The company: Shooting Partners, London, UK

advanced deck control and ingest solution As the name suggests, Shooting Partners provides a range of collab- orative services – technical planning, project management, equipment packages and crews – to broadcast and corporate production companies Cinedeck RX shooting in the UK and internationally. proves perfect Amongst its many credits, the company provided Sony EX3s for the 2012 Dubai Nissan 24-Hour Car Race, a Sony XDCAM package to Channel 4’s for primetime popular Rude Tube produced by October Films, and Canon EOS C300s to Studio Lambert for the documentary The Boy Who Can’t Forget, also for Channel 4. For the multi-camera production of BBC’s hit show The on BBC Secret Choir, Shooting Partners delivered a larger package including full-sized, shoulder-mount Sony cameras, with viewfinders, remotes, on-set comms, Service vision mixing and split-screen monitoring.

“Instead of having to buy separate recording systems Shooting Partners, together with sister company Anna Valley Displays, for each camera system, we has also delivered eye-catching LED studio display and lighting instal- lations to Sky Sports News, ITV’s X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, plus can now just use the Cinedeck flagship BBC programs including Match Of The Day, Newsnight and The RX. One box fits all.” Daily Politics Show.

With celluloid capture now all-but vanished from British TV production in favor of HD acquisition, Shooting Partners recently purchased four Cinedeck RX record, monitoring and playback systems for use on multi- cam productions. And, to assist clients with quality control on program- ming, the company has published online a list of Sony and Canon HD cameras approved for production by the main terrestrial and satellite broadcasters in the UK – including BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky.

“As a rental company, we need all our equipment – cameras, lights, recorders, displays – to be as flexible as possible. The great thing with Cinedeck RX is that it can be used with each of the cameras certified by the main broadcasters,” says Shaun Wilton, Head of Facilities at Shooting Partners. “With its sheer range of codecs, instead of having to buy sepa- rate recording systems for each camera system, we can now just use the Cinedeck RX. One box fits all.”

The Project: Secret Service, produced for BBC by Initial/Endemol

Most recently Shooting Partners deployed its RX recorders on the BBC’s primetime, hidden-camera, comedy show Secret Service. The six x 40-minute series was produced by Initial (an Endemol company), and stars (Top Gear, Total ) as the head of the Se- cret Service – a team of highly-trained operatives (actors and comedians) who trick, prank and generally wind-up, unwitting members of the public as they are being secretly recorded.

Shooting Partners was tasked with providing a range of camera pack- ages for different types of tricks, including a set of multi-cam stunts, shot at specially-dressed locations, that are the highlight of the show. Wilton says he and the team at Shooting Partners – Senior Technician James Foreman and Technical Manager Tony Mawby – were already aware of Cinedeck’s range of recorders during the research period for Secret Ser- vice. “We instantly saw how easy it is to use and how we could harness the RX, not just on Secret Service, but many other broadcast and corpo- rate events we work on as well. It was a no-brainer decision to purchase, and we quickly discovered they are perfect for primetime.” The challenges: Record times, tight physical space for equipment and crew, client peace-of-mind

“On Secret Service, we had no idea of knowing how long a stunt would take unfold. So the crucial thing was the ability to have uninterrupted recording,” says Tony Mawby. “With tape and optical disks we’ve been limited to a maximum of 95 minutes of HD recording, but we realized that was not going to be nearly enough for this type of show.

“What’s more, we knew the stunt locations were going to be physically tight. The space to accommodate dedicated the recording decks we originally thought we were going to use for each of the seven or eight cameras, plus the other monitoring and control equipment, and the crew, was going to be a real squeeze,” adds Mawby.

Foremen notes that it was not a massive leap of faith for Shooting Part- ners to adopt solid state drives (SSDs) and go completely tapeless, as the company had already championed tapeless workflow with various Sony and Canon HD cameras, using optical disk, SxS and compact flash cards as the recording media. The challenge was selling the idea of SSD record- ing to the client. “We had to reassure them that their material would be totally safe and protected,” he says. Behind the scenes at Secret Service. Shooting Partners The solution: Multiple Cinedeck RX Broadcast systems Innovates production solutions in small spaces. Shooting Partners deployed four Cinedeck RXs to shoot the main stunt sequences on BBC’s Secret Service. These sequences were shot over the course of six weeks at five different locations, which had been specially dressed to conceal up to eight cameras, the recording equipment and the crew. Each RX captured from two camera ISOs, at 1920 x 1080p, in XDCam HD50 MXF format. The cameras used were a combina- tion of Bradley Engineering BE-HD10 hotheads and Panasonic AG-HCK10 mini-cameras.

Each RX was set in dual record mode, which enables two separate cam- era streams to be recorded on one SSD sled, with an identical copy of each camera pair on the second SSD sled. Using 240GB and 120GB SSDs guaranteed a two-hour record time. RX recording was triggered using a laptop, connected to the RXs using a NetGear Prosafe 24-port Gigabit switch. The RXs could be to controlled individually, in selected groups or all together. A Blackmagic Smart VideoHub enabled the video signals to be routed to the Cinedeck RXs and other monitors at the location, in- cluding the director’s gallery.

At the end of each day’s shoot, one set of SSDs was shipped to Prime Focus in Soho, which was responsible for the Avid editorial on the show, with the other set of SSDs taken back to Shooting Partner’s HQ for safe- keeping. Dual Cinedeck DataPort 25 import docks were used for the edi- torial ingest. As soon as Prime Focus confirmed safe delivery and back-up of the material, the SSDs were recycled back to the production crew the Cinedeck RX’s small footprint next day.

“Over the six weeks we shot, we had to rig and de-rig the technical set-up five times. These can be heart-stopping moments, but it all went smoothly. The RXs fired up like they should and never let us down,” says Foreman. “We also had no worries about capturing the action, as the RXs gave us the ability to record for 120 minutes from each of the eight cameras – 90-minutes that we anticipated the stunt would complete in, plus a further 30 minutes in case of any overruns,” adds Mawby. “A significant advantage during post production was that the editors and director had a wealth of footage to select from – such as general views, interiors, closeups on props, actors and the people being pranked. Also, hidden-camera shows typically suffer from the footage being low-quality SD, but the look on Secret Service will be far better, as we were capturing in HD.”

Regarding the issue of concealing equipment and having a small physi- cal footprint, Foreman says, “The fact that the RX has two camera inputs, and that the RX unit itself is pretty small, saved considerably on space compared to traditional deck. Furthermore, being able to do dual records on both hard drives – one for the edit house, the other for a safe loca- tion – gave the producers great peace-of mind that their material was protected at all times.”

Wilton says that using the RXs, rather than other recording decks, deliv- ered significant cost-savings. “The production company only had to hire four RXs, as opposed to eight VTRs. There were no stock costs either, as the SSDs used were ours. Because there were just four RXs to control, the shoot required just one operator, and as material was being sent straight to the post company, there was need for a data wrangler or DIT on-set either. All together, using the RXs amounted to a significant saving across the whole production, which we were able to pass on to Endemol.”

Since working on Secret Service, Shooting Partners has deployed its RXs on Channel 4’s Secret Eaters, produced by Endemol, a groundbreaking new TV series about the psychology and science of eating. The RXs have also been used on a number of corporate productions and live events, including an awards ceremony for UBM (United Business Media). Along with providing uninterrupted recording for several hours, the RXs have been used for master and proxy recording – typically XDCam50 and ProRes for editorial. hidden camera hijinks at BBC’s Secret Service “All in all, we’re more than happy with or purchase of Cinedeck RX, says Wilton. “They have helped us to overcome the main issues of record-time and working in tight physical spaces. They are versatile too, offering a huge range of codecs and able to work with an impressive array of HD cameras.”

Extensive workflow possibilities BBC’s “Secret Service”

8 4 Cinedeck RX

C a 2 Masters per Deck XDCam HD50 m MXF, 1080p e Removable r SSD Drives a Master Backup until s Edit complete

Avid MC Edit