Lifechange: Lets go be a director...

J

jboswell

Member
Bear with the initial background here, I will get to the meat in 3 or 4 paragraphs, I am looking for advice/comments/concerns/criticism so I need to fill everyone in, this is also my first post after lurking for about a week, so apologies if this seems like "lol newb you aren't a director".

So, after working my 7th or 8th fulltime job for over a year now, I am leaving for vacation and the possibility of persuing a dream.

Basically I go on an extended vacation every 2-3 years (as I burn out or as I don't have another job immediately lined up.) This time to South America.

Since this trip is going to be a bit more extended than my last one (this one will be 3+ months, last one was 2 months) and looking back, on the last trip and seeing how much free time I had, I figured I would bring some stuff to occupy my time, and then also some stuff that I could actually work on while I am away.

I am going to be leaving July 1st from Los Angeles and driving south along the west side of this continent, going to try and make it all the way to the tip of South America. Taking my old 89' Honda Accord, filling it with everything we (myself and a good friend of mine are going together) could possibly make use of, and hitting the road.

This is officially a Surfing / Sightseeing trip, but as I know there will be a lot of downtime I figure this will be a really good opportunity to actually plan a film out, or at the very least get a lot of time behind a camera, get a solid grasp of proportion/framing and certainly editing and timing. The goal is to come back with a rough cut of a feature length film (low res on a laptop) and then once I am back bring it all into a full res cut and polish with some color grading and fine tweaks to the edit, and put it out there.

I haven't set anything in stone yet but I am leaning towards a surfari type film or documentary.

I have kinda made up my mind on using the HVX200a, it is fairly over my budget but honestly I wouldn't want to make this with anything less, I like films with big huge pretty detailed pictures, must be the cinematographer in me. I could go with some $1000 camera and do 1080i but the way I see it I am also doing this for me, and I will not be very motivated if the pictures aren't as absolutely stunning as I can make them and get the utmost resolution out of it.

1080p or die basically.

That being said, I am 'fairly' certain this camera does that, all the specs I have looked at seem to hint at it but I honestly haven't seen it stated outright anywhere, however that isn't the only selling factor for me, there are a lot of action shots I would like to do (waterproof housing slowmo) in the water that the 720p 60fps would just be way too cool for school to do it with. Also, the fact that it writes to P2 just rocks, I am an IT guy by day, so I like having the ease of just pulling and pushing cards instead of messing with tape, I dunno tape, I do know PCMCIA.

I have 3 weeks till this trip goes off, we will be planning our route here in a couple days and finalizing our list of things to bring and then after I have those things set I will be laying down my options (partially based on where we will be at any given time) on what/how to go about shooting.

Also since I have never been the biggest Documentary/Surfari enthusiast I will have to do quite a bit of research on the subject before we leave. I know this all may seem whimsical but I will certainly have the time and I have always been into art as well as tech, sketching/drawing/painting/designing as much as I have been into setting up networks and servers and configuring mail servers.. Been kinda all around computers since I was 12 or so, rather second nature.

Lastly I haven't worked out the lenses I am going to use, from what I have seen that is actually the more expensive part of the process so I am not entirely looking forward to it. At the very least I will need a Wide Angle, and I would love to get a Telephoto as well but the cost may very well be prohibitive, I may not be able to get any lenses at all for that matter and that may make getting a camera entirely pointless, who knows!

Anyhow, I will probably be getting the camera in another day or two because I would like to start playing with it and get to know it inside and out before we leave.

Any and all advice is welcome and appreciated!

Joe
 
take this job and shove it....

take this job and shove it....

Sounds like a great adventure. My advice if you are truly DRIVING to the end of the world is sell your Honda immediately and buy a mid 90's toyota 4runner, pickup (4 bangers only no V6!) or an 80's landcruiser. Your Honda will not survive Central america. Toyotas are the only 3rd world vehicle you should attempt this trip in. Try and find one with low miles.

What will you do for footage storage? Remember the less moving parts the better. You may consider investing in Blueray and archive that way.

Do you have security for your $10k + video equipment? My advice to you is obtain or borrow a BIG dog and put it in the back of the Toyota you will be buying.. If you are doing the beach/surf thing be aware this is the second most crime ridden place in mexico. ( The first is the border areas)My experience with a dog in mexico is that you get hassled far less by law enforcement and people avoid you in general if you have a perro diablo. Don't mean to sound racist but Mexicans in Mexico DO NOT LIKE DOGS. Of course the dog may also hamper your film making.

Bring no weapons, bring no drugs, and respect the natives.

Have fun.. I did the same thing once but went north with a 16mm Belieau. Its for sale now if anyone is interested. Comes with beautiful Angenieux zoom lense!
 
Joe,

Jaycanode's are all very good advices!

Hope you can make it and when you're driving thru Ecuador, please let me know in advance. It will be a pleasure to help you anytime. I'm located in Guayaquil, the biggest city in the coast, very near from the beaches and Montañita, where all the surfers go year around!

I'm selling my HVX200 this week and ordering the 200A from Specialized Communication Corp. You might contact them before any buying decision is made... truly nice people and the best deal in the market:

http://www.spec-comm.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=118_23&products_id=737

If you wish I can support you guys with what ever you might need... Apple/FCS2/M2/Zeiss/20+ years on business.

http://www.mandy.com/home.cfm?c=eps004

http://www.mandy.com/home.cfm?c=cin435

Drop me a PM anytime at your convenience...

Good Luck.

Henry A. Epstein
CinemaElectronika
 
Joe,

To me, I think the whole thing should be recorded. You, right now, thinking it up, planning it out, YOUR TRIP could be a movie in itself. Combined with the surf flick. Because a lot of people probably wish they would do what you're doing... Good luck and have a blast.
 
unless you get a 35mm adapter (which is kind of a pain for run and gun shooting) you cant use proper "lenses" all you can use is screw on telephoto and wide adapter lenses.

if you get a 35mm adapter, THEN you can use true photographic 35mm lenses. butthen you'll need power for the adapter, rails, and very likely a follow focus - and a way to flip an external monitor unless you get a 35mm adapter that has the flip feature.

making good images isnt a simple matter of getting a good camera and go...
 
jaycanode:
sell your Honda immediately and buy a mid 90's toyota 4runner, pickup (4 bangers only no V6!) or an 80's landcruiser.
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This may be a little tough to do but it has been recommended, quite a few people have laughed when I told them it would be in my Honda... Budget is tight so I dunno if this will be possible.

What will you do for footage storage?
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Planning on bringing a couple external 500GB-1TB Drives and just mailing them home as they get full (and having new ones mailed back.) I think it will take decently long enough to fill one or two of those drives that we shouldn't need to sweat it. Though buying an external BlueRay burner isn't a bad idea, not sure if the budget would support that as well.

Do you have security for your $10k + video equipment?
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Was thinking some kind of electronics storage case, modified a bit, adding a heavy lock or two and chaining it to the spare tire in the trunk. A dog would be rather hard to get ahold of, and asking someone to let me "borrow" theirs probably won't happen. Also, another mouth to feed / mammal to look after.

Bring no weapons, bring no drugs, and respect the natives.
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This is where I kinda am leaning the other way, no actual firearms mind you, but we do plan on bringing knives, primary use will be cutting up fish and possibly legstraps for surfing as there have been 3 shark attacks in southern mainland Mexico in the last 2 months. A knife won't do much against someone with an AK-47 but I have been trained in their use in combat situations (ex-marine) so I won't be completely helpless if the need arises, but I am not actually planning to have to use it in self defence. Bringing actual firearms would likely be way too much of a headache in border crossings.


CinemaElectronika:
Hope you can make it and when you're driving thru Ecuador, please let me know in advance. It will be a pleasure to help you anytime. I'm located in Guayaquil, the biggest city in the coast, very near from the beaches and Montañita, where all the surfers go year around!
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Awesome! I will definitely let you know, I plan on stopping in here with questions/comments/updates every couple weeks, or whenever we get to a wifi.

Out of curiosity how much are you selling your 200 for? Also, via all the recommendations on this board I will probably be going with SpecComm.


sonic freak:
To me, I think the whole thing should be recorded.
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Definitely have this in mind, going to start shooting as soon as I get the camera...


wgzn:
unless you get a 35mm adapter (which is kind of a pain for run and gun shooting) you cant use proper "lenses" all you can use is screw on telephoto and wide adapter lenses.
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Very glad to hear this before I order the camera, doubt it will change the choice but I suppose it is a relief to know I won't have to worry much about lenses as most of this is going to be run and gun. Any tips on how to make "run and gun" look its best? Aka, not Blair Witch. Going for beautiful eyecatching pictures, obviously that is a lot of framing and proportion but will I be able to get nice DoF shots and manually rack focus with the basic screw on lenses or nothing at all?

Doing some long shots of surfing from the beach, some panaramic shots of the beaches when we get to em, shots of up close surfing (from a swimmers POV) and then sorta interview shots with a beach background of locals or something. Background on that given spot (just though of that one, sounds like it would be great.)

if you get a 35mm adapter, THEN you can use true photographic 35mm lenses. butthen you'll need power for the adapter, rails, and very likely a follow focus - and a way to flip an external monitor unless you get a 35mm adapter that has the flip feature.
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Any idea what a starter package of all this would cost me given the previous shot descriptions?

A telephoto would be nice for the long range, the wideangle for interviews and establishing shots.. Follow focus for moving down the beach with surfers (if that is even possible to rack as you go, imagine that would be tricky as hell.)

I am getting an inverter for the car and then I could use a long extension cable for beaches I can't get the car close to in order to power the necessary equipment.

making good images isnt a simple matter of getting a good camera and go...
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This made me laugh a little, I certainly agree and I expect a bit of pessimism with regard to the whole idea, but I honestly just really want to put something out that I can be proud of, and I have pretty high standards.

Thanks everyone for the input, it all definitely helps!

Joe

P.s. Loved the Lebowski reference out of nowhere in the middle of all the replies! hah
 
you might be perfectly well off just using a couple of high quality screw on tele/wide adapters. like those from century optics or 16x9. the good ones however are a grand or more.

as far as getting a 35mm adapter. if youre shooting alone and on the shoulder i really wouldnt recommend it. adapters take a bit of time to get on and off. add a lot of cumbersome front weight and really need a follow focus and camera assistant to get the best results.

dont get me wrong. you CAN shoot from the shoulder with a 35mm adapter. but its a really cumbersome situation.

my brevis, rails, follow focus and 4 lens setup was about $3500 and it takes about 15 min just to set up

it sounds to me like youre gonna be doing a lot of spur of the moment quick and possibly dirty stuff. id suggest that you keep your kit lean. camera, 2 16 gig cards, a good LED on-camera light, a wide and a tele adapter a decent shotgun mic and a water housing.

a cheap shoulder mount rig might not be a bad idea either. kind of depends on how you like to shoot
 
I worked on the Amazing Race and we shot in South America and Africa. Bringing any type of equipment that looks expensive can literally mean your life in some circumstances. We had to have a team of security ( 2 former Seals and 2 former Brit SS) go with us and had 10-20 guides.

As i mentioned in a previous post, my friend was doing a small safe trip and they stole the camera while it was checked in for a flight.

Granted the HVX is a great camera, maybe you should look into getting a Sony (where you can change the inside lense and forgo the need for a pesty 35mm adapter).


We shot in Argentina and Chile and it was beautiful (no real problems). But from my experiences in guatemala, columbia, and honduras i would want to blend in as much as possible in some areas.
 
It might get kinda dicey driving through the western part of Columbia because of the FARC rebels. If you do, that in itself would be great footage to get.
 
Maybe I'm just more paranoid than most people, but as a producer too I feel it's my job to cover my ass when I do work, so I hope you're not going to put your footage in just one source, drop it in the mail from some third world country, then hope for the best, haha.

When we went on a 7-state, 20-day corporate road trip, I bought a Pelican 1500 case to put two 500 gig Western Digital externals in. Every day the footage from the day went onto both externals, so they were a perfect mirror of one another. That way a single drive failure wouldn't make any difference, or if someone dropped the thing, no big deal, etc. Even that solution, to me, wasn't completely ideal because I would have preferred to have the hard drives in different cases actually. That's how paranoid I am, haha. But we made sure that particular case was always in the hotel room, not with the rest of the equipment, and no maid service was ever requested so nobody was going through our stuff with the hard drives back at the hotel room a few days.

Sounds like a fun trip, though, you should definitely do something with it filming-wise.
 
JonathanLB said:
Maybe I'm just more paranoid than most people, but as a producer too I feel it's my job to cover my ass when I do work, so I hope you're not going to put your footage in just one source, drop it in the mail from some third world country, then hope for the best, haha.
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A fine point indeed, always good to look at things from a producer perspective as well, I will have to sit down and go over the plans a couple times from 2 or 3 different points of view.. I almost always instantly look at it from an IT standpoint and have started to work on the "What will I need to shoot this/that/etc and how do I want to present it" aspect, had rather forgotten the Producers need to be as realistic as possible..

Since drives are so cheap I can probably just buy double and mail one home and keep a local copy on site, the possibility of backing everything up to HD-DVD is there too but I think that would be kinda costly (for the drive anyway.)

Joe
 
I've not read every post but the trip sounds exciting to me....

I must admit my Dad bought one of the little Sony HD cams with a 160GB hard drive etc... thought it was a bit of a toy at first.. but had a play with it and boy what fantastic little cameras... in some situations...

I'm not saying it a replacement for a HVX but in certain situations I reckon they could be gold... Really cheap for an underwater housing... etc...

Also because they are domestic cameras they won't get the attention the HVX will.. can be good for tricky situations... also I find that people are more relaxed talking to a little camera...

Just a thought ... you could get at least 2 cameras.. water housing and a bunch of toys for the price of a HVX...

Remember content is king... not the shooting format... particularly with a gorilla style doco...

Good Luck...

PS.. I'm thinking of buying 3 Hard Drive cameras for a river shoot through uninhabitable areas.. it will give me about 100 hours of recording or something ridiculously huge...

HD 120GB 10MP HARD DRIVE HYBRID HANDYCAM HDRSR12
I think this is the 120GB version...

PPS: In Australia we had a guy called Albey Mangels... He traveled the world in some crazy Skoda or similar piece of crap ...and shot the whole thing on super 8mm... it was a travel log but it worked... you might be able to find some info on his films on-line....

Also I spend good money on microphones... decent sound is the make or break on indies...
 
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I must admit my Dad bought one of the little Sony HD cams with a 160GB hard drive etc... thought it was a bit of a toy at first.. but had a play with it and boy what fantastic little cameras... in some situations...

I'm not saying it a replacement for a HVX but in certain situations I reckon they could be gold... Really cheap for an underwater housing... etc...

Just a thought ... you could get at least 2 cameras.. water housing and a bunch of toys for the price of a HVX...
Click to expand...

There are multiple reasons I am looking at the HVX though, and that is kinda the catch, I want a camera that isn't writing to tape (for quite a few reasons there.) I want a camera that can give me a bit of versatility in the resolutions/framerates I shoot at. I want to be able to use different lenses/filters and whatnot, that is kinda a gimme, but if I wind up keeping the cam after the trip I would like the ability to build it out a bit with 35mil adapters and so on... Hooking into a firewire port is also extremely helpful as I can pull in content directly to my laptop (or via the P2 card alone) and be working on a roughcut while on the trip.


Remember content is king... not the shooting format... particularly with a gorilla style doco...
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A large part of the content and the focus in this film will be the scenery, so getting it at the highest resolution I can is a key factor for me.


PS.. I'm thinking of buying 3 Hard Drive cameras for a river shoot through uninhabitable areas.. it will give me about 100 hours of recording or something ridiculously huge...
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Camera comes with a 16GB P2 card, I will likely also be purchasing a used 4GB card as a backup and then I will be moving it all off to removable 500GB drives, 1 stored on site (in the car, in the case) and the other mailed back home.


PPS: In Australia we had a guy called Albey Mangels... He traveled the world in some crazy Skoda or similar piece of crap ...and shot the whole thing on super 8mm... it was a travel log but it worked... you might be able to find some info on his films on-line....
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Reading up on this guy, sounds pretty hilarious.


Also I spend good money on microphones... decent sound is the make or break on indies...
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Sound will definitely be important, though I don't think I have budgeted for that, very likely as I play with the camera here in the next couple weeks before I leave I may decide to invest in a nice small sound setup.

Joe
 
http://surfingexploration.blogspot.com/

Finally got on my way about 2 weeks ago now, killing a bit of time here in Baja Sur, I left ahead of time with Dog and Camera, been sorta dragging my feet waiting for my friend to get his stuff together and get down here, we will be meeting up Wednesday on the mainland (Los Mochis.)

Wanted to come back here and post up the blog if anyone is interested in the trip or footage. I haven't broken out the camera at all yet, with just me, and the Dog being a pain in the ass lately it has been somewhat impossible to do anything other than try and find time to relax. Soon as my friend gets here I will have a bit of the load freed up and be able to start getting footage!

Joe
 
rover_stormcases_xilitla_detail.jpg


You need one of these. Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota. Those are the vehicles you want for this type of trip. Honda... not so much. A search on eBay, especially with the current state of gas prices, shows just how affordable these bullet-proof trucks can be.

Ready supply of parts, simple mechanics and quality of build (especially in the frame and drivetrain) are the primary reasons you should only undertake this trek if you can procure one of the aforementioned vehicles.

*EDIT* Didn't see that you'd just posted that you're already underway. Travel safely and enjoy it! *EDIT*

e
 
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jboswell said:
http://surfingexploration.blogspot.com/

Finally got on my way about 2 weeks ago now, killing a bit of time here in Baja Sur, I left ahead of time with Dog and Camera, been sorta dragging my feet waiting for my friend to get his stuff together and get down here, we will be meeting up Wednesday on the mainland (Los Mochis.)

Wanted to come back here and post up the blog if anyone is interested in the trip or footage. I haven't broken out the camera at all yet, with just me, and the Dog being a pain in the ass lately it has been somewhat impossible to do anything other than try and find time to relax. Soon as my friend gets here I will have a bit of the load freed up and be able to start getting footage!

Joe
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I see you went with the dog security. :D
 
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