What is shipping with Epic-X Stage 2

[Gunleik Groven]

Epic with belt batterypack is my favourite one-man-band setup.

For traditional DP/AC/2nd AC 2D setups, i feel the dust hasn't really settled for what is good and bad solutions. The Epic comes basically as a fantastic image capturing device in a square box with too few in/out connectors placed at weird places with nowhere to attach extra equipment. Not really built for use by humans in a traditional film setup. You have to humanize it on your own.

You can grab wonderfull images with it either way, that's not my point, but there are challenges connected with how the cam currently ships, and easy use in a traditional film/TV-drama environment. Solveable, for sure. Just not really the out-of-the-box thingy one might expect or hope for.

If you don't have access to an Epic before taking delivery, leave a week or two or four to familiarize yourself with it and find good solutions before giving it away to clients. Give clients the right expectations, and they'll be infinitely happy with it. Give them the wrong expectations, and the opposite will happen, and that may cause problems for many more than yourself.

Just a thought from someone who has, after all - fallen deeply in love with the box and its image capturing virtues...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I think a key for many, will be to find other ways to operate the cam than the touchscreen, and stuff like Brooks smart little shuttle for mounting the Redmote somewhere accessible in a non-onemanband environment.

Extra sdi monitors and equipment like the kipro for playback and instant editing proxies may be things to consider to make the kit feel as smooth as it is in a larger environment production. Problem for many small renters when competing, is that if they are ignorant of solutions like that being pretty common -and investment heavy for small shops - the expectations as to userfriendliness, ballance and flexibility won't be met the way their clients expect.

And that can be challenging as to the reputations for the cam.

Of course it is true that the camera works extremely well in huge productions, but those productions usually will have the budgets and manpower to customize anything the way they want.