LIVE BLOG!

Bruce and I are at Camp Fretterd in Maryland today. We've got the HVX200 tricked out with the Letus Ultimate, our Nikon primes, some HMIs, a fogger and, as you can see to the left, our pick of some other cool toys.

I'm going to be updating this throughout the day so check back in when you can -- I'll try and keep it interesting with pics and details from the set.

Here's who we have on the crew. Bruce Liffiton is shooting, David Girard's working the audio, Joey Walker is our Grip today, TelePrompTer is from Telescript DC, make-up is provided by Andrea Hines and our PA is Caroline Devereaux.

We're shooting 720/24PN with the HVX200 and currently have the Nikon 50mm on the Letus Ultimate. The viewfinder and LCD on the camera leave something to be desired, so we're using a Zacuto Zamerican arm and Zicromount III to use a Panasonic 8.4" monitor instead. The DoF system makes this a necessity. We've got the Joker 800W HMI, two 1x1 Litepanels and two KinoFlo Divas burning and a fog machine is making us all feel that we need glow sticks and some rave music.

***UPDATE***

We're currently doing the prompted portion of our shoot, then we're moving on to a two camera interview with SFC Dotson. As I said, we're shooting with the HVX200 so I'm going to be downloading the footage from the P2 cards as the crew sets up for the next shot. We've got the Duel Adapter, our MacBookPro, two Lacie Rugged drives attached by Firewire 400 and 800. I'm using Shotput for the offload and transfer of the P2 cards and the P2CMS for playback and verification.

***UPDATE***

We've switched to the Nikon 85mm, moved the lights accordingly and now we're just choking on the fog that's filling the room. And there are people who don't think this business is all about the glamor...

***UPDATE***

Important lesson learned: always have a can of compressed air with you. After switching set-ups to our 2-camera interview Bruce noticed that the image suddenly had some artifacts in it. A quick playback check confirmed that they hadn't been there during the morning's shoot so they'd somehow been introduced while we moved the cameras and set up the second HVX200. We prepped the Letus for surgery...only to realize that our compressed air was sitting 50 miles away in Bethesda.

Bummer.

Joey, our Grip and now our BFF, ducked out of the room and came back 2 minutes later with the can of air pictured above. A few minutes later (actually, the rest of the crew just took a lunch break while we cleaned and re-rigged the system) and we are good to go.

***UPDATE***

Bruce should have said no to the burritos that were on offer for lunch...

Sorry, boss... :-)

***UPDATE***

We have twin Letus' (Letuses? Leti? Answers on a postcard to Visual Edge...) working for the interview section of the shoot today. Our Ultimate, with the Zacuto rigging and follow focus, is in the foreground and we have a Letus Extreme with the Letus rigging working on the second HVX200 in the background. Both cameras have 85mm lenses on them. The plan was to only have one of the cameras with a DoF system on it and the cutaway camera would just be shooting "as is." The difference in the image was shocking. Just...shocking. So we pulled out the second Letus. And now everyone's happy.

***UPDATE***

Time to download our first card, baby!

***UPDATE***

Two cards down and everything is going smoothly. We've completed the interview, grabbed a couple of jib shots and now we're on to the tabletop shots. Yes, we've broken out the lazy Susan...

***UPDATE***

By the way...

Best. Load-in. Ever.