By Elizabeth Davis, September 25, 2003
The debut of two new vehicles by Ford Motor Company before thousands of journalists at the 2003 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, MI, was shot for the first time in HD by renowned production house Dark Spark Media Productions.
Dark Spark, located in the rolling hills of Royal Oaks, MI just outside of Detroit, decided to use the Panasonic AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera to shoot "launch" videos for the two Ford vehicles-the 2004 F150 truck and the 427 sports sedan. Versions of the videos were also used at the auto shows in Chicago and New York City.
Ford kicked off its 100th anniversary at the Detroit show with a newly-constructed 112,000-sq. ft. display that showed off 94 vehicles, the company's biggest wave of new product and concept introductions. Dark Spark's assignment was to create videos for the 427 concept car, as well as for the newly-designed F150 truck. The 427 is the showpiece of a possible design direction for a future line-up of Ford cars.
The videos, displayed on a 45-ft. projection screen flanked by two 20-ft. screens, were presented at press events for more than 6,000 international media at Detroit's Cobo Arena. Dark Spark also produced for the auto show a highly-stylized video celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Chevy Corvette, a two-minute piece that was shown on a 50-inch plasma on the main floor of the show.
Dark Spark's Owner/President Rick Yarmy served as director on the two Ford videos, produced for the automotive giant through Presentation Works, a Detroit-area company specializing in large-scale, live automotive events. Dark Spark produces most of its high-profile assignments, previously shot in film, within the automotive industry.
Yarmy says, "We purchased the VariCam largely as a replacement for film in product shooting, specifically photographing automobiles
. Last year, we'd rented an AJ-HDC27 from Bexel in New York to shoot a video for Toyota's Scion model for the New York Auto Show. Our cameraman was ecstatic about the camera's functionality, and, as the director, I thought the VariCam's performance was outstanding. The AJ-HDC27 is attractively priced and I was impressed with Panasonic's CineGamma philosophy. I really liked its variable-frame rate shooting-there's a lot of call for off-speed work in the automotive industry.
"The press events were set up like a rock concert, with the projection far eclipsing the size of motion picture screens. For the 45-ft. screen, we took a slice out of the middle of 16:9 images we'd shot, blew them up, and projected them in a 3:3:1 aspect ratio. We broke the center section of the 16:9 material into three segments, then feathered the image (recombined through projection). The images held up great.
"The VariCam material handled a lot of manipulation in post. On the 427 concept car piece, we pulled color out, brought the contrast way up, and tinted it red. We'd shot a black car outdoors at night in Detroit. We'd been anxious about the night shooting, but the dark car looked beautiful.
"The F150 had an opposite style, all bright, vivid colors. We shot a yellow truck during the day, with both off-road and track shooting. We did off-speed shooting at 60-fps. The client was blown away!"
Yarmy explains that he did a full 16:9 HD cut of the Ford videos on the company's Avid|DS HD system, inputting from a Panasonic AJ-HD150 DVCPRO HD studio VTR. A separate post house sliced and re-divided the material for projection. According to Yarmy, he anticipates many more conspicuous automotive assignments for the VariCam, and will use the camera in the spring to shoot episodes of "Bob's Job," an Emmy Award-winning Dark Spark production that has aired on WTVS, Detroit's PBS station.
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