Douglas Johnson

I worked pretty consistantly as a 2nd in the late 90's before changing careers into the A/V world. Now that I've returned to working on set the whole cell phone thing has been quite a shock. Sometimes I'll look around and everyone will be on their phones. I'll admit, there have been some times where I pull it out to check my email (usually when there's a big lighting change) otherwise the only time I use it is to figure out a troubleshooting issue or use the calculator for something. The problem I find is using the phone as a tool without it being mistaken for you slacking off on FB since many others are doing just that. That being said, the biggest asset a 2nd can have is awareness. Regardless of anything else, if you're aware you'll know how the 1st likes to organize their kit, how they take their coffee, what lens or item is needed before it's called for, etc. The other asset is organization. The more organized you remain the easier it's going to be to do your job quickly and effectively.

What Jeremy says. As soon as I hear the word cut I offer to take the camera from the operator or offer an apple box to sit on if they don't wish to put the camera down. There's no reason to ruin your back, shoulders, or legs as the operator will just not be able to do their job effectively as the day goes on. Now, if I'm doing reality sort of stuff with smaller, lighter weight cameras, I will sometimes just take a knee or keep the camera on my shoulder as they are working out what's going to happen to next. In this situation you never know when your going to have to suddenly grab a shot or follow the action. But, in a situation with relights, set ups, and discussions between takes I prefer to have the operator put the camera down or take a seat.

Yes, I was instructed to rename the clips, since I am one of the editors who will be dealing with the media in the future. It's being shot on KiPros and going straight onto external drives. Some of the deck ops have been good at naming stuff, others have not. So I have several clips all with the same name and because of how it's acquired there's no metadata. That's why I chose the folder structure and then some sort of identifying clip name. I am also getting footage from a RED Scarlet and a camera with SXS cards, I don't rename either of these since I'm aware that the folder structure shouldn't be compromised. This is the first time we've done an entire show recorded to a digital medium and no one really knew how long things would take in the transfer and back up. So far I haven't worked less than a 14 hour day. The drive names are all 001, the sub folders all named aja, and as I said many of the clips are just getting random internal names perhaps still set from some previous show. Figure the more I organize on site the easier the post process will be, especially since I know I'll be one of the people who has to scour through all this footage in the future. This is one of my concerns with the company I am currently employed for. I'm often asked to perform multiple tasks which eventually eats up much of my time. So, regarding data management, I'm understanding that my job is simply to transfer the media into an organized folder system for the assistant editor to log later and make sure that the there's no problems with the records? Thanks for the advice.

I'm doing my first all digital asset job at the moment and I'll admit that I'm a little bit overwhelmed. I used to do a lot of film loading, but with that you had a camera note with each mag you received so you always had an idea of what was on the roll, with digital you sort of a get a bucket of clips with a letter or number on the bucket. The media is coming in from 5 locations and four b-roll crews and no one is taking any detailed notes and all the media have random naming of the files, some of them repeated. I worked about 18 hours yesterday just ingesting everything and now I'm trying to figure out what's what before the next storm of drop offs occur. At the moment I'm separating it out by date/venue/drive(card)#+recordname {ISO,PGM,ect})and then going in and naming the clips according to venueinitial-drive-recordname-#. Is there any more I should be doing? Any suggestions on how to best organize everything better?

This pretty much sums it up. Once you hear "camera speed" do your thing and git. Couple things to consider though. That the slate was indeed in the shot and could they read the whole thing. The operator will tell you if you boned it. Between takes when there was some down time we would play slate games. The 1st or Operator would use the zoom lens and call out say "200mm" and I'd try to get the slate perfectly framed so there wasn't too much space around the edges. It was fun, but when it was time to work, I was told that my slates were always bang on. But yeah, sometimes the mic placement doesn't always allow for that. Basically, the point is, know where the best place is to do your slate and know the best way off camera so you wont hit anything and aren't in the eye line or way of the actors moving on and off camera.

That's a great video from Inglourius Basterds. Most people don't mind if you have a little fun with the letters but some do. You'll feel this out quickly. Generally I used the standard Apple, Baker, Charlie, but on one shoot there were so many set ups it was the first time I got into double letters. I remember one I used was 'American Yeti' everyone cracked up and they had to stop the camera. After that I just stayed safe. So, there's no real rule of thumb, just so long as people understand what letters they are when heard verbally.