Jaron Berman

I'm not arguing with the quality of XDCAM HD 35 - its a great codec for sure. But with the panasonic recorder attached to an F3, vs. the internal codec, the AVCHD is noticeably better. Very noticeably better. My point being - numbers don't ALWAYS tell the whole truth. But honestly, if there's one thing that will sell more Canons initially than Scarlets it's Vincent Laforet's anecdote - " I should also mention that we shot with the C300 camera for 3 days in 95ºF + temperatures in the desert on RC Helicopters and Russian arms and we never had a single issue with the camera that I can recall. Impressive given that these were prototype cameras" The canon will likely price-out about the same as a scarlet in the same configuration - with batteries, evf, lcd, recording device, grip - perhaps the canon a little cheaper. BUT if your project depends on a camera working 100% of the time, well then the decision will probably be tougher for potential buyers.

The price seems to be the shocker. BUT based on release-event marketing materials, how can anyone say this is any better or worse than anything else? I think comparisons are being made based on price, which is natural. How things LOOK is a lot more important. At 24mb/s AVCHD blows the doors off XDCAM HD at 35mb/s, and thats just a "numbers" comparison. If numbers were all that mattered, the original RED1 would far outperform the Alexa. Even the MX SHOULD outperform the Alexa - but in reality its nowhere close. We can spin the merits of raw vs. log vs. linear all day long but who cares? If it looks like crap, it looks like crap. If it's great then that's awesome! - another tool. Once its out, a REAL price is charged, and people start using it then we can judge if its any good and if so, which markets its good for. Same goes for scarlet. Maybe scarlet is a fabulous camera, 99% reliable with great skintones and highlight rolloff....Who knows, it's been a LONG time coming. But for now... Canon is a company who's business is in-house development of lenses and sensors. I'm willing to wait and see how it actually LOOKS instead of deciding whether or not its any good based on endless spec-blathering. Even based on the recompressed vimeo clips it seems to retain highlights and roll them off better than most footage short of the Alexa, so I'm happy to see what its capable of. It's environmentally "sealed" to some extent, and it looks a bit like a mamiya 645. That's style, right?

I'm not sure why 3rd party mfg would be any more excited about this than any of the other new s35 cams on the market (exception being Alexa or F65) - none of the new s35 chip cams have any thought of operability - jam as much in as small a package as possible and let the end user figure it out. wait no, call it "modular" and charge more for all the freedom! F3, Af100, RED, this - all suck for ergonomics. The REAL killer would be an XDCAM body with the F3 chip, but until that happens its nice to have so many compact and uncomfortable options. Including this new one. As for price, who knows, itll likely be less than 16, probably 10 or less - all rumors right now. The camera in the bg looks like a 1d body, which would make sense - the new 1dx is an EF video body - perhaps they decided to give it the red "c" now, much like sony badging "cinealta" on their 24p cams. I agree with Adrian though - the lenses look very interesting. Very usable range on the 14.5-60, nice stop - could be a killer lens. Canon HD video optics (HDXS / KLL) have superb focus feel, hope that translates to these lenses.

generally the hardest/most expensive/most time consuming part of lighting a large space is just that - lighting the background. If it is strictly a background, and you don't need to change what it looks like - i.e. it's a warehouse and you're ok with it looking like a warehouse - then it's generally easiest to start there and see what you get for free. Snap a few stills of the space or frame it up on your 5d and expose it the way you'd like it to look in the final shot. If you find that it looks the way you'd like - note the exposure and move on to the easy part - the key light. For something like this, you may find that its a lot easier than you'd expect if you start with the background and then bring in the key to match the exposure or perhaps be slightly above the bg - 1/2 - 1 stop over. The biggest challenge will be matching the color of your key to the ambient lighting in that space. Warehouses tend to use powerful, dirty, cheap lighting - usually of the fluorescent or mercury vapor type. That means a heavy green cast. BUT - you're shooting digital, and one cool aspect of digital is that the camera itself is essentially a color meter. Take a few still frames in RAW, do a custom white balance and hopefully you have time to bring the still frames of a white/gray card into photoshop. Adobe Camera Raw has a little "white balance" eye dropper which you can use to great effect - sample the white/gray card and it will actually read out the kelvin temp of the ambient lighting, as well as any green/magenta shift. That +- green will be tough to perfectly replicate because it doesn't read out in gel strength but you can eyeball it and get pretty darn close. Now all you have to do is use a combo of gels (CTB probably and Plus Green) to get your key to about the same color as the ambient. The point here is that you want your key to be as close to the color temp of the ambient lighting as possible so your background doesn't look crazy colored because you're gonna re-whitebalance to your newly gelled key light so the skintone looks correct. But the closer you get to matching the warehouse color the better so it looks more seamless when that lighting bleeds onto your talent. When I do things like this I "cheat." A vectorscope is an AMAZING tool for video/digital in that you can EXACTLY match colors in realtime, especially when using a fixture like Arri's Locaster LED (or any other 6-7 color LED). If you have access to a vectorscope it'll save all the photoshop/still frames... But the overall message - start with your background - thats the tough part, and then at the very end work on your key and shaping the light so it looks correct for your intentions. You may actually find that a piece of foamcore or a flag over your talent helps IMMENSELY - so you can block any frontal warehouse light from hitting your talent's face, allowing you to put your pretty lighting on them instead. And you'll probably find that the nasty warehouse lighting looks just fine if its backlighting your subject.

Have you seen the casio hybrid projectors? Very cool tech, obviously in their infancy.... but for the size and output lumens, they are pretty incredible.. So perhaps it won't take an enormous technical breakthrough so much as licensing / knocking-off the breakthrough of other companies and repurposing. The casio is laser/led shining on a 720p DLP - they have yet to release a 1080p module.... but with clever purchasing and repurposing you could surely use that same light engine to drive a higher-rez chip. The limitation with the casio projectors right now seems to be signal processing - I've heard that with outboard color control they can be quite pleasing accurate bright and durable - all good things. Red 1 wasn't revolutionary technologically - it was a generational leap in cost/performance surely, but the "pieces" of the camera all existed in other worlds - RED did manage to bring them all together and sell the whole. All the elements of good and bright 3-d projection exist so perhaps you're wrong - companies like Kodak can only "manage" certain things because they spend so much time and money trying to innovate. Someone else may be sitting on the sidelines wondering, "why can't I take Casio's light engine and stick it on Sony's chip, and sell it as my own," or something to that effect.....

And in truth, RED is most successful in marketing. Their site was an innovation in camera marketing, so it's no surprise really. If your company depends on viral marketing, and a few people keep pointing out flaws that don't help you market....AND you control the forum on which they speak, then I think it's not really so shocking/insulting/newsworthy. I was banned a long time ago while pointing out ergonomic issues with R1....over and over and and over and over again (perhaps thats where I went wrong?) - At the time I drank the coolade and I thought REDUSER was a place to actively help their development... but its really not - they have the people they listen to - the original 10 or so people on their list and the "big name" DP's who's opinions they can quote in sales materials (incl. the site)..... and then the rest of us who, try as we might through their officially sanction forum, can only consume "information" and shout into the wind. Reduser is a bit biblical really - cryptic messages come from above and the underlings discuss, interpret and praise - usually futile. And it sells. So good for RED, they've taken a relatively dry and technical field and made it "sexy" to the average person. I can't tell you how many lay-people ask me "have you worked with that RED camera? What do you think? isn't it cool?" Obviously RED-tech hysteria has spread beyond the tight borders of our nerdery, so protecting their image and cleaning-up their site (same thing) can't be shocking at all.

I have that unit, it's amazing for what it's intended...and its also a great compact dimmer for 3 lights. The plugs on it are 3 x edison plugs (std. USA grounded) and outputs to 3 x edison female outlets. It has a ton of presets for TV, fire, anything that needs to flicker and yes - the 3 channels let you get the appearance of flames by using 3 separate sources at different physical locations. That unit can do 3 individual 2K lights, as each "leg" is separate. I don't personally know of a 220 unit but it's worth calling the magicgadgets people to see if they have an answer. Likely, if they have a 220 unit, it would handle 3 x 4K lights......worth calling them though. If a fire gag is what you're after, you can do it manually with a couple small handheld reflectors, or manually adjusting dimmers. Not as easy though. One thing you may try - a cheap DJ style dimmer box (DMX control) and a cheap DMX controller, you may be able to rent these - they definitely exist in 220... and you can probably program it any way you like - total cost a lot less than the magicgadgets, though much more limited wattage - usually 1000w / channel on 220 or less.

its a beautiful light. Comparing it to an Arri Par, a better comparison is this: K5600 makes the Joker 400 and the Blackjack 400 - both use the same lamp, ballast, cables, but the quality of light is very different - the Joker is a par, the blackjack is a fresnel (looks like a baby alpha) - par is an ugly, lumpy beam but very punchy, and with spread lenses and diffusion you can clean it up and use it in a lot of situations - like all Pars. Fresnel is a very smooth beam with a lot of focus options and clean shadows, though less brute force. The Alpha will have less throw/punch than a par fixture like the arri, but a much cleaner beam - it's a true fresnel - the lamp moves in/out towards the fresnel lens. Another cool thing about the Alpha/blackjack is the ability to pull the lens - I have a couple of the blackjacks and can speak to how clean the shadow is - it's a razor sharp and incredible even field that's wide enough to throw the shadow of the accessory slots. If you want film-noir razor-sharp shadows, the Alpha/Blackjack can rival dedicated single-shadow broadlights like the Arri X light and Desisti Goya. Basically, it's fresnel vs. par - which ever suits your needs. The Alpha is just a very clever and compact 4K fresnel that has the additional benefit of being easily run without a lens. I'm in the process of selling my jokers because I find that I like using my blackjacks (fresnel) better - the ability to use a fixture without diffusion is nice. To each situation there's a different solution, but if you're looking for a 4K fresnel, the Alpha is VERY nice.

Lowell tota - can't get many lights smaller than that except moleeno. For bringing up room ambience or bouncing, they work quite well..... and their reflector can be positioned to work pretty well as a cyc light too. Rifa is a great light, as Robert mentioned - fits in the case with your sticks and makes really beautiful light, available (EXPENSIVE) grids, etc. lowel isn't a bad way to go for cheap portable and easy.

The best way to light quickly is to do your homework BEFORE getting on set. The more you know about your locations, times of day, actors, shot lists etc the more you can do the pre-pro side of things. Sure, it's possible to walk into a location and start slinging lights around, but knowing where the sun is related to the windows, how long the scene is supposed to last, etc can help immensely - but it takes doing some research beforehand. And that includes a long chat with your director to make sure you know how much coverage he/she expects. If he/she wants to do a 7 minute moving master, and it takes 20 takes.... How are you going to maintain light direction and intensity? If you know this beforehand, you will be way faster on set because it won't be a stressful rush - you knew it would happen and planned for it. Also, what's the project? Is it a slick/glossy music video? There's a LOT of glamour lighting on your list. Lighting is about creating mood and depth in the frame- you don't necessarily need back and hair light to create depth if you use color or tone contrasts between foreground characters and background. A person with dark hair will naturally separate from a white or light colored background. When I'm trying to work quickly my first question is "what do I get for free?" a lot of times I'm working in locations that are chosen for the way they look and I'm not trying to ruin that mood... So I start with the background and add/subtract light as necessary to make it feel, to my eye, the way it feels in real life. Adding key is fairly easy and easy to balance from there, so I tend to key last. As for eye lights- unless you have your key/keys super super high and close to your subjects, or your subjects have incredibly deep eye sockets, I find them to be really annoying - essentially you're just a dding another shadow you have to control. The eye is a hemisphere, it'll reflect anything it sees- so as long as your key is low enough of an angle to your subject, it'll sparkle nicely. If you need the eyelight as a frontal fill (like an Obie), that's a matter of taste, but it usually looks like exactly what it is. Which brings up my next point- If speed is key, don't shy away from blocking carefully. If you simply can't adequately light an enormous space in the time allotted, or you can't find a good place to stick a light but you do have some framing flexibility, try working with the director to get your players to land in good spots/face the way you need- if it's justified by the story and helps you place lights. A key light for one character can, with some blocking., shift into another role if the character moves. Or cross-keying 2 characters you can use the bottom of each beam to hair light the other character. That's 2 units doing the work of 4- if you can hit the marks it's 2 units faster.

It's little known YET, but ETC has a new fixture, the Desire D40 which should do a pretty stellar job in any test, and more importantly in real life. They make about 10,000 different versions of the fixture (or more realistically 6 I think?) but I got the Lustre+ version - all their fixtures use the 7 color Selador engine - 40-some Luxeon Rebels (3w), MANY different operational modes including a color calibrated mode and a max-output mode. All their fixtures are supposed to be spot-on in calibrated mode, and that boast coming from ETC actually means something. I have been playing around with them in their various menu configurations - they offer local or DMX control, and it's slick because you can set the 100% white color of the fixture to any color temp between 2700 and 6500 so that if you decide to control the light in a color-mixing mode (to allow simulated party gel colors) - if you punch it to "white" it's not just all-on, it's a calibrated white. There's a "studio" mode on all the D40 series no matter which model you choose, which is color temp, brightness, and tint adjustable - and you can set the dimming curve to be LED instant, or have "gravity" like a tungsten fixture when dimmed. If it's not obvious, I'm pretty impressed by the buggers. They aren't light, super compact, or battery powered. But they have immense throw and beam shaping ability (using plastic lenses like a par but with smoother field). I haven't measured output yet but according to specs they should have roughly the same power as a 400HMI, perhaps slightly less. Certainly brighter than a 1K tungsten, and again - white on this unit uses 7 colors, on mine I believe its RGBAW, Indigo and Cyan. I just got them a couple days ago and have been too busy to shoot or measure anything with them specifically, but for $1300-$1600/ea street price they are impressive fixtures. Now I just have to learn to pick my beam shaping lenses - you can't "cut" the beam with doors without some diffusion as you're cutting the outer ring of LEDs and thus shifting the color.... but I'm sure with some practice it shouldn't be too hard esp. because you can stack combinations of spread lenses and diffusion to really tweak the beam - oval, circular, linear, rectangular.

Accurate vs. pleasing is another story. i dislike the look of litepanels 1x1, though they are used EVERYWHERE for a couple good reasons - they are fast to set up, and they can be battery powered. Will tungsten look better on skin? Yes. In many cases however, speed is more important than chart accuracy. I have a couple of the new Arri Locasters and I absolutely LOVE them. I think they look FAR better on skin than the 1x1, and its significantly easier to match them to any ambient light. When using the locasters, I pull a custom WB on the ambient, then use a vectorscope to match the Locaster to it exactly - the casters have variable "color temp" and +- green - it takes about 10 seconds with a scope to match them to just about anything, and I find the light to be very pleasing (and FAR easier on talents' eyes than the multi-point light of 1x1). They make an intensifier accessory - looke like a breakdown hard-side softbox...(dont know a better way to describe) that I like to skin with opal - and while intense, the light doesn't bother talent even when close-up and bright. Of the currently available LED's, I think the Locasters are by far the best. Output isn't anything to write home about, I think they're a little brighter than a bare 1x1, but the functionality is much better, and they're cheaper than 1x1 to boot. They can also be battery powered, though the available Anton mount is a little wonky - from the factory it doesn't allow you to use the fixture vertically...I drilled and tapped holes lower oin the yoke and to the back so the battery counterweights the head, so I can use flimsier travel stands if necessary (and use the fixture vertically). I use the light more than any other I own because it's convenient, fast, looks good and runs off battery or 4-pin XLR 12-28v. It really is an awesome light. I agree with guy about Kinos though - a lot of video engineers actually paint cameras to Chroma DuMonde charts using the Kino KF32 tubes, so obviously they must be pretty accurate. The barfly is a GREAT light, but in a pinch, I'll take the slightly-less-accurate (VERY slight difference, I've shot charts side-by-side to see) every time. My only real gripe about the Locaster is that the system case is awful. It doesn't fit the system! If you have the anton mounts or intensifiers you need to get a new case. Stupid!!!!! Make the case fit the SYSTEM!!! ARGGGG. But really - that's not a bad gripe, the Locasters are pretty fantastic. They have completely replaced my arri 300's for "2-people sitting at a table" scenes...and saved me about $1000 on stands - you don't need mini-max menace arms when you can get away with cheap combo boom stands and still get the light boomed out about 60" from the stand.

In my not-entirely-serious post, I did allude to the things about Tree of Life that bothered me, basically as a counterpoint to the mostly glowing or cautiously neutral feedback.... but I'm curious what about the film inspired others? Everyone watches film differently, and I'm the first to admit that I've learned quite a bit about my craft from some awful films...- some brilliant cinematography goes unnoticed in some of those awful films. But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy the film itself, find it entertaining or think it's a well told story. Were there some great moments of photography in Tree of Life? Absolutely. Was it a well told story? In my opinion, absolutely not. Was it entertaining or thought provoking (what most film in theatrical distribution is meant to be)? In my opinion, no. I may be small-minded but the beautiful thing about this particular forum is that we're all entitled to our own opinions, and in discussion we can, perhaps, broaden our minds a bit. Here at least we can only hide behind our real names. My opinion may be wrong, who knows! But I think the act of dismissing my points wholesale is very small-minded itself. I did preface my post with "I thought" - to denote my comments as opinions of mine. Discussion is good and productive and if you disagree with my points - lack of story, actual character development, forced CG, being propped-up by the director's notoriety, not knowing when to properly end - please say so and add to the discussion. If you find Malick to be a genius, I'm genuinely interested to know why, that maybe I can find some perspective by which to review his older films and perhaps glean some new knowledge or at least respect. It may be shocking how many small-minded people are truly open to learning new things, as opposed to those willing to dismiss any and all disagreement with their own opinion. Crazy right? It's a lot easier to assume I'm evil because as of this moment, I don't love Terrence Malick or the Tree of Life. But that can change.

I think I agree with Chris, though I'll be less coy - I thought it was a disaster and an awful waste of time. Had it not been attached to Terrence Malick's name I doubt it would have gotten distribution at all, even straight to DVD. Really - screen it in a vacuum absent of film pretense, and I'd bet the audience walks out (like they did here at IFC in NY). The audience, in unison, groaned after each of the 4 fake endings, as if to say "how can you possibly continue to punish us?" Film/digital/whatever - I think that conversation misses the point entirely. There were about a handful of interesting shots, but if you're looking for stunning - watch Planet Earth or Life. At least they didn't draw-in stars or dinosaurs. If you're looking for plot, story or even character, watch ANYTHING else... Tyler Perry can sling together something more compelling than that drivel. Tree of Life really felt like a jumbled mistake, like the editor tried to cut around a senile director losing his mind... in order to salvage bits and pieces into an art-film. Malick brilliant? Well, he hired Ennio Morricone on Days of Heaven, so at least back then he wasn't totally insane. Seriously, even for the curiosity factor just skip this film - too many GOOD films out there to watch with your 3 hrs. My friend (an editor) has actually vowed never to trust my movie selection again because I dragged him to this. That's $14 I could have spent on a burger. Or anything else. Literally anything else. :)

depending on which lens you use the 1200 will likely have more throw. The Goya is very similar to the Arri X-lite (arri copied to my knowledge), so if you can find the arri online calculator you should be able to punch in distances of both fixtures and see relative spreads, stops, fc etc - basically just think of the goya/x as a big BIG lightbulb - that's all it is. 50' away, the 1200 par with a flood lens at middle focus position should give a beam 46' across (+ field) at key on a RED shooting f/2.8 (basically needs 45FC). The X-lite should be able to throw the same lumens but from 37' away, but the beam will be 153' across! Thats a pretty big difference in distance from talent, but it's also a HUGE difference in spread - so choose wisely! If it's important to hold exposure on this backlight for a long walk + talk or something, it'll probably be easier to dial it in with the par - BUT your street can't be too wide. It'll take more grippage to do the same thing for the goya, but you'll have more flexibility in terms of spread. And truthfully, little issues are a lot easier to excuse or hide in backlight than they are on keys. The more you know about your location beforehand the better prepped you can be - its really hard to guess these things day-of esp with "big" lights because you kinda need to get it right before planting your fixture - running power to a 4k or bigger is a slower task than with standard edison power. If you can scout and measure, pace it out, discuss the shot with the director and audio - you can do it the dorky way and calculate everything to the point that the margin of error is no big deal - so you show up knowing exactly where to place your light, where to run power, where to hide your genny, which lens to use, what additional grip will need to be rigged, etc... - the Arri calc is AWESOME for this, just try and get as much preliminary info as possible about your location - hard numbers don't lie. There's nothing like showing up with the 4k and saying "I really hope this works!" Much better to know it'll work - and time is much cheaper when you're on a computer than when you've got a crew waiting for you!

no, not even close, BUT the goya is a cool light for a different reason - it throws a very flat and even beam of a very wide angle so you can cover a large area with the light closer - the only disadvantage to this is your inverse square law - when people/objects move closer and farther they will get brighter and darker moreso than a more focused unit farther away - like a 4k par. One very cool thing about the goya is the availability of a "black reflector" which means you can throw one, razor-sharp shadow from the unit - even a flooded fresnel can't touch the clean edge of that beam. In general though, if you need "punch" then a par will give you more bang for your buck. I've used the goya as a nighttime "backlight" but mostly because the character was going to be in profile at one point and relatively close to a wall - and i wanted that cartoonishly defined shadow.

On the low end, I think even the Panasonic AF100 gives RED a run for its money. But it's clear why Alexa took so long and costs what it does - does a pretty incredible job when compared to film. Out of curiosity John - when you're budgeting film vs. digital are they factoring DIT, monitoring, archiving etc... it feels like there's a point at which the assumptions of what will show up on set for digital are so high that it pushes the budget back in favor of film, no?

16 looked beautiful, Alexa looked pretty amazing, MX looked like RED. Blown highlights, crushed blacks, plastic skin. I have to disagree with Stuart completely -MX isn't in the same league as s16 or Alexa - like John said - just look at the glass blocks...or on the last shot look at the cars in the bg as they transition to black, compared to the skintone.... No contest....but then again, MX is in a different price class sorta, so it's not surprising But from your test, its impressive how nice Alexa looked compared to the s16! The lower-value skintones looked awfully nice on film, even Alexa can't quite hold that low-light skintone just yet. Nowhere near as gross and plastic as MX, but still - ain't film! Thanks for posting this - always nice to see side-by-side shots every so often to check on the "state of things."

the $500 marshall 5.6" is pretty common, and takes AA's. it's handy when you must shoot 5d

No offense to RED, but the idea that you must own gear is ridiculous. The current trend of "buy everything" was one of their great innovations in the motion picture world. Sure their products offer a lot of bang for the buck, but step back and look at your initial statement - you want to write and direct - and go from there. If your business isn't camera rental, and you don't have a busy production company always shooting on the exact same format, it probably doesn't make sense to own a camera. The big issue is delivery - there doesn't exist one camera that works in every situation... and the overall price of a "camera" in shootable form is exponentially higher than the pricetag you see on RED or any other manufacturer's website. So buying cameras that work for this project but don't fit your next project... not the best investment. Needless to say - at that total budget with those specific requirements, I'd steer as far away from anything RED as possible. To make the most of that footage, you'll be spending a mint on post and storage, which alone could eat half your budget. Not to mention lenses, accessories, etc... Ok, some key words I pulled out from the initial post: realistic, not shaky, two cameras. practical, flexible, and lightweight setup. Cheap would be good too. a lot of movement, without having to import until post, agile as possible, by the seat of our pants. flexibility over beauty, banding, shutter roll, etc. isn't going to be acceptable. Firstly, a DSLR is about the worst possible choice. It fails essentially every one of your requirements. Scarlet may or may not exist at the time you shoot, and by the time you make it "shootable," it'll likely cost a lot more to buy or rent than a better and more completely configured system. You have described, to the letter, an ENG camera. Those letters conjure up ugly and awful things in a lot of peoples' minds when it comes to "film-style" production, but truthfully the picture from GOOD eng cameras can easily rival most footage shot on "superior" cams like RED. By definition, ENG cameras must be very high quality, FAST, comfortable, stable, flexible, and usable in harsh environments. Realism - thats your own opinion, means many things to many people... Not shaky - a proper shoulder-mount camera will be infinitely more stable than a jerry-rigged mini camera, and the ergonomics make it SO much more comfortable to shoot all day. It's not uncommon on reality shows to go through 7-8 discs (43min) in a day, ALL handheld. Two cameras - ENG cams are built to be jam-sync'd timecode from one to another - makes post a LOT easier to group clips and base your script notes on time of day. Each camera also records 4 channels of audio - with 2 cams you can "poor man multitrack" your sound if necessary - and the audio circuits of most ENG cams are light-years better than any DSLR or RED. I.e. they can be used for dialog recording. As for look - you should get your white balance correct on set, but if that's done you actually do have quite a bit of flexibility with your image in post. Most current ENG cams record 4:2:2 color space, and if the built-in codec isn't good enough you can strap a better recorder on...but you may be pretty surprised at how incredible the image can look onboard. A lot of it is glass too - modern HD glass for 2/3" cams can be stunning - I prefer the Canon ENG-style lenses over the Fujinon for this type of stuff, but there are plenty of options. I LOVE the canon 21x7.5 and 22x7.6. They offer focal length flexibility you can't dream of on "large" sensor cams. (HDx35 aside). 2/3" lenses give you insane flexibility and speed. 22x! Make sure to get a CCD cam if skew bothers you - EX3 will show the same kind of skew as RED, less than 5D but still noticeable. Sony F900, F800, or Panasonic Varicam will not skew. Overall, my favorite cam right now in that type of environment is the Sony PDW-F800. It's XDCAM disc based - you get the advantages of tapeless but also the archivable nature of tape (and no careful ingest every day). The cam automatically writes proxy video to the disc or to a USB stick, so you can edit your dailies immediately without risking your footage. You alluded to it, but there is a LOT to be said about finishing the day's shoot and going home. No downloading, archiving, backing up, etc. XDCAM discs are incredibly durable. And the F800 shoots true full raster 1080p 4:2:2 at a higher bitrate than the EX cams. Before dismissing the ENG option based on "book rates" online, call around to as many rental houses as you can, especially those in large markets like LA. You may be surprised to find out that they'll work with you on price and make a very complete package that fits your budget. F800 is MY favorite, but Coppola still shoots his films on F900... say what you will about the films themselves, but they are VERY well shot, on "outdated" equipment. Many many rental houses have F900's sitting on shelves collecting dust - your rental could be low but better than the cam sitting there. The big gotcha of buying - all the little things. Matteboxes, filters, sticks, cables, brackets, rods, LENSES - all these things are sometimes "thrown in" from rental houses but cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy when you add them up. Good ENG lenses can cost $40,000 +, but you'll pay a proportionally tiny amount in rental if you rent the whole package. And also don't forget service - if a camera goes down or something breaks on equipment you've bought - you're out of luck. But rental houses exist for service - most will bend over backwards to keep your production on schedule, even if it means subrenting to swap out a piece of gear that's not working for you. Anyways, before ruling out 2/3" cams, go demo some or watch some well-shot footage (youth without youth, slumdog). You may be shocked at how great they look, and how well they fit your specifications.

at that price, if you can find one - GH2 Panasonic. Very impressive little camera, doesn't alias / moire, has rotating LCD, can be adapted to use just about any lens incl. 2/3" broadcast lenses.

Sounds easy but cutting the gel sucks. Nothing fun or easy. Make sure you have a VERY sharp knife or you'll rip/kink the gel - makes the edges come up prematurely. Home depot sells a "window film application kit" which is meant for their adhesive window things (like fake stained glass) but the kit comes with a sprayer full of application solution, a mini knife and a decent squeegee. And the best part is - home depot is everywhere. Get the window very wet, wet the gel a little too, stick it down and squeegee. Trim the edges to be a tiny amount smaller than the window - like 1/32 or 1/16" and you'll prevent air from getting trapped under the edges and the gel curling when the window changes temperature. Or you can get window treatment thats set-dressed in-shot (blinds, curtains, etc...) - you may be surprised how expensive gelling windows can be. Now, the more important discussion - what's your end goal? There are a couple ways to go about this and both involve knowing how much stop you need. If you're simply trying to balance the window to your indoor exposure you need to figure out how much of your overall exposure is coming from the window first. Also, figure out what kind of lighting you can afford inside - tungsten, hmi/kino, or bounce. If you're using tungsten units, make sure that instead of just ND you get 85ND gels! Then you're working tungsten indoors. If you're spending that kinda money to gel windows, you probably wanna make the most of that effort and use cheap tungsten lighting (and not worry about gelling practicals). It may be cheaper to rent bigger HMI units inside and skip gelling altogether - with good location scouting you can figure out what time of day to avoid so your lighting units will make the most of what you have. Or, go old school and ping-pong where possible - using shiny boards, xenon mirrors and diffusion you can redirect light from outside an off-screen window to where you need it. But before going to any trouble - decide what it is about the window you wanna save - is the action outside important? what time of day is it supposed to be?

You also may be surprised how different parts of the helicopter vibrate to different degrees or frequencies. As a rule of thumb - try mounting to something on the floor or bolted to the floor (in military helicopter) - most of the rest of the machine will be more likely to vibrate. And forget about anything on the sides or top - that's all basically aerodynamic and cosmetic. Id say experiment mounting in lots of different sports to see which shake the least. And you can alway go for the "all of the above" approach - us every tool at your disposal like the DSLR with image stabilization mounted in vibration dampening foam or through the specific vibration dampening rubber-type matts (can do wonders at the mount points) - use multiple mount points triangulated to the camera itself (like the way you mount with suction cups on a car), and don't overlook post stabilization in your editing program. If your final delivery is 720p or SD, shooting 1080p can give you some wiggle room to "smoothcam" the image.

Touch the Sound about a hearing-impaired percussionist. Literally "visual storytelling." Very similar in many was, and likely an inspiration to the work Adam Beckman did on "This American Life."

Brandon has a very good point - it's ALL about chemistry. There are ops who can do the dance and those who just get frustrated by the compromises it entails. When I started finding a lot of my work going towards reality, I was initially embarrassed. The content is so....uh....... anyways. I worked a number of shows that were heavily directed, and in those cases you can act as a traditional "lettered" op - getting the angle assigned. But when I started shooting more "doc" shows, the skills I had felt very...lacking. Esp working with one of the best reality ops in NYC. That may sound like an oxymoron but it really really is not. I've worked with him on scripted and unscripted shows and the guy is legitimately talented. The biggest takeaway is this - to be good at shooting "unscripted" you NEED TO LISTEN TO THE DIALOGUE. You need an earbud and you need to know going into the scene what tendencies each character has. Most people have "tells" even when they're in heated exchange, and you can also find the natural rhythm of their speech. A lot of the directing in this style of coverage is more content-related. "we don't care about this, snap in and get listening shots," or "this is good, back for content." So yes, it's STILL about coverage, wides, Cu, etc... but its about knowing WHEN to get them...and also swallowing ego when there's no physical way to get the best shot - multicam in this style is all about compromise, not to say it can't be well done but you can only fight so much for coverage when the cast turn their backs to you. As for nuts-n-bolts - it's a dance. You ALWAYS shoot with both eyes open so you can anticipate action as well as the action of your other ops. The traditional A B C ops are usually placed ahead of the scene into the zones where their "important" characters are expected to land, but usually that lasts about 5 minutes. A-cam still tends to dictate the line, but besides that you're finding relevant crosses based on the dialogue you hear in your earbud, not your rank on the call sheet. Oh - a lot of these shows don't use PL intercoms either - the director and cam ops are on walkies, meaning not a lot of chatter from op to op because you'll step all over eachother - lots of hand signals and "chemistry." Its a very different way of covering a scene from traditional scripted. It can be extremely effective and efficient or really really bad, but when it comes to being better the only real way is to work with ops who are really good - and pay attention to how they move and communicate. And LISTEN to the scene - by definition, the "characters" drive the coverage in this style so if you listen and watch facial expressions closely they'll key you in. Then it's just framing shots, picking focal length, pulling focus and watching exposure in black n white. All with a microwave next to your head, 2 hops on the back and a hytron. 33-43 minute takes at a time :)