CINCINNATI, OH - Michael Caporale, the founder of production
company 24P Digital Cinema, LLC, here, recently shot a music video for country
artist John Brannen's song, "Boom Baby Boom." The video was captured using
Panasonic's AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera and AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 camcorder.
A preliminary version of the Boom Baby Boom video was shot
entirely on the HVX200, and included complicated greenscreen production for
composites. Subsequently, Sly Dog Records commissioned Caporale to modify the
video to coincide with the release of Brannen's new CD, "Twilight Tattoo,"
which features the song.
"In what might be called a classic case of role reversal, I
created additional scenes using the VariCam, Panasonic's flagship HD camera,"
notes Caporale. "Demonstrating the versatility of these two cameras in
complementing one another, I used the compact HVX200 for the studio composites,
while I utilized the VariCam for a rarely-used feature, its high gain capacity.
I was able to create scenes with a high degree of gain-induced noise, which
were then further enhanced with detail settings as well as tonal and color
manipulation in camera to produce a texture that post effects cannot exactly
match."
The finished video consists of slick, composited studio
images juxtaposed with grainy shots of Brannen performing the song during the
windy prelude to a pounding thunderstorm.
"The conventional assumption would be to attribute the
smooth images to a larger 2/3-inch camera (the VariCam) and the grainy images
to a smaller chip camera (the HVX200), but nothing could be further from the
truth," says Caporale. "The composited scenes were assembled in Apple's Shake,
and clearly demonstrate the ability of the HVX200 to hold fine detail and clean
edges without tearing or green fringing."
Caporale first used the VariCam on the 2001 feature Tattered
Angel, and has gone on to lens six more independent films with the camera, as
well as several documentaries.
The Boom Baby Boom music video can be downloaded to an iPod
by accessing the following link: http://www.24pdigitalcinema.com/boom.html.