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I am currently working as DP for a feature documentary with the working title \u201cNightshift\u201d for award winning film maker Vanessa Vassar. Filming started last week in LA and we are currently moving onto Vegas.<\/p>\n
We have been filming for about 5 nights now and so far it\u2019s gone pretty well.<\/p>\n
I have been shooting using 2 EX1s. One with an Extreme mounted on it and one \u201cclean\u201d with the wide angle adaptor on it. I also have 5 16gb cards and 8 8gb cards so loads of media.<\/p>\n
Almost all our shooting has been after dark so it\u2019s been a real challenge. The EX1 has performed pretty well. Sometimes it has been too dark and I have refused to go over 9db of gain and a top light is out of the question. After all you can bring up the pictures in the grade by two stops so have been tending to keep the gain to a minimum. This is a really important tip, sure it looks dark to the eye but it is better to do that and bring it up in post. Less noise. Nicer pictures. Magic Bullet looks or Colorista bring up exposure beautifully for FCP.<\/p>\n
Shooting \u201cclean\u201d was mostly handheld capturing lost of actuality, I have a sound recordist who connects to me wirelessly and I use the cheap shoulder mount as mentioned in an earlier blog. It\u2019s worked beautifully so far. Taking the weight and letting me shoot for prolonged periods of time. Also with the wide angle on it makes following people shots pretty steady.<\/p>\n
With the Letus I have it mounted on Zacuto rails and the protech ps1 tripod plate as documented in another earlier blog! I have the new EX1 fix on it and a number of different lenses. Being night time it has been difficult\u00a0 using it most of the time using just ambient light. It seems darker in LA than London!<\/p>\n
For interviews I have used the Letus and mostly lit with one RIfa 55 and once using a dedo as a backlight.<\/p>\n
At the end of the shoot I have been using two lacie 250gb 5400rpm rugged drives. One for quicktime converted files for FCP and the other I create folders named after each card and drag and dropped the entire contents of each SxS card into that folder. So I have a perfect duplicate of my card in case the conversion didn\u2019t quite work or the footage is needed for avid or a different system.<\/p>\n
On top of that I have a LACIE D2 Blu-ray burner with lots and lots of blank discs. Each one holds about 25gb, so I have tended to shoot using the 8gb cards mostly as it makes it easier to copy the entire contents onto the discs. I have been cloning the cards onto the blu-ray not the quicktime files. Each disc took 45 minutes to burn and 45 minutes to verify. So pretty much real time. A real downer. You don\u2019t need to verify if time is an issue<\/p>\n
After Vegas we are moving onto New Mexico. We then move East all the way to New York and after that to various countries around the world.<\/p>\n
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Below are some shots of me then screen grabs from the Letus footage first then the clean shots.<\/p>\n