Sonnet Chosen by Brightwood Productions’ Peter S. Thompson

Sonnet Technologies, Inc.  announced that its Fusion F3 portable
two-drive RAID storage system provided storage and video backup for a
documentary film about the LA La Ride, a cross-country motorcycle trip made by
actresses Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer to raise awareness for the Gulf of
Mexico oil-spill disaster.

  Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer

The Fusion F3 was chosen by Brightwood Productions‘
Peter S. Thompson, who served as director of photography for the production.

"The Fusion F3 turned
out to be the ideal storage solution for this project. Not only is it rugged,
which was important since we were hauling it in and out of cars and motel
rooms, and sometimes traveling up to 400 miles a day, but its superior
performance meant I could offload a large volume of material from three cameras
very quickly each evening," said Thompson. "Most important, I had
peace of mind that our data would always be protected, whatever conditions we
found ourselves in." 

The LA La Ride was a project
of Acting Outlaws, Sackhoff and Helfer’s project to raise money and awareness
for the Gulf Restoration Foundation. Last October, the two actresses embarked
on a cross-country motorcycle ride covering 2,500 miles from Los
Angeles to New Orleans.
Brightwood Productions joined them on the trip to provide video footage that is
currently being edited into a feature-length documentary. Shooting mainly 1080i
video with a Panasonic DVCPRO HD camera, Thompson saved the footage onto a
Focus FS-100 portable DTE recorder during the day, with videotape providing the
master backup. Since the Focus drive could only hold about four hours of
footage, the day’s shoot was offloaded every evening to the Fusion F3. In
addition, content from P2 cards recorded by a second Panasonic camera and still
photos from a digital SLR camera were also offloaded to the Fusion F3. 

The Fusion F3 is
specifically designed to meet the demands of audio and video professionals in
both studio and on-location productions, with high throughput performance,
rugged design, and quiet operation – plus the flexibility of a quad interface
and the convenience of an integrated universal power supply. Fusion F3 encloses
its high-performance 3.5-inch SATA drives in a stylish aluminum and steel case
that fits equally well in recording studios, high-end A/V racks, and desktop or
mobile video-editing systems.

For the LA La Ride shoot,
Thompson also used the Fusion F3 to support on-site editing of some footage for
daily clips, which he delivered to the project’s website by connecting the
system to his Mac notebook running Final Cut Pro. With 6TB of storage, the F3
had ample room to store raw footage as well as the edited Final Cut Pro
files. 

"It was great to just
plug the Fusion F3 into my Mac and have it pop right up on my screen, which was
not the case with many other hard drives I’ve used. And it was a pleasure to
have a hard drive that was fast enough to handle playback of our full-quality
HD footage in Final Cut Pro," said Thompson.