WASHINGTON—Documentary films take viewers around the world to places far away, offering opportunities and experiences they may never get to enjoy. That globe-spanning trait will be a central part of a number of sessions for The Video Show’s series on documentary filmmaking.

Do you ever wonder what it takes to shoot video in a harsh and frozen environment? Attendees can learn all about it from Tom Trainor, a director of photography on the Animal Planet series “Into Alaska” as he shares his experiences. Attendees will also have the opportunity to explore the world from the jungles and cultures of the Amazon with Celene Di Stasio and Shane Yeager of Digital Creative Visionaries. They’ll share their insight, as well as drone footage and interviews with the local people.

Along with traveling the world, documentaries can also help us learn about how to continue to protect it and the creatures that occupy it. That will be a key focus in the session led by Roshan Patel, a filmmaker at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, who documents and educates viewers on some of the world’s most endangered species.

The full list of sessions currently scheduled for the documentary track is available on the Video Show website.

The Video Show will take place from Dec. 4–5 in Washington, D.C.

LOS ANGELES—Media company RYOT co-founder and former CEO Bryn Mooser announced this week the launch of XTR, a nonfiction film and TV studio that will develop and produce documentary films and nonfiction series.

Led by an award-winning executive team, XTR is developing series and feature documentaries with partners like Anonymous Content, VICE Studios and Futurism.

“This is the beginning of a revolution in documentary storytelling,” said Bryn Mooser, the two-time Oscar nominee (“Lifeboat” and “Body Team 12”) and CEO of XTR. “New technology is enabling emerging voices, while established names from across the industry are turning their energy toward nonfiction. With streaming platforms that can reach bigger audiences than ever before, we are witnessing a true democratization of both filmmaking and distribution. At XTR, we aim to help propel the documentary filmmakers of today into the industry giants of tomorrow.”

XTR recently closed an investment round with funding from former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Franklin McLarty, Mark McLarty, Christina and David Arquette, Josh Kushner, Lyn and Norman Lear, Bryan Baum and Zem and James Joaquin. The investment round was led by the McLarty Arquette Group, with Franklin McLarty serving on XTR’s board of directors.

XTR is located in a Sunset Blvd. warehouse loft in Los Angeles’ eastside Echo Park neighborhood. Besides housing the company’s offices and post facilities, it will serve as a gathering place for filmmakers, XTR said.

More information is available on the XTR website.

Exploration into the endangered habitats of bears and the global crises that threaten the species recently aired in a landmark broadcast event for South Korean audiences. In January 2019, leading domestic television network MBC broadcast “Bear,” an episodic nature documentary series exploring the impact of climate change and urbanization on pandas, grizzlies, polar bears and beyond. This marked the first simultaneous broadcast of HDR and SDR programming in South Korea, providing audiences with UltraHD HDR displays the opportunity to view the engaging wildlife documentary in more vibrant and vivid hues in a wider dynamic range.

The Seoul-based broadcaster’s first foray into high dynamic range transmissions was in 2018 for the Russian World Cup. For broadcasting “Bear,” MBC required a solution capable of transmitting content from an HDR source to HDR and SDR destinations concurrently. To manage the workflow, MBC enlisted AJA’s FS-HDR real-time HDR converter and frame synchronizer to run UltraHD HDR to HD SDR conversion, enabling real-time broadcast to audiences in either format. Based upon the HDR and resolution capabilities of their televisions, viewers could watch either version of the program at the same moment in time.

Throughout production on “Bear,” FS-HDR was tapped for gamma conversion of BT. 2020/BT. 709. “The HDR to SDR gamma conversion with FS-HDR is perfect, without any bandings in the highlight area. This allowed me to achieve a more natural grading feel, closer to how the human eye views color in real life,” noted MBC’s Chongmo Ki. “FS-HDR’s diverse array of adjustable parameters enables more accurate conversion, and the fact that I can control all parameters from my laptop is especially convenient.”

MBC is currently in production on an upcoming documentary entitled “Humanimal,” a nature series which will explore the relationship between humans and wild animals coexisting together in shared environments. Produced in HDR, the documentary will once again be broadcast to audiences simultaneously in HDR and SDR, and MBC intends to use a similar workflow powered by FS-HDR for real-time conversion. Throughout production on the series, MBC also hopes to explore AJA’s new HDR Image Analyzer as a solution for color grading monitoring and analysis.

About FS-HDR

FS-HDR, a 1RU, rackmount, universal converter/frame synchronizer, is designed specifically to meet the High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG) needs of broadcast, OTT, post and live event AV environments, where real time, low latency processing and color fidelity is required for 4K/UltraHD and 2K/HD workflows. Developed in partnership with Colorfront™, the FS-HDR’s HDR/WCG functionality is powered by Colorfront Engine proprietary video processing algorithms.

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface technologies, converters, digital video recording solutions and professional cameras, bringing high-quality, cost-effective products to the professional broadcast, video and post production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com.

Basingstoke, UK — January 15, 2019 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that global energy brand BP, has invested in the XStream EFS scale-out storage platform and Flow media asset management to manage the commissioning, producing and publishing of BP-related media projects.

“In its 110-year history, BP has published more than 10,500 films, documentaries, commercials and corporate videos covering a diverse range of topics produced in a wide range of geographic locations all around the world. And until recently, nearly all of the filmmaking was done with external resources. In 2015-2016, the BP Communications and External Affairs team set out to build an internal state-of-the-art production and post-production department that would support the diverse project needs and fast-growing content catalog,” states Steven Croston, head of visual media for BP. “We outgrew our original storage and media management system. We needed a replacement that would give us both the room and production capabilities to allow a fluid workflow supporting both internal teams and external contributors dotted around the world. EditShare proved to be the media-centric platform we required. With embedded production tools and workflow automation, we are able to connect the many moving parts and players across BP’s very dynamic production flows.”

The move to in-house streamlined production processes and reduced budgets. Croston adds, “The net result of the move to internal productions was a 40% savings on budget with zero reduction in the number of projects we could achieve or the quality in which they are produced.” The BP-TV team produces around 80 films per year published inside and outside BP.

The EditShare XStream EFS, Flow and AirFlow provide BP an advanced, fault tolerant shared storage infrastructure with comprehensive media asset management tools that connect BP systems and support remote productions. Serving as the control layer for media, Flow tracks all assets from capture to playback with tools to search, retrieve and assemble content as well as automate processes including migration to and from the BP content archive. The XStream EFS 300 stores all BP content up to 8K resolution including rushes, work in progress and finished productions for distribution. With metadata tracked, assets can be easily searched and retrieved via Flow or AirFlow for production internally or externally.

The installation, which was supported by EditShare reseller gaselec.tv, alleviated multiple pain points for BP. “BP is pushing the envelope when it comes to the range of productions they need to manage and this requires immense versatility with their infrastructure,” comments Tara Montford, managing director, EditShare. “They are producing documentaries, promos, animations, and commercials, and require flexibility in how they manage these projects with potentially hundreds of users all over the planet. This is where EditShare shines; you can manage near endless amount of projects simultaneously, limit user access to only certain projects, and have editors step into a different editing suite in which they were working and pick up a project right where they left off. With automating transcoding, EditShare also gives BP a way to create a mezzanine format and standardize production codecs. This is critical when dealing with content volumes of this magnitude.”

For more information on EditShare XStream EFS, Flow media asset management and AirFlow, please visit www.editshare.com.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV and film industries. Our groundbreaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance EFS central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first three-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

©2019 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare is a registered trademark of EditShare.

Press Contact

Alex Molina
Zazil Media Group
(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (617) 834-9600

NEWARK, N.J.—Director of Photography Joe Callahan has completed principal photography on a feature-length documentary on wildlife rescue and rehabilitation in India.

Using a Panasonic AU-EVA1 5.7 cinema camera, Callahan did most of the shooting in jungles, deserts and cities like Jodhpur, Delhi and Agra. The documentary profiles the work of Wildlife SOS, a worldwide organization dedicated to preserving India’s natural heritage, forest and wildlife.

“The EVA1 proved itself to be insanely reliable,” Callahan said. “India beat the hell out of the cameras: We shot 12 hours a day in 120 degree heat. There was constant ash in the air, to the extent that we couldn’t see any blue sky.”

The heat was so intense that at one point a metal plate on the build-out burned Callahan’s face. But despite the temperature, there were no camera failures, he added.

From the outset, Callahan understood shooting the documentary –which has a working title of “Where the Wild Things Aren’t”—would be “incredibly taxing,” he said. “What I look for in a camera is reliability, usability and image quality. The EVA1 is one of the top cameras I’ve ever evaluated in terms of color science and dynamic range, and I chose it over much more expensive options.”

Callahan shot in 4K and recorded ProRes HQ externally on an Atomos Shogun Inferno and used the EVA1’s SD cards as an internal backup. Lenses included Tamron 24-70 and 70-200 G2 zooms, as well as a set of primes.

Typically, the DP shot at ISO800, but occasionally used ISO2500, which allowed Callahan to use smaller LED lights, saving money.

The DP praised the versatile form factor of the camera, which he could rig up on car rigs and gimbals in India or break down quickly for handheld work to get shots while tracking tiger poachers.

While Callahan purchased the EVA1 cameras specifically for the wildlife project, he has used them subsequently on a number of commercials, including spots for GEICO, Alfa Romeo, Tide, Black & Decker, LensCrafters and Alaska Airlines.

"The EVA1 is beautifully complemented by vintage lenses, and I’ve used a range of them—Leica Rs, Super-Takumar and older Zeiss models, for instance,” he noted. “The images consistently look great,” he said.

Examples of Callahan’s EVA1 work are available online. More information on Wildlife SOS is available on the organization’s website and additional information on the Au-EVA1 is available on the Panasonic website.