A new South African documentary gets on the bike – a vintage motorbike that is.
Ever heard of the DJ – or in the case of 2013, the JD? Well, to the uninitiated the
DJ/JD (let’s call it the JD to save space) is a motorcycle rally for bikes manufactured
before 1936, and runs from Durban to Johannesburg (hence the DJ acronym). It
commemorates a road race that began in 1913 and ran until 1936, when it was
banned due to road conditions and traffic.
The commemorative run started in 1970 and it has taken place every year since. As
the smart ones will have noticed, 2013 is the 100th anniversary of the original run,
which went from Johannesburg to Durban (JD), so this year it was decided to recreate
the original race.
There were some 187 entrants, including 17 from overseas and 11 ladies.
Commencing at Carnival City Mall, it’s a grueling two-day event run on minor roads.
Riders stay over-night in Newcastle, then continue on to Nottingham Road, and finally
finish at the Durban City Hall.
It’s a unique motorcycling event not only in South Africa, but also in the world and
worthy of coverage for television broadcast, as well as for posterity. The problem is
that funds on the vintage club scene are scant to say the least. Attempts to secure
broadcaster interest, both locally and abroad, were not exactly successful. It was a
case of: “Bring us something and we will air it,’ but without any financial recompense.
So – what to do? Would it be possible to cover this event on a shoestring? Would its
appeal to the industry produce results?
Thus far the answer is a resounding yes. The production team of Andy Stead and
Trevor Ou Tim (also first camera operator) felt that a minimum of three cameras
would provide basic coverage and the decision was made to go for two handheld
cameras and a helmet mount on one of the riders.
Camera set-up
A Sony NXCAM HVR-NX5E was donated by Sony Broadcast together with a condenser
microphone, a cable and three batteries with a charger. Each big battery allowed for
about six hours of recording time, while the small emergency battery allowed for
about three hours. This camera was to be used by Ou Tim, an experienced camera
operator.
The second camera – a Sony HVR-Z1E together with zoom lens, batteries, a RODE
NTG-2 shot shotgun microphone with foam windshield, pistol grip, boom pole, tripod
and 10 mini DV tapes – was donated by Digitalfilm’s Frank Meyburgh. This was to be
used by ex UK-based DOP Brian Emmis, who in his day worked at College Productions
Ltd, Leo Films Ltd and Ranger Communications Ltd.
An obvious choice for the helmet cam was a GoPro, however no donations were
forthcoming and the cost of purchase is well over R3 000. A solution presented itself
in the form of a Prestigio roadrunner 700X with almost identical specs to the GoPro.
The Prestigio could be purchased for under R2 000 with a free Roadrunner HD1 car
cam thrown in. The 700X shoots full 1080 HD with a 170mm lens, remote control and
waterproof helmet mount. With two 16 GB mini SD cards it was just the ticket.
High end performance
The 7th of March saw the first bike ride off from Carnival Mall at 06h00 with the full
crew in attendance. Interviews with officials and riders had been recorded before the
event and both camera operators were in support vehicles following the rally – Ou Tim
in a sponsored BMW active Hybrid car driven by two paramedics following the run, and
Emmis in a support vehicle. The helmet cam was mounted on rider number 83’s
helmet halfway through the field.
Ou Tim found the Sony NXCam a pleasure to use. “It feels familiar after using a Sony
Z1 HDV camera,’ he says. “It has the same great weight balance when used
handheld, which became important as I was hanging out of a car at speed while
filming the bikes in motion. It allowed me to hold my position for shots very
comfortably. But what I was very impressed with was the anti-shake mechanism built
into the camera. When shooting handheld, while walking, the visuals looked like I
was using a Steadicam.
“The focus ring and zoom is comfortable in the hand and easy to use. I really loved
the lens – the G Lens has a great reputation and I loved the way it renders crisp,
clear images, as well as the natural colours. On a cloudy day in Nottingham Road, I
found the lens able to capture some lower light areas very well. The camera uses
three Exmor CMOS sensors which, judging by the quality of the visuals, work very
well,’ says Ou Tim.
He notes that he wasn’t too crazy about the touchscreen, which he finds difficult to
use on all camera screens due to their size.
“Maybe it’s because I have fat fingers,’ he continues. “But the standard control
buttons work great. Again, it looks familiar if you’ve used Sony’s HDV models, so it
should be easy to migrate when you upgrade to this camera from HDV.
“The Sony NXCam records to solid state with its two memory slots. I found that I
could shoot continuously by changing a flash-card of the second slot, while recording
on the flash-card of the first slot. With two 32-GB memory cards, I could record non-
stop for six hours of continuous HD footage. The battery that I had in the camera
could also manage six hours of shooting, so I felt very confident working with it. I
could really concentrate on filming rather than worrying about batteries running dry, or
watching how much space I had left on the card.’
Older model
Emmis, using the older model Sony camera, was also full of praise, saying that the
camera was familiar, had good monitoring, lasted well on the supplied batteries and
produced the expected results.
“The HVR-Z1 delivers what DV filmmakers need in the HD world. It’s the obvious
choice if you are shooting 1080i,’ he says.
According to the filmmakers, the images captured by the Prestigio were astonishing.
Clean, natural colours with great 1080 resolution and minimal distortion from the
170mm lens. Sound recording on the camera was reportedly excellent; the camera had
the ability to play back both sound and visuals so they could be checked quite easily.
However, the filmmakers found that when the camera was helmet-mounted it was
impossible to tell whether it was recording or not – and often it was not recording
when the rider thought it was.
At the end of the event a total of 15 hours of footage was available. All footage was
transferred onto hard drives for future logging and an offline shot selection for
editing. Some of the footage was used for a short insert on SABC3’s morning show
Expresso.
The footage will form the basis for a 30-minute documentary for both broadcast and
DVD release.
By Andy Stead
Screen Africa magazine – April 2013
