HDCAM and EX go to the extremes

It's one of the most extreme regions on the planet, where daily high temperatures reach 60°C and the land is torn apart by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The Danakil desert in Northern Ethiopia is home to the nomadic Afar people – reputedly one of the toughest tribes in Africa. The area also happens to be a disputed border zone with Eritrea .

The Hottest Place on Earth is a major three x one-hour BBC / Discovery co-production produced by Lion TV. Presented by Kate Humble with vet Steve Leonard, and geologist Dougal Jerram, the programme investigates how people, animal and plant life manage to live in such a hostile environment.

“The incredible landscape meant going HD was a no-brainer,” says series producer Rupert Smith. “But the harsh conditions meant we had to be well prepared if our kit was going to survive.”

Hire company Hotcam supplied three HDW-790P HDCAM camcorders with special protective covers built from the silver material used by firemen in super-hot infernos.

The team, which was advised by camera supervisor Richard Farish who runs Expedition Media - a specialist in extreme environment filming, also took a Sony PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX camcorder for conditions that were too hot for tape.

“We wanted to film inside a live volcano and get as close as possible to a boiling lava lake,” recalls production manager Patricia Chacon. “Since the cameraman was abseiling inside the crater we knew that tape would simply melt.”

23 day shoot

In all, around 150 hours was shot on HDCAM during the 23 day shoot, supplemented by 30 hours of material shot 35Mb/s High Quality mode on the PMW-EX1, including lots of colour shots as the crew trekked and drove across the desert.

The crew had little time to get used to working with such an unfamiliar technology. “They were backing the media onto a laptop each day and backing that onto hard drive,” says Mark Shelley, Lion’s technical manager on the job. “It’s so important on a tapeless shoot to work out your procedure before going on location and to religiously label files or you end up with duplicate folders.”

Not only did the PMW-EX1 and its SxS PRO memory cards survive the inferno without hitch, “the picture quality was brilliant,” says Shelley. “It slotted alongside the HDCAM footage perfectly.”

Offline editing was performed on Avid at Lion and post production house Blue did the HD conforms, grades and online on Nitris plus all the audio post. Media was supplied as embedded AAF which had been transferred from XDCAM EX to DNxHD 1.85. This was then handled seamlessly using Symphony Nitris by Ronnie Newman and graded using Pandora’s HD Pixi by colourist Graeme Hayes.

By any standards it was a tough shoot, with some of the crew trekking and 4W driving more than 120 miles in demanding conditions that caused them to drink 10 litres of water a day.

The Hottest Place on Earth is a Lion Television production for BBC One directed by Katie Crawford and Justin Kelly.