I saw one the other day that was bigger than the Genesis and that baby weighs in at 45-50 lbs in all. In  film the camera is huge and I have been in the mass moving business since I started in 1986.  The Canon 5D Mark II inspired me to throw out the mass and really break all the rules.

Man cam in minivan with backpack on the floorboard

Studio hand held mode in Washington

Studio hand held in Cambodia

Directors Mike McCoy and Scotty Waugh on Motorcycle Stripper

Rudy Harbon lensing with a Man cam with DC-3 Flyover off the Horn of Africa

Rigged stripper on diplomat's car in Phnom Penh

My camera is still very small for Studio hand held mode, Man Cam, and even smaller for Action Cam mode.  Keeping it simple is our motto at Hurlbut Visuals and one that the Elite Team members believe in as well.  What is the smallest, most compact set-up that delivers the story?

When I shot “Into the Blue,” I asked a lot of experienced cinematographers about their experience with shooting on water and what made them the most productive.  I listened to all of their advice and chose a hybrid route by using some of their ideas mixed with my own. When I discussed my plan, a few of the naysayers said that my set-up count would go down by 75%.  I was also told that Mother Nature would challenge us everyday. Unfortunately that would not be an option for us.  Our budget was tight at 53 million for 60 days of shooting topside and 99 days underwater. It seemed impossible to pull off the director’s vision.

So, we came up with a new master plan that we put into action.  Director John Stockwell loves to keep his crews small and intimate with the flexibility to change at a moments notice.  Having a large crew would not make this movie a reality, so what we opted for a very large camera pkg. that fit into one Catamaran. 45 people and one boat made the entire on the water sequences of the film.   If it was blowing hard and we could not go out, we tucked into a bay and shot to get the day.  Not a huge flotilla to navigate and anchor.  Just one camera boat, a picture boat and a few running support boats for divers and lunch.  We started at 28 set-ups the first day, and then ramped it up to about 35 to 40 a day.  This was ground breaking! But it was a very similar concept; lots of cameras ready in every configuration, small crew, small footprint. That equals speed, creativity, and the ability to capture serendipitous moments.

Our 10 1^st Unit camera pkg. consisted of 1- Arri 535B on a 30’ Technocrane, 1- Arri 435 camera in a AquaCam housing on a 20’ Foxy crane that had a moving fulcrum to submerge the housing, 2- Arri 535B cameras in hand held mode, 2- Arri 535B cameras in Studio mode, 2- Arri III cameras in Underwater housings, 1- Arri 435 for slow-motion work, 1- Arri 535B on the Steadicam.  This was all on the deck of a 45’ x 14’ Cat, that had below storage bays, a head and two supercharged Honda 350 outboard motors that blasted this baby across the ocean at 25 knots fully loaded. For further details you can read the ICG article at www.cameraguild.com/index.html?magazine/stoo0905.htm~top.main_hp

Rudy Harbon with big glass no gack

I am sharing this with you because it worked well. Now, it is your turn to make the decision for your shoot and it may have a variety of different solutions.  The same holds true for a smaller production. This camera can be huge. I chose to do it with glass but not with all the other gack.

There is one critical question to consider. Do I need to make the camera look like an impressive movie camera for me to be taken seriously?  The answer is NO!  If we are going to embrace this new technology, everything has to change.  The way we work will become more efficient; video village shrinks, people start to trust, re-invent, think out of the box, force their hands.  If we want to achieve this we all have to NOT function like it is business as usual or the camera will blow up to what I see on all the web sites. It is the monster of all monsters with cables, adapters, converters, switchers, battery packs, wireless transmitters, etc.

I worked on all the Navy spots without a video village because the agency watched the playback on my lighting monitor when the directors were happy with the performance and the shot.  If the agency wanted something different, we delivered it and then moved on.  The end result was increased productivity. What shows up on the screen increases in a cheaper, more eco friendly way.

Though it is not always possible, try to start with the simplest set-up and build from there. If you need an on-board monitor so that you can broadcast a signal, put it all into a backpack: an Anton Battery pack, MDR, video converter, cinetape, wireless video transmitter, or a hard line that comes directly out of your back, not near the camera.  Get another Marshall monitor with an Anton Battery back and run a hard line to the director first, then if you have to go wireless, again put it in the back pack. Just remember that adds time and things can fail, so the more you add the more it can go down.

Try out this idea, you go from Studio hand held mode to Man Cam by just plugging in cables to the camera, so you go onto a head where your back pack hangs on the dolly or your sticks.  If you need all this stuff, just don’t put it on the camera.  I would love to see your configurations that inspire and create.  Send some pictures!

Studio Hand Held Rig

The secret is weight and where it is placed.  This camera can be anything you want it to be.  It can be stripped down to a still camera or dressed up on a tripod with matte boxes and all the other bells and whistles.  But the fact remains that it is a 2.5 lb still camera, which just needs a little love in the right place for hand held work to shine.

Dressed Up To The Nines For Intense Long Lens Work

Dressed Up On A Head That Quickly Turns Into A Man Cam

A Gyro is one of the most unnatural pieces of movie-making gear you can put on this camera.  I made the mistake trying to use this device for the intense hand held action work on the Navy SEAL Project. I would back pedal down a hallway and try to pan slightly to frame a SEAL coming down an adjoining hallway.  The camera spun out of control, ruined the shot and it just felt wrong.  It added: more cables, more batteries, more weight (in all the wrong places), and the noise for sound was deafening so we scrapped it.  Chalk that up to having your hat handed to you. Now, for helicopter and ocean work, I think I would entertain the use of one of these beasts, but other than that I am not sold on this technology.

The 5D, 7D, and 1D can be steady with good operating or they can be shaky and intense if that is what is needed to help tell the story. They can glide on a steadicam, fly on a technocrane, soar in aerial photography and land precise choreographed smooth moves on the dolly.  You choose!

Man Cam on a Head

Here are a few ideas that have worked well for the elite team:

1.  Break down your project into all of the possible different modes that you might be shooting and plan to have at least one camera configuration for each mode.

2.  Get as many cameras as you can! They are cheap to rent and constantly changing configurations costs you valuable time when shooting. It can even make you look disorganized and unprepared because a director may be ready to roll and you are floundering getting a camera into whatever mode you need.

3.  Have at least one camera body assigned to each mode for shooting. For example, on the untitled Navy Seal project that I am currently shooting we have 13 5D bodies in all different configurations. Many have at least 2 in a particular mode for a multiple camera shoot.

The elite team and I had so much fun naming the different configurations that we decided to hold a contest for the best name. Mikey Svitak will be the judge, so please comment with your best idea for a name and we will announce it on our October 20, 2009 blog.

There will be a grand prize that goes to the winner, so let your creative juices flow and have fun with it! Here are a few of the names we came up with to get you started:

1.   man cam mode

2.  action cam mode

3.  helmet cam mode

4.  stripper mode

5.  steadicam junior mode

6.  studio handheld mode

7.  crash cam mode

Good luck! I can’t wait to hear your ideas and share those on the blog along with the winner.