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Panasonic AJ-HDC27V HD Cinema™ Camera

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There is a growing level of interest in electronic cinematography, and the rising tide could lift all ships. That should benefit Panasonic, which this month begins shipping the AJ-HDC27V - a new variable frame rate camera that not only supports 24P, but also has a variety of frame rates, for overcranking and undercranking.

Panasonic is offering the camera to filmmakers as a new alternative, claiming that appropriate applications include documentary and episodic television. The camera has a suggested list price of $65,000 for a typical configuration, not including lenses.

But with all the debate in cinematography circles about 24P acquisition, the company is being careful to target the AJ-HDC27V toward the current market for Super 16 mm, not 35 mm, and, wanting no part in the discussion about video replacing film, Panasonic is quick to emphasize the word "option."

The first engineering sample of the camera arrived in the U.S. from Panasonic's Japan headquarters in Osaka in February. This was quickly followed by an unveiling during an International Cinematographers Guild meeting in Burbank. In the weeks prior to the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in late April, three more cameras arrived from Japan. By this time, curious customers and Panasonic staffers created a demand. A select few had gotten their hands on the technology prior to Film & Video's press deadline, when the cameras were collected and shipped to NAB. This month, cameras are scheduled to begin shipping to dealers, and were shown in Los Angeles at Show Biz Expo, May 31 June 2 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The Panasonic AJ-HDC27V camera's frame rates can vary between 4 and 60 frames per second at 720 lines progressive. That is, 4 fps to 33 fps in single increments, as well as 36, 40 and 60 fps giving cinematographers the ability to overcrank and undercrank for effects such as time lapse and stop motion. The camera system is based on Panasonic's DVCPRO HD compressed digital format, which has been well-received in the broadcast community. Naturally, Panasonic hopes to replicate its success in the film industry.

But Panasonic does face tough competition in the space for 24P camera technology. Sony reported that there are already about 280 of its 24P camcorders in the field, and other manufacturers such as Thompson (which acquired Philips' cameras and film imaging divisions) are developing their own 24P cinematography systems.

Perhaps Panasonic's biggest boost was the recent news that Fox is planning a major drive toward electronic acquisition for episodic shows now being shot on film.

The company plans to purchase a total of six acquisition units. Four are Philips LDK-7000 EFP-style cameras operating in conjunction with JVC's 720p/24 D-9 HD. Fox also bought two Panasonic variable frame rate cameras.

According to Jim DeFilippis, VP, television engineering, for the News Technology division of Fox parent News Corporation, the units will be used in the production of TV series airing on Fox television and cable networks this fall, although he could not name the specific programs. Some Fox shows are now shot on 35mm, others on 16mm.

"The reason we decided to go into electronic shooting is that, with all the MPEG compression work we do, film is a difficult medium to deal with because of all the grain and noise," DeFilippis explained. "This is not about shooting on HD, it's about shooting digitally. We went with 720 because 1080 has fallen short of its promises. We like the 24 frame rate because it can get to both NTSC and PAL cleanly, which Fox needs to do as a multinational company. At the same time, we future-proof our programming."

JVC's D-9 HD is an extension of the company's D-9 broadcast format. The company has been working with Fox for a year toward the development of this technology for 720P/24 production, which is positioned as a format technically and artistically compatible with "program release on television."

According do DeFihppis, Fox earmarked about $1.3 million for the purchase of the new electronic acquisition systems. Some of the money still remains and will be used mainly for lenses and viewfinders.

Opening Gambits
One of the first projects scheduled to be shot with the new camcorder is The Conscientious Objector, a feature-length documentary being produced and directed by Terry Benedict and lensed by DP Suki Medencevic. After some initial shooting prior to NAB, production begins in June. An early 2002 release is expected.

The documentary's subject is Desmond Doss, a World War II medic who received the Medal of Honor fighting in the battle of Okinawa. According to Benedict, based on his religious beliefs, Doss refused to carry a gun or work on the Sabbath day. "Though mistreated by fellow soldiers and superior officers, Doss was undeterred, saving the lives of wounded soldiers on either side. So committed to fulfilling his role as a medic, he defied orders to retreat and take cover while under heavy fire countless times. The frail soldier is credited with saving 75 lives (including several who had ridiculed him) at the battle of Maeda Escarpment."

In the planning stages, working in video was far from Benedict's mind: "Because of the significance of Doss's story, my original concept was to shoot Super 16. I wanted the cinematic look and period feel to fit the story's place in history. Venturing into the documentary world, I was fully aware that economics would always be an issue. So my goal was to minimize it's impact and do what was best for the story. Planning for a feature length doc, I never considered high def as an option, even with all the hype that it's the feature format of the future."

In some ways, Benedict was opposed to video, for many of the usual reasons: "My biggest opposition has always been the issues of contrast, true color rendering, and depth-of-field. My other issue was the overall'video' look. Is it really possible to make video look non-electronic without spending a lifetime in post? And what about the revelation that the money spent posting could've afforded 35mm on the front end?"

So, when Medencevic suggested shooting on high definition, Benedict made his reservations clear. But Medencevic had his own equally clear perspective. According to Medencevic, the team initially considered Super 16 because they wanted to create both a broadcast and film version. "The quality of the image of Super 16 and HD are similar," he said. "In my opinion, the high definition has a crisper look." It also "enabled me to work at 60 percent lower light levels."

The main reason the DP wanted to shoot in high definition was that the documentary will contain multiple interviews. "It's more economical to shoot on tape than film," he said, adding that the team wouldn't have to stop often to reload film. He reported that CSI is providing a video-to-film transfer of the footage. Benedict had yet to be tuned to the new way of thinking, however.

"After viewing screen tests of several high-def cameras I was impressed but still not convinced enough to commit," admitted Benedict. Then, he meet with Ryan Sheridan of Birns & Sawyer and Doug Leighton of Panasonic, who showed the director some tests shot with the Panasonic prototype. That did it. "I came away not only impressed, but excited," Benedict enthused. "I had hammered everybody about wanting to shoot in dappled light. There before me was a shot in the shade with sunlight streaming through the leaves. There was no clipping on the highlights and plenty of exposure in the shade. For the first time I was hopeful that there might be an alternative. One of my fears producing this doc was the prospect of not knowing how long some of the interviews would go. There was the very real prospect that right at a pivotal, sensitive moment, the roll would run out. It would take five minutes for a reel change and the moment would be lost. High def would give me 46 minutes per tape."

With Benedict swayed but still not entirely convinced, a series of meetings were held with Sheridan, Leighton, a team from CFI and Brad Powell from Complete Post. "We all agreed that a more substantial test was needed in the field. After setting up the prototype at Birns & Sawyer, we headed to Tucson, Ariz. to shoot a survivor from Okinawa. For the interview, we opted for a warm, subdued look with subtle filtration to convey the sensitive aspects of the story. The exterior B-roll we used was a combination of cine grads and color in the matte box to capture the desert motif. When we arrived back at Birns & Sawyer, Ryan, Suki and I watched the footage on Panasonic's high-def studio monitor. A feeling oŁ confidence overwhelmed me. All the elements that it offered were right for the story. There is a cinematic, non-electronic look to the image achieved with minimal filtration. I got the piece of mind knowing I had 46 minutes between tape changes. And finally, I really believe that the project will benefit in the final output to 35mm film print." Benedict said.

And how did things work out? Film & Video briefly caught up with Medencevic after his first few days of shooting with the prototype camcorder to see if reality was matching expectations. "I like it very much," he said. "The variable frame rate enabled me to do some enhanced motion blur." He also expected to take advantage of the option to do tune-lapse photography.

"Overall it is working," he reported. On cost considerations, Medencevic noted that the Panasonic camcorder is less expensive to rent or purchase than Sony's 24P camera system.

But, Medencevic also said there are a few things Panasonic could improve. For example, he'd like the ability to white balance at frame rates other than 60.

Another project that already made use of the camera was Darren Gould's short narrative Hindsight, which follows a con man as he sees his past catch up with him in a Twilight Zone-style story. Gould's company Lost Electron Films is producing the short in association with Mountainstream Media both of Salt Lake City.

According to Gould, who served as both director and DP, "I am quite impressed with the Panasonic camera's sensitivity; it is capable of capturing fine detail. Our art department was keenly aware of this sensitivity after a few test shots, and makeup and set decorations were adjusted accordingly.

"One of the scenes in the film takes place inside an old motor home. The camper had some very funky '70s-style lights mounted over the dinette and a stained glass window behind one of the seats. I wanted to be able to show these lights and the window in the scene. Because the camera is so sensitive, I was actually able to use these lights to help illuminate the shot," said Gould. "I used a couple of 420-watt Pepper lights for fill and used dimmers to warm them up and to match the interior lighting. I also made use of a skylight, used ND filters to knock the light way down, then warmed it up with some gels. We could have achieved the same results using a color temperature meter, but I liked being able to see the results instantly on our monitor."

The Hollywood film community seems to be embracing its message, and it even won over International Cinematographers Guild president George Spiro Dibie, ASC, who has been sparring with Sony. But he also pointed out that, "If you shoot something with 720P, you're still going to have a problem in postproduction. We don't have enough post houses that can do that - a good a-z system where you could shoot and go there and come out with a beautiful product that you could project digitally."

When it comes to post, the AJ-HDC27V has a very different approach to 24P than the Sony system. While Sony's CineAlta camera operates either at 1080P 24 fps or 1080130 fps, Panasonic's new camera actually records at a frame rate of 60 fps (at 720 lines). This gives users few different editing options.

Essentially, while the camera is recording 60 fps, it flags good and redundant frames with a one or a zero. Though Panasonic has coined the term "nonlinear automatic editing" to refer to this approach, nonlinear editing systems still have to be developed to make sense of that flagging information.

Pinnacle Systems plans to be one of the first to market with a new version of its Cin6Wave nonlinear editor based on Final Cut Pro and MotionPro for finishing. Cin6Wave will be able to take the feed from the camera via HD SDI and automatically throw out redundant frames. "Pinnacle is building an automatic system extensible to any frame rate," said Laurin Herr, the company's VP product management and strategic development professional media division. "They will have two types of flags that say good frame/bad frame. You throw away the bad frames and keep the good frames."

A second editing option is to take all 60 frames into an NLE and perform pulldown-type calculations depending on the input and output frame rates. Panasonic refers to this as "manual nonlinear" editing. Quantel's format-agnostic iQ platform is one such platform.

Jon Pannaman, VP of engineering, Quantel said that, "720P/60 is a signal that we support on iQ anyway. Deinterleaving, or untangling, frames in different sequences is something the system does inherently. Up until the point of automatically identifying the frames, it's within the spec of the machine. When it becomes automatic then we've got something that's very seamless"

Later this year, Pannaman said, expect to see automatic frame rate detection added as feature on iQ: "We are very interested in it. We certainly intend to support it based on it becoming a successful format. We think it's a great advancement as far as the ability of a video-based camera to support the needs of the film community. Cranking speed on a film camera is a very common thing to do, and this is giving cinematographers the same flexibility, so we think it's a very good idea."

Last but not least, a third option is to use the Panasonic Universal Format Converter (AJ-UFC1800) as an intermediary between the camera and the nonlinear editor - allowing the DP to convert from 720P to 1080P or any other format requirements.

All in all, the post-pundits are impressed. According to Herr one advantage a 720/24P system has over a 1080/24P system is that it is inherently more compatible with computer equipment: "SXGA 1080 X 1024 is very commonly supported in the world. It turns out that a 720P frame is 1280 X 720, so it fits inside that very common computer resolution. This means it's possible to display a 720P frame on the same monitor as you would a common computer resolution. It also means that various types of projectors built for computer displays will effortlessly work with 720P. This gives a complete workflow at a more reasonable cost than if you had to go out and get special equipment."

Characterizing it as "part of the emerging toolkit for digital cinema," he said. "Panasonic is saying here's another alternative - 60 fps, 30 fps, 15 fps, 10 fps, or 5 fps. That means there's not only in cinematography the ability to overcrank and undercrank, which a cinematographer has as part of the current bag of tricks, but also that you get all sorts of non-cinema non-broadcast applications where you might want a faster frame rate, for a lot of action, or a slower frame rate, for things like time lapse. It extends the repertoire of the cinematographer in a good way."

Pannaman feels the big benefits are in "high-end industrial applications and television episodic, where they're doing a lot of film based work today that really never sees anything other than television. They would get quite a bit out of it." He concluded that in its strategy, Panasonic is "being realistic, not trying to go up against the habits of a lifetime for some very successful people. It's better to put it out there in fairly modest applications and let people find it. That's one of the things that we like about it. We don't want to get into religious wars on going after what is obviously a de facto standard."

Copyright 2001 Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. 
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