5 Ways To Make ‘On-Set’ Life Easier!
Technology ‘On-Set’
We all use vast amounts of technology now, whether that’s your iPhone, to WhatsApp, or Amazon’s Alexa, to set a timer! We use technology to make day to day life easier so why shouldn’t we extend that to our ‘on-set’ life too?
In this blog I am going to run through how I’ve developed my Shooting Packages to make our ‘on-set’ life easier.
1 – Monitoring the Shot!
My wireless monitor kit has been a real hit with clients. This allows the Director/Producer/client to monitor the shot wirelessly from the camera, allowing us all to move around freely. I love this as it means my client can watch the shot while it plays out in real time, saving us time on re-takes and playbacks!
I have also recently just added a camera monitor to my kit for those jobs where the wireless monitor isn’t suitable, such as in fast-paced documentary shoots. This sits on the side of the camera and allows the Director/Producer/client to take a ‘quick look’ at the shot before we record. Again, saving us time!
2 – Second Camera
Want a second angle without a second operator? No problem! I have hand picked a suitable B-Camera to complement my Sony FS7 to offer us ultimate flexibility. It’s small, lightweight and can easily match the FS7 picture, making life in the edit easier.
It can capture time-lapse sequences at the push of a button and feature a fantastic auto focus mechanism for when it’s un-manned on-set.
3 – LED Lighting Kit
A DoPs first love is always lighting, and developing a suitable lighting kit is essential. It goes without saying advances in LED technology have revolutionised lighting in the last 5 years. LEDs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the traditional 1×1 panel light to the ICE Light and LED heads.
Here… diversity is the key word! I have developed a LED lighting kit to fit a range of purposes with a range of fixtures. From beautiful octodome soft-boxes for key lights, to small, battery powered, accent lights. This gives us a range of different types of lights to use across different environments and scenarios.
4 – Sound Kit
We can’t always have a Sound Recordist on-set so I have developed a small Sound Kit to offer us the ultimate flexibility for those single crew shoots.
It comprises all the microphones we might need for those interviews, vox-pops and pieces to camera we want to grab, recording straight into the camera for sync sound!
While it is certainly no replacement to a professional Sound Recordist, it offers us the flexibility to record my own sound on those occasions it’s needed.
5 – Backing Up Footage
This is the part of the shoot that is almost always forgotten until the end of the day, and always takes longer than expected!
I have developed a DIT/Edit Laptop kit comprising of a brilliant piece of software called Hedge, designed to speed up the back up process. With the software you can copy multiple camera cards to multiple drives at the same time. Not only this, it will ping my phone once the back-up is complete and verifies the copies using checksum technology. This not only makes backup quicker and more secure, but it also gives us more time to shoot!
Why not try Hedge yourself? They offer a 10 Day Free Trial and readers of my blog can get a 10% Discount using the affiliate link below, which also helps me keep this blog going!
My DIT/Edit Laptop also features FCPX, DaVinci Resolve 15 & Sony’s Catalyst Browse so we can review rushes and check sequences cut.
Summary
So there we have it, 5 ways I’ve made my ‘on-set’ life easier, and ultimately gives my clients more flexibility too!
Want to hire me for your next shoot? Why not get in touch!
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