The Briefing Room

SECAUCUS, NJ (September 25, 2008) – This year, during NBC Sunday Night Football telecasts, Toyota is profiling some of the gutsiest high school football teams in America in a program that is being shot with Panasonic AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD camcorders. Over the course of the season, The Line of Scrimmage will travel in a Toyota Tundra truck to visit eight different schools from around the country that exemplify true devotion to the game of football and the gridiron culture.

Forty-five second documentary shorts are airing each week during the NBC Sunday Night Football Halftime Show. Each of the eight teams is featured for two successive broadcasts, the first episode introducing viewers to the team and their community, the second covering team practices and their Friday night game. Like the Toyota Tundra, each gutsy team profiled refuses to quit despite the odds – whether enduring brutal weather conditions, playing only away-games because the team doesn’t have a home field, or remaining focused despite having parents deployed in Iraq. Toyota created The Line of Scrimmage to celebrate high school football, the fans and the local communities. The program is lightly branded, with a Tundra on a football field at the top of each episode as the only product reference.

The Line of Scrimmage is airing in HD, and viral videos can be found web-wide on YouTube and MySpace, and at www.toyota.com/lineofscrimmage. The recurring The Line of Scrimmage campaign, in its third year, is produced by Saatchi & Saatchi LA, using production company Untitled (Los Angeles, CA). The director is Matt Ogens (who directs through Rabbit). The Director of Photography is Anthony Hardwick, and Mark Schwartzbard is the second unit/B camera operator. Unit Production Manager/line producer is Jay Kelman.

Previous seasons of The Line of Scrimmage were shot with Panasonic’s AG-HVX200 P2 HD handheld camcorder, and while the Saatchi LA team, headed by producer Amanda Miller, was committed to a tapeless workflow, she and director Ogens wanted to increase the campaign’s production values. Hardwick, well acquainted with Panasonic HD cinema cameras, wanted to work with a larger, shoulder-mounted camera with interchangeable lenses. Hardwick has been the DP for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (shot with the AJ-HDC27H VariCam) and the upcoming Bill Maher theatrical documentary, Religulous (shot with the AJ-HDX900).

Reviewing cameras at Abel Cine Tech’s Los Angeles office, Hardwick judged the HPX2000 ideal for The Line of Scrimmage assignment; the production rented two HPX2000s from Abel Cine LA for the duration of the two-month shoot. Hardwick also equipped each camera with a Canon 11 x 4.7 ENG HD wide zoom lens and Canon 21 x 7.5 ENG HD long lens.

Hardwick is shooting both 720/24pN and 720/60p DVCPRO HD; each camera is outfitted with five 16GB P2 cards. On each five-slot camera, he assigns three slots to 24pN shooting and two to 60p to facilitate media management. While he has a media manager on location to offload and back up duplicate files to 120GB hard drives, Hardwick said that the only occasions the production comes close to filling up the five cards per camera is on the game days, when he and his crew shoot a full game in addition to other interviews and b-roll.

The typical shooting schedule is a series of interviews with local townspeople that are shot with one camera, followed by team meetings, practices and games shot with the two HPX2000s. Hardwick is shooting the games with available, stadium lighting.

“In general, I’m using the HPX2000’s standard HD curve with a .45 slope, which is punchier and more contrasty than the film-like gamma curve I’ve used in the past, and works well to preserve detail in the shadows,” Hardwick said. “We typically shoot wide open at 1/250th shutter in 24pN, and with the half shutter setting in 60p.”

“The look of Panasonic cameras, whether tape-based or tapeless, is fairly cohesive throughout, and it’s a color palette I’ve come to love and appreciate working with,” the DP added.

Kelman said, “P2 production has worked out great. The workflow is easy and the quality outstanding. Not incidentally, working in solid-state has put us in good shape when the production staff has to deal with the same challenges as the football team, namely extremes of heat and cold.:

The Line of Scrimmage is being edited in Final Cut Pro 6 at Beast Editorial (Santa Monica, CA); the editor is Rob Watzke and associate editor is Charley Lee.

For more information about The Line of Scrimmage, visit www.toyota.com/lineofscrimmage.

About the AJ-HPX2000

The AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD shoulder-mount camcorder integrates native HD progressive 2/3″ 3-CCD performance with the ultra-high reliability and speed of P2 solid-state recording. As one of the most flexible, full production-quality cameras available, the AJ-HPX2000 records pristine high-quality images in over 30 HD and SD formats ranging from 1080p, 1080i, 720p to 480p, 480i and 576i. With the new AVC-Intra codec option board (AJ-YBX200G), the AJ-HPX2000 can deliver 10-bit, 4:2:2 master-quality video for outstanding video production and news acquisition. The AJ-HPX2000 holds up to five P2 cards offering users extended recording time. With five 32GB P2 cards, professionals can record over six and one-half hours in AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD at 720p 24 native, or close to three hours in other AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD formats.

About Panasonic Broadcast

Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Co. is a leading supplier of broadcast and professional video products and systems. Panasonic Broadcast is a unit company of Panasonic Corporation of North

America. The company is the North American headquarters of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE: MC) of Japan, and the hub of its U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. For more information on Panasonic Broadcast products, access the company’s web site at www.panasonic.com/broadcast.

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EDITORIAL CONTACTS:

Stacy Moore or Pat Lamb

(201) 392-4458 (518) 692-8150

moorest@us.panasonic.com patalamb@aol.com