NZVN December12

DECEMBER 2012

Vol 187

Backpacks are IN We are at the offices of Focal Holdings with Marc Jamieson and we’re here to look at Kata bags – specifically backpacks because, for quite a long time, backpacks for video weren’t used much in New Zealand.

Recently, they’ve become extremely popular as people see the value in putting everything on their back, because cameras have got smaller, and especially the DSLR operators are finding that they can fit their camera, their lenses and all their bits and pieces in a backpack and it’s so much easier to chase the action.

With us here today, we have William He from Photofans ( www.photofans.co.nz ). William is here for two reasons – one is that William is a reseller of Kata product mainly in the photographic area, but he’s also a user of Kata bags.

Ed: William, what do you actually look for in a backpack for the use you put it to?

William: I like all the gear with me and because I have quite a big lens, I need a big bag. I look for quality, durability and of course easy access.

Ed: Do you put it to the test in terms of it falling off your back, or you bump into things, or why do you need it to be durable?

William: When you’re on location, the photo or the video is the most important part, so you don’t care about your gear … you’re dragging it around, so you need the durability, the quality.

Ed:

Do you use the bag as a pillow at night?

William:

Aaah no.

Ed: You’ve got a girlfriend for that. So what do you do, where do you go – are you taking stills, or are you taking video?

William: Mostly for stills. I originally started doing some video stuff, but not too much.

I go to the mountains, beaches and sometimes the racetrack, because I bike ride as well. I go to Pukekohe and Hampton Downs quite a lot to shoot motor sports.

Ed: And the backpack is more preferable than a shoulder bag?

William: Yes. The backpack is easier to carry … you can imagine, if I put all my gear in a bag, it’s roughly about 20kg. So a shoulder bag for a short distance, drop

William is sporting today a Bumblebee 220 by Kata.

it in the car, carry it in the car – fine. But, if you’re walking around a racetrack, you need to carry all your gear for a whole day almost, you don’t want a shoulder bag. Your shoulder will be tired after that.

Ed: So what is it about the Kata range that you find is particularly suitable? I mean, you can buy a backpack from a camping store much cheaper than you could buy one of these, but what is it that makes it worth that extra amount of money?

William: I think the protection. The equipment I put inside this bag is very expensive so I want to protect it.

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P12 Technodolly at the Hospital.

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No matter how tough I am with the bag, it’s gentle on the gear, so I think Kata do ( especially for the Pro range ) really, really good protection.

Ed: Now Marc, in the Pro range, we’re specifically looking here at the Bumblebee 220, but that’s not to say there aren’t others in the Bumblebee range … you’ve got smaller ones and there are also larger bags in the Pro series, but something like this, the Bumblebee 220 is about the middle. This is something that could take a smaller format camera, video camera or the DSLR series and I guess to me, one of the key features is the ease of getting into it.

Marc: Yes, this is really easy to get into because once you open it, you see all the gear, which is then very quick to put in or take out.

Ed: And the difference is that you don’t sit the bag. A backpack you would sit on its bottom, and you would have to take everything out from the top.

This particular bag has a different way of accessing?

Marc: You can access the Bumblebee 220 in a couple of different ways – one, if you want to access all the gear, you open all the zips and the whole face opens out; or secondly, if you arrange the zips in the middle of the bag, you can gain access to only the top compartment or you can arrange the zips in a way that you could gain access to only the bottom of the compartment. That’s great for security as well.

Ed: And that’s it – the backpack can be laid on its flat and completely open, so you’ve got access to everything, or you can sit it on its bottom and just

access the bottom part or the top part and take out the bits you need. But it also has a clever arrangement with the zip pullers, because on the main compartment, the pullers there are what’s called the “parachute puller” and as well as being easy to grip, they’re very good because …?

Marc: It’s the strength of them.

They’re all parachute grade zippers as you’ve correctly pointed out, but usually like with the cheaper backpacks, or with a suitcase, you would start somewhere with one zip and then you would open it that way.

With the Kata system, you’ve actually got four different zips on the main compartment of the backpack and if you put all the zips together, you can use that as a locking system.

That’s ideal if you were travelling or if you were in an area where there was a high risk of theft. It’s important, if you have four zips, that people aren’t able to access them from four different areas. more on page 6

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Ed: And you could even put a padlock through the four and it would keep everything in one place?

Marc:

Yes, you definitely could.

Ed: And the other pockets … there’s a pocket there for a laptop, side pockets to put other things in and they’re identified by different zip pullers.

So, just by looking at the zip puller, you know which pocket type you’re looking at?

Marc: Yes I guess that’s one of the other great things about Kata is their attention to detail. Everything that Kata does on their products is for a reason; nothing is just for show generally speaking. What they’ve done cleverly, is they’ve made it so that even if you’re in the dark, you know what you’re accessing. The way that they identify that is, to access the larger compartments of the bags they use the parachute zippers and then to access the smaller compartments of the bags The dividers are brilliant yellow and moveable. ( maybe to get access to your memory cards or your battery charger or whatever it may be ) they have buttons at the end of Marc: Exactly and I believe that was strategically the zippers, so you can still identify them in the dark. done; they placed it there because yellow is the best colour to identify items.

Ed: And the other great aid to night time access is of course the Kata yellow on the inside, which is very There’s no point in having a black interior; if you’ve got pretty. You wouldn’t want a suit made out of it, but as black lenses or black body or black whatever it’s not an internal to a bag, it’s a fantastic colour? going to be that easy.

Page 6

Ed: Or black sandwiches – you’d never find your lunch.

Marc: And of course, the other valuable thing is that the compartments on the inside are totally flexible in terms of positioning because they’re all Velcro attached, so you can fit a DSLR camera in there and it won’t rattle around, or you can move a couple of the compartment dividers and you can fit in a larger format camera. And there are also nice little net bags for putting loose bits and pieces in, so nothing’s going to rattle around.

Another feature is the straps. The material is a “croclike” rubbery compound that obviously is going to last and last; but it also fits into the back very nicely. I just put it on and it’s extremely comfortable. There are straps that you would put around your waist and around your chest to hold the bag firmly in position if you were on a motorbike for example, or you were tramping up the mountains, but you can tuck those straps away and just use the shoulder straps when you’re going from location to location at a short distance and without too much difficulty, so it becomes very easy to put on and take off.

But wait, there’s more! There are a couple of included accessories.

There is a Kata rain cover and there’s also a little tripod holder.

This is a simple pouch which clips onto the base of the backpack and enables you to slide your tripod legs through and keep it securely onto the outside of the bag.

So extra little pieces that just make it the perfect backpack for video and stills.

It’s worth noting that Kata also have the lightweight protection guarantee, which is a really bold statement to make. You see on the tag of this particular Kata bag, that they guarantee that this bag will be the lightest and most protective bag in its class, or they’ll give the user their money back.

Ed:

And they can keep the bag?

Marc: That’s a good question! They will refund the money. It’s a bold statement to make, they’ve sold millions of bags and to date they haven’t had one claim for a refund.

Ed: Right, so if you’ve got a Kata bag out there, go and test all the competition, see if you can find a lighter one of the same size and class and call Marc – he’s got cash waiting for you.

Okay, that’s the Bumblebee range, but Kata doesn’t stop there. Obviously these are not suitable for large cameras, so if you’re taking out your big shoulder mount, you need something a little bit larger. Kata’s got a backpack for that too?

Marc: Yes they do. They’ve revamped the Kata 510 from the previous GDC range and they’ve updated it to some fantastic new looking 2012 style bags.

There’s two particular models – they have a Pro-V 410 and they also have a Pro-V 610 which is specifically designed for the video market.

Ed: Well you might not fit an F65 in there but certainly parts of it.

Ed: Okay, so that’s the Bumblebee 220. Now if you go down into the smaller size, they still have the same features but just less space?

Marc:

Yes sure.

The Bumblebee family incorporates two different ranges of the bags, so you’ve got a Pro-Light series and an Ultra-Light series – and you’re right, they generally do carry the same features, but just slightly different in size.

One of the important things to note about Kata is that they’re all about lightweight protection, so whilst William has touched on the protection aspects of the bag, it’s really important to note that he said “when carrying around 20kg or so worth of gear, it’s essential the bag is not another 20kg itself.” That’s important when you’re buying a bag and one of the things that our retailers are always giving us feedback on, is that Kata have gone the extra mile, they’ve taken a lot of weight out of the bag. They are the market leaders in terms of taking the weight out of the bags and I believe all the other competitors are playing catch-up. But Kata still keep the protection.

Marc from Focal Holdings with a Kata backpack for the bigger cameras.

Go visit your Kata dealer and have a look at their backpack range.

Test them out on the weight NZVN guarantee too.

Page 8

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Technodolly at the Hospital We are at South Pacific Pictures in Henderson, Auckland and we’re looking at a Technodolly in action with the Shortland Street postproduction supervisor, Dylan Reeve and Technodolly technician Marc Mateo.

Ed: Dylan, a simple question, what are you using this Technodolly for?

Dylan: Oh we could, but every time you do a shot you have to build up the hospital set extension.

Ed: Oh I see, so every single frame shot that you took before, you’ve got to do new graphics for it in your build?

Dylan: We need establishing shots of the hospital which, in reality, is our office building. It is about four stories shorter than the hospital is in Ferndale Storyland, so we need to shoot establishing shots and we then use visual effects techniques to extend the height of the hospital artificially to six floors.

We’ve just redone some of the exterior of the hospital, which means we need to create new establishing shots to use from here on out and, as part of that, we’ve got a Technodolly which is a motion control crane. It gives us the ability to shoot more dynamic shots than we have before. In the past, it’s been a lock-off shot, and we’ll do the establishing, but it just means that every time you see the exterior of the hospital it’s exactly the same shot, exactly the same frame size, everything’s the same – it never changes.

Ed: But you could move the position of the crane and all that sort of thing?

Dylan on the Shortland Street back lawn.

Page 12

Dylan: This time, what we’ve got is a motion control rig, which means we can have a more dynamic shot and it will be predictable. Every time we do this shot, different times of day and night, different things in the foreground, the motion will be the same. So we only have to create the move as it were, we only have to create the set extension once, and we can keep reusing it for all the shots that we do with different content on the same move.

Dolly Shop and we’ve got a RED Epic on the front of the crane with a bunch of prime lenses. We’re doing one shot at the moment which is just a static setup where the crane will “boom out”, but later on, we’ll be setting up tracks along the front of the hospital to create a much more dynamic move, where the crane dollies along the front of the hospital as well as having the boom arm go up and down and move around. So it will give us some pretty dynamic motion.

Ed: Because I guess the metadata of the move, telling you how it’s moved in frame, you can actually import that into a graphics programme and make the graphics move to the same position?

Marc: Setting up the move is pretty quick. We are about to do a shot now which is a simple push in on the telescopic arm, so we have sampled two positions called “keyframes”, and the machine has created a smooth motion between those two points we call “the path”. Once the path is created, we can adjust it by adding further keyframes and by scaling the time between keyframes. We then switch the machine into PLAY mode and it will move along the prescribed path in precisely the same way every time. There are a lot of other more complex features, but this move doesn’t really require them.

Dylan: That is possible … we haven’t tested that workflow yet.

Ed:

You heard it here first people!

Dylan: The plan going forward is actually to use a standard visual tracking system to build the 3D track, but there is also metadata off the crane that we could import. Most people say it’s probably easier just to do the visual tracking and then the animation … because, if you import the data from the crane, then you also have to import all the metrics about exactly how far away the crane is from every item in the frame; whereas, if you just track the frame, then obviously you’re building a 3D picture from specifically what was happening in the frame. So we’re shooting with the Technodolly from the

Ed:

How long is this all going to take?

Dylan: It’s now 2pm and we’re scheduled to be here till 10pm. We’re going to grab a few shots from this setup before we go up and setup the tracks along the top and then we’ll stay there for the rest of the day.

Ed:

Now there seem to be a lot of people standing around here Dylan … 8 – does it need 8 people to run it?

Dylan: Oh look, I’m sure you’d be better talking to Dennis about that … a Technodolly operator is unavoidable, an experienced grip for the crane is unavoidable – beyond that I guess it’d be crew choice you know. You could have one DOP doing the camera, I think we’ve also got a can assist and an operator and a DOP and obviously the standard Shortland Street accouchements of AD’s and First AD’s and people in the Art Department; we’ve got people to wrangle extras.

But this is a small crew by Shortland Street standards.

Dennis Thompson from the Dolly Shop has his tuppence worth on the matter of crew numbers required.

Dennis: That’s right. In the simplest structure, the DOP operates the camera as he normally would, using either the pan bar controller, joystick or wheels.

Our technician Mark samples the more on page 17

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an Epic camera which we never would have used. On location, we’re usually shooting on a Panasonic twothirds inch P2, so this is all very different.

Ed: So you’re using the Epic basically because there’s so much post?

Dylan: We’re using the Epic because of all the pixels – it’s got lots of them. So it gives us lots of scope. Obviously we can do a little post zoom as well, so as well as all the moves we can build in a camera shot, we also have some scope to reframe some of the shots for different variations.

Ed: Now Dylan, post? You’ve got the RED Epic and you’re using the RED RAW files, what do you put them on?

Dolly Shop technician Marc Mateo operates the crane.

operator’s keyframes and makes any adjustments to the flow of the shot – speed, length and the stops and starts. A grip moves the Technodolly base and arm into the positions that the DOP asks for. The Technodolly then smoothly follows the pathway of those preset positions.

Ed: Dylan, I suppose it’s good that they all get to see it and sort of know what it does?

Dylan: I think there’s probably a bit of that as well.

I know there are a couple of people planning to pop in later on just to have a wee nosy, because it is very outside the norm for us in terms of, for example, using

Dylan: Post work for us on this as a VFX job is the Adobe Creative Suite, CS6.

So we’ll probably use Premiere CS6 just to wrangle the footage and all the compositing will be done in After Effects, CS6 also. It’s got a solid RED workflow and is a strong compositer that we know how to use quite well – it’s certainly very capable of doing what we’re doing. Also the new CS6 introduced a very good 3D tracker which is obviously great for this purpose because we can track the camera moves.

Ed:

But your main edit suites are?

Dylan: Everything we do normally for the show is Avid based hanging off an EditShare server; we’re a very EditShare centric workflow here. We’ve got quite a unique installation in the world – one of 3 or 4 apparently. So we couldn’t make this show on anything else … well, we couldn’t really make the show on anything other than Avid at the moment – the other tools aren’t quite there for the types of turnaround we need to do and the workflows we have to manage.

Ed: But you can take the footage out of Premiere into your Avids without a problem?

Dylan: Oh absolutely. At the end of this shoot, it will be rendered as DNxHD files that we can just put into our asset management system and treat them like any other piece of footage.

Ed: So really you do have a lot of “mix and matches” it seems. Is this a budget thing or is it actually you’re picking the best tools for the jobs?

Dylan: It’s both. I mean it’s the best tool within a reasonable budget. We don’t have a lot of call for VFX work, so obviously it would be ridiculous for us to spend money on a …

Ed:

Smoke?

Dylan: On a Smoke system or Nuke or anything like that, but After Effects certainly gives us enough bang for our buck for all the types of work that we throw at it, and it fits in perfectly well with our current systems.

Ed: Back to the Technodolly, is there no other crane that could do this?

Dylan: Not readily available. The motion control aspect of it is important, so that we can do a single shot multiple times throughout the day, with the exact same details.

We could use a standard jib or even a Technocrane, but we wouldn’t be able to repeat the motion exactly, so it means every single variant of the shot we’d have would be a separate 3D solution, and a separate composite building experience, which is obviously difficult. It just makes the job more difficult … we’re in fast turnaround TV, we just don’t have the time in our postproduction schedule for that kind of thing.

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Marc: Once a shot is created, it’s easy to go back to it at any time in the same setup. You can move the crane to the other end of the track or wherever and do a completely different move, then very quickly come back to the first move or any keyframe in the move and continue where you left off.

You can even manually override the move if you wanted to. So from that point of view, it’s also a great shot creation tool.

Ed: And you totally trust that it’s going to repeat the motion; you’ve obviously done some tests?

Dylan: Oh absolutely.

There’s no question that the crane is very capable of doing that. It’s done so for much bigger clients than us, so that aspect of it we’re not worried about. Everything else after this point, after we shoot it, it’s all a bit of an experiment, but we’re confident we’ve got the necessary skills.

Ed: So you haven’t used it before …?

Offices / hospital in the background.

Some of the crew ponder the next move.

A photo worthy of a caption contest?

Page 20

Dylan: No, I haven’t personally and I don’t think any of us from the Shortland Street side of things has encountered it before. The first of these shots will be seen when Shortland Street comes back in the 2013 season, so early-mid January 2013 we’ll see these shots on air.

Ed: And I guess, if you really like it, you might incorporate some other things in it … those high shots over the operating table?

Dylan: It’s the same with any of these things when we incorporate a new technology, a new tool we haven’t used before. It’s always good to know about it for future opportunities, so that if anything does come up ( especially very special occasion stuff ) then you understand that it’s there and it’s an available tool. We’ve done it before – we’ve used a radio control helicopter in the past for aerial shots. We now know that’s a tool that we could use in future; something to put in the back of the mind for when the right time arrives.

Ed: Well we look forward to the 2013 season.

Dylan:

It will be full of drama!

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Atomise Limited is proud to supply and support the editorial solution for “The Hobbit”.

Avid Media Composer Nitris DX | Avid ISIS 7000 | Apace VSTOR Octopa Read about it in the June 2011 edition of Content And Technology magazine. http://tinyurl.com/CandT-june11

Avid Audio at Protel We are at Protel with their audio specialist René Bullinga and Stuart Newman from Avid Australia.

Ed: Stuart, there was a bit of an Avid Pro Audio show last night in Auckland and you had one in Wellington.

We all know about Media Composer, Pro Tools, etc but you’ve got some enhancements to that, that have just come out now and you’re letting the New Zealand professional industry know about it. What was it all about?

Stuart: Well I guess in the last two years we’ve completely refreshed what we call our HD product range of Pro Tools hardware solutions.

We’ve had product with HD native in this space for about two years and last year, we introduced HDX which is our new DSP platform for Pro Tools HD. They’ve now been in the marketplace for 12 months and we’ve got a lot of our developers that have recently brought out software to work on the system, so it was a good time to come out and show people where we’re currently at with the software workflows and how people are using these audio enhancements. So we came over with a guy called Tom Larkin …

Tom’s actually far more into the music side; he’s the drummer for the band Shihad that I’m sure everyone in New Zealand has heard of. He’s based out of Melbourne and he runs his studio in Melbourne with Pro Tools. He’s got 25 years of production history with his band, with some of the best producers in the world – out of Canada, the States, LA, Australia, and New Zealand. I think it was a really good event for users to be able to interact with him, ask him questions … maybe not so much technically inclined in subject matter, but more so how does the technology fit into his workflows and the way that he wants to go about developing his sounds.

Ed: So how does he use the new Avid technology in a clever way?

Stuart: Pro Tools is obviously the backbone of what he records to and then he can take his Pro Tools sessions to pretty much any studio in the world, because we’ve got about a 95% market share in pro studios worldwide. That’s not to say we’re the only software, but you generally have Pro Tools there as the core, with other software there too.

Ed: But you’re saying this is just more than Pro Tools – this is a software upgrade or this is a hardware upgrade?

Stuart: We haven’t specifically released a new product on this trip, but HDX and HD native compatibility from many of our third party plug-in providers are really just becoming available now, so we’re showcasing many of those products. We are bringing Pro Tools to 64 bit in the near future with the anticipated release of Pro Tools 11 next year, and the new hardware actually enables us to set the platform for that out in the field. We are continually releasing versions of Pro Tools that are bringing more advanced features for users in the professional market.

Ed: Has this incorporation?

had

a

history

in

the

Euphonix

Stuart: The Euphonix acquisition has been a hugely positive thing for Avid from the fact that many extremely bright people came over from the Euphonix

company, the likes of Martin Stahl who was actually the architect at Nuendo; and we’ve got Martin Kloiber who was the CEO of Euphonix, he’s now the director of Audio Product Management worldwide. So we’re taking on elements of their products and developments that they had when we acquired the company and we’re now

René and Stuart at Protel in Auckland. working to hone down future products that hopefully we’ll get released very soon.

Ed: So people who weren’t there last night to hear from Tom Larkin – how can they pick up on this? Can they see this as a YouTube clip or can they read about this on the web, or is it gone, they’ve missed out?

Stuart: Yes, they did miss out this time. In the future, we might actually record these things or do a webcast, we’ve certainly talked about it, but René and I and Protel, we’ve been talking about doing user related events like this on a more regular basis – maybe not next time with Tom, but you know, there are so many fantastic producers, engineers, mixers out there and video/post mixers too.

René: This session was less of a product focus and more of a user focus, so to actually have a user like Tom explaining “tips and techniques”, his methodologies and thought processes behind the production, is a great learning opportunity for end users. It really is an educational exercise, and we were delighted with the response from those who attended.

So look out for more sessions like this next year.

People should make sure they subscribe to our newsletter at www.protel.co.nz to ensure they are aware of future events.

Ed: Well that’s always good, so hopefully in the future, if you miss out on the live event you’re going to cover it in some way?

René: That is a possibility, but the best experience is definitely gained by being there on the night, especially as there are always plenty of real examples to be heard and discussed. So be sure to sign up for our newsletter to be advised of future events is the best advice!

If anyone is interested in discussing this event or any of the topics covered they are welcome to give us a ring or pop in for a coffee!

Ed:

Page 24

We’ll look forward to that.

NZVN

Radio Spectrum News Wireless Users NZ has updated its website (www.wunz.co.nz) with the latest developments in the roll out of digital TV in NZ and includes a spreadsheet showing the use of DTT by region as of October 2012.

Wireless Users NZ recently contributed to a draft Radio Spectrum Five Year Outlook plan. http://www.rsm.govt.nz/cms/policy-and-planning/consultation/radio-spectrum-five-yearoutlook-2012-2016/view) Its submission is here. (http://www.rsm.govt.nz/cms/pdf-library/policy-and-planning/submissions/Submission% 20from%20Wireless%20Users%20NZ.pdf) Of note WUNZ asked for a single point of contact at Radio Spectrum Management and a more user-friendly interface so users can access information on what is transmitting where when moving around New Zealand.

How do I search/confirm UHF frequencies in use and polarisation for each DTV channel?

Visit the RSM Register of Radio Frequencies SMART (http://www.rsm.govt.nz/smart-web/ smart/page/-smart/WelcomePage.wdk) 1.

Select “search licences”.

2.

In the channel field, enter the DTV channel e.g. DTV33 3.

Click the “Search” button Sound Techniques has good stocks of the RF Explorer in store. This handheld RF scanner is an economical way of getting an instant appraisal of RF in a working environment and can be used to diagnose radio microphone issues. NZ$199 + GST For owners of iPhones or Android devices Sound Techniques recommends the FreqFinder app available on either app store. Enter you radio microphone frequencies and check that there are no intermods interfering with transmission. Intermodulation is a non-linear source of RF interference that arises when two or more transmitters at different frequencies are operating.

NB: Check the website regularly, as the ballpark is being changed on us all the time.

Stephen Buckland

Page 26

* Trial products are subject to the terms and conditions of the license and services agreement that accompanies the software.

Autodesk and Smoke are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/ or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at anytime without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. Š 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

merry christmas

& Happy New Year from the team at DVT

Christmas Hours: Closed 5pm Friday 21st Dec till 9am Monday 7th Jan

www.dvt.co.nz Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd | Phone: 09 525 0788 | Email: sales@dvt.co.nz | 45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

Like DVTNZ to stay up-to-date with the latest promotions and industry news.

Shoulder Mounts at Panavision We are at Panavision with Tim Timlin to discuss some new shoulder mount rig options.

Ed: Tim, we saw a little sticker on last month’s ad from Panavision, “SYMPLA” is coming. This a product from Manfrotto that, it’s fair enough to say, Manfrotto have waited until others have come out with a rig like this, but they’ve done it better?

Tim: Yes, Manfrotto promised us that they would be bringing out a shoulder support system for DSLR cameras and it would be the best. Now it’s here, and certainly it’s very versatile and could be the best as you can see. They call it the Sy-stem M-oving Pla-tform.

Ed: And also beautiful – that Italian design - and I’ve looked over it and can confirm that it has some very clever features?

Tim: Yes. It’s interesting because it’s a “tool-less” system and it’s easy to adjust – the idea being that you can rapidly setup a camera and put it into place. On the other hand, if you look at this alternate rig I have here, I can show you how much more difficult it is to put a camera into it. It needs an Allen key to make adjustments and, although it’s less than half the price, it’s not nearly as convenient as the SYMPLA. Ed: Well that’s it – you can take this Manfrotto SYMPLA rig and you can shoulder mount it and very quickly you can change it to go onto a tripod or into a Fig Rig so there’s a huge variety of ways to use it.

That’s how most people use their cameras, they don’t have them in one setup the whole time?

Tim: Exactly, yes, so you need the versatility of a rig system that’s going to enable you to do what you want to do quickly and make those adjustments.

Ed: I would think that if somebody wanted to have their DSLR mounted in a shoulder rig fulltime, then they’d buy a camera that was actually shoulder mount?

Tim: Probably.

Ed: Mind you, we don’t want to put words into DSLR owners’ heads you know … they might start thinking about what they’re doing.

Tim with the Indi rig - less camera.

Tim: You’ll see Manfrotto shows the Fig Rig version with a Sony camera in the catalogue, which isn’t a DSLR, possibly with that sort of thing … I guess they’re trying to show the range of cameras SYMPLA can cater for.

Ed: Ahhh! So in fact, you can mount a Sony handheld camera, such as the FS100 or FS700, or I imagine you could mount one of the smaller EX cameras on it?

Tim: Yes I would think that any of those hand-held cameras would be able to be put onto this system and enable you to put a matte box on it and it would be quite versatile. The matte box system with the SYMPLA system has a circular hood, borrowing from the photographic field, and it’s a rubber concertina type hood rather than the traditional square rectangular hood of the standard matte boxes in the film industry.

Ed:

But it still has the slots for filters?

Tim: It still has the slots for the filters. It has a sort of “bag at the back” fit, rather than different sizes of rings, again to make it fairly quick to adjust and change. The Manfrotto handles are replaceable by custom handles; remote control handles that Manfrotto offer as well.

Either you can do a clamp-on remote LANC type of control, or the handle itself can be replaced, giving you

Page 28

Simpl

Simpler

SYMPLA (The) System Moving Platform

by Manfrotto SYMPLA is a professional modular video rig system that extends and complements new cameras, allows for stable support and framing, supports essential accessories features, offering versatility and high performance as well as comfort, safety and much simpler and faster set up than existing rigs.

SYMPLA is built for flexibility and speed, so you can change anything and everything easily and quickly: hand grip positions, counterbalance, camera body, lens, accessories, filters, light-shielding angle; shoulder-supported, hand-held, or tripod/monopod-mounted‌ whatever you need to get the shot, the second you need it.

Sales Service Support

Tim (09) 3608766 tim.timlin@panavision.asia 318 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland

rigs tend to just have a linear same level offset, but the SYMPLA has an angled one, so the shoulder steps up or down to the camera platform with their type of design. It’s vaguely sort of “S” shaped as you can see, which gives you again a height adjustment straight away.

Ed: So that makes it more comfortable for the operator to get that perfect position?

Tim: Yes I imagine this is where Manfrotto must have done some research because the standard rigs The SYMPLA rig without the camera matte box. don’t have that angle built into the offset. As far as I am aware, only Manfrotto functions like zoom control and also trip the shutter for with the SYMPLA system do it this way. still shots or for record / start / stop for video – and the focus speed can be customised as well. So, very neat Ed: That would make it easier to keep the perfect remote controls by Manfrotto that work very well with horizontal position and still hold it in the most the SYMPLA too. comfortable position, whereas in other situations you Ed: Now what I particularly like about this is the adjustments for the plate where you mount the camera to. There is a very clever screw system for sliding the camera sideways or moving it up and down, I guess so that it all lines up perfectly with your matte box?

Tim: Yes, that’s the simple thing, but in fact when you work with these things, people generally want to put follow focus systems on to them. Manfrotto at this point don’t offer a follow focus, but there are obviously very good systems from Chrosziel and O’Connor, which probably cost as much as the SYMPLA on its own, but that’s where you need the height adjustment, to get the lens ( depending on the size of the camera body ) to match it to the follow focus. That actually seems to be where the critical adjustment needs to come.

Generally, the matte box itself, if it’s aligned with the camera, it merely requires a vertical up or down shift, and that’s relatively simple to arrange. The other thing the SYMPLA system offers you is lens support, like a cradle, so it will easily deal with very long lenses if you have to mount them on these systems. You can join the rails together easily as they are threaded at both ends to lengthen them. So it certainly adds solutions for perhaps more difficult arrangements of camera accessories.

might have to move a few centimetres up or down to get your camera in the perfectly horizontal position.

But what’s the name of this basic rig that we’re comparing the SYMPLA to?

Tim: It’s called an Indi rig and it’s American made. It comes complete with additional carrying handle, matte box, side wings and French flag; it comes with follow

Ed: And that’s it, unlike shall we say the more basic rigs that are just designed for putting cameras into a shoulder mount position, Manfrotto has this history and other clamps and bits and pieces that join onto or can be added to the SYMPLA rig to further enhance the uses to which you might want to put it?

Tim: Yes, very much so. There is also a V-Offset available for bridging large height differences; it doesn’t necessarily have a battery support at this stage, but again there are the sockets or the threaded areas where battery plates can be added, if you like, as further counterweights – but there is a counterweight available for it as well. You can see that the shoulder support can be inverted to give you a brace which can be put against the body if you wanted to use it in that way.

There are two rod lengths available, a 300mm and a 150mm so again you can make adjustments within the system quite easily depending on what you want to do.

It’s also interesting the offset that it has … conventional Page 30

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focus, front handles and a shoulder support … all for the price of around about $1,360 plus GST, which is quite a lot of kit for that amount of money.

own follow focus, your own matte box if it is set up for 15mm already. So you would only need to buy the basic SYMPLA system and add the bits if you had them.

It is quite demanding to set it up – you need Allen keys - but once you have set it up, it’s perfectly serviceable and will work effectively as a shoulder rig.

Ed: And of course it goes very well on Manfrotto tripods?

Ed: That’s it – if you’re operating it all of the time, once you’ve got it set up for yourself, you can easily take the camera on or off and it’s set up ready to go and everything’s on there?

Ed: But if all of that has confused you and you don’t know which one to choose, there’s a very simple solution … you come in and talk to Tim here at Panavision and he’ll show you both rigs and you can try your DSLR or your small hand-held camera on either of these and see if it’s what you really want.

Tim: Yes. This type of rig is typically what you’ll find coming from China as well. There’s a huge number of designs as you’ve seen on various shows, many manufacturers making rigs in various forms – some of lesser quality and some better … the fact is, you’ve got to spend some time tweaking it to get it to fit your particular camera. Once your camera is set up on it, usually with a sliding plate like this one has, you’re ready to go and it’s good enough. Whereas the SYMPLA offers that versatility and tool-less approach that would be much quicker to set up and use, and easier if you want to whip it off and put it on a tripod or convert it into a different sort of support, say with the Fig Rig or something like that.

Ed: So in that case, if you had your own matte box already, you could easily fit that to the Manfrotto because the rods are standard, all the threading points are there and it’s easy to add those extra bits on?

Tim: Exceptionally well.

Tim: Indeed, Manfrotto has used the industry standard 15mm rod system here so, yes, you could add on your

Page 32

Tim: Yes. I would be happy to show anyone the rigs and they could work through it and discuss any sort of options that they might want to do with these systems.

NZVN

To view the C300 in store today, visit one of our Canon Cinema Authorised Resellers

Ed’s Christmas Present

Loudness Finally under Control Our tempers have suffered long enough but now there are new standards set for the loudness of television commercials in New Zealand. The major broadcasters have accepted the guidelines from the NZ Broadcast Engineering Group and they will come into effect on 1/1/2013.

To see the guidelines in full, go to the CAB website www.commercialapprovals.co.nz and search CAB News, Technical Standards then download the PDF.

My present is that you get to keep receiving NZVN for free for another year. Despite “gloom and doom” in some corners, our advertisers are continuing to support us so we can keep telling you of all the good things they have that will make your jobs better or easier.

Please continue to support them and tell them that you came to them because of NZVN. The website is steadily getting more hits ( some issues over 200 ) while the paper holds its own. I like paper, so we will continue.

No January issue as I’m on Great Barrier Island keeping well away from technology.

Back in February.

Merry Christmas, Ed and elves

Loudness history goes back a long way ( as you will have read in previous issues – November 2011 was a biggie ) but the big push has come from the US of A with the introduction of their “CALM” Act. We have sensibly followed their lead as has Australia and others – apart from the Europeans who are still fighting!

What’s it all about? Basically, as well as the previous specs, there is now a requirement for all commercials to have a target loudness level of -24LKFS. LKFS is “Loudness, K-weighted, relative to digital Full Scale”. An LKFS is as near as equal to an LUFS if that helps and “K” is the designation of the frequency weighting curve used.

Need you bother? Well, you have to comply with all specs or your ad will be rejected but there are choices. Any of your usual broadcast equipment suppliers will be very happy to supply you with a measuring device or you can get your favourite commercial file delivery provider to fix each one you make for you.

They can also tell you of the new high def specs enabling you to provide your commercial in at least a form of high definition. Whether it will play out in HD will depend on the broadcaster and the channel – some things don’t change!

ED

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