JAG episode
 

Hello,

Is the JAG episode tonight (2/18/05) the one with the shots used from the Sony HDV camera?? Or was it last weeks episode, and i missed it??

Thanks,
Mike m.

I believe it's tonight. Everything I heard was third week of Feb and that's tonight.

Tonight.

I did not see any shot over the gunner in the helicopter, did I missed it?

Just watched... oy. Now I remember why I don't watch JAG. Not my type of show.

But judging it strictly from a technical standpoint, it looked great. I believe the Z1 was used on the shots taken from inside the aircraft, and if that's true, it was a seamless insertion.

The only thing I saw which didn't look right... well, there was a lot which didn't look right, that is, didn't look accurate: such as an F-18 matching speed with and flying alongside a Cessna private plane -- I don't think that can happen -- even if the Navy fighter had gear down and full flaps extended, which it didn't, I think it's still gonna blow past any generic single-engine GA aircraft running at full throttle. Same F-18 Hornet maneuvers to place the Cessna in its engine exhaust wake with no effect -- plus wingtip vertices with no effect -- ah, give me a break! It's the Super Cessna, I guess. Finally the Hornet, still matching a slow speed with flaps up and not stalling, opens up with its 20mm Vulcan and said Cessna *explodes* in a massive fireball. Hmm. If it had been shred to pieces and fell out of the sky, I'd buy that, but -- well, maybe it was packed with nitroglycerine or something. I give up. Yeah, I just don't dig that type of television, sorry.

Anyway, as I was saying, the only thing I saw which didn't look right was one quick handheld shot taken from the deck of an aircraft carrier as an E2 Hawkeye lands... it's an impressive shot, very dynamic, but there was a bit of breakup at the end of the shot, wasn't onscreen very long but it was noticeable. Of course, no way to know if that was originated on the Z1 or not, plus I have satellite, which breaks up on its own sometimes, so maybe it was just my dish acting up.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to finding out about and seeing some more instances of HDV usage on network television in the near future, I just hope it ain't JAG. That's my story, Lieutenant.

It seemed the shots only lasted about 2 or 3 seconds in two scenes. If they were only the ones shot from behind the gunner, it was gone very quickly. I HD Tivo'd it and replayed it several times in slow and stop motion on my 50" Fujitsu plasma. What was interesting is that they seemed to focus on the machine gun pointing out of the helicopter (from behind), but the boat in the ocean was not in focus. At any rate, the shots I've taken with my FX1 were certainly more impressive.

As to Chris's point, the show is very strange in that occasionally you'll see some really poor clips (like the one from the carrier). They almost look like they were shot with a 1 chip cheapo SD consumer cam. Very weird! I think some of those shots are archived from somewhere and just thrown in as filler.

Ken, I didn't get to the television in time, can you post a couple shots? I'll tell you if they're the right ones or not. I wish CBS would allow me to post at least a frame or two, but they were very adamant at Sundance Film Fest about it. We had the 900 footage next to the Z1 footage there. Some folks from here saw it, I'm sure.
Machine guns w/tracers would have been the correct shot, in all likelihood. The really amazing stuff was the dark chopper interior looking out over the ridiculously blown out bright sun on the waves/water when they shot up and rotated around the boat they were "apprehending."

... and that was the very first scene, right before the opening credits, which I missed entirely. So I guess I didn't see it at all.

Hello,

I did see the show, in High Def.. And honestly I really could not pick out the Z1 shots while the helicopter scene was happening.. There was only one time when a shot occured, and it was behind the machine gunner and lasted all of 2 seconds where it looked a little more like video than the rest.. But it was quick and not at all glaring.. From what i saw the Z1 footage blended in and was pretty transparent..

Mike M.

I'm with you, Chris, not my kinda show. It's rather ironic, tho', that new video technology seems to make its inroads into generally accepted applications via less than normally accepted methods. I saw an article on network news re: the advances made in streaming technology made by the porn industry. They were the only ones willing to invest the cash when the technology was developing. It takes all kinds, I guess.

I've taken a few screenshots guys, but I don't see the methodology for posting them here. Can someone help?

If you wanna send em' to me, we'll host em' on our site and folks can link to it.
There isn't a way to embed images in links here, I don't believe.

O.K., here's a link to the AVS forum where I posted this.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...68#post5206768

o469 and 0467 are the Z1, the other one you posted isn't. Funny to see those so downrezzed and compressed, i've been looking at them for a month in full HD glory. HUGE diff. But you got the shots.

But you know, what ruined it for me is that even with the live HD (and JAG is generally a stunning looking show in HD), you could see how they only focused on the gun and NOT the ship which you could see was a blur (just as it was as the show plays live in HD). This really did nothing to show off the Z1. Then again, I'm sure that wasn't their intent.