SONY'S XDCAM SYSTEM DRAWS RAVE REVIEWS DURING FIRST FEATURE PERFORMANCE AT SUNDANCE FILMMAKER'S LAB
Optical Camcorders and Sony Professional Disc Media Seen as "Next Generation" Technology for Moviemaking
PARK CITY, UTAH, July 26, 2004 - The annual Sundance Filmmaker's Lab featured a coming attraction of new technology that promises to redefine the moviemaking process for cinematographers and editors: Sony's XDCAM ™ Professional Disc ™ System. Since its inception in 1981, lab personnel relied exclusively on digital videotape formats, but after seeing the potential of shooting with XDCAM, a move to optical disc could be in store.
"I wanted to test the next-generation of acquisition," said Ian Calderon, director of digital initiatives for the Sundance Institute. "We let the directors of photography (DP) experiment with the XDCAM camcorder in different environments, so they could become familiar with it."
Calderon added, "Rather than impose a new technology on our DPs, I'd rather offer them the chance to `self discover' the XDCAM camcorder by getting familiar with the new technology first so they can later use it to its fullest potential."
The DPs at the Lab used one PDW-530 on a rotating basis, mostly for interior and exterior shots and, according to Calderon, all were impressed with the results.
"The new XDCAM camcorder achieves wonderful image quality and, as an added benefit, using the [Sony PFD-23 Professional Disc] media allows you to record and re-write media hundreds of times, without any degradation," Calderon said. "That raises all kinds of positive implications. Additionally, the material that you've shot is instantly accessible, which further compresses the timetable for filmmakers often under tight deadlines. So we are planning to move up to the XDCAM system and make it available to our filmmakers next year."
The goal of the lab is to give filmmaker's a chance to put their screenplays "on their feet," as Calderon described it. Each year, eight to 10 filmmakers come to the lab to work out the most problematic scenes in their scripts in a collaborative environment.
"Scenes are rehearsed, shot, cut and then presented at a creative advisor screening," Calderon said. "The lab gives our filmmakers an opportunity to pre-visualize their most problematic scenes by putting them in a full production environment. So when the filmmakers actually go to shoot the movie down the road, they will have already resolved those problems before they go into production. They'll do their craft work here so when they're on the set, the script is in good shape and ready to go. It's an extraordinary collaborative environment; it's as if they were doing a creative screen test of their own screen play."
The XDCAM family includes the PDW-510 DVCAM and the PDW-530 MPEG IMX ®/DVCAM ™ camcorders, the PDW-1500 optical disc compact deck, and the PDW-V1 optical disc mobile deck. The system uses Sony's PFD-23 Professional Disc media, which can store 23.3 GB of content on one disc making the XDCAM solution optimal for acquisition through to archiving.
Editor's Note: For more detailed product information, your readers can visit www.sony.com/professional. To find the nearest Sony authorized dealer or service location, readers can call 1-800-686-SONY. For additional press information and digital images, please visit Sony Electronics' news and information web site at www.sony.com/news.
