NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 'ACCESS 360 WORLD HERITAGE' TRAILERS

Here's a promo scene and some trailers from a new series I've worked on this year. 'Access 360 World Heritage' The Amazon' goes out on National Geographic Channel throughout the world on 21st and 22nd September. There are more clips at www.adventuresinHD.com <>

KESSLER CINESLIDER AND ORACLE TIMELAPSE KIT - PRACTICAL REVIEW

I’ve now done two location shoots with the Kessler Cineslider and their Oracle controller. It’s been a learning curve to say the least and I think I’m now about ready put some words together about how I’ve found working with it.

The Cineslider isn't particularly new to the market and there are many existing reviews across the web. For that reason I'm going to write about how I've found integrating the Cineslider and Oracle into a busy location shoot schedule - not just in a test environment.

The shoots I’m doing are not ‘timelapse’ shoots. I’m not some dude going out into dessert for a week, sleeping in hammock next to a 5D clicking away all night and coming back with ten incredible shots to make a montage with a classical music soundtrack. I’m a cameraman who gets two weeks to shoot a hour of documentary television. The timelapses are something on the side to up the production value.

If you don’t know what the Cine Slider is then here's the Kessler site.

The Cineslider and Oracle controller's uses are wide ranging but the big selling point is the motion control element. This allows you to record a tracking move along the slider track and then re-play that same move over a specified amount of time – while a DSLR sits on top timelapsing. The result being a timelapse perhaps taken over the duration of a whole night which when rendered plays back in 15 seconds with a smooth tracking move thrown in for extra wow. And what about long-exposure time lapses I hear you ask - if the camera is moving then don't they go blurry? Kessler has an answer for that. The Oracle controller also acts as the camer's intervalometer. It moves the slider in increments, pausing before it fires the shutter, then when the shutter closes it moves on and repeats the process. Very clever.

The added advantage the Cineslider has over the smaller Kessler models (and most other sliders) is that it can also take the weight of a large body broadcast camera so you can do real time moves at full resolution and compression too.

Kessler gear is modular – there are lots of little bits and attachments that fit across their range. Which means that ordering a bespoke kit for your personal needs is a bit of a research mission (although they do sell a package of bits to get you going if that’s what you want). It also means the price starts to stack up from what you originally thought it would be. It’s not necessarily expensive but it did end up being more than I’d originally planned once all the peripherals had been taken into account.

The first thing you realise when you attempt your first moving timelapse is this thing isn’t a toy. It’s bloody complicated and very powerful. I’m only utilising a fraction of the possibilities that the Oracle controller is capable of and it’s already a stretch to get my head round.

This is not something that you can read the instructions of and then hit the ground running. You need a lot of time practising and refining. It’s a bit like playing a musical instrument - you need hours of practice before you can even play the easy bit of Stairway to Heaven.

And so that’s what I did (practice on the Cineslider that is, not learn Stairway on the guitar)! I sat in the camera room for hours, I took it to the park and then I sat in the camera room some more. The real time-eater is that with timelapses you get no instant feedback. You have to dump the card, render the individual pictures into video and only then can you watch it and realise to what extent you have hold of the wrong end of the stick.

I also pimped the kit out to suit my needs. I didn’t want to use the Kessler battery as it looked a bit bulky and I already have a box of V-lock batteries on my shoots – carrying an extra battery and charger seemed a bit silly. This meant I had to chop the end off their power cable and replace their cigar lighter socket (really!? In 2012? I guess in the desert you could power it for week-long timelapse from a car battery – so I’ll give then benefit of the doubt) with a D-tap plug so I could connect it to a V-lock plate. I got a small Manfrotto ball head to mount the 5D on. I bought spares of all the cables and connectors -mainly just standard computer LAN cables.

I managed to squeeze everything into a Pelican 1720 gun case. I think something slightly bigger would have been better (or two flight cases) but I wanted to keep it as portable as possible because of the kind of shoots I do. The Cineslider comes with a semi-hard case, which would be fine for road travel but I wasn’t happy checking it on international flights.

And so for the first shoot. Nothing like jumping in at the deep-end… three weeks in the Amazon rainforest during rainy season. I admit I was a little nervous about the Oracle controller and the electronics. It’s well built but it doesn’t have the really rugged, been-there-done-that feel that I like kit to have on this sort of job. In any case kit is either waterproof or it isn't and this isn't.

 

I was very careful with it. I didn’t get it out in the rain (of which there was much) and always put it on a ground sheet. I don’t trust LAN cables and connectors at all so I kept them as clean and dry as possible. At first I thought the use of these bog-standard system cables was a really weak link in the system, however I bet it kept the cost down massively and means spare parts can be bought easily at a cost of almost nothing.

At first I used the slider mainly for mounting the main camera on and doing real-time moves. I found it really easy to set up (I just attached the Sony quick release plate directly to the slider plate with a 3/8 thread bolt). I’ve used a lot of lightweight track before and one thing you can’t do is lay it on uneven ground. Although the Cineslider's move is short it really trumps in this respect.

This way of mounting does mean that you have no way to pan or tilt during a track - you’re limited to small crawls sideways. You have to see this in context though – to get any other sort of track move on this terrain you’d be talking about metal track, wedges, apple boxes etc – which isn’t going to happen in this sort of remote location. I have on order the Kessler hi-hat bowl which means you can mount a bowl head on the Cineslider to enable pans and tilts. I haven’t seen or used it but I suspect that once you’ve got the hi-hat, a Sachtler 20 head and full size broadcast camera on top it's going to be mega-wobbly. I’d like to be proved wrong about that. Even if is it too wobbly to do actual moves during a slide it will still make the whole thing easer to use as I'll have more control of the camera independently of the slider.

Now the biggy - timelapses. In all honesty trying to fit these in around ‘normal’ filming is very difficult. They take time to set up, time to run and then they don’t always work out how you expect so you have to do it again. This isn’t something that goes down too well with modern budgets and scheduling. You need a very understanding producer. I also screwed up a 'one time only' timelapse by putting a move on it - should have kept it simple I guess.

The work flow went something like this - I'd set a timelapse going and then go off with the main camera and shoot GV’s/B-roll or a sequence and then comeback at the end of the timelapse. This has a number of issues in reality, mainly that you need a spare member of the crew to sit with it (to stop it getting nicked and to stop inquisitive people ruining the shot) and unless you are very careful you often find you or other crew members need to walk through the timelapse shot in order to shoot the other things you’re doing. Also if something goes wrong with it and you’re off shooting something else you can’t just pop back and restart it.

One thing I found useful is to have two 5D’s. One on the slider and one on a tripod. This way you can leave two going and if one goes wrong it’s not a complete waste. If they’re both good then you’ve got double the footage.

Recording the moves that you want to be replayed during the timelapse isn’t as simple as it might sound. I understand why this is difficult (the way the motor/Oracle have to work) but it really is a pain in the arse, very difficult to get right and eats time. And you also can’t know if you’ve got it right or not until you watch the rendered timelapse back - in other words usually too late to do anything about it. Again an understanding producer is a great help. You can save three moves and then reuse them in multiple locations but I found that three wasn’t really enough to cover all bases.

Never the less over the last two shoots I have got faster, the moves have got better and my hit rate is on the up. So a lot of it is clearly down to practice - which is something Kessler does point out in the instructions. If you’re thinking of renting one for a couple of days shooting I wouldn’t bother – it’s only worth it if you’re going to invest a lot of time in it. I’ve had the production company asking me to advise other cameramen on how to use it and no one really understands that it’s just weeks of practice time you need. Which is basically not going to happen unless the other guy is an owner/operator too.

If you’re doing timelapses in this way - on a tight schedule and doing other things at the same time - you probably aren’t going to get the absolutely stunning all day long perfection that you might get if you were concentrating solely on timelapses. But you can still get some visuals that will catch the viewer’s eye and have them wondering how you did it.

The Cineslider and Oracle are undoubtedly great pieces of kit. Most of the difficulties I've had with timelapses are because of the nature of timelapses - not because of any problem with the kit. The Kessler kit really makes it as simple as possible to do something really quite complicated. Having the Cineslider on shoots to quickly pull out and use with the main camera has been great - and has upped the production value in locations where taking more than the bare minimum kit can be difficult.

It's taken two shoots but I think I’ve mastered Stairway. Next up is Bohemian Rhapsody. Scaramouch.

LOOKING AFTER WET CAMERA KIT IN RAINY SEASON AMAZON

For people who live in the Tropics this post might be old news, but if you don't and you're going on a shoot somewhere humid it could keep your camera rolling and your shoot moving.

I've filmed in humidity and rainy season before. I had two memorably wet nights with fishermen on a rock in the middle of the swollen Mekong river in Laos, and a week crocodile hunting in the southern Philippines amongst other things. The thing with these places is that however deep you go into the jungle in South East Asia you can pretty much guarantee you'll find some sort of accommodation with walls and a roof and maybe even aircon. The weather is also generally very hot which means that even in rainy season it is often hot enough to dry kit out between rain storms. These moments of respite from the rain and humidity are essential to allow your gear to dry out.

The Amazon basin is different. There's more rain, more humidity, more water (where we were there was almost no land), fewer people and almost no guesthouses. It was also a little cooler than Asia which meant that instead of hot and humid it was often cool and humid which basically just meant the air felt very damp.

In order to have somewhere to sleep we had to take it with us - in the form of a boat which was our transport, dormitory, restaurant and kit room. It was covered but didn't have sides which meant the all pervading damp set in pretty quickly and didn't fully dry up for the whole time we were there. We were filming through rain storms almost every day so the kit was actually soggy most evening too.

So how do you keep kit dry and working in a situation like this? You need two things - a large waterproof case and a lot of silica gel sachets.

Every night we would break the kit down completely (a pain in the arse when your kit is Sony PDW700, two broadcast lenses, EX3, nano flash, sound kit, 2X go pros, 2x 5DMkII, 2X radio mics, 416 boom mic). We'd separate out the soggy non-electronics (rain covers, camera jackets, Rycote softie etc) and hang them out as normal. During a wet night these wouldn't dry at all but I'd brought two rain covers so I could choose the least wet one and give the other a few hours of daylight to dry out.

The electronics were then all put in a large Pelican case and loads of silica gel sachets added. For a European putting wet kit away in a box feels very counter-intuitive. But come the next morning the the kit would be dry, and most importantly working. Some of the silica gel sachets had actually turned into bags of water - I've never seen that before.

As for the batteries - where possible I was trying to get them on and off charge before we went to bed. This way I could put them away in drybags for the night. Most nights I had to leave one or two charging though. To protect these I built a little tent out of a tarp' so they were sheltered from the damp and condensation but the cooling fan on the charger still had some air around it. The tripod and other bits of hardware got an occasional spray with WD40 which seemed to be enough.

All this meant every morning and night the camera assistant Paulo and I had a full gear strip down and re-build to do. Which along with dumping the cards from the 5D, GoPros and Nano Flash meant a lot of extra work on top of the shooting day. But it kept the kit going so I guess it was worth it. We had actually taken a spare, or at least an alternative, of every single kit item just in case - even a spare camera body. Thankfully we didn't need it.

For keeping the kit dry during the day I had absolutely everything in dry bags or Pelican cases. Zip lock bags, bin bags, tarps, small drybags, big drybags - anything water proof. I have a fully water proof backpack/run bag which was essential. I thought I'd taken a lot of this kind of stuff but it turned out we used every single thing I had - you can never have enough it seems. It's also good to have ways to hang your drybags off the ground - it's one thing to leave a dry bag out in the rain, it's another thing to have a bag full of kit and rushes sitting in a puddle.

By following this gruelling regime we had almost no water related issues with the kit, which was a small miracle. The only problem came from a Gopro which had a temporary humidity shutdown - after a night when it hadn't been put away in the dry case.

So there you go, that's how to keep your camera going in the Amazon. We had an awesome shoot - filming in some of the hardest conditions I've ever worked in. When we returned to civilization at the end of the shoot the smell of the kit, team and soggy washing was so bad we didn't allow the hotel cleaners into our rooms!

A little more on aircon - 
It's common for people not to use aircon when storing kit in the same room. The theory being that if in the morning the camera is cold and then you take it outside into the humidity it will suffer from condensation. This is completely true.

However, aircon units do also work was a dehumidifier so I'd argue that in some circumstances (drying kit in humid weather for example) it's probably better to have it on. The trick is not to have it on too cold - if possible set it just below the outside temperature. That way you get the dehumidifying effects and the camera won't fog up when you go outside.

If you must go from very cold aircon to humid outside it is always best to turn the camera on and allow it warm up before you leave the aircon. That way the temperature difference is reduced.