I worked with Graham Cooke at G-Vision in South Africa. He understands my limitations and need for simplicity and for power saving and time saving. If I am out the whole day in the sun, crossing rivers, digging myself out of the mud, juggling batteries P2 cards, positioning for the best light or action, and basically surviving, I don''t want to come back to camp and start a work day at midnight. So I download the P2 card or cards directly to a RAIDed LaCie array of 2TB drives each day. At first I was doing each P2 card twice—once on raw AVC-Intra 100, then backing it up via the Apple codec via FCP. So we ended up with four copies of each. I am a film guy; hard drives and media you can or have to wipe makes me nervous. In future, I will just do the faster AVC dump (backed up via a RAID)

Did you make use of the GPS encoder in the camera?

Didn''t even know it was a feature. Would have helped one or twice when we woke up in the back of our truck and had no idea where we were.
—Barry Braverman