TNDV brought its 40ft expanding side truck, Aspiration, to capture live performances for in-venue image magnification; and to serve as the central command centre for content acquisition. The dramatic elements of the event - which included a rousing speech and performance of two recently-imprisoned members of the Russian musical act Pussy Riot - influenced TNDV to make some changes to its mobile production workflow. This included the use of Canon EOS C300 cinema cameras, which introduced new production possibilities while challenging the crew.
"It was going back to Truck 101," said Nic Dugger, president and owner, TNDV. "We basically reverse-engineered the truck to work with a camera designed for the film industry, making adjustments across the infrastructure to ensure that the cameras worked with every component. We also lost of a lot of the creature comforts we are used to with the cameras themselves. However, we gained a look and feel that is not easily achievable with broadcast cameras, thanks to a shallow depth of field and some incredibly high resolution images."
Dugger and his team engineered nine HD video outputs to support the cameras, with feeds frame synched and time-code locked content for delivery across Aspiration's switching, routing and multiviewing infrastructure. In addition to magnifying performances from The Flaming Lips, Tegan and Sara, and other performers on large venue screens, live feeds were recorded to in-camera memory cards and Aja KiPro recorders on the truck for future use by the organization. The KiPros recorded the feeds using a progressive segmented frame rate, allowing TNDV to capture the content in the 24p-style preferred by the film director.
(Jim Evans)
