HD Today Stories Archive
Epic Speed
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
Fast Girls shot on RED EPIC Fast Girls is a British feature film by IRON LADY Producer Damian Jones and is timed to coincide with the massive interest in athletics with the looming 2012 championships. The drama follows the ambitions of a...
When Ronnie met Mark
Category: Large Sensor
The Panasonic AF101 Multicam Broadcast Shoot The images feeding through onto the monitors are sharp, detailed and clean. However, it's the subjects that first grab the attention: Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood and music producer Mark...
.JPG "High Speed ALEXA for Formula 1")
High Speed ALEXA for Formula 1
Category: ALEXA
"The ARRI ALEXA and Formula 1 cars were both built for speed -an ideal combination." Jonathan Jones, Ember Films Says Jonathan Jones of Ember Films. The British DP used an early beta version of the ALEXA soon after its launch...
Victory in Austerity. Bert & Dickie shot on Alexa
Category: ALEXA
As we approach the 2012 London Olympic Games, the UK's focus on this great sporting event is intensifying. Countdown clocks, announcements about the torch's route, ticket sales, policing tactics: the country's media channels are awash...
F3 used in Reebok Short Films
Category: Large Sensor
Mark Jenkinson, Director at Production Company Superglue, found the PMW-F3 the ideal camera for his series of docs for sports brand Reebok. Combining a Super35 sensor with PL mount adapter, it enabled him to choose his own glass and create...
The Dark Art of Large Sensor Production
Category: Large Sensor
"Capturing the beauty of a Leonardo painting requires a particular type of camera. Not just because of the subtlety and deftness of the pictures, but also because the delicacy of late 15th century art means that lighting on and the around...
Scar Tissue
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
Filming a Chiller - a tale of the unexpected The feature film Scar Tissue has recently completed production using Sony's PMW-F3. It was not all plain sailing. Written and directed by Scott Michell, the story explores the science of...
Stephen Fry's Planet Word
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
The BBC 5-part series, Planet Word, takes the viewer on a global tour of language and different forms of human communication. The presenter, Stephen Fry, wanders amongst the Turkana people of Kenya, mingles with evolutionary experts in Germany,...
Peckham leaps into life with 3D
Category: 3D
Peckham leaps into life with 3D The British feel they know the borough of Peckham intimately. From Del Boy to the omnibus, from the riots to famous Ballard, Peckham is deep within our national consciousness. ...
Delicacy shot on Alexa
Category: ALEXA
On the film festival circuit, there are countless boy-meets-girl stories and explorations of grief and alienation. The short film Delicacy is quite different; it is a story about an extreme culinary connoisseur and an expert chef obsessed with...
Hewlett Packard commercial shot with AF-101
Category: Large Sensor
Independent production company Delinquent's commercial for Hewlett Packard's ePrint system is an example of a new emerging TV format. Their latest production was created with TV production values. It was filmed and edited...
Animal Planet shoots with 5D MkII
Category: DSLR
Two climbers are perched on a small ledge up a mountain in the Swiss Alps with the worst electrical storm the region had ever experienced. Darlow Smithson Productions re-enact the crisis for the Animal Planet I Shouldn't Be Alive...
Skeletons
Category: Large Sensor
The stars of Skeletons, the film that won best new British feature at the 2010 Edinburgh Film Festival, have recently been shooting tests of a new TV comedy series, called "Kenny Diamond." Using a Sony F3, hired from VMI, DOP Gary...
The Sound of Silence: Sony PMW-F3
Category: Large Sensor
Director Georgia Oakley's new short film, Hush, was shot on location on the South Oxfordshire downs in the early summer. Relating the story of a deaf child, the piece is an exploration of non-verbal communication. "A beautiful...
3D Film-making Goes Independent with Panasonic
Category: 3D
It is James Cameron and Sky TV that have stolen the stereoscopic 3D limelight. Events such as football cup finals and royal weddings have seemingly been produced with no expense spared in order to show 3DTV at its best. The Ryder Cup, for...
Alexa Goes Blue Chip
Category: ALEXA
When a blue chip corporate client commissioned a new TV commercial, shooting the country's leading athletes, the ARRI Alexa was the camera of choice. For producer Tim Wright of the production company Bruizer, the camera selection called...
Power, Precision and Panache - Rolls Royce/Alexa
Category: ALEXA
The new Rolls Royce costs 2p per mile to run. But don't get the wrong impression: Rolls Royce is not going down market. The prototype Phantom model shown this March at the Geneva Motor Show costs an estimated £1 million pounds. But...
.jpg "Panasonic AF-101 in Congo Documentary")
Panasonic AF-101 in Congo Documentary
Category: Large Sensor
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the largest, poorest and most beautiful countries on the planet. Tragically, its landscape of rainforest, jungle, savannah and mountains have been scarred by years of fierce conflict and decades of...
Studio 9 Films in Congo with Panasonic AG-AF101/NanoFlash
Category: Large Sensor
A recent broadcast production commissioned by Al Jazeera is the first to adopt the new Panasonic AG-AF101 Four Thirds camera. The production was filmed on location in The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the largest and poorest countries...
3D on the North Sea
Category: 3D
Most cameramen find their first job in any new format such as stereo 3D challenging enough, but camera operator/editor and GTC member, Elliot Hornell, upped the ante on a recent shoot for Aberdeen-based production company Viscom. Not only was he...
Bringing a magical copier to life using DSLR
Category: DSLR
Copier, directed by West Midlands-based Samantha Harrie, is a new British short film telling the story of Stacey, a teenager who discovers a disused photocopier that can make real copies of almost anything – including people. ...
Legoland Commercial and Promos shot on P2 and AVC Intra
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Marcus Domleo is a talented DoP who enjoys using the Panasonic P2 Camcorders with 35mm lenses and Letus/Pro 35 adapters. Here are a series of Promos and Commercials shot by marcus using Panasonic Cameras including the Panasonic HVX-201,...
Seeing Heaven
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
VMI are delighted to have supported director Ian Powell on his first Gay Feature Film ‘Seeing Heaven’. The film is beautifully shot by DoP Alessio Valori using a Sony EX3 Camcorder supplied by VMI. Powell is delighted with the results...
Polar Bears in Trafalgar Square
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
An initiative was formed to create a life-sized ice sculpture of a polar bear in Trafalgar Square and then in a number of major cities worldwide. These will be powerful, iconic, emotive events which bring home the beauty and fragility of the...
Churchill's Supreme Fantasist on XDCAM
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
Marbella Productions has chosen XDCAM EX as the format to shoot a 60 minute drama on Churchill using the Sony EX-3 hired from VMI. One of the strangest men in Politics, a fantasist and compulsive liar, father of modern financial journalism,...
Hindi tracks seek out new life with Spanish shoot
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
When Moviebox Records decided to breathe new life into classic Hindi tracks by having them remixed by new British Asian artists, excellent promos had to be part of the package. The track ‘The Streets Medley’ by the artist Mumzy and...
British Airways Advert shot on HPX-3700
Category: P2 AVCIntra
British Airways' new US TV advert (September 2009) is shot using VMI's HPX-3700 P2 AVC Intra camcorder and their own canon 5d Mark 2 with DOP Stuart Graham and operator Jonathan Smiles.
Raising Awareness
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
Keep a Child Alive (KCA) is a charity dedicated to stopping the awful carnage that AIDS is inflicting on families, and specifically children, where in Africa alone it has created 13 million orphans over the past few years. Raining awareness is a...
Shooting Television
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Senegalese musician Baaba Maal has been making music for over two decades now. Along with fellow countryman Youssou N’Dour, he’s also found a wider audience beyond West Africa’s thriving music scene in the West, breaking through...
.JPG "Better Days Promo: RED best low-budget")
Better Days Promo: RED best low-budget
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
Shoot UK has completed its promo for ‘Better Days’, the new single from Speech Debelle, the genre-defying south London rapper/hip-hop artist. The project was low budget from the outset, explains Shoot UK MD and producer, Harri...
Tic-Tac: WCRS
Category: P2 AVCIntra
When it came to producing a range of eight different slots for an online Tic-Tac campaign, Shaun Dyos, from top agency WCRS, had no hesitation in hiring a Panasonic HPX-500 from VMI. “I know P2 cards work well from experience,” he...
On Thin Ice
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
The PDW-700 XDCAM HD Camcorder stood up to the challenging conditions when filming Two Four's documentary series, "On Thin Ice". A hardwearing camera capable of captuing crisp images, such as the PDW-700, was required when...
Erotology
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
EROTOLOGY is an erotic drama shooting on locations around North East England. Directed by Ashley Horner, written by Sean Conway and produced by Pinball Films. An erotic art film set in present day Northern England,...
CNN/Turner shoots Philips commercial on RED
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
Writer and director Adam Woods had previously completed seven ads for Philips in 2007 with CNN's commercials production unit TCP, so when the company asked him to create a new series of global films, he knew he needed to raise the bar –...
You can be sure of...P2
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Nothing tests a camera more than taking it round the world and operating it in different environments, as DoP Richard Mitchell from Monkey Science found on a recent job for Dutch oil giant Shell. The series of four short films followed...
Life Goes On
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
A dramatic Bollywood feature film is being shot by Stormglass Productions, using RED and Cooke S4i film lenses hired from VMI. "Life Goes On" is being shot in May 2009 on location in London with acclaimed DoP Robert Shacklady. The...
Prince William on HPX-500 by RAWvideo
Category: P2 AVCIntra
HRH Prince William visited on Friday 24 April and launched the NMA Future Foundations Appeal. This is an £8m appeal for the site to become a world-renowned centre for remembrance. This was shot on Panasonic HPX 500 by RAWvideo as part...
.jpg "RED reaches an Epiphany")
RED reaches an Epiphany
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
‘Epiphany’ is a four and a half minute short from Looking Glass Films in which a young woman called Jenny, in conversation with her psychiatrist, suddenly reaches a profound realisation. Saying anything more would give the game away,...
4x4 is Five by Five
Category: XDCAM EX/HD
Belfast-based 4x4 Production and Post's corporate video for the Health and Safety Executive in Ireland was an ambitious shoot, with a 20-page script shot in a docu-drama style over four days. “Hand-held, but great quality," was...
Agile's campaign gets the RED carpet treatment
Category: RED EPIC/Scarlet/MX
Agile Films recently completed work on its online series for the Powerade Inner Gear campaign, which accompanied the Six Nations rugby tournament. Adam Shakinovsky, Head of Productions at Agile Films, explains that from the outset, the brief...
Sundance winner ‘Rough Aunties’
Category: HDCAM
‘Rough Aunties’ is the latest film by internationally acclaimed documentary film maker Kim Longinotto and tells the story of a remarkable group of women who all work for the Bobbi Bear organisation based in Durban, South Africa, the...
A Chinese journey for HD feature
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Tigerlily Films' latest feature, 'She, A Chinese', swapped the streets of London for western China this September, as the production moved to Chongqing, following the journey of its main character. Whilst aiming to achieve the best...
Phantoms: Gets Film Look
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Director and editor Lauren Pushkin’s latest pop promo commission, Fifty Phantoms’ ‘Last Night’ called for a rich, vibrant look – without the budget for film. Her first port of call was VMI, where she hired a HPX500...
On The Crest Of A Wave: Varicam
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
Big Wave Productions produces high-end science, wildlife and adventure programming for the UK and international markets, with broadcast clients including the BBC, Channel 4, Nat Geo and Discovery. When the company came to make ‘The Manta...
Garage Days Revisisted - pop video shot with HDX-900
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
MC Bonez and DJ Q’s latest hit, ‘You Wot’ was shot using Panasonic P2 technology hired from VMI shot on an HDX-900 by Flynn Productions. “It was a single day shoot of 14-18 hours and we shot all over East...
Lipsey At The Height Of Fashion on P2 E-Commercial
Category: P2 AVCIntra
New London Films and Volatile Media - part of the Music to Your Eyes group - have carved out a niche specialising in filming for the fashion and beauty industries. As image really being everything in these sectors, they decided to shoot in HD...
Lessons Learned P2: 4x Camera Commercial
Category: P2 AVCIntra
Yesterday we completed our first multi-camera commercial set up running on HPX-500 P2 cameras combined with an HVX-200 P2 camera. The shoot went smoothly and there are some learning points: First of all sending 1 x Panasonic G10 archive field...
Campaigning in HD
Category: HDCAM
The latest campaign for Cancer Research was produced by London-based MakeFilm and shot in and around Seaford near Brighton over one hectic day using a pair of HDW-750s hired from VMI back in the Autumn. “One of the biggest hurdles was...
Journal of a Contract Killer in prime focus
Category: HDCAM
Inspired by a true story, the short but rather dramatic life of 28-year old Stephanie Komack is told in an intriguing new film written and directed by Tony Maylam. Dubbed Journal of a Contract Killer, the clue is very much in the title as it...
HPX 500 Has Potential X-factor
Category: P2 AVCIntra
John Lamb at John Lamb Films has become the first person to try out VMI’s new Panasonic HPX 500 cameras, which are rapidly being seen across the industry as a tapeless replacement for the reliable Sony DSR 570 workhorse but in High...
Agile Films Shoot Virtual Campaign
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
“Parcour” is the title of this very exciting and creative production by Agile films. Featuring street acrobatics is cool enough, but this production also uses well-known London landmarks to act as spectacular backdrops for this...
VMI welcomes 5,000th attendee to HD Seminar
Category: Other Case Studies
VMI’s MD Barry Bassett, has been a prolific evangelist of HD over the past 4 years. He has been instrumental in spreading the good news of HD and its merits far and wide by introducing this technology to a wide spectrum of industry...
Sensitive Skin II
Category: HDCAM
Baby Cow productions has recently completed shooting the second series of the drama Sensitive Skin, staring the wonderful Joanna Lumley. Patrick Duvall, the DoP who shot the first and second series said “I was encouraged by the success...
Crack It With Egg Stink Productions Commercial
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
When London based Stink Productions were commissioned to produce a series of commercials for the new Egg card, producer Juliet Naylor said “the production team were faced with many, creative and technical challenges”. These...
HD: Low-Budget Solution
Category: HDCAM
Sillwood Films found two solutions for the production of their latest film, SAXON: one was a specially-structured tax rebate scheme for investors, and the other was to use High Definition. SAXON follows ex convict Eddie back to the...
Bad Vibes in the Studio
Category: HDCAM
S2S Post have been having a macabre time with Reverb, a horror movie set in the claustrophobic confines of a recording studio. The Film is the debut feature of Writer/Director Eitan Arusi. Alex and Maddy, two guerilla musicians, set about...
Shaking Dream Land
Category: HDCAM
“When we embarked on Shaking Dream Land, we were first-time feature-makers. We had only produced shorts and documentaries before, so we tried to surround ourselves with a mix of talent,” remembers Katrina Moss, one of the all-woman...
Pinball Films/VMI sides with the Tyne
Category: HDCAM
Tyne Newcastle-based Pinball Films are just producing their final cut of Kaz, shot in Berlin and the UK, for less than EUR1million, thanks to a consortium including VMI. The feature film, about a feisty music journalist who discovers...
Green light for HD
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
It was no giant leap for DoP Damian Elliott to choose a Panasonic Varicam when Northern Ireland’s Tourist Board asked 4X4 Production and Post for footage of their thirty major attractions. Says Damian:” We could have used Super 16...
Plastics Wins Gold
Category: Other Case Studies
A pumped-up, overblown thriller of a teen flick which gets rudely invaded by sci-fi...” says Plastic’s official synopsis: it won top prize at this year’s VMI - sponsored Curzon High Definition Shorts festival. Its hero Matt...
Lorenz, Set Me Free
Category: P2 DVCPro HD
BigHead Media certainly brought the magic of lenses to bear on their recent promo video Lorenz, Set me Free. Says Producer/ Director Martin Pickering “We wanted to make the video look as if it had been shot on film, since the video...
Lady Godiva
Category: HDCAM
How many 90-minute features with a £1.4 million budget do you know which have been written and directed by a 20-year-old with her own film company? Well, Lady Godiva is one. What’s more, Director Vicky Jewson’s been a...
Granada ANGLIA New Wildlife Series for National Geographic
Category: HDCAM
Granada Anglia have worked extensively in the US for a number of broadcasters over the last six years. Recently winning a major commission from National Geographic for a 13 part Wildlife series, however, gave Granada Anglia the opportunity to...
Perfect Woman
Category: HDCAM
Most crews - film or otherwise - would be in a rush to create ‘the perfect woman’. But one week? That was the challenge facing Olympus Productions recently, and High Definition provided the answer . Neil Johnson, the Supervising DoP,...
Lessons Found In Lost Worlds
Category: HDCAM
Atlantic Productions are currently shooting over 20 hours of HD television material across the globe, for major companies like The History Channel, National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. Ruth Sessions, Head of Production at Atlantic,...
Popcorn
Category: HDCAM
This 90-minute comedy starring Jack Ryder and Jodi Albert follows the lovelorn Danny as he takes a job at the local multiplex so he can be near the girl of his dreams -only to find out that his first day is her last. But...
Tutankhamun’s clue to planetary chaos
Category: Other Case Studies
This scarab-beetle on Tutankhamun’s necklace represents the life-giving Egyptian Sun-God. But scientists say the natural glass it is made of came from a cosmic calamity that could repeat itself at any time. Tutankhamun’s Fireball...
In The Frame, Barry Bassett VMI Managing Director
Category: Other Case Studies
The intricacies of frame-rate conversion for international co-productions. In an international HD co-production, you will encounter the problem of differing frame rate compatibility between the USA/Japan and Europe. In Europe, programmes are...
Lighting for High Definition Cameras By Paul Wheeler, BSc, FBKS
Category: Lighting
There are many myths about lighting for HD cameras: let’s see if we can substantiate or dispel some of them. You need less light - Producers would love to believe this, but unfortunately in 98% of cases this simply is not true - sorry...
Painting with HD
Category: Other Case Studies
High Definition enthusiast and DoP Joe Dyer originally trained in Fine Arts,particularly portraiture, and developed all the artist’s painstaking devotion to image. That devotion has stayed with him through an enviable filming career as...
Lessons From Daddy
Category: HDCAM
Katie Bevell is a producer and, since her background is very much production-orientated, also the line producer of the 14-minute short Daddy (working title), a dark drama which explores how Damien’s involvement with a paedophile ring...
HD’S Technical Versatility Cuts Costs
Category: Other Case Studies
When Polish director Edward Porembny visited his roots to shoot a bittersweet examination of middle-age, little did he know he would be recording the demise of his beloved Poland Or that he would blaze a technical trail with his use of High...
