‘Nothing Comes Close’ shot on JVC’s HD camcorder

‘Nothing Comes Close’ is a movie created and produced by Impact Image using JVC’s JY-HD10 high definition camcorder.
Directed and edited by Doug Fidler and produced by Bob Hayes and Paul Flandinette, the movie was made to promote the world's most capable and dynamic ‘swing-role’ combat aircraft, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and was first previewed in July 2004 at Eurofighter’s pavilion at the bi-annual Farnborough International 2004.
Eight minutes in length and six months in the making, ‘Nothing Comes Close’ is a real movie experience that demonstrates the Eurofighter Typhoon’s ‘swing-role’ capabilities, combining Hollywood- quality special effects with live action and acted drama. To add to the film’s realism, the film was shot in Cyprus, Germany, Sardinia and the UK at German, Italian and Royal Air Force locations.
Producer Paul Flandinette said: “The JY-HD10 was small enough to be used in the confines of a Eurofighter Typhoon cockpit to shoot air-to-air refueling and in-cockpit action sequences and this added greatly to the film’s realism and drama.
The optical image stabiliser system which has been incorporated into the JY-HD10 enables the capture of images even in the most rugged conditions.
Flandinette added: “We had to hand the camera to Eurofighter Typhoon aircrew and often only had a short amount of time to brief them on our shooting requirements and how to operate the camera. The results are a testament to the ease of use, quality and dependability of the camera. Camera benefits aside, the service we received from JVC was extremely helpful and supportive.”
Launched in to the European market in August 2003, the JY-HD10 is commonly known as the world’s first affordable professional high definition camcorder. It demonstrates clear advantages to programme makers of using this feature-rich HD camcorder to produce high definition movies without having to make significant financial investments in new equipment.
The single CCD (1.18 million pixel, 16:9) camcorder can record at various resolution modes. It records from the CCD at HD resolution 720p and will output at both 720p and up-converted 1080i signals, with an MPEG2 HD compression, directly on to standard size Mini-DV cassettes, which is at the same mode of recording standard definition mode. The camcorder also incorporates a standard mode with 4:3 compression of MPEG2 at 480/60p or 480/60i.
For ‘Nothing Comes Close’, the images recorded by the JY-HD10 camcorder were converted by Lumiere to MPEG2, and dropped into Final Cut Pro, which in turn scaled the images up to a full 1080p. This final output was compatible with the main timeline edit. The movie was edited on a Mac G5 dual 1.8GHz with two HUGE raid systems totalling 1.2 terabytes.
(GB)