VW’s ‘Transparent Factory’ integrates HD vision

When Volkswagen dubbed its new luxury limousine Phaeton – son of the sun god Helios – the name became an inspiration for the new Dresden factory built to manufacture the car. The 49,000 m sq Transparent Factory was designed by architect Professor Günter Henn so that customers could watch the making of their dream cars at close quarters. To further extend the customer experience, VW integrated an HD cinema which OTOM HDTV and Filmproduktion helped realise.

The original concept in the summer of 2002 was simply for a Digital Betacam documentary about the Transparent Factory. However, Filmproduktion's Managing Director Hans-Joachim Herbst decided to use HDCAM for some test footage which proved more successful than even he'd hoped.

After delivering the 26-minute Digital Betacam version to VW, Herbst invited the client to a screening of HDCAM footage at the Posthouse in Hamburg. VW executives were so impressed by this screening, they commissioned a full HD version of the documentary which had already been delivered, as well as deciding on a second HD film about the technical details of the Phaeton.

HDCAM Decision
“There is nothing to be found anywhere else within the motor manufacturing industry world-wide that can compare to this [factory],” Herbst explains. “I wanted to portray this extraordinary development in a high quality format. I could never have been able to afford to shoot this film on 35mm, however I had an excellent digital alternative available with 25P progressive or 50i interlaced. What also attracted me to HD were the wide range of editing options and that I would end up with source material which was high quality and independent of any one format.”

Another important point for Herbst could be seen when comparing the Digital Betacam and HDCAM camcorders.

“I was won over by the more extensive menu programme to regulate the shots, the lenses which were considerably better and the higher resolution of the picture sensors. We were able to achieve considerably better results with the HDCAM shots even after the down conversion of the recordings.

“This all gave us more room to be creative and in the end we had no problems implementing our ideas. For me, the plan to show the customer the full Digital Betacam version which had been ordered, alongside HDCAM clips, became a certainty after we had captured the first few shots.”

Chroma GmbH in Hamburg took care of the post production. The Digital Betacam version was cut on an Avid Symphony, while Smoke from Discreet was used to edit the individual HD clips for the test presentation.

“We were particularly impressed by the fact that there was no need for costly colour correction. There were also many surprising results which became apparent during the post production and which amazed the whole team.”

Ideas, Innovations and Top Class Technology

The second Phaeton production was also shot by OTOM HDTV and Filmproduktion, this time with cameraman Sven Kiesche. Ideas, Innovations and Top Class Technology is the title of the 23-minute documentary, which shows the manufacturing of the exclusive car.

Chroma was once again responsible for the off-line and on-line editing. It was one of the first large projects they produced using Avid DS HD for uncompressed HD editing and finishing. The Avid was used to retouch some scenes, says Herbst: “The post production revealed that cabling could be seen on the floor due to reflection of the light. Luckily the necessary retouching caused no problems and we were astonished by the short amount of computer time necessary.”

TaurusMediaTechnik was responsible for the mixing of the sound.

“Right from the beginning,” Herbst says, “it was obvious to me that the documentary would have to be a top class product in order to be able to pursue my ideas further. Therefore it was really important for me to have experienced partners especially in the editing. I think it has been worth it.”