Stephen Press

I had a friend shoot mine. He is a guy I rate a one of the best cameramen on the planet? So why is most of the reception shot on a Dutch tilt with a beer glass held in front of the lens? Coming up to 20 years ago? I must get around to editing it soon. Where am I going to get a High-band tape player?

I don?t shoot weddings but when a very good friend of mine got married, she asked if I would shoot hers. I said ok and went along to the rehearsal. She was ex-tv and he is military? so the rehearsal was two hours for a half hour wedding. :rolleyes: The location was a pig? it was a beautiful old church, no lighting allowed, no moving of historical stuff? it was a pig. The groom was tall, the priest was short, they did a reading over here, they did the vows over there, the signing way back there, the rings around the front and as I watched the rehearsal I found myself drifting around to get the shot? hmm this would look better on steadicam. So I talked to everyone. I warned them that if I used it, it would be distracting and? well, intrusive. They didn?t mind. She was ex-tv. So I did it. I?m very happy with the way it looks, very happy but during the rehearsal the priest had somewhat glossed over his sermon. Given the captive audience he seemed compelled to make the most of it. The half hour stretched a bit longer? a lot longer. :blink: Why is it the freebies always end up the most work? Note to self ?I don?t do weddings. I especially don?t do steadicam weddings.? :lol:

Ironically when I load the page in Firefox the tab reads ?$14 Dollar Steadicam ? the Poo? How very apt.

This should have been an easy set up (I didn't fly with the monitor up there) instead it was a real pain... looked ok in the end but was it worth the grief?

I much prefer this version http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=tfkuvqIqPYk

I did use my rig in the end. (The client was a bit shocked at how much faster it was to set up and balance the Actioncam to his shiny new Glidecam) ;) We didn?t have time for me to get back in the groove with regular. I have to admit when I started I tried to keep practicing both but the longer I operate the more set in my ways I?ve become. :blink: How is the zero G working out? I would love to upgrade one day.

I fly goofy. I can go regular but I just find goofy more comfortable. Yesterday I had a shoot with a new client and they wanted me to use their new V16 Glidecam. As far as I can tell it doesn?t do goofy. Am I missing something? Is there a simple way to get it more to what I?m used to? Or do I just need to get with the regular crowed?

I don?t know about Super Bowl but we just had the World Rugby Sevens over here in New Zealand (The USA team actually won a shield, congrats) and Rhys Duncan was operating Steadi cam down the sideline for two days solid. He was awesome. Sprinting at speed he still managed to zoom in onto the on field action. I still don?t believe some of what I saw, at one point long lens smoothly keeping pace with a former junior sprint champion!!! Rhys you are a machine!

Speaking of Lisigav who is this? http://www.warcraftrealms.com/char/2327135

I have operated barefoot on the beach a few times. Even removed my jeans once for sound to stop the swish as I walked but I wouldn?t make a habit of either. In fact I keep a pair of shorts and some beach shoes with the rig now just in case.

Hi Amando, yes I would get some sprigged shoes for the wet grass. Are you running the whole sideline or just half? Soccer is very hard to keep up with as ?the ball always beets the man.? (Coaching truism about passing the ball :) ) I?ve done a lot of Rugby but it is easier as they play patterns. In soccer the ball can go anywhere at speed!!! The few soccer games I?ve done we were mainly shooting pre-match, half time, the player?s benches, throw-in?s (if you get lucky) the crowd and (very cool) corners. Find out just how much they expect of you. If they are being realistic. Are you cabled? That makes a big difference. Good luck.

I?m a big fan of layers of Icebreaker Marino wool products Also the coat on top of the vest so I can get it off if I am too hot.

A definite maybe! ;) I?m not going to say never but my criteria for working with this company again is a lot higher. They did pay in the end (the soundie as well) and if I had been involved with the planning and prep I?d like to think the whole shoot would have been a lot smoother. If anything I think the previous DOP was overly optimistic as to what they could have achieved with the equipment and time they had? then again I don?t know what he had in mind? I?m willing to believe it was a one off bad shoot? I guess I?m an optimist at heart but I will have my eye?s wide open and everything on paper before doing anymore business with them.

A currier arrived today with a hard drive, a bottle of wine and a Cheque for my full invoice? :blink: :blink: :blink: Happy now. :D

Thanks Alec it might come to that. I?ve run into this a few times where the data wrangler is also running the video assist/playback and gets so wrapped up in that they seem to forget about the ingesting. After all it?s supposed to be easy, fast and foolproof <_< Up to now I have tried to kept myself separate from the data side of the shoot leaving it all up to the productions to organize. Now I?m wondering if it is something I will have to take a more active part in just to make sure it is done right... but that would mean taking more responsibility for something I have very little control over? that doesn?t thrill me. Anyway good luck with red.

I should have mentioned that before I did an invoice I called the Production Manager to talk about rates and what to bill for? I know after the shoot what an idiot? I offered to eat the Actioncam hire and have a day buy out rate for the first day that included some of but not all of the ingest time, I didn?t even think of the 3 hours spent waiting around on day 2 I just assumed that was on the clock. She had just seen the rushes and was gushing. It was so much better than they had been expecting and the client was stoked? apparently he had been on the shoot but at the time I thought he was second AD? a very good second AD at that. Don?t worry about it, bill for everything the PM said. So it came as a shock that they were not paying. She of course is long gone from the company and the guy I?m dealing with now is not very helpful. I guess what gets me is that at the time I let myself be a doormat. There were lots of warning signs and point where I should have said no or just walked but it was like watching a slow train wreak, it was just so unbelievable I couldn?t step away. So while I?ll take some of the blame for not following my own normal best practice and I can live without the Actioncam hire, I can see that the ingest time on day one was my own call and not wanting to mess around my friend who lent us the P2 cards so they could be argued, I will not back down on the 3 hours on day 2. They claim the 3 hours we spent on set as we waited for the cards to ingest was a break in a split shift. Now I very rarely agree to spit shifts and then usually only for live events with a early set up, rehearsal then a long break till show time. We never discussed a split shift, it was not on the call sheet as a split shift. None of the other crew I have contacted thought it was a split shift. The soundie has yet to be paid, he is in discussion over extra equipment to do the job. I can?t write this off to experience. I?m just too annoyed. I will talk to the soundie and see if we can lodge a joint complaint if I can?t resolve thing any other way.

Its funny we should be talking about the HVX with primes on another thread because of something that just came up. Ok this is a bit of a long story but if you bear with it there is a real kicker at the end. About 6 months ago I got a call from a camera assist I have worked with. He had a corporate shoot with an out of town production company (Name withheld for now) they were part way through and the DOP had a stomach-ache, could I come in for a half day and fly the Steadicam for them. I had nothing else booked so I said ok. By the time I got there the stomach-ache had become appendicitis so I now had the whole shoot to do? I should have run then. First the gear. The camera was a HVX with adapter and prime lenses. The Steadicam was in fact a Glidecam V8 with no monitor on the sled. The data wrangler, cam assist and grip were all crusted around the camera trying to get it to work, one of the necessary plastic flange thingies was missing so they were phoning and bodging? I left them to it to find out more about the shoot. It quickly became apparent that the Director had delusions of competency. The first shot of the day was to be a 4 to 5 min continuous roll moving through a maze of rooms and corridors involving 6 actors with dialog and a huddled mass of extras? this was a corporate vid??? The sound guy was sobbing in the corner over how he was supposed to mic 6 with out being warned? he thought he had problems? So while I tried to set lights around the director?s constantly changing walk through, the witches coven around the camera declared the Frankenstein lash up of lens and gaffer tape ready. The Glidecam was a dog and a pig to fly at the same time. The arm was too big to fit through a doorway it just couldn?t do the job so after demonstrating the problem to the director and his cluster of hangers on I unloaded my ActionCam from the boot of the car and set up on that. 3 hours and we hadn?t shot a thing. During that time you may have thought the actors had there lines down pat? For the next hour we did blown take after take. Finally I refused to fly until the actors could to two walkthroughs in a row without blowing their lines. While they did that I had time to have a closer look at the camera. I was using all of their own settings as what we shot had to mach earlier shot stuff but some of the settings looked wrong to me. I talked about it with the cam assist who had his hands full with the piece of sh!t follow focus and he was shocked to find the camera had somehow changed to the wrong setup. Luckily we had nothing in the can. Finally after 6 takes we had something that was ok. The director?s posse all nodded happily at the playback and he agreed. Now for one on one interviews. A fast and dirty lighting set up, I was beyond art at that stage but it look alright. What followed was the water torture theory of interviewing technique. 2 agonizing hours of IV, drip, drip, drip? only 5 more interviews to go. But now all the P2 cards are full. It?s the data wranglers moment to shine. Somehow one of the P2 cards is stuck in the camera. The others won?t download onto the laptop. We go to lunch and leave him to it. Half an hour latter, a limp salad selection of catering (I?m lettuce intolerant? strange but true) and still no joy. The stuck card is out but the laptop and cards are not talking. I phone a friend who works at a local P2 news station and he drops off a handful of cards on the proviso I get them back to him by morning. We slog on. My half day now well and truly into the 15 hour mark it?s time to head home. Will I come back tomorrow? They didn?t even ask, they just assumed, I should have said no anyway but like a possum trapped in the headlights I was so focused on finishing the task it honestly never occurred to me to pull out. The data wrangler took the production company?s P2 cards to work on them over night. I took the News P2 cards with me. At home I got an old hard drive I use to backup my PC. I formatted it and downloaded the P2 card onto it? ha! If only it was that simple. The drive is too old and slow? I feel the same? so I take the PC apart and mount it inside, turn off everything that normally runs in the background cross my fingers and pray. It works eventually but I have to sit up and transfer the files at real time. Next morning after a refreshing 3 hours sleep I take the hard drive and drop off the P2 cards to my friend along with a bottle of wine. The rest of the shoot is a few simple GV?s that can be easily shot in a few hours? of coarse with our director and the helpful herd it takes another 15 hour day of painstaking grind. To be fair there was three hours of standing around in the middle as they try to get the P2 cards loaded onto the laptop. So finally I wave them and my hard drive goodbye head home to a hot bath and a large rum and coke. Next day I sleep late before sending off my invoice? to hear nothing until recently my Quick books accounts programme brought up a nag screen reminding me that (Name withheld for now) hadn?t paid or in fact sent back my hard drive. I contacted them and it seems they have issues with my invoice. For a start they don?t think they should pay for the Action cam as they had their own Stabilizing rig there? I can see that and although the director had said they would pay for it I can see where that might be argued but there was more? they didn?t think that they should be paying for the ingest time of the P2 cards at my home. That wasn?t what they hired me for its something that if I did at my own home in my own time because I wanted to then that was my problem and while they are at it they don?t want to pay for 3 hours crew time when we were waiting for the P2 cards to be ingested? apparently that was a brake. I?m keeping this light but there is an emotional point that goes so far beyond angry that you just have to laugh or you are likely to explode. I don?t think it is unreasonable to expect to be paid for all my time including ingest time? and I?d like my hard drive back. Payment aside, I guess its stuff like this that colours my thinking about P2 as a format. I know it?s not the formats fault that I was dealing with morons but it seems a lot of morons are enamoured with P2. With another format I could have handed the disk/tape whatever over and walked away at any time. Am I being unreasonable? What do you guys think?

I think you need to pick the right tool for the job. In this case it was a night shoot. We used 8x HMI?s and it still wasn?t quite enough light. For the cost of the camera, the adapter, the lenses, the lights and the run time, the bigger genny needed? not to mention the time wasted getting the thing to work right? ?It?s never done this before?? we could have hired a more suitable camera and still got the "look" The right tool for the job? :)

The humans are dead!

Slightly off topic but I really wasn?t happy (actually nobody was happy) with the look or the fiddly and painfully slow operation of this camera set up. It just wasn?t worth the grief. For the same or even less money we could have gotten a HD XDCam and shot with half the lights in about half the time and still had a better look at the end of it. Sorry for the rant but I?m just sick of productions selecting cameras etc because it?s perceived as ?film cool? I?m happy to try anything but please don?t pick a camera based on its street cred rather than it?s ability to actually do the job. rant over

I flew this set up for a music vid on my Action Cam. Balanced with little difficulty. About 15 min to set up.

I?ve shot a bit (reality shows, short films and music vids) on the HVX and only had a brief play with the Sony but if I was buying today that?s what I would get. It kicks the snot out of the HVX in every way. It?s still a handycam with all the problems that goes with that but it just does everything a bit (and in some cases a lot) better than the HVX. I don?t care what Panasonic replaces the HVX with, P2 is still stands for Problem Squared. If I sound bitter it?s just I resent that the ?simple workflow? that was promised seems to always end up adding at least two or three hours to my day and/or the loss of a useful crew member to accommodate the mostly useless ?data wrangler? who seems to sit on their ass all day occasionally surfacing from behind a laptop and holding everything up when they can?t get the cards ingested and then wiping the settings on my personal memory card, camera setting that I hunted down over the year, then resetting all the setting on the camera that I spent 40 min manually punching in without telling me? sigh. At lest with the EX1 for a reasonable amount of money you get a decent amount of storage on the card so you have less need to stop everything while it decides if it feels like being ingested today.

We already have a New Zealand Dancing with the Stars show and Bex or Rebecca Wilson-Jennings, fly?s it with real skill, so no luck there for me? maybe just as well as I wouldn't want to show up the stars ;)

The Freelancer Fandango I wasn?t sure if I should post this here. Technically there is so much wrong with it? starting with the obvious fact that I can?t dance? really it was only meant to be a bit of fun for my friends at b-roll.net... knocked off on a quiet day. So please don't think it is an example of my usual operating style. It was just a bit of fun. (To be honest though, sometime I'd like to set it up and do it properly... if I can find the time and a dance instructor :rolleyes: ) Anyway enough excuses merry xmas to all.

Vegetarian is nightmare for me. I have a bunch of food intolerances including lettuce? I kid you not? onion and any grape or grape based products, yet for some reason I am the first call from friends on any wine trail, so I love my meat. Ironically my sister runs a farm sanctuary where nobody gets eaten. Pakuratahi Farm Animal Sanctuary So while I understand both sides I try to convince myself meat appears magically in the supermarket and has nothing at all to do with suffering or animals in any way shape or form?