C200: A Snapshot of the News/Event LA Camera Market

[puredrifting]

Yesterday I worked the red carpet at the NAACP Image Awards. I don't work many red carpets anymore and they are far from my favorite kind of shooting as they aren't a cinematography venue, there is very little artistry or creativity involved, it's pretty much blast everthing with HMIs, focus and frame. A friend was hired to produce a live stream of the event though and asked me to be a part of the camera team and I was able to man the A camera, on a tripod with teleprompter and to work with the event producer and a director to shoot stand ups with the on camera hosts so it was interesting enough as it was live, scripted multi-camera coverage rather than shooting just talking heads for a news outlet so I said sure, what the heck.

Because we were only shooting an hour or so of live, streamed content, the rest of the time I was able to go up and down the red carpet without a camera, just looking and observing what was being shot and by which outlets. I have observed over the past few years that LA, on the lower end, is a Canon town and yesterday's event was a chance for me to see dozens of crews and shooters in action and to observe what the trends in cameras are. This being an event heavily covered by local news, AP, and Reuters, it was to be expected that I would still see a lot of relatively ancient Sony and Panasonic 2/3" HD broadcast cameras. I would say 30-40% of the cameras being used to cover the event were 2/3" broadcast cameras, as to be expected. Perhaps another 10-20% of shooters, mostly for web outlets, were DSLRs and mirrorless. I was also surprised that I noticed a resuregence of news crews with a producer, on air talent, camera op AND a sound mixer. For a while, ENG sound mixers were becoming a dying breed, with the camera op being forced to do their own sound so I thought that was a new, interesting trend, to put sound mixers back on ENG crews. Not every crew had one obviously but about more than half of the main outlets did.

I was bored enough waiting to shoot our segments that I made a little list that I though might be interesting as to what is currently popular in Los Angeles, at least for the low end, as you would expect to see at a press type event, obviously not shooting commercials, music videos or films.

total media outlets on the red carpet, 70.
Cameras used

1. RED - 0 (as expected)
2. Arri - 0 (as expected)
3. Various Sony 2/3" Broadcast cams (I couldn't tell you the individual models but almost all were older XDCAM HD cameras w Fuji glass) 22
4. Various Panasonic 2/3" Broadcast cams (once again, I spooted a few 2700s and 3700s but a lot of older P2 broadcast cams as well) 9
5. Canon 5D MKIII and MKIV (shooting video, the stills people were in a separate area and from what I saw, none in the still section were shooting video) 6
6. Sony A7 variant (it was in a cage at the end of a monopod so I couldn't see the exact model) 1
7. Canon C300 MKIIs 13
8. Canon C200 6
9. Canon C100 MKII 3
10. Canon C100 MKI 2
11. Sony FS5 0
12. Sony FS7 MKI 0
13. Sony FS7 MKII 1
14. BMD UMP or Pocket Cinema 4K 0
15. Canon consumer Vixia (unknown exact model) 1
16. Producer of event had a guy following him around specifically with a Sony A7 variant mounted on a Ronin S
17. Canon 1DXMKII (shooting footage not stills, in our video section) 3
18. Panasonic UX180 1
19. Sony NX5 or NX5 type of one piece prosumer 2

This is totally anectdotal and proves nothing other than at a news type event, the amount of broadcast cameras is down significantly from just a few years ago and the cameras that are almost as popular are digital cinema type cameras and in LA at least, the ratio of Canon digital cinema cameras versus Sony was significant.
Doesn't really mean anything but it does support my thought that at least in the digital cinema lower end space in LA, Canons are still really popular, Sonys, not so much. I still think in most other places, the ratio of Canon would be much lower and the ratio of Sony digital cinema cameras would be MUCH higher specifically, FS7s. I've only
shot red carpet in Los Angeles and once in NYC and in NYC, there were a lot more Sony FS7s than here, that was about two years ago.

 

[Bassman2003]

Thanks for posting. Looks like quite a scrum. No GH5's.

 

[DLD]

My old neighborhood. I lived on the other side of La Brea.

As to cameras, I would have thought lighter cameras on monopods (with external monitors) would be far more flexible in getting the above-the-head shots. Likewise, camcorders with long zooms would feel more at home.

I also assume someone was flying a drone somewhere (with the city/organizers approval, naturally)

 

[puredrifting]

Def no GH5s that I saw. The event was going for about two hours before I had to do my part so I was able to just hang out and observe an unusual amount of time. We were there at 7:00 AM and did tech rehearsal at 10:00 AM and event didn't begin for us until 5:00 PM.

I did see one or two doing what you describe, an A7 variant and some Panasonic fixed lens camera that the Reuters guy had up on monopods, but couldn't tell the exact model. Def wasn't a DVX200, probably a UX180 or something like that or may be an HPX270?
On a typical red carpet, like for movie premieres, which I have done hundreds over the years, it is all very timed and choreographed. Typically the name talent is escorted down the carpet with a publicist and you get exactly :30 to 2:00 with them,
enough time to ask maybe one or two questions, that's it. What's even dumber is because you only get one or two questions, everyone has a tendency to ask the exact same question, if you are listening as they make their way down the line to you,
you can usually hear it over and over again. That's why you'll see the same exact bite from talent over and over on various media outlets. As I said, not a lot of room for any type of creativity, I hate doing regular coverage on a red carpet, it's the
most mind-numbing gig there is. Not sure if a long zoom would do you much good, most of the interviews are shot from about 2-3' away and the lighting was awful as it was all super contrasty side lit and even though we had twenty Arri M18 HMI PARs, those don't
do much against mid-day bright sun other than add a touch of fill.

This one was highly unusual in that it wasn't all choreographed and timed and a lot of the talent were doing 5-10 minute interviews and a lot of them just hung out, talking to the reporters and each other. Since me and my crew were just sort of hanging out, I was introduced to
several people, asking if we wanted to shoot interviews with them. It was awkward as we really didn't want or need to since we were just doing the live stream with talent doing to cameras and interviewing specific talent who had been lined up beforehand.

Did get to chat up Trevor Noah, John Legend, Chrissy Metz and all of the kids from This is Us (very nice all as you would imagine, I shot John last year for a documentary) so that was kind of pleasant compared to the normal red carpet, which is chaos.
This red carpet lasted nearly three hours, then they seated talent and we broke it all down. Spending all day literally ON Hollywood Blvd. was challenging, the noise and random homeless and almost homeless who hang out in costumes harrassing tourists
to take photos with them gets old after 10-12 hours, which is really long but it was nice, more like a cocktail party without cocktails.

There was also a BIG swarm of bees that descended in front of the Dolby Theater and cleared out all of the crew and tourists for while. It was weird. Eventually they all swarmed up to the upper most arch of the entrance, the queen must have been out there because the entire swarm just clustered
around one small down rigged pole way up there. But it took almost an hour and before that there was just a huge swarm shutting the whole entrance down. Strange.

If there were any drones, they were really high up there, didn't see or hear any but lots of regular air traffic heading to Van Nuys and Burbank Airports.

I think I fulfilled my quota of live event and red carpets for the year, back to shooting documentaries, much more fun and interesting.

 

[DLD]

Were there any really high vantage point cameras, sort of like you see in the NFL with a cable cam or even a blimp? It seems like, if one had a nice zoom on a 2/3", he could reach the big stars from any angle rather than waiting for them to pass by for an interview. Or, since I don't watch these shows anymore, maybe it's all drone now.

As to the Boulevard action, I lived there for 14 years. I hear it's a bit worse these days. I once saw Jay Leno getting a few pizza slices from one of those hole-in-the-wall places for a Tonight Show remote. The camera man didn't get bupkis ... he was the lucky one.

 

[puredrifting]

We had a camera up on a light stand about 10-15' up as a big shot of the event. As far as the carpet, each media outlet had their own little area staked out and most of the stars and celebs would stop by each one so I guess they all got what they needed?
I'm not sure if you can fly a drone, even as a Part 107 pilot, on Hollywood Blvd. I have the FAA app, I should check.