Learning something new every day

I don't think it's a newsflash to anyone that works in production that there's always something new to learn. Formats keep changing, there are dozens of cameras to keep straight and the menus...good grief, the menus.

But quite apart from the technical aspects of this industry there are always other things that one can learn. Having been out on location for the past couple of days (yes, I was set free from the office) I now know the following:

Big buildings are not as close as they appear.
Case in point: the distance between the Capitol and Union Station in DC. Looks like it should be a quick walk. Here's a map. Should be a piece of cake. 15 minutes of slogging to get to the New Jersey entrance of the Capitol turns that notion on it's head. And brings us to our next lesson of the day...

Always take a handcart to lug gear around.
So I was showing up this morning with a Panasonic HDX900 with a 16x6.3 HD lens on it and then a bag of assorted audio, video and power cables. Being an office wonk it never even crossed my mind that carrying that amount of gear a short distance (wrong...see above) might get really uncomfortable. When you're mentally working out the weight as you're walking, pretending that the shoulder strap isn't cutting your blood supply off to your arm and taking a real long look at crosswalks to catch your breath, er, make sure the road is clear you know that wheels are an essential item. Which segues nicely into...

Don't ever assume someone else will have the bits and pieces you'll need.
I'm never showing up anywhere ever again without the following pieces of kit:

• 25' Stinger
• Triple tap
• Ground lifter
  
• Set of screwdrivers
• Gaffer tape
• (2) XLRs
• (2) BNCs
• BNC coupler, splitter and BNC:RCA adapter
• Wheels

By the way, "anywhere ever again" includes ball games, house parties and baptisms. You just never know when you'll need to run power and make sure the cable's safe for pedestrian traffic.

Finally...

The hours suck in this business.
I had a 7am call time this morning. It's around 20 miles from my house to Union Station, so that's roughly 40 minutes of driving. I figured I needed to be wheels up at 6am, so that meant a 5:20am wake-up to make myself presentable. When you take into account that I'm more comfortable seeing 5:20 in the morning from the other side...well, let's just say that Starbucks was my friend a few times during the course of the day today. And I was off-set and done by 11am! Gonzo and the crew with him on the shoot for a WebMD on Monday had a 7am call in Baltimore and they didn't leave location until gone 10pm. And then he got up Tuesday and pulled another 11 hour day.

All in all, I think it would be good for anyone who wants to go into production to go out and have a couple of days like I've had this week. You'll realize that the problems you don't run into on location are because the crew has done it's homework, prepped accordingly and anticipated issues. You'll have a little more sympathy for the guys getting into the building five minutes late after having to haul carts of gear from the loading dock, through security and then go and park their vehicles. And you'll know not to wonder why they aren't jumping up and down with excitement at your project -- it's nothing personal, it's because the pre-dawn call time you gave them is their third that week.

Chris Cardno
Production Manager
Visual Edge Productions

Footage from the HPX2000 using the Letus depth of field system

Letus depth of field system with the HPX2000 from Chris Cardno on Vimeo.

Here's a quick glimpse of footage captured using the Letus depth of field system on the Panasonic HPX2000.  We've got the 2000 is 720/24p and we're encoding to DVCProHD on the P2 card.  The Letus B4 relay lens is attached to the Letus Ultimate and we've got our modified 85mm Nikon prime on the front.  The rigging and follow focus (seen in the stills in our last post) are from Zacuto, who gave us a very nice shout out on Twitter today -- thanks, guys!

The Coke Zero can is 3' from the film plane, the Dust Off is 5' away and the Christmas lights are 6'+ from the film plane.

This is going to be a LOT of fun!

Letus relay lens is here

Above you can see the new Letus relay lens working with the Panasonic HPX2000.
Above you'll see a closer shot.
And another close up from a different angle.

Isn't it exciting? :-)

We've got our modified Nikon 50mm lens on the front of the Ultimate and, of course, the good folks at Zacuto make the best custom gear on the planet so we have that in play as well.

You're probably wondering where the footage is showing the gear in action -- we're working on it, I think we'll have some tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a shot of a monitor!
Moving images coming soon...

All the "marvelous nonsense"

Dealing with video cameras today reminds me of watching Ghostbusters with my Gran. As Dan Ackroyd's Ray Stantz instructs Ernie Hudson's Winston Zeddmore on the correct way to clean a trap after a catching a ghost my Gran laughingly said, "That is some marvelous nonsense they're talking in this film."

23.98, 24p, 30p, 60i, 720o, 1080i, DVCPro, HDCAM, Red, HDV, down-converting, 4x3, 16x9, P2, XDCAM, 4:2:2, long GOP, intra-frame...

Marvelous nonsense for most people. And it's only going to get worse as formats adapt and we move into newer technologies. For those in the field it's becoming increasingly difficult to get to the root of what a client wants. For those who rent cameras it's a series of phone calls and last minute double checks that the camera that is going out will shoot the format, frame rate and frequency that the client needs.

Here's a popular scenario. A producer calls and says they have an upcoming shoot. They want to shoot with a 900. First question: which 900? SDX900, HDX900, F-900? It should be simple to narrow it down to high definition or standard definition, but that leaves you having to explain the differences between Sony's F-900 and Panasonic's HDX900. Which, in turn, leads to a discussion of the post capabilities: can your edit facility deal with HDCAM or DVCProHD? Once that's done the frame rate will come up. And that's yet another round of discussions.

I knew a professor in college who, at the beginning of an exam, would write four letters on the chalkboard: RTFQ. Read The Fricking Question. Or words to that effect. In production today, with a constantly shifting set of acquisition formats and broadcast standards, the letters need to be updated: ATFQ. Ask The Fricking Questions. Yeah, it gets old but dragging out a phone conversation before the shoot is a heck of a lot better than a phone call after the shoot from a producer or editor freaking out that they can't play back or ingest what you shot for them.

As tapeless begins to get a foothold in the industry (and that's a whole other topic...) the questions are going to become more labyrinthine. Which codec are we shooting in, can your post house deal with a Mac formatted hard drive, are you BRINGING a hard drive, all of these issues are going to rear their head and all of them need to be addressed before the shoot begins.

So, what to make of all of this? In my opinion it is now imperative that the entire production process become a fluid whole as opposed to a simple breakdown between pre-production, production and post-production. The DP for a project needs to be aware of the post-production capabilities, the editor needs to understand the creative reason for a particular format or frame rate, and the production company needs to make sure that everyone is on the same page. This then makes life a lot easier when the project needs to pick up gear in other markets or when a different operator has to sub in for the lead DP -- everyone is educated, informed and able to clearly state what the production needs are. That's how to cut through all the tech speak and "marvelous nonsense."

At least until the next format arrives.

Review: Panasonic AG-HPG20 'P2 Portable'

We've had the new P2 Portable in-house for just over a week now and, while we're still running some tests to see exactly what it can do, it appears that it's going to be a very useful addition to the Visual Edge inventory.
For the camera owner, the P2 Portable offers the ability to make your production a P2 based experience, and improve the quality of the captured image, while using the camera you already own. Connecting via HD/SD-SDI the HPG20 can be mounted to the back of a 2/3" camera or can sit independently. The P2 Portable will then take your 1080 or 720 signal and can encode it to AVC-Intra 100, AVC-Intra 50 or DVCProHD. If you're outputting an SD-SDI signal from your camera (NTSC or PAL) you can choose to encode to DVCPro50, DVCPro25 or DV.

The 3.5" LCD monitor gives you or your producer a live view of what's being shot and also enable clip viewing for playback. An external HD or SD monitor can be connected via the built in HD/SD-SDI or composite video outputs and the P2 Portable has both a built in speaker and RCA audio outputs. Waveform and Vectorscope are included and can be used with both the incoming signal and the recorded ones.At the end of the shoot the HPG20 can directly connect to a hard drive and transfer your footage with verification. A large improvement over the previous model is the P2 Portable's ability to play back the files DIRECTLY from the hard drive and display them on either the onboard monitor or an external HD monitor. In addition, it's easy to name each card, or even shot, that you transfer to the drive which makes for a more streamlined post-production process. Finally, the HPG20 gives you the ability to edit and load metadata and text notes, enabling the post-house to identify the camera, shooter, location, etc.

The HPG20 offers other features, although they appear to be of limited use in the field. The HD/SD-SDI output is a welcome addition for monitoring but the down/up/cross-conversion functions are only accessible through that port -- as such, it is not possible to to shoot in 720p and then output 1080i to your client's hard drive without the use of a "black box." The included Firewire 400 port does not allow transfer of AVC-Intra encoded footage and cannot be used for data transfer to a hard drive. You can, however, stream directly for recording through Firewire which, in essence, makes the HPG20 a more stable and versatile version of the Firestore.
The biggest problem with the HPG20 is the time it takes to transfer directly to a hard drive: it's abysmally slow. Switching verification off results in a nearly 60% improvement in transfer time although it is still slower then using the Duel Adapter with a Mac Book Pro and a hard drive attached through Firewire 800. Using the HPG20, with verification on, to transfer a 16GB card via USB 2.0 to a LaCie 250GB Rugged drive took 30 minutes and 47 seconds. That's nearly twice as long as the total recorded time on the card and you can bet I'm glad I didn't test this with a 32GB card. Without verification the transfer time was 12 minutes and 38 seconds. Using a Duel Adapter, Shotput P2, a Mac Book Pro and the LaCie on Firewire 800? 8 minutes and 10 seconds.

Overall, the P2 Portable is going to be excellent for tape-based Panasonic camera owners who want to extend the life of their camera and expand the services they can offer their clients. The awful data transfer time is a real problem that needs to be addressed by Panasonic going forward, but just having the ability to transfer footage in the field and play back that footage without needing a laptop is a very welcome feature.