DIT Pre-Pro questions

[Andreas Herzog]

My top tips are as follows:

1. Be self contained on set with power and transport.
2. Do a complete workflow test with sound and picture before shooting. (this will involve all relevant people).
3. Have a close dialog with the DoP before and during shooting. Be aware of what color profile your monitors are set to.

I also use a Van. 10 ohrs of battery power, Eizo Color EdgeCG245W, Panasonic BTLH2550, A raid5 enclosure, raid1 enclosure, Cache-A LTO, Projectiondesign Action25 projection for focus analysis. - And of course a buddha statue to keep a positive energy so that your MacPro don't crash =) - make a clone of your system disk in case it breaks.

I deliver dailies on a rugged lacie hard drive - h264 - works great.

After chewing trough 100Tb (10 feature films and 3 TV series) of red material it all comes down to one thing that I find most important: Back Up. This is your main concern and what you need to do every day. You generate dailies, offline, set LUTs, one light, maintaining/setup of camera and all the other stuff, but if you not have a safe backup setup you of course are screwed. This might sound easy, but sometimes you are on very demanding locations - so be prepared and study the production schedule so that you don't get any nasty surprises.

Also: I must say that to be a DIT is the best job in the world!! =) You get to be a professional geek, you get to see all the material and really learn allot about filmmaking form technical aspects to artistic decisions.

Good luck mate!

[Gunleik Groven]

Calibrate, test, recalibrate, re-test, make sure, be able to give correct answers and examples on the fly, allways give the right answers once more, and be capable of backing up your answers with examples, back up, check calibration, be happy!

Know what's right for offline, VFX and online.

Get that DR floating down the pipeline in the right way for each application...

BTW

This post is independent of the issue of a RAW vs RGB workflow

[Quentin Brown]

My top tips are as follows:

1. Be self contained on set with power and transport.
2. Do a complete workflow test with sound and picture before shooting. (this will involve all relevant people).
3. Have a close dialog with the DoP before and during shooting. Be aware of what color profile your monitors are set to.

I also use a Van. 10 ohrs of battery power, Eizo Color EdgeCG245W, Panasonic BTLH2550, A raid5 enclosure, raid1 enclosure, Cache-A LTO, Projectiondesign Action25 projection for focus analysis. - And of course a buddha statue to keep a positive energy so that your MacPro don't crash =) - make a clone of your system disk in case it breaks.

I deliver dailies on a rugged lacie hard drive - h264 - works great.

After chewing trough 100Tb (10 feature films and 3 TV series) of red material it all comes down to one thing that I find most important: Back Up. This is your main concern and what you need to do every day. You generate dailies, offline, set LUTs, one light, maintaining/setup of camera and all the other stuff, but if you not have a safe backup setup you of course are screwed. This might sound easy, but sometimes you are on very demanding locations - so be prepared and study the production schedule so that you don't get any nasty surprises.

Also: I must say that to be a DIT is the best job in the world!! =) You get to be a professional geek, you get to see all the material and really learn allot about filmmaking form technical aspects to artistic decisions.

Good luck mate!

Wow, Serious setup you have there Andreas.
I'm looking to build out my DIT kit bit by bit as the productions I work on go up in scale and bring in more money with them.

A portable flightcase/rackmount for my mobile laptop based setup which will allow me to do unit moves without unplugging everything and wrapping each piece of equipment and each cable away is one of my top priorities right now, but I'm looking into decent monitoring options so that I can begin to offer proper one lights and look setups as and when I get to work on a production that want's them. I was just wondering how you calibrate all your screens & projector? It would be great to find this out from someone working at your level.

[Chris Ratledge]

2 - LUTs. When is the best time to make these? During pre-pro camera tests? Or on set right before you pull the trigger on a shot? If you do it during pre-pro, you aren't going to have the same light as you will on the day, especially for interiors and night stuff. If you do it on the day, you could be in a seriously crunched-for-time stressful situation.
Also, how much are you controlling different LUTs for different monitors on set? Does the DP usually have his/her own monitor with a specified look applied to it? Is it a different LUT than video village/director's monitor? I'm confused on how do accomplish this task if it's required. Is there a good resource somewhere for more insight on this? Are you, as a DIT, setting up and operating/maintaining video village? I assume it's different on every show, but I'd like to get a feeling for the norm.

NO, I'm not operating video village. On a two-camera feature I really hope not to ever have to do this. It would be nice to have a dedicated video assist operator for playback, that I would no doubt work very closely with.

As I understand you can do a live coloring adjustment to SDI monitors via 3cP and and HDLink Pro, but I've yet to have this requested, which is good (for me) because I can't afford to drop the thousands it would cost right now! In my experience the DPs all do various things, but most doing a baseline setting for the cameras that leaves room for some touch-up at my station or later in post.

BUT, with the above mentioned hardware I could see how this could easily be accomplished if not set up in camera tests during prep. Out of the camera to my station, apply LUT via 3cP, back out to VTR, and then to whatever monitors is needed. That way playback from his/her station is always going to contain the applied LUTs.

There are some VTR guys on this board I believe, that may have more detailed information, maybe they'll chime in too.

[Dustin Cross]

LUTs from camera to monitors is more of an F35 style of DIT workflow than a Red style DIT workflow. Most use a Panavision box for that.

I have been thinking about getting the HDlinkPro to see how well that works with 3cP. Since I mostly do Red shoots it is easier to dial looks into the camera metadata or into the RSX file after the footage is on my cart. I still have issues with 3cP though.


Dusty

[Chris Ratledge]

LUTs from camera to monitors is more of an F35 style of DIT workflow than a Red style DIT workflow. Most use a Panavision box for that.

I have been thinking about getting the HDlinkPro to see how well that works with 3cP. Since I mostly do Red shoots it is easier to dial looks into the camera metadata or into the RSX file after the footage is on my cart. I still have issues with 3cP though.


Dusty

Yeah I recall your thread asking how to make 3cP more viable and useful. I was about to pull the trigger on that before that post, so now I'm evaluating it a lot more, as much as I can, before deciding to purchase or not.

[Jay A. Kelley]

So you know, I am really taking notes with all these answers.. This is better info than I had hoped for.

Jay

[Andreas Herzog]

A portable flightcase/rackmount for my mobile laptop based setup which will allow me to do unit moves without unplugging everything and wrapping each piece of equipment and each cable away is one of my top priorities right now, but I'm looking into decent monitoring options so that I can begin to offer proper one lights and look setups as and when I get to work on a production that want's them. I was just wondering how you calibrate all your screens & projector? It would be great to find this out from someone working at your level.

For a laptop solution we use a MBP with express34 slot connected to a Sonnet QIO. Out of the QIO you can connect two Caldigit 2,5" raid1 (eSATA) and power it all with 12V/battery. Put it all in a peli case with foam that are cut to fit the hard drives/QIO/laptop. This will give you a proper backup solution 2x raid1 backup. You'll need to distribute your power so go trough a small fuse box. I would really recommend the Panasonic BT-LH2550 witch has a dvi-d and 12V that you can use with the laptop. It's also pretty cheap compared to more high end ref monitors. The panel is abit slappy in the blacks and contrast (Eizo is better on that), but you still have a decent display. Its also nice to be able to hook up to the camera (hdsdi) and see the waveform live. This is of course not a RAW image representation, but you have a tool to at least confront the DoP when he/she totally burns out the signal so that you can double check whats going on with the RAW values in camera.

Calibration: This is not always easy to get right and I'm no expert on this! But with 4 years of "learning by doing" I maybe have some pointers... All monitors behave somewhat different color wise when its not the same brand - unfortunately. The last year more monitors have come with a DCI calibration with a 2.6 gamma that will represent a Digital Cinema Image - but on set this option can be somewhat confusing so I don't use this yet. First find out what profile/calibration final grade and the editor are using. I usually calibrate the editors monitor with an eyeone - set to 6500K, 2.2 gamma - this will make my offline files more or less correct in the whites and in the blacks. If the monitor has native profiles I set it to rec 709 for TV work or Adobe RGB for movies.
A final grade suite can vary allot. They usually have a Barco ref monitor and a 2K projection, all set to 2.6 gamma. More and more have a correct DCI image, thats why I'm trying to get DCI calibrated on set situation going, but this will almost certain mess up a correct offline calibration. So you need to make a choice as I see it - correct edit or correct final grade for a RAW workflow. In a RGB workflow I would focus on correct offline colors.

In our MacPro lab solutions we use the new Eizo with an integrated calibration eye, works very well. Rec 709 for TV and Adobe RGB for movies. I use the Adobe RGB because this option seems to give me the most constant color representation on different brands. But be aware that Adobe RGB has a very wide color range. For me its more important that the monitors looks the same in color and contrast/gamma than it might be 100% correct towards the post house. It always turns out great anyways=)

I think maybe Gunleik can go more in detail on calibration. I'm happy with my setup, the DoP is happy and the final grade process usually goes without any big confusions. Problem is usually in a RGB workflow that the final grade don't get as nice as the offlines that are graded in RAW and delivered in 1080p ProRes 1/2 premium debayer... I'm working on a movie right now that will be the first time we test a RMD workflow towards Nucoda FilmMaster.

A aspect that also are important is your viewing conditions. In the van all walls are grey and I have a light behind the Panasonic monitor to give me correct contrast for my eyes. This is for cinema productions. When doing TV I add more light to the room in general to compensate the contrast on screen to a realistic TV viewing condition.

cheers -

I'm actually on set right now in my van... I love this job!

[Quentin Brown]

Wow, awesome in depth post there Andreas. Thank you so much for all the info, and all the time you spent posting it!

I hope all goes smoothly with the RMD -> Nucoda workflow.

[Jay A. Kelley]

FYI

For those of you posting really good info, I'll be contacting you shortly about something.. Via PM