SECAUCUS, NJ (August 25, 2008) – Wonderdog Media (Tacoma, WA), one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier digital video production companies, has made Panasonic’s solid-state AG-HVX200 P2 HD camcorder its mainstay acquisition tool since early 2006. The award-winning facility specializes in corporate and commercial video, and is dedicated to serving non-profits such as CARE International and Habitat for Humanity.
Co-founder/producer/Director of Photography Scott Gribble is currently spearheading a large-scale project, shot entirely with the HVX200, establishing a medical news network for up to 232 local physicians’ offices. Wonderdog is producing a dozen 30-minute, commercial-free episodes for the new network, called the Northwest Physicians Medical News, premiering this October. The custom content ranges from interviews with area doctors shot against green screen to healthful cooking segments to location profiles of 911 first responders. The medical news show will be played back from a CompactFlash media hardware player output to plasma and LCD displays in the doctors’ waiting rooms.
HVX200 assignments current on Wonderdog’s roster also include a 30-minute episode of City Limits Fishing, a hit fishing show that airs on the Versus Network; magazine news segments shot for the “Montel Williams Show”; and documentary coverage of a Tacoma air show that will be broadcast on Comcast’s On Demand digital cable network.. The Wonderdog principals-Gribble and his co-founder/wife Olga M. Gribble-have shot several narrative features and shorts with the HVX200: one of these projects, An Army of Two, recently won the Grand Jury Award at a regional 72 Hour Film Competition; and Scott Gribble was the DP on a full-length feature, Keep Your Day Job, Superstar, just hitting the festival circuit.
Gribble routinely outfits his HVX200 with Redrock Micro’s M2 Cinema Lens Adapter, which enables 35mm lenses to be used with the camcorder. He does all editing on Avid Media Composer V.3.0.
“At the time the HVX200 was coming on the market, I was ready to supplement my big broadcast camera with HD gear so I could offer high-definition shooting options to my clients,” Gribble said. “The HVX200 came up on top in all my research, and I was sold on its 720p native frame rate recording and off-speed capabilities.”
“Shortly after I purchased the HVX200, my larger camera broke down and I didn’t bother fixing it,” Gribble continued. “I’ve been shooting with the P2 camcorder on a daily basis ever since.”
The DP recently began shooting with a 32GB P2 card; previously, he’d used a combination of 8GB and 4GB cards. “Now I can shoot a whole day on one card,” Gribble said. He praised P2 for being a “green” medium, small and infinitely reusable, and the overall format for its ease-of-use on location.
“We want to run an eco-friendly business, and shooting exclusively with a tapeless format has certainly reduced our overall carbon footprint,” Gribble noted. “And not incidentally, removing tape from the shooting equation has saved us a lot of money.”
Prior to introducing the 32GB P2 card into his shooting, Gribble would offload cards into an AJ-PCS060G P2 Store Drive, outputting via USB 2.0 to a PC loaded with Avid Media Composer (he uses the P2 Store less now that his need to recycle cards has been reduced by the larger-capacity P2 card). He creates multiple folders for different segments, mirrors his content for back-up, then drags and drops MXF files into Media Composer.
Deliverables vary from assignment to assignment, ranging from DVDs to flash media to analog videotape and more.
“I really feel that the HVX200 lets me offer our clients exhaustive production options, regardless of their end product,” Gribble said. “Everything is in the camera.”
For more information about Wonderdog Media, visit www.wonderdogmedia.com