Uber-light RED and Steadicam configuration

[Charles Papert]

I just joined Nate Weaver and various other dignitaries on a whopping concert shoot (I imagine someone else will be posting about this) and have detailed my quest to build the lightest possible Steadicam setup with the required accessories (drive, Camwave transmitter, two channel lens control, clockit etc) over at the Steadicam forum:

http://www.steadicamforum.com/index....topic=9692&hl=

Pictures viewable here:

http://web.me.com/chupap/Films/REDandsteadi.html

[Curtis Abbott]

Wow, crazy set up Charles, what did the final weight end up being? (roughly)

[Charles Papert]

I used my Klassen harness exclusively, never had time to switch to the PRO vest, and that weighs in at a hefty 12.5 lbs. The PRO arm with two canisters was about 10 lbs. So my estimated total for the entire rig was around 53-54 lbs (accounting for the items I didn't have with me at the prep when I weighed the rig). That's quite light, I'm used to a payload in the 80's. Since the vest and arm are something of a constant, we generally refer to the weight of a given rig as just the loaded sled (i.e. everything on the end of the arm) and thus the 31 lbs here was exceptionally light for a system with 35mm optics. It felt rather delightful!

[ericyoung]

Thanks for the useful posting Charles (as always). So the towel round the Red Drive successfully avoided dropped frames from loud acoustic vibration? How far were you from the front of the main speaker stacks?

[ayarbro]

The towel helped quite a bit, as well as Charles' great operating...buuuut being only feet away from huge speakers blasting GreenDay kinda made it a losing proposition.
Unfortunately the towel didn't completely solve the problem. There were lots of dropped frames. We should have been on compact flash cards on that camera, but there were no 16GB cards or (more importantly) 16GB CF modules to be found in the bay area.

2 days before prep I had found out that the bay area, dead for work during the previous 3 months, had 2 other 2 camera RED jobs on the same day! so, needless to say finding all the bodies with PL mounts and proper accessories was a fairly large task. Thanks to Lee and Ryan at Lee Utterbach Camera (*PLUG*-lucamera.com) , we were able to get all the cameras together and outfitted more or less properly.

[Nenad Barjaktarovic]

removed

[NateWeaver]

Howdy folks, the director here (and now editing this job)...

Sad to say the Red drive took a beating. Hundreds of dropped frames. I knew that a Red RAM would have fixed this problem, but I also knew that enough insulation wrapped around the drive would as well (which worked for 8 cameras). The two in the barricade needed full-on queen sized comforters, apparently. The show was 2.5 hours and I have a VERY quick turnaround on some of the edits, so I didn't want to risk syncing issues with a ton of 8gb loads.

The good news is that even with the dropped frames, inadvertent camera shutdowns, and weird "POST" issues, I still have a ton of usable footage. In my opinion, it's a testament to smart streaming design and robust file format design.

[Steve Gibby]

Nice setup Charles...looks like it would fly well. I read your Steadicam post post. Sounds like you worked through the usual (and some unusual) issues well.

Nate, I was DP for the recent 10 RED camera concert coverage of Journey in Manila. All 10 cameras used RED Drives on ET Shock Mounts, including the five cameras on and right in front of the stage. We had absolutely zero dropped frames from any of the ten cameras. No RED Ram, no CF cards, all RED Drives on ET shock Mounts - and no dropped frames whatsoever. I noticed in Charles' Steadicam forum post that it wasn't an ET Shock Mount he used.

I'm based just three hours south of Oakland, two of my three REDs have PL mounts, and I have four ET Shock Mounts. If you'd have contacted me I would have run up to Oakland with some gear to help you out.

Sounds like you guys worked through the normal issues that come up for gigs like that. It also sounds like you had a very good crew. It'll be a big job editing all that, but I'm sure you'll nail it well. I'll look forward to checking out the program...

[NateWeaver]

Most of our cams had ET shockmounts. Regardless, the ET shockmount in my experience, (and I shoot almost exclusively loud music) doesn't help with excessive sound levels. I've had problems with loud music and the ET mount at least 5-6 times in the last year. I could see it helping somewhat, but I've still always had the issue. There's also a chance I shoot bands that like their playback and concerts louder! In particular, shooting drums seems to be where I have the most problems, and some drummers in particular hit very hard.

The only thing that I've been able to reliably fix with is fabric wrapped around the drives (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot).

As far as the discrepancy between having problems in the barricade and not having problems, this particular show had PA front-fills for the kids in the front row, as well stacks off to each side that those two cameras were constantly 3ft away from. Ear damaging loud.

[Steve Gibby]

Ah...that explains the challenges a lot more. Sounds like the db of sound was pretty high. Yes, cams next to drums get a lot of various high levels of vibration. That would be a good place for a RAM Drive. The sound levels were pretty darn high on our Journey concert production, but it sounds like yours were higher.

Were the drives right up front next to the stacks the only ones you experienced dropped frames with?

Beyond music production, we've been using the ET Shock Mounts extensively in high vibration situations, with no dropped frames, in helicopters, on boats, strapped on cars, on skateboards, etc.

Anyway, thanks for the added info Nate. I'll look forward to seeing the finished piece...