American Cinematographer - December 2005 - 34

that the

import is verified, and that spot
proxies give you some idea
that the material came over okay. In all,
we found that field downloading took
about 30 minutes per five cards that
checks of the

contained

40

minutes of recorded

footage. That was

a

little tight.

Nevertheless, the test worked to
the satisfaction of the

Engel takes aim
at one of

the

re¬

creation's

location,

AJ-SPX800 P2
camera
same

is the

size and

weight as its
tape-recording
brother, the
SDX900.

could

use

the minivan's DC

using my 15"
G-tech 250GB hard
100GB G-tech portable hard

Apple G4 laptop,
drive, and

a

a

Queens, New York, in October 2004.

They

were

searching for the remains of

drive and Panasonic's five-slot P2 card

two of the murdered men from

reader. We first tested the system at

along with other victims of mob hits

Abel Cine Tech. Associate

buried in

producer
Melissa Hetzner, production coordinator

an

area

1981,

that locals called

"Mafiaville."

Erin Browne, and camera assistant Leah

We filmed her at the Evidence

bombarded with details

Response Team's headquarters in New
Jersey. The camera worked well. One of
the interesting attributes that I discov¬
ered on this shoot was how easy it was
to check shots. Rather than having to
rewind and spot check and then return to
the end of the tape, all I had to do was
select the clip I wanted from the LCD

Yananton

were

how to get

the cards set up and
camera-ready, how to download the
cards once they were "full," and how to
on

reformat the cards when the next set
was

finished. It

was a

somewhat scary

prospect, in that once the cards were
reformatted, all that existed were the
files

on a

hard drive. At least with tape,

have the tape as backup after you
digitize. We decided we would add a
measure of security by backing up the
material overnight onto another hard

you

drive. This would add to
terms of labor and

our

costs in

storage.

The test at Abel went well, but it

for Jesse to get
speed on the system.
Beth requested that we plan a real shoot
to see what would happen under less

was

really only

monitor on the side of the

controlled circumstances. We set up an
interview with Sue Ostrobinski, an FBI

camera

and hit

"play." (I'm not fond of field spot checks,
having accidentally erased portions of
shots or even whole shots in the past.)
Because each shot becomes its own clip
and each clip has a thumbnail keyframe
photo, we could easily go through the
material and check it.
We found that the download

a way

everyone up to

30 December 2005

who coordinated the FBI's
Response Team that was in
charge of a forensic excavation in
agent

Evidence

We started out

shooting victims.
The Panasonic

we

power.

was

production team.
much that she
sent selects via e-mail to commissioning
editor David Glover in England and to
WNET's executive producer Jared
Lipworth in New York so that they could
stay abreast of production. I was even
able to string out proxy selects in Final
Cut Pro 5 on my laptop for a promo that
Jared needed. Jesse Rosen figured out
how to reconnect the sequence's media
to the high-resolution source original,
including sound. We output to DigiBeta.
The proxies are very low resolution, but
several hours of proxies can fit on a
single 512MB SD card. Also, they only
have burnt-in time code and a single
Beth liked the

proxies

mixed-down

mono

We went into full

production in
owing to some last-minute
complications, had to start editing while
we were still shooting our primary mate¬
rial. We had always planned on shooting
our reconstructions midway through the
edit

so we

Macs, but a lot of time has to be spent
sure folders are set correctly,

a

better idea of

we

and five dramatic-reconstruction

days.
Everything went well until one
download in the field during the second
documentary day. We were filming in
Connecticut with Al Harper, the director
of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic
Science at the University of New Haven.

We downloaded batch 106 (we had
decided to name each batch as though it
were a

tape), and everything appeared

normal, in that the download program

(RsyncX) verified the download of the
material, the metadata and the proxies
and the downloader checked several

and

making

would have

needed in terms of the story.
We had scheduled 12 documentary days
what

load to PCs is
to

-

June and,

proxies.

supposed to be faster than

sound track

limited, but still wonderful.

labor-intensive process, even with two
sets of cards (10 altogether). The down¬

a

so

After we got back to New York
imported the video and audio into

Final Cut Pro, we discovered that some of
the material shot that

day had been
American Cinematographer - December 2005

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2005
