Emmy-Award winning Director of Photography Rob Fortunato is currently in production shooting a History Channel special, “1968 With Tom Brokaw,” with Panasonic’s AJ-HDX900 multiformat DVCPRO HD camcorders. The documentary will show the veteran newsman interviewing personalities from the era and also offering his own reflections on the year.
Fortunato is heading up a team of cinematographers, all shooting 720/30p with HDX900s and, occasionally, Panasonic’s VariCam. The HDX900 features a native 16:9, 2/3-inch HD, 1 million pixel 3-CCD system. Fortunato is also handling the technical look of the show, including extensive green screen work on producer-driven interviews.
“Shooting HD green screen can be tricky, given the extreme level of detail HD captures,” Fortunato said. “The HDX900 is excelling at this critical aspect of the production. We’re shooting against seamless green photography paper, and given proper lighting, the results have been very successful.”
Fortunato said that most of the shooting for the Brokaw special is being done on tripods, with the cameras outfitted with Fujinon HAc13X4.5B Super Wide Angle HD lenses. The production also employs Fujinon Prime lenses.
Shooting began in July and will wrap later this month. The two-hour History Channel special will air in December 2007.
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