I don't know, some cinematographers use multiple cameras, such as John Seale ( http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/February2011/JohnSealeASCACS/page2.php )... I read they frequently used 2 cameras on "Thor", even on dialog scenes. It can help you work faster, and cut down on multiple takes, which can be helpful with less-experienced actors. I've seen many production stills with cameras lined up on the same shot, each with different focal lengths, to give the editor more choices. I wouldn't necessarily rule it out.
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Short film equipment advice....
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I don't know, some cinematographers use multiple cameras, such as John Seale ( http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/February2011/JohnSealeASCACS/page2.php )... I read they frequently used 2 cameras on "Thor", even on dialog scenes. It can help you work faster, and cut down on multiple takes, which can be helpful with less-experienced actors. I've seen many production stills with cameras lined up on the same shot, each with different focal lengths, to give the editor more choices. I wouldn't necessarily rule it out.
I still think you're being too ambitious. Action is really difficult to do well... and 15 minutes is going to be really tough.
Some of my friends made a 3 minute "Grindhouse" trailer with marshall arts and action scenes and it has taken them the best part of a year to complete.
http://vimeo.com/28055077
And you'll probably agree with me that the action scenes are some of the weakest?
As for using multiple cameras? It is hard enough to orchestrate two actors and one camera. Your cameras are going to be filming each other and the lighting will never be right for all the angles and instead of one good take you're going to end up with 3 bad takes. The big productions that use multiple cameras are people who have spent years honing their craft and have literally dozens of specialists on set who know their art inside out. And they usually have sets built with lighting and camera positions in mind.
Some of my friends made a 3 minute "Grindhouse" trailer with marshall arts and action scenes and it has taken them the best part of a year to complete.
http://vimeo.com/28055077
And you'll probably agree with me that the action scenes are some of the weakest?
As for using multiple cameras? It is hard enough to orchestrate two actors and one camera. Your cameras are going to be filming each other and the lighting will never be right for all the angles and instead of one good take you're going to end up with 3 bad takes. The big productions that use multiple cameras are people who have spent years honing their craft and have literally dozens of specialists on set who know their art inside out. And they usually have sets built with lighting and camera positions in mind.
http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew?blend=1&ob=4
Its not going to be heavy with martial arts. For action scenes to be good yes we will NEED to get complex with different cameras but that speeds up the work. Survey the scene, check to see the cameras field of view and physically mark where each camera man can and can not go to avoid camera guys filming each other. If you watch the show 24 in season 1 allot of the action scenes did show camera men in a blatant way. Surveying is extra work but it is by no means impossible or crazy time consuming. We will have dual 5000 watt generators on site with MacBook Pro's to dump the video following each scene to keep everything organized, obviously with 10,000 watts of power and 8 hours worth of juice we can light the place up like a christmas tree provided we have the lighting which we've got thanks to a construction type guy working with us. Import and transcoding will take place stat and while that is processing we will move onto the next scene while I have the editor monitor that process, granted the MacBook Pro's aren't really fast enough but they can import just fine so we can not worry about 6 scenes broken up into 67 cuts on a three 8gig SD cards. Next scene may not be action meaning only one camera angle thus less complexity. One of the town officials emailed me back very much interested and he is going to contact the owner asap and the law enforcement agencies surrounding the two areas are all on board with us (I know some people and made some calls). I think its ambitious but then again so were allot of movies. I'm sure if everyone does their job (which is no guarantee haha) we can get things done. A year to pull this together sounds like the kind of project you spend 15 minutes a day working on or so and not really too concerned about it...
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Woah woah woah woah woah... Woah.
Heed smokescreen76's advice. You're trying to run before you can crawl. All this talk of editors transcoding on set, 16mm film and 10,000 watts of lighting... Trying to replicate a big Hollywood set is a recipe for disaster. Keep it as small as you can get away with.
My advice would be not to talk to people like that.
Heed smokescreen76's advice. You're trying to run before you can crawl. All this talk of editors transcoding on set, 16mm film and 10,000 watts of lighting... Trying to replicate a big Hollywood set is a recipe for disaster. Keep it as small as you can get away with.
My advice would be not to talk to people like that.
I'm not misquoting you because I'm not quoting you. Whether you were serious about using 16mm or just daydreaming, it suggests you think you have the luxury of thinking beyond the fundamentals. To get a decent film from a first attempt you can't afford to.
It's more people, more equipment, more to plan, more to think about and do on the day, more to look after, more to go wrong.
Some advice from a professional DIT and editor...
Transcoding on set does speed things up, provided that your data handler(s)/DIT(s) are always on the ball and have a firm grasp of the workflow. But it's been my experience that in student productions, this isn't always the case. Additionally, efficient transcoding requires fast hardware, and prior to the recent quad-core models, MBPs were no speed demons in that regard.
You'll see bigger productions do what you're thinking about doing, but do understand that these larger shows almost always hire professional DITs that operate purpose-built rigs (fast dual-processor Mac Pros, hardware RAID systems, etc.).
My best advice to you here would be to run speed tests on the hardware you intend to use on-set prior to shooting. Factor in how much you intend to shoot in a given day. This will give you a better idea of how feasible it actually is to transcode "on-the-fly". There's no shame in dumping/logging data during the shoot and then transcoding later, after the general chaos of film production is out of the way. There's far more pressing things to worry about on film sets, trust me.
Overall, it seems to me like you're pretty adamant about efficiency on a rather ambitious film. It's possible to achieve both, but it requires experienced crew and the right tools - and with student/low-budget productions, you often don't get the luxury of having both (or sometimes, either one). If it's a matter of meeting a deadline (like your grade), consider toning down the complexity. Good stories can be told without that.
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There are lot of people here trying to help you make a better film. We're explaining from real-life experience that some of your decisions are going to cause you problems.
DIT on set is not a good idea. The normal workflow is to have enough cards to last you the day and then do all the DIT stuff at the end (While everyone else is packing up the gear you'll see one guy in the corner with a laptop watching progress bars)
My advise for working with unpaid cast and crew - give them a little leeway. They are not hired hands (as they're not being paid) so you can't push them around. They are probably working for you for the experience or to stretch their creative muscles. Make sure the experience is as fun as possible, feed them well and listen to their ideas and input. If things start running late ask if anyone has to leave (and let them). If you want to get that one more shot before lunch ask if people mind hanging on - if your crew believe in the project they will probably prefer to keep shooting.
The 550D is notorious for overheating and sapping batteries so maybe use the multiple cameras as backup. If you think that Hollywood productions uses EX1's or anything remotely similar then you need to do a little research. 90% of films are still shot on 35mm film. As far as digital cameras the RED and Alexa are making inroads and older generation digital camera's like the Genesis and Viper are still used.
I am not giving you a hard time. We truly want to help.
DIT on set is not a good idea. The normal workflow is to have enough cards to last you the day and then do all the DIT stuff at the end (While everyone else is packing up the gear you'll see one guy in the corner with a laptop watching progress bars)
My advise for working with unpaid cast and crew - give them a little leeway. They are not hired hands (as they're not being paid) so you can't push them around. They are probably working for you for the experience or to stretch their creative muscles. Make sure the experience is as fun as possible, feed them well and listen to their ideas and input. If things start running late ask if anyone has to leave (and let them). If you want to get that one more shot before lunch ask if people mind hanging on - if your crew believe in the project they will probably prefer to keep shooting.
The 550D is notorious for overheating and sapping batteries so maybe use the multiple cameras as backup. If you think that Hollywood productions uses EX1's or anything remotely similar then you need to do a little research. 90% of films are still shot on 35mm film. As far as digital cameras the RED and Alexa are making inroads and older generation digital camera's like the Genesis and Viper are still used.
I am not giving you a hard time. We truly want to help.
Thanks a bunch! Sorry I am just the type of person who is always asking "Why? Why?". We don't have a deadline per say but I would like to get filming before it starts snowing out though I guess that might make the film interesting, I just think people will be less inclined to do a film if they are freezing their rear ends off :O. Today I dispersed some more responsibility and managed to get some excitement going with my guys and I keep seeing them message back with new creative ideas or even just new knowledge they acquired which is good.Some advice from a professional DIT and editor...
Transcoding on set does speed things up, provided that your data handler(s)/DIT(s) are always on the ball and have a firm grasp of the workflow. But it's been my experience that in student productions, this isn't always the case. Additionally, efficient transcoding requires fast hardware, and prior to the recent quad-core models, MBPs were no speed demons in that regard.
You'll see bigger productions do what you're thinking about doing, but do understand that these larger shows almost always hire professional DITs that operate purpose-built rigs (fast dual-processor Mac Pros, hardware RAID systems, etc.).
My best advice to you here would be to run speed tests on the hardware you intend to use on-set prior to shooting. Factor in how much you intend to shoot in a given day. This will give you a better idea of how feasible it actually is to transcode "on-the-fly". There's no shame in dumping/logging data during the shoot and then transcoding later, after the general chaos of film production is out of the way. There's far more pressing things to worry about on film sets, trust me.
Overall, it seems to me like you're pretty adamant about efficiency on a rather ambitious film. It's possible to achieve both, but it requires experienced crew and the right tools - and with student/low-budget productions, you often don't get the luxury of having both (or sometimes, either one). If it's a matter of meeting a deadline (like your grade), consider toning down the complexity. Good stories can be told without that.
Yeah I definitely want to make sure its fun for everyone so food will be involved and thus far I've been accommodating everyones schedules pretty well which is a pain for me but it keeps everyone happy. I wasn't implying an EX1 was used in Hollywood though; simply that DSLR video is allot more to handle at once than just grabbing dedicated camcorder. As for the 550D overheating...I've had it happen to me when I was doing a minor gig for someone (occasionally a family friend will invite me to an event to do pictures/video) but it happened to be on a really hot day and I was shooting 1080 pretty much not stop instead of doing cuts like I usually do as it was a picnic with allot going on and as you know you don't want to miss anything!
I guess I'm trying to make sure things are simple and organized but not so much that it looks like I didn't put the effort in. As for action scene's, the whole 15 minutes is not going to be action...we had a meeting (all my guys) and we brought allot of the initial bold ideas for lots of long guns and constant firing down to a more discrete image. I'm planning maybe 2 major action scenes and even then they won't be something out of Jason Bourne's day dreams lol. I've been watching allot of movies lately (Not just action stuff) and instead of paying attention to the content, I've been looking at the shots and thinking how they got the angles, how many cameras they had to use, etc. and if a scene I saw came off as having too much I strayed away from it. Quick question though; how many days should I plan to shoot for? My concern is not overstaying my welcome with the factory owners, but not rushing things and trying to get it all done as fast as possible in one day and burning out everyone too fast...
We are shooting a series of 15 minute shorts (Shameless plug - http://www.thedeadhour.com) with a very experienced crew. The average shoot is 4-5 days to complete filming. That said, I've worked projects with a less experienced crew for a 5-6 minute short and we shot over 4-5 days also. The days were much shorter but it kept everyone from getting worn out. There is a point a couple hours in where your actors start to get really tired. Watch for it and encourage them to get a snack. Relax, get to know everyone and make sure people are having fun - within the boundaries of your project. At the end of the day it's up to you to dictate the pace of the movie. Win the cast and crew over and they will move mountains for you.
Well, there are certainly advantages to having a DIT on set too, even if that duty is given to an assistant cameraman. One of the advantages of shooting digital is that the DP can check his work prior to the next camera set-up to make sure he really got what he wanted, whereas with film and (sometimes) tape, they have to rely on their experience and gut instead.
And it's much easier to identify problem areas like lighting, framing, continuity, etc. when you run playback on a larger screen. But the use of a good field monitor helps a lot in this regard as well.
Finally, depending the amount of content being shot, having enough fast memory cards to store the whole day's footage isn't always feasible. And like or not, memory cards DO fail from time to time, regardless of the brand. As a safety measure, I much rather offload media to storage as quickly as possible. On my DIT gigs, I typically run a RAID system that makes a least 3 copies (as the budget permits, of course).
I watched a video by Philip Bloom where he was discussing memory cards and he said to stay away from those 64GB SDXC cards so if you accidentally format a card or it fails you don't loose everything. I'll be using an 8gig card with 3 or four 4gig SDHC.
That's actually good advice, but even still, data ingest should ideally happen whenever a fair bit of downtime exists (like when changing a camera setup). Fast cards don't take an awfully long time to dump, provided you're using a decent reader.
On a lot of the RED shoots I've worked on, I would have to practically beat this into camera departments that think they're "too busy" to take two minutes to unmount a digital magazine. In the case of RED, these are custom drive packs made up of mechanical disks or SSDs in RAID-0 configuration. REDs can also record to high-speed CF cards, but they're often impractical to use because the super-high bitrate recording doesn't lend itself well to CF card capacities (e.g. like 6 minutes on a 16GB card). The point is - I just have trouble trusting the drive packs (especially the mechanical ones) with 2 hours worth of footage at a time, knowing these get knocked around during production quite a bit.
It's better to be safe than sorry.
I just stumbled on to this thread and am printing/saving it as a reference. Loads of good info here.
Nope. Everything was ready to go and then are location went last minute. Land owner decided to change his mind last minute.... I had a large amount of people interested and ready to go and I had allot of support people but the set getting thrown out last minute killed my plot mainly because of peoples schedules NOT being free and I had planned a weekend where everyone was free...was pretty pissed and I am STILL trying to get people together for SOMETHING to shoot but its proving even more difficult to work around peoples schedules now....sort of frustrating when you organize a huge thing and then it falls apart from something stupid like that in the end...Oh well, I guess Ill just read up more on what to do but Id really like to shoot something decent to edit...
I had a large amount of people interested and ready to go and I had allot of support people but the set getting thrown out last minute killed my plot mainly because of peoples schedules NOT being free and I had planned a weekend where everyone was free...was pretty pissed and I am STILL trying to get people together for SOMETHING to shoot but its proving even more difficult to work around peoples schedules now....sort of frustrating when you organize a huge thing and then it falls apart from something stupid like that in the end...Oh well, I guess Ill just read up more on what to do but Id really like to shoot something decent to edit........and this sort of thing is exactly why I quit filmmaking at an amateur level. Wasted the best part of a whole year trying to get a short film organised, and in the end ended up making a highly compromised version just to not waste the rest of the year. Sadly, without money, you'll very rarely get the level of commitment from others you need let alone the passion that you have for what you're trying to do.