SWEEPING FEATURE DOCUMENTARY “EARTH” UNCOVERS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR IN THE WORLD’S MOST RUGGED AND AWESOME LANDSCAPES WITH PANASONIC’S AJ-HDC27 VARICAMS

July 11, 2007

Source: Panasonic

The upcoming feature documentary Earth, a feature-length version of the groundbreaking documentary television series Planet Earth, was shot with Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam® HD Cinema cameras for all land-based acquisition. Earth, co-produced by BBC Worldwide and Greenlight Media, tracks animal families on epic journeys across the world’s most demanding and spectacular landscapes and will make its international theatrical debut this October.

With a combined budget of more than $40 million and more than 4,000 days of cinematography, Planet Earth and Earth represent the biggest documentary production ever. Planet Earth, the 11-part television series which aired on the BBC in 2006 and the Discovery Channel earlier this year and is now available in DVD, redefined blue-chip natural history filmmaking, amazing viewers with never-before-seen animal behaviors, startling views of locations captured by cameras for the first time, and unprecedented high-definition production techniques. Production spanned more than five years.

The movie was directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Patrick Stewart narrates the English-language version of Earth, which is an epic portrait of our Planet with polar bears, elephants and hump-backed whales as the principal characters.

The VariCams were the BBC's first choice for shooting all land-based footage. As the VariCam replicates many of the key features of film-based image acquisition, it allowed BBC Directors of Photography to get the look and feel of film but in a high-definition format. The production made extensive use of the VariCam’s off-speed capabilities, a real must for natural history shooting. The BBC utilized the fast ISO 640 sensitivity of the camcorder to the fullest in filming in some of the harshest environments in the world.

“Our high definition deliverable contract specified either electronic HD origination or 35mm film,” said Linfield, a Producer with the BBC’s Natural History Unit. “Now, 35mm looks great but just wasn’t practical for most of the filming. And that really left the Varicam.”

“Natural History filmmakers are used to shooting film and use variable frame rate almost constantly,” he said. “Most people would be surprised at how little we shoot at 24/25fps.That duck bobbing up and down may look like it was shot at 25fps but was probably 32fps or 40fps. That frenetic shrew doesn’t look slowed-down, but was probably shot at 60fps just to make it comfortable on the eye, and so on. Add to that the material we actually want to look overtly slowed or sped-up and it’s easy to see why we were reluctant to give up flexible frame rate!”

“The VariCam is far from a one trick pony, however--it is also capable of making very pretty pictures largely because it has a pleasing color palette and great ability to handle high contrast--for us these factors were just as important as out-and-out resolution,” Linfield continued. “We especially liked the Film rec mode which gave us good dynamic range with no ugly knee point and a very filmic-looking distribution of tones. This helped us to intercut HD video with film where necessary, and also lent a glossier look to the product -- certainly for Western audiences where a film-look is still associated with high-end production. I also think our operators appreciated the relatively film-like menus.

 “All in all, the VariCam was a great package for us and one that still hasn’t been beaten today - four years after we first bought our cameras. While there are now other HD cameras with variable frame rate, the VariCam is still the only camera I know of that is also affordable, portable and onboard recording.”

 “For the theatrical release, we went back to the VariCam original camera tapes and frame-rate converted in Final Cut Pro to generate a 720 25fps timeline,” Linfield said. “This was upscaled to 2K in either Shake or Nucoda Filmmaster with surprisingly good results.”

Earth is currently in post-production. For more information about the series, visit www.discovery.com/planetearth.

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