As 50 aspiring filmmakers endure a rigorous Hollywood boot camp to kick off the new reality series On the Lot, the show’s Director of Photography Jay Hunter is taming the arms of what he calls “the reality show octopus beast” using Sony’s XDCAM SD PDW-530 Professional Disc system.
“I compare shooting reality television to an octopus because each arm (camera) is shooting independently. It presents huge quality control challenges because images shot by different cameras never appear the same color,” Hunter, said. “With its ability to store scene files, the XDCAM is much more like a computer than the video cameras of the past. With the flip of a switch, you can sync up all 12 cameras to the exact same look ‘ eliminating color variables and inconsistencies.”

Hunter says the scene file storage also helps makes the online editor’s job easier when color correcting thousands of hours of footage during post production.

Hunter, who also used the XDCAM in the production of “Rock Star: Supernova” and “America’s Next Top Model” calls XDCAM a tool that greatly elevates reality TV production, a genre he says hasn’t received much respect in the past for its image quality. For On the Lot, Hunter guided his crew to shoot the series using the camera’s progressive 30P mode that creates a visual environment that “treads the line between film and video.” Not quite the film-look of 24P or the video look of 60i, he calls it “something altogether unique.”

“The camera has great capacity to see into darkness and capture detailed highlights and shadows,” he said. “The results are very stunning and dynamic.”

Hunter says capturing time-lapse imagery, a commonly used transition effect in reality TV, is done much more efficiently in the XDCAM’s true time lapse mode that mimics 35 millimeter production.

Another of Hunter’s favorite XDCAM features is the memory cache that allows operators to recover footage up to 10 seconds before the camera is recording.
“In the past, we were just out of luck if we missed a shot,” Hunter said.

On the Lot executive produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, gives aspiring filmmakers from around the world the chance to earn a $1 million development deal at DreamWorks. The show airs twice a week throughout the summer on FOX.