Here are a coupe of ways we use the Marshall. Sometimes I mount on the camera, in this case Robert clamped it onto the slider mount and I am using it to judge the speed of the tracking motion. I often use a Zacuto finder, but find with these sort of situations the Marshall works better for view while shooting. In the other image it is mounted next to the camera so that I can direct and also look at the image crop. Note the color strip on the side of then monitor. The Marshall does this really excellent false color exposure thing that is fantastic for judging exposure. It will also do a sharp line focus add screen, however I find that focus is better achieved with a Zacuto and 5x or 10x on the camera. If we are in studio, we always then take some footage, transcode to ProRes, and open up it up FC on the nice calibrated Eizo to see exactly what it looks like.

Here is a first edit of some of last weeks work with the Trey McIntyre Project, a dance company that I have worked with in the past. The brief was to continue the existing brand space and to improve it. I did light tests with my assistant for a couple of days before we headed out. I wanted a light setup that was easy to do, would show the dancers faces, had a healthy American Vanity Fair vibe, but also a bit of surreal snap to it. We settled on 2 lights, both powered by Pro7A 2400 packs. The main light was a Chimera white medium box positioned as a fill to the opposite side of the camera as the sun. The dancers were never more than 90 degrees to sun, and often almost directly facing it. The rear light is a white beauty dish, disk in place, and a layer of full spun glass over the front. It was up about 18ft and behind the dancers. The main light was about 1/2-1 stop over the sun reading. Camera was a H3D, 80mm lens. Other gear: pocket wizards, 6500 Honda generator, MacBook Pro, Weibec external hard drive, bogan tripod. The Phocus software that the H3D uses is not for the meek. It requires a very fast computer and and operator who knows what they are doing. But the camera puts out 100mg tiffs and recyles roughly at the same rate as the strobes. I have a certain affection for that camera, it just feels nice. Reminds me of my old Contax 645.

We have done a number of athletes shoots. Dancers differ pschologically from competive athl;etes in that the latter’s life is entirely driven by numbers. How many reps, how far, how quickly, what level of stats compared to others etc. When I work with athletes, the best way to get them to chill is to start right away with quantifying the task at hand. This will take 2 hours, we will do 4 setups, each will take about 20 tries, etc. But, I have to stay with what I said, because at the 2 hour mark they are out of there. Dancers don’t have that. They don’t clock play time, or hang time. What they do have are photos. Is their photo the featured one for the company, how many of their shots go into the pool, do their pictures suck? There is much more pressure on them for the photo session than for an athlete, who typically would rather be eating or sleeping. When the dancers come to a session, they are never late, they are never unprepared, they come to work, and they have their game faces on. They know that a good shot will propel them to higher status in the company and perhaps to notice of a more prestigous company. In a word, they work it, and they work it hard.

Gear:
Hassy H3D 800/sec ASA 100
80mm lens f8-f16
2 Pro 7 packs
2 Pro heads with head extensions
Pro beauty dish white
Med Chimera white
Pocket Wizards
Mac Pro 2.8 ghz dual core Intel w/8gigs ram
G Tech drives

I am not entirely sure what to make of this, but it was an exceptionally bad week for the world of the electron over here at studio DHS. Saturday, a visiting art director accidentally smashes a 500 gig spinning Iomega HD to the floor. Wrecked. Tuesday my never failing super designed Glyph crooked. Weds, one of my G5s onboard 500 gig drives failed. Friday, in a spasm of elctro failure, a brand new Light Panel unit starts to bleat, then fails, followed by a program failure at Smug Mug, then all the electricity in Marina del Rey goes out. Wow, did somebody put a hex on me? None this was tragic. We triple backup everything- at least 2 working copies on connected drives, a third copy on night time backup drives that we store on the other side of the room, and all the still images get burned into a library of DVD. Just in case of a nuclear holocaust, once a month I send to my mom’s garage in Oregon a big drive with everything we did that month. I guess that makes 5 backups on everything. The Glyph is being replaced by the super apologetic people at Glyph tech support in upstate NY, the Light Panel is being replaced by Samy’s, and we popped in a new onboard drive to the sick G5 for a hundred bucks. I had to put out some serious coin for a pile of new G drives and a couple more Glyph raids, just to be sure. I have decided that since an art director smashing a working drive to the floor was never part of the backup contingency plan, nor was 3 drives failing in 3 days, that we need to add another layer of protection. I can not tell you how much I am looking forward to the ram based drives becoming price competitive

This little device is what has made using the 5DII as a movie camera possible for me. How Vince and the other pioneers were working without it astonishes me. Not only is the 3X magnifier a juicy view of the LCD, but it also helps me stabalize the camera by having a solid point of contact to my eye. Mostly, the camera just feels friendly, it feels like an extension of me when with the Zacuto. Love it. Even when I have a Marshal connected, the Zacuto is always on the back. Not to diss the competition to the Zacuto, but there is no comparison. That other device has now been turned into a very nice loupe for the Hassy HD3 screen.

Now this word of caution which should be filed under stupid human tricks. If you happen to be outside, and it happens to be sunny, and you additionally happen to have your back to the sun and the camera casually held at you side with the lens forward, you will burn holes in the LCD by magnifying the sun onto it. I know that sounds nuts, but I just came back from a job in Boise ID, where I let the client play with my baby and that is just what happened. I have 5 white burn marks on the LCD. The good thing is the fix is not heinously expensive. CPS will do it for about $200 and it takes them 3 days. Those guys rock. And my clients bill just went up by $200. I called Zacuto, who had never heard of such a nuttiness as someone actually having thier magnifier turned into a 6th grade science experiment on an unlucky and expensinve camera, but they generously are sending me a new plastic attachment square to go on the back after the CPS guys replace the LCD.

I have found that I need a partner on the equipment side who really knows what they are doing, a guy to equipment problem solve for me. For me that person is Jeff at Fotocare. Even though I am in LA most of the time these days, I would rather call Jeff in NYC, go over whatever my equipment issue de jour is and have him UPS the gear to me than deal with a local person. Not too say that there is a not a super cracker jack local gear supplier who could take care of me, I just like Jeff, I trust him, and so I deal with things long distance. For instance, I was having trouble figuring out the best way to mount my Marshal monitor. Jeff made several suggestions, sent them to me, I tried them out, and sent him back the ones I didn’t like. Jeff and I speak sometimes every day, because in this new world of moving image there is always something to figure out. And let’s face it, we are all working in a technology driven industry now. Its not like Canon vs Nikon, its much more than that silly discussion of years ago. Now I need all manner of widgets in order to make the process work, and if I don’t have all my ducks in a row, the system don’t work. Example, ND filters. Jeff was able to hook me up with BW 77 mm filters of 2,3,6 and 10 stops. That took some research on his part to dig them up, not much use for a 10 stop 77 mm ND in stills world, but with a 85 1.2 lens in daylight shooting motion, there sure is.
My plug is this, find a guy who knows his business and work with him. It will do you a world of good to have someone on the other end of the phone who you can really talk to. Let the amateur market deal with the online discount stores. I am a pro, my livelihood is at stake here, and I want somebody in the fight with me that I can count on.