Hello,

Is the JAG episode tonight (2/18/05) the one with the shots used from the Sony HDV camera?? Or was it last weeks episode, and i missed it??

Thanks,
Mike m.

I believe it's tonight. Everything I heard was third week of Feb and that's tonight.

Tonight.

I did not see any shot over the gunner in the helicopter, did I missed it?

Just watched... oy. Now I remember why I don't watch JAG. Not my type of show.

But judging it strictly from a technical standpoint, it looked great. I believe the Z1 was used on the shots taken from inside the aircraft, and if that's true, it was a seamless insertion.

The only thing I saw which didn't look right... well, there was a lot which didn't look right, that is, didn't look accurate: such as an F-18 matching speed with and flying alongside a Cessna private plane -- I don't think that can happen -- even if the Navy fighter had gear down and full flaps extended, which it didn't, I think it's still gonna blow past any generic single-engine GA aircraft running at full throttle. Same F-18 Hornet maneuvers to place the Cessna in its engine exhaust wake with no effect -- plus wingtip vertices with no effect -- ah, give me a break! It's the Super Cessna, I guess. Finally the Hornet, still matching a slow speed with flaps up and not stalling, opens up with its 20mm Vulcan and said Cessna *explodes* in a massive fireball. Hmm. If it had been shred to pieces and fell out of the sky, I'd buy that, but -- well, maybe it was packed with nitroglycerine or something. I give up. Yeah, I just don't dig that type of television, sorry.

Anyway, as I was saying, the only thing I saw which didn't look right was one quick handheld shot taken from the deck of an aircraft carrier as an E2 Hawkeye lands... it's an impressive shot, very dynamic, but there was a bit of breakup at the end of the shot, wasn't onscreen very long but it was noticeable. Of course, no way to know if that was originated on the Z1 or not, plus I have satellite, which breaks up on its own sometimes, so maybe it was just my dish acting up.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to finding out about and seeing some more instances of HDV usage on network television in the near future, I just hope it ain't JAG. That's my story, Lieutenant.

It seemed the shots only lasted about 2 or 3 seconds in two scenes. If they were only the ones shot from behind the gunner, it was gone very quickly. I HD Tivo'd it and replayed it several times in slow and stop motion on my 50" Fujitsu plasma. What was interesting is that they seemed to focus on the machine gun pointing out of the helicopter (from behind), but the boat in the ocean was not in focus. At any rate, the shots I've taken with my FX1 were certainly more impressive.

As to Chris's point, the show is very strange in that occasionally you'll see some really poor clips (like the one from the carrier). They almost look like they were shot with a 1 chip cheapo SD consumer cam. Very weird! I think some of those shots are archived from somewhere and just thrown in as filler.

Ken, I didn't get to the television in time, can you post a couple shots? I'll tell you if they're the right ones or not. I wish CBS would allow me to post at least a frame or two, but they were very adamant at Sundance Film Fest about it. We had the 900 footage next to the Z1 footage there. Some folks from here saw it, I'm sure.
Machine guns w/tracers would have been the correct shot, in all likelihood. The really amazing stuff was the dark chopper interior looking out over the ridiculously blown out bright sun on the waves/water when they shot up and rotated around the boat they were "apprehending."

... and that was the very first scene, right before the opening credits, which I missed entirely. So I guess I didn't see it at all.

Hello,

I did see the show, in High Def.. And honestly I really could not pick out the Z1 shots while the helicopter scene was happening.. There was only one time when a shot occured, and it was behind the machine gunner and lasted all of 2 seconds where it looked a little more like video than the rest.. But it was quick and not at all glaring.. From what i saw the Z1 footage blended in and was pretty transparent..

Mike M.

I'm with you, Chris, not my kinda show. It's rather ironic, tho', that new video technology seems to make its inroads into generally accepted applications via less than normally accepted methods. I saw an article on network news re: the advances made in streaming technology made by the porn industry. They were the only ones willing to invest the cash when the technology was developing. It takes all kinds, I guess.

I've taken a few screenshots guys, but I don't see the methodology for posting them here. Can someone help?

If you wanna send em' to me, we'll host em' on our site and folks can link to it.
There isn't a way to embed images in links here, I don't believe.

O.K., here's a link to the AVS forum where I posted this.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=5206768#post5206768

o469 and 0467 are the Z1, the other one you posted isn't. Funny to see those so downrezzed and compressed, i've been looking at them for a month in full HD glory. HUGE diff. But you got the shots.

But you know, what ruined it for me is that even with the live HD (and JAG is generally a stunning looking show in HD), you could see how they only focused on the gun and NOT the ship which you could see was a blur (just as it was as the show plays live in HD). This really did nothing to show off the Z1. Then again, I'm sure that wasn't their intent.

Well...the shots DID focus on the boat, but I guess they decided to cut that out. I've got original shots for the whole sequence, there were 8 passes around the boat/simulated firing sequences, I'm not sure why they didn't do more with that footage. Then again, I didn't see the episode. Any chance I could get you to send me a stream of it?

I'm really not equipped for streaming Eagle. My HDTivo is in a dedicated HT setup....no computer.

What was disappointing was how razor sharp the shots preceding and following the Z1 shots were. I agree with you, I have no idea why they chose what they did based on what you've reported.

:-) Actually, my last name is "Spotted Eagle" but most folks call me "Spot."
I might be forced to download the stream from the CBS site, except that it's in REAL, and I can't begin to speak of how much I hate REAL.

So then I should have called you "Mr. Spotted Eagle". ;)

The winner is Mike Moncrief, who correctly identified the HDV footage as the brief clip from over the machine gun. I was at a seminar last week on HDV, which included a presentation from the DP who shot the footage, Jody Eldridge, who showed the clip, along with some other material he shot with his Z1 of Las Vegas lights, which was much more impressive.

Regarding the JAG footage, he said they elected to use the Z1 (while his $150,000.00 Sony 950 sat at home) due to the cramped conditions on the copter. The footage was quickly dubbed to a Sony HDCam deck and sent to post to CG in the the tracer bullets for insertion into the show.

I won't swear to this, and I didn't ask, but this sounds like a case where they had other cameras that would be their primary coverage for the scene, and someone thought it was worth risking a few bucks to see if they could get one more shot for the final edit. If it worked, great. If it didn't, no big deal. In the end it worked out, and everyone's happy.

BTW, the most interesting presentation of the evening was by Brad Wright, the developer of HDVxDV, software to allow you to edit HDV in FCP. Check it out. http://www.dvdxdv.com/HDVxDVsite/Overview.htm

Sony had some OK "eye candy" footage shot with the Z1, but nothing that knocked me out. I think they will be buying Jody's Las Vegas footage, which was much more interesting than anything Sony's people shot.

Surprisingly, in footage from a side-by-side shoot out between the Z1 and a Sony PD150, the PD150 held its own. Not so much a knock on the Z1 as another example of what a teriffic camera the VX2K/PD150 series is.

All footage was viewed on a theatre size screen using a Sanyo projector. Most of the footage was from hard drives.

The seminar was put on by the LAFCPUG and sponsored by Promax.

Wayne Orr, SOC

Wayne, I'm wondering if you saw the actual footage that was used in that Jag episode. Having recorded it on an HD Tivo and watching it over and over, I can tell you the footage was easily distinguished from the footage preceding and following it. On either side of the Z1 footage, the shots were razor sharp. It seems that for some reason the shot that was used focused only on the machine gun and not the ship at sea. The result was that it appeared as if the scene was out of focus. It didn't look much better to my eyes than some single chip consumer DV cam.

What I really found disappointing is that owning an FX1 and seeing how incredibly sharp and pristine footage from the unit is when displayed on my 50" Fujitsu HD plasma, I expected far far better from the material used for Jag. It seems that Spot saw footage that was more impressive than what was finally used on the show. Go figure.

Ken, I'm certain Wayne saw the original JAG footage, as that's what Jody has been showing around. I've also got the Las Vegas footage and the Bowl footage Jody's been showing around, showing it here in NYC tomorrow night. I think Jody's also got some of our Hawaii and Mexico footage too.
Anyway, the footage Sony has from Bali is impressive, but none of the other stuff is all that exciting.
We've got some wonderful footage of bull elk fighting from last week that we'll be showing around, already sold 5 mins of it to Nat'l Geo, so we're pretty excited.

The JAG stuff seems to have been deliberately messed up, but I'm not sure why. Wayne, I don't know if you saw both, but it looked that way to me. Your thoughts?

The footage I saw was the raw footage from the camera. As I said, it had been dumped to HDCAM for the inserts. I remember thinking exactly what Ken saw; the boat looked out of focus, with the focus set for the machine gun. My guess is, Jody Eldridge maybe thought it was better to focus on the machine gun to aid the look of the CG tracers. Or, possibly he was told by the CG effects crew to shoot it that way. Effects gurus have a lot to say about how footage gets shot, and sometimes they make poor decisions. Don't we all. But I am reading an awful lot into a 2sec shot. Then again, we all spend so much time talking about how to achieve narrow depth of field with these cameras, and end up with the heaviest ND we can find to get a wide aperture, we sometimes forget that a large depth of field can help a shot like this.

Anyway, shooting in a situation like this is a great pressure cooker; you have to shoot like you only will get one take, and every little decision you make will affect the outcome. You have to hope your experience will cover all the mechanical bases, and you can concentrate on the "art."

So, to answer your question, Spot, I didn't see the JAG episode, so I don't know if they did anything else to the footage in post. But besides the boat looking out of focus, I seem to also remember it being a bit overexposed. Not sure about that.

BTW, Spot, where did you shoot in Hawaii? I may be shooting some beauty shots over there later this year, and am looking for suggestions.

W.

I shot all over the island, but if you want to know the best places, they're up in the Koolau mountains. Connecting you to a great guide (friends, not paid folk) is as easy as an email or phone call. I have many professional shooter-friends that live there. On most all islands. Oahu is the least easy access, then Maui. The best island, IMO, is either Hawaii or Kuaii.

Thanks for your kind offer, Spot. I will definitely contact you if the project firms up.