The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and P2HD
 

Hi Everyone,

I am writing this on my last morning in Alaska, I have said my goodbyes to our team and I am going home. For those of you who have been wondering what has happened to Barry this week, being that the number of posts have been a little low; well Barry has been in Alaska, working with the Iditarod production team. For those of you who have missed the announcement, Panasonic is a sponsor this year of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and what that means is that we supplied the P2HD cameras and some training folks to go with that. Additionally we are building a back story of training and the decision-making that went into the decision behind the Sponsorship. These stories will be on our site and will have been shot with the HVX200.

We have a website that is dedicated and right now we have some photos loaded and the videos are too far behind. They are working out the final streaming details. All of the video you will see on the site has been shot with the HVX200, and maybe a little with the HPX500. Keep in mind all of these are compressed for the internet and are not the raw files. As we move closer to the final "making of" documentary we will probably press it to a DVD and included some raw stuff to look at. But that is later.

The story is that Pansonic had five guys come in a week before the race to work with the shooters and teach them how to work with P2. The weather being what it is around here, where -40 is not uncommon out on the trail, P2 with its no moving parts looked ideal and so far has been the least of the troubles on the race. One of the favorite mushers, Doug Swingly had to scratch as he had a pretty serious accident and 11 of his dogs had to be air-lifted to a Veterinary hospital, the other 5 are okay. We have had our share of ESD, or Static sdismounting drives, and having to reboot systems. I thik out on the trail much of that goes away. Two of our guys continue on to the first Hub in McGrath today or tomorrow, when they can catch a ride on one of the small planes that are part of the Iditarod Airforce.

The Iditarod Team is doing clips on their Insider website, all of this footage has been captured with either the HVX200 or the HPX2000. They bring it in, import it to the timeline and then send it out to the web. The cutting style is not fancy but is newsworthy. Eventually the footage will make it into a documentary that will air on PBS or Discovery. Some of the footage will also be a part of the OLN/Versus Network 3 part series on the Iditarod.

Anyhow it has been a facinating week watching this all develop. And did I say Barry actually got some hands-on time with the HPX500. ;-) So if you visit our site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast, you will see an Iditarod Banner, when you click on it, the page will display where the photos are and the videos will be shortly.

There is also a click to the Iditarod site. Any video from this years event will be in a 16:9 format, all the 4:3 is from last years BetaSP stuff. I believe you can see some of the footage for free, but the majority is in the Insider membership, which is $19.95. I figure that most of us can spend $20 in a day and not have a clue what you spent it on, this will give you access to news on the race which I am currently finding to be addicting. Not only is this the last great race on earth, its coverage makes it one of the most challenging documentaries on earth.

Enjoy!

Jan

Jan,

I was hired by one of the sponsors of the Iditarod race to shoot video footage and interviews with mushers. They wanted to help promote the race so we fed video out to nine TV stations in Portland, Yakima, Billings, Great Falls, Missoula, Seattle, and Cheyenne (there were multiple stations taking the feed in the big markets.) While I was running around with my Sony PD-150 (sorry:-) I saw 4 or 5 guys with Panasonic HD coats on shooting with the HVX 200 and the HPX 500 (this was at the start of the race in Anchorage) I stopped by and talked to them as I am starting to think about what I want to upgrade to when I finally have to upgrade to HD. They were all nice guys and took the time to talk to me about the cameras during the two minute breaks between mushers taking off out of the chute.
So not only did they shoot great stuff, but they took the time to help you guys with your PR and showed me the camera...it looked like it worked great! By the way, I'm glad the wind stopped blowing for the start in Anchorage, the three or four days before the start it was gusting around 60mph which, was pretty cold with the temperature as low as it was.

As for my shoot, it went off great and we got video out to the lower 48 before anyone else....as a matter of fact I had fed video out before the last musher left the chute in Anchorage! Because of this, the Weather Channel aired my footage for the next couple days which was pretty cool.

Anyways, thanks to your company for helping to sponsor the Iditarod, it's a big deal up here but for people from "the lower 48" many don't realize what it's all about. I'm glad you got to see first hand!

Was this the Cabela sponsored documentary in the HD Discovery channel last night March 18th?

If it was, why was it reduced in size?

The show you saw was produced by Versus. IT was shot primarily on Varicam and I can't say anything else as I did not see it.

Best,

Jan

The site about the Iditarod says the AJ-HPX2000 was also used. Is there any work with just the HDX200?

On our site, www.panasonic.com/iditarod all of the footage on this site was shot with the HVX200 as that is what our team went in with.

Best,

Jan