COVER STORY
“We heard that other crews, who have tried
to film the Jungle Marathon in the past,
had difficulties with the humidity affecting
their tapes, so we decided to use tapeless
cameras to combat this problem,”
Tinopolis cameraman, Rhys Edwards
reveals. “We chose JVC’s GY-HM700
camcorders, supplied by Digital Garage,
because we needed solid state professional
cameras with interchangeable lenses
that were lightweight and rugged,” Rhys
explains. “In a humid, jungle environment,
the GY-HM700’s tapeless feature was a
must. The QuickTime format fitted into
our Final Cut Pro workflow easily, and the
fact that they are relatively light cameras
saved us a lot of energy whilst trekking
through the jungle.
“I was at first nervous about using a solid
state camera, as I thought that one wrong
press of a button might delete a day’s worth
of footage, but I was surprised at how user jungle waiting for runners to suddenly storage – enough for up to six hours
friendly the GY-HM700 is. We downloaded appear, the playback system on the of continuous HD recording.
our footage onto a laptop each night, and camcorders was a godsend,” Rhys
started each day with a fresh 32GB card.
“We would film until our SD cards
continues. “If I was looking back at
In difficult conditions like the Amazon,
were full – about two days’ worth –
footage that I’d recorded earlier and
the camcorders performed wonderfully
then we would transfer the footage
a runner appeared, I could just switch
to a hard drive via an Apple MacBook
from VTR to camera mode and start
Pro. We kept the full SD cards as
“I could just switch from VTR
shooting straight away. With tape, this
a precaution and backup in case
would be impossible, as I’d have to
to camera mode and start
something happened to our hard
spool back to the end of my recorded
shooting straight away”
drive. The fact that 32GB cards are
footage, by which time I would have
becoming cheaper meant that we
missed the runner.”
could afford to do this.”
and I was particularly impressed
The GY-HM700 uses standard,
Lowri’s training leading up to the
with the images it produced.”
inexpensive SDHC memory cards
marathon and the challenge itself
which are light, robust and reliable
were broadcast on S4C in January
The production crew – consisting of two and can also be read by a computer
this year, but are still available to view
cameramen, two sound recordists, a
using any card reader. For continuous
on S4/Clic, which is S4C’s equivalent
director and a paramedic – endured heat,
shooting, the GY-HM700 camcorder
to the BBC iPlayer.
n
bugs, tarantulas and piranhas over the
provides two memory card slots,
two-week shoot in the Amazon rainforest.
for a total of up to 64GB of on-board www.s4c.co.uk/clic
“Because we were in the middle of the
Photograph © Christine Kappes
11
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