A 16 TB Archion Synergy HD storage system (made up of two 8 GB RAID arrays) was used to manage the complex workflow. Synergy HD is designed to expand the storage requirements of existing Avid Unity clients without the need to replace or upgrade their current Unity infrastructure. About 40 hours of color-correction will be necessary to give the disparate source footage a consistent look and feel.

The film is being directed by Christopher Bell, with Jim Czarnecki, Alexander Buono and Tamsin Rawady serving as producers. The story also follows the real-life experiences of Bell and his brothers.

Q: Why the decision to go with P2 solid state?
A: Well the gear is very affordable and on a project like this, where we knew we would be shooting fro a year and didn’t want to rent it, the HVX200 really fit our needs. We also like the small form factor of the camera. We did a lot of interviews here. A larger camera might have intimidated our subjects and gotten in the way of what we were trying n to accomplish with the film. We did a lot of verità© stuff where you don’t want to attract a lot of attention with the equipment. We could have used HDV gear, but I’m not a big fan of the format. On this project, it was an absolute joy not to be dealing with tapes.

Q: What was the most challenging part of the workflow?
A: When we began shooting, the HVX200 was brand new and not many people knew a lot about how to use it. Having to readjust our thinking when moving from tape to solid-state recording was definitely a challenge at first to get used to. Once we had our system down, however, we were more efficient than we ever have been on a feature production.

There was a lot of organization of clips that we had to learn. Instead of tapes, we had FireWire hard drives that had to be kept track of. We would go on month-long road trips during shooting where we would bring a number of Gtech 500 GB FireWire drives and a 1 TB drive with us. Each day we would shoot on the P2 cards, then download the clips to a laptop and then onto an external hard drive. We usually used up an entire 500 GB drive within a week’s shooting. This drive was sent back to our studios in Santa Monica for editing.

Q: Did you save money shooting in HD instead of film?
A: Absolutely. We shot about 400 hours of original footage. This would have been prohibitive with film. Also, instead of loads of film reels or videotapes, we traveled with four 8 GB P2 cards, the cameras, a laptop and FireWire drives. That’s it. And these are carried in special backpacks made by KATA that everything fits into. It was very convenient. And we never had any problems with the equipment. We never lost any data and never ran out of capacity on the cards. Once we shot for eight hours straight without stopping.

My partner Tamsin became adept at working with the files and getting them off the P2 cards so that cards would be immediately available after they were full. We also used the P2 Store to quickly erase the cards. As I was shooting, I would pull one card out and hand it to Tamsin, who would download the clips to the laptop [and] then reformat the cards so that I cold continue to shoot. We became very efficient at it.

At the end of every day or at midday, Tamsin would download the clips from her laptop to the portable hard drive. Back at the hotel at the end of the night she would back the data up to a second hard drive. When the drive was filled we would ship them back to the office, where they were offloaded via a FireWire 400 cable into the Archion storage system, then put the portable hard rive on a shelf. This gave us the security we needed.

Q: How did the Archion Synergy HD system help you?
A: We now have a secure storage system that includes two 8 TB blocks of storage across the Archion Synergy HD array. It’s like having a 16 TB Unity, except that Unity can only mirror the files, whereas the Archion system actually gives you RAID protection. So we were able to get more storage out of the drives than if we were using a straight Unity system.

We started with a different storage system that wasn’t adequate in terms of bandwidth. It was incapable of dealing with three Avid HD systems at once. At one point we lost 2 TB of data, but we were able to reload our back-up drives and off we went. The Avid Unity that’s linked to the edit systems has been a dream and the Archion storage allowed us to pick exactly the right amount of capacity we needed without being too expensive. It turns out we needed a lot more storage than we originally expected. With documentaries, you always end up shooting more footage than you think you will. It just something you can’t control.

For more information, visit http://www.bsffilm.com/.