The second season of the
series "Ice Road Truckers," currently airing on History(TM), once again has
Sony's XDCAM(R) HD system proving it's up to the challenge of handling
extreme cold.
In Season One, the show documented two months in the lives of truckers
hauling supplies over frozen lakes in the Northwest Territories and
explored the history of the region. In Season Two, the challenge is getting
equipment and supplies to natural gas exploration sites and remote villages
in and around the Arctic Circle.
But one thing hasn't changed, according to Gavin Brennan, the series'
director of photography -- the ability of the Sony optical system to
consistently perform well in extreme environments.
Brennan said the XDCAM system is the perfect choice for shooting in the
diverse conditions the production crew encounters.
"Tape-based systems would not be practical for us at all," he said.
"Tape can get too brittle in the extreme cold and clog up the heads. The
more moving parts you have, the more problems you can run into. The XDCAM
system gives us no problems related to the weather or the conditions."
During the production, the XDCAM HD camcorders are encased in
protective rubberized tape and still continue to perform flawlessly, shot
to shot, he said.
He is also impressed with the ability to review footage on-the-fly as
thumbnails on the camcorder's LCD screen, enabling the crew to make
decisions about the footage immediately without having to carry around a
separate playback monitor, and then be ready to record instantly as soon as
live action was ready to be captured.
The entire production crew from "Ice Road Truckers" also regularly
makes full use of many of the system's in-camera features, such as time
lapse to produce effective mood-setting scenes. That, combined with the
camcorders' HD resolution and overall image quality, convinced him that for
production environments as demanding as the Arctic wilderness, the XDCAM HD
system is one cool customer.
SOURCE Sony Electronics
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