The unique skill set that my Elite Team brings is that they all have a film background and are comfortable with certain rituals that accompany being a motion picture film loader and 2nd assistant cameraman.  These include: managing the truck; keeping  track of the gear and specialty pieces of equipment; creating an inventory and log; assessing how many magazines you have to load and color coding it according to the stock; labeling the magazines with the date, job, film stock and amount loaded on the magazine itself; and writing a camera report with the same information.

The system we designed for the untitled Navy Seal Movie is a mixture of the traditional film loader combined with the DIT job in the digital world. On our movie, Mike McCarthy who is a brilliant post production guy at Bandito Brothers with an IQ that I swear is above 180, set up our media manager work-flow system.  The Media Manager station is very simple and compact.  Sticking with the small footprint approach we employ a Mac Book Pro Laptop, a 24” HD Cinema Display monitor, and 4 External 500GB hard drives.

MacBook Pro

We shoot 10 to 15 minutes on a 8GB card.  I like using the 8GB cards the best because the counter on the top of the camera kicks in depending on jpeg settings at approximately 15 minutes of media recorded.  This is a great gauge.  Once the counter starts to come off of 999 we re-load the card.  Just like a 1000 foot magazine on a film camera.

Card Reader with 8GB Card

There are three important reasons to do it this way:

1. We can get that to the media manager and he can check the focus on his big monitor.  We all know how critical the focus is with these cameras.
2. The cards tend to heat up and when that happens the noise factor goes up.  So keeping a fresh card in there is very good way to keep the image as clean as possible.
3. It promotes a steady pace of backing up cards, so if for any reason something happened to the camera or the card you are not losing a whole day worth of footage.

In our work-flow system, the 8GB card from the 5D camera goes to the media manager. He downloads the media into the computer and simultaneously sends it to the 4 external hard drives.  After the download is complete, he checks for focus and exposure and labels each set-up for the assistant editor with as much detail and description as possible. Then, he formats each card before sending it back to the cameras in the field. When the cards go back to the field to be reused, the camera assistant knows to double check that each card is coming back empty.

2 of 4 Hard Drives

Next, one hard drive is shipped to the editor to start logging the footage; one is a back up if the original one gets lost in shipping.  A third  is for the director to view on his laptop. The last one is a “cloned master “of what we sent to the editor, which is held in post.  This system has been successful in delivering the entire equivalent of 1.8 million feet of film safely into the edit room.

How do you manage media?  What successes have you had?  I would love to hear your formula.

Imagine prepping, shot listing and then letting the action play out in real time like a play. We put the cameras in and around the Navy SEALS action to document it without interrupting to get amazing moments of serendipity that would not have happened it they were broken down into individual shots.  We shot in real time.

First, we set up  “cover sets,” a concept coined by director Michael “Mouse “ McCoy.  We then discuss the operation and where to best set up our cameras to cover it.  The Elite Team is put in place and we run the image capture live as it happens.  No stopping the action and breaking it down into pieces; we run the whole thing again until we get all of the necessary coverage.

Here is the breakdown for the Pool Training Sequence for Navy Swimmer.

• 1-camera in deep water housing which captures underwater and split level shots
• 1- camera on a dolly tracking profile with swimmers that moves at water level and then submerges to see them swim underwater
• 1-camera on 300mm Canon lensing medium shots of the recruits as they pop out of the water and sit at the pools edge
• 1-camera on 600mm Canon lensing extreme close-up shots of the recruits as they pop out of the water and sit at the pools edge
• 1-camera on a high overhead shot as the swimmers head at camera to take in the scope.
• 1-camera high speed on a dolly tracking at water level with the swimmers
• 1- camera hand held on 70-200mm Canon Zoom going rogue and capturing little bits

Navy Swimmer 720p & 1080p

The serendipity moments are real; you feel like you are experiencing it as if you are the Navy Swimmer, Diver, or SEAL.  We are able to lens these 3 minute spots for the Navy in 3-4 hours with our small footprint shooting module. Now, there are moments while we are shooting that have Blue on Blue filming, which is a military term that means you are shooting yourself.   For the few seconds where the other cameras are seen, we then go to Brett the magician in the After Effects room at Bandito Brothers to deliver his artistry.  He has painted me out of several shots, the most obvious one was on the swim deck of the yacht on the “Where’s the 5D MIO SEAL operation.”

This is groundbreaking filming which is unique in its style and execution and has only been possible since the invention of the Canon 5D, 7D and 1D cameras.