Mobile & Compact DIT Package (Pelican?)

[Joseph Tese]

Not really my area of expertise.

Anyone have any good resources for a very portable and compact mobile DIT station? I'm curious also if anyone has developed a a system to fit into a rolling pelican.. Of course, this mainly applies to lower budget smaller shoots. Thanks!

[Phil Rhodes]

Years ago, I built a small PC system into a Pelican 1650 case for doing on-set VFX previsualisation and video assist work. It's completely obsolete now, of course, but it was extremely convenient to roll up, throw it on a magliner, and run one cable (two if you want to run it from mains) and go. A similar arrangement could be done now for DITting.

They make panel frames for peli cases so you can fit a panel inside without having to cut holes in the case and spoil the waterproofing. I had the panel cut by a local engineering firm, and they made a folded aluminium chassis that drops inside with the hardware in it for easy access and removal.

The trickiest part of it was finding a monitor that would fit inside the lid, which is a very shallow space. I had to find one where the mains power supply wasn't attached to the back of it. I'm not sure how common such things are now. I stuck it in there with two strips of two-inch sticky velcro and it effectively became a huge laptop with a lot of custom configured internal widgetry.

It survived many intercontinental plane flights and was generally a useful and worthy piece of gear. This conversation makes me want to haul it out and refit it with more modern components.

P