No more the forte of television crews, travelers create the best of moments ...with easy accessibility to digital technology...

1. 34 vivacity magazine • july 2011 www.vivacitymagazines.com 35july 2011 • vivacity magazinewww.vivacitymagazines.com
cover story
TRAVEL“Snapshots, videos, coctails and currency bartering for
a bookmark placed among the travel tales…”
Filming travel is a journey within the journey. No more
the forte of television crews, travelers create the best
of moments recording information and experiences
with easy accessibility to digital technology.
Arun Khanna
FILMINGModel: Rashmita Maharjan
Photographer: Rajiv Shrestha
Make up & Hair: Sophie
Wardrobe: Pocket, City Centre, 4011786
Vehicle Courtesy
Leon motors pvt ltd
L 200 sportero
Shantinagar, Baneshwor, Ktm, Nepal
4622485, 4622147, 4622074
Shoe Courtesy
Third Pole Trekkings
Thamel, Ktm
9849233595

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cover story
Location
The Airport Hotel,
Sinamangal, 4112635

3. 39july 2011 • vivacity magazinewww.vivacitymagazines.com
T
he eye flits at ultra high speed, performing a
saccade at 200 milliseconds - the fastest of
movements that the human body is capable
of - the thumb decisively pushes a button
and the screen blinks ‘record’ with thoughtful glee.
As if looking for the right pieces of a jigsaw puzzle the
LCD searches the crowd, the history, the silhouettes,
the images, and the silence hidden in the cacophony
among city spaces. Each recording, in anticipation of
what the final story may want to say. Paradoxically,
the traveler with camera-in-hand remains detached
from the scene, oblivious to what else happens
around, and yet attached as long as the ‘frame’ is alive
with recording!
A story is nothing if not told, and a memory is
nothing if not reclaimed - digital or cerebral.
Undoubtedly we all like to preserve stories where we
or ‘ours’ are the main characters. Our travels are a
series of such stories, autobiographical, formed with
distinct individuality yet yearning to get shared.
Just as adventures are relished best when recounted,
travel viewed in retrospect is a journey within the
journey. Filming travel has layers of realities, the one
that is seen, the one that is filmed and the one that
is reviewed and talked about. As a starter the LCD
screen on cameras gives this advantage, and has done
forvideowhatPolaroiddidforstillphotography.The
French novelist Robert Sole notes “Digital culture
invades our behavior as much as our values, and
modifies our relation with reality.” No doubt, the
perception of a location changes a lot when filmed or
a film on it viewed.
The Big & Small Screen
Dedicated television networks all over the world
sculpture travel, a perpetually changing shape of
cultures, landscapes & people; often a tool for
marketing destinations or even preserving cultures.
Visual images are potently persuasive. It is said in the
1960 US presidential debate, Nixon won on radio
but Kennedy won on television. There
after everyone running for public
office had to be video-correct to
survive and win. And that is as true
for authenticating and projecting
travel locations in a world gorged
with images. The right camera-
angled perspectives, the right lights
and sounds have too often won over
travelers to destinations, bypassing
theoneswhichnevergotfilmed.Pioneeredbythe120
years old National Geographic Magazine, travel has
dwelled largely on the factor of the hidden revealed
and the spectacular authenticated by experience.
Movies have done the same to the perception of
destinations, pinning cinematic landmarks on the
travel map of the world.
Movie maps have successfully campaigned for travel
markets. ‘Visit Britain’ sponsored by Vauxhall in
1996, featured 200 film and TV locations around
Britain from 60 years of British film history and rose
to be Visit Britain’s most successful printed product.
Its media popularity attracted attention both home
and overseas, prompting people to discover different
parts of Britain as they followed the screen stories
and their characters. Many countries continue to use
movie maps as a harbinger for travel.
Cinema since its inception made travelogues. The
Lumiere Brothers with the invention of cinema
at the turn of the twentieth century showed life in
Paris, making travel the first genre of filming. Scenes
of exotic locations were grouped together as fillers in
the early days of matinee shows.
Very soon travel got its second major film genre –
the documentary. Although the term was used by
John Grierson in the 1950s, it designated the work
of Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North” an
account about the life of an Innuit Eskimo, shot in
1922, followed by “Moana” depicting the daily life
of a Polynesian tribe in Samoa.
Pioneers
Asmotortravelbecamepopular,travelfilminggained
impetus. Robert Fulton, the Britishadventurer, inhis
classic book “One Man Caravan” describes perhaps
one of the most daring and original bike journeys
in the annuals of travel. The 1932 journey on his
Douglas motorcycle took him on an eighteen-month
A story is nothingif not told, and amemory is nothingif not reclaimed -digital or cerebral.
cover story

4. 40 vivacity magazine • july 2011 www.vivacitymagazines.com 41july 2011 • vivacity magazinewww.vivacitymagazines.com
odyssey through Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
India, Sumatra, Malaysia, Siam, Indonesia, China,
and Japan. En route he encountered gangs of
robbers in Waziristan, had his camera confiscated in
Afghanistan, was offered a tiger cub for two dollars
in Malaysia, got locked up in jail on charges of being
a smuggler in Indonesia, and was escorted across
Japan by 33 motorcycles. Besides extra space for
luggage and fuel his customized chopper carried
a hidden point 32 revolver, and a movie camera
with 40,000 feet of film! The journey resulted in an
incredible vintage travel record shot on 35 mm
nitrate film.
Advertisers thrust images to the hilt
till the message is delivered. In 1958,
three English housewives bought a
Land Rover and drove it all the way from
London to Zanskar in the Kargil district of india.
Over five months Anne Davies, Eve Sims, and
Antonia Deacock drove 16,000 miles before
travelling another 300 miles on foot. The trip
was sponsored by Ovaltine who supplied the
women with a 16mm camera to shoot a TV
advert, but the footage was deemed unusable
lying lost, till photographer and filmmaker
MartinSalterin2007decidedtomakeadocumentary
on the event.
People travel for novelty, knowledge, escape, and
adventure - all of this makes for incredible filming.
Ever since the DV camera entered the market in
1998, mini-DV tape playing camcorders became
ubiquitous and telling travel stories a regular affair.
And the camera sizes matched independent travel’s
pocket.
Making films, short or long, amateur or professional,
has undergone a transformation that is way beyond
thepredictionsofmediapioneers.Digitaltechnology
and film perception has proven even the best of
predictorswrong.Backin1927H.M.Warnerheadof
Warner Brothers Movie Studios asked “who the hell
wants to hear actors talk?” While Bill Gates opined
in 1981, “640 K ought to be enough (memory) for
anybody”. We know the rest.
A traveler can be an auteur in his own right and
shoot a distinct style of events and subjects
A humble handy-cam needs
no lessons from Syd Field,
or Eisenstein or a Kurosawa,
everyday visual stories are
non-verbal communication
patterns. The camera could
do well to mimic the rule of
Albert Mehrabian’s verbal
and non-verbal communica-
tion breakup - the 7:38:55
ratio - which claims that
communication is 7 percent
verbal, 38 percent tone of
the voice and 55 percent
non verbal behavior as seen
from body language, and
therefore indicates the im-
portance of visual content in
communication.
Having said that empathy is
perhaps the core emotion of
the moving image and gets
best interpreted by ‘trans-
ference of illusion’ caused by
positioning of the viewpoint
and the movement of the
gaze. In filming terms that
may be understood by the
shot pattern of the shoot -
The Master shot or the wide
shot which establishes or
reestablishes the scene and
gives a realization of where
is it happening. The close up
shot, which give a sense of
proximity. The reverse-shot,
which counterbalances the
visual perception from both
sides of the scene. And the
‘inside-the-dramatic-circle-
of-action’ shots which are
taken from inside the physi-
cal spaces of the situation
being filmed and makes the
camera pan around to cap-
ture the closeness of the
experience. A combination of
these four shot pattern can
deliver enough variation to
filming and give any number
of edit points for a story.
Creating
theShotEver since the DV
camera entered
the market in 1998,
mini-DV tape playing
camcorders became
ubiquitous and
telling travel stories
a regular affair.
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with close to broadcast quality that were once the
prerogative of professional film crews. Anchored
travelogues are no longer the program format of just
television networks. Handycamed video diaries can
shoot and send the images streaming to hundreds
of sites teethed with giga, terra & petabytes. Taxi
diaries could be road journeys, and walking tours
could be on-camera trekking tours. Travel tours can
document – food, markets, monuments, public place,
religion, festivals or people, and the list goes on.
The jargon of tech
Gordon Moore the co founder of Intel stated in
the 1960s that the storage capacity and speed of a
semi conductor chip would double every 12 to 18
months. Still going strong and today famously know
as Moore’s Law, which besides other things, makes
considering camera options a constant race against
digital technology. Fortunately camera formats
don’t change at the same speed as their chips. The
DV holds its own even as manufacturers create
transit options to newer formats.
Video cameras offer a range, from the household
consumer DV & HDV format to the professional
HDCAM, HDCAM SR, digital Beta-cam, and RED
thatusesRedcodeRaw- forwhich StevenSoderbergh,
directorofOcean’sElevensaid“ShootingwithREDis
like hearing The Beatles for the first time”. 2011 also
showcases the NXCAM HD camcorder equipped
with a Super-35mm equivalent sensor, a widely used
film stock size in the film industry that is perfectly
designed for capturing motion picture.
HDCAM, HDCAM SR & Digi-Beta, Red, and
NXCAM cameras are the fare of professional TV
crewsandfilmmakers,costinganywherefrom10,000
dollars to 150,000 dollars. All of them boast of super
CCDs or CMOS circuitry, responsible for image
quality, high resolutions and brilliant S/N Rations
- above 55 dbs at least - which in simpler language
means powerful signal strength that overcomes low
quality shooting conditions caused by bad lighting,
poor sound or other such interferences. As a final
word before getting into the tech web of pixels
and pictures it will suffice to add - the resolution of
cameras are related with diffraction limits of the lens
rather than just the pixel size on the chip.
For the purpose of a regular traveler’s filming
interests a DV camera can be the easiest option. Its
interface usage and file size is compatible with every
desktop computer or laptop that has a fire wire or
faster USB port. The next would be HDV, with more
storage space requirments.
The first question for choosing a video camera will
be its chip strength; this sets the quality of color and
brightness within the picture. A 3 CCD camera is
better then a 1 CCD one, and places even a regular
handycam somewhere between the basic consumer
camcorder and the next level professional one.
Newer cameras now come based on CMOS chips,
A traveler can be an
auteur in his own right
and shoot a distinct
style of events and
subjects with close
to broadcast quality
that were once
the prerogative of
professional film crews.
though, if you are considering to edit your HDV
content – that needs a slightly faster computer. And
since it needs more space, HDV will require extra
large capacity playback discs such as Blu rays or the
likes. Conventional DVDs do fine as long as the
content does not go beyond their storage capacity.
Tapes and flash memory cards are not essentially
different recording formats but different storage
mediums. Before making a camera choice it is
essential to understand, what recording medium
does the camera favor and some of the utility features
of different memory options. Hard drive or inbuilt
memory - good for storing larger amount of data,
no hassles of carrying separate cards or tapes, the
disadvantage can be slightly slower recording speed
compared to removable memory cards.
Memory comes in different storage capacity and
formats, CF (Compact Flash) SD (Secure Digital)
SDHC, SDXC cards, most are interchangeable with
different camera brands. The popular one being
the SD which can be anywhere from a couple of
mbs to tens of GBs. SDHC & SDXC are the latest
versions of the SD and can give a capacity of upto
2TBs, with faster speed. P2 and SxS cards too are
flash memory cards but in market terms are made for
compatibility with Panasonic and Sony cameras. SxS
cards entered the market as a recording medium for
Sony’s XDCAM camera. As a medium DVDs are an
option easy to record and play back, while mini DV
tapes are a better choice for those who want to edit
and look for a more finished filming project.
On the audio front a consumer handycam comes
with a single plug-in jack for the microphone,
whereas the prosumer versions take sound to a better
balanced level with XLR plugs.
Besides the tech it is good to invest in a few
precautions as well. Unless you want the shaky
reality TV impression to your videos, it’s good
to carry a tripod stand for the camera. And to
save a video from careless doom, it is a safety
to use headphones, else you may land up with
a surrealistically silent non-starter.
Tapes and flash memory
cards are not essentially
different recording
formats but different
storage mediums.
which is not a redundancy of CCDs but a choice of a
different technology.
As for format choices, DV, DVCAM, HDV or the
newer formats as the XDCAM, or the AVCHD,
- which does not use tape but memory cards. The
familiar tape mediums as the DV & DVCAM have a
slight quality difference. DVCAM gives a better sync
totheaudioandvideorecording.AndwhileDVgives
sixty minutes of recording from a sixty minutes tape
(cassette), the DVCAM mode gives a forty minutes
recording from the same tape.
HDV is the high definition version of the DV. It has
a better resolution and records on a wider screen-
frame that is technically referred to as the 16:9
screen. Whereas a DV format usually has a more
squarish screen. To avail the choice of recording
either DV or HDV from the same camera, one needs
toinvestinanHDVcameraasmostofthemcombine
the options of choosing between DV, DVCAM and
HDV. As for alternately record DV and HDV onto
the same tape, present cameras are not equipped, but
very likely to happen soon. One thing to remember

6. 44 vivacity magazine • july 2011 www.vivacitymagazines.com
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Cameras
Besidesthelikesof specializedmanufacturersoftopofthe
line professinal camcorders as the Grass Valley and Red
Digital Cinema Camera Company. The major players in
the video camera industry are Sony, JVC, Panasonic and
Canon.AmongvideocamerastheFX1isSony’sprosumer
level camera while the Z1, Z5 and Z7 are the professional
entry levels forshootinginHDV.
The Z1 is the HDV equivalent to the DV based
PD 170 camera that has been the work horse of
videographers for almost a decade and a half. The
XH G1 and the XH A1 are Canon’s prosumer
models, while its XL H1 is the professional entry
level. In equivalence Panasonic offers the AG-
DVX100A and the AG-HVX200 .
For the regular traveler’s HDV versions of smaller
handycams the choices could be – Sony’s HDR-HC1,
Panasonics’s HDC-HS700, or Canon’s HV20.
Giving more zing to filming options are new entry
consumer cameras as the HDR-TD10, Sony’s first 3D
handycam; and the NEX-VG10, the first Handycam
Another festival, the Adventure Travel Film Festival
which annually takes place in US, UK and Australia,
offers two objectives to the filming traveler – to bring
together the adventure travel community and to show
that filming is not difficult to do.
Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival
and Film South Asia, though not dedicated travel film
festivals, are a good platform to submit films that could
have to do with travel, since much documentary filming
in Nepal is often staged on travel..
In the film world there are two types of production
entities,independentanddistributoraffiliated.Whether
an amateur, or a professional a film maker today can
make the best of both. The cheapest of distributors is
the internet. It spawns, and with it the convergences of
media consumption platforms continues to proliferate.
There are many travel sites such as the Lonely Planet
Thorn Tree, Virtual Tourist, BootsnAll, Trip Advisor
and newer ones such as Dopplr, Trip Wolf and Driftr
besides being online platforms of information exchange
many may also provide information on how to and
where to share travel filming. Besides that YouTube
still remains the best platform to reach millions of
viewers although often at the cost of low resolution.
And then there are recent sites like Vimeo which limits
free uploads to 500 MB and one HD video a week but
delivers better resolution of the images.
camcorder to accept interchangeable lenses compatible
with Sony E-mount series of smaller, lighter lenses and
Konica Minolta A-mount lenses.
Sharing Travel
Filming can today be shared at all levels of technical
and story-telling categories, right from a living room
audience to international film festivals. Besides the
regular ones there are many festivals dedicated to travel
filming. The recently concluded inaugural Nomading
Film Festival in New York, interestingly summed
the travel-filming perspective through its submission
categories – ‘The trip I wish I was on - The trip I’m glad
I wasn’t on - The nomads I want to travel with - The
most enlightening trip - and The trip that makes me
want to travel, now!’