Lessons

Lesson Info

Packing the Right Kit: Basic Gear

We just got rained out of shooting outside that's reality like that's how photoshoots work that's all video shoots work that's you know as the expression of the shit happens and so you know you're always prepared for the worst and you hope for the best so now we're back indoors and let's actually let's finish with some of the basic year before we go into the helicopter and the gimbal um this is a kessler slider you've heard us talk about the slider a lot when we were storyboarding this slider you can actually have with a motor or without a motor were used the oracle motor and with the motor you can see it allows you to control how fast that camera moves left and right on the track now of course the camera can be pointing perpendicular to the actual track or can be pointed down the track. We're going to do a shot tomorrow morning of jim's face and we're going to have the camera pushing into jim's face and so in that situation going the wrong way in that situation we're going to be pulli...

ng focused on doing a little pull focus while we're actually pushing in is what we would call that were sliding toward him you can make these a lot more sophisticated than the way that we're using it you can put motion control heads that allow you to tilt and pan you can follow focus devices I would say that the majority of the time we don't even bring the motor unless we're doing time lapse sequence is most of the time it's just this slider with a little fluid had the seven o one man photo had I think this head's been replaced now and often times I can'tjust override it can once it's on the motor okay? We were just with our hands while the sliders mounted on the tripod we would just slide it right and left we might be manipulating the camera that tilt up or down or panning at the same time, but this is pretty high on your list of equipment after you get your camera to muns is some nd filters a microphone, a tripod this might be the next item on your list, some kind of a slider, different qualities of sliders, different lengths but you know you want something in my opinion that you can still put on your backpack and carry it alone if you're going to be that one man band versus you don't need a five foot slider because you're gonna have a hard time carrying that thing. You'll be the guy walking on the trail that's hitting branches with the slider sticking out of his backpack um next in line would be this is a super cool it's the feather light jib made by our good friend in lake tahoe, california canyon and this is made out of carbon fiber so it's super lightweight it fits inside a standard travel bag that you can check under the plane when it's collapsed and you can see this thing is actually on that cheap the smaller lightweight man photo tripod you get a lot of bang for your buck with this jib arm like get into places that you just never get jim to because you have to carry everything on your back. This jib literally gets this big, you know? So you consigned that right into your backpack. You know, we have bigger gyms that are more stable can carry have your cameras, but this thing when you're going out skiing, this is go to, like this guy and a slider is actually manageable to take with you and you can get you no more complicated shots, more complex shot. So this is this is this is kind of this father trained really is kind of a a new, a new kind of game changer tohave a gym move in, you know, remote places and one of the things we didn't I think when we hustled to come indoors, what we do is in a studio people carry, you know, real weights that twenty five pound plates and put them on the end of the jib, we actually use little outdoor canvas bags and they're designed for like packing sleeping bags or climbing year just for hauling up a wall and we'll just hang the bags right off the end of our jib and put rocks in it so you know if we're gonna hide twenty miles into a location I brought this into the character or mountains in pakistan I'm not going to carry a twenty five pound dumb bell or two of them with me so we'll kind of take advantage of what we have to work with rocks on the ground or waters and other great weight water's pretty accessible depending on where you are and the other thing I would say about a jib and you'll see us doing this tomorrow you can operate the jib from two different locations you could be at the back you can control the jib from that handle or once it's perfectly weighted you can actually be right at the front of the gym and just let your camera float by manipulating the camera that way so this is light pro gear you can go to their website and this is the feather camera crane maybe the coolest lightweight piece of gear in the video where I share the minutes there wait put this on we've actually believe it or not we put everything from a nikon one camera to a red epic on this thing and the red epic was a little scared looks like you're fishing men and everywhere a shot from a gym before, when you set it up like that, are you basically because you don't pull focus, I imagine what's, on the other hand, are basically like f a man like to get everything and focus moving through bright, sunny day, everything from most of us, the way we're going to shoot at this level and style production, yeah, you're putting it on infinity or your pre focusing your five six f a and you're doing this shot your you know you have enough depth of field, you can get really sophisticated with cranes and you can follow focus rigs on the end, and you can manipulate the head we're going to show you actually with as we move through this equipment, sean has figured out a way to mount this handheld gimbal on the end of a crane arm. If you didn't see it last night, visit my, uh, facebook page corey rich productions, and you can see a photo that we post did last night, and it was way had a dock. We had the fifteen foot jib arm with the gimbal mounted on the end of it, and so we have total control of the camera short of focus that's probably the next thing that will add his follow focus. But again, the mork crap you add to your production the more things that go wrong in the more time you burn trying to fool around, you know, this is it like you're seeing the guys usually usually just two of us sometimes it's three you know, most it's four of us. So it's, we want equipment that's kind of tried and true or it's going to work and we're gonna have less opportunity for failure. So one other thing I wanted to say about slider is you obviously don't have to just use this slider in the horizontal format. You can also put in a vertical format and let the camera climb. You can have the camera go down so you know you can use your imagination in terms of how you used these devices, you can flip it upside down and point the camera straight, you know we could mount it on the raft or it's, a device that moves from right to left. We're left to right or from side to side it's just how how you use your imagination two quick questions one is it? Is there any issues with weight going up and down with the motor? Where is that? Yeah, you got it depends on the motor that you have through these different companies on how strong it is, its also you know you're not going to push a red up shirt, you could play the d s allies and pushing words sign another quick question are you guys just pulling focus with your hand on the focus, right? Oh yeah, this is a very sophisticated focus point system, and I don't know you could get good results with that, you know, a lot of people don't think that's, you know, great filmmaking technique, but it works the monitor help with the focus speaking like you're using that, yeah, if you if you got the time to set up a monitor and it does help for sure, you don't bother with these focus pulling dials way, find its it just gets a bit cumbersome, and now you're messing with making sure that if you're doing len swaps and things like that, like when you're really out in the field or in a remote location, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to slow yourself down like that. You want to just keep on moving that's the other thing I wanted to point out before we dive into the helicopter in the hand, tell gimbel so the other thing that this motorized this motor does the oracle motor this's, the oracle motor? Yeah, okay, what this allows us to do if we're doing time lapse sequences. It allows is let's just pretend for a second there's a camera mounted on the slider and we have some vegetation in the foreground and we have this beautiful scene in the background we can actually tell this motor to take five hours to move across this track. And so as the camera's firing an image every two seconds for example, this thing is just slowly plotting its way along the track, so it allows you to do things in the time lapse world that otherwise would be completely impossible. That's that's, that's really the reason aside from just fluid moves, the other reason you get a motor you make that additional investment is for time and I think we very rarely used it for live shooting it's it's been strictly for doing those motion time lapses adds a lot of life to the time lapse I'm sure you've all seeing that it's it's a nice effect have you found the three foot slider is the best like optimal wheelhouse for do tim tend to use a six foot mohr? Have you found? I'd say this is a pretty good besides because you can still get that on the backpack we have a slightly smaller one that's kind of a go to one for us that when we're using it for skiing a lot that's definitely on our backs, we have a five foot and it I mean it only gets brought out when we're doing you know, bigger shoots where we because you're not taking that really deep into remote locations going from a met metal jeb he funny like vibration issues with wind going on the lighter set up and how would you met managed that keep the motion where you want to be I mean I think the answer is of course you you know that if there's really a wind your there's a moment with jobs like gibbs and even heavy jobs who if it's windy enough you're not just it's not gonna be giving you this is more vulnerable than a hundred pound jib and the hundred pound jim is more vulnerable than a thousand pound jib so it's you know the reality is yes the answer is within lightweight job like this you might repeat your shot five times to get that one that's perfect that's kind of a rule of thumb better the tripod had better the jib better this slider the re part of what you're paying for is with fine tuned equipment you nail it every single time it's kind of like driving a fiat versus driving like the ferrari the ferrari's gonna corner every time we only well the fiat occasionally all male that turn but most of the time it's skipping over may that's an unfair comparison but that's really the difference you know this gets to remote locations and you can do amazing work with this thing, but you're not going to nail it every time I mean that's just the reality of it's, you know, it's, carbon fiber, it's a little no two boa lacing system it's, you know, ultra lightweight cable. So, you know, the reality is it's just a very different tool than a ultra high end crane you can help yourself out, the better you balance it, the better action you're going to get out of it, you want to be able to have it just sitting here by itself like you shouldn't have touched that it should be that if you khun manually just operated with a finger, your going to get way better is old sad your shots if because the moment you're starting to force this, you're going to see your own body movement in the shot, so you just needed balance. That's that's the best way you're going to get, you know this movie shot out of it and software has really started to help, like those minor no wind effects, you know, warp stabilizer it's kind of become a game changer, so but the bottom line is, you know, you get what you pay for it three conditions air really bad, it doesn't matter what you do it's still bad conditions