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Vincent's 5 top HDDSLR Rigs

So we're gonna go into custom configurations and way spent quite a bit of time as I mentioned last year on gear what we didn't talk too much about was what type of configuration do you need based on your budget and your needs uh and your ability and your profile we're going to kind of go through that now um as you've probably seen, there are thousands of pieces out there in the market it is a market that has exploded like very few people in any of the photography of any business I've seen before there's something manufactures making handheld riggs monitors, audio rigs and sky like, well, where do I start? And what I've done is I've just kind of broken it down into a serious of kits the national get you guys to come out and play with some point and point out when you want to use one versus another uh, what you've gained with one and what you lose with the other uh and also reflects also price points obviously, you know, some are significantly less expensive than others right now there i...

s on the my gear page on my block um four kits that are very close to what we're seeing here for the most part if not identical, that had every single bolt and filter peace and battery and attachment because trying to put this together off of being aged randomly part by part is insane um so know that and also know that uh it's totally cool to mix stuff you know you don't have to abide by one system you can mix parts uh there are certain cinema standards uh that air out there whether it's filter size or rod signs and um you can kind of mix and match and as you buy stuff uh think about you know, am I just testing the waters here? Do I want to make like, a small initial investment or borrow someone's rig and see what I'm doing do I want to make my own homemade handheld rig? You know, I think I mentioned this last year the easiest way to stabilize a camera is to, you know, put ah washer on the ground where the string on screw that the bomb, your camera and kind tug against it and you're creating a sort of natural resistance may be amazed at how you can stabilize the camera just a string uh, nut and just a washer and screw uh it's not high tech doesn't look impressive on a big set, but who cares if you're not on a big set and even if you aren't a big set kind of cool discussion? Uh I've been on really big shoots the still photographer where I didn't have a balance from my flash I would always find coffee filters and tape them to my stroke to kind of get those nice dome effect looks whatever works when I was in alaska I didn't have gels I put scotch tape on maestro and I used an orange marker you know do with what you will if you don't have a slighter or jib uh take a tripod and just used two of the legs and collapse the third leg and just with your fluid head push forward and tilt up or down as you go guess what if you practice that you will get some pretty impressive results and there's one less piece of gear travel with okay the reason that they make more expensive gear uh and more perfected year is because depending on the size your production you don't have two three four five six ten twenty takes okay, so uh one of things will be using during the narrative and perhaps even during the uh documentary workshop will be a wheelchair uh I used a wheelchair a few months ago in shanghai to be wheeled through uh uh a a a uh what was it kind of overpass we don't have time or the crew or the budget to get an entire crew to put down a dolly and track not to mention you would've seen the track in the shot um we don't have a steadicam operator so we went with a steady can't with a wheelchair and we did fifteen takes and one of the takes is rock solid we had that luxury um most takes on the high end production level you get one two maybe three takes you know uh colin firth who just won best actor in the academy awards last weekend, lost track of time his last weekend um recent area with him on how uh filmmaking is basically this experience where you get three goes at either getting the worst performance of your career or a flawed one forever on screen or one of your best performance this is that you excel in the can and that's basically it that's filmmaking on the high end given the amount of money in his words three goes at it and you move on to the next setup and that's why you have expensive here that guarantees that you will get the shot every single time you guys understand that it's the reason you pay more for reliability perfection so that fall focusing unit that cost fifteen hundred dollars is so smooth relative to the one that cost three hundred dollars there's a reason do you need the five thousand dollars follow focusing unit? I don't think so, but some people did all right, so we're gonna go ahead and get started um we were to talk about how it's difficult navigate all the different pieces of gear um and how you can reconfigure them end this way so a zay mentioned you may want to kind of take a step into it see, you know, test the waters out or you know already I'm getting into this this is my next thing and I'm going to want to invest in a kit that will expand with me over time a modular system all right? We'll talk about that as well because when you spend a lot of money on stuff that cannot grow once you're done using that, it kind of just sits there and gathers dust and I mentioned this earlier we're going to jump into it aside I mentioned, uh there's a custom configurations page on my block with all these little pieces so don't freak out and there are plenty of people who put stuff together you could go in there and find these kits and we're also putting some stuff together uh for future uh, uses let's go and start with the first one uh, this is basically what I would call, um, you know, a very simple um, starting point. It's what I call the low profile kit uh, who do you guys think, uh, would use this event to tell people we're shooting events and the events in the gyno photojournalists photojournalist perhaps, um, is this going to get you as much attention when you're walking around, uh, new york city uh what's in here no one knows you new york let's say you're walking around china well, someone look at you strangely if you're shooting like this versus shooting with something like that obviously right the moment you pull this guy out anywhere in the world within thirty seconds flat you've got someone on you where's your permit who were you shooting for? What are you doing when you have this or in fact minus this arm it's much easier to get away with it uh up to this point, most people still don't know that these cameras take video that won't last for long would take advantage of it now. Okay, the advantage of this is I can carry this around all day with one arm maybe have a second set up around my shoulder I'm not going to get tired. Um and I can jump out of a car uh I could run after someone I can hold it very easily over my head below me um and um it's just very low profile. So was it comprised of it's right here we just have a bear five d with a lens. Okay? And the main components are uh this this rig here that has a grip one grip for the right hand and a stock to put against her shoulder. The number one rule with any rig is the more points of contact that you have the more stability you're gonna have kind of a golden rule of video all right so how many points of contact we have on this rig three which are they hand obviously the shoulder and then the eye so on the isa zuko dozy finder it basically cups around the back of the camera and the advantage of this is twofold you've all try to do this you know with your naked eye and as you get too close or too far you rather can't see the imagery of a hard time focusing also a lot of external light and glares will always get on your lcd screen it's a reflective surface and this way you can kind of get in the zone with your camera you can very easily the one hand zoom and focus okay but um you can also of course put an audio device on top is well expand a little bit more we'll get that into that little bit later this is something that you operate by yourself this is a kind of a key point you the moment you plug anything into the ht my port on these cameras right now that lcd screen goes dead all right so when you're shooting like this you can't share the signal with anyone else so if you're a document documentary person cool or doing an event no one's looking over your shoulder if you're working as part of a team especially narratives uh your clients can't see it the actors can't see it the director can't see it the dp can see you get the idea you're all you're closed off from the world here uh but you're nimble I also noticed that in terms of focusing have you guys ever try to focus smoothly on a ring with your hand like this you always reached that point we've got to stop and grab again okay uh they do make a little lever up here that allows you to red rock does you know just to a little more fine tuned patrol and do faster focuses but setting marks a cz well is going to be a little more difficult when I started when I shot reverie I used to buy yellow scotch tape, cut them in triangles and I put one on the focus ring and one of the barrel and line them up for my point a to point b low tech works very well um the issue is you have got to make sure you have plenty of little triangles that they don't fall off they don't move or budge but you can do it but doing a smoke smooth, you know focus from point a to b on this is going to be challenging okay um but it's a great way to start why don't we go ahead and plug the extreme my cable into it? If that's cool marcus and I'm going to, um show you what this looks like now obviously what's the one thing I mentioned that happens when you plug in issue my port into this camera I go blind uh I can't see what I'm shooting in camera okay, so I actually have no way of telling what you're saying if you're saying anything you okay let's go ends with the exposure and set focus so you can kind of understand that uh the reason I'm doing this for now for you guys now is to kind of appreciate the stability of this all right? Cause you'll see how we go to the heavier units with more with more points of contact and obviously the more weight it is very important you're gonna get much daddy results, so I'm simply going to try and do a smooth of the movies I can towards john you can see it picks everything up I can't focus because I can't see what I'm doing but it's it's cool for light rich, you know, like photojournalism documentary type work um trying to a cinema move with this is a little more complicated. All right, any questions on this? But you guys have pretty straightforward, right? All right, I'm back, we're not gonna move I guess I want quick asher um, have you found anything that you know I can give you a little bit of an lcd under they have like the five inch versions of some way that coming up okay coming up one more question about that one doesn't have the ability to mount to try a plate on the bottom of it uh let me see on this side you don't think so it does not all right, so you can't go from sticks to hand health, which is a really nice any news crew any energy group will be able to go from their sticks and just write on their shoulder and run right now this is not built to that I'm sure you could fashion something thatyou khun you know, screw down there but as of right now, it's not intended it's it's kind of a bare bone system also keep in mind with this system going to working most likely with circular andy filters right? Because you have no matt box says no rail system right here now red rock does make a rail system that goes on the hot shoe so you could put a rail system on the hot shoe that supports the mat box if you want and also even if you want to go crazy, follow focusing system from above so you can't expand this, you know, definitely you can reduce some of these pieces, um but also understand when evil screwed on andy field right and when you're nervous or in a rush do you notice how it's always impossible to get that filter on without not only dropping it five times and breaking it? We're getting some marks all over it so that's why? You know we have matt boxes that swing in and out relatively easily um so that you can change lenses and, uh drop filters into not one day that we get there it's not ready yet and vince you're just using the in camera mic on that set up right now we are using in camera like we can absolutely put a zune h foreign we'll talk about this in a second on to the, uh, hot shoot with amount um we'll also get the audio a little bit later. Uh, I think that you as a document you're gonna have to have a sound device on you. But it's probably the worst way to record sound as any audio engineer will tell you because you're recording your sound and what's near you and all of your movements and the further you get from the subject that worth the audio is ok. You can of course we'll get to this later. Um yes, sure. Okay, okay, well, trouble shoot some stuff um there you go, let's, take a couple questions from the web and from you guys when you're using those handheld riggs yeah like what techniques do you use to try and stay steady like you know you're walking forward obviously warning is not something very city right um it's it's an art I mean um it's it's a very physical thing frankly you have you know you have to be pretty for the physical person you have trained how to control your breathing gently lower your center of gravity a little bit and just try and stay and basically have your body become the shock observer um that is one thing I will readily admit I'm not good at you know I do not like to do uh handheld work uh because I don't have ten, fifteen years experience doing it and that's when I work with an operator who does uh because you know it's that's how they make a living and they're actually most hollywood operators that you meet that have fifteen, twenty years experience have really bad knees really bad shoulders elbows and back issues so it's similar to the techniques used for long exposures still so you're trying to get a fifteenth of a second you breathe in and she had three that stuff like that yeah control it more control your breath uh control your physique uh learned to move certain ways a smooth as you can and like I said I'm not next threat whenever that you know a handheld job comes in if I'm a dp I always seen I'd really like to work with an operator possible because that's the beauty of filmmaking is they have people who do that for a living. I guess you had some questions. Internet always has questions. Yes. Um, question from a d j uh, you, um wants to know if the eye cups on those a kudos e finder as rotate herbal for left eye dominant folks let's find out all right? Yes, they are. They rotate able they also make a two point five x and a three point o x and I use the two point five because I have classes when you have the three point oh, you may not see the full frame with the three pointer. Also be wary that when you mount these onto the back lcd of your cameras depending on what camera you're using, um, you know, you're basically sticking this on with double sided tape and, uh, be careful never to rip it off for a quick because the lcd on a lot of these cameras is itself stuck on the camera with double sided tape. Keep that in mind, but they make a bunch of kits. Almost every manufacturer allows you to screw into the base of the camera and hold this up to the fighter is just one more thing to deal with, right? You're trying to work fast so are we called I guess yes ok one more question often to use a handheld light meter versus in camera light meter very a question I think unless you're on a high end production um it's it's it's a style decision uh if you're shooting film you got to use a handheld meter that's the obvious answer if you're working with multiple life sources I will use a light meter um see, connick makes a fantastic uh, cinema um light meter that does everything in the book that you can imagine we'll kill the model number by chance um marcus of the psychotic he's busy we'll get back to you on that uh I also use a color meter uh because, you know, even in this room we have some warm lights, we have some cool lights, we have some gentle lights and green lights. Truth is personally, I'm a very big fan of doing three things on the most basic level trust your lcd uh, to a certain degree it's going to be in the ballpark what's the time. Um make sure that when you're outdoors you're cupping your eye around it letting your ia just because you know it's gonna look much darker than it is relative to ambient light on this sunny day I look at the history graham of the back of the camera all the time so when you press the info button a few times on the five d and seventies history channel pop up and I'm not going to be less in the history rams, but look up on how to read history rams when we work on bigger productions, we have very expensive reference monitors that are calibrated, you know, every day, every week that are supposedly color accurate, but even then you've heard photo shot by the numbers I work with monitors on set that have scopes built in so you can see a you know, a graphical representation, you can see where you're blowing out that highlight and where you're crushing those blacks. So that's a relatively enough detailed answer, a lot of tools at your disposal, one blurry lens in the chat room s asked if vince is wearing that gray colored shirt for color correction later in post um it's not great blue, so I guess we'll have to color practice yes way are all right cool, so we're not going to jump on to the next slide, which is this synovate ah handheld system that they just announced and just showing you a different company obviously, uh that has a separate, different type rig. Um, this is a sixty d as opposed to all the other candid cameras that most was familiar with, such as the five year mark to one d mark for the seventy the rebels etcetera, etcetera this is the first camera that has a l city on the back that swivels and that's kind of cool because how often are you shooting video right here where your eyes very often you're shooting video down here and you can't see your lcd so it's really nice to have an l c that flips out and you can point out that you obviously down at you from overhead for doing interview you're very vain at yourself, okay? I have not worked extensively at all with the sixty five play with it once I haven't had a need to but for people who want to kind of keep it down and dirty and not get into buying an external monitor or even a viewfinder uh new vf over a little cup uh like thie zagato this's a graceful a great graceful solution. Yeah. Okay, um you also see that on top of this rig we have a little adapter. I believe this is a man photo with a guy that goes in the hot shoe into a screw into the zoom so you can have that on your kit as you shoot and obviously move it right off the hot shoe or not um and you have handles and what's you know it's very some of the other kid you have a little more control in terms of how you rotate this and how you use it so you can use it differently in different modes. If you want to go ahead and know that you're going to be shooting in low mode for the whole shoot, go ahead and swivel out the lcd and shoot your entire scene like this and do a poor man's slider shot on the ground. Okay, um also you can, of course, rotate these on a table if you don't have a tripod with you, go ahead and hand this off to you because we're done with it and use thes three points just like a tripod. You can go ahead and adjust, weigh the arms, work to do a dutch shot, for example, it's just another way of thinking of it. Um, quick tip if you don't have tripods, we'll have a way to stabilize your cameras, sandbags or super common apple boxes, shirts, sweaters, duffle bags like whatever you need. We've all used to kind of help, you know, stabilized the camera, but this is just a different company has a quick release played on the bottom here, so if you just pull the camera off and I'm gonna call marcus uh, too kind of help me out here so I can hand that other parts of him and go ahead inside the camera, right off maybe that you could go bare camera real quick and perhaps put this on a separate different type of uh contraption alright just different version different camera very similar to the first one you can of course well known on this one but you could put a z finder if you flip the screen if you wanted to so you can protect it's rain or you can flip it over and put that on there as well the reason you couldn't yeah is that rig using a really write stuff late or is that a right now this is a basic man photo place we're going to get to the the cooler really write stuff place that I am madly in love with but there are definitely a bit price here. So this is a standard man photo plate kind of markets can recall numbers right off, you know, model number this is it's the small one it's the small man photo plate that slides right into most their tripods. This is the really write stuff plate that uh so you will asking, uh, that we're gonna get to on these rigs? Um uh I swear by these but we'll get to in a second so so I want to come up here and operate this should have the same problem we had with the semi but at least what you can show them is how you can do different types of shots uh, with this rig from overhead or below, what might be cool if there's a handheld person instead of plugging in and tasty and I'm gonna let him actually operate in low mode. Let's, just keep it down here. You keep it down as low as you can cleanse cup, ben's cat the first thing I do with these every lens cap that I get is that tend to throw them out. The only time I ever uses is and when I when I shipped cases, but when you're out and about this is the number one way photography or film to miss shots, you know, uh, it's the worst thing, um, there's a camera, even on checked us in that part of it's like, seventy, because if you go and if you could kind of maybe see if you can follow the lcd screen a little bit and show them how to do a prince fergus nowhere that you feel comfortable to do a little mode or overhead, so you just pull this way. We do have a shia member, then you can't see, right? I can't say we're gonna get to that just put it right there, and this is a really long limbed, right, you get the idea, yeah uh the key point to remember about all this stuff though is the problem we're having with not showing you a live feed for a documentary persons not an issue but as soon as you get to any sort of production where you have more than one person needs to see what we're doing uh that's why we don't always shoot with justice kind of a key point here you can hang on to it you're keeping it no um go over to one run and gun kit uh this is what a colleague of mine calls his man cams that right like that man can and the reason is that it's because he likes to shoot like this he likes to go right in the camera and back next now follow navy seals my friend shane hurlbut scdp very successful guy also has a great blawg on issues lars and he likes to have you cannot do this with a panavision camera too heavy unless you're arnold schwarzenegger now they do have operators that could do this but the average person cannot do this what's really nice about this rig is this something you would run around the room with his case after navy seals just shot a film on navy seals and it's just a very reactive you know go low go high push pull get close it's a very just a wonderful way of controlling the camera you only have two points of contact you don't see in your arms but then you can also go really quickly to a super low more like this with the overhead handle and the key here on this point is this little marshall monitor so now this allows you to go ahead and uh see what you're shooting from any angle very easily and perhaps work with a second person so you can have someone falling walking with you helping you focus not the most high tech way but at least two of you can see and operate all right keep in mind with any lcd you're going to have issues with glare looking for a little goodman on here so you can stick your eye up to it but um different configuration uh this is something that you are eventually going to get tired of doing holding like this after a five or ten minutes it's not a documentary photographer is going to want to use a videographer for entire day shoot this is more of a specialized used type thing but the reason you pointed out is that it's a fantastic way to really make your camera movements very energetic you see how I'm able to move this video relatively smoothly with my arms base in fast motion or even middle motion but easier than our shoulder with my legs with your legs you only have a very limited range a range of motion that you could do this you're extending that and making it more fluid um you'll also notice it's got the bigger man photo adapter over here good slider right off and now put this down and you can operate it all by itself and, um of course this plate down here this cheese plate is the foundation of a bigger system okay, as are these rods and handles he's our the identical rods sorry rods and handles you're seeing on the bigger kit so with this running gun kit you're starting the foundation of, you know, a future larger and more worst health system all right um you khun put a really write stuff, play on the bottom here or any tripod plate and just kind of keep going so we're going to talk about the marshal monitor at some point as well. It's coming here we go cool. So this is a martial honor they released in that last three months. Two months is a little bit I don't know when they released it we don't know when they release it for more than a few months ahead for a little while um and the beauty of this is simplicity it's incredibly life it operates on double a's, which is a blessing and a curse the blessing is that stays extremely light. The curse is, you know, unless you want to go to a chargeable four batteries um you know you're going to dublin is like crazy you know limit the amount of time to do whereas on a pro kit can I unplug that killing everything for you you screwed this battle you have this uh are you gonna do that? I'll let you know on a big crew you go ahead and talk about his grand put it back on so you can see you know anton bauer run out of power the whole crew's waiting foryou helicopters about the land you got to get that shot on and off goes the anton our opening this up thinking four batteries out during the men keeping track of which one is uses not you get the idea. So the beauty of this monitor is that it's a small monitor has a tremendous amount of built in features in it has like four function of presets um it has a simple hd mine in um it does not have an hd my out like a moderate about to show you but if you want to start off with a really cool little monitor it's a good one to go with and you could very easily put a marshal sorry goodman on it and use this as your ivf as well dvf is a fancy word for trying to find her, you know and I cup so you could go ahead and mount this on a camera like this and operate off of this little monitor as you know operating off the seven inch moderate close to your eye it's just too big kind of battery life doesn't have double like how long will call can I say call energizer and I get in trouble I mean called their double a's pushing a monitor like that what's that mean double is pushing a monitor like that I can't expect extremely um I've never pushed to its limits I've used this like occasionally I really I mean honestly, this is what I use uh I know people use this quite a bit and you know, have extra paradise lies not in the world, you know you're gonna go ahead and the light and go quick all right obviously the smaller side of screen you have the less detail you're going to see and you're framing and in terms of sharpness always keep that in mind I noticed that they've talked about like fall speaking and skin tone color and stuff like that on some of those mothers if you use that and do you like that? I mean all the time and I think it went into on the previous workshop so these monitors have functions that are false colors so uh you know, a pink will represent what a skin tone should be blues represent what starts going into the underexposed range and the yellows and reds and oranges are like what's your what you're blowing out so you can push one of those four counts of functions that you see on the slide there, and I'll immediately tell you regress, whether you're in a dark or bright environment, what numerically your functions are, um, I'm not sure if this one conflict the image or not, but most all the bigger monitors conflict the moderates if you mount the monitor upside down, hit one button flips screen as if both having unscrew it and re mount that, uh, it has peeking in a bunch of other like gizmos attached to it again was love stuff. We're gonna kind of fast forward on this workshop that we already went through in the last one was when they were going to get at the end of it and marcus, I'm gonna ask you from now on the kind of stay with me if you're cool, you're just against more and more gear. Uh, one thing I should mention is if you're using any sort of audio device on your camera, you always have to have headphones on shelling out of mike unless you're really lonely uh, just a demo, but you want to be able to hear what the camera or in this case, the reporter is hearing all right, uh, people also asked why not plugging mike directly into one of these cameras and I will tell you if you the exact same high quality mike and plug it into these cameras versus plugging into an external recorder the quality of the audio quality we've seen definitely better because the candidate does stuff to it on a variety of different cameras, different ways that compresses it changes the gain on automatically or not, depending on what camera you have. So it's what we call a dual system in video, which means you have one device recording sound and a device recording the image, and you put them together after the fact, and we'll get to that later. And but the first question people say, you know what? What type of, uh, sound device you attached to your camera? My answer is none. I have a second person whose job it is to you sound. You know, that tv station is a notoriously super cheap. I mean, how cheap they are. You always see a video engineer along with a sound engineer because the reason they're paying a second person to fall around with a shotgun mic and to match levels because audio so important. All right, so are you guys doing great? I get the next one is the indy filmmaker kit it's this guy right here, it's markets want to go ahead and bring it up front, um basically, this is I think what the direction that the majority of you will probably be going into as you get more serious in terms of what you want to achieve on a production um this is a system right now that will easily go from your sticks should go ahead and get a nice pan and tilt head. This is a man photos is the five o four, five or nine ht brand new it's a brand new uh, pretty fantastic fluid head and you have all different friction controls for pan and tilt game. We did that last time. This allows you, teo very easily tilt in a professional looking matter and pan and control the amount of friction you have on those moves. So when you want to do a very fast moving, you saw how that jerk because there's too much tension fighting me. So if I go ahead and loosen the tension down here on this knob, look very easily to a wet pant, okay? So having the ability to adjust the resistance on your fluid head it's kind of key, we're not going to spend much time on fluid heads on sticks this time we've spent a tremendous amount time on it last time, so as you can see in this situation, markets want you come with me, we could be shooting a short film or much of anything and I could be operating and generally markets could come over my left shoulder we're both working office monitor here and he is pulling focus in fact you know is live this point is going to try and do that sure this is a look right now this one I think that cable will work for us so is that just have a zoom on it for her looks because you said you always use a this is your regular actually put this on purpose to show you that how effective you think it's microphones going be in the battle line with the way all this john all right it's kind of my way to say this is what's going to force you to do we now have a solution way would have to bring it much closer and only have six feet okay? Is that the one that's right there? This is too long. Yeah um and this is a mini okay, so I can get you a six foot it's just to go to their system. Yeah, ok let's do that we're going to plug into this system but what we're trying to show you here is that you can very easily operate obviously had raised the tripod so that would be more of this height and I could be going ahead and looking at framing of the image whether I'm the dp or the operator or the one man band uh I can go ahead and do this and pull focus at the same time they follow focusing wheel okay or I can have a second person looking over my shoulder uh pulling focus for me begins very hard it's easy on a simple situation like this where I'm going from you to kenya to set one mark over here we'll talk about setting marks later in the workshop and go from one mark the second mark preset your focus marks okay, but when you're running around handheld trying to keep the frame perfectly composed is a full time job. You cannot focus and do that the same time because I can't seriously I mean it takes a lot of skill do that's why usually have two person crew so that's max, you can't pull this back out of it so what's new about this kit and it's what's really nice is has just come out is what's called a loop through monitor. All right, this has been a pain for people for two and a half years and that when you tend to use h demise you cannot loop the monitor out to a second model or secondary source. This marshall seven inch monitor that will show you slide up in second allows you to take the signal from the camera into this monitor and loop it and out loop it out to a second monitor on the camera maybe a second seven inch marshall that then loops out to a tv screen video village, a wireless device. Why? Why is that important? Group d b could watch it. Your camera system can watch? Yeah, I mean, you know, every commercial tv production, any production there's more than just one person operating, you have to have multiple people's people seeing what you're shooting it cost way too much money to rewind this case. Just one button digital, but play no one has time to stop and replay after every take your doubling the amount of time it's fifty percent your time you're wasting in terms of shoot time. It's a massive spending and what happens is on most productions, you're gonna have one person just staring at that screen. You see the director and he may call it after the first take, okay, we got it moving on, no replay. Ok, so you have to have the ability to loop a signal of this camera to the outside world and that this is one of the first solutions they pat splitters that you could buy for years, but they're quite unreliable. So you guys know, and they're hard to power on camera. And they have, you know, things, you know, that they're out there that worked better than others. But this is a very just, uh, graceful way of dealing with that. That scene that's coming in giving data so he says, well, they will do little technical snafu that always happens. Signal three. Move on, move on, let's. Move on. So you have to take our word for it that you can see the image when we figure out the technical bugs that always happen on these things. And here is the key. Right over here, marcus good on mount this. I'll have you operate that's cool. It's a brand new food had a little bit stiff, but it is you're putting your foot on it, marcus, to try. And you know what table is is you pull it off? Yeah, really knocked it over a little tip. Markus puts his foot down on the spreaders of a tripod and, uh, interesting. So here's a good tip. Actually, this's actually really, really good kind of caveat. You're always gonna get new rigs sent to you in time for shoot. We're going to get a new rig to show off or a new gizmo for your shoot, avoid that at all costs, but this stuff doesn't happen, this was easy. But a lot of times we'll get a new fancy something you want to throw it into your production and you have everything else working perfectly and that one thing fails because you haven't had time to familiarize yourself with it. Okay, so that's actually really important lesson especially for me. So I always had all these prototypes coming in and you end up focusing on like god this thing's not working they're not scenes audio saying they're not getting audience thing like you know what's going on here we go marcus is now handheld mode on you can see that obviously the advance of this system is that there is a wait in the back she's going to counter the weight in the front and naturally balance the camera he's got two arms that he khun tucked into his you know mid section for more support he can also focus with his hand on the fall focusing wheel he's got a match box up front which obviously uh does several things one it has the flags to kind of cut out exterior light and flares swivels out real quick so that you could go ahead and switch lenses, pull it out, pull up put another one in no more screw on filters were then this filter system is the ability to go ahead and marcus does that front runner back back one we'll filter out one last stop of light, stick a filter and have it on the ready it goes without or credit red andy raise it laurette or rotated all in the math. And there you go. All right, this whole idea of screwing on a filter or whatever being will make quick changes when the sun's going in and out in a big production is why we use matt boxes. Okay, also, the ones is going to be a little larger in diameter in front, you have bigger type filters. Um, and I think that explains that part. What else have we missed? Um, he's gotta handle up here so you can go ahead and try to operate. Um, at least handled the camera. Put it up and down with that it's not to be the most comfortable. We'll show you a different type of matt box. It has greater abilities. Uh, we've gotten arm over here so you can rotate this up or down. Uh, we'll show you more sophisticated arms. It actually go inoculated and direction that you want. But this is what I would call kind of a great this is one of things. This is the big prize we're giving away at the end of workshop, you know, um, it's over two thousand dollars in accessories, but with this kid you could pretty much shoot almost anything within reason all right, so you could go hand held you can put this rig on a techno crane if you wanted to on a steady cam or on sticks uh and you work with two different people uh we mentioned the ants on our battery back here so if you got a spot battery out it's very quick and obviously the loop for monitor which we weren't able to get to work but that's uh when it does work a great ability great tool to have with you any question you guys have? How much do you break that down when you travel with like when you're going from point a to point b you know well let's break everything down you know, there's a general rule I think markets will agree to that I mean, I was a photographer I would never leave lenses mounted on my cameras traveled about how good the case was because if there's a big shot it's going to bend something and I know that marcus tends to, uh, break everything down to every single peace for the most part yeah, it also it's easier to fit stuff in the cases in that way yeah, it's more compact and, um you know, generally what you do is you bring a variety of these pieces and build different types of rigs depending on what you need ok is there a reason why you don't have a doughnut on that mat books yes because we're lazy ok? So one of the most er perplexing things that I had to face when I started with video uh was why I put a filter in front of here and I was he was really weird highlight reflection marks in my video and I would like wait my hand in front of the camera and nothing happened is like where is this coming from and I wasn't seeing it you know on live but I kept trying to find the light behind me what was happening is light comes from behind here and hits the filter from the back okay so you have to have what are called doughnuts which are just kind of cut out of rubber you khun take like circular mouse pads come out only when you are and there's different diameters and you put them between the lens and the mat box and no light comes in from the back it's a really good question actually was like honestly quite a few times is like what's that flare coming from what's that big spotlight on my image and you're looking all around you know in front of you and you realize that you forgot to put it down in there okay cool uh way can't show you the video out unfortunately which sucks but what you would notice obviously is the long through works is working perfectly fine on that rig I think it's just a matter of our team on cable it's just you know the whole configuration but, um he's monitors definitely work. Okay, great. Um you can see obviously you go from sticks to hand held and the wait is your friend and video had helped the heavier the camera this mother is gonna be just simple physics to within reason when you're carrying around um, a, uh, imax camera. You kind of don't like it this much. So let's, go ahead and jump to this rig right over here. Um and scare everybody okay, let me, uh, got the video for you for this one. This is what I would call I think I'm gonna quickly show you the, um, super model from marshall. Right there. You've got the slide. Okay, the ultimate rig. And I would say that on average, one percent of h gs lar users will ever use a rig like this. Okay, and you should feel like that three. So why am I showing this to you? Is to show you the most tricked out a cia salar rig you could possibly get just so that you can crying and stare at your bank account, but more to the point so you can see all the pieces that are available and which ones you might want to poach all right you don't need this whole thing but you may like the cage idea you may like the dvf idea you mean like the handles email like this mad box you may like the handle from overhead you get the idea right I'm showing you everything and you can just can't choose the parts that you like uh market still working on that you switched over yeah let's go ahead and go with this guy and uh what's what is going on here somewhere buried in here is a seventy five game until it's finally it's a five d all right uh the heart of this system is a cage okay the reason you may want to use a cage several fold uh you will notice that when you do you've pull focus uh your camera may tend to flex okay because still cameras were not made with amounts that are made to be absolutely like a locked so it's one screw down here without a pin in a variable your cameras constant deflect so as you pull focus especially fast once you will see the image jump up and down also having one mounting point on a camera isn't the best and a hot shoe um is kind of ok solution this cage basically surrounds the camera not only protects it but completely solidifies into one block and has lots of mounting points on it to attach the cage or things to the cage that's point number one it's just it's a solid unit the second most important thing for me about this cage is power what you have your own thing coming here to do a detailed shot of these cables here is you have this cable you come back out or cut to the wide angle this one anton bauer battery pack is powering the camera the cube talk about later it's one monitor in two miners powering everything with one battery. So the whole idea of running out of batteries you swap it out put another one in everything runs again. That's what professionals work on higher and productions you can't be reaching down here trying to find an lp six cannon battery and then trying to pop another uh anton bar on the back of this monitor and then other batteries on this guy you get the idea it's one battery source powers the entire unit uh, so you'll see the cable coming in to come back in here that supplies the power. It has three power out reports you can power up to three things and it has a trigger which is kind of cool. Uh, I'm not sure marcus loves the left side so I can tell you that, um right here right here, one of things that slows me down the most in hd slr finding that button all the time because you're already you know ready to rock and roll and you play a hand off and start and stop and you're rolling a lot of additional foods you're not supposed to in fact you're not going to start and stop all the time keep rolling it so having a trigger in a convenient place on your handles wherever you want it start stop is such a basic thing for any camera but for some reason and we'll have it here so this trigger that you could amount to just about anywhere sends a signal for the cage to a small and fred receive we're going to see a tuck in here that will start stop the camera simple okay um then around the cage you also see this cool little thing how many htm my cables have we all broken over the past two years is I used to to work on any production with ten cables that I brought with me because invariably someone would trip over the camera this would get bent you'd lose a signal mid shot this is a very simple attachment they put onto the cage you khun I wouldn't recommend it almost picked the whole cage up by the cable all right it's not going anywhere you're not gonna lose your signal a very simple device keeps everything solidified uh then as you can see you can go ahead and they'll be shy markets come back here uh amount the the camera off the sticks you got it and you can handle it with this o'connor over it from the top being about the script is that it can rotate I'll have to show that off trump back on here basically any direction you want good take over you want no I just think it's rock solid all right, so you see there's two of them on the front here you want to go ahead and lower this just a little bit you know this is professional grade it's not going to move on you you make pulling as hard as I can it's not it's not budging make this o'connor okay uh a cz you see just I used on the simplest use this as a tripod on the ground, right? So kind of you some really quick and dirty work you could mount these to the mat box itself she's really cool. You can operate right from the map box technique a lot of high end shooters like to do um you also notes on this kid and I'm going as fast as I can see there were a little bit over uh mount a vf monitor it's just a small monitor aa lot of monitors are coming out are out there right now there's a center roy monitor out there right now uh that I've heard good things about and I've heard bad things about so I'm kind of waiting for the next two manufactures to come out with the there's hopefully better quality, you know, red rocks coming out with an e v f and, uh, zagato isas well, they have not come out to market. The idea is to me go ahead for this on your shoulder, there's. No better way to operate then with your eye right up to the camera as an operator, you are one with the camera there's no light coming in and out. Um and you know marcus could move around and I think we have it live in a single here coming out of the campbell talk about that in a second. But he is one with the camera and I will then become his first a c his first assistant camera and I will often this monitor pull focus for me. Okay, so whether the camera stationary on stick it's where he's moving I'm goingto go ahead and try my hand at this. Here we go red would move towards the subjects of holdouts close your irs data that there you go trying test me, make it simple. Ok, go all the way up to someone right that you can do it without a problem without really interfering with his motion, ok, and you can see how this is night and day compared to doing it with the solar rigs right you don't need all this stuff to do that um you just need to martial lou cruz but having ability have someone focused for years that you can operate freely is a huge plus um you'll notice also I'm using an o'connor full of focusing unit which is rock solid compared to the less expensive ones uh this unit is actually in thousands of dollars range um we're using as a cue to arm up here told the monitor and we're using that flip function we talked about up here so you know it's the monitor is mounted upside down I pushed you have three button and flips it right side up which means that if I say marks on the ground quick go ahead put placed on the ground and I want to go ahead and shoot like this I don't have to re mount the monitor I'm just gonna press have three everything is right side up you get the idea it's all about speed now having unscrew stuff and be able operate from any direction um why don't you take us through really quick? Uh the the o'connor matt box and a terror deck look in shan also the black magic sure uh let's bring this sticks out this up how much does that weigh? This thing was good estimate of weight but I'd say somewhere twenty five pounds max so it's got some way to it it's not as heavy as like a traditional film camera fully loaded but um yeah, I still got some heft you'll get tired after a while so um, o'connor along with coming out with these oh grips and the c f f one follow focus has just added the o'connor o box their new line of camera accessories on d o boxes is great just like any other really high end um uh matt boxes on the market there, but I had a pretty good affordable price like compared to area matt boxes and what not it's, not thousands upon thousands of dollars, I don't know the actual price point to you, I think it's over twelve fourteen dollars census, so I have to leave the red rock is seven hundred years later on there, you know, so it's a whole different level of matchbox, so in any case, uh, o'connor o box, as vince was mentioning, they have these ports on either side and there's actually a rail support that I believe has another support on the bottom of that, but I haven't in clamp on mode, which means I have ah retainer ring right here that is fitted for these carl zeiss lenses, so aiken literally just pop it on the front of the lens and it just, uh titans down to that element it's just rock solid secure on that's great for handheld stuff um this also has this whole line of quarter twenty and three sixteen uh ports on the top here which is those of the two kind of standard screw sizes in film and photography so a lot of accessories will be able to be put here so you could put like one of your city arms on top here and have a monitor off for you generally anything you could put on their, um as with the red rock thiss also has to filter stages um in the front here and you could get him in four by five or four by four size filters um there's no difference to that really except for kind of lenses you're using um generally you'll find four by four and four by five or two main standard ones you can also put a bellows on the back and when you're using this in the broad based mode and that you can use one hundred thirty eight millimeter filter which is you can use like a circular polarizer other things like that has the sun shade and you get I believe it's possible to get siders though I haven't investigated that further but it has these ports on the side where you khun get the bridge player to put siders are so for all of those of you that we've lost in the explanation I'm sure the majority of you is this's a mat box you can buy and use for a lifetime on pretty much any camera doesn't have a huge front and element so we'll use this you know, on a film camera on a red on epic on already alexa so you buy this matt box you have it for life you're not going to swap it out unless you have, you know, an optimal with a huge front man's element so that's kind of the idea it's very versatile it it's rock solid you know it's it's not going anywhere and, um if you could pull it off for me real quick and I'm sure that one last thing before you cut out um you want this off that's cool way have a c p two lens in front of here we'll talk more about that during production tomorrow and sunday way talked a lot about last lesson, but the difference between this and the average cannon lands or night comment of shooting on icon is that they have clearly set marks on the focusing ring she have a chance of actually pulling focus by knowing distance and just reading it off or reading marks on the ground there repeatable whereas on a nikon sorry at least on cannon lens um if you go passing fitty, just keep turning and turning and turning and all of your marks are off forever they're all relatively the same size so if I asked someone that changing lens pull ends up another one on matt bach was on you know to resize everything because lenders longer or shorter or wider it's a very quick process it also has an iris ring over here that you khun control uh gradually whereas on the canon lenses you've got to go in third stop steps and you can see it go click click click click so if you walk endorsed outdoors you control that on a professional career actual amount of motor this somewhat control knowing the focus wirelessly but the iris um what's the mountains will not let it can amount is canon wtvf lands mountain and you can convert that to appeal not as well so you can have this whole set to use with cannons and uh you could do it on the field that recommend you not you do a rental shop where you can calibrate lens go ahead use this set of lenses on an epic oren alexa aura panavision pln's mounts so does isis making lenses can melt yet they're called c p dot two's all right and what we working with those the last thing we did not mention is two things to me about the terror attack as well yes I want you go ahead and walk us really we really really push the reason that you guys can see that picture on that monitor behind us. Um without any cords actually being tethered to it is this little guy right here it's called the terror that cube and its wireless hd wireless system um hd wireless is is pretty pretty new there's only a few systems out there and a lot of them have are pretty finicky in terms of distance and interference but these guys do something pretty interesting they run over wifi networks so you can either use in this case we're using a transmitter on fbi in transmitter which bills get it with hd my to an hd my receiver um but the cool thing about these is if you don't want to purchase that or if you don't want that full system you could just get a transmitter and you can actually stream straight to your computer or your laptop out in the field um and you can do it in an ad hoc set up so it's just this directly to one computer or you can put this up on like a wireless network and like a building and which boost the signal quite a bit and I believe multiple users can turn into the same stream so you can go ahead and feed this into multiple monitors on set you can also feed it to your iphone actually came to the iphone, the ipad and all your laptops so you have much of clients and much of ipads and they couldn't watch where you're shooting live a little bit of a delay um this is I believe around two thousand dollars system for one unit uh I don't know the actual presidents around at this point all the prices are on my block if you want to check it out uh, which is actually incredibly recently price for wireless the next one is in the five ten thousand dollars range and fifteen thousand dollars range she's a very expensive units generally so being able to bring us your production is really cool a little addition um and we'll talk about a little bit later some more. Uh the last thing we're going to do before you cut off is talk about this black magic box that's on the back um in the idea with this box is that out of your camera comes in hd on my signal and a c my singles in general are hard to split for never reasons one of them is there attending protected and they don't want to be split for people who need steam eyes meant for your televisions but I want you to watch six televisions off your dvr homes. Building protections makes our life difficult but it takes in the hd on my signal in here and it converts it into two fbi singles out which is kind of the broadcast standard uh hmm I was not very popular in any professional video world's almost every moderate you rent any device you rent is hd sd eye out or in and u s bnc cables that, unlike ht, my cable's, don't just pop right out or bend there pretty solid. They're relatively inexpensive, and, um, the only issue with doing this, of course, is one more piece to add to your kid, right. One more point of failure, and you also have to power it this case, repairing it off a p tap, running off the anti on our plate. But this will allow you to work with here much any professional system, this little black magic box. The last thing I'll mention about this, though, is this was never meant to be a peace that goes out in the field, so meant to live on top of a computer. So when it rains, you can use this. If it's super dusty and you're moving around like crazy, you don't want to be using this either, so there's limitations as you can see the ht, my double loops through martial. Htm is trying to take care of those issues.