As a producer/director, I’ve traveled around the world putting together dozens of video crews ranging from small documentary teams to large commercial productions, so I know how challenging it can be to put a great crew together.
Here are nine helpful tips for assembling the right small crew and creating a good vibe for a successful shoot.
New in rentals are the Westcott Flex Lights. Lightweight and powerful, these fixtures have the “flexibility” to light all kinds of scenes. Each light is constructed of an LED array on a soft panel that can either attach to a square frame for support or stand alone in unique lighting situations.
All of the Westcott Flex Lights are impressively bright and generate significantly less heat than fresnel or HMI lighting sources. And with a super low weight and profile, the panels easily mount anywhere — handy in very tight setups.
The Westcott Flex Light Travel Kit includes everything you need to set up two 1×1’ soft light sources. With dimming options, battery power and adjustable color temperature, this kit is perfect for setting up quick interviews or adding light to “run and gun” productions. Studio B also offers a 2×2’ daylight balanced Flex Light for situations that require higher output.
The lighting systems come with frames, diffusion, dimmers and adjustable ball joints compatible with baby pin mounts.
Handheld gimbal stabilizers are taking camera mobility to a whole new level. But that freedom extends only as long as you can stand to hold up the rig. All day shoots with a Ronin or MoVI can be a heavy task. Luckily, we now have the perfect piece of gear to save your arms during long productions – meet the Easyrig Vario 5 Gimbal Rig.
Designed to support cameras and gimbals from 11lb to 38lb, this vest system lightens the load of a wide range of handheld setups. It serves as an excellent companion to our DJI Ronin or any of our digital cinema cameras — the Vario 5 supports shoulder mounted camera rigs, too. Contact us to reserve the Easyrig Vario 5 today.
The Sony A7S is a powerful camera for its size and price range. Now, you can take full advantage of an A7S rental when you pair it with the Atomos Shogun 4K Recorder. Output crisp 4K footage with an impressive dynamic range, beautifully exposing shots that comparable cameras can’t touch.
Internally, the A7S is limited to 60fps at 1080p, but via HDMI, the camera can output 4K footage at 24fps and 30fps, as well as regular HD up to 60fps. In addition, recording to the Shogun gives filmmakers easy access to powerful features like scopes, zebra stripes, and focus magnification with the touch of a finger — all on an easy-to-view 1920 x 1200 seven inch display. The Shogun even allows shooters to preview footage with preloaded 3D LUTs, further bolstering creative control on set.
Rigging up these two great pieces of equipment keeps independent filmmakers at the cutting edge of the 4K video market and greatly increases flexibility in 1080p workflows. Check out the footage below, shot with this setup at varying resolutions and frame rates:
Tips for shooting with the A7S:
Move over F55, our Sony F5 can now shoot 4k internally straight onto SxS cards. We just upgraded it this week, so now there’s no need for the AXS-R5 external RAW recorder for quick and easy 4k shots. While it doesn’t shoot RAW internally (for that you’ll still need the R5), if you want to shoot 4k and don’t want to deal with the size of RAW footage, it’s a lighter, cheaper alternative. Now, rather than recording 500GB of footage for just an hour of 4k RAW, you can fit a lot more on your cards and hard drives with the more compressed 4k XAVC codec.
Since they first came out, the ability to shoot 4k internally is one of the main aspects that set the more expensive F55 apart from the F5. With upgrades like this, however, the gap is narrowing and the F5 is proving to be the better investment.
Best of all, the basic camera rental hasn’t changed in price at all with this upgrade, so you can now rent the F5 and get beautiful 4k images for the same rate as before.
DP Shane Hurlbut just posted an instructional video on the basics of setting up and operating C-Stands. Whether you’re a beginner or a key grip, (though it’s definitely more for beginners), it’s worth watching just to fill any gaps in your knowledge.
Check out the post on his site where he also includes a lighting schematic diagram for the making of this video.
Check out the demo reel of footage we shot on our DJI Ronin over the past few months. Special thanks to the Cal Parkour club, Shabnam Dance Company, and Warrior Dash.
Rent the DJI Ronin 3-Axis Camera Stabilizer today: https://studiobrentals.wpengine.com/content/dji-ronin-3-axis-gimbal-stabilizer
Fresh off another awesome year, Studio B threw its annual holiday party last night. With great people, great food, a white elephant gift exchange, and a compilation of our work from the year, the party was a grand success. We threw up a GoPro Hero 4 to capture a timelapse of the festivities.
Some of the Studio B Crew at the Warrior Dash Finals.
This past weekend we shot the Warrior Dash competition in Sacramento. With a crew of nine people, eleven cameras, and a 3am call time, it was a long but exciting day. We survived the mud and dust with some amazing footage, and I think it’s safe to say the cameras got the worst of it:
Our gear list: Sony F5, Sony FS700, Red Epic, Red Scarlet, two Canon C300s, Canon 5D mk.II, two GoPro 3‘s, two GoPro 4’s, the DJI Ronin, Porta-Jib Traveller, and a quadcopter.
The Teradek Bolt Pro Wireless SDI Video Transmission System just arrived! Send 1080p60 video wirelessly up to 300 feet from your camera. This is the perfect device for when you need to go wireless on set. If you’re using our new DJI Ronin stabilizer, for example, and your director, DP, clients, (or whoever!) want to see what the camera sees, then there’s no other way to send video since tethered cables would ruin the balance and autonomy of the camera. Our kit comes with one transmitter, one receiver, and all the necessary cables and mounting hardware you’ll need.
Check out the Teradek Bolt Pro page here and rent one today!