By Dominic and Corine Milano, November 2, 2006
Filmmaker and director of photography Robin D. Berg followed expert speargun hunters Sheri Daye and Chad Palan to the waters of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, as well as Key West and Treasure Coast, FL, to shoot footage for Speargun Hunter, a 13-episode series. Berg used a Sony XDCAM HD PDW-F350 and HVR-Z1s to document scenes ranging from a close encounter with a shark to the capture of a world-record-size yellowfin tuna.
"All the underwater stuff is shot with the Z1," Berg explains. "We shot all the land-based footage on the F350. For example, I shot time-lapse of the morning in Key West. It was really beautiful footage. The XDCAM handles contrasting low-light situations really well."
The XDCAM is fitted with a Fujinon 13 x 3.3mm lens with a polarizing filter, which Berg is using throughout the series.
"Our workflow," Berg continues, "has been taking the XDCAM in 35 Mbps high-quality and dumping that to DVCPROHD 720p. We take the Z1 footage and put it through a Miranda HD-Bridge and turn it into full-bandwidth HD. Then basically I'm editing Z1 footage in DVCPROHD and editing the native XDCAM footage with FCP's 35 Mbps plug-in. We're really just amazed at how nice tapeless XDCAM footage is to use in the postproduction environment. You know, not having to rewind tape and being able to scan through our files really quickly. We use Final Cut Pro on a Macintosh G5."
Berg's team is not shooting double system to back up the XDCAM direct-to-disk footage, because, Berg tells us, "It's been rock solid. We're treating each disk as we shoot as source footage. It stores just like tape. Another beautiful thing about the XDCAM is you've got the disk space. Storage is so cheap. For 30 bucks you get an hour's worth of HD, instead of 32 or 34 bucks for 30 or 40 minutes on a tape."
Terry Maas, a world-record holder for speargun hunting and underwater photography, shot the underwater scenes using the Z1, which Berg said proved to be difficult at times. "The only way you can follow them and actually get close to the action with these big huge spears," Berg explains, "is if you have another free diver holding their breath, so that limited us right there. They're going down about 70 feet for a minute."
As for sound, above water Berg's team used the stereo condenser shotgun mic that comes with the F350. The team was on 21-foot boats most of the time, which made it challenging to fit both the divers and the video crew on deck. With the F350 shotgun mic, they were able to get fairly close proximity. "If you got within 3 feet of a couple of people talking and checked levels, we could get wonderful results," Berg says.
The team is getting underwater audio by using an underwater housing. Berg elaborates, "We're using the Light and Motion Bluefin housing for our Z1. The housing actually has a device you plug into one of the XLR inputs and you're able to get astoundingly clear underwater audio. We've got some really incredible audio of a barracuda shredding a fish on the shaft of a spear and you can hear the barracuda's teeth crunching on the shaft."
Speargun Hunter began airing in SD and HD on The Outdoor Channel in January 2007.
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