FIELD MONITORS SUPER TEST ANSWERS We reveal the true picture on the latest portable viewing devices
Part 2: Pro audio capture
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR
Expert advice to put your subjects at ease in front of the camera
Conferences: 11-16 April 2015 Exhibits: 13-16 April 2015 LAS VEGAS CONVENTION CENTER
FREE EXHIBITION PASSCODE INSIDE, SEE PAGE 81
The ultimate magazine for next generation filmmakers WINTER 2014 £4.99 @ProMoviemaker
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A DROBO MINI WORTH £285 See page 22
SPECIAL REPORT
STATE OF
THE ART The biggest IBC show ever reveals the latest gear and technology STARRING AJA, Sony, JVC, Blackmagic and more!
SHORT CUTS
Expert tips for producing your first short film
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WELCOME The ultimate magazine for next generation filmmakers Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridgeshire CB22 3HJ
Editorial Editor Terry Hope Deputy editor Zena Toscani Sub editor Lisa Clatworthy Sub editor Hannah Bealey Advertising Sales director 01223 499453 Matt Snow mattsnow@bright-publishing.com Key accounts Maria Francis 01223 499457 mariafrancis@bright-publishing.com Sales executive Krishan Parmar 01223 499462 krishanparmar@bright-publishing.com Design Design director Andy Jennings Senior designer Alan Gray Senior designer Mark George Designer Emily Stowe Designer Katy Bowman Publishing Managing directors Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck When you have finished with this magazine, please recycle it
Welcome to Issue Two of Pro Moviemaker, it’s been a busy three months since we last caught up. In that time there have been yet more landmark developments and launches in the filmmaking sector, and we’ve seen the huge IBC show in Amsterdam and photokina in Cologne come and go, both of them naturally lively showcases for the fast-growing digital video movement. We were a media supporter for IBC, and have a full report of the event from our team on the show floor in this issue, along with five pages of news from other quarters, all serving to demonstrate how much there is to talk about these days. Also in this issue we’ve got a terrific hands-on review of Sony’s A7S by Andrew Reid of the EOSHD blog, which reflects just how big a launch this is for the filmmaking community. As Andrew reports, this could genuinely be a game changer, helping to truly establish Sony as a market leader in the sub£10,000 digital video category. Also in this issue we’re looking at some very tasty new monitors, are sharing advice on how to put interviewees at ease and are debating the merits of hiring in gear as and when you need it. We’re also taking a look at working on location and examining some audio basics, so there’s plenty in here to keep you going until we meet again early next year!
Pro Moviemaker is published quarterly by Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridge CB22 3HJ. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of Bright Publishing Ltd. ISSN number: 2045-3892. Pro Moviemaker is a registered trademark of Bright Publishing Ltd. The advertisements published in Pro Moviemaker that have been written, designed or produced by employees of Bright Publishing Ltd remain the copyright of Bright Publishing Ltd and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
Terry Hope TERRY HOPE, EDITOR
MEET OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS ZENA TOSCANI DEPUTY EDITOR When she’s not writing features and reviews for Pro Moviemaker, or getting overly excited about new camera gear and cinema releases, Zena puts her 1st class film degree and love of adventure to good use by shooting action sports shorts and documentaries.
AUDREY AQUILINA FILM LIGHTING With many years of lighting experience working on large scale productions for the likes of BBC, Channel Four, Five and Discovery US, Audrey, who comes from a background in photography and design, is equally at home in the studio and on location.
YORK WOODFORDSMITH FILMMAKER The founder of the Five on a Bike studio gained a First Class Honours Degree in live TV production and then worked in a small video studio. He set up on his own at a time when digital filmmaking was emerging and has never looked back.
VICTORIA GRECH DSLR FILMMAKER After starting out as a still photographer specialising in weddings, Victoria moved into the world of DSLR filmmaking in a serious way, and has become fully established and successful in the field. She now offers training to others wishing to follow her lead.
JAMES VELLACOTT FILMMAKER James was first introduced to filmmaking while a photographer with the Daily Mirror working with 5D Mark IIs, and he now runs Cherry Duck at Tower Bridge, a busy production house making everything from commercials to films that are designed to be web hosted.
ANDREW REID EOSHD BLOGGER The proprietor of the popular EOSHD blog, Andrew hails from Manchester but is currently based in Berlin. He prefers to concentrate on his own filmmaking projects rather than commercial jobs, and considers the real ‘bread and butter’ focus of his blog to be DSLR video.
LORRAINE GRULA VIDEO BLOGGER Based in the US, Lorraine is a long time video production professional with an emphasis on documentary-style production and journalism. She runs a blog called Video Production Tips, which helps people all over the world learn how to make their own videos.
MATT BELL AUDIO SPECIALIST At various times Matt has been an audio engineer, video editor, photographer, PR consultant, managing editor, courier and translator, and he was very nearly an accountant, but escaped. He’s now a technical writer on broadcast and audio technology.
WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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CONTENTS
WINTER 2014
SPECIAL FEATURE
8 IBC NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Direct from the exhibition floor, we summarise the most exciting launches and updates from IBC2014.
FEATURES
26 C AREERS IN VIDEO
We discover the merits and demerits of positions on the payroll from three in-house filmmakers.
34 FOCUSING ON FICTION
Having made a successful transition from photographer to filmmaker, Victoria Grech discusses the process for making a short fiction film.
ACADEMY
46 DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS
Lorraine Grula imparts some expert advice to put your inexperienced subjects at ease in front of the camera.
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54 LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION DOP Audrey Aquilina talks us through the key lighting considerations for shooting on location.
60 S OUND DECISIONS
Expert Matt Bell continues his series on capturing pro-quality audio and tells us what aspects simply can’t be saved in post.
67 MOVIE MATTERS
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Our team of industry experts answers your questions on subjects from streaming to stabilisation.
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GEAR
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ON TEST: SONY A7S
Andrew Reid puts the revolutionary Sony A7S through its paces and sees what this 4K-capable CSC has to offer to filmmakers.
83 TAKING THE RENTAL ROUTE
We look at the benefits of renting gear with two start-to-finish case studies on the process of hiring.
89 FIELD MONITORS
We test out three field monitors at varying price points from Marshall Electronics, Sony and Atomos.
96 BUYERS’ GUIDE: MEMORY
Gavin Stoker gives us a round-up of all things data storage and advises what filmmakers should be looking for from their memory cards and drives.
WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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LATEST FROM IBC
RECORD-BREAKING
SHOW
A staple in the filmmakers’ calendar, this year’s IBC show was packed full of gear-hungry attendees trying to get their hands on the latest kit. Here’s our news highlights from the exhibition floor
At Pro Moviemaker we were thrilled to be media supporters of what turned out to be the most successful IBC show ever. 55,092 attendees from 170 countries poured through the doors of the RAI exhibition centre in Amsterdam to visit countless stands throughout the 14 halls. Connectivity was an ever-present theme during the event, with exhibitors like JVC showing cameras with live streaming capabilities, while the likes of Zacuto were demonstrating intuitive, modular rigs. Meanwhile the pace and quality of innovations in the 4K sector continued to excite and impress us. www.ibc.org
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LATEST FROM IBC
WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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NEWS LATEST FROM IBC
Premiere support While a release date for the AJA CION could not be confirmed before going to press, AJA did announce that the Raw CION camera format will be supported in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. CION is already set to enable a range of ProRes codec choices and other direct-to-edit workflow options, but by opening up the option of working with AJA Raw files in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, AJA is giving its customers crucial flexibility for post and grading. www.aja.com
COMPACT 4K CAMCORDER Marking the start of an exciting new series of cameras from JVC, a prototype model of the upcoming GY-LS300 compact handheld camcorder was shown at IBC. Featuring JVC’s exclusive Super 35mm 13.6-megapixel 4K CMOS image sensor, it can deliver internal 4K 24/25/30p recording on standard SDHC/SDXC UHS-I U3 memory cards, while its dual codec system also provides simultaneous recording and streaming for both HD/SD and HD/proxy files. The camera uses Micro Four Thirds lenses, but can also accommodate a wide variety of stills and video lenses for filmmakers who have already invested in expensive lenses (converters available for PL-mount and other lenses). www.jvcpro.co.uk
ALPHATRON EVF FIRMWARE UPDATE Alphatron has released a firmware update for its EVF: V0.66 Anamorphic De-squeeze. Filmmakers using the Alphatron EVF in conjunction with anamorphic lenses can select three
de-squeeze modes: 1.3x, 1.5x and 2x that will make the anamorphic image appear ‘normal’ through the EVF. Alphatron has also made it easier to access the pixel-topixel mode by placing this option directly under a function key. Update your EVF by following the instructions here: http://bit. ly/10jLl7g www.alphatron.com
Top grade in class SmallHD has just released a groundbreaking firmware update, which accommodates an industry first: on-monitor colour grading. Users of the SmallHD DP7-PRO monitor will now be able to perform on-monitor colour grading so crew and client can choose and update colour settings on set, in real time with the option of
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sending graded imagery downstream to another monitor. The upgrade also enables the production and exporting of LUT tables for post-production, and facilitates simultaneous display of previously created effects or animations as reference frames next to the live video on-site. www.smallhd.com
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NEWS LATEST FROM IBC
LED STUDIOLITES FROM LIMELITE Limelite, the videography and broadcast subdivision of Bowens International, has just launched two new LED-based Studiolite options. The SLED4 (£865 plus VAT) and SLED8 (£1250 plus VAT) provide users with four or eight flicker-free, state of the art linear tubes of LEDs. Available now, the new Studiolites have been specially developed for photo and video use. The lights have been designed to create a soft, wide beam of even light that is said to wrap around the subject to produce flattering illumination. Additionally, the tubes produce very little heat, so are ideal for lighting people and still-life subjects over long sessions if necessary. And, unlike the potentially fragile glass tubes used in fluorescent fixtures, the SLED tubes are designed to be extremely robust and easily replaceable. With full DMX ‘In’ and ‘Out’ controls the Studiolites can be controlled remotely or from the on-board digital control panel – complete with a dimming range from 100% to Off. This enables each unit to become a master control for many Studiolites linked together. The new models also feature a wide range of optional accessories and modifiers including grids, barn doors and filter frames. www.limelite.uk.com
STEADY SHOTS
Sony solutions Sony took IBC by storm this year by announcing a host of product launches and updates. The PXW-FS7 camcorder was in the new-line up of gear and distinguishes itself as the first XDCAM camcorder to feature a 4K Super35 CMOS sensor with a wide choice of recording formats including 4K, XAVC 4K and Full HD super slow motion, also in XAVC. Another new member
of the XDCAM family, the PXW-X200 camcorder, features a 1/2in-type Exmor 3CMOS sensor, a 17x zoom lens and XAVC Intra/Long GOP recording with 4:2:2 10-bit sampling as well as MPEG HD 4:2:2. The PXW-FS7 will be available this month for £6,718, with the PXW-X200 following in November. www.pro.sony.eu
PORT-PROTECTORS Working in tandem with its HD monitor production, SmallHD has released lightweight HDMI/USB Port Lock Protectors for Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Mark II HDSLRs. Designed to eliminate the risk of a lost shot or damaged port when a wire is accidentally pulled, the SmallHD Port Lock Protector firmly holds the HDMI cable plug in place within the camera’s Mini-HDMI port. The protector costs $49.99 (£30.78) and includes a 1.5-foot HDMI cable. www.smallhd.com
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LATEST FROM IBC
MŌVI MOVING ON UP Freefly Systems, manufacturer of professional camera stabilisation solutions, is increasing its product offerings and lowering its prices. With the overwhelming demand for the M VI systems, Freefly has relocated to a larger manufacturing facility and is now offering a price drop to consumers as a result of higher production volumes. The M VI M5 for cameras weighing up to 2.27kg is now $3,995 (£2,459), the M VI M10 for loads up to 5.5kg is now $7,995 (£4,923) and the recently announced M VI M15 for payloads of up to 7kg is now shipping in limited quantities, priced at $11,995 (£7,386). Expanding the flexibility of the M VI system seems crucial to Freefly as the company has announced the M VI Ring ($299/£184 MSRP), which is a rigid carbon fibre, hoop-shaped frame designed to enhance the ergonomic handling of the M VI stabilisers. In addition to this, Freefly is now delivering its new M VI Controller, a professional solution for dual operation of any of the M VI stabiliser systems. Primarily designed to allow a second operator to control pan, tilt, roll, focus, iris and zoom of a M VI-mounted camera, the Controller also displays information from the stabiliser, such as battery voltage and pan/tilt/roll angle, and provides access to configuration settings. www.freeflysystems.com
HOLD ALL THE ACES Sachtler, part of Vitec Videocom, has just announced the release of its Ace Accessories line to complement the established Ace product range. The Ace Base Plate, Ace Follow Focus and Ace Matte Box can be bought individually or as a package and
are designed to be compatible with other brands – including Anton/Bauer batteries that can be mounted on the base plate rods and Litepanels products, such as the Croma LED fixture, that can be mounted to the matte box. www.sachtler.com
Miller winner Miller Fluid Heads (Europe) Ltd hosted a celebration at the 2014 IBC show as part of the company’s ongoing 60th anniversary festivities. Miller announced Gabriele Woolley, director of The Broadcast Bridge, as the winner of their recent charity raffle for a limited edition Miller LP ’54 Classic Tripod. Hand-crafted from the finest Australian Blackwood and using remaining components from the last production run of the Light Professional (LP), the Miller LP ’54 Classic Tripod is not available for purchase and only 40 of these collectors’ items were reproduced for worldwide distribution in honour of Miller’s milestone anniversary. www.millertripods.com
low res thinkstock
Save the date! Feeling IBC withdrawal symptoms or didn’t manage to catch the action in person this year? Grab your diary and note down these dates for upcoming exhibitions and conferences that are sure to get your gearbuds tingling… 18-20 November 2014 Satis, Paris, France www.satis-expo.com 24-26 February 2015 BVE, Excel London, UK www.bvexpo.com 11-16 April 2015 NAB Show, Las Vegas, USA www.nabshow.com 4-7 June 2015 Cine Gear Expo, Los Angeles, USA www.cinegearexpo.com
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NEWS LATEST UPDATES
SHORTS EASY WIRELESS AUDIO The Audio Technica System 10 camera-mount wireless mic system offers affordable and easy-to-use wireless audio. The system is based around the ATW-R1700 receiver, which can be mounted on a hot or cold shoe and can be used with the System 10 beltpack or dynamic handheld digital wireless microphone transmitters. It has an independent headphone monitor output and selectable audio output via 3.5mm mini-jack connectors. Wireless communication frequencies in the 2.4GHz range ensure no interference from TV or DTV. Prices start at £274 for a receiver with ATW-T1002 handheld microphone. audiotechnica.com
CSC WITH 4K
Samsung suits pro moviemakers The latest CSC, and the most highly specified yet, from the electronics giant is set to take centre stage with 4K fans
STUDIO SOUND ON THE GO Røde’s latest microphone offers studio-quality audio, but has a USB interface that makes it compatible with any computer running Windows or Mac OS, and an iPad with a USB adapter. The new NT-USB is a versatile side-address microphone that’s ideal for recording musical performances as well as voice. It includes a 3.5mm stereo jack for headphone monitoring, with dials to adjust monitoring levels, and it’s supplied with a premium pop-up filter that minimises hard plosive sounds during speech and singing. The NT-USB is available now for £130. www.rodemic.com
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amsung’s new flagship mirrorless camera, the NX1, has caught the interest of professional videographers as well as photographers, thanks to its advanced 4K recording capabilities. No external recorder is needed with the NX1, since it includes HEVC (H.265) Codec, the most advanced compression technology available. While the H.264 standard codec records video at 160Mbps, H.265 reduces this by half to 80Mbps, doubling the amount of footage you can capture on the same capacity memory card, but without any compromise in quality. However, the NX1 also has an HDMI 1.4 port that lets you connect to an external recorder and supports professional codecs such as ProRes, Cinema DNG and DNxHD,
allowing you to record uncompressed 4:2:2 8-bit 4K video. Conversion software is also supplied to set you up for 4K editing. Also designed with videographers in mind is the NX AF System III, which has 205 phase-detection AF points that can be used during video recording. What’s more, the Wi-Fi functionality of the NX1 is fast enough to support the transfer of large files, including 4K, and Bluetooth – a first on this kind of camera – adds to the wireless connectivity options. All this comes in a durable magnesium alloy body that’s dust and splash resistant with rubber seals on dials and buttons. The NX1 is available to pre-order now for a price of £1299 body only. www.samsung.com/uk
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LATEST UPDATES
UPDATED CODE IMPROVES DAVINCI Over 100 new editing and colour grading features have been added in the latest upgrade of Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve professional software, bringing it up to version 11. Feedback from professionals has directed the addition of a host of tools designed to make editing easier. A collaborative workflow allows an editor and multiple colourists to work on the same job at the same time, and compatibility with Final Cut Pro X has been improved so it’s easier to move files between the two programs, improving the options for collaboration between independents and large studios.
Photographers moving into videography will feel at home with the new Raw image and colour grading controls that provide options such as highlight and shadow recovery and contrast. Image processing has also been optimised for improved speeds on Apple MacPro systems, a combination that offers an instant solution to working with Ultra HD 4K video and YRGB 32-bit floating point processing quality. Existing DaVinci Resolve customers can download version 11 free. Also free is DaVinci Resolve 11 Lite, a slimmed down version that supports Ultra HD video. www.blackmagicdesign.com
CANON UPS THE ANTE ON THE 7D
Canon’s popular APS-C HDSLR the EOS 7D has been rebuilt and redesigned and comes with a raft of new features designed to appeal to both the still photographer and videographer. Focusing on the moving images side, the EOS 7D Mark II offers the filmmaker a new suite of pro-standard recording features. AF performance is executed by Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology, allowing smooth, accurate focus and, in a first for EOS, both Movie Servo AF speed and tracking sensitivity can be customised, giving you complete control for pull-focus effects and transitions between subjects. The camera can capture every split second of the action in Full HD quality, with a choice of frame rates from 24p to 60p for smooth movement and slow motion effects. Captured footage is designed to fit into existing professional video workflows, thanks to uncompressed (4:2:2) HDMI output to external recorders. There are also new dedicated microphone and headphone sockets, as well as silent control to prevent operational noise being captured if settings are changed. www.canon.co.uk
FIRST NIKON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL The inaugural Nikon European Film Festival is now open for submissions from enthusiasts and professionals, who are invited to enter short films of less than 140 seconds, on the theme of ‘A different perspective’. Entrants are encouraged to explore this theme in terms of their own attitude towards their subject and relationship to the story, as well as the physical angles from which they choose to capture it. One Grand Prix winner will enjoy an all-expenses-paid oneweek networking trip to the Cannes Film Festival in May 2015 and receive a Nikon D810 Film Kit. Winners of both the Best Narrative and the Technical Excellence categories, which are awarded for the best story told from a unique perspective and the most creative use of kit respectively, will receive a Nikon D750 Film Kit and €3000, and there are also prizes for the Best Student Entry (D750 Film Kit and €2000) and the Best Film as Voted for by the Public (D750 Film Kit). Submissions will be accepted until 12pm on 15 January 2015. www.nikonfilmfestival.com
LIGHTING POWER ON-CAMERA Rotolight has introduced the world’s first on-camera lighting system with an accurate electronic colour display, allowing videographers and photographers to tune colour accurately and quickly on location. The Rotolight NEO features Bi-Colour LED lighting technology for excellent colour rendering. NEO also offers twice the power of similar oncamera lights: the 120 LEDs deliver 1077 lux at a distance of three feet. Single and multi-light kits are available that include a ten-piece Location Filter Pack; prices start at £249.
www.rotolight.com
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NEWS LATEST UPDATES
FASTEST UHS-II MEMORY
SUPPORT YOU CAN RELY ON
Video tripods from Manfrotto Manfrotto has announced its new 535 aluminium single-tube leg video tripod, designed to combine stability and versatility with portability. The single-tube leg design makes set-up fast, while leg angle selectors provide operating heights that range from 23 to 171cm. Four leg sections mean it collapses to a size that’s ideal for portability. The 75mm half bowl allows quick levelling, and an adapter is supplied to convert this into a 60mm half bowl. The 535 is also available with the 500, 502 or 504 Bridging Video Heads that can be easily used with sliders, jobs or photo tripods. Launched alongside the 535 is the MVT535HH single-tube leg Hi-Hat for low-level or tabletop tripod use and slider support. This also features a 75/60mm half bowl and leg angle selectors for height adjustments from 12 to 24cm, but a single leg section for maximum compactness. Reliable and sturdy, it’s made from aluminium casting components. The 535 tripod is available now for £269.95 or from £437.95 in a kit, and the Hi-Hat costs £203.95. www.manfrotto.co.uk
The new Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC and SDXC cards are the fastest memory cards on the market that use the UHS-II interface. The cards make use of the new UHS Speed Class 3 specification to deliver top speeds of 300MB/ sec and write speeds of up to 260MB/ sec, enough to deal comfortably with 1080p Full HD, 3D and 4K video. Available capacities are 32GB and 64GB. Every card is supplied with a UHS-II SD card reader so you won’t be held up by old hardware. Also introduced to Lexar’s range are the Professional 1000x SDHC and SDXC cards, with top read and write speeds of 150MB/sec and 95MB/sec respectively, and the Lexar Professional Workflow SR2 UHS-II USB 3.0 card reader, which is compatible with the new cards and existing Professional Workflow hubs. The new products will be available by the end of the year, with prices ranging from £22.99 for the SR2 card reader up to £135.99 for a 64GB Professional 2000x SD card. www.lexar.com
PRIME VIDEO LENSES PrimeCircle XM cinema lenses are now available. Designed as high-quality but costeffective optics for videographers, the lenses feature manual focus and manual aperture control, with focus scales on both sides that are calibrated to each individual lens for maximum precision during follow-focus work. The focus scales are available in metric or imperial measurements, and are engraved on the barrel. The design also features a red aperture geared ring. PrimeCircle XM Series lenses are available with Canon and Nikon mounts in nine focal lengths, ranging from 15mm to 135mm. www.lockcircle.com
G-TECH GOES EXTRA LARGE G-Technology has added to its G-RAID Studio and G-Speed Studio Thunderbolt 2 storage solutions introduced earlier this year with the announcement of the G-Speed Studio XL. The new solution holds up to eight removable enterprise-class 7200rpm hard drives to provide huge capacity and transfer speeds of up to 1350MB/sec. Performance of the system can support 4K workflows,
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while customisable RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and 60 configurations allow you to balance speed and performance with reliability for your needs. Dual Thunderbolt ports allow you to daisy-chain multiple systems for greater storage and performance. The G-Speed Studio XL will be available in November at prices of £2699 (24TB), £3479 (32TB), £4199 (40TB) and £5250 (64TB). www.g-technology.eu
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NEWS LATEST UPDATES STEADY SHOTS
Gyroscopic stability The ZeroGrav 2-Axis Digital Gyro Stabilizer is the latest addition to Adorama’s Flashpoint ZeroGrav line-up, and is compatible with both DSLRs and the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. The Gyro uses a lithium-powered gyro motor to control pitch and roll by detecting the camera’s position and movement and compensating according to the situation. It’s designed to offer the same level of stability in any situation, and can even deal with high-speed action. It features twin handles for a steady grip and balance. The Gyro is available only from Adorama at a price of $899 (£550). www.adorama.com
SANDISK EXTREME PRO FOR 4K Sandisk has announced upgrades to its Extreme Pro range that offer support for professional 4K video capture and processing. An upgraded Sandisk Extreme Pro CFast 2.0 card delivers write speeds of up to 440MB/sec and top read speeds of 515MB/sec, sufficient for cinema-quality 4K video capture, as well as large capacities of up to 128GB. Also upgraded for videographers are the Sandisk Pro Solid State Drives, which can now reach transfer speeds of 550MB/sec to offer the
HDMI TO RIVAL SDI Atomos has introduced auto start/stop trigger and timecode over HDMI connections, bringing the advantages of the professional SDI standard to the HDMI interface. The move signals an effort by Atomos to standardise the HDMI interface for the professional video industry in light of its increasing popularity in Full HD DSLRs and 4K mirrorless cameras. The implementation means that videographers will be able to trigger functions on external devices from the camera, as they can with SDI. To go with this innovation, Atomos has also developed its own range of HDMI cables. These new cables have tight-fitting connections and coiled cable lengths to reduce clutter. The cables offer a variety of lengths with HDMI mini and full HDMI connection combinations, with prices starting at around £15. www.atomos.com
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speed and reliability needed by professionals working with 4K Ultra HD1 files. The solid state drives have also been qualified by Atomos and Blackmagic Design for 4K Raw and 4K ProRes capture. Read more about Sandisk in Buyers’ Guide, pages 96-101. The Sandisk Extreme Pro CFast 2.0 cards will be available in October, and the solid state drives are available now online, starting at £122 for a 240GB drive. www.sandisk.co.uk
NEW CINE LENS FAMILY SLR Magic has introduced its APOHyperPrime lens family with the announcement of its first member, the CINE 50mm T2.1. The optical design has been developed from scratch to meet the standards required for 4K and 6K sensors, and the apochromatic lens corrects for chromatic aberrations, reducing the coloured edges at light/ dark transitions in images. The newly-launched APOHyperPrime CINE lens series features standard PL mount, with the option to use them with mounts including Micro Four Thirds, Sony E and Canon EF via adapters. The CINE 50mm T2.1 lens will be available in early 2015, and pricing is to be confirmed. www.slrmagic.co.uk
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LATEST UPDATES
SHOOT FROM THE HIP Hipjib offers an all-in-one solution that gives you the same flexibility as using a combination of a tripod, jib arm, shoulder mount, dolly and steadycam, but at a fraction of both the cost and the weight. The Hipjib ties around your waist and supports any ordinary tripod: two legs of the tripod rest on the Hipjib, providing support and the flexibility of smooth precise camera movements. Your hands are left free to operate the tripod video head and the camera, and you can easily switch to static shots because your camera is already mounted on your tripod. At just 25x5cm, the Hipjib is ideal for locations where larger equipment is not an option. Hipjib is available now for around €167 (£130). www.hipjib.com
QUOTE PROMOVIEMAKER AT CHECKOUT TO RECEIVE 25% OFF YOUR HIPJIB ORDER
SUPPORT FROM A MONOPOD KIT
SOFT LIGHT FROM LISHUAI Lishuai has introduced the C-200S, an in-camera LED light with a soft output, designed to enhance portraits and close-ups. Some 40 high-power LEDs produce even light with an output of approximately 790 lux at a distance of 50cm, and 212 lux at 1m, with a colour temperature of 5600K. The panel can be mounted on a camera via the shoe mount, or onto a stand with the standard 1/4in thread. The supplied battery provides a continuous full-power output for 90 minutes. The C-200S costs £192. www.proav.co.uk
The new Video Monopod Kit from Benro offers videographers stable support in situations when weight and portability are key. The kit includes the S4 Head that features an ergonomic pan bar handle to ensure smooth panning and tilting. The aluminium construction provides fast set-up and sturdy support, bolstered by the folding three-leg base, when you can’t use a tripod. Flip-lock legs make set-up fast, while padded handgrips and a hand strip add comfort and security. Available now, the kit costs £203.40. www.benro.co.uk
THREE-AXIS HANDHELD GIMBAL FROM DJI
The Ronin is a new three-axis stabilised handheld gimbal system from DJI that’s been developed for filmmaking professionals. High build quality standards are said to ensure that it keeps up with rigorous handheld and aerial use in any
environment, while custom-built ultra-fast processors, accurate sensors and advanced algorithms, together with close attention to detail, have created a system that offers precise manipulation of control angles – within a ±0.02° range.
Other key features include a smart battery with a four-hour run time, a built-in receiver and remote control, high-performance processing power and the ability to support a multitude of cameras and lenses. www.dji.com
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COMPETITION
WIN THE DROBO MINI
TO GO LARGE ON YOUR STORAGE! Lightweight and portable, even when loaded with 2.5in drives, the Drobo Mini is a flyweight storage superstar, perfect for filmmakers on the go
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enowned for simple setups and reliability, Drobo’s storage solutions afford users unprecedented flexibility, data protection, expandability and now, portability, with the Drobo Mini. Proving that big things really do come in small packages, the Drobo Mini packs a serious punch with four swappable drive bays for any capacity SSDs or HDDs. Whichever drive you use, Drobo’s award-winning BeyondRAID technology means you don’t have to worry about backups: Drobos, with BeyondRAID,
will protect your data without any user intervention, are self-healing and have virtual hot spares, so if a drive does fail, Drobo will automatically re-lay out the data to return to a protected state without disruption. Using the same 2.5in drives primarily used in laptops means you can rest assured that the Drobo Mini was born to travel. There’s also the option to implement Hot Data Caching through the Drobo Accelerator Bay – a feature usually reserved for larger business solutions. This feature uses high-
performance flash memory to allow the fastest possible access to your data. The Drobo Accelerator accepts an industrystandard mSATA SSD, leaving all four 2.5in drive bays available for highcapacity HDDs or even SSDs. Knowing that speed is of the utmost importance, Drobo has equipped the Mini with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity. Simultaneously connect up to six Thunderbolt devices at once and with bi-directional 10Gbps performance, all devices in the chain will receive maximum throughput.
PRIZE WORTH
WIN A BRAND NEW DROBO MINI! £285 Drobo is offering readers of Pro Moviemaker the chance to win one of these fantastic storage solutions. All you have to do to enter is answer one simple question by our closing date, Friday 9 January 2015. Email your answer to comp@promoviemaker.net, with Drobo Mini in the subject line. All the correct entries will go into a hat and the winner will be selected at random.
Question: How many 2.5in drive bays does the Drobo Mini accept? To find out more about the Drobo Mini, visit www.drobo.com.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS: Entries must be received by Friday 9 January 2015 and the winners will be notified by email/phone. This competition is open to UK residents only, aged 18 and above. Employees of Bright Publishing and the prize provider and their immediate families and agents may not enter. Entries not in accordance with these rules will be disqualified; by entering, competitors will be deemed to have agreed to be bound by these rules. Data protection: if you would prefer your details not to be supplied to Drobo please state NO DATA in the subject line of your email. The prize must be taken as offered with no alternative. In the event that the prize cannot be supplied no liability will attach to Bright Publishing. For full t&cs visit www.bright-publishing.com.
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FEATURES
From case studies to insider info, we interview and get advice from the professional videographers and filmmakers on the topics you need to know about
26 C AREERS IN VIDEO
We discover the merits and drawbacks of positions on the payroll from three in-house filmmakers.
34 FOCUSING ON FICTION
Having made a successful transition from photographer to filmmaker, Victoria Grech discusses the process for making a short fiction film.
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CASE STUDY IN-HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHERS
CAREERS IN VIDEO
WORKING 9-TO-5
Self-employment is common in the world of videography, but it isn’t the only way to get involved in this profession. We talk to a range of inhouse filmmakers who have discovered the benefits of life on the payroll WORDS ZENA TOSCANI
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ith video touted to be the future of content marketing by 2017, it’s no surprise that more and more companies are hiring in-house videographers in place of outsourcing to agencies or freelancers. In fact, a recent study in video marketing found that 68% of companies who utilise video are now creating their content inhouse. While investing in kit and staff will cost a company some considerable capital, it’s likely to pay for itself pretty quickly when you consider that corporate projects are often charged in the
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region of £1000 per minute of finished video – great news for employers but more concerning for the freelancers who would be otherwise earning those figures. As companies begin to take their video production more seriously, so should freelancers hoping to make the move into one of these potentially lucrative salaried positions. To help discover what it takes to go from contractor to colleague, we discuss the good, the bad and the ugly with a group of filmmakers in the midst of successful careers in videography.
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IN-HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHERS CASE STUDY
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CASE STUDY IN-HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHERS
TOM FARTHING
TOM’S KIT LIST
ony PMW-EX1R camcorder S XDCAM HD Manfrotto MN-504HD/546BK kit Litepanels Croma Sennheiser RX, TX, ME2 mic kit G3 Rode NTG1 shotgun microphone, P48 Lastolite 95cm silver/white Zoom H6 Petrol Deca Dr. Bag Wise S2 Express card 32GB
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POSITION: Online production editor TIME AT THIS COMPANY: Two years
COMPANY: Financial Times
AS WITH MANY LOVE STORIES, TOM Farthing’s first fling didn’t quite pan out how he had hoped. As a teen he was besotted with radio but it just wasn’t meant to be. After tailoring his A-levels, degree and part-time employment choices for a career in radio, Tom took a brief hiatus from his dream to travel the world but came home to find that the industry had changed. Video had exploded with the Internet’s expansion and radio was getting left behind. The advances in technology made it simple for anyone to set up an online radio station but this had a massive commercial impact, especially for advertisers. As there was no longer any money in radio, Tom decided to revisit another skill he’d picked up at university: videomaking. The combined experience of working in radio and producing music videos with friends at the weekend helped land Tom his first TV job as a junior editor at CSC media. “I was at the bottom rung of the ladder but the people there were really nice,” he says. “A TV company took a chance on me so I worked really hard for them.” Though a large proportion of his work involved important but unglamorous administrative tasks, the small size of the company meant that his production experience was extremely diverse. “We got to do camera work at festivals and in the studio and I also worked with more specialist software like Motion,” he explains. “If you showed the impetus to want to work on other things they’d say, well, we need help in other areas so what do you want to
do? Putting your hand up really was the best thing you could do.” Tom stayed in the same position at CSC for two years and the variety of work coming in and his frequent hand raising meant that he learnt an invaluable amount about the workings of a TV company and enhanced his own skill set enough to take on a more challenging role. Ready to take the next step in his career, Tom applied for a videographer position advertised in The Guardian. At the time of applying he had no idea that the job was with the Financial Times, which potentially could have been a problem since he had limited financial knowledge, but in his opinion this was actually a good thing. “Not having a love for the subject matter can sometimes be more beneficial because you can distance yourself from it, look at it more subjectively and make the best video possible.” When it comes to having pride in your work, Tom is fortunate enough to work for a company that values continuing professional development. In addition to undertaking numerous courses at Soho Editors that were designed to give him a better working knowledge of software such as Adobe After Effects and Photoshop, he’s also taken regular steps to improve his skill set via online learning platform Lynda, and he sees this as key to a successful career in videography. “There are very few people in the industry now that can make a decent living by being a specialist in just one area,” he says. “The more skills you have, the more
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“There are very few people in the industry now that can make a decent living by being a specialist”
TOP Editing in the back of a taxi between shoots to get the content out as quickly as possible. ABOVE The fully-equipped Financial Times TV studio where many of Tom’s videos are shot.
chance you have of progressing in this constantly changing industry.” In his current role as online production editor at the Financial Times it’s essential that Tom has a broad range of skills, due to the small size of the team. “At any time I can be expected to shoot a video, edit it, export it, put it on the video server, upload it to YouTube, insert the metadata and keywords, get the embed
codes for the website and pull content into newsletters,” he says. Fortunately, Tom had the foresight to undertake a couple of short courses on website production and coding in his own time a few years ago, so there wasn’t too much of a steep learning curve despite all these responsibilities. With a varied job role and frequent trips abroad, Tom has an enviable in-
house position that he wouldn’t trade for the volatile world of freelancing. “You have the family atmosphere and ability to socialise with colleagues – I certainly wouldn’t give that up for the extra 30% you might get paid freelance,” he says. “Freelancing is so competitive and can be demoralising at times, so keep trying for the in-house jobs and keep applying because the positions are out there.”
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CASE STUDY IN-HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHERS
REBECCA MACHIN
CRRENT POSITION: Audio visual producer TIME AT THIS COMPANY: Five years
COMPANY: Alzheimer’s Society
ABOVE Rebecca at the Alzheimer’s Society offices. RIGHT Legacies - Glenys discusses her sister’s legacy for a film to promote leaving gifts in wills.
REBECCA’S KIT LIST
anon EOS 5D Mark III C Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens Marshall V-LCD50-HDI monitor Zoom recorder H4N Sennheiser K6/ME66 mic Rode lav mic Manfrotto MVH500AH 755CX3K tripod Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X
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REBECCA MACHIN’S CAREER STARTED with a short work experience position after she graduated from a course in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, though in many ways her journey on this creative path had already begun. With centuries of ancestors in the pottery industry, Rebecca was exposed to visual art growing up, and she was always encouraged to pursue creative interests, such as photography. As such, she became fascinated with trying to capture the atmosphere of a place through her art, and so video was a natural progression. Unfortunately, her first job in the industry was not to be so creatively fulfilling. Working as a researcher for six to seven months at an online video production company, Rebecca contributed to a number of short instructive films, covering important life lessons like ‘How to care for ferrets’, ‘How to cook a chicken curry in under ten minutes’ and ‘How to remove jam from a carpet’ among countless others, and while she was no doubt creating domestic heroes worldwide, the role left her feeling somewhat unsatisfied. “I wanted to work somewhere where I could get much more hands-on experience,” she says. “We were meeting really fascinating people and I felt like I wanted to capture those stories more interestingly and more effectively.” Having gained enough experience to realise what she didn’t want to do, over the next few years Rebecca undertook a number of production positions at
different companies, trying to unearth a niche for herself or at least a cause that she really felt committed to. During this time she honed her technical abilities. The majority of her work was in producing films for online audiences, so she began refining what she could achieve with a small team and got to know cameras such as the Sony HDV-Z1 like the back of her hand. It was this experience that landed Rebecca her current position as audio visual producer at the Alzheimer’s Society, in what was a newly created role at the time. “I think the charity, like many others out there, was just experiencing an increasing demand for film from their partners,” she explains. “They wanted to streamline the process so that they could manage the quality and cost by bringing it in-house.” Fortunately, Rebecca found herself with a very supportive manager, so quality control became her responsibility in many ways, and her judgement was trusted on issues like moving onto Macs, investing in DSLRs and even expanding the team to include an AV assistant. “When I first arrived we were shooting on Z5s,” she explains. “But I soon found that I wasn’t satisfied with the picture quality anymore; it felt like the standard of our films wasn’t equal to that of our competitors.” While the decision to move over to DSLRs was easily made and the costs recouped very quickly, the whole process of filmmaking is sometimes a point of contention. “There’s a debate about whether or not you should be spending
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time and money making films for a charity,” she says. “Surely you should be spending that money on good honest contact with people with dementia, or support workers?” The range of purposes she creates films for makes this issue easy to justify. “It’s about putting real people’s stories at the heart of the work of the charity,” she explains. “The voices of people with dementia are always central to what we do, whether our films are used in training, reports, as part of campaigns, or in ongoing research.” While her videos are used in a diverse range of applications, the subject matter and filming conditions are often very similar, which has allowed Rebecca to become incredibly efficient at what she does. “If it’s something around London we can generally shoot and edit within a day with very little notice,” she explains. As with all positions, Rebecca’s responsibilities extend further than her job title might suggest, as some social media also falls under her remit, namely running the charity’s YouTube channel. “We work really hard to optimise this, as there’s often a lot of misinformation that’ll come out on top in searches,” she says. “We produce some niche films that might not achieve thousands of views, but we’re really happy they’ve reached the right audience.” Sometimes those niche stories are the hardest to film. One particular challenge the Alzheimer’s Society faces is how to represent people in the later stages of dementia. “Here we only film people who have the capacity to consent,” says
“I wanted to work somewhere where I could get much more hands-on experience”
ABOVE Jo shares her story of her partner Bob’s dementia diagnosis and the support they have received from the Alzheimer’s Society. BELOW Rebecca filming Graham and Sheila’s story on location in Rotherham
Rebecca, “but we need to find ways to represent those people who can’t consent, because their stories are really important too.” While Rebecca is of the opinion that dealing with people in emotional situations becomes easier with time, it’s something that she is faced with regularly, as often the people who come to a charity to share their story want to show the hard, emotional side of it. “When someone appears to be on the verge of tears, knowing whether you should carry on recording is always difficult,” she says. “If you leave it a couple of beats then you’ve still got the shot and you’ve given your interviewee the opportunity to ask to stop, but quite often they’ll say, I want you to see this.” She confesses that some of her most wobbly camera shots were at the most emotional moments, but this is part of the reason why she hasn’t moved to a more corporate videographer position. “People take these stories seriously and are respectful of others’ life experiences,” she explains. “It’s really nice to be able to get to know a subject and not have to hop between different things, never getting to the bottom of them.” It’s those real stories and the significance of the job that has kept Rebecca working in-house at the Alzheimer’s Society for the past five years. “It’s an amazing job really because it’s secure and you get to make films that really do make a difference,” she says. “You can’t say that about many jobs, let alone film production jobs.”
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CASE STUDY IN-HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHERS
SIMON ETHELL
POSITION: Petty officer, Mobile News Team TIME AT THIS COMPANY: Almost 20 years
COMPANY: Royal Navy
ABOVE Simon shooting on location. RIGHT After framing the shot, the small team size means Simon is often operating both the camera and sound.
SIMON’S KIT LIST
anasonic P2 camera P Rycote SFT 18 softie windshield Sennheiser K6 & ME 66 directional mic kit Large Black Hard Pelican case GoPro HERO 3 camera Nikon D800 Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens Nikon SB 900 speedlight CompactFlash 8GB card
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WITH NEARLY 20 YEARS OF MILITARY service under his belt, Simon Ethell tells us of a lesser-known way to make a living as a videographer: travelling the world with the Royal Navy. Having started his career in the Royal Marines, Simon achieved his primary goal of earning his Green Beret and serving as a Royal Marines Commando, reaching the rank of Corporal within 13 years of service. His interest and involvement in filmmaking started while conducting training on snow and ice driving in Norway. “Doing this role I found myself creating short videos and still images to enhance my lectures,” he says. “I really enjoyed this aspect and decided at that point that I wanted to be a Royal Navy Photographer.” Other passionate Marines helped him learn the basics of filmmaking, but one of the main appeals of the transfer to the Royal Navy was the technical training that was provided through the 5300 Defence Photographer and Electronic News Gathering (ENG) courses held at RAF Cosford. Though relinquishing his Marines uniform caused some trepidation for Simon, he never looked back, and now spends 70% of his time filming and 30% capturing stills, all the while wearing his Green Beret. “I really like to show the Royal Marines and Royal Navy in a
positive manner, so that the public can see what we actually do,” he says. “I also enjoy being part of a small exclusive team that has the opportunity to travel the world, capturing different events and trialling the latest equipment.” When it comes to direction, Simon is lucky to have the flexibility to shoot in his own creative style, so long as the sequence serves its purpose, and he also has access to a variety of kit. “I like using the Nikon D800 for interviews to get that magical shallow depth-of-field,” he says. “I also recently shot a short piece on the Army Commandos, which gave me a chance to experience working with the Canon C300.” But don’t be fooled into thinking that being part of the Mobile News Team is all plain sailing and jet-setting: this is a job that comes with a set of unique challenges. “Working with the Marines, I have to be physically fit,” Simon explains. “If I cover a speed march, I have to run around and satellite the group for the run, so this means continually running ahead to capture them as they pass.” Simon might be working as an in house filmmaker and photographer but he’s still expected to be a fully involved member of the force as well, and it’s this combination of responsibilities that he finds so appealing.
“I like using the Nikon D800 for interviews to get that magical shallow depth-of-field”
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CASE STUDY VICTORIA GRECH
T FOCUSING SHORT FILMS
ON FICTION
Having successfully moved from photography into filmmaking with a series of commercial projects, Victoria Grech is now negotiating the steep learning curve required to move into short fiction films WORDS TERRY HOPE PICTURES VICTORIA GRECH
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hose making the biggest splash when moving from stills to movies are the ones continually pushing and challenging themselves, and although there are the inevitable setbacks and occasions where the comfort zone can seem an awfully long way away, this sink or swim approach is perhaps the quickest and most effective way to learn to reach it. Victoria Grech is a prime example of someone never content to stand still, and her relentless desire to discover more about filmmaking has seen her continuously testing her limits. She’s come out a little battered but with her skill set and reputation enhanced and with more of the experience needed to thrive in her chosen sector on board. Her latest dive into the deep end saw her take on the production of an epic
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four-minute trailer for a projected feature film, problem solving as she went along and relying on her team. True to the nature of personal projects both budget and time were eye-wateringly tight, but Victoria was convinced that she could come away with a demonstration film that everyone could be proud of. “The first idea I had was loosely based around the idea of working with a real lion,” she recalls wistfully, “but eventually this distilled down into doing something that went against all traditional advice: I decided I would set out to work with children and animals.” What Victoria had in mind was a fantasy story with a touch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe about it, complete with evil witch on horseback, lots of mist and a sense of menace. Then Linda Johnstone, a friend, happened to mention
that she might be able to arrange for a pack of 16 Ridgeback dogs to come along and suddenly another element was in place, one that would give the trailer its name: Battle for the Ridgebacks. “I had three child actors to play the main parts,” says Victoria, “and they were amazing, seeing as none of them had ever acted before. I also had another actress to play the part of the witch, and with Linda’s help, we managed to source a horse for the day. All of the actors needed costumes, and my mother and I were working on these, spray-painting them to get the look and feel we wanted. I had started a Pinterest board to express my visions and look for the film, and this helped with styling and prop ideas.” Victoria had a large support team, from her regular second cameraman Paul Cook through to sound, behind-the-scenes
IMAGE Victoria Grech sourced and created the costumes with the help of her mother, using Pinterest to create a mood board to gather ideas and styles.
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VICTORIA GRECH CASE STUDY IMAGE Using a Steadicam Zephyr rig alongside a Canon C300 and Cinema Lenses equalled a very heavyweight kit. A Steadicam spotter was wisely employed for the day alongside a second shooter using a smaller rig.
“I underestimated how much work was required even for a film of this length; I’d set aside three months if I were to do it again” photos and general help carrying kit. The role of Steadicam spotter was handed to Martin Dance, ensuring Victoria didn’t stumble into any rabbit holes with her heavy rig while filming. “There were also several dog owners on hand,” says Victoria. “In total the team was 15 to 20 strong, way bigger than I’ve ever worked with before. I have to truly say everyone was pretty incredible, and if I hadn’t had such a great team around me there wouldn’t have been a film at all. What I’ve learned over the years is to invest in relationships: there’s nothing like a group achievement, and this is why I love the art of filmmaking.” Victoria gave herself just one week of pre-production time and a day to carry out the filming, and she concedes that this was not nearly enough. “I underestimated how much work was required even for a film of this length, and I would look to set aside closer to three months if I were to do it again. There were just so many corners I had to cut and it made life difficult. “For example, I prepared a storyboard for the first three scenes of the film using the storyboard app on my iPad. I didn’t
have time to do any more, so the rest was in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I then had to try to put my vision across to the rest of the crew, and that was frustrating for everyone.” Long shooting day Filming took place in the height of summer and the plan was to work from 9am until 4pm, but instead everything overran and it wasn’t until 9.30pm, when there was no light left in the sky, that shooting was completed. The final scenes were completed using portable Kino Flo and Dedo continuous lights. “I had hoped that we wouldn’t need these lights, but had them in the back of the car just in case,” says Victoria. “However, as things worked out we wouldn’t have been able to finish the shoot without their help when the light started to go. We used every last portable light possible to get us through, and I actually think those scenes look much better with the smoke at night than originally planned for the day.” Paul and Victoria had planned to shoot everything off two tripods, but with the
fast pace and lack of time Paul eventually shot with a handheld OConnor rig while Victoria opted for the same rig with a Steadicam Zephyr stabilising system. “The Zephyr is a serious heavy duty rig that can accommodate bigger cameras and rigs,” she says. “We needed this because I was using a Canon C300 together with Canon Cinema Lenses, plus an EOS 1DC. I used an OConnor full rig, which included my favourite follow focus and O grips. The new shoulder pad is great as I could use it in a number of different ways, giving me extra flexibility to change lenses and greater comfort.” As Victoria was the only one of the team to have Steadicam training she ended up working with the Zephyr all day, and this made it difficult for her to play director. “The children thought I was an octopus women, thanks to the mechanical arm,” says Victoria. “It was funny, but ultimately the film suffered because I couldn’t fully concentrate on my role as a director. I think in future I’ll need to step back a little so that I can spend more time making sure that everyone fully understands my vision. “I’ll try to get an assistant director involved in the next film as well, which would leave me to just direct. At one point Paul and I were shooting separate scenes to try to speed things up as we were running out of time, and I was having to brief him on exactly the look I wanted in just a few minutes, which was not
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CASE STUDY VICTORIA GRECH IMAGES It may have taken until 9.30pm but the day’s shoot was enough – three to four minutes was all that was needed for the final production and it wasn’t an easy task considering there was a team of up to 20 to look after.
ideal. I couldn’t have done this without him that’s for sure!” Because of the tight budget there was no scope to employ a dedicated focus puller, and so Victoria had to think on her feet and to work with hyper focal distances to maximise depth-offield. “The OConnor follow focus was so smooth for the handheld rig,” she says, “but when you’re moving with a Steadicam it becomes challenging and you can’t manually focus while moving. Some of the night scenes were shot on the Canon cinema lenses at f/1.4 on the 50mm, so the depth-of-field was tiny.” Ambitious production The shooting itself threw up all kinds of issues that Victoria had never encountered before. For a start there were a lot of people on set who needed to be communicated with – way more than you would encounter on a commercial shoot – and even one person not quite getting the message could ruin a take. For one of the key scenes the dogs were set to be released by their owners on a given signal, and they would then all race past the low angle camera position in a highly dramatic fashion. “The owners were briefed to lie down low in the grass so that they couldn’t be seen,” says Victoria, “but it was too much for a couple of them to resist and they raised their heads to watch their dogs once they’d let them go. Unfortunately the fact they could be seen in the background ruined an otherwise perfect take, and we had to set the whole thing up again.” Other elements of the coordination worked brilliantly, and every person in the team played their part and made a contribution. Walkie Talkies allowed everyone to stay in touch which was crucial for some dramatic scenes:
OUR THANKS TO… Actors: Sarah Nix, Elenie Perricos, Thomas Frost, Hugo Richardson, Carmel Adreinne Film crew: Paul Cook, Phil Pain, Dade Freeman, Peter Alberti, Linda Johnstone, Martin Dance Trainer Sue Craigi, all 16 Ridgeback dogs and their owners Sponsors: Canon, OConnor, Tiffen, Rycote, Sennheiser, Vinten, Petrol, Think Tank, Steadicam, Hire a camera
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theatrical smoke bombs were discharged immediately before the camera started rolling, and timing was crucial if the scene was to be completed before the smoke started to clear. “The other thing that I needed to do as director was to keep everyone motivated for the entire day,” says Victoria. “I’ve personally got a lot of energy and managed to cope even though I never had a rest. However, understandably, other people did get tired, and I had to be aware of this. The children were great even during night scenes when everyone was truly shattered. Fortunately it was an incredible crew and we were all determined to see this thing through.” Putting it all together With the footage safely in the can Victoria now faced the task of pulling together all the elements. Again, time was incredibly tight – just two weeks – and some tough decisions had to be made regarding which scenes would end up on the cutting room floor. Editor Ross Turner had a tough job, and Victoria sat with him for much of the time as he pulled things together. “I decided to shoot everything in C-log profile,” says Victoria, “and by using the 1DC in its super 35 mode for HD we achieved footage that closely matched that produced by the C300 2k footage. Editing was carried out using Final Cut Pro X and the film was graded with Blackmagic’s Da Vinci Resolve to create the typical Hollywood grade I was after. “I was very tough with what was included in the film and what was left out, and there were several scenes that were individually really strong but they didn’t fit the edit. I even cut out a lot of the morning footage since I wasn’t convinced
that it worked with what we’d shot later, and we needed to get the production down to three and four minutes.” Another area where lessons were learned was in audio, and if she wasn’t aware already through her filmmaking experience how crucial this element is, Victoria certainly understood its significance once she came to work on the audio track in the editing suite. “Because we were in a rush on the day of filming we didn’t get the audio we needed,” she says, “and quite a lot of things, such as voice-overs, needed to be subsequently added. We also needed to work on layers and layers of Foley audio, which is basically the sound effects. It’s fascinating to realise that genuine sounds are never really dramatic enough: a bit like with theatrical make-up, it needs to be really over the top. For example, there’s a scene where the girl blows the dust off a book, and the sound you hear is me blowing into a mic of a Mac screen, and everything from the metallic sound of swords clashing through to galloping hooves had to be added in the same way.” With the experience under her belt Victoria and her team considered the massive outlay of time and effort to be well worthwhile, and all now have an impressive feature production to add to their showreel. “Looking ahead I would love to work on a longer and more involved production,” says Victoria, “but I’ll definitely go into it with my eyes open. I’ve learned so much from taking this on, and it’s been a really rewarding project to have been involved with.”
More information www.victoriagrech.com
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SAMYANG ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Dedicated to filmmaking Samyang continues to expand its range of dedicated VDSLR Cinema Lenses, unveiling a new 50mm model at photokina. Filmmaker York Woodford-Smith takes it for a spin
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s the world of digital filmmaking continues to explode so the realisation grows that it’s no longer viable simply to muddle through with tools adapted to the job. The heady days when photographers and filmmakers alike suddenly discovered to their astonishment that a DSLR had the potential to deliver amazing full-frame video footage for a fraction of the price of a dedicated professional video camera are still fondly remembered but we’ve moved on. There’s now a growing realisation that making a living in this vibrant sector requires bespoke gear. This means that photographers who achieved amazing things on the film front working with their stills lenses are realising that, good as they are, they do come with their drawbacks when used in a different medium. Their autofocus abilities suddenly count for nothing. Instead, it’s about whether they’re easy to work with on a manual setting or can accept a follow focus. Jumps and noises
when moving from one aperture to another are out of the question since the jump will be visible and the microphone will pick up the noise. The answer to this quandary is a dedicated cinema lens. These specialist bits of kit have been around film sets for many years now and traditionally they carried a large premium as they’re sold in relatively small numbers and have to be heavily engineered to meet with the demand for ultra-smooth operation and the hammering they get from regular daily use. They also come with highly accurate T-notations instead of f-stops, which are so precise that once you have a set of the lenses you know for a fact that footage will be exposed exactly the same whichever optic you use. They also feature stepless aperture rings so that the exposure can be changed smoothly and imperceptibly with no sound, plus they are built to deliver ultra-smooth manual focus, with a ridged ring around the barrel designed to accept a follow focus.
ABOVE & LEFT With focal lengths ranging from 7.5mm to 85mm, the Samyang VDSLR Cinema Lens line-up offers filmmakers a wide choice, all at affordable prices. RIGHT Meet the latest Samyang VDSLR lens: the 50mm T1.5.
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Recently Samyang has burst onto the scene with its highly rated VDSLR cinema lens line-up. Now encompassing 11 models, the range stretches from 7.5mm up to 85mm, all at stunningly affordable prices, just a fraction more than the conventional still lens equivalent. Meet the new 50mm The latest lens to join the line-up is the 50mm T1.5, which was launched at photokina with its stills twin brother, the 50mm f/1.4. Super-fast and optically superb, the lens sits in at the higher end of the focal length range – neatly filling the gap between the existing VDSLR 35mm and 85mm models – and is designed to work with APS-C cameras, such as Canon’s EOS 60D, 70D, 7D and the newly launched, warmly welcomed EOS 7D Mark II, as well as the growing numbers of fullframe cameras and camcorders. It gives 46.2° field of view and, thanks to its high light transmission value of T1.5 (f/1.4), it ensures impressive image quality, even in low light. Optics consist of nine lens elements arranged in six groups (including one aspherical and one hybrid aspherical lens element), and to ensure high contrast and faithful colour reproduction all lens elements have been covered with multi-layered UMC antireflective coatings. Furthermore the lens has been designed with the filmmakers’ love for shallow depth-of-field in mind, since it features not just an impressive maximum aperture but also an eight-bladed aperture that delivers remarkably smooth bokeh. A feature set as impressive as this one could be expected to come in at a high price point, but true to Samyang style its SRP is a mere £479.99, which includes VAT. Quite a bargain in fact, and it’s the lens that many in the film industry have been waiting for since the VDSLR line-up first burst onto the scene.
PRO MOVIEMAKER WINTER 2014
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SAMYANG ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
“Designed with the filmmakers’ love for shallow depth-of-field in mind, it features not just an impressive maximum aperture but delivers remarkably smooth bokeh”
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SAMYANG ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE “It feels very well engineered and is not too heavy, but has a solid feel to it” The lens in use While its credentials on paper appear immaculate, the only genuine test for any lens is to send it out to a working studio. In this case we got in touch with York Woodford-Smith, who heads up the Five On a Bike media production house in High Wycombe, Bucks. York’s team produces films for a wide and expanding range of commercial clients and has even on occasion worked for corporations the size of McDonald’s UK. York himself is steeped in the business, having graduated with a 1st class honours degree in live television production, entering the profession as digital filmmaking was on the verge of breaking through on the back of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. “I started work in a proper old school one-man band studio,” he recalls, “and it was a great experience, working with a professional standard Sony PD150 camcorder. It then took me two and a half years to persuade the owner to take a look at what digital had to offer. “I eventually decided I probably had enough experience to set up on my own, and that’s when I founded Five On a Bike. There’s now a small team of five of us, and we’re currently looking to expand the team and add self-shooting freelance directors and camera operators. Collectively we pride ourselves on the fact that we have an extensive knowledge of filmmaking, which extends to us carrying out all our own editing in-house.” York didn’t work regularly with HDSLRs until 2011, at which time he was also using more traditional pro camcorders, such as the Canon XF100 and 300. “I now work with a Canon EOS 60D, a 5D Mark II
and a C100,” he says, “and have a set of photographic lenses to accompany them. These are a Sigma 30mm f/1.4, a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 and a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8: the 70-200mm in particular was expensive to buy, costing me around £1000, but they’ve done a good job for me to date.” Given his positive filmmaking experience with still cameras and lenses, it would clearly take quite something for York to consider alternative gear, but he readily agreed to try out the new Samyang VDSLR 50mm and approached the experience with an open mind. Dedicated “To be honest the concept of a dedicated cinema lens was something that I’ve not really come across before,” York says. “I’ve managed pretty well with what I’ve had, and have coped with the limitations along the way. However, I was intrigued to see what the Samyang would look like and to experience how it would handle, and I was impressed with it straight out of the box. “For a start it feels very well engineered and is not too heavy but has a solid feel to it, and you would imagine that it would stand up to some serious professional use. The manual focus felt very smooth indeed and I was impressed with the grooves around the lens barrel that are designed to work with a follow focus. The lenses I’m using are autofocus and you have to switch that off in order to be able to film with them. It’s a much better idea to have a system designed with follow focus in mind, and I can see real advantages for that.”
However, it was the stepless aperture ring that really caught York’s eye and, for him, this was the key feature. “We often face situations where the light might change while you’re filming a scene,” he says, “and it’s a real issue if you have to adjust the aperture during a scene because the full aperture change will be noticeable and you’ll also hear the click as it’s adjusted. For this reason alone I would recommend someone looking at equipping themselves for a film studio to look very closely at a lens such as this, because I can see the real advantages it would bring.” York is also impressed with the price point of the lens and its fast T-stop. “One of the main reasons that we film with DSLRs is the beautiful shallow depth-of-field that it enables us to work with,” he says. “Obviously the very wide apertures allow you to make the most of that look, and the advantages of the T1.5 over the f/2.8 lenses I’m using regularly were clear. This is something I would have enjoyed using more, but I needed to have a variable ND filter to really try it out. However, I could see that kind of maximum aperture being something that I would be using very regularly.” Although he admits to being something of a fan of zoom lenses, owing to the issues that can arise when trying to change lenses in the field if you’re filming on your own, York can see the benefit of a fixed lens as well. He has, in fact, worked with many filmmakers who swear by them. “I really enjoyed the chance to work with the Samyang 50mm,” he says. “It looks like a good all-round package and I could see the VDSLR lens line-up having real appeal for the dedicated filmmaker.”
More information Five on a Bike: www.fiveonabike.com Samyang: www.samyang.co.uk
ABOVE The Samyang 50mm T1.5 in action with one of York Woodford-Smith’s Canon EOS HDSLRs.
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AZDEN ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Make yourself heard In the world of filmmaking audio quality is crucial, and you need a selection of top quality microphones from the likes of Azden to make sure you can cope in every situation
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hen photographers first dipped a tentative toe into the world of HDSLR filmmaking the whole question of audio was something of a minefield. This was a strange, unknown area to those used to working in the silent world of stills, and it involved a huge learning curve for those who were serious about making the move. In-camera sound recording has never been up to any kind of professional standard, though it can just about supply a guide track. A step up is an on-camera mic that records the general sound coming towards it, but cheaper versions will pick up the camera sound. Those who are serious about their audio very quickly realise that the only way to go is to invest in a selection of dedicated microphones to record the assorted tracks externally and then mix these with the video footage at the editing stage. The realisation that no one single microphone can do the job may come as a surprise to those new to the world of filmmaking, but it’s a fairly straightforward proposition to acquire a selection of the mics you need. You’ll soon come to terms with the unique abilities that each type offers. It helps enormously when a company such as Azden produces a wide range of products to cover every eventuality. You can source exactly what you need without ever having to look elsewhere, and it provides valuable continuity throughout your lineup of gear. Picking up conversation Azden lapel (also known as lavalier) microphones, for example, are small and discreet and can simply be pinned to a jacket and will be virtually invisible yet ideally positioned to pick up the speech of even a distant subject. You could, for example, mic up the best man, the bridegroom and the father of the bride at a wedding reception if you’re filming the big day, and you’ll pick up every word they say loud and clear, even if you’re filming from the back of the room. There are two types of Azden lapel mics available: omni directional and uni directional. The omni directional
type essentially picks up sound from all directions, so is good for the main speech as well as the ambient sound. Meanwhile the uni directional type picks up sound only from one direction, and comes into its own if there is a hubbub of sound around the speaker and the aim is to record just one clear, uninterrupted voice. It’s your call which situation you think you’ll face, and many filmmakers carry both types. You’ll probably also need more than one lapel mic; you could be working with several at a time if the situation involves several speakers. A shotgun microphone, named for its appearance, is highly directional, rejecting sounds that may be coming from the left or right. This makes it ideal for use on television or film sets, where the subject being recorded is directly in front of the microphone’s position. The Azden SGM-DSLR mic is a broadcast quality shotgun microphone, specifically designed to meet the demands of the advanced HDSLR user. Unlike the plastic housing of many competitors’ microphones, the all-metal SGM-DSLR with its shock-mount holder eliminates camera noise, while its long,
IMAGES To cover all eventualities, Azden’s quality range includes lavalier mic kits and shotgun microphones.
metal, lightweight barrel offers superior directionality and wide response. Another high-quality stereo shotgun microphone, the Azden SMX-100 is designed for broadcasters, videographers and audio professionals. The mic offers wide frequency response in a compact, lightweight camera-mount design, and its M-S pick-up configuration means recorded signals are stereo and mono compatible, making it an excellent choice for all video-based audio applications. The wide selection of products in the Azden range will give you a complete choice for every situation, allowing you to prepare for virtually every eventuality. With audio accessories like these, the sound on your productions is guaranteed to be right up there with the quality of your visuals.
More information Azden: www.azden.com
“With audio accessories like these, the sound on your productions is guaranteed” WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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ACADEMY
This is where you’ll learn more about the nuts and bolts of videomaking, and our team of experts is ready and waiting to pass on its knowledge
46 DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS Lorraine Grula imparts expert advice to put your inexperienced subjects at ease in front of the camera.
54 LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
DOP Audrey Aquilina talks us through the key lighting considerations for shooting on location.
60 S OUND DECISIONS
Expert Matt Bell continues his series on capturing pro quality audio and tells us what aspects simply can’t be saved in post.
67 MOVIE MATTERS
Our team of industry experts answers your questions on subjects from streaming to stabilisation.
AUTUMN WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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ACADEMY DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS
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DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA
Very often the person appearing in front of your camera is inexperienced, even terrified, so it’s your job to direct them and put them at ease. Lorraine Grula shows how to handle the situation WORDS LORRAINE GRULA
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f you get the chance to work with professional on-camera talent then it will certainly make your life as a filmmaker so much easier. I’ve always admired folks who could waltz in front of a video camera and be commanding, yet personable and enjoyable to watch all at the same time. It’s certainly not an easy thing to pull off, but the real pros make it look effortless. Naturally, of course, in the real world there may be many occasions where you’re not working with professionals, whether you’re shooting a corporate video or maybe wedding guests talking to camera. So what do you do if your on-camera person has no experience? They could be nervous and unsure. The lights might be making them squint and sweat. They have no clue what to say or what to do with their hands, except to flail them about like a scarecrow in a storm. Even worse still, they might stand there like a granite statue and mumble their words incomprehensibly. Set against all of this it’s your job to guide them through the shoot and to come away with a video production that’s every bit as
good as if you’d worked with an Academy Award winning leading actor. So what’s the trick to achieving that seemingly impossible task? Having worked in the TV news business for about 20 years and having in that time convinced literally thousands of people they really did want to be on TV, plus freelancing in the corporate video world for about ten years beyond that, I can promise you that the most important thing you have to do is to calm their nerves. First step is to assure them that your number one goal is to make them look good. They have to trust you and be willing to let you and your camera be in ultimate control of their destiny as it relates to the final video product. Think about how scary that could be. They can only let go of their fear if they trust you have their best interests at heart. Needless to say, working in a journalistic as opposed to a PR capacity makes a huge difference in how far you can go in assuring that corporate CEO you have his back. But no matter what the exact situation, if they trust you, they will be able to let go and give a natural performance.
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DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS Using my skinny filter I’d say there is a 90% chance that a subject’s main concern will be that they will come across looking and sounding foolish. It can be a very sobering moment watching yourself on screen for the first time, and we’re not used to seeing ourselves as others see us, and it can take a little accepting. Some people who are insecure about their looks could worry that they will appear fat, old, or ugly. Coupled to this they are afraid of saying something inane or rambling, or of running out of things to say and resorting to ‘ers’ and ‘ums’. There are lots of basic video production techniques, such as diffused lighting, which you should explain are being utilised to make sure they look nice. Create a set and background that will enhance the shot and let them in on what you’re doing and why. I try to use humour to diffuse some of the tension, and might tease my subject that my camera has a special ‘skinny filter’ that can take off 20 pounds. Bad as that joke is, it can make them laugh, and that can help someone to relax. Regarding your subject saying something stupid, that goes directly back to the trust issue. There’s quite a high chance that someone inexperienced might inadvertently come out with something that they regret saying, or could stumble over words or get tongue-tied. Make sure they are aware
“Despite any reassurances you might make, it’s a fact that the mere presence of a camera can create anxiety” that you are on their side and will only put out a take that they are happy with. Anything that hasn’t worked as planned will be deleted, not posted to YouTube. Despite any reassurances you might make, it’s a fact that the mere presence of a camera can create anxiety. There were so many times I wished that my camera and I could disappear and turn into a fly on the wall. However, that’s not going to happen and so you need to get your subject used to the situation and build in the time that’s necessary for them to relax. If a person is exceptionally nervous you need to deflect their attention away from the camera that’s pointed directly at them, and come up with techniques that I’ll come on to in a moment that can help them to forget it’s even there. Perfection is not possible I’ve seen it a thousand times: video producers who don’t properly accommodate the novice and expect miracles. They coach, cajole and instruct the person on every little detail of how they appear on screen and the way they
speak. ‘Look over here. No, this way… further… that’s it… chin down… No, too far, now chin up… Back down just a touch… OK good, hold it steady. Alright… You’re smiling too much. Now you’re frowning! OK, better but don’t purse your lips so much. OK, better, now, suck that gut in, sit up straight, and look natural. OMG, now your nose is shiny. Stop the camera! Where’s make-up?’ All the producer with that attitude does is to make the person so uncomfortable that they’ll be afraid to breathe. Their on-camera performance will be stiff and hopelessly unappealing and they’ll get tongue-tied and will make mistake after mistake. After a while they’re so flustered that you may well have lost them completely. If you go with this approach the chances are that you’ll never get the video you need. I’ve seen shoots that should have taken an hour stretch into four or five hours, and nothing was accomplished except to create feelings of anger and humiliation. It’s an unhappy experience for everyone, and the ultimate result is no usable video. Novices simply cannot handle strict orders to stand and move every inch of their body perfectly. They need to be able to direct their energies into speaking and communicating a message. If they are too busy concentrating on the precise alignment of their chin, not much else will be able to flow through their minds. It’s a much better idea to set up the shot in such a way that the person can sit or stand comfortably and not have to sweat on whether their chin is half an inch this way or that. I should add that it might also be that you as a producer need to chill out just a touch. Whatever camera angle and framing decision you have to use to lessen the pressure on your subject you should go for it. This could mean zooming out to a medium or wide shot and having more props and background in view to distract the viewer’s eye away from that wayward chin. Also consider that sitting behind a desk is more comfortable for most people than standing with nothing to lean on or hide behind. Don’t get me wrong; the shot has to look right so the person on-camera has to have the proper posture and head stance. I’m not saying to not give directions. What I am explaining is that if you work
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ACADEMY DIRECTING YOUR SUBJECTS
“Step in front of the camera yourself before you assume that it’s easy to not squint or feel like you’re under an inquisitor’s bulb” harder to build a shot and position the person so that they feel comfortable and relaxed the benefits will be enormous. Limit the directions you give to broader, more basic things such as ‘avoid leaning forward in your chair’. Then if they do lean forward don’t freak out: instead give them a chair that doesn’t lend itself to leaning, or rocking. Rocking in particular is deadly on-camera, but I’ve no doubt that you probably knew that. Three-quarter profile If you can set your shot up like a news interview, with the person looking at someone off-camera instead of looking directly into it, do it. That one trick will go an amazingly long way toward allowing them to forget the camera is even there. This makes the shot a threequarter profile, and since this approach is used so much in TV news it gives the viewer the impression that the person is not a paid spokesperson and is speaking off the cuff. Also make absolutely sure that your lighting set-up not only works for your production but is comfortable for your subject. Step in front of the camera yourself before you assume that it’s easy to not squint or feel like you’re under an inquisitor’s harsh bulb. Move your lights and diffuse them, and make sure that they’re not pointed directly into your subject’s face. Bite-size pieces Even if you are using a teleprompter, the chances are extremely high that your novice will not be able to get through the entire two-minute script in one take. Instead, break up the script into 10-20 second chunks, and take on one chunk at a time. Practise each one and get a good take before moving on to the next. Working in this way will make a night and day difference in terms of your subject
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being able to produce a good take. You can either edit it letting the jump cuts show, or you can cover it with B-roll. Another option is to have your subject turn before starting each take, so you can edit in the middle of this motion and make it look as though it were shot with multiple cameras. Another variation is to plan on the middle being covered with B-roll and only having your person show for the opening and close. If you do this, you can have them read the middle as a voice-over, which is much easier for the novice. I’ve seen this technique save more than one project in the past. In short, experience tells me that with a comfortable set-up and laidback approach, a novice will feel relaxed enough to let their energies flow into
a performance that works on screen. Chances are you’ll have to do some careful selection and polishing in postproduction, but the end result will end up looking professional and everyone will come away happy.
More information www.videoproductiontips.com Lorraine Grula is a long-time video production professional with an emphasis on documentary style production and journalism. Today she runs a blog called Video Production Tips, which helps people all over the world learn how to make their own videos.
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F&V ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Latest launches from F&V! It’s show season and F&V has been busy launching new products aimed at the serious filmmaker. We take a closer look at a compact and versatile EVF and two new lights that come with some high-end features
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&V has gained a huge reputation over the years for its innovative and cuttingedge range of products for the filmmaking business, and its latest launches are aimed at those looking for a fully featured EVF that’s suitable for a wide range of demanding assignments and two new LED lights that will be perfect in both the studio and location environments.
PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS HDMI and SDI loop through HDMI to SDI conversion Upgradable via USB Focus assist Zebra pattern Check field H/V image flip Audio level meter Range error Time code display DSLR Scale Vectorscope
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EVF SpectraHD 4 Given its deep and unrivalled understanding of the needs of cameramen, F&V has developed a compact and versatile EVF that is perfect for all types of filmmakers. From run and gun documentaries through to big commercial sets, this EVF is the perfect companion, with a full professional feature set and the ability to be taken virtually anywhere. The F&V SpectraHD 4 is a lightweight EVF monitor providing a HD resolution screen (1280x720) for high-precision image evaluation with a viewing angle of 170°. Thanks to its highresolution display, the SpectraHD 4 can be used as a stand-alone 4.3in monitor or as an EVF – it’s your choice! A quick release attachment system allows you to take the loupe on and off with ease, and the whole unit is protected by a robust, metal housing, making the SpectraHD 4 suitable for every situation. The SpectraHD 4 can be used with a wide range of cameras from DSLRs through to broadcast and digital cinema cameras, and custom profiles for a growing range
TOP SpectraHD 4 and loupe combination. ABOVE The SpectraHD 4’s 4.3in screen in use.
“Given its deep understanding of the needs of cameramen, F&V has developed a compact and versatile EVF perfect for all filmmakers”
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F&V ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
SPECIFICATIONS
ABOVE Use the Expandable Link System to create a large panel from several Z180 units, controlled by one parent-light.
of models are offered to optimise the display of any input signal. F&V has also made it easy to share your signal with other devices, thanks to the provision of an HDMI as well as an SDI loop: you simply use this converter to integrate a wide variety of cameras into your professional workflow. The SpectraHD 4 provides a variety of tools to improve your workflow. Advanced features like vectorscope, focus assist, zebra pattern, check field, image flip, range error, time code and many more are all squeezed into this compact, powerful device. The SpectraHD 4 also comes with
upgradeable software, and over time the range of features that is offered will only get greater thanks to regular free updates. Available as a stand-alone unit (around £750), the loupe alone (around £235) or in a kit version with a loupe (around £930), the SpectraHD 4 is available now. F&V UltraColor Lights F&V is justifiably known for the quality of its lighting accessories, and it has recently launched two LED products in its UltraColor series. They are both sure to quickly prove themselves worthy additions to the range.
ABOVE UltraColor Z1200. BELOW SpectraHD 4.
SCREEN SIZE: 4.3in PIXELS (HXRGBXV): 1280x3x720 VIEWING ANGLE: 170° DISPLAY AREA (HXV): 93.6x58.2mm ASPECT RATIO: 16:9/4:3 selectable COLOUR DEPTH: 24-bit (16.777.216 colours) BRIGHTNESS: 400cd/m2 CONTRAST RATIO: 800:1 COMPATIBLE INPUT FORMATS: NTSC/PAL HDMI INPUT FORMATS: 480i/p, 576i/p, 720i/p, 1080i/p HDMI INPUT/OUTPUT: HDMI (type A) female SDI INPUT/OUTPUT: BNC female (8Ω) OPERATING VOLTAGE: 6-18V DC POWER: Max 6.2W OPERATING TEMPERATURE: 0-40°C (32-104°F) STORAGE TEMPERATURE: -20-60°C (-4-140°F) The Z1200 is a 2x1 panel (60x30cm) that produces a high light output thanks to its 1200 LED display, but the light it produces is very soft as well, owing to its builtin diffuser. Along with its power, the other thing of note about the Z1200 is its colour accuracy: it has an impressive CRI of 95 ±0.6. The second new light panel from F&V is the K8000+, which comes with an 800 LED display. Once again, accuracy is right up there, with a CRI of 90 being delivered.
More information: www.fvlight.eu Watch a video about the SpectraHD and MeticaFM 7 monitors: http://vimeo.com/106661166
WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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SHOOTING ON LOCATION
Filmmakers wanting to shoot on location face a host of hurdles the minute they step out of the studio. In the first of this twoparter, Audrey Aquilina explains how to cope with the challenges and make life easier WORDS AUDREY AQUILINA
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JONATHAN DREDGE WWW.JONATHANDREDGE.COM
or me, working on location is one of the most enjoyable aspects of videography. The principles of lighting are the same whether in a studio or on location, but you’ll find differences in terms of logistics and practicality plus a lot more potential for the unexpected to happen once you venture outside. With this in mind, prep is key, and ideally you should be making a recce of any location you plan to work in prior to your shoot. Success depends on having everything you need with you or, alternatively, being prepared to do without. Go through the project beforehand, imagine yourself working there and make a checklist. This extra prep will pay off when you are able to improvise and cope effortlessly with anything a location can throw at you. The wonderful thing about being on location is that each place is unique and will be able to make its own contribution to your production. It’s important to be able to make an assessment of what it has to offer or, conversely, what it might lack, with regard to the style and content of the shoot you are intending to undertake.
LEFT This scene was lit with a single battery-powered light supplemented with car headlights. The umbrellas were not intended to be in shot originally but ended up becoming surreal props since time ran out and the weather wouldn’t let up.
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ACADEMY SHOOTING ON LOCATION BELOW Wet weather gear is essential in the UK, including waterproof coverings for the camera. In this case a tough polythene bag goes over the assembled camera and tripod. Fitted camera jackets (Portabrace, Kata etc) allow you to operate freely while protecting the camera but it’s often quicker to throw a bag over the tripod and use brollies.
around where you are trying to set up equipment will slow you down enormously, and there will be the temptation to chat, which can also be distracting. This attention to detail is often overlooked on small shoots but arriving, unloading and liaising with a location or a client can add a surprising amount of time to a schedule. Look after your gear at all times, because opportunist thieves are always after easy pickings, and it could even be that your insurance becomes invalid if you don’t take reasonable precautions (gear should always be kept locked securely or under watch, and you’ll need to check that kit will be covered while you are in transit, for example). Look to store your equipment away from where you are shooting, but where you can access it in a hurry. It should be locked away or in an area with controlled access. On small, mobile
shoots, being able to leave the kit somewhere convenient means you will work quickly. Access to power You need to be sure there is safe power available in the location you’re using. In old buildings in particular look for signs of unsafe wiring. Dodgy wires can easily cause fires, or give you a shock. If you have any doubts use alternative sources such as batteries, natural light or a generator, equipment permitting, and/or limit your light sources to very low powered ones such as fluorescent or LED lights. Know the power of your equipment. Have fuses on everything and ensure your equipment doesn’t exceed the safe limit of the power socket you’re using. Use heavy-duty power extension cables and rent your lighting from a reputable supplier or have your own kit regularly
“Look after your gear at all times, because opportunist thieves are always after easy pickings, and it could be that your insurance becomes invalid if you don’t take precautions”
JONATHAN DREDGE WWW.JONATHANDREDGE.COM
Arrival on location When you arrive at your chosen location, will you be able to gain access? Is it possible to unload or park? Will the vehicle you’re travelling in – which could be a van if you have a lot of gear – fit through any tight entrances? Will a trolley be helpful (and available), and could stairs be a problem? Who will help you unload? Alone, you will almost certainly need to leave some kit unattended while you get into the location and move the vehicle away from the loading spot. It’s easy to get overloaded with gear if you’re trying to shift everything in one go. It’s reasonable – and professional – to spread the load, so insist on having someone meet you, even if it’s the location’s security guard. If a presenter or other people are appearing on screen, will someone else look after them or will you have do that? Is there a facility for hair and make-up or, at the very least, somewhere the talent can prepare? Your client will want to talk to you about the day and walk you through options, and you can’t be everywhere at once. People milling
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subjected to a PAT (Portable Appliance Test). Any circuit, but especially ones being used in damp environments, think humid rooms or ones open to the exterior, should be protected by a residual-current device (RCD). Often the most atmospheric locations can be the ones that are the most unsafe. Run-down buildings and areas with high crime rates carry obvious risks, as do rooftop shots, working near water, in abandoned quarries, around asbestos and so on. Get used to the idea of risk assessments. They’re not limited to location work, so you might already be familiar with them. They should not be a box-ticking exercise but a realistic assessment of what could go wrong, how likely it is, how bad the effects would be, how you might prevent it and, in the worst-case scenario, how you would get help should you need it. The risk assessment can be a detailed form (sometimes required by large companies or location managers) or a simple set of notes on your day’s call sheet. The important thing is that the person responsible for the shoot has shown competent assessment and has put adequate measures in place to mitigate any dangers. Even if you’re working on location in a corporate or similar environment you should consider the risks. For example, think about such things as equipment theft; damage to client property; injuries; fire; damage to computer equipment; knocks and bumps to floors and windows; heat damage; accidentally setting off fire alarms or sprinklers. Consider your gear and who will be using it, where you will be and what could happen. In a typical exterior corporate location you may need to think about traffic hazards, aggravation from the public, the weather, working in the dark and anything else relevant. Shoots should not go ahead without a risk assessment, and the legal ramifications of not producing an adequate one can be huge. Things can, and do, go wrong. Never work without public
JONATHAN DREDGE WWW.JONATHANDREDGE.COM
SHOOTING ON LOCATION
ABOVE Existing street lighting provides ambient and working light during a night shoot on location. Check what’s there before turning up for your shoot.
“Working on location comes with added planning and responsibilities so don’t skimp on safety”
liability insurance (including in a studio) and you may need other kinds of insurance in place depending on your circumstances. Remember that travel to and from the location is part of the risk, and long hours, risky transport, and tired drivers all need to be avoided. Take care of your team If you’re working outside you need to consider the health risks that the environment might throw up, and don’t forget about the comfort of the people working with you. Everything takes longer and is harder to do when it’s cold and raining. Is there shelter conveniently close to where you’re working or will you need to bring a marquee? What about hot drinks? Or, alternatively, shade if the weather has turned hot? And if the nearest toilets are a 30-minute walk away then be prepared to lose at least an hour off your schedule. Be prepared not only for danger but also for relative comfort. Typically in the UK a corporate shoot will be based around an interior interview, but you are likely to also need exterior general views (GVs), which could be found around the same location or you could have to search to find them. Again, this is an area where you might be able to do some work in advance, and if you know where you need to go and the best time of day it will make your life simpler.
Expect daylight and weather to fail, because inevitably it will. Look up the weather forecast and make sure everyone is prepared for all eventualities. People underestimate the cold if they aren’t used to working in it – there’s a lot of standing around when you’re shooting a film – so advise your team to dress with layers so that you can warm up or cool down quickly. In the UK, especially in the winter, it’s wise to carry fingerless gloves to work in, scarves, a hat, and an extra fleece, as well as efficient wet weather gear. Working on location comes with added planning and responsibilities so don’t be tempted to skimp on safety. However, with a bit of experience the extra care and prep required will become second nature and the rewards are enormous. It can be a great way to see distant parts of the world or even just other parts of your own town.
In the next issue of Pro Moviemaker Audrey will be looking at how production values can affect your work, and how to make use of available light, dealing with windows and how to gain access to awkward spaces. Audrey Aquilina is a filmmaker and DOP working in documentary and drama, with international credits. www.aquilinefeatures.com
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G-TECHNOLOGY ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Pixel wrangling in the video age Influential French videographer and blogger Emmanuel Pampuri travels the world making films about various trade shows, relying on G-Technology products for dependable backup
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here are many voices out there on the World Wide Web, commenting on the latest launches, fresh innovations and the day-to-day business of surviving and flourishing in the digital world, and one of the most respected in the filmmaking arena is that of Emmanuel Pampuri. This highly regarded French blogger and film producer travels the world, visiting the many trade shows and fairs and reporting back to his army of regular followers, who tune in to find out the latest developments and to pick up reviews about products coming their way. Emmanuel started out in 1990 as a trainee photographer in a studio, picking up the basics and learning how to master the tools of his trade. As he became more established he took the decision to team up with some friends to create a video magazine and started producing VHS videos of jazz concerts, kicking off in some style. “The first one I covered as a cameraman was with Miles Davis at a jazz festival in 1991,” he recalls. “For more than 15 years I was more a TV director than a filmmaker, but then in 2006 I decided to set up my own company, and since that time I’ve been offering post-production and camera rental, managing complete workflows from the lens of the camera through to the DCP mastering. I now consider myself to be more of a producer than a filmmaker. “However, if you ask me about what my job entails it’s not easy to give a short answer since I’m involved in so many different areas. I’m a teacher, journalist
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and a blogger, and some of my followers refer to me as the ‘French Digital Guru’. It’s quite funny to have all these young people asking me questions about how to choose a camera: I prefer to refer to myself as a pixel wrangler.” There’s a bewildering number of trade shows dedicated to the world of filmmaking and broadcast, such as IBC, NAB and BVE, these days, as well as a number of big imaging shows, such as CES and photokina, that also have the video market under their umbrella, and Emmanuel travels to many of these, putting together reports for his specialist audience. More than this, however, he also takes the time to capture something of the essence of the places he’s visiting, short films that he refers to as his ‘little video postcards’, which satisfy his instincts as a creative filmmaker. Appealing to the Internet audience Having been in the business since long before the Internet became a viable method of talking to an international audience, Emmanuel has a good perspective on his newfound status as a blog superstar, and he’s refreshingly self-effacing. “The blog is very successful but it’s still something I would describe as niche,” he says. “I’m not famous like Philip Bloom or Vincent Laforet, mainly because of my language. I’m French and that’s not such a big community, but it’s still really crazy sometimes when people come up to me in the street and
talk to me because they have recognised me from my online broadcasts.” In terms of gear Emmanuel has an eclectic taste, varying his choice depending on the nature of the shoot. “For my personal use I really like the Panasonic GH4,” he says. “For a very small camera it delivers incredible picture quality, and I also like its ergonomics. I’ve been a beta tester for Panasonic’s GH cameras for quite a while now, and it’s a position I really enjoy. When I’m working as a producer I like to use Red Epic and Sony F55 cameras, and I work a lot with vintage lenses, such as Leica Rs or those from Pentax Takumar/Contax Zeiss.” While he might vary the camera gear he uses, there’s only one company Emmanuel is prepared to trust for his backup requirements, and that’s G-Technology. He’s been using G-Technology’s G-Dock ev with Thunderbolt storage since it was launched, impressed by its hot swappable USB 3.0 compatible ev drive system with user configurable Raid 0, 1, which has been specifically designed to optimise the digital content workflow. Any combination of G-Drive ev hard drives can be popped into the G-Dock
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HEROES OF BACKUP
“Using the G-Dock it’s fast and safe to produce double backup” ev for ultimate flexibility, and transfer speeds of up to 136MB/s are possible. “It’s an incredible tool,” says Emmanuel. “Very clever, and using the G-Dock it’s fast and safe to produce double backup. I did use other drives before and experienced a lot of problems. Disk crash is a big issue for all filmmakers, and I need to work with fast tools that are very robust. On the post-production side in particular I need to share a lot of content with our customers, and prior to the G-Dock I worked with tons of drives that utilised lots of different cables and power adapters. These days I ask my clients to upgrade to G-Dock and G-Drive evs, and it makes it much easier for us to work together.” The risk of memory corrupting and data being lost is a constant worry for filmmakers, and Emmanuel, like so many others in his field, is ultra cautious. When working out in the field he restricts
himself to memory cards that are a maximum of 32GB, so if one becomes unreadable only a limited amount of footage is lost. Everything is backed up as quickly as possible to his MacBook Pro Retina laptop and G-Drive hard drives, and one hard drive will be carried in his cabin bag while a duplicate is in his suitcase. “If it’s a very important project I send drives by UPS or Fedex back to my office as well, to ensure that there is yet another copy of my data to hand in case of an emergency.” As if to prove the wisdom of such a cautious approach, Emmanuel recounts the story of a customer who was foolhardy enough to place both of his backup drives in the same backpack. The inevitable happened: the backpack was stolen on the subway, and a complete day of shooting was lost. Shuddering at the very though, Emmanuel is determined to never be in the same situation.
Continuing its launch of products to benefit the professional filmmaker and photographer, G-Technology has recently announced its new G-Speed Studio XL external hard drive, which can hold up to eight removable enterprise-class 7,200rpm hard drives, offering colossal capacity and performance of up to 1,350 megabytes per second (MB/sec) performance. G-Speed Studio XL also supports 4K workflows, with userconfigurable RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and 60, and impressive transfer rates of up to 1,350MB/sec in RAID 0. Like other products in the Studio line, the G-SPEED Studio XL can be daisy-chained via dual Thunderbolt 2 ports to boost storage speeds and effortlessly support demanding multi-stream HD, 2K and compressed 4K workflows. Expected to be available this November, the G-Speed Studio XL carries a suggested pricing of £2699 for 24TB, £3479 for 32TB, £4199 for 40TB, £4499 for 48TB and £5250 for a colossal 64TB.
More information www.g-technology.eu www.pampuri.net
* G-Technology, G-Drive, G-Dock and G-Speed all registered trademarks of HGST, Inc. and its affiliates in the United States and other/or countries. * Thunderbolt is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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PART 2: RECORDING SEPARATE AUDIO
SOUND DECISIONS Continuing his series on the intricacies of recording professional standard audio, Matt Bell looks at the most crucial aspects of audio capture and considers the things that simply can’t be rescued in post-production
ILLUSTRATION KATY BOWMAN
WORDS MATT BELL
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ollowing on from our exploration of the concept of audio for video productions in the last issue of Pro Moviemaker, plus our general look at the tools of the trade for this area, I’m now going to move on to take a closer look at some of the most crucial aspects of audio capture from the perspective of a stills photographer exploring DSLR video for the first time. So many of these basic aspects of audio production are akin to the focus or exposure settings that experienced stills photographers will already know all about, and these are the kinds of things that can’t easily be rescued in post-production. In the last issue we considered the fundamental approaches to audio capture when using a DSLR to shoot video. The final option we considered was an increasingly popular one amongst DSLR videomakers: that of using a stand-alone audio recorder (or indeed multiple recorders) to capture different audio sources outside the camera, and then marrying the visuals and the separate audio recording(s) at the post-production stage. As we concluded, this approach might not seem attractive to traditionalist stills photographers who have been trained to capture their images in-camera if possible, but some degree of post-production is needed anyway on all but the most basic of video material, even if only to edit, add titles and credits and so on. Ultimately the relative simplicity afforded by the external audio recorder approach to audio capture is regarded as a worthwhile tradeoff by many DSLR videographers. Moreover, complex audio layering, such as that employed in professionally shot films or documentaries, requires detailed post-production audio mixing and
assembly of many different sound sources anyway (for example, background ambience, special sound effects, music, voice-overs, re-recorded dialogue and so on), so you could argue that such an approach is taking you further along the road to professional video production techniques. Experienced film sound recordists, like Chris Watson, David Attenborough’s favourite audio engineer, are used to looking at the sound available at a given filming location, whether they’re working on a TV programme, documentary or feature film, and breaking it down into multiple sources. For example, if you are filming an Arctic snowscape you might incorporate the sound of ice creaking, wind howling over the frozen landscape, footsteps crunching through snow and the cries of sea birds, to say nothing of any dialogue, music or voice-over material that the finished scene might incorporate. Old hands will make separate recordings of each, and assemble the results rather like an audio collage in postproduction. The advantage of this approach is that the relative levels of the various sounds making up the whole can all be changed with respect to each other during editing as required. While this approach demands much more time in postproduction than capturing all your audio live on your DSLR, the results are much more controllable and professional. Photographers comfortable with carrying out post-production work to get the best from their images are unlikely to object to this way of working, and may even favour it. Certainly, if you regularly shoot in Raw format and are used to layering together multiple tripod-shot exposures to enhance the overall dynamic range of your imagery, there will be nothing to trouble you in a conceptually similar approach to audio post-production.
“While this approach demands much more time in post-production… If you regularly shoot in Raw, there will be nothing to trouble you in a conceptually similar approach to audio post-production” WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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AUDIO WIZARD “There’s no substitute for monitoring the way most audio pros do – namely by using a decent set of headphones while recording”
BELOW Professional location sound recordist Chris Watson, photographed while recording with David Attenborough in explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expedition hut, Antarctica.
periods, which can still sound very unprofessional. There’s no substitute for monitoring the way most audio pros, and indeed most film sound recordists, do — namely by using a decent set of headphones while recording is in progress. That way, if there’s a problem, whether it’s audio at too low a level or too high, and no matter how shortlived, you soon know about it and can opt for a retake. Increasing numbers of DSLRs and CSCs designed for filmmakers come with a headphone connection, as do all the external audio interfaces that are on the market, such as those mentioned in the last instalment, from the likes of Juiced Link and Beachtek. The latter will also have proper controls for setting audio input levels that can be adjusted at any stage, and also independent audio level metering that goes far beyond anything yet available on DSLRs themselves. If you’re looking to invest in a stand-alone audio recorder to capture your sound, all these days are likely to feature decent metering and level adjustment facilities, from budget handheld digital dictaphones through to rack-mounting multitrack recorders with fully specified builtin mixers.
brightness or exposure in images, if you have to resort to large level shifts your audio is likely to be very noisy and artificial sounding, just as a heavily manipulated image might end up looking unnatural. Similarly, if the audio level is much too high at capture, distortion is likely, and no amount of audio processing will remove it and restore the original detail and clarity in the dialogue; it’s the same dilemma you’d face trying to recover visual detail from an overexposed area in a digital file. In photography, you use a light meter to check light levels; in the same way, something is needed to check and set the sound levels in an audio recording. After a shaky start in the early days of HDSLR video, some DSLRs do now include rudimentary audio meters on their screens for their built-in microphones or audio inputs, if they have them. However, most still only work before you start to shoot, allowing you to adjust the overall level beforehand but not as you’re recording. Moreover, if your audio exhibits a wide dynamic range (being mostly fairly quiet with occasional loud interjections, for example), it’s easy to set a recording level that’s appropriate for most of the time but which will overload for short-lived
JASON ROBERTS, COURTESY OF CHRIS WATSON
Get the components right Relying on an extended audio post-production phase doesn’t mean, however, that you can afford to be slapdash at the audio capture stage, and can simply ‘fix in the mix’ any problems in the audio you record. Indeed, although assembling multiple audio sources in post can arguably afford you a more professional end product, this will only happen if the constituent parts have been competently recorded in the first place. If the recording you make of important dialogue or explanatory voice-over work is unintelligible, and each of the other ingredients in your evocative on-location ambient audio collage is marred by the likes of wind noise, no amount of canny layering or audio processing will ever make the result sound anything other than poorly realised. This is because, as with stills photography, there are some aspects of audio capture that are virtually impossible to rescue later, no matter how much processing you carry out or how good your audio editing software might be. The basic level of the main audio source that you’re trying to capture (for example the speech of a documentary presenter talking to camera) has to be sufficiently high to begin with, in exactly the same way that you would wish to correctly expose the centrepiece of a visual composition. Whilst you can boost audio signal levels in post, just as you can boost
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The audio you want Even assuming that decent monitoring allows you to set optimum overall recording levels, the absolute level of a wanted sound source is not the only important factor. The level of the audio you want to hear in your finished result with respect to background noise, or any other unwanted sounds that you’re not particularly interested in, such as a car alarm going off in the road outside or the trains passing on the line next to the building where you’re making your film, is also crucially important. Exactly as in photography, this comparison of the level of the wanted audio to the unwanted audio is known as the signalto-noise ratio. To take a simple example, imagine recording
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a video interview in a crowded pub. If you record the audio and video by holding up an iPhone on the other side of the room, the signal-to-noise ratio will be hugely unfavourable, ie. the noise will be at the same, or possibly at a greater level than, the sound of the interviewee speaking, and the resulting audio recording will be appallingly noisy and possibly unintelligible. Compare this with a recording made with the recording device or microphone held up close to the subject’s mouth, or from a little further away but with a directional microphone that favours picking up the speech over the general ambience of the recording environment: the difference will be telling, and the latter will be far more professional. As in photography, unwanted elements in an audio recording cannot easily be removed or reduced without distracting consequences. Sound can be processed or ‘equalised’ to boost or reduce certain frequencies at the
expense of others – experienced sound people often refer to this process as ‘EQ’ – but because unwanted ambient noise and speech both contain a wide range of frequencies, you can rarely EQ out ambient noise without also compromising the level of someone’s speech. This is why in feature film production, if the audio captured on location is unacceptably noisy or unintelligible for whatever reason, the dialogue is frequently re-recorded in high quality in a recording studio with the original actors, and subsequently re-synchronised to the visuals, a process known as dialogue replacement. Put simply, if it’s noisy, the original location audio is never going to be salvageable, and new recordings of the dialogue have to be made instead, in exactly the same way that there really isn’t a way to create pin-sharp, beautifully lit, low-noise images from a set of unfocused, badly exposed photographs.
“The only truly effective way to tackle wind noise is to use a microphone windshield” ABOVE Sound Devices’ four-channel professional 744T audio field recorder.
EQUIPMENT
STAND-ALONE AUDIO RECORDERS If you favour a stand-alone audio recorder to capture your sound, you can take your pick these days from budget handheld digital dictaphones through to pro-spec rackmountable multitrack recorders with fully specified built-in mixers. Some of the brands to look out for are: Roland: www.roland.co.uk/products/subcategories.aspx?c=109 Zoom: www.zoom.co.jp/products Sony: www.sony.co.uk/pro/products/broadcast-products-professional-audio Olympus: www.olympus.co.uk/site/en/a/audio_systems/audio_recording/index.html Tascam: www.tascam.eu/en/cat/7 Fostex: www.fostexinternational.com/docs/range_intros/Recorders_and_Mixers.shtml Sound Devices: www.sounddevices.com Nagra: www.nagraaudio.com
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Unwanted sound There are many unwanted aspects to sound that cannot easily be removed if they’re captured as part of the original audio recording. In location shooting, wind noise and unpleasant room acoustics present two of the greatest challenges to DSLR filmmakers inexperienced in audio matters. Wind noise manifests itself on audio recordings as inconsistent pops, rushing and dragging sounds on your soundtrack, which can detract from, or make it impossible to follow, important dialogue or speech. Once present there’s no reliable means of turning your audio track into a high-fidelity recording. Similarly, there’s no reliable means of removing poor room acoustics from a location recording, which is why the sound in so many low-budget (or iPhoneshot) videos is so poor. However, by the same token that a bit of care and attention exercised at the composition stage of a photograph can work wonders on the end result, time spent on resolving the causes of unwanted noise or a poor signal-to-noise ratio in an audio recording at the time of capture is sometimes the only possible way to rescue the recording. As already explained, the best way to deal with speech recorded in an echoing room is to increase the level of the speech with respect to the level of the reflected sound, and the best
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way to do that is to go in close to the subject — in this example, the person speaking — with the microphone or audio recorder, effectively excluding the reflected sound. As noted in the last issue, directional microphones can also help to exclude an unwanted room acoustic, although this approach can never salvage a recording made in an extremely echo-prone or noisy environment if you’re too far away. Similarly, the only truly effective way to tackle wind noise is to
use a microphone windshield at the time of recording. These are instantly recognisable even to audio recording novices from any live news broadcast or ‘making of’ documentary, and usually take the form of a shaggy, furry coating wrapped around a case that partially or completely encloses the microphone, or sometimes an expanded foam sheath that slips over the mic. Referred to in black humour style as ‘dead cats’ by many hardened audio professionals, these serve to break
ABOVE LEFT In the same way that an image like this one made in insufficient light will exhibit noise, audio recordings made at too low a level may be distorted and unintelligible, even if boosted to acceptable overall levels in postproduction. ABOVE RIGHT A selection of UK manufacturer Rycote’s range of microphone windshields for outdoor recording, including some designed for use with DSLRs. LEFT Røde’s VideoMic Pro, a favourite external on-camera mic among DSLR users.
up the gusts that cause wind noise when they buffet the microphone, reducing the unwanted noise to an unobtrusive hiss and an occasional low rumble. Many windshield sizes, types and designs are available, even for the built-in microphones on DSLRs, and there is simply no substitute for using one when working outdoors. The undisputed Rolls Royces of the microphone windshield world are made by the British company Rycote, which handily also makes the windshield supplied with Røde’s VideoMic Pro, a popular choice of external microphone for DSLR-based filmmakers and videomakers. Although it’s all too easy as a photographer or videographer to buy equipment for the sake of it, making you less mobile and less efficient at ‘running and gunning’, there is equally no doubt that if you carefully choose certain indispensable pieces of kit, you increase your chances of capturing professional-quality audio.
More information: www.rycote.com www.Rødemic.com/microphones/ videomicpro www.juicedlink.com www.beachtek.com www.chriswatson.net Next issue: Matt Bell takes a detailed look at what you do in post-production once you’ve captured your audio.
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MOVIE MATTERS Our panel of experts is waiting to receive your queries and is ready with words of advice that can help you to sort out issues that range from audio through to business-related matters such as insurance and finance STREAMING 101 Mike Turner, senior manager, Engineering Services at JVC Professional I am looking to move into events videography but have fairly limited knowledge of live streaming. Can you give me an overview of this field and what I might need in order to offer this service to my clients? When it comes to live video streaming for events videography it really is not as complicated as it might at first sound. Just decide if you want to stream directly to the Web or if you need to stream to a studio for a live broadcast. You’ll almost always be streaming a live event, since that’s really the whole point; however if your material isn’t urgent, it might be better to
send the video at high quality via an FTP connection. Our JVC GY-HM650 handheld camcorder and the larger GYHM850/890 shoulder-mount ENG/ studio cameras have the distinct advantage of having network and live streaming engines built-in, meaning it’s only necessary to connect either a Wi-Fi or GSM modem, or standard Ethernet adapter, to its USB interface. In crowded network situations, such as at an exhibition or a live event, it’s best to use a fixed Ethernet connection. For best quality over a GSM network, I wouldn’t advise anything less than 4G. The wireless capability of these cameras also allows fast delivery of video, perfect for live streaming. If you’re streaming from a camera back to a studio, you’ll need a decoder, such as the Teradek CUBE 355, which converts the network signal into an HD-SDI signal for studio integration.
Think first about whether you’re streaming to the Web or a studio, to help you decide on your connection and kit needs.
Alternatively, if you wish to stream directly from your live event or conference to the Web, you don’t need a decoder, but you will require a contract with a content delivery network (CDN), via companies such as Wowza, Streamstar or Zixi. Again, choose a Wi-Fi, GSM or Ethernet dongle, connected to the camera, and you’ll have reliable video delivery over the Internet. We have some live streaming guides on our website, so for more technical information on how to set this up using our camcorders, please visit www.jvcpro. co.uk/streamingguide.
Mike Turner is a senior manager in Engineering Services at JVC Professional, manufacturer of professional camcorders, monitors, projectors and surveillance solutions. Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker. net with STREAMING in the subject line. www.jvcpro.co.uk
“In crowded network situations, such as at an exhibition or a live event, it’s best to use a fixed Ethernet connection”
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MOVIE MATTERS ASK THE EXPERTS
SOUNDS LIKE LOVE Mathew Piccolotto, product specialist at RØDE Microphones What microphones would you suggest I use to film a wedding? Weddings (both the ceremony and reception) are extremely high pressure situations. You need to capture every critical moment (visually and acoustically), while also being free to move around the room. With the help of a few clever microphones, capturing this audio doesn’t need to be a painful task. Generally speaking, wired microphones are not very wedding friendly. They hinder your movement, get in everyone’s way and are really quite unsightly. Luckily this doesn’t automatically mean that you need to be using expensive wireless set-ups.
For all critical dialogue, such as the priest/celebrant, bride and groom and speeches, the RØDE smartLav+ is a clever way to capture clear, direct audio of each speaker, into a smartphone that can be easily concealed on the individual. At less than £45 each you’ll be able to use a few of these and capture allimportant dialogue without cables or complex wireless gear. For the music (live or otherwise) a stereo mic is your best option, due to the width of the audio field being projected. The Stereo VideoMic Pro (£199) is a great on-camera stereo mic, which will record the audio directly to your camera. This is also great for capturing the general ambience of the ceremony. For something away from the camera, the i-XY microphone, connected to an iPhone, becomes a stand-alone, high-quality stereo recorder, positioned anywhere in the room leaving you free to roam.
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When recording audio to multiple devices, such as smartphones, you will need to export this audio and mix these tracks to your video in postproduction. This may be daunting to some, but there is plenty of software to assist with this process, and your production quality will jump to amazing new heights. It’s well worth the extra practice, and you’ll never go back to single system audio/video.
Mathew Piccolotto is a product specialist at Røde Microphones, manufacturer of premium microphones and audio accessories for studio, live and location recording. Send your questions for this column to experts@ promoviemaker.net with SOUND in the subject line. www.rodemic.com
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CINE STYLE Luke Tait, broadcast product manager at Intro2020 What are the main benefits of dedicated cine lenses over traditional still lenses? On most still lenses, the aperture or iris control has click stops which is fine for stills, but will create problems when you start shooting video for a couple of reasons. Primarily, the audible click when changing aperture will be picked up by your camera’s mic and you’ll notice that there is a visual pop in the image as the exposure changes – for these reasons, dedicated cine lenses are de-clicked or stepless. This means that your aperture choice is infinitely variable. Plus you can smoothly and silently control the amount of light coming into the lens, allowing you to make adjustments while shooting that won’t be glaringly obvious to your audience. On top of this design feature, Samyang and Tokina cine lenses also have focus gearing. This gearing or ridging is a standard 0.8 pitch that allows you to use a follow focus device. The alternative option if you have a normal stills lens is to buy a rubber band with teeth on, which would really be a last resort as these frequently slip. Having this gearing built-in means you’ve got really firm, smooth control of your lens. There is also gearing on the zoom and iris rings, and in some really advanced rigs another crew member can control these separately, which basically puts these lenses into a much more professional category. The Tokina range of cine lenses is also a good example of the higher build quality typical of video lenses compared to stills. These lenses are built to be used day in, day out, so while a little more investment might be needed in the first instance you have the reassurance of knowing this glass is going to last a lifetime.
Luke Tait is the broadcast product manager at Intro2020, UK distributors of quality imaging products including Samyang VDSLR lenses and Tokina cine lenses. Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker.net with GLASS in the subject line. www.intro2020.co.uk
GOING STEADY Peter Novell, key accounts manager, Video at Manfrotto I’ve got a great tripod for photography, but will this limit me when shooting video? What should I be looking for in a quality video tripod system? The main purpose of a tripod for stills photography is to keep the camera rock steady, allowing the use of slow shutter speeds. For video shooting we want to be able to smoothly pan and tilt the camera as and when the shot demands. A problem when using a photo tripod for video is the difficulty in being able to quickly adjust the height of the tripod and, at the same time, level the camera for horizontal panning shots. Additionally, photo tripods usually feature a three-way or ball head, which, whilst being great for locked off static shots, does not permit smooth camera movement. These issues are overcome in purpose-built video tripods such as the Manfrotto 504HD and 546BK, by incorporating a half-ball system, enabling quick and easy levelling coupled with a professional quality fluid video head. It isn’t always necessary to purchase a complete new tripod
system for shooting video, since with the better quality photo tripods the head can be removed. For example, on Manfrotto photo tripods such as the 290, 190 and 055 series, the head can be unscrewed and exchanged for a flat-based video head such as the Manfrotto MVH500AH or MVH502AH. If purchasing a video tripod from scratch, look first of all for a system capable of taking the camera weight as fitted with any accessories. Sturdy half-ball levelling tripod systems now come in two flavours: single tubular legs such as the Manfrotto 535 which are available in both aluminium or carbon fibre for a lightweight option; and the more traditional parallel leg tripods. With regards to the tripod head look for a fluid head allowing smooth camera movement, a counter-balance feature and a lockable sliding camera plate enabling easy balancing of the camera. Finally, a reputable name coupled with a decent warranty, spare part availability and its acceptance by broadcasters would swing it for me!
Peter Novell is the key accounts manager for Video at Manfrotto, manufacturer of quality photography and video tripods and stabilisation solutions. Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker.net with STEADY in the subject line. www.manfrotto.co.uk
“Look first of all for a system capable of taking the camera weight as fitted with any accessories. Sturdy half-ball levelling tripod systems come in two flavours: single tubular legs, and the more traditional parallel leg tripods” WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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MOVIE MATTERS ASK THE EXPERTS THE IBC EFFECT Chloe Baxter, marketing manager at CVP
New kit is sure to excite any filmmaker or stockist, and this year the EOS 7D Mark II and Leica S have grabbed attention.
What products/developments are you most excited about post-IBC? How does a show like this affect your business at CVP? IBC certainly didn’t disappoint this year! One of the most exciting pieces of news to come out of the show was Sony’s announcement of the PXWFS7K; this camera will really come to life when the firmware update is available in early 2015, allowing users to achieve full 4K recording. Another great announcement is the Canon EOS 7D Mark II, which people are calling a ‘fusion camera’ as it combines features from a number of cameras popular with videographers, such as the EOS 5D Mark III and the EOS 70D. We can’t wait to get our hands on it and really see what it has to offer. At Photokina, Leica announced multiple new cameras, including a whole new product line: the X. One of the cameras which grabbed our attention in particular is the Leica S; we are looking forward to stocking this camera as CVP is proud to now stock Leica.
Chloe Baxter is the marketing manager at the CVP Group, one of the leading broadcast and professional video solutions providers in the UK and Europe. Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker.net with GEAR in the subject line. www.cvp.com
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HEDLER ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
The perfect video lights For serious filmmakers there simply are no lights to match the quality of Hedler products, designed from the ground up to offer robust performance, consistent quality output and silent operation
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he professional filmmaker is looking for a high level of performance from the lights they choose, and these have to be ultra-reliable, able to cope with the rigours of life on the road and in the studio and capable of outputting good quality, consistent light. With audio in mind they also have to be silent in operation, which is a long list of requirements that not every manufacturer can live up to. Hedler, however, has a long track record of providing well-priced, highly specified products that are very much up to the job, which goes a long way towards explaining why they are the tools of choice for so many serious operators out there. One of those regularly to be found working with Hedler lighting on a variety of shoots is cinematographer Chris Fergusson who, after working his way through the camera department as an assistant and focus puller, has over the past year been working solely as a director of photography (DoP), shooting commercials, music videos, brand funded content and independent feature films. “I’ve got a set of eight Hedler lights that I keep in my car at all times,” says Chris, “and they’ve been invaluable to me, no matter how big or small the job, as either key lights or ‘get me out of trouble’ lights. I’ve got two DX15s, H65s and H25s, plus a C12 and an H10, and alongside these I have an Octogon Softbox, an umbrella and a snoot. “My gaffer and I particularly love the DX15s: to have an HMI that is
small and lightweight, with a built in ballast that punches out around 700watts, is so useful. We’re always rigging it up or putting it out on arms and booms for backlight or kickers. It’s incredibly versatile. I also use the H65s and H10 a lot, and again, these are small robust units that are incredibly versatile. The C12 is also brilliant for its punchy narrow beam. To be able to rig in a 1250W bulb into a light the size of a dedo is a fantastic option.” Classic lighting The Hedler DX15 in particular is a unit that you’ll find in innumerable film studios up and down the country, and it was designed specifically with the needs of digital video in mind. Outputting continuous daylight-balanced light, it produces flicker-free output at approximately 5700 Kelvin. It also has the advantage of operating without a fan, eliminating noise, and it comes with builtin electronic ballast with fault recognition for the lamp. Designed for professional use, the bulb has an average lifetime of approximately 6000 operating hours, as does the electronic ballast, and it’s capable of
ABOVE One of Chris’s studio set-ups using four Hedler lights alongside red gelled fluorescent tubes. BELOW Hedler lights are available singly or in a two-head kit.
producing a continuous light output that equates to a 650W standard tungsten halogen bulb. “A DoP I used to focus pull for had a set of the DX15s that he always had on him,” says Chris. “I thought they were great units and when I wanted to get myself a lighting kit I went to Hedler and tested a range. I think they are lights I’ll have with me for a long time. The colour output is great, especially on the Tungsten fixtures: it has a soft quality to it that I love. For small spaces, eye lights or backlights rigged up on arms they are so handy, and I love their compact size and the versatility the built-in ballast provides: you really can rig these lights anywhere.”
More information www.flaghead.co.uk www.chrisfergusson.co.uk
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GEAR
Throwing the focus on the gear that will help you to do the very best job, we’re looking not just at the cameras, but also the invaluable accessories that you need in your kitbag to offer the complete video package
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ON TEST: SONY A7S
Andrew Reid puts the revolutionary Sony A7S through its paces and sees what this 4K-capable CSC has to offer filmmakers.
83 TAKING THE RENTAL ROUTE
We look at the benefits of renting gear with two start-to-finish case studies on the process of hiring.
89 FIELD MONITORS
We test out three field monitors at varying price points from Marshall Electronics, Sony and Atomos.
96 BUYERS’ GUIDE: MEMORY
Gavin Stoker gives us a roundup of all things data storage and advises what filmmakers should be looking for from their memory cards and drives.
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GEAR SONY A7S
SPECIFICATION Contact: www.sony.co.uk Street price (body only): £2099 Sensor: 12.2 megapixel CMOS full-frame Viewfinder: XGA OLED LCD: 3in; 921,600 pixels File formats: Raw, JPEG, XAVC S, AVCHD Max resolution: 4240x2384 Shutter speed: 30secs-1/8000sec ISO range: 100-102,400 Autofocus points: 25 Autofocus system: Contrast-Detection AF Memory: Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo, Memory Stick XC-HG Duo; SD, SDHC Connectivity: HDMI micro connector (Type-D), BRAVIA Sync (link menu), PhotoTV HD, 4K still image playback, Mass-storage, MTP, PC remote Lens mount: Sony E Aspect ratio: 3:2 Shooting speed: 5fps HD movie mode: 4K Live view: Yes Dimensions (WXHXD): 126.9x94.4x48.2mm Weight: 446g
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Sony A7S Sony has set out a clear intention to challenge strongly in the burgeoning filmmaking market, and its latest A7S model is picking up some serious plaudits. Andrew Reid takes a look at its high-end set of features WORDS ANDREW REID
There are certain cameras that you suspect have the potential to be game changers the moment you get your hands on them, and Sony’s videofocused incarnation of its A7 series, the A7S, falls firmly into this category. After just a few days with the camera I was convinced that it was the best consumer model the company had ever made, and although it does feature a few cons alongside a considerable list of pros there are some remarkable features included that really will serve to get the serious filmmaker excited.
In case you’re wondering what the ‘s’ suffix for this particular A7 stands for, it’s sensitivity, a reference to the fact that the A7S offers an ISO capability up to 102,400, expandable to a nigh-on crazy 409,600. This amazing low-light performance is allied to a full-frame sensor megapixel rating of 12.2, which some might consider a little on the low side in this day and age, but it’s all part of the trade-off offered by this camera’s bespoke set of features, and you won’t find too many filmmakers worrying overly much about that particular number.
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SONY A7S ANATOMY SONY A7S
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ABOVE The A7S’s feature set makes it a force to be reckoned with in the filmmaking market, offering professional touches that rival more expensive offerings. BELOW Already in the hands of pro users, the compact but capable A7S has attracted attention and complimentary remarks.
The Sony A7S is designed to be ultra compact and yet to still offer the functionality and performance of a full-size HDSLR, such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Despite being a compact model it still comes with a full-frame sensor (1). Although this only offers 12.2 megapixels of resolution it’s super sensitive - hence the ‘S’ in the name - and has the ability to offer ISO speeds up to 102,400. On the front of the camera you’ll find the Wi-Fi sensor (2) and an AF illuminator/self-timer lamp (3). At the top of the camera (4) you’ll find the front dial, and there is also an equivalent rear dial. These allow you to change the settings required for each shooting mode with immediate effect.
Other headline features include the fact that the camera comes with the ability to output 4K via its HDMI port to an optional external recorder, namely the Atomos Shogun, which will add another £1000 or so to your initial £2000-plus body only price, and it does this without the need for line spinning or pixel binning. It also comes with some really professional touches that, in my opinion, put it somewhere between the FS700 (street price £6600) and the F5 (street price £12,000) in terms of video performance, which starts to explain why I’m so excited by it. One of the neatest touches is the provision of S-Log 2, a $3800 upgrade just a few years ago on the Sony CineAlta F3, which is a gamma function that can reproduce the entire tonal range captured by a CCD or CMOS imager. This is something that’s amazing to see on a model in this price range, and it really does work on this camera to deliver enormous dynamic range without the usual artefacts and banding we’ve seen with flat picture profiles before on DSLRs. The image once graded is silky smooth at the native ISO of 3200. What grain there
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The back of the A7S is simple and straightfoward to negotiate. One of the most important controls is the menu button (1), from where you can access a wide range of camera and custom key settings. The 3in 921,600 pixel monitor (2) is designed to fold out in one direction to give you a better angle to view from. Other controls that can be found on the rear of the camera are the AF/ MF/AEL switch lever (3) the FN/ Send to Smartphone button (4), the control wheel (5), the playback button (6) and the C3 (Custom 3)/delete button (7). At the top of the camera you’ll find the rear dial (8) and the C2 (Custom 2)/Enlarge button.
The top-plate of the A7S is likewise uncomplicated and easy to work around, and will be familiar to anyone who has previously worked with a DSLR. The main control up here is the Mode Dial (1), with all the usual settings that you’d expect. Moving to the right you then encounter the Exposure Compensation Dial (2), which will give you a maximum of three stops of over and underexposure very quickly and simply, and next to this is the C1 (Custom 1) button (3). The Multi Interface Hotshoe (4) is a proprietory hotshoe introduced by Sony two years ago to replace a previous assortment of other hotshoes used in the past.
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SONY A7S is left helps to dither the 8-bit bands together more smoothly. Yes, there is some more ugly noise in the very deepest darkest areas of the S-Log image, but this should not appear in your final image unless you’ve made a mistake either with exposure or with your grade. The Canon EOS 5D Mark III’s Raw files cannot achieve the same dynamic range as S-Log on the A7S, while still maintaining low noise in shadow areas lifted in post. There is a downside, however, and until a firmware update allows you to load your own LUT for S-Log 2 onto your SD card you’re going to need some serious grading knowledge to get the best out of it. Quite simply the more general consumer buying this camera simply will not be able to get the best out of the image. The consumer Sony picture profiles for JPEGs just do not give you the same workflow or image quality, so you’re compelled to learn to grade or at least apply the LUTs and looks created by others. Even Raw on Blackmagic cameras is friendlier than S-Log, because you can just open the Raw files on default settings. With S-Log you have to grade: there is no choice. You have to learn how to use LUTs, how to export them from Resolve to Premiere, how to manipulate the luma curve, the RGB curves – the lot. It’s a steep learning curve. L-Curve! Quality not quantity As mentioned already, for a camera of this price the A7S is left behind rather by its megapixel count. However, it’s very much the quality of the pixel, not the
quantity, which matters. After covering the mainstream bases with the A7 (low price) and A7R (high megapixels for the price), Sony is now targeting that smaller niche of people that actually just want a good image – and know what one is. The price of the A7S is justified on so many levels. Firstly that 12-megapixel count is a big marketing risk. Secondly the yields from a silicon wafer with such a large sensor are far lower than for APS-C. Additionally the yield of megapixels per dollar is much lower compared to the A7 or A7R so the A7S has to be sold to a more educated consumer willing to look beyond the ‘headline number’. The end result is brave, compelling and unique. Sony is alone in having the guts to do a 12-megapixel consumer camera in 2014, albeit one with pro leanings. Quite simply ISO 12,800 on this camera looks like ISO 800 on the GH4. ISO 3200 looks like ISO 200 on the 5D Mark III. Dynamic range is 14 stops in Raw stills, and close to those figures in moving footage when S-Log is employed. The overall image you can produce is spectacular, and I would go so far as to suggest that this sensor, far from being underpowered, is one of the very best I’ve ever encountered. The news gets better, because there’s a professional standard video processor and codec on board to back it up. Having seen mediocre performance from XAVC-S on the AX100 and RX100 III, my expectations were that this would be the Achilles heel of the A7S, but it’s actually one of the camera’s greatest strengths. The encoder in the A7S is far better, and
actually I’d rank it higher than Sony’s pro camera, the FS700. It’s incredibly efficient and grades on a par with ProRes recorded via HDMI. It has only one flaw, and that is on fast unpredictable motion blur you get a lot of macro-blocking, so a recorder like the tiny Atomos Ninja Star could be useful here. In full-frame recording mode at 24p, rolling shutter is, of course, more severe than on the more expensive professional Super 35mm cinema cameras. It’s easy to over-blow the problem however, because in practical everyday shooting rolling shutter is sometimes a problem, sometimes not. It depends on the kind of shoot and the shooting style. Those who do fast handheld camera movements, whip pans or shoot handheld at the long end of a telephoto lens will want to enable the reduced rolling shutter skew mode of the A7S, of which there are two. Super 35mm mode (APS-C mode as the A7S calls it) gives you roughly equal rolling shutter skew to the FS100. That’s incredibly impressive, given that the A7S is reading out 4x the resolution from the sensor. Switching to 60p in Super 35mm mode further reduces skew. The results are impressively detailed and you get a clean image with no increase in moiré or aliasing. APS-C mode also works over the 4K HDMI output. How is this possible? The camera appears to crop the 12-megapixel full-frame sensor to approximately 2768x1560 and upscales this 2.8K image to 4K with only minimally less detail than in true full-frame 4K mode. You can
ABOVE It’s often said that all good things come in small packages, and the Sony A7S is truly diminutive. Lined up alongside the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, the A7S is clearly smaller. In fact, the A7S is more than 20cm smaller in every dimension than the Canon; it’s a close run thing with the Fujifilm X-T1 though.
“The overall image is spectacular, and I would go so far as to suggest that this sensor is one of the best I’ve ever encountered” WINTER 2014 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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add a Metabones Speed Booster if you need the look to match your 24p shots in full-frame mode. If you enable 60p in full-frame mode the sensor starts pixel binning and you get moiré and softness, so always shoot at 24, 25 or 30p if this is how you’re working. Image quality The A7S resolves slightly more detail in 1080p than the 5D Mark III can manage even in Raw 1080p, and I haven’t felt this satisfied with a camera since the GH2 came out. I liked 4K on the GH4 and still do; it’s a fantastic camera and cheaper than the A7S, doing 4K internally with much smaller file sizes than 4K externally to ProRes will clock in with. Dynamic range on the GH4 is also pretty impressive given the much smaller sensor and higher megapixel count. The A7S is full-frame. There’s no getting away from that. Even versus the 1.5x crop of Super 35mm over full-frame, the feel of your images, especially at the 24-50mm focal range, is completely
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different. Good though Speed Booster is, the GH4 can’t quite mimic it with one, not without softer edges and corners if you push beyond a 0.71x focal reducer to something like 0.58x. Additionally the silent electronicshutter mode of the A7S, like the GH4, is just lovely. It makes the camera far sleeker and stealthier to use, overall more pleasing and more mannered in public spaces. The Sony A7R by comparison clanks away, and the shutter feels like a diesel engine in a Tesla Model S. Electricity is the future: someone should tell Canon and Nikon! The continuous shooting rate of the A7S in e-shutter mode is significantly quicker than on the A7R. The images have the same wide dynamic range and colour gamut I’m accustomed to from the excellent 36-megapixel Sony sensor in the Nikon D800 and A7R, so there’s no compromise there. Also the camera feels more responsive overall, due to a faster processor. It seems snappier in the menus and quicker to start up.
Areas for improvement No camera is ever perfect, and the A7S comes with its fair share of quirks, some of which are forgiveable while others are, frankly, a little bit silly. Mainly they are ergonomic quirks, like not being able to assign APS-C or silent shutter mode to a custom button, or even the function menu for quicker access. The batteries are on the small side, and because of its massive sensor and very fast processor the A7S eats them up. You really need the A7 battery grip to give you some decent working time, and this works well ergonomically apart from one glaring fault – the shutter release button is too easy to put pressure on as you hold it for horizontal video shooting. There doesn’t seem to be a way to disable or lock it. The video record button is really awkwardly placed, but bafflingly cannot be assigned to the C1 button next to the shutter release or the shutter button itself in video mode. In video mode you can’t take stills and in movie mode you can’t get the full-quality magnified focus zoom,
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SONY A7S “The A7R did not have the video quality to rival the Canon, but the A7S raises the bar to another level, possibly signalling the end of DSLR domination in this area”
VERDICT SONY A7S
The Atomos Shogun is the perfect partner for the A7S since it can record the camera’s 4K output, but it adds considerably to the bulk.
while peaking is less effective where it is most needed. If you try shooting video in stills mode and silent mode is enabled, you can’t select S-Log or the other pro video picture profiles unless you enable the mechanical shutter – deeply odd. It’s also a shame that the electronic viewfinder is not up to the benchmark set by the Fuji X-T1, considering Sony led the way here with the A7R. However, I’m sure that by the time we reach a Mark II this will be improved. To be honest it’s not that bad as it is, just not the best any more. The US model is NTSC locked and the European and Hong Kong version is PAL/ NTSC switchable. However when set to NTSC you get a persistent Running on NTSC message to dismiss on every bootup, which is a bit unnecessary. As I say, most of these are minor glitches, some of which may well be fixed in firmware updates. None is a deal breaker, and overall the list of advantages that the A7S offers far outweighs the drawbacks, all of which I can live with.
The Sony A7S is the first camera to really beat the Canon EOS 5D Mark III on pretty much every level for both stills and video, especially the latter. The A7R did not have the video quality to rival the Canon, but the A7S is a different proposition altogether and raises the bar to another level, possibly signalling the end of DSLR domination in this area at the same time. I can think of no reason to shoot on stock 5D Mark III video settings when you can shoot XAVC-S on the A7S. As for Raw, it’s becoming a little harder to justify the larger files now that the gain in image quality and grading ability has narrowed to the best-compressed codecs. S-Log is fantastic. If you’re competent at grading LOG footage (quite a complex skill that takes time to master) then S-Log 2 on the A7S will give you an image in the ballpark of Raw with Magic Lantern on the 5D Mark III but with XAVC-S file sizes that are 300MB per minute compared to 6GB per minute of uncompressed Raw. These images also have far less noise and are delivered from a form factor more suited to shooting video. Those without the necessary grading expertise can wait for Film Convert to support S-Log for the A7S. It already supports S-Log on the Sony FS700 camcorder. For Blackmagic and Panasonic GH4 users it’s a tougher choice and it will definitely come down to individual taste, lenses, needs and projects. For instance the GH4 and Blackmagic cameras still have unique features not offered on the A7S, like global shutter and internal 4K recording, so if these features are important to you as a filmmaker you might want to sit tight for a while. In terms of pros there are many, and they are important ones. The low-light performance is astonishing, being three stops better than the GH4 and even performing better than Sony’s own top end F55. The inclusion of S-Log 2 gives you a viable alternative to Raw video with tiny file sizes, while the ability to shoot in 4K gives you future-proof recording over
HDMI. You also get 13 to 14 stops of dynamic range, which is noticeably more than the Canon EOS 5D Mark III in both Raw stills and S-Log video mode. For the number of features the camera provides it represents incredible value for money, and as the price drops over time it will become even more desirable. There are a few cons in the mix as well of course. For a start there is borderline unacceptable rolling shutter skew in certain shooting situations (in full-frame mode), while the video record button is very awkwardly placed and you can’t assign it to the custom button. There’s no internal 4K codec, while the cheaper Panasonic GH4 has it, and the camera’s tiny body loses much of its raison d’être when it’s attached to a large 4K recorder/field monitor. Meanwhile shooting S-Log 2 is challenging from the camera display due to the lack of ability to apply LUT to the LCD, and grading S-Log 2 will prove difficult for average users without grading and colour correction expertise and software. I was also less than impressed by the camera’s battery life, which didn’t compare well to the GH4. Overall, however, this is an exceptional camera for the filmmaker and it’s one that will really help to put Sony on the map. I can’t wait to see how things develop from here, and it will be an exciting journey for us all I suspect in the years ahead. HOW IT RATES Features ISO range, S-Log Performance Better than Sony’s F55 Handling Good, but not perfect Value for money Incredible
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PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING 9.5 It’s chock full of pro features Pros: Low light abilities, S-Log 2 Cons: Placement of some buttons
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GEAR
RENTAL GUIDE
HIRING GEAR
TAKING THE RENTAL ROUTE The days of owning all the gear you need to run your business are long gone, and instead professionals are looking to invest in the minimum amount of kit, and to hire in what they need for each individual shoot WORDS TERRY HOPE & ZENA TOSCANI
W
hile there’s a certain amount of kudos and personal satisfaction attached to owning outright the latest piece of high-end cinematic hardware, on the economic front, such an investment can prove costly. For many of those working to become established in the field of filmmaking cash flow is an ever-present challenge, and tying up capital, if it’s available, in gear that’s steadily depreciating is a potentially dangerous move. For most operators, every job is likely to be different, and it could be that you might not use certain items for more than a handful of jobs a year, meaning
that your money is effectively sitting in the cupboard for much of the time. For these reasons, plus the fact that technology is moving on apace all the time and kit has a nasty habit of rapidly becoming outdated, modern filmmakers are increasingly looking at renting all but their core gear, building the cost of this into their quote so that the client effectively pays the bill. In fact this is the only way that many of the larger jobs can be sustainable, since the cost of equipping a studio with everything that’s needed for a production can be infeasibly expensive: a substantial film lighting rig alone could cost in the tens of thousands
to buy, while lighting accessories, extra cameras, lenses and steadicams would all add to the cost. If you happen to be filming away from base there’s also the question of transporting everything to where it’s needed, which could involve a lot of logistics and a set of headaches that would add considerably to the stress levels involved. The big players in the market can deliver gear to virtually anywhere, even throughout Europe, and some maintain their own dedicated vans and lorries to ensure that orders can be fulfilled, at very short notice if necessary.
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GEAR RENTAL GUIDE Access to all gear For those moving into the world of filmmaking, perhaps from stills photography, renting offers a way and a means of testing the water without a massive investment, and it also gives you the chance to have a day or two with a piece of kit that might be on your wish list, to discover first-hand if it really can deliver the results you are looking for. The Canon C-series cameras, for example, are amongst the most popular hire models around, largely because they represent the next step up from an HD-enabled DSLR such as the EOS 5D Mark III and are relatively straightforward to use by anyone from a photography background, plus they accept EF fit lenses. Rather than make an investment of up to £10,000, however, photographers can hire out a C300 body only plus spare batteries for around £170 a day, pairing it with lenses they might already own. Many filmmakers will also hire out C-series bodies to supplement the camera kit they already have, and it’s more cost-efficient to rent in backup as and when you need it than it is making an investment in a number of spare bodies that might only see occasional usage. The daily rate for the sensational Sony A7S meanwhile, reviewed on page 74 in this issue, works out at around £80 per day, body only, with a weekend hire at £120. Some establishments might even be open to deals whereby they will rent out gear for a weekend rate where you effectively pay the equivalent of a one-day hire, and it’s worth shopping around and ringing up on a Friday afternoon to see what might be available. Specialist lenses are also popular hire items since, again, you might find that an optic you need for a job might only find itself being used two to three times a year. Commercial photographers can’t operate in the way that an enthusiast might, and splash out on a piece of kit simply because you love the idea of owning it. Every single piece of kit you invest in has to justify its place and earn its keep, and any corners you can cut by hiring in could make a big difference to your survival.
CASE STUDY JAMES VELLACOTT CHERRYDUCK PRODUCTIONS Based at Tower Bridge Studios, in the heart of London, Cherryduck is a busy production company with its own in-house ad agency, Cleverducks. Proprietor James Vellacott regularly hires out equipment, particularly lighting, for jobs being undertaken, and finds this a much more efficient way to work than investing heavily in owning everything he needs outright. “Some of the lights we’re using would cost in the region of £7000 each to buy,” he says, “and yet the day rate for hire might be in the region of £130. We would need to store any gear that we owned and, again, this could create issues in terms of space. We also have a need for different types of light for different kinds of jobs, and might use anything from high-powered Arri HMIs through to more portable Kino Flo fluorescent lights, and it would simply be impractical to keep an in-house stock of everything.” James also regularly hires in cameras as and when required, and it gives him
the option to work with products at the very highest end of the scale if the occasion might demand it. “We recently covered a shoot for M&S at London Fashion Week where we hired in two Red Epics and a Red Dragon, which equated to around £200,000 worth of kit once all the lenses were taken into the equation. Renting allowed us to gain access to this kind of gear for the limited time that we needed it. We also regularly hire in C300s, Blackmagic cameras and EOS 5D Mark IIIs. “On the lighting front the best units we’ve come across are the new Arri M series HMIs – the M25/40 and the favoured M18s. The M18s are roughly £6000 to buy, but only £130 a day to rent. If you want portable daylight/ sunshine that you can plug into any domestic 13A circuit these are definitely the ones to go for. “We know what we might need for a specific job, and we’ll build the hire costs into the quote for the client. A really big shoot might have a budget
“Some of the lights we’re using would cost £7000 to buy, yet the day rate for hire might be £130”
Because of the variety of shoots Cherryduck covers, hiring makes perfect sense, allowing the team access to crucial items of kit that might otherwise by unavailable.
Build a partnership Those who rent regularly need to take the time to build a relationship with one or more hire companies: you may find that no single one carries all the kit you might ever wish to hire out and, besides, there will always be times when the item you’re looking for has
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of £30,000-£40,000, and it’s up to any production company to ensure that they meet the expectations. Consequently you need to make sure that you have the equipment to hand to tackle the shoot, and you don’t want to find yourself short of anything on the day.” We got in touch with Shoreditch-based rental company PixiPixel, a company that has over ten years’ experience in both still and motion equipment hire, to arrange the loan of some of their latest lighting gear. A Cineo TruColor LS LED Light Panel was despatched to Tower Bridge Studios, giving James the opportunity to try out this new generation light, and he valued the chance to see first hand what it could do on set. “The LED lights are really coming of age right now,” he says. “They can’t rival the output of HMIs, but could potentially give us another option for smaller jobs. At the moment we’re relying on Kino Flo Diva-Lites, which are the industry standard for video location work and ideal for interviews. They’re really versatile, and you can change the colour temperature of the unit by switching the fluorescent tubes for ones that are daylight or tungsten balanced. This can
be a little fiddly, however, while the Cineo unit is slightly easier to manage. “We don’t use LED lights at all in the studio at the moment, but clearly this is a growing area and it’s really good to have the chance to see what the latest units can do. I can see that the Cineo TruColor could potentially do a good job for us with regard to such things as interviews since it’s so easy to carry around, and hiring would be the way to go because they cost a lot more than the Kino Flo lights.” PixiPixel MD Toby Newman is used to dealing with requests for filming gear, and along with the demand for continuous lighting he’s also experiencing a number of rental enquiries about dedicated video cameras. “It just makes so much more sense for filmmakers to hire in some of the more niche items,” he says. “The Arri Alexa, for example, costs around £70,000£80,000 body only, and would be a big expense for any individual to buy, and yet they might only find themselves using it five or six days a year. “It’s not commercially viable to make the investment, and a day’s hire rate would be £650, while the Arri Amira is £350 a day.”
More information
PixiPixel, like many of the best rental companies, will move quickly to deliver items, and an order placed by the end of the day can often arrive by 7am the next morning. Big orders can also be delivered just about anywhere, even across Europe if necessary. “We try to be as flexible as possible,” says Toby. “We’re very happy for photographers and filmmakers to come in for a demo of equipment if they’re not sure whether it’s going to do the job, and we try to accommodate individual requests wherever possible.”
www.cherryduck.com
www.pixipixel.com
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GEAR RENTAL GUIDE
CASE STUDY WILL MOORE AND THOMAS RAFFERTY, PRECISE EYE Up-and-coming filmmakers Will Moore and Thomas Rafferty regularly shoot a range of different genres, from corporate films to music videos and documentaries, so renting kit is a great solution for them to tailor their productions to the necessary aesthetic and budget. At present they are shooting a collection of shorts designed to marry high-impact visuals with the compelling stories of second-generation immigrants. The particular nature of this shoot provided the perfect opportunity for trying out the new Panasonic GH4. “Our latest subject was a man of Chinese heritage who grew up on the Isle of Man, and took up boxing to combat certain prejudices and fitness concerns before focusing on the Wing Chun martial art,” Will explains. “As such we needed a camera that could cope with
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the outdoor interviews, action shots and low light environments, so the GH4 seemed like an ideal choice.” With limited hiring experience, putting their trust in hireacamera, a rental company they’d never used before, felt like a risk. However, it proved to be well worth taking. “The rental process with hireacamera was extremely pleasant,” Thomas says. “Their customer service was fantastic, we never went long with an unanswered email and they offered us great flexibility when organising drop-off and collection points – a massive plus for filmmakers who are regularly on the move.” Providing exceptional and honest customer service is something Hireacamera prides itself on, as managing director Guy Thatcher explains. “Our customers tend to be
mostly small professional set-ups whose reputation is on the line at all times,” he says. “They place their trust in us to fulfil an order and we do, where necessary, go out of our way to ensure this happens. This can range from early delivery free of charge to getting in a car and delivering by hand. We are realistic and know that things can go wrong with courier deliveries, so we always try to operate on a worst-case scenario and have backup plans in place, where possible. Peace of mind for the customer is everything – they have enough to worry about.” Peace of mind was certainly abundant in this rental process, from the sturdy hire case and multiple charged batteries through to the bonus packet of sweets in with the kit. While something as simple as providing charged batteries and
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JACK CARMELO
“Hire companies are an extra resource you can call on and bring yourself up to speed on the services offered”
For Will and Thomas of Precision Eye, renting was relatively new territory as they had only hired more needspecific kit in the past and generally from the same agency.
memory cards should be standard with all agencies Thomas and Will have been stung by half-charged batteries before. With an effortless pre-production process Thomas and Will were eager to get on set with the GH4 “One of the camera’s great strengths is its size to quality ratio,” says Thomas. “For such a compact camera the still and moving image quality was fantastic. At around £200 for the hire period, it was an incredibly affordable way to dip our toes into the exciting 4K waters. However, it immediately posed an interesting creative challenge, albeit a nice one to have, as it made even the most banal piece of action – our subject eating a burger – look and feel incredible. The depth, richness in colour and detail made every bite feel like it could hold its own within a
Wes Anderson film – an instant hit on the test shoot, but it meant we were filming everything and anything.” However, the challenges of a 4K workflow soon became apparent, and the team would perhaps consider expanding their rental kit next time. “We realised during our brief flirtation with 4K that we would promptly fill our memory cards,” Will says. “Post also proved to be another challenge, as our well-weathered MacBooks struggled to view such colossal files, so we switched back to good old 1080p and still benefited from the durable, lightweight and compact nature of the GH4.”
More information www.preciseeye.co.uk www.hireacamera.com
already been booked out. Initially you’ll probably need to pay a personal visit, to prove your credentials and to leave a substantial deposit before you’re allowed to take kit away. As the relationship starts to build, however, and the rental company takes on board the fact that you are a genuine operator, the rules will be relaxed and you’ll find it ever easier to deal with your chosen partners and they, in turn, will do everything they can to accommodate you and to turn you into a regular customer. The best rental companies will always be ready to offer advice and feedback on products, and will often be open to filmmakers making an appointment to come along to try out kit on the premises before making a hiring decision. It’s in their interests to be as accommodating as possible. Regular customers can expect to receive regular updates on the kit that’s available, and most of the major hire companies will constantly be updating their stock and will have the latest cutting-edge products as soon as they are available. As always, the key to getting the gear you want is to book as far ahead as possible, since the most popular products can be booked out weeks in advance. Also, if it’s possible to be flexible on your times that will stand you in good stead, and give you the greatest chance of getting your hands on the gear you want. Naturally the items that rent out the most regularly – invariably continuous lighting rigs and the most popular cameras – are usually the ones that the most stock is kept of, and if you have regular kit that you’re looking to hire it’s a simple process to ring through and to place your order. Get into the mindset that hire companies are an extra resource you can call on and bring yourself fully up to speed on the services they have to offer and how to get what you want, and you will have a key partner that will help you immeasurably as you build your business. It’s the modern way of running a film production business and it will add greatly to your flexibility and ability to handle even the most demanding assignments, so choose your partners well and take time to get to know them and then enjoy the access you’ll have to the kit you need to run your business.
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MONITOR TEST
FIELD MONITORS
THE BIGGER PICTURE
While many HD-enabled cameras now feature enhanced LCD screens these can fail to deliver in bright conditions or at a distance. Increasingly larger field monitors are seen as an alternative, so we’ve tested three of the latest professional offerings WORDS ZENA TOSCANI
T
he quality and size of on-camera LCD screens has improved massively since HDSLRs first made their breakthrough, but with most models coming in at 3-3.5in it can still be hard for videographers to see what they are shooting, even in the best of conditions. Throw in some bright sunshine on location or a low angle shot and visibility becomes nigh on impossible, even with the articulated screens now on offer from numerous manufacturers. Enter the shoot-saving field monitor.
An external field monitor not only allows you to see a much larger view of what’s in the frame, it also gives other key personnel on set, such as clients and focus-pullers, the chance to watch what is being, or has been, recorded. Another useful benefit professional models offer is a host of enhanced features to ensure operators achieve accurate focus, exposure, colour and more, so there’s little doubt that the quality of your output will massively improve with this kit addition.
Alas, not all monitors are created equal and choosing the best one for your set-up can be quite the minefield when you get into the nitty-gritty of things, like LCD versus OLED, power consumption and pixel mapping not to mention cost and weight considerations. To make your selection process easier, we’ve picked out three models at different price points, and have not only tested their monitor-specific functions but also their practicality in terms of usability, portability and reliability.
TOOLS FOR THE TEST Canon EOS 5D MkIII Younger brother to the camera that revolutionised DSLR moviemaking, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III’s ergonomic design, full-frame 22.3-megapixel sensor and ability to shoot high-speed footage at 60 framesper-second make it the perfect partner for this field monitor test. It’s beautifully bright 3.2in 1,040,000 pixel LCD provides a very high bar for the external monitors to compare with.
E-image EI AO3 cold shoe adaptor Beautiful in its simplicity, the E-image EI AO3 slides into your camera’s shoe mount to allow the connection of numerous items via the widely used ¼in thread mount. With an adjustable angle, swivelling ball head, this type of adaptor is ideal for connecting an external monitor, giving you the flexibility to position it at a variety of angles, safe in the knowledge that the screws will hold everything in place.
Manfrotto MDeVe system Designed with videographers in mind, this professional stabilisation solution sees the Manfrotto MVH500AH video head perfectly paired with the user-friendly MDeVe aluminium 755XBK tripod. Lightweight, compact and designed to deal with loads of up to 5kg, this is an ideal system for filmmakers who are regularly shooting on location with additional accessories like field monitors.
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GEAR MONITOR TEST SPECIFICATION Screen size: 7in Pixels: 1920x1080 Brightness: 700-nit with adjustable backlight Screen type: LCD panel Weight: 644g Video input/output: HDMI input/ output and embedded audio SDI Audio monitoring: Stereo headphone 1/8in jack HOW IT RATES Features Custom perfection Performance Bright, sharp and immersive Handling Dials for all occasions Value for money Premium pixels
MARSHALL ELECTRONICS V-LCD71MD-3G
The DC power input combined with the larger than average size makes this model equally at home as a more permanent studio monitor.
“You can tell that this monitor was designed with longevity in mind” 90
8/10 8/10 7/10
PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING 8/10
www.lcdracks.com
Pros: Superior functions for pro monitoring Cons: Not so travel friendly
function buttons that you can programme to provide quick access to almost any monitoring feature. In operation, the LCD71MD-3G performs exceptionally. With a 7in native, full resolution 1920x1080 LCD, it’s hard to find any flaws in the image output. The 700-nit high-brightness, LED backlit IPS panel continues to deliver even in bright sunlight and the visibility only becomes reflective at viewing angles impressively close to 180°. If you’re in the market for a field monitor you’ll soon discover that there’s a host of monitoring features present in most models. Typically these are: false colour filter; waveform display; focus assist; aspect ratio; gamma, temperature and colour space presets; markers and guides – and
Marshall doesn’t disappoint by including all of the above. Plus, the inclusion of a printed false colour key on the right of the screen makes for a useful addition in false colour filter mode. As a native resolution screen this model also has a pixel-to-pixel mode, which bypasses the monitor’s internal scaling to show images in their true resolution and aspect ratio, mapping the incoming image pixels to the screen pixels, 1-to-1. From a construction point of view, this is clearly a professional piece of kit that will likely outlast numerous camera replacements. You can tell that this monitor was designed with longevity in mind by some of the more simple construction elements, such as the replaceable front panel. Marshall has cleverly screwed on a clear plastic overlay which is easily replaceable for a nominal fee to save you fretting over the inevitability of scratching the actual LCD screen. However, all these longlasting, pro elements add up to a pro price tag, so while you won’t be disappointed with its features and quality, it’s worth considering how much you need that extra size and customisation and whether the additional weight will become a hindrance.
Street price: £1,740
WITH THEIR THREE-DECADE strong technology pedigree, it probably comes as no surprise to see a Marshall Electronics monitor in this line-up. A firm favourite among filmmakers, Marshall has a reputation for making quality products without gimmicks that are designed to stand the test of time and upon first inspection, the V-LCD71MD-3G appears to be no different. Although a little weighty, this piece of kit feels sturdy and high quality. Immediately noticeable is the modular design with a ¼in screw mount on all four sides, giving the user mounting flexibility. Featuring considerably more buttons and dials than the other monitors in this test, the LCD71MD-3G still manages to save space by making them multipurpose. While the four dials labelled BRIGHT, COLOR, CONTRAST and USER do what they say on the tin in normal monitoring mode, when inputting a customised crop size for instance, the dials are then used to resize and position the selection box. There are also four user-definable
9/10
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MONITOR TEST SPECIFICATION Screen size: 5in Pixels: 1280x720 Brightness: 400-nit Screen type: SuperAtom IPS panel Weight: 310g (without batteries) Video input/output: HDMI input/ output Audio monitoring: Stereo headphone 1/8in jack HOW IT RATES Features 9/10 Multipurpose piece Performance 9/10 Delivers on all levels Handling 8/10 Occasional touchscreen troubles Value for money 9/10 Superior technology PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING 9/10
ATOMOS NINJA BLADE SOMETIMES WHEN WE RECEIVE test products they don’t always come packaged as they would to the end consumer, so it was a pleasant surprise to receive the Ninja Blade in its Atomos branded, heavy-duty carry case. The foam cut interior immediately reveals the amount of product you are getting for your money, and it’s clear that Atomos is diligently trying to accommodate the needs of a wide range of videographers by including adaptors for using your camera’s spare batteries, master caddies for your 2.5in storage media drives (necessary for record mode) and an AC power adaptor for studio use. Interestingly, though some of the nuts and bolts are left out, you won’t be able to use the Ninja Blade out of the box even for basic monitoring unless you have an HDMI cable and your own shoe mount or similar to fix it to your camera or rig, but for everything else that is provided we can forgive them these omissions. It’s worth saying early on that while the Atomos Ninja Blade is in this line-up for its monitoring credentials; it’s so much more
The Ninja Blade only has one button on the right-hand side of the device to turn it on and off, so all the features are accessed via the touchscreen panel. There were occasional glitches with the responsiveness of the touchscreen that could be frustrating on set, but by and large, the navigation was instinctive and functional.
“You really will be taken aback at everything this product delivers for the price”
Pros: All-in-one solution Cons: Bolt-ons necessary Street price: £700
www.atomos.com
than that. Marketed as ‘the world’s most advanced smart production recorder, monitor and playback deck’, you really will be taken aback at everything this product delivers for the highly competitive price point. We dabbled with the recording and playback functions to get a decent overview of everything that the product has to offer and were blown away by little details like FCPX compatible SmartLog, which allows you to ‘favourite or reject’ clips for an incredibly efficient post-production workflow and the ability to circumvent your DSLR’s 29.59 minute record barrier. If you’re looking to upgrade your DSLR or mirrorless camera’s MPEG footage to 220Mbps edit ready 10bit 4:2:2 Apple ProRes HQ or Avid DNxHD 220 as well as utilise all the usual monitoring features then the Ninja Blade could well be your match made in heaven. The essential tools for achieving accurate on-set colours and exposure are included as you would expect, but it’s their intuitive design implementation that sets Atomos apart. As with competing models you can change the colours for things like focus peaking, but with the Atomos Ninja Blade the full waveform monitor functions like vectorscope, RGB and LUMA
parades can be positioned to cover the full screen, lower third or bottom right with full control over the transparency and dynamic range. Head to the SmartMonitor mode to easily access zebra bars, focus peaking, false colour and blue only exposure, with their own customisable colours, grid lines and thresholds. While we were impressed by the viewing angles achievable with the Marshall monitor on test, the Ninja Blade blows it out of the water with a stunning 179° viewing range of its super bright 1280x720 IPS panel, making it easy for multiple people to crowd around and view the smaller five-inch screen. If you’re likely to be using the monitor for long periods, the low power consumption, continuous power dual battery system and ability to hot-swap hard-drives make for a revolutionary addition to any filmmaker’s kitbag.
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MONITOR TEST SPECIFICATION Screen size: 5in Pixels: 800x400 Brightness: N/A Screen type: LCD panel Weight: 250g (without battery) Video input/output: HDMI input Audio monitoring: Stereo headphone 1/8in jack HOW IT RATES Features No-frills approach Performance Limited view Handling Simple solution Value for money Small change superstar
7/10 7/10 8/10 9/10
PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING: 8/10 Pros: Brilliant value Cons: Back to basics
SONY CLM-V55 REPRESENTING THE BUDGETfriendly end of the field monitor spectrum, the Sony CLM-V55 packs a surprising amount of punch for its small stature, featuring a number of the same functions as the higher priced models on test. Upon unboxing, the compact nature of this product is immediately noticeable, with the removable sunshade folding over the screen, doubling as a scratch protector. This monitor comes complete with a short HDMI cable that doesn’t get in the way of other controls or accessories and a cold shoe mount that can tilt 180° and rotate 360°, giving you plenty of positioning options. However, you will need to purchase a battery to get you up and running in the field. Going with the minimalist theme you’ll notice the almost non-existent controls, bar a power button and rotating wheel on the right-hand side, but don’t let this fool you into thinking that the control options are lacking. When we turned on the monitor we found the colours to be a little high in contrast, but this was quickly remedied by pressing the
Street price: £399w The simple action of clicking and scrolling the wheel to access and adjust all the features on this monitor is certainly one of the selling points – you never feel like you’re lost too deep in a myriad of menus and customisation options. It does what it says on the tin and is incredibly user-friendly.
“This is undoubtedly a perfect entry-level model to DSLR monitoring”
www.sony.co.uk
rotating wheel to access the main menu and scrolling through to the brightness and contrast options, which were then easily adjustable. Some shortcomings are to be expected for a monitor that comes in at under £400 and these are namely the absence of a few of the more advanced functions such as waveform monitoring and false colour mode, combined with a lower resolution LCD screen at just 800x400 pixels. That said, the presence of some of the more well-used monitoring tools, like focus peaking and pixel-topixel mode, make this a great option for filmmakers looking to improve their output without putting themselves massively out of pocket, and the resolution is adequate enough for a screen of this size. The screen hood is another great but simple addition that tackles glare on location in an instant. Obviously with this erected you limit the number of people who can view the screen without huddling very close together, but the hood can easily be detached and reattached as necessary. Though the customisation options are limited Sony has done its research with the basics that they do offer, including a handful of choices for aspect ratios, colour temperatures
and, for filmmakers wanting to keep their kit as light as possible, the ability to monitor audio though the monitor. This is ideal, so long as the camera you’re using outputs its audio via HDMI. While this is undoubtedly a perfect entry-level model to DSLR monitoring and will be a massive improvement on using the built-in LCD screen alone, you might outgrow the CLM-V55’s lower resolution if you decide to upgrade your camera system to something like a compact cinema camera. For the price point though, the simplicity and inclusion of key focusing features make this monitor a real contender for videographers and documentary filmmakers running and gunning, for whom the lightweight portability is crucial.
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Test Winner ★★★★★
THE VERDICT With the monitors on test ranging in price from £400 to £1,740, some disparity in features and quality is to be expected. But by and large, all the monitors in this test cover the essential tools and manage to offer something that the others don’t, each of them catering to a specific subset of filmmakers. The lightweight simplicity and low-cost of the Sony CLM-V55 makes
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it an ideal entry into the world of DSLR and CSC field monitors, while the impeccable resolution and advanced monitoring features on offer in the Marshall Electronics V-LCD71MD-3G would see it at home on location and in the studio, with brightness and clarity sure to impress any clients on set. However, once all the scores are tallied, the winner of this group test has to be the
Atomos Ninja Blade. Featuring pristine image quality, an unparalleled viewing angle and infinite customisation options, there is nothing that you could want for in this monitor. On top of that, the inbuilt recording and playback functions will skyrocket the quality and efficiency of your output, making this, truly, a videographer’s secret weapon.
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GEAR BUYERS’ GUIDE
MEMORY KEEPERS DATA STORAGE
Shooting Full HD and now 4K video is undoubtedly going to mean that you’ll need a bigger hard drive. You’re also going to need fast writing/reading memory cards and a workflow solution that’s as slick and streamlined as possible, suggests Gavin Stoker… WORDS GAVIN STOKER
T
he words ‘data storage’ may not be ones to quicken the pulse, but get your solution wrong – or inadvisably opt for one that is inadequate for purpose – and those very same words are enough to make the blood boil. With this in mind, we’re exploring the available devices to cope with all that crystal clear yet data heavy video that shooting Full HD, or now 4K clips, is going to generate. That means
getting your data chain correct; from initial capture to editing of footage and eventual storage and safekeeping, taking in everything from Secure Digital cards and pro grade XQD media, to SSD and HDD devices. Fortunately we’ve come up with suggestions to safeguard and store those precious files, to demonstrate why memory matters and prevent a creative meltdown on your patch.
MEMORY JARGON BUSTER SSD: Solid State Drives (SSD) offer significantly increased transfer speeds over HDD and all without the need for moving parts, therefore decreasing the chance of any wear and tear incurred merely through operation. Another advantage is that data is retained even when there is no power present. Yet another plus point is speed; SSD drives are faster and more reliable than simple USB flash memory drives. HDD: Unlike an SSD, this is a traditional spinning – ie. moving – hard drive. Hard
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disk drives are essentially metal platters with a magnetic coating storing your data. There will be one inside your computer. RAID: No, not a snatch and grab exercise, but Redundant Array of Independent Disks, a data storage solution that combines multiple disk drive components, storing data in different places on multiple hard disks to improve performance. READ AND WRITE SPEEDS: As one might assume when we’re talking about data, the read speed is how long it takes to read
something from the drive – so how long it takes to access whatever data is on it. The write speed is how long it takes to save – ie. ‘write’ – something onto the drive or disc. The higher the numbers quoted in terms of megabytes per second, the faster both these processes are. USB 3.0: The third and latest version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for the computer community. It supports data transfer rates of up to and over 5GB/ sec, making it perfectly suited for devices handling heavy data loads.
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BUYERS’ GUIDE
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Editor’s Choice ★★★★★
SONY SSD & HDD DRIVES & SD & XQD REMOVABLE MEDIA From £264.35 for PSZ-SA25 Drive www.sony.co.uk Sony offers four external drives from 256GB for the PSZ-SA25 Solid State Drive (SSD) to 2TB for the PSZHA2T Hard Disc Drive (HDD). With data transfer speeds of up to 120MB/sec, the durable drives conform to military standard. Pro SD cards with a Class 10 rating and high-speed data transfer of 95MB/sec are available in ‘4K compatible’ capacities of 32GB and 64GB. Expert and Performance SD cards provide
a Class 10 rating and speeds of 94MB/sec and 40MB/sec respectively (up to 64GB). Next up is Sony’s XQD series, which includes the 128GB capacity XQD-128A. The advantages are a reading speed of 400MB/sec and a writing speed of 350MB/sec. Capacities include both 32GB and 64GB. Pro: Solid looking product Con: Not always the cheapest
LEXAR PROFESSIONAL MEMORY CARDS & DRIVES
From £224.99 for 2TB Rugged drive www.lacie.com Available in 1TB, 2TB, 250GB (SSD) and 500GB (SSD) capacities, LaCie’s Rugged portable hard drive has Thunderbolt ‘shocking’ speeds of up to 387MB/sec (SSD version). Videographers are able to transfer 10GB in under five minutes and enjoy zero lag when accessing files or editing videos. Improved shock, dust and water resistance is offered. For a desktop solution the LaCie 2big, with Thunderbolt
2 tech, delivers up to 420MB/ sec and features up to 12TB capacity and USB 3.0 backward compatibility. Alternatively the latest d2 boasts an allaluminium ‘unibody’, dual Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0. Claiming an industry first the d2 Thunderbolt 2 can be upgraded to a best-on-market speed of 1150MB/sec. Pro: Heavy-duty options Con: Large-ish desktop footprint
SANDISK EXTREME PRO
From £23.99 for a Professional 1000x 16GB card www.lexar.com Recently announced Lexar Professional 1000x (150MB/ sec) and 2000x (300MB/sec) SDHC/SDXC UHS-II cards include a SD UHS-II reader. Capacities are 32GB or 64GB. Readily available are the Professional 600x SDHC/SDXC UHS-I cards up to 256GB, with Class 10 performance of up to 90MB/sec, plus Professional 1066x CompactFlash cards with a read transfer speed of 160MB/sec. Lexar also offers the USB 3.0-equipped high
LACIE RUGGED DRIVE & DUAL DISK RAID & SSD DRIVES
capacity JumpDrive P10 range up to 128GB and the cheaper JumpDrive M10 Secure USB 3.0 Flash Drive (128GB max). Desktop storage includes the Professional Workflow four-bay Thunderbolt HR1 and forthcoming HR2 USB 3.0 reader and storage drive hub. Individual drives are available in 256GB or 512GB. Pro: High capacity, fast transfer speeds Con: Price
From £125 to £559.99 www.sandisk.co.uk The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD 240GB drive (also in 480GB and 960GB capacities) features respective read and write speeds of 550MB/ sec and 520MB/sec, with prices starting at £125. For video, we recommend the 512GB Extreme Pro SDHC/ SDXC UHS-I memory card (at £559.99). This offers write speeds up to 90MB/sec and UHS Speed Class 3 recording speed – so ideal for stutterfree 4K video. Furthermore,
it’s shockproof and waterproof and will survive an X-ray machine. Cheaper is SanDisk’s 64GB Extreme Pro SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card at £184, optimised for cameras supporting the UHS-II standard. This can cope with sustained video capture requirements of 30MB/sec, supporting up to 64GB of cinema quality 4K, Full HD and/or 3D video. Pro: No moving parts Con: Some high prices
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BUYERS’ GUIDE
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT WIRELESS
DIGISTOR PROFESSIONAL VIDEO SERIES SSD From £179 (240GB) to £349 (480GB) www.digistor.com This solid state drive is squarely aimed at pro videographers. Designed for uncompressed (or compressed) video capture up to 480GB, the Digistor SSD Drive Professional is also aimed at and certified for use with Blackmagic 2.5K and 4K cinema cameras. The upshot is video recording with a claimed blazingly fast speed, lower power consumption and totally silent operation. With
no moving parts, the unit is said to be extremely robust and allows videographers to edit directly from the disk. What’s more, there is compatibility with Atomos recorders, and indeed Digistor products are certified as highly recommended by the brand. Pro: Perfect Blackmagic pairing Con: Not many we can think of
From £109 www.wdc.com This nifty unit is the wireless drive for all your devices, allowing you to back up videos from SD card and keep on shooting. Wireless and also portable, Western Digital’s My Passport Wireless allows up to eight devices to connect to it at the same time. There is also a built-in SD card slot, with the ability to instantly share your creativity with any device connected. The integral rechargeable battery is good for six hours of
continuous video streaming with up to 20 hours on standby. Quick data transfer comes via a USB 3.0 port. The My Passport Wireless drive is currently available at select UK retailers and online from the store.westerndigital. com. Suggested retail prices are £109 for 500GB, £137.99 for 1TB and £179.99 for 2TB. Pro: Small, sleek and fairly priced Con: Not so rugged
Highly Recommended ★★★★★
G-TECHNOLOGY G-SPEED STUDIO HARD DRIVES
DROBO MINI 8TB BUNDLE
From £1544 (for 24TB G-Speed Studio) www.g-technology.com G-Technology’s G-Speed Studio with RAID hardware is a four-bay Thunderbolt 2 portable storage solution for editing on the road. Sustained transfer rates of up to 660MB/ sec are claimed in RAID 0 setting and the unit can be daisy-chained through dual Thunderbolt 2 ports. It comes supplied with four removable enterprise class hard drives, and, according to its manufacturer, in a RAID 5 configuration users can
seamlessly edit three streams of compressed 4K video. Newer still is the G-Speed Studio XL, with the choice of a 24TB or top capacity 64TB unit. It gets the ‘XL’ moniker because it can hold up to eight removable hard drives to offer a colossal capacity. G-Technology claims a speedy performance of an impressive 1,350MB/sec. Pro: Huge storage capacity Con: Only large capacity
www.drobo.com £658.80 A massive amount of storage space in a small, thin yet rugged form factor is the pitch here, with the Drobo Mini 8TB featuring four hotswappable 2.5-inch drive bays pre-loaded with four Samsung Spinpoint M8T 2TB drives, giving a total capacity of 8TB. If a drive should fail the Mini automatically repairs itself and returns to a protected state while providing full access to all
data – new drives can be added or swapped on the fly with no downtime. Pros can transfer large multimedia files from media cards to the Mini while still on location – no longer is lugging 8TB worth of storage to a shoot any problem, claims its manufacturer. Pro: Large storage, smallish form Con: May get bashed in transit
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