Shortland Street future-proofed with new cameras

A big bang change over to HD could mean big trouble so television icon prepares one step at a time…

The big bang approach to upgrading from SD to HD has risks when you have a finely tuned production schedule like the venerable Shortland St.

The South Pacific Pictures serial medical drama shoots five days a week for 10 ¾ hours per day – five episodes a week.

There is no room for disrupted schedules or unreliable equipment on a set that moves this fast.

Line producer Tim Hansen explains that the standard definition show is not required to produce in HD yet, but they can see it coming and are preparing for it.

The production is avoiding the big bang approach to upgrading to HD, instead approaching it as a step by step process, reducing the risks of disruption to shooting.

The recent purchase of three Sony HDC1500 studio cameras was a milestone in the transition.

“If, all of a sudden we did want to output in high definition without taking the kind of approach we have, the reality is we’d probably need to stop the production for a least a couple of weeks to install and test new systems. This way we still need to install and test, but we effectively do it as we go,” says Hansen.

“A company like this can’t operate successfully by making these decisions badly,” he notes, “We had to make a good case.”

The business case called for installing the three Sony HDC1500 studio cameras on the Shortland Street set at the South Pacific Pictures Studios in Waitakere City.

At the heart of each Sony HDC1500 camera are three  2/3″ 2.2 megapixel Full HD CCD sensors with 14-bit A/D converter and processing, making the camera the top of the line studio camera from the Sony stable.

The production had previously purchased HD lenses and monitors, and the new cameras are HD, but the studio shoot is still live video mixed to Sony Digital Betacam tape to be offline cut with location material shot over 1 to 1½ days per week.

To make sure the actual reality matched the glossy brochures they headed off to see other users of the Sony HDC1500 cameras.

“Both OSB and Sky have over the last few years installed very similar systems and we went and had a look – and made sure we got the true story,” says Hansen.

The story they heard was good.

The good feedback, the history of reliability, good local support, technical capability, and reasonable pricing were factors that helped make the business case.

Hansen says the changeover to the new cameras was quick and trouble free, resulting in much higher quality pictures, even in the standard definition post workflow.

But the new cameras did throw up some surprises.

“The approach we’ve taken to slowly integrate the newer technology gives us the ability to capture in standard definition now but we can look at high definition pictures on high definition monitors.

“For better or worse we are seeing parts of our sets that we’ve never seen on telly before,” he explains.

This will help when the show does go fully HD.

“It gives us the ability to work out what we are going to have to alter and do differently in our sets and our make up and wardrobe and so on, that’s one of the reasons why we have decided to integrate in this way.”

Another pleasant surprise came from the sensitivity of the Sony HDC1500 cameras.

“We don’t have to put as much light into the sets, it’s as simple as that,” Hansen says.

“We are able to reduce the lighting requirements to achieve the same picture, it saves power but it also looks better. We don’t have to bash the environment full of light; we are able to use a much more naturalistic lighting approach to achieve the same result.”