Olympic Documentary Shot with Panasonic HD Cameras

[Gregg Lengling]

By Elina Shatkin

Feb 28, 2003, 16:55 PST




This Monday, March 3rd at 9 p.m. (EST), the SHOWTIME cable network will begin airings of "Salt Lake 2002: Bud Greenspan's Stories of Olympic Glory," shot at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Games with Panasonic's AJ-HDC27
VariCam HD Cinema cameras.

For the original two-hour documentary, seven-time Emmy Award winner Bud Greenspan and his independent production company, Cappy Productions, shot hundreds of hours of footage with the Panasonic VariCam cameras, marking the first time that the Games' official documentary was captured in high-resolution high definition video.

Under the direction of Greenspan, Cappy Productions equipped eight crews with VariCams to acquire the HD footage for the documentary, which presents an emotional and powerful look at individual stories from last winter's Olympic Games. Featured are the stories of several remarkable Olympic athletes, including American skeleton competitor Jim Shea Jr., American bobsled driver Brian Shimer, Croatian alpine skier Janica Kostelic, Italian cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo and Australian aerial skier Alisa Camplin, as well as the exciting gold-medal hockey game between the United States and Canada.

The documentary will repeat air on SHOWTIME on March 11th at 9 p.m. (ET/PT),
March 13 and March 18, and will also be distributed internationally in more than 50 countries, with a potential viewing audience of over 300 million television households.

The AJ-HDC27 VariCam replicates many of the key features of film-based image acquisition, including 24-frame progressive scan images, time lapse recording, and a wide range of variable frame rates (4-fps to 60-fps in single-frame increments) for "overcranked" and "undercranked" off-speed in-camera effects. The AJ-HDC27 VariCam also features CineGamma software that permits Panasonic's HD Cinema camera systems to more closely match the latitude of film stocks.

Cappy also utilized Panasonic AJ-HD150 HD Cinema VTRs with AJ-FRC27 HD
Cinema frame rate converters on the mixed-format edit, integrating VariCam footage, DVCPRO50 material from the Olympics' Broadcasting Organization, and video from follow-up interviews.