Nick Higgins
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Its not that old- maybe 3 years. I’ll check the contrast- but my guess is that is in the middle
http://www.nickhiggins.com
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I did the same with a 3 -5pin cable and its worked out great. I would have preferred a stereo mic but at some stage the cup no longer flowed over with cash for gear.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
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So I lived to tell the submariners tale. We were on board an Ohio class sub called the USS Pennsylvania for 4 days in the Pacific. All in all a seriously fascinating environment to shoot in. Luckily its the biggest sub out t here so space wise it wasnt too cramped. Like a cross between a sleeper train, a plane and below decks on a big ship.
As Mark says it was all fluorescents with various degrees of flattery, none very high. There was just enough light to function with an HDX900 without adding any gain but I had to lower the gamma and on occasion switch from -3db to 0db to get any detail. We took a couple of lite panels with us and they worked out great. There were lots of shelf like spaces to leave them on and there were enough light sources in every shot to make them seem like part of the sub’s reality.
I’d say that the shorter the camera operator the better cause there are lots of things to clunk a camera (and your head) on.
You can feel the swell all the way down to 200ft but below that it was very smooth. At periscope depth it rock and rolls quite a bit and you find yourself willing them to get it done quickly and get down below. We went down as far as 500ft and down there its very sweet indeed. You cant even tell which direction you are going unless you see the front end of a torpedo.
Getting on the sub can be a challenge depending on the weather. We boarded out in the ocean and luckily it wasnt raining, If it was I would have been up the creek cause all I had was a canvas portabrace bag. It would be a good idea to have a waterproof hard case back up cause at some stage someone has to lug it from one ship to another and its certainly subject to the elements for a good two minutes. It was clear sky when we got on so i just had the camera in a rain cover on a shoulder strap- the challenge then was climbing down 4 flights of ladders down a hole that the camera had to be put vertically to squeeze through. A contingency plan for getting the gear on in bad weather would be a good idea.
When we got off, again in the middle of the ocean, we set up on the supply ship to shoot the dive (a seriously rare thing that the navy doesnt usually allow). Its pretty surreal to get out the belly of the beast you’ve been on for 4 days and to watch it slowly disappear. I was in awe as much as I would have been if it had been a whale we were shooting. I am pretty sure its the first time i have emotionally responded to the departure of a vehicle!
All in all a fascinating shoot. The show airs on NAT GEO worldwide in July. Its called Big, Bigger, Bggest.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.department of expansion.com -
Thanks Mark- much appreciated. I have been Youtubing all the submarine videos to get a peek at life inside- certainly looks tight for space.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.department of expansion.com -
Yes you can go straight into FCP from the HDX900.
You will have to manually hit “capture now” in the Log & Capture window to record the signal though cause the camera and the laptop cant control one another.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com -
Cheers for that. Thats what I was starting to conclude. It would certainly be better if the Firestore could do what an NLE does and strip that signal back down to 23.98 and thereby save you significantly on the file size but I guess it cant (yet!), but we live in hope.
Shooting straight to a hard-drive with a tape back up is a pretty sweet way to go; its super efficient and doesnt feel like you are taking too much risk. Its a shame that the Firestiore is extra-ordinarily noisy and a pain in the arse to operate but being able to bypass the digitising from tape phase is a winner for sure.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com -
My Goodman guide arrived yesterday!!! (Thanks to an intervention by Meryl Altman). Cheers again for that Meryl- much appreciated!
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com -
Thats for sure- we were fortunate to be handed a DAT tape at the end by the sound recordist. The fun will be synching the 4 cameras and cutting something that makes sense, fortunately not my job. We shot with 1 HDX900 and 3 HVX200’s. As expected the P2’s were a bit of a pain cause we rolled non stop and at the end the P2 store couldn’t download the massive files.
For any Beethoven fans out there here’s a 30 second spot for the film that I shot on the HDX900 in Tokyo last week
https://homepage.mac.com/doubledogfilms/cello/iMovieTheater35.html
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com -
The main event was a 5000 person chorus singing along to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (in the massive national Sumo Wrestling arena) for the finale of a feature documentary called FOLLOWING THE NINTH.
The rest of the time was spent running around town covertly shooting contemporary Tokyo on the fly for visuals to use with the concert. The tuna auction at 5am was an early start but a true pleasure to shoot. This is where I noticed that having the camera wrapped up in its rain cover meant people hardly took notice.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com -
Glad to report it all worked out well- thanks for the advice.
What a seriously great place to shoot (and eat!). My new top tip top shooting covertly in the street is to keep the black portabrace rain cover on the entire time cause that way from a load of angles it doesn’t look so obviously like a camera, worked a treat.
http://www.nickhiggins.com
http://www.doubledogfilms.com