BUILD IT, AND THEY WILL STORE AS MUCH FOOTAGE AS THEY CAN!

[Dan Kanes]

I take a proactive stance as a member of local 600 and refuse
To take a victim mentality, ever.

Other crew members as well as producers love and respect the way I run data management and image capture and manipulation.

128 is the perfect sized mag, and now that we can capture it faster, and safer I feel a 256 (especially with hdrx) is great.

 

[Dustin Cross]

R3D Data Manager is great for formatting Red Drives so it doesn't take long to reload camera.

Shooting a ton of footage on Red Drive for a special reason I understand, but not as the default.

After working with Alexa for months, 14 min on a card is plenty! A 64Gb SSD on Epic will give you 14 min with great quality. I need a special reason for more than 64GB. Overcranking, HDRx are specialty things and not the norm. Break out a big card when you need it, but use 64GB as the default.

I agree, take a proactive stance. Don't let production or camera push you into a situation that might harm your reputation.



Dusty

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I take a proactive stance as a member of local 600 and refuse
To take a victim mentality, ever.

Other crew members as well as producers love and respect the way I run data management and image capture and manipulation.

128 is the perfect sized mag, and now that we can capture it faster, and safer I feel a 256 (especially with hdrx) is great.

I don't know if it's necessarily victim's mentality. I know it's common out there for producer's to balk at expensive DIT kit rentals. On some jobs the producers may understand the value. On other jobs, they see bottom line and will fight tooth and nail to avoid this kit rental. One other problem - there is no standard rate for them to go by. And this raises a flag with producers. They know roughly how much an Alexa or a RED package is to rent. But DIT kits range from a couple hundred to over a thousand a day. So as much as we want to take a stance and say we won't work without the right tools, there are times when this just doesn't play out. Personally, if I know I am going to be put in a bad situation where I will be unable to wrap with the rest of the camera department, I make sure there is a very clear understanding with production about overtime, hotels, meal penalties, etc.

As much advance communication with production is always a good idea. A lot of issues can be solved before getting to set. Appropriate workflows can be established, and there is time to fight for the right tools to get the job done. Sometimes in the heat of battle people are too caught up in the moment to deal with our challenges.

It is okay to speak up when we see situations developing on set that are going to be a detriment to us accomplishing our jobs in a timely manner. An example of this happened a couple months ago with a shoot I was on. I had established a protocol for how often media would be swapped (we were using RED drives) and based on that we would have no problem finishing shortly after wrap. However, the director kept letting the camera run, even while makeup was being tweaked, lighting adjusted, etc. After a while, I knew this was going to mean I was backing up a lot of unnecessary footage. So, I quietly discussed it with them and everyone agreed to do their best to avoid that kind of thing as they realized it would just add time on the backend for no reason. It was a case where I felt it was appropriate to speak up and try to prevent being in a bad situation.

 

[Dan Kanes]

My opinion is, that if you take the job it is part of your responsibility to have a solution ready.

If they don't want to pay for a tower does that mean that tu are getting the laptop for free?

My point is : it is now possible to build your own tower that is faster than a MacBook pro, for far less than a MacBook pro, especially if all it needs to do is move data.

Point being, if you can't rent a macpro tower and Cart to them For 300/day - you can rent them a data tower for $75/day and still come Out way ahead of the game. This would be sans redrocket card of course.

Of course producers almost always are absurdly too shortsighted. That's why we need to show them the way.

I'd personally rather not take a job than attempt to do the job with the wrong tools and be extremely frustrated.

I hope this doesn't sound too confrontational, I just think that we have a responsibility to fill.

 

[JohnF]

For managing large amounts of data laptops are, generally speaking, too slow.
Furthermore many tower based DIT setups for hire are far too expensive for use as data back up systems - this is a significant issue for producers - If data management and back up is the priority I found that I could build an as-capable system for less than a few days hire of a DIT system. IMO DIT is a completely separate job from data management.

Though I accept the general point that when possible don't fill the mags, my projects would often require an almost complete use (80%+) of the large 256GB SSD mags. Which is tricky as (IMO) the fact that it's not recommended to format SSD mags off camera (eg. by using a computer) is a real pain and makes data management for my projects a serious issue as I need far more SSD mags as a consequence.

For jobs that produce a lot of material a data back up system needs to be fast, have plenty of RAM with far more storage capacity than the job requires (at least double the expected shoot data) and designed with minimal data bottlenecks in mind . Keep the operating system clean and simple. Don't run any apps in the background, don't use the system for any internet use and, as already mentioned avoid filling the storage drives above 80%.

JohnF

 

[Rich Schaefer]

A 64Gb SSD on Epic will give you 14 min with great quality. I need a special reason for more than 64GB.
Dusty

Shooting an interview or live event is a good reason. I do agree that dramatic and commercial work 14 min will be fine.

 

[Cail Young]

For two cameras, Qio plus 2-4 eSATA drive bays is just fine on a MacBook Pro. More than 2 cameras... that's a problem.