Second Season of Hit History Series 'Ice Road Truckers' Continues to Put HD Optical System to the Test PARK RIDGE, N.J., July 11
PARK RIDGE, N.J., July 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The second season of the series
"Ice Road Truckers," currently airing on History(TM), once again has Sony's
XDCAM(R) HD system proving it's up to the challenge of handling extreme cold.
In Season One, the show documented two months in the lives of truckers
hauling supplies over frozen lakes in the Northwest Territories and explored
the history of the region. In Season Two, the challenge is getting equipment
and supplies to natural gas exploration sites and remote villages in and
around the Arctic Circle.
But one thing hasn't changed, according to Gavin Brennan, the series'
director of photography -- the ability of the Sony optical system to
consistently perform well in extreme environments.
Brennan said the XDCAM system is the perfect choice for shooting in the
diverse conditions the production crew encounters.
"Tape-based systems would not be practical for us at all," he said. "Tape
can get too brittle in the extreme cold and clog up the heads. The more moving
parts you have, the more problems you can run into. The XDCAM system gives us
no problems related to the weather or the conditions."
During the production, the XDCAM HD camcorders are encased in protective
rubberized tape and still continue to perform flawlessly, shot to shot, he
said.
He is also impressed with the ability to review footage on-the-fly as
thumbnails on the camcorder's LCD screen, enabling the crew to make decisions
about the footage immediately without having to carry around a separate
playback monitor, and then be ready to record instantly as soon as live action
was ready to be captured.
The entire production crew from "Ice Road Truckers" also regularly makes
full use of many of the system's in-camera features, such as time lapse to
produce effective mood-setting scenes. That, combined with the camcorders' HD
resolution and overall image quality, convinced him that for production
environments as demanding as the Arctic wilderness, the XDCAM HD system is one
cool customer.
SOURCE Sony Electronics
