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Gear
Camera Rig
Currently the main camera rig is built around the Amphibico Housing to suit the Sony F900 HDcam camera. Light packs based on HMI units fasten onto a custom base plate which can also fit onto a custom underwater tripod. Interchangeable front ports allow for several lens configurations including a custom extension for the probe lens (see below). All camera controls including built in filter wheel are accessable from a panel and handgrip.
Plankton Productions also have a P2 in a Gates Housing currently deployed on location in Papua New Guinea for extra shots of special creatures.
HD Probe Lens - Available
Plankton Productions recently acquired an HD Probe lens from Innovision Optics allowing us to film extreme close up images.
The kit consists of a lens-barrel and a range of interchangeable front elements and custom servo-motors for focus and iris. The lens is submersible and suitable for filming underwater subjects at close range. The kit is available to rent through ProCam HDQ - Lenses and Accessories or direct.
David also owns a custom built 5-axis motion control rig that allows the camera head and lens front to be positioned very precisely where 'the action is' in the microscopic realm. All the equipment is available for custom filming.
When the Shoot Finishes the Filmmaking Begins
19, 2009
by Peter Simon
Slippery underwater subjects never quite seem to adhere to production schedules or creative storyboards.
Late 2006 Plankton Productions installed 2 Macintosh based Final Cut Pro workstations with Blackmagic HD I/O cards to better organise footage and facilitate program production.
An Apple laptop with portable external drives has also been deployed for the Panasonic P2 camera based in PNG.
HDcam field tapes are digitised using the DVCProHD codec to save drive storage space, cut-down and re-arranged in a non-linear workflow and eventually conformed uncompressed and laid back to HD-D5 tape as compiled subject blocks.
Some specially selected older SD PAL interlaced footage from SP-Betacam is being up-converted to HD 1080 progressive using Teranex which produces good results on most material.
The HD-D5 tape library collection with unique embedded TC and Ubits is a stable master footage resource for subsequent uses at 1080/23.98psf.
The D5 tape-deck has essential capability of playing out from tape at 23.98, 25, and 30 frames per second (and inserting 3:2 pulldown) thus servicing productions in all main HD formats.
HD-D5 & HDcam decks and Sony F900 camera are supplied in joint venture by Equipment House Pro-Cam based in Brisbane, Australia along with additional edit workstations including AVID as required.
All material on D5 tapes is stored online in several RAID5 arrays occupying about 10TB at DVCProHD resolution and acessable in a Final Cut Pro 'D5 Master Library' Project.
The entire D5 Library inventory has also been mirrored on RAID5 in several locations as a natural part of current project workflows.
All up there's around 200hrs of HD material accessable 'near-line' for editing, including about 30hrs of footage from Antarctica expeditions.
Shot choices, creative scene edits and sequences for conforms are being routinely exchanged by email as FCPro projects and sucessfully re-linked to local media.
Naturally this requires some extra care and co-ordination with distributing correct source media but is in reality how many people now work in the de-centralised global village.
During 2007 Apple introduced the ProResHQ codec with a data-rate around 200 Mbits/sec which looks virtually indistiguishable to HDcam off tape - but at 1/4 of the data rate of uncompressed HD on an edit system.
It seems to be Apples answer to AVID DNX HD codec and Panasonic AVC all running about the same data rates as HDcam.
However ProResHQ uses nearly double the disc storage space compared to DVCProHD and only the newer Apple Macintosh machines seem to have sufficient CPU speed for capture and playback.
Inevitably increasingly mature tapeless workflows based on Panasonic, RED and XDcam cameras will prompt upgrades as will the implementation of longterm LTO based data backup.
Meanwhile several projects are being brought to completion with the current set-up as well as continued ongoing D5 Tape Library organisation.
While all this equipment is about getting the best possible images up on the screen, it's the extra-ordinary subjects that are of greatest interest to our audiences !
