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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PANASONIC S AG HVX200 HAND HELD HD CAMCORDER AFFORDS OLYMPIC

DOCUMENTARIANS PRICELESS ACCESS TO THE GAMES UNGUARDED MOMENTS

Cappy Productions Teams VariCam with HVX200 for HD Retrospective

to Air on Showtime in Early 2007

SECAUCUS NJ March 28 2006 For more than 20 years seven time Emmy Award winner Bud

Greenspan and his independent production company Cappy Productions New York NY have had the ultra

challenging assignment of producing the official documentary retrospective for the Olympic Games With this

privileged berth however comes the Olympic sized challenge of producing a full length piece that relies less

on sports highlights than on close ups of the unpredictable and unscripted behavior of the competitors Or as

Director of Photography Bob Scott describes it Behind the scenes access is critical to making a movie about

something the whole world has already seen once

Last month in Torino Italy the production team took advantage of Panasonic s AG HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2

hand held camcorder to capture HD footage that was unprecedented in its immediacy and intimacy whether

found at the top of a mountain or backstage at women s figure skating The HVX200 was used in tandem with

three AJ HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema cameras with four camera crews shooting under DP Scott one of

country s most accomplished sports cinematographers

Currently in post production Bud Greenspan Presents the 2006 Torino Games will air on the Showtime

Network early in 2007 and will be broadly distributed internationally The documentary will run between 90

120 minutes

The AG HVX200 offers production quality 100Mbps HD video with independent intra frame encoding 4 2 2

color sampling and less compression making HD content easier and faster to edit and more able to stand up

to image compositing versus long GOP MPEG 2 systems

Scott himself a VariCam owner said In Torino we were on the hunt for shots that many months from now

will make viewers sit up and say Hey where were the networks when that happened And because the form

factor of the HVX200 is so small and unintimidating we got the shots that no one else had

Notably a Cappy cameraman equipped with the five pound HVX200 was waved into the prep area backstage

at the women s figure skating finals where he was one of only two shooters the second being the world feed

photographer tethered by a cable to a big camera There the Cappy photographer kept the HVX200 trained

on Shizuka Arakawa on her way to becoming the first Japanese Olympic gold medalist in figure skating The

HVX200 captured Arakawa s reactions as she watched her favored rivals Sasha Cohen and Irina Slutskaya

both fall on the ice and as she received a congratulatory call from the prime minister of Japan

Equally as dramatic Scott recounted was an episode at the start house for one of the Alpine events We had

one of our cameramen literally hanging off of the building with a guy holding him around the waist Our

photographer was able to shove the HVX200 around the corner of the start house and more or less

suspended in space shoot wide angle at 60 fps and get some stunning footage that I can pretty much

guarantee will make the final cut

The DP noted It was a grueling 18 days and the HVX200 stood up to being thrown in and out of vans and

backpacks big disparities in temperature e g freezing temperatures followed by blasts of heat and early

morning shoots in white out conditions We even had the HVX200 on our local cameramen as they skied down

some of the hardest slopes finding spots to film the action

He continued We received the HVX200 only 24 hours before the opening ceremony The factory settings

matched very well to VariCam with the cine gamma modes I prefer built in We ve been shooting the Olympics

with VariCam since Salt Lake City 2002 and know that caliber of HD camera is friendly to high contrast

conditions think bright sun on super bright snow I was eager to see how the HVX200 would compare and it

certainly retains much of that dynamic range and did very well in our many contrast y situations Color

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rendition is dead on and the HVX200 has great optics matching up with our 30K broadcast lens pretty darn

well

Cappy senior producer Sydney Thayer noted Regardless of whether there will be an SD broadcast we shoot

in HD to get the best quality image and produce legacy coverage of the Games all Cappy s outtakes are

archived at the I O C We are huge fans of the VariCam but the fact that we had the tiny HVX200 this year

made us considerably less obtrusive

He explained I ve been with Cappy since 1984 and that year there were two camera crews at the Games

the ABC feed and us Over time the world feed has exploded and more and more companies have been

buying rights to the extent that this year there were 20 major broadcast organizations in Torino Much stricter

rules have been implemented and the nature of access to small companies such as ours has been severely

limited But the HVX200 was a great assist in getting us into tight spots with handlers typically saying You

can come in if that s all you re bringing It s a classic camera for the Greenspan verite approach of

documenting the entire trajectory of an athlete s story

In terms of post production Cappy producer editor Michael Schanzer said We had six 4GB P2 cards for the

camera and at the end of a day s shooting we d go back to our office and off load the cards to an AJ

HD1200A DVCPRO HD VTR We realize that this is a somewhat old fashioned methodology to use with the

tape less HVX200 but as this is a long form piece we weren t required to do on site editing and we d had no

hands on time with the camera before Torino I anticipate that the next time we use the camera our workflow

will be more IT centric

Schanzer said Cappy is currently logging and organizing the 250 hours of footage conceiving story lines and

planning more than a dozen follow up interviews to be shot all around the world ideally with the HVX200 An

off line edit will be done on Avid Express and the on line HD edit done at a NBC owned facility in Torrington

CT Cappy will master in HD accommodating worldwide downconversions as needed

The ultra versatile HVX200 records in 1080i and 720p in production proven 100 Mbps DVCPRO HD quality

with the ability to capture images in 21 video formats The DVCPRO HD format offers users cost effective

intra frame compression where each frame stands on its own for editing and its full 4 2 2 color sampling

allows the image to hold up under color correction The camera records video on a P2 card as IT friendly MXF

files in 1080 60i 30p and 24p in 720 60p 30p and 24p in 50Mbps DVCPRO50 and in 25Mbps DVCPRO or

DV The HVX200 can capture fast or slow action in 720p at various frame rates the first time this function is

available in a hand held camera The shooting frame rate in 720p native mode can be set for any of 11 steps

between 12fps and 60fps including 24fps and 30fps For more information on the AG HVX200 visit

www panasonic com hvx200

The AJ HDC27 VariCam replicates many of the key features of film based image acquisition including 24

frame progressive scan images time lapse recording and a wide range of variable frame rates 4 fps to 60 fps

in single frame increments for overcranked and undercranked off speed in camera effects The

AJ HDC27 VariCam also features CineGamma software that permits Panasonic s HD Cinema camera

systems to more closely match the latitude of film stocks

About Bud Greenspan

Bud Greenspan one of the foremost writer producer directors of sports films who has impacted decades of

Olympic coverage will receive this year s Lifetime Achievement Award at the 27th Annual Sports Emmy

Awards to be presented on May 1 in New York City In addition to his seven previous Emmy Awards

Greenspan has been recognized for his body of work with the George Foster Peabody Award and the

Directors Guild of America Award For his outstanding service in chronicling the Olympic Games he was

awarded the prestigious Olympic Order by The International Olympic Committee in 1985 In 2004 Mr

Greenspan was inducted into the U S Olympic Hall of Fame as a Special Contributor

About Panasonic Broadcast

Panasonic Broadcast Television Systems Co is a leading supplier of broadcast and professional video

products and systems Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North

America The company is the North American headquarters of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd NYSE

MC of Japan and the hub of its U S marketing sales service and R D operations For more information on

Panasonic Broadcast products access the company s web site at www panasonic com broadcast

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