Filmmaker Kathy Kolla, president of Cola Kat Productions of Beverly Hills, CA, recently shot a short-form documentary about the La Gran Limpieza (The Great Los Angeles River Clean-Up) with Panasonic’s AG-HPX170 P2 HD handheld camcorder.
The documentary was independently produced by Cola Kat to raise awareness about trash in the river and how much of it eventually winds up in ocean waters. Running over 50 miles long, the Los Angeles River flows through 14 cities and countless neighborhoods, from the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley to the ocean in Long Beach.
Panasonic’s HPX170 P2 HD handheld was used to shoot the entire project. The video was primarily shot at 720/24pN, though some undercranked time-lapse footage of freeway traffic at sunset was recorded at 12fps. The HPX170’s choice of up to 20 different frame rates was important to the production. The documentary is currently being edited in Final Cut Pro 7.
The AG-HPX170 features full, 4:2:2 independent frame production quality HD and solid-state recording. It has a new 1/3in progressive 3-CCD imager system, Leica Dicomar 13X lens, an HD-SDI interface and metadata. The camcorder has two P2 card slots and records in 20 HD and SD formats — from 1080i, 1080p, 720p to 480i.
