United Kingdom
Professional Video
Content creation & presentation
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A marathon of Amazonian proportions
Tinopolis, one of the UK’s largest independent media producers, recently used two of JVC’s GY-HM700 camcorders to film four-part series, Ras yn
Erbyn Amser (Race Against Time), about this year’s Jungle Marathon – the world’s toughest endurance event. 
Held in the Amazon Rainforest, the Jungle Marathon is one of the toughest self-sufficient endurance challenges in the world, where contestants endure a gruelling 222km six-stage race, held over seven days. 130 runners from around the globe signed up to the challenge, 35 of whom were from the UK, with the aim of raising awareness of global climate change.
Production company P.O.P.1 produced Ras yn Erbyn Amser, working together with Tinopolis and their new GY-HM700 tapeless camcorders, to film competitor and television presenter, Lowri Morgan, as she competed in the race. Always up for a challenge, Lowri is the presenter of Welsh language channel S4C’s motorsports programme, Ralïo+, and veteran of several marathons and the extremely tough Ironman Challenge. Rasyn Erbyn Amser followed Lowri on her rigorous 18-month training period as she built up towards the race, and showed her delight as she finished as the highestplaced female Briton in the tough race.
“We heard that other crews, who have tried to film the Jungle
Marathon in the past, had difficulties with the humidity affecting their tapes, so we decided to use tapeless cameras to combat this problem,” Tinopolis cameraman, Rhys Edwards
reveals. “We chose JVC’s GY-HM700 camcorders, supplied by Digital Garage, because we needed solid state professional cameras with interchangeable lenses that were lightweight and
rugged,” Rhys explains. “In a humid, jungle environment, the GY-HM700’s tapeless feature was a must. The QuickTime format fitted into our Final Cut Pro workflow easily, and the
fact that they are relatively light cameras saved us a lot of energy whilst trekking through the jungle.
“I was at first nervous about using a solid state camera, as I thought that one wrong press of a button might delete a day’s worth of footage, but I was surprised at how user
friendly the GY-HM700 is. We downloaded our footage onto a laptop each night, and started each day with a fresh 32GB card. In difficult conditions like the Amazon, the camcorders
performed wonderfully and I was particularly impressed with the images it produced.”
The production crew – consisting of two cameramen, two sound recordists, a director and a paramedic – endured heat, bugs, tarantulas and piranhas over the two-week shoot in the
Amazon rainforest.
“Because we were in the middle of the jungle
waiting for runners to suddenly appear, the playback system on the camcorders was a godsend,” Rhys continues. “If I was looking back at footage that I’d recorded earlier and a
runner appeared, I could just switch from VTR to camera mode and start shooting straight away. With tape, this would be impossible, as I’d have to spool back to the end of my
recorded footage, by which time I would have missed the runner.”
The GY-HM700 uses standard, inexpensive SDHC memory cards which are light, robust and reliable and can also be read by a computer using any card reader. For continuous shooting, the
GY-HM700 camcorder provides two memory card slots, for a total of up to 64GB of on-board storage – enough for up to six hours of continuous HD recording.
“We would film until our SD cards were full – about two days’ worth – then we would transfer the footage to a hard drive via an Apple MacBook Pro. We kept the full SD cards as
a precaution and backup in case something happened to our hard drive. The fact that 32GB cards are becoming cheaper meant that we could afford to do this.”
Lowri’s training leading up to the marathon and the challenge itself were broadcast on S4C in January this year, but are still available to view on S4/Clic, which
is S4C’s equivalent to the BBC iPlayer.
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