MARCH 2013
Dedo Shows us the Light I was most fortunate to be invited to join a small group of resellers and lighting specialists at PLS where we were very honoured to have Dedo Weigert from Dedolight and his wonderful assistant Elena, not only showing us through the range of Dedolight product that Chris at PLS is offering us, but also giving us a chance to learn how to set up lighting for an interview situation. I began with due deference.
Vol 189
Ed: Master, we have covered the products from Dedolight from NABs and IBCs over the years and I know we’ve always been impressed by the products you create for us. My overall impression, and I’m sure this is echoed by the people here today, is that Dedolight offers clever lighting solutions. Would that be true? I mean, there are lots of lighting providers out there who provide light, but I think Dedolight goes a big step further? Dedo: It has two faces – one is that we cater to the highest demands of precision lighting as it is used in the
Hollywood blockbuster films, as we are well established in difficult tasks of lighting special effects. Anywhere where precision lighting is needed, has a place, makes sense. At the same time, we also cater ( often with the same equipment ) to the smallest team – two people teams, the one person team, people have to work under street fighter conditions, and we try and give them identical potential – as we’re using it in the big time feature films – in the smallest, lightest, most versatile packages that I don’t think have any equal. At the same time, we can say they’re the most economical lighting systems, regarding our low voltage equipment, and it’s also an indestructible system. So those are very serious advantages that I feel quite sure about saying that, in this field, we don’t have any equal. Ed: I’ve certainly seen a good demonstration of the indestructibility of a travel pack ( Elena threw it from a great height at the floor in imitation of an airport baggage handler ) and obviously the quality of the engineering that’s gone into making your product is superb, but in terms of the light provided, I would say that there is an even spread of light and there is predictable good colour, whatever the model of light? Dedo: One aspect is the highest degree of control to build controlled devices, controlled accessories, as well as highly controllable light fixtures that offer a by far bigger focusing range over any other professional lighting equipment and within the beam, absolutely smooth light distribution. We’ve got an interview with Stuart Harris who is doing high class hair commercials. He uses our 650 Watt light without any diffusion on his women, and that’s very courageous, but he believes in the utmost quality of the light character. At the same time, it’s the different concept that we have about soft lights – trying to make them dedicated soft lights, meaning that they’re built to function only as soft lights and to try to do that job in the best possible way by providing a true wrap around character, rather than a soft box that you stick in the front of a studio light. That will give you more of a hot spot and not such an even light distribution, or not the wrap around character that we try to excel in. Ed: There certainly is a huge Dedolight product range and what impresses me is that it’s not all about LED. There are a number of manufacturers that have “embraced”, shall we say, LED and that’s all they now produce, but you’re not like that. You have LED but you have other technologies as well – tried and true and proven ones?
Dedo on camera for PLS web presentation.
Dedo: Our priority from the beginning was designing the best optical system where we deviated from the known studio lights that have one spherical front lens, to a two lens system, then expanding that technology into a double aspherical, non-spherical system and adding two extra motions to the focusing – the zoom focus. Now we’re trying to transfer the advantages of our unique optics on to the focusing LED lights. But for each individual light source, we have to design specific optical systems that match the light source to get optimum performance and the best possible character. So that’s one approach to our LED lights. At the same time, we also have the multi LED panel lights, where we feel our points are that we have better colour and we have higher light output, coupled with a power consumption that is less than half of what most of our competitors have, so if you want to save the planet, use half the power, have more light. That’s a serious step, but in the professional world, it’s the colour rendition and that is a difficult field for LEDs because it doesn’t only go by the spectrum analysis which we do every day; it also goes by the response of particular sensors which may show differences between brands of camera, a different behaviour towards sunlight or halogen light ( even pretty closely matching when you’re shooting with HMI light or fluorescent ), but with LED light sources, those cameras show results that differ considerably. That’s why the camera tests are of utmost importance, but they don’t lead to one result because the cameras give different responses. So more on page 6
Go www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news. P18 Why have a smokey Mac P21 Invite to Sony 4K camera launch P24 Microphone “how to” P30 As certain as taxes Page 2
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there’s this new colour evaluation system called TLCI ( Television Lighting Consistency Index ) from the European Broadcasters Union, which shows different results from the CRI values that we’ve always believed in. That is based on studio cameras and those studio cameras work with prisms and three sensors, all of which are CCD sensors; but the vast majority of our clients, the small producers, don’t work with CCD sensors, but with CMOS sensors, and even between the different CMOS sensors from different origins, the response to colour varies considerably.
percentage of users, but we have to point out that there are differences and people should know about them and this is where we may be the ones who take more care in trying to educate our users. Whether it’s a good business attitude I don’t know, because the more you inform users about potential difficulties, peculiarities or even hazards, the more the user will tend to say “let me go to my previous supplier because he didn’t have those problems!” Now that’s not quite true, because he just didn’t know about the problems, or he knew about it and didn’t want to say.
Ed: What you’ve just said, to me, illustrates the need to have a reputable supplier looking after your product in a place like New Zealand, because, as you say, there is a wide variety of cameras out there; there are certain lighting setups that will suit one camera better than others.
Ed: What is it … sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?
Dedo: The traditional light sources – halogen, metal halide, HMI and even fluorescent, seem to work for the vast majority of cameras in an identical way. With LEDs, it’s more necessary to bear in mind the response of a particular type of camera, because here we do find more variations than we’re accustomed to. In the end, the client has to try and evaluate the colour with his own camera, but he needs a little bit of education as to how to do that, based on the understanding that it’s his camera that may see the colour of LED light differently than the camera of his neighbour. He has to test it himself and see whether it suits his needs. Fortunately, with the vast majority of our LED lights, we seem to satisfy the overwhelming
Dedo:
Yes.
Ed: In part of your presentation, you talked about the dangers of HMI light, that the amount of UV coming from it is actually three times greater than the sun and if you have a studio setup with lots of HMI light, you’ve got no ozone layer to protect you. If you’re in there all day, day after day, what are the results? Dedo: In my case, I was very careless and I ruined the lenses in my eyes, but those are repairable. Other skin reactions, like skin cancer, are not that easily repairable or could be permanent. Ultraviolet is a potential hazard and we are very proud that in UV protection, we have gone much further and have seriously better results than everybody else in the professional lighting world. We learned that from our work in museums where we had to develop special filter technologies that worked extremely effectively, and so
Page 6
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far it looks like we’re the only ones who have perfected this technology. Ed:
Have you put in glass filters that remove the UV?
Dedo: No, it is that, on our front lens, we deposit the filter in a vacuum coating that doesn’t eliminate the ultraviolet, but it brings it down to a level that is incredibly low. Like for example you could say halogen light that is usually considered to be harmless, has 135 microWatt per lumen of your ultraviolet content and we have two microWatt per lumen. Ed:
That sounds pretty safe to me?
Dedo: Drastically lower and to human skin, that is a very, very safe level. Ed: On the subject of studios, to have an LED studio, one would think that, because they’re providing cool light, you’re not going to need air conditioning, but in fact, if you have too many LED lights in a small studio, you’re still going to get a lot of heat? Dedo: There’s a myth that LED lights produce no heat. The truth is – like in every fairy tale there is a truth somewhere – the forward heat of the LED light source is low, but the heat on the LED itself is very high and 80% of the energy supplied to an LED light source turns into heat, and in traditional studio halogen, that could be considered to be 90%. So the difference is not that vast in the heat saving and in the saving in secondary cost from air conditioning. Ed: So in the old days, you needed the air conditioning to keep your talent cool, but these days, you need your air conditioning to keep your LEDs cool?
Dedo: Yes. But at the same time the trend is that LEDs, as they develop ( and we still have to regard them as part of an emerging technology ), they will provide noticeably higher useful light output in comparison to the studio halogen system. You must also differentiate between the multi panel LED lights, with many LEDs in one panel, where a lot of the light is turned into useful light; whilst in a focusing light, you have the traditional handicap like you have in a studio halogen Fresnel when the spot position that’s only 6% efficiency of the 10% visible light over the … so from 100% energy you have 0.6% use in visible light in the spot position of a studio halogen Fresnel. In that respect, also the future will be that LEDs can offer some higher efficiency; it’s not true that they don’t create any heat, but the relationship is going to get better in the future. Ed: This leads me on to one of the other things you talked about – the relationship between the CRI value and the lumen per Watt. This is something that is a major discussion point and one should look into this when deciding on the sort of light you need for a studio, an outdoor “run and gun” situation or a lighting truck or whatever. It’s a very good way of determining the best sort of light for the job that you want to put it to? Dedo: Ideally in the professional world, we want to be at a CRI level above 90. At the moment, most white phosphor LEDs are under 80 and the better LED light sources dwell in the mid-80s. The target is where we’re getting now, to get into the mid-90s. But the spectral response of the white phosphor LED will still be
Page 8
characterised by the blue peak. On the righthand side of the blue peak there is a noticeable valley, and that will remain this way and will still show noticeable differences over full spectrum light sources, like the sun or halogen. We always want to be in the region of CRI above 90, but at the moment the higher the CRI goes, the lower lumen per Watt, the lower is the energy efficiency in relationship to the light output. Ed:
There’s no such thing as a free lunch?
Dedo: Eventually there may be! This is a technology that is very important and many, many work on this with incredible intensity. Ed:
And Dedolight’s doing it too?
Dedo: We’ve been working with four different manufacturers of LED light sources for five years now and even to create a common language regarding colour evaluation was very difficult, because they test their LED light sources in an Ulbricht sphere where you stick a light source into a white ball that reflects the light in every direction and mixes it up. But when we use that in a focusing light, with our double aspheric optics, it’s a completely different game. So, special LED light sources have to be developed to co-operate best with our highly developed optics.
Ed:
And the best lighting is one that you don’t see?
Dedo: Often good lighting is the one that’s not noticeable, but there are other situations … look at a Rembrandt or a Caravaggio or an El Greco, where the lighting becomes very much noticeable. There is no rule and breaking the rule can be fun, but it’s always the motive behind it. Does breaking the rule enhance the message, or is it supposed to enhance the glory of the maker? Ed: Now you’re getting into religion. stop.
We’d better
Time to talk with Chris McKenzie who’s looking remarkably well after having half his brain removed. Ed:
Which side of your brain was it Chris?
Chris: middle.
It was the dead centre one, straight up the
Ed: No, in fact it was his heart he had a few little problems with, but he’s looking good now and so ready for more stress, for people to call him with their problems? Chris: Yes absolutely and starting off with Grant and working up from there. It’s always the way. Ed: Now one of the key points I learnt today is that Dedolight means great optics. It’s all about the optics. There are lots of people who can make light bulbs, and put them in boxes ( and they do ) but Dedolight goes that extra distance by selecting the right sort of illuminating device, putting it in the right shaped and robust box, and then top it off with the clever bit – the optics? more on page 13
Ed: And something that has impressed people I’ve talked to is that you do your own testing; you don’t rely on the manufacturer of the LED or the bulb that you use to give you the specifications that you then pass on to your customers. You actually do the testing yourself to make sure it works in a real world situation? Dedo: In the descriptions of LED qualities, there are noticeable lies being told, more so than we’re accustomed to in politics and religion. Many of the lighting professionals might agree that there are no valid rules for every lighting situation. Rule #1 in lighting is that there is no rule. But one thing that will apply to many lighting tasks is that we may not want to show that a great lighting master was at work. It’s more subtle if you can concentrate on conveying the message and transporting moods, rather than showing excellence in handling your lighting instruments. A comparison would be that a painter should not be advertising the brand name of his brush … you should look at the painting and that should convey mood, message. We’re the servants of the image, the image is the servant of the director, and the director is the servant of the story. We have a distinct place in the hierarchy and the big god is the screen – the ultimate that we live for. There are other aspects, like in business there are people who think the essence of business is found on the golf course or at the dinner table, but I’m a very naïve purist and I don’t live on golf courses or at dinner tables. I like to live watching the screen. Page 10
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evenly spread across that flat surface, even though it’s not coming in at right angles? Chris: A typical application in the film or tele sense is where you’ve got a key light hanging over the head and you want to have someone walk 10, 20 metre towards camera. They need to be uniformly lit during that walk, unless you’re going to do an iris pull, and if you’re in a black studio, you can do an iris pull. But if you’ve got a lit background you can’t, so you’ve got to attenuate the light if you’re using one source. Ed: So you can either do it by a subtractive means, taking out some of the light, but Dedo’s done something a bit cleverer?
How to light an interview.
Chris: Yes that’s very true. A well reputed New Zealand manufacturer said to me years ago that there’s nothing different in Fresnels, they’re a lens, a reflector and a lamp and there are 50 companies in the world that make those and a proportion of them make them very well. But what Dedo did was go back to square one and relook at the optical system. It’s probably had three iterations in the time we’ve been dealing with them since the early 90s and yes, the aspheric and double aspheric optic that he uses is how they achieve the collection of light and distribution of light. I’ve not seen anything that comes close to a Dedolight in terms of the flatness of the beam and in a cinematic sense, that’s what we want. We want a consistent exposure across the beam, because there’s nothing worse than having someone with half their face a third of a stop down, because the audience don’t know why you’ve done it, but unless you’ve done it deliberately, it makes them uneasy if you’re not presenting them with a uniformly lit face. That’s where we start from. We start from the face and in most situations ( particularly if you’re doing corporate video ) you’ve got to make the CEO look a million bucks when he might have had a hard night before. So as lighting people and cinematographers, we have to help him to make him look that million bucks that he’s getting as a salary. Ed: One of the points I liked that Dedo made was that, with a Dedolight, you can cheat the inverse square law by two methods. One – the simple method – was to use a graded filter? Chris: That’s true and it’s a technique that’s been used in the film and TV industry by using wires with variable amounts of transmission … it looks like a flyscreen mesh. If you’ve got 30% wire and 70% open spaces, you lose 30% of your light. It’s very crude and to do a transition from half to a third to a quarter, there’s always a hard line. Ed: This is in a situation where you’re putting a light on an angle on a subject so you want the light to be
Chris: Well he’s done what every good cameraman knows … he’s actually put a graduated ND filter and you know anyone who has put a graduated ND in front of a camera to hold back clouds or sky or to do effects knows how that works, but he’s the first person to do it on a light. Ed:
But that’s still subtractive?
Chris: Absolutely and that subtractive principle is the primary way of doing it. But the second principle is using his asymmetric lens which is a change in the shape of a lens that puts more light through the top part of the lens and less light through the bottom. By the same means, you get that attenuation in light over a linear plane. Ed: Or if you rotate that lens you can have more light at the bottom than you can at the top? Chris: That’s right, yes, top to bottom, side to side, front to back. So yes, in effect, you’re not cheating the inverse square law, you’re actually making the inverse square law work for you. But you are cheating what people expect out of a fitting. Ed: Now the big question I have for you is this. Here’s Dedo presenting all of the lights in his range and, in quite a few situations, making comparisons with ARRI and showing that, certainly with the ones he chose ( apart from one ), the Dedolight model beat the ARRI hands down. How does this fit with PLS now being an ARRI light supplier? Chris: It fits well because a lot of the Dedolight kit at the moment is still in the small end. It is expanding into the larger fixtures … it’s horses for courses. There are still ARRI lights that you would want to use over a Dedolight for larger applications and I’m not saying that Dedolight won’t pick up to that level eventually. ARRI have a broader range of fixtures while most of the Dedolight product is fairly designed for purpose, so it’s more portable. One of the things that Dedo has talked to you about is the portable studio concept and the fact that, when you’ve got the single man run and gun shooters, they don’t have to think about “oh I can only
Page 13
shoot this with a single light on top of my camera” – they can still take something that gives them a five light kit. They can do some nice portraiture, they can do some two header interviews, they can light backgrounds and everything else. That’s where I see it, that “yes”, they are trumping ARRI on some of the optics and they’re trumping every other conventional fixture manufacturer as well. Ed: So it might incentivise the others to up their game? Chris: Absolutely, yes, and the thing that we always push is that we supply what people need, not just what we happen to have in our line of kit. We’ve just done a couple of studios where we’ve supplied a mixture of manufacturers’ equipment because one item was better than the other and vice versa. So mixtures of ARRI, local Selecon LED kit, Strand dimming and Dedolight. You could go to one manufacturer and buy all that stuff, but you’re not necessarily going to get the best for the purpose in that situation. Each situation is unique – there are people I wouldn’t sell Dedolights to because they’re not suitable for what they’re trying to do, or I wouldn’t trust them! Ed: But you are trusting us to play with your gear because, this afternoon, we get a tutorial from Dedo and then we get to set up lighting situations and see how these work with different cameras?
The new improved Chris.
Chris: Absolutely, and at the end of the day, everybody here knows what they are doing theoretically so it’s a matter of getting your hands on the stuff and doing it. I think I’ve heard bits of this presentation probably 4 or 5 times now but every time I hear it, I learn something more that Dedo’s come up with. He’s an incredibly collaborative person
and, as he said earlier on I think, he’s a big kid in a sandbox, but he doesn’t like to play on his own. He values people’s opinions and people’s ideas and when you look at some of the kit, it’s come out of a lot of other people’s ideas. He’s surrounded himself with a bunch of very clever people, in terms of his electronic design, his optical design and mechanical design, but he’s the visionary, he’s the driver and he’s the man who has the passion. I just feel very humble … to have him here in New Zealand is pretty special, and hopefully everybody gets something out of today and if they don’t, well … Ed:
Sod them.
Chris: Ed:
It’s their loss.
Hey, let’s go and play.
Chris:
Absolutely.
Post-Play It was hugely informative, educational and I found out what I’d been doing wrong for 30 years. Now I know better and I’m sure the others do too. Keep a watch on the PLS website because there should be some great NZVN tutorials available. Go to www.kelpls.co.nz FYI Footnote When Chris McKenzie picked up Dedo and Elena from the airport on Tuesday night, on the way back into town, he was going to drive up to the top of Mt Eden to show them the sights at about 5.30pm, but he decided “oh no, I’ll go to One Tree Hill.” So they had a nice view over Auckland city and it was only afterwards they heard about the madman with the gun who was robbing tourists and shooting on Mt Eden at 5.30pm! You should buy a Life on the road for Elena. Lotto ticket Chris.
Page 14
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COMPATIBLE WITH IPHONE, IPAD AND IPOD TOUCH Rode NTG1 Condenser shotgun microphone for professionals The NTG1’s full frequency response, low noise and audio transparency make it an ideal film, video, and voice over microphone, while its low weight (105gm/3.7oz) makes for an ideal boom microphone. Features: • Native 20Hz-20kHz response plus a selectable high-pass filter at 80Hz. • WSVM windshield to minimise light wind noise and plosives. • 10 year warranty.
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that hasn’t been confirmed yet, but obviously you get a lot more by purchasing an Autodesk licence through DVT with support and services that far outweigh what you do getting something online.
hardware from a reseller you can work out support contracts or other levels of service and support to wrap around your business to make sure that you’re always being productive.
Ed: Well there are other editing and graphics products available online already so does that mean that the Autodesk product is so complicated it needs a reseller to support it?
Ed: Is there a difference between Smoke and “Smoke on the Mac”?
Con: It’s a relatively problem-free product; there’s a rather large amount of training material available online as well. But what resellers bring to the party is an enormous amount of expertise, industry knowledge and understanding around workflows, and hardware solutions that go around Smoke and they have an enormous amount to offer. You’re paying the same price whether you buy it through one of our resellers or whether you buy it online, so we strongly recommend that customers purchase it through a reseller to get that extra support.
Ed: Well Stuart, that sounds like a big confidence in DVT’s ability to support such technical product. With your experience at range of editing products, is Smoke on the more difficult for somebody coming in cold Adobe CS6?
Most of our customers using our products are deriving their income out of using the products, and they really need a reseller standing behind them to support them through that process, so that when they come up to software issues, or need some extra support, they’re offering a layer beyond which Autodesk are able to offer direct. When they need help with hardware, they’re offering a layer beyond … well Autodesk doesn’t even offer hardware, so they need a little bit more than just Apple support which can take, you know, two weeks to get your machine fixed, whereas if you buy your
Con: There’s really just one product – it’s Smoke on the Mac. vote of a highly selling a Mac any to, say,
Stuart: Well the wonderful thing about the 2013 version of Smoke on the Mac is that it now has the same user interface as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Media Composer. So anyone used to one of those three products can now step into Smoke on the Mac and almost without any training whatsoever, move clips around on the timeline, trim the in and out points, do cross-dissolves, fades, wipes, picture in picture effects all work intuitively the same way as those other three applications. So Autodesk has done an enormous amount of work on that front end interface to make it comfortable and very familiar to anyone that’s come from an editorial background. But where Smoke on the Mac differs from those other products is you’re just one mouse click away from moving into the high end 3D compositing
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environment they call Action, or one mouse click away from the high end node based compositing environment of Connect FX which has such enormous power under the hood. So if you just need to edit, Smoke is now as good an editor as Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer or any other editing application. But it also brings an enormous amount of graphics capabilities, it’s got graphics capabilities built in, it brings an enormous amount of compositing capabilities built in, it’s got grading built in … it’s got all of these things in one product. And you know the biggest problems that people have with complex workflows that they’ve developed with things like After Effects and Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve and CINEMA 4D is that when they get down to the wire and their clients come in and want to make last minute changes, the amount of round tripping that they have to go through, particularly if you add some plug-ins into the mix, gets extremely complicated. And your ability to be able to unravel your project to make some of those small changes, whether they want to swap one shot out for another or do a slightly different grade on one part of it that you’ve already composited somewhere else, it can all come unravelled quite quickly. With Smoke on the Mac having a completely integrated environment to do the whole thing, it means you can make any of those changes at any time without any compromise. Ed: It brings to mind the expression “one throat to choke?” Stuart: sure.
Stuart: It’s great, and you’ve got 1500 of them, 32 gig of RAM, 3.4GHz of processing power is an enormous amount of power in a $4,000 machine that can now drive Autodesk, Smoke, extremely well. And add to that a little bit of Thunderbolt storage, AJA I/O XT and a Sony OLED display, and you’ve got an absolutely awesome editing, grading, visual effects, finishing, conforming system that is second to none. Ed: So it’s all come together as a perfect storm at DVT. You’ve got the software and you’ve got the hardware, you’re ready to go? Stuart: Absolutely and it’s been great fun now that the 2013 version is finally released, we’ve got these new iMacs here, it’s been enormous fun shipping them out to a range of different customers. Seeing what they’re doing with these products now is absolutely exciting and invigorating. We really enjoy it. Ed: I mean they must be pleased, because we actually announced this after NAB last year that it was coming, but it took a long time. Was that a good thing? Stuart: Well you know a lot of companies announce at NAB and ship at IBC. This was a little bit later, but it was a wonderful Christmas present to have it all, yes. Ed: So we can expect something even bigger at NAB 2013? Stuart: Well we’ll have to wait and see, but it’s hard to imagine that they could top what they’ve NZVN delivered in the 2013 version for Smoke for Mac.
It’s one system to rule them all, that’s for
Ed: Oh, bold, bold comments. But you mentioned in there that this contains graphics, this contains effects, but what about the files … we’re so used to exporting a file from our editing programme, such as a still picture; with Adobe it’s easy because you make it a Photoshop file. Are the file types compatible with other products? Stuart: First of all, looking at video files and the different camera formats that we’re shooting on today, editing applications have traditionally had better support for Sony and Panasonic and RED and all the different versions of file formats that are out there, but now Smoke with the 2013 release supports all of those file formats as well. So it doesn’t matter which camera you’re shooting on, that media is now compatible with Smoke. Also, in addition to that, you can bring in Photoshop files, either as a single graphic or in its individual layers for animation. So it has an enormous amount of compatibility with all of the existing media, graphics and sound files that we’re already using, so there’s no problem with any of that. Ed:
Even my high-band?
Stuart: Even your high-band, absolutely – if you want to capture tape you can do that too. Ed:
What more do you need?
Stuart: Just get your Smoke for Mac and the new hardware. One of the other really cool things about this product is that Apple have got their latest version of the iMac, which now has a proper NVIDIA graphics card in it with 1500 CUDA cores of processing power … Ed:
How big is a CUDA core?
Stuart: Ed:
A CUDA core is about this big!
Wow, I’ve never seen one that big. Page 22
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Microphone “How to” With the help of Shure microphones, Daniel Larsen from Shure and our model today, Stephen Buckland from Sound Techniques, we are looking at how you correctly attach a radio microphone and transmitter – but first, how you choose a shotgun. Ed: Daniel, I understand that in shotgun microphones, “size does matter”? Daniel: Yes it does. The operating principle is frequency cancellation by difference in timing. When you take the same audio signal, delay and recombine it, there is a cancellation. The greater the timing delay, the lower the frequency that is cancelled. The longer the microphone the more off-axis frequencies you can cancel, the more directional the system. Ed: So a short one is more for trying to record a crowd? Daniel: Yes, perhaps used for something that you need a broader coverage of. Ed: And the good thing about the Shure microphone system is that it’s modular. Can you explain that? Daniel: Well the modular system has the microphone that connects onto the preamp and so we’ve got the option to be able to change from a shorter to a longer capsule onto the same preamp. Ed: So there’s one preamp and then you just screw in whichever, whether you want a long, a medium or a short microphone onto that. Obviously it saves price and it saves weight in your kit? Daniel: That’s right. This model, the A89U, has a very small footprint. The preamp runs parallel to the capsule, and so you’re basically able to take up less
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Daniel shows two Shure shotguns.
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physical room with the same sized microphone capsule and preamp. Ed: So this is specifically designed for a camera – to clamp onto the top of a camera? Daniel: Yes, it would be ideal for that. Ed: Stephen, this would also have applications for the soundie? Stephen: Yes, because of its low profile, it means that you can fit it into tight corners like, say, you’re in an office with a low ceiling, you could have the microphone up right against the ceiling and not have to accommodate the extra length of the power and preamp. A very novel system. Ed: Now Daniel, radio mics. You’ve placed one on Stephen so tell me about your placement? Daniel: I’ve put the transmitter on the talent’s hip, somewhere that’s easy for me to reach. We could have put it anywhere on Stephen, but that’s a nice place to put it if he’s walking around – ideally it’s not going to fall off him or be sat on. Ed: I can see there’s a clip on there to attach it to a belt – how about the microphone and lead? Stephen: Ideally the microphone should sit roughly in the solar plexus, that’s the best point in the chest. Ed: That’s the bony bit at the middle-bottom of your rib cage. Why is that the ideal place? Stephen: It’s about the correct distance from the mouth where the noise is coming from when people are speaking. Ed: Aren’t you also getting vibrations from the chest? I’ve heard that it’s getting vibrations from the chest cavity rather than the mouth? Stephen: No, it’s more getting the signal from the mouth. If you hold it right up close to the mouth, then you would get what’s called the proximity effect, which is a sort of a “boomy” sound as if someone’s talking directly into your ear. A bit further away it’s more open sound. You also get problems if you clip it onto the neck of a T-shirt – it starts to sound really guttural. Ed: So that distance is pretty critical? Stephen: Yes, if you can get it in the solar plexus that’s the best place. It depends on the situation – it depends what the person’s wearing. There are constraints obviously if they’re wearing a tight knit garment or satin shirt or something like that and you might have to be a bit more inventive … Ed: Like a body stocking? Stephen: Like a body stocking, yes. Ed: Have you worn one recently?
Stephen: Only when I played a spider in the primary school end of year show. Ed: Any photos? Stephen: No chance. Ed: Damn! Alright, so as you say, the ideal place is the solar plexus, but you sometimes have to put it places to suit the garments that the person is wearing? Stephen: Yes. If you think about stage use in particular, often the microphone is put up into the edge of the hairline or the wig – that’s not much use on people like me or you who haven’t got much hair to hide it. You can even sometimes try behind an ear, but you have to bear in mind that if you put it on one side of the face and the person directs all their conversation to the other side of the face, you won’t get much Stephen wired on the outside useable sound. for picture clarity. Ed: But that’s for those specialty stage microphones. What we’re talking about here is something that’s probably about 10mm in diameter? It’s not easy to hide. Stephen: Yes true. Ed: If you move it closer to the mouth, what happens to the frequency? Stephen: The sound starts to get a bit nasally and it’s not as crisp or as clear as it would be if it was further away. Ed: And if you go further away from the solar plexus? Stephen: Well you start to lose level, so as you amplify the microphone sound, you start to pick up more and more of the background sound as well. Ed: And then if you put it underneath the clothing? Stephen: It will sound muffled unless it’s a mic that’s specially tailored. Some microphones are tailored with a little high frequency boost to compensate for that, but generally if it’s under clothing it will sound muffled, just
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like it would if you pull your beanie down over your ears. Ed: And for popping and windy conditions Daniel? Daniel: You have a windsock or pop filter and that basically reduces really high frequency and the low to mid-range frequency that some people have in their voice. These lower frequencies are known as “plosives”. Plosives have a distinct popping sound. The windsock also helps with low frequency boom that some people have in their voice or reducing wind noise when recording in outdoor locations. It’s good to have that option of being able to use a windsock if needed. Ed: What about turning the microphone round the other way, so it’s pointing down – what effect does that have? Daniel: That would work. Being “off axis” to the microphone will work, however you’re not going to get as much direct sound coming from the person speaking, and also if it is windy, that’s not really going to help that cause. Stephen: Turning it upside down can help though if you’ve got a person with a very sibilant voice, you know with lots of “s’s” – it can just take a bit of the edge off the “s” so that it doesn’t sound so sibilant. Ed: Okay, so this is for a fairly standard microphone, the large condenser type one. Now there are specialty microphones that you can attach to these packs and I guess, the good thing about most of these packs, especially the Shure, is that you can plug a variety of microphones into the same pack. What you get in the basic package is a basic microphone that works well, but what other options do you have Stephen?
Stephen: Well often you’ll find that, with a higher quality microphone, you’ll get a better quality result. Shure make a range of lavalier mics which all should work with this particular pack and I would imagine other manufacturers’ mics can be wired up accordingly as well. Ed: So if you already have a mic you can plug it into this pack very likely? Stephen: Yes, once you’ve changed the connector. Ed: Okay, so when you do hide the mic under someone’s clothing, what are the worst fabrics to put it under? Stephen: Among the worst would probably be silk or nylon polyester type material, because they easily slide across the face of the microphone. Bear in mind that the microphone is at the end of the capsule and anything that touches that is going to be amplified and picked up. Also, we talked before about body stockings … tight clothing, where there isn’t any gap to put the microphone, is going to cause grief and cause clothing rustle. If you put it under, say, a T-shirt on someone with a hairy chest, the poor sound mixer will be waving their head from side to side in great agony and everyone will be wondering why. Of course it’s the sound of the hair bristling against the microphone. Ed: So what do you do in that case? Stephen: You get out your razor! When you’re putting on a lapel mic, it‘s quite useful to secure the mic cable in a couple of places. One is relatively close to the microphone to stop the cable moving there – because the cable goes into the back of the microphone, if there’s any noise on the cable, it will be
Page 27
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amplified by the microphone; and then secure the cable in a loop near the transmitter end, so when at the end of the day the person who has got the microphone on decides it’s time for them to go home and yanks the microphone off, they’ve got a loop of cable that will stop them pulling the whole thing and dropping it on the floor. Ed: You’ve got to keep an eye on that talent don’t you Stephen? Stephen: Oh yes, talent will be off home as soon as they can. Ed: Okay, now adjustments. In the transmitter pack, what can you do? Daniel: In the transmitter you’ve got gain attenuation … say your talent that you’re using is very dynamic, you can attenuate the level so that the talent can be transmitted to the receiver without peaking the output. Ed: Now I think I’m right in saying this works like adding neutral density filters in a camera? An ND filter gives you more dynamic range in high light conditions. With a radio mic transmitter, the normal position is the quiet position and you attenuate the gain ( in other words lower the gain ) when you’ve got someone speaking very loudly? Daniel: That’s correct. Basically we can lower the gain so that the small operational amplifiers that are in the unit can amplify the signal without clipping causing distortion. This makes things nice and easy to work with in post. Ed: It gives you some dynamic range which you wouldn’t have if you just left it on the normal setting – all of your audio would be clipped?
Daniel:
That’s right, correct.
I noticed this when I recorded an auction competition and I didn’t know about attenuation adjustment. When I put the audio onto the timeline, it was basically a block of sound and I really didn’t know quite what to do until I read the manual and discovered attenuation. Hmmmm, problem solved. Ed: Now I guess the other thing one needs to set these days, because of the spectrum changes, is the frequency. How’s that done on this Shure pack? Daniel: This is done quite easily. We open up the base of the pack like so, it’s hidden – which is quite good because talent can’t touch it and accidentally change the frequency that they’re on. We open the bottom of both packs, we point them at each other, there’s an infrared syncing device in there, and we hit the clearly labelled “sync” button on the receiver pack and that will send the frequency from it to the transmitter pack and they will be frequency locked together. Ed: So you choose your frequency on the receiver pack? Daniel: There is a function on the pack that will do an automatic scan to a frequency that’s available for those packs to use. And the great thing to look for in any radio pack I’ve found, is ones with AA batteries, because sometimes it happens that the batteries that you thought you had fully charged or that you had spare, in fact are flat and NZVN that’s very embarrassing.
Page 29
As Certain as Taxes We are at Editworks in Christchurch with Grant and Lisa Mitchell who have made a name for themselves in the local funeral market. Ed: I guess that’s a fairly niche market – is it only funerals that you do? Grant: We do weddings on request but, yes, funerals are mainstream. Ed: And this is something that you always wanted to do, or …? Grant: We just stumbled across it really. My sister -in-law had the business before we took over. My lovely wife, Lisa, helped her out a few times; that involvement grew and here we are four years later. Ed: Do you still find it’s challenging? Grant: Every funeral is different … people have different requests, people have different photos, so everything is different about every case really. Ed: So you have a pattern … you say photos, so just talk us through your process – if it’s not a trade secret? Grant: Oh no, it’s not really. We pretty much freelance through the main funeral homes in Christchurch and, when we get a call from the funeral director from whichever company, they give us the details of the family, we ring the family and go out and meet them. They give us photos they’ve already presorted and we just add some of their favourite music to the slideshow and put it together. Ed: You’re putting those together as a slideshow to show at the funeral? Grant: Yes. We turn up about an hour before the service starts to set up either our own gear or some companies have already got a projector and screen and stuff installed in the chapel. Ed: Is that as far as it goes, or do you actually record the funeral service as well? Grant: If the family request that the service be recorded, we do record that. Most of the reasons people get a service recorded is if it’s a young person who has passed away and they have a young family, then they’ll get it recorded for the children for later on in life; or if there’s somebody overseas who can’t make it for whatever reason. Ed: And what equipment do you use for that, if you have to do the recording? Grant: We’ve got Sony V1’s that we’re using at the moment, and also a Sony NX70. That’s pretty much it. Ed:
And you do the editing as well?
Grant and Lisa - yes, it was Christmas at the time.
Grant: We’ve got a local guy who does editing for us, but we’ve also got a good guy in Auckland. Ed: Now tell me, you’re also interested in not only providing a DVD to your clients of the recorded funeral but you’ve got some other ideas as to how you might want to deliver this to people who couldn’t be there? Grant: Possibly. Obviously, technology is available, but there has to be a connection from the church, to allow web streaming of the service to an audience of however many want to view it. I guess the world’s your oyster once you have connections. Yes, that’s definitely an avenue we’ve been looking at for a little bit, but the whole connection problem is what
Page 30
we’re finding at the moment. Some churches have WiFi or modem routers; some churches are not wanting us to connect into their network for whatever reason, and it just becomes a little difficult. We’ve hit a bit of a brick wall in some respects, but without spending too much money, not doing it on the cheap, but to try and get a cost-effective product that will not escalate the price for the family, because it’s not about that. It’s about providing the service, all the while making some money for yourself, but also keeping the costs realistic for the family. Ed: You don’t want to take an OB truck for example? Grant: Not at this stage, but we could be looking at it. To help us through what the possibilities are, we have the local man in the know, Mike Symes from AVA. Ed: Mike, there are a number of options that Grant and Lisa could engage in. What sort of things should they be looking at? Mike: We’ve already looked at a few options for Grant, but the most solid way of doing stuff like this is to go “hard wired” – as long as people have an internet connection which is good and solid. If you’re looking at a wireless situation, you need something that’s going to be strong enough or have an application that you can broadcast, because it’s not practical to do it over a short distance, but over a long distance you do require quite a bit of infrastructure. Ed: Okay, so for that simple solution, the connection to the church’s modem, what are the options there … obviously AVerCaster is one? Mike: Yes, AVerCaster is in the “low budget / no fuss” area and then there are products like VBrick, ViewCast – it depends again on the quality of conversion you want to get and also what you’ve got going into your system. If you’re going straight from a camera where you’ve got HDMI, you’ve got SDI, you’ve got composite and so on, so standard definition, high definition, it’s really up to the individual. These days, I would be looking at an HD solution, but obviously it’s a lot lower cost to do something on standard definition. Ed: So what are the options when you don’t have a cable solution and you’re in a church somewhere? Is there any option other than record it and then transmit it with a delay? Mike: Basically that is it, but you can record and it’s just a delay to transmit when you can get to a link. As I say, if you have a wireless solution, short distance it’s not too much of an issue, but long distance it is.
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Ed: So there are solutions there, it’s just a case of talking them through and finding out what’s the best one that’s going to fit your budget and the end result? Mike: It would be nice to say that there is a solution to use anytime, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in the near future. We’ve also got the new wireless frequencies to be allocated and what’s going to happen with that, and that’s a whole new area. Ed: We won’t go there. And now the brains of the outfit – Lisa – tell me when the two of you are out on a job, who actually is the director? Lisa: Me. Ed: Ooooh … well, I guess you were the one who started this … so where were the skills that you had that let you get into this? Lisa: It was “on the job” training, so I’ve learnt from my sister and just improved from there. We came from a totally different background – we had a courier run for 15 years; we’ve had a milk run; I’ve worked in an office – so this is totally different for us and, yes, it was “on the job” training. Ed: I would assume that the actual use of the camera and the recording and all that sort of thing – that’s really secondary to the main value in that you’re a people person and you can relate to your clients who are obviously in some sort of a stressful state at the time? Lisa: Yes, you understand that they’re grieving and you know that they don’t want people in their face and you just get a feel on the day for what they want. I find it’s important to capture who’s there, because the family are going through a stressful time and they just want to be able to go off and grieve and they don’t really realise how many people were there, who’s there … so it’s important to capture all that sort of thing at the start. You just put yourself in the family’s situation and you back off not to be in their face. They don’t want cameras near them, they just want to grieve in their own way, but it’s still important to capture all those bits for them for later. Ed: So there’s more to the business than knowing the latest technology? Lisa: Most definitely. It’s knowing the people, yes. Ed: Future developments – is there anything you’ve got in mind apart from the streaming? Lisa: We’re too busy at the moment and we’ll just keep working as we are. Once it dies down that’s when we’ll start looking further into avenues. Ed: “Dies down” – that’s appropriate for a funeral NZVN team!
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AD COPY REQUIREMENTS: To qualify for listed rates, all copy and artwork must be submitted in photo copy ready form - black on white, as an Adobe PDF file - print optimised. Email to <finnzed@xtra.co.nz> AD DEADLINES:
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Pay by cheque or direct credit to ANZ # 010242-0160111-00 Page 31
Smoke demonstration event Tuesday 19th March 2013 | 7pm start DVT – 45 Fairfax Ave, Penrose, Auckland Refreshments will be provided. Join Autodesk and DVT for a close look at the all new and exciting Autodesk Smoke 2013 professional video editing software. SHIPPING NOW. If you’re a producer, director, editor, grader or visual effects artist don’t miss this opportunity to see Smoke 2013 in action first hand. Rob O’Neill, Autodesk’s Senior Application Specialist for Creative Finishing, will take you through the powerful feature set. Smoke is now easier to use, more flexible with hardware requirements and more cost effective than ever before.
To register, email sales@dvt.co.nz
REGISTER NOW with name and phone number to register
PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS
Autodesk Smoke 2013 is now available from DVT. Visit www.dvt.co.nz to download our free product guide. * 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 or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or a liates 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 o erings, and specifications and pricing at anytime without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
www.dvt.co.nz Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd | Phone: 09 525 0788 | Email: sales@dvt.co.nz | 45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland
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