Jathavan Sriram

Oh Hi James btw.! Thank you for your email.

From my last beach shoot (was dit) - mostly annoying was the distance between camera truck/ dit station and the actual beach. We had two more V-mount batteries (total was i think 8). Yeah the Magliner was not of much help so it was lots of carrying equipment back and forth - so keep that in mind for shoot prep on set and when you leave. Also take extra things with you to clean the equipment - the sand goes everywhere. The first AC also cleaned extra carefully the lenses afterwards - telling me that the salt in the air can be harmful for example to the rubber parts. Not sure if that that concentration of salt is really that relevant though.

Flame, Inferno and Smoke are quite old school. Flame and Smoke are still used though - but they are fairly high end and not really what a novice needs to learn or even afford. Try first learning the basics of 3D, which should take you about a year. Creating realistic 3d models involves a lot of knowledge about rendering and lighting techniques - and when comping with real footage you have to look out for much more on set. Free software like Blender is more than enough to star with. After that you can get into Maya.

Don't forget to shoot distortion grids of the lenses you used for plates. At best always ask the 1st/2nd AC to shoot those for all the lenses at the day of packing - and then take notes what lens was used on the shot. Also ask Script/Continuity to note down this kind of information.

Adding to Dwight and Ryan I think a DIT should also have more than general knowledge about data transfer, checksum creation and comparison (e.g. why is MD5 faster than SHA-2 ? ). Also good communication with the post production facility (or the guys you hand the files over) is very important. Furthermore as a DIT you should be involved in the process of discussing what equipment to be used for saving and backup of files - and what is required by the film insurance company.

As a side project we have created a little free tool called "metavisor" to directly view and extract metadata of Arri Raw files inside your web browsers with simple Drag and Drop technology Link to metavisor: metavisor I would love to get some feedback from the pros here: What you think about the tool? What would you like to be improved? How important is viewing and export of metadata to you? Is the current tool with installation (Meta Extract) provided by Arri too cumbersome to use? What free webtool would you like to see concerning production / postproduction / vfx ? The tool is still in beta phase. We are also planning to extend the functionality to the other capture formats the Alexa supports, RED, Sony's cameras and connect the vfx/lens data information to our database and make it available to the digital workflow community. Also if you ever imagined a nice tool that everyone should be able to use for free in our industry - just drop us a line (metavisor@nablavfx.com). Usually people with good ideas and interesting problems are industry professionals ;) Big thanks to everyone giving some feedback ! We really appreciate your time. Jatha --- Announcing - metavisor - http://www.opendci.com/app/metavisor Extract Arri Alexa Raw metadata with this simple free web tool ! Quickly view metadata online of Arri Raw files (*.ari) inside your browser, with simple Drag and Drop. Download the metadata in csv or json format. -- Jathavan Sriram Co-Founder, CTO nablavfx R&D|3D|VFX h: http://www.nablavfx.com m: contact@nablavfx.com Google+: https://plus.google.com/104702076022464846295 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/3165753