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Aerial Filming with the RED

Dominik Muench

Dominik Muench

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Hi Guys,

I'm sure there are a lot of people here who have experience wit the RED and aerial cinematography, I am going up for the first time this week to do some camera tests and check out the different mounts and stabilization systems the chopper company has to offer and I just wanted to see if anyone can give some general tips and things to consider.
Has anyone had problems with drop frames ?
What about shutter settings ? is there anything special I should consider to avoid strobing ?

thanks for the help.
 
Do NOT try the Red on the Tyler Nose Mount; your footage will be unusable.

I called Tyler and they said, "sometimes it's OK."

I guess that works if the price of the pilot, helicopter, and mount are insignificant and the footage is not important.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Leo, wow its funny you mention that, this seems a widespread problem. I know of a local company here that use a Tyler mount on their chopper and I had several colleagues reporting they had massive problems with it and the RED, to the point where they couldn't use the footage at all.
 
Yes, it was a dark, dark day. Had to go back to our VariCam and reshoot everything.

I think this is something that needs to be disclosed by Red and RedUser, not to mention Tyler.

It's tough in market distant from easy & cost effective rental of proper mounts.

Buyer beware.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Leo Ticheli said:
Do NOT try the Red on the Tyler Nose Mount; your footage will be unusable.

I called Tyler and they said, "sometimes it's OK."

I guess that works if the price of the pilot, helicopter, and mount are insignificant and the footage is not important.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
Click to expand...

Dominik and Leo,

Absolutely my experience re the Tyler nose mount - was an expensive exercise and totally unusable footage.

In my extensive research I've narrowed it down to the Libra mount. There is some wonderful footage shot in Europe using this setup. There are 2 of these in Australia but good luck getting the guy that runs the hire on these to call you back. After an initial conversation re a 5-day hire ($10,000 worth) down in Tasmania, absolutely no response to e-mails, landline and mobile messages - obviously doesn't need the business!!!

best
joe


best
joe
 
I believe that there is a big difference in Tyler nose mounts and Libra set up/
Tyler nose mounts are almost hardmounted on the Helli , Libra mount there is vibration isolator wire antivibration mount its called , all the good aerial remote heads have this, including Gyron, which I have worked with with great results.
All these helis frequenses are more than enough to damage the footage on the hdd.
As far as I know vibrations are the only factor that can damage red footage.
Unless someone knows another factor maybe?
 
constantine Tirintzis said:
I believe that there is a big difference in Tyler nose mounts and Libra set up/
Tyler nose mounts are almost hardmounted on the Helli , Libra mount there is vibration isolator wire antivibration mount its called , all the good aerial remote heads have this, including Gyron, which I have worked with with great results.
All these helis frequenses are more than enough to damage the footage on the hdd.
As far as I know vibrations are the only factor that can damage red footage.
Unless someone knows another factor maybe?
Click to expand...

Just had a look at the info you e-mailed me Constantine - that mount of yours looks like a work of art. Have had a KS12 up until recently, but can see that one would definitely require 2-3 gyro units with your rig.

best
joe
 
Hello Joe. You are correct one gyro of any power like the KS12 cannot stabilize all axis, so for instance if you stabilize pan and roll, you will have jitter in tilt, if you stabilize tilt and roll you will have jitter in pan, etc, so you need at least 2 gyros and the more powerfull the better. Its also depends of how the mount works, some mounts purelly depend on the gyros and if you turn the kenyons off they are totally unbalanced. My device the air-gunner is like a short steadicam sled with gyros and can balance the camera in perfect balance living less job for the gyros and be more precise.
Also the adjustable tension on the elastic cords can fine tune for vibrations best way possible. one can choose from 2 -4 gyros but generally for a red one 2 x ks8 s with this rig are fine.
Thank you joe.
 
I forgot to explain this as well.
2 gyros will not stabilize equally in all axis, there is going to be one axis double stabilized and the other 2 mono stabilized . 3 kenyons can equally stabilize all axis so its best to have 3 from 2, and dont forget 25-30 degrees /sec max panning , so wip pans or faster and the gyros kick you back.
 
This does you no good, but day after tomorrow i'm taking my RED up in a fixed wing amphibious plane to shoot some wildlife and scenery here on the Sea of Cortez. I've had good luck in the past shooting hand held with some straps, bean bags and rice bags. No mounts here where i live but was having this conversation yesterday with geographic whom wants to rent a Bell 206 and fly with a cineflex here...but the paperwork is a mountain to make it happen.
 
the human body does absorb a lot of vibrations ( unless you are as skiny as Iam ha ha ha) and methods like bungies and bean bags do a certain amount of antivibration protection, but they will not stabilize the shot and you will have jitter all over specially with longer lenses, but it can be done.
 
Just adding that the problem is NOT the hard drive; we were using the RAM drives. It's the rolling shutter that can't handle the vibration.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Leo Ticheli said:
Do NOT try the Red on the Tyler Nose Mount; your footage will be unusable.

I called Tyler and they said, "sometimes it's OK."

I guess that works if the price of the pilot, helicopter, and mount are insignificant and the footage is not important.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
Click to expand...

Ditto on that.
 
has anyone had issues with strobing or flicker on the footage itself ?

I spoke to a DOP who recently did a shoot on a varicam and he had quite severe problems with the footage because of some odd frame rate/ shutter angle problem.
 
Hey Joe - nice to catch up with you last Friday.... crap job though.

re. nose mount. Are you actually referring to a Tyler Mount or your own nose mount?

Just curious...
 
Johnny Friday said:
...day after tomorrow i'm taking my RED up in a fixed wing amphibious plane to shoot some wildlife and scenery here on the Sea of Cortez. I've had good luck in the past shooting hand held with some straps, bean bags and rice bags. No mounts here where i live but was having this conversation yesterday with geographic whom wants to rent a Bell 206 and fly with a cineflex here...but the paperwork is a mountain to make it happen.
Click to expand...

Hi Johnny, I would really like to hear what settings (frsame rate, focal lengths, etc) you decide to use.

I will be shooting from a fixed wing plane in January, and want to make sure I get it right!

Thanks,
Antony
 
Make sure you have vibration isolation of some sort best way possible, cause both issues in both cases are caused by vibrations, and on a fixed wing application you will have quite a lot of them.The good thing is that you can test vibration before you take off and record some footage see how it turns out, tell the pilot to rev the engine a bit , and look at the results on the footage. Might save you unpredictable surprises.
 
Russell Galloway said:
Hey Joe - nice to catch up with you last Friday.... crap job though.

re. nose mount. Are you actually referring to a Tyler Mount or your own nose mount?

Just curious...
Click to expand...

Hey Russell,
Was referring to the Tyler nose mount which cost around $950 a day and was totally useless as far as the resulting imagery was concerned. Tyler in LA said that they regularly hire to guys shooting Red with no problems........I gather that sometimes the results are good and at other times they are less than ordinary.

Constantine - we're definitely talking Tyler fixed nose mount. As far as I'm aware Tyler do not have an external nose mount with any form of stabilisation.

best
joe
 
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