C100: Some of my BTS C100/C300 goodness for Resurrection: Prison Break S5

[puredrifting]

Yay, embargo is finally off! If you have the patience to sit through it, the work I shot on location in Morocco (doubling for Yemen) last Spring is visible and sprinkled throughout this BTS look at the making of Prison Break S5. I didn't shoot the interview with Wentworth Miller, which to me, has a weird blue look to it but all of the BTS you see in "the Middle east" was me with the C100 and C300. I shot interviews in Morocco, they are sprinkled and mixed in with interviews that were shot on the stages in Vancouver that I didn't shoot. Lots of fun stuff on this projects, drones, explosions, shootouts, stunts, car work, shoot outs, etc. working BTS on an action show is the best. It was 132F in the Sahara Desert for a week straight when most of this was shot. Fortunately they did use a few of my shots we captured out in the ancient fortified city of Ait Ben Haddou, which was an amazing place and experience shooting it. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/444

That week, the screen on my Atomos Ninja Blade melted (props to Atomos for replacing my screen under warranty), my C100 and 300 both exhibited thermal shutdown warnings, which I have never experienced anywhere else and the audio cables for my mic hop from our sound mixer kept literally falling apart because the heat was hot enough to melt the solder in the cable connections. We each drank gallons of water each day and the scary part was you rarely, if ever peed during the day, it was so dry. The fact that both the C100 and 300 survived this shoot without breakage and shutting down was a testimony that while they are of a prosumer build, the engineering holding them together is pretty good. Sure, lots of plastic but a lot of other cameras would have just stopped working in these circumstances.

Some more fun facts, a lot of my footage from the original run of Prison Break S3, S4, perhaps even a few shots from S1 are sprinkled in the opening few minutes, those were shot in Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas. That's what was always fun about working on the show, it moved every season, much like another show I shoot on, Homeland. Makes for an interesting BTS perspective because you go to a new country/location every season. Hopefully they will get a Season 6 and we can do another fun shoot like this one.

Enjoy!

 

[DLD]

Back in 1987, when I was working at Leo's Stereo in Canoga Park, we had a Saturday outdoor sale when it was 114F outside. An Emerson record/combo player, which top was made of thin black plastic, melted. One could poke a hole through it with a pencil. After it had cooled down in the evening, the player looked like an upside down horse saddle.

I hope you, at least, had outdoor fans in Morocco.

 

[puredrifting]

Back in 1987, when I was working at Leo's Stereo in Canoga Park, we had a Saturday outdoor sale when it was 114F outside. An Emerson record/combo player, which top was made of thin black plastic, melted. One could poke a hole through it with a pencil. After it had cooled down in the evening, the player looked like an upside down horse saddle.

I hope you, at least, had outdoor fans in Morocco.

I think I had visited that Leos, I was managing the audio department at Circuit City in Ventura at the time, ha, ha, good times in the 80s.

No fans, we were literally out on the streets. If you watch the piece above, about three quarters of the way through, you can see some of my shots of the streets and alleys of Ourazazate, all cinder block houses with windows with the locals and kids peeking out, looking at us filming below. it is surviviable but you have to take breaks, you have to drink gallons of water and listen to your body. A few of the crew and actors fainted a few times and there were some cases of heat exhaustion. Fortunately I grew up on a ranch and I can take heat pretty well. Put me in the cold, real cold though and I am miserable, hate it. I recall a shoot we did in Wales, Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge in an epic blizzard, -30F, -50F with the wind chill. No thanks, give me the heat any day.

 

[patrickbaldwin]

This is great. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Josh Bass]

So really basic question. . .when you're doing the ENG/run-n-gun/fly on the wall/get it while you can/b-roll stuff, how do you stay confident with your focus? AF? peaking? shoot high volume knowing half of it will be soft? Haven't done much of that with the C100 and it always fills me with terror poo thinking about it.

 

[nedcam]

Nice work Dan! What was the key light you travelled with? Did you do the post on this?

 

[indiawilds]

Very Nice. How many cameras were there? At 16.08 I see three guys with cameras on their shoulder. Did you do the aerials as well?

 

[puredrifting]

So really basic question. . .when you're doing the ENG/run-n-gun/fly on the wall/get it while you can/b-roll stuff, how do you stay confident with your focus? AF? peaking? shoot high volume knowing half of it will be soft? Haven't done much of that with the C100 and it always fills me with terror poo thinking about it.

One touch AF is my friend. I used to go through everything you are talking about with the 5D MKIII, a good portion would always be soft. Ever since I have used the C300 and C100 with DPAF, I rarely have an out of focus shot anymore. This piece gives you a good idea of how frantic and crazy shooting BTS can be because you have to capture what is going on, stay off camera when they are rolling two to three cameras on these scenes, stay out of the way of the ADs, background extras, stay out of the actors eyelines, avoid getting hit or run over by the vehicles, cranes, drones and all at the same time as you are trying to capture artistic and well shot footage. I would venture that if you have not shot a lot of BTS, you could easily get killed on a shoot like this one, there was a lot going on in every scene, a few scenes had hundreds of extras, cars zipping all over the place, etc. It was fun but frantic. I love BTS shooting but it is not for the timid or those without high situational awareness.

 

[puredrifting]

Nice work Dan! What was the key light you travelled with? Did you do the post on this?

This show was Aputure LS 1S x 2, Arri 650 x 2. I did not do any of the post on this, the production company I shoot a lot for did the cut.

 

[puredrifting]

Very Nice. How many cameras were there? At 16.08 I see three guys with cameras on their shoulder. Did you do the aerials as well?

The DP on this show was very good, Jeff Mygatt, I've worked with him before on Prison Break and 24. This show used an Arri Alexa SXT, two Arri Alexa Minis (sometimes one on a Steadicam but mostly shoulder mounted) interestingly teamed with Panavision Primo zooms and the drone shots are Arri Alexa Mini, some with the Canon 16-35 2.8 and some with some Zeiss primes. I did not do the aerials, they hired one of the best drone teams in the world from Finland, flew them to Africa just to shoot the aerials for three days, then they were headed out to shoot a feature in China. The pilots were A-list, very good at what they did, I filmed their monitors on their controllers and listened in as the director was directing the drone shots. This shoot is partly why I find it funny that people think that professionals in Hollywood use consumer drones like the P4Pro and prosumer drones like the Inspire. The drones these guys flew was huge, custom made, an Octocopter that could fly with an Alexa Mini, lens, focus, zoom controls, etc. It was about four to six times as large as the Inspire and the pilots told me that without the camera gear, their rig cost about €50,000.00

 

[Eric Coughlin]

One of the main actors, Dominic Purcell, had a large metal grate inside the prison yard entrance fall on him on our second day of filming. It gouged open his head and broke his nose, they airlifted him out for emergency surgery. Fortunately he was fine after surgery but it was pretty intense and I was standing right there when it happened. Blood everywhere. I can only talk about it because it was in the press last year. I love BTS shooting but it is not for the timid or those without high situational awareness.

So did you film that?

I did not do the aerials, they hired one of the best drone teams in the world from Finland, flew them to Africa just to shoot the aerials for three days, then they were headed out to shoot a feature in China. The pilots were A-list, very good at what they did, I filmed their monitors on their controllers and listened in as the director was directing the drone shots. This shoot is partly why I find it funny that people think that professionals in Hollywood use consumer drones like the P4Pro and prosumer drones like the Inspire. The drones these guys flew was huge, custom made, an Octocopter that could fly with an Alexa Mini, lens, focus, zoom controls, etc. It was about four to six times as large as the Inspire and the pilots told me that without the camera gear, their rig cost about €50,000.00

Do you find that full size helicopter setups with Cineflex aren't used much anymore on big productions in favor of using drones?

 

[puredrifting]

So did you film that?

I was taking a break from the intense heat in the shade of a 12x12 silk about 20' away, I was changing batteries on my rig. I looked over and saw it happen. Believe me, I was grilled if I had shot it but was not rolling. I felt bad for the guy, it must have been painful. That's one of the interesting things about shooting BTS, you sometimes have opportunities to shoot coverage of a scene just like productions cameras because they do so many takes (although the director of this episode was super efficient, he did just one or two takes of everything, John Ford style, which I love, to me that is directing, having a vision of how you want the scene to play out, shoot it and move on). So I can often shoot scene multiple times from multiple vantage points which gives our editors great choices and ways to piece together a sequence. Also, if you miss something because of a battery change, you can still get it on the next take.

Do you find that full size helicopter setups with Cineflex aren't used much anymore on big productions in favor of using drones?

I have not seen a helicopter used on a production since Die Hard IV, which was quite a long time ago. It's all about drones these days and it should be, so much simpler and easier than using a real helicopters.

 

[Networker]

The drones these guys flew was huge, custom made, an Octocopter that could fly with an Alexa Mini, lens, focus, zoom controls, etc. It was about four to six times as large as the Inspire and the pilots told me that without the camera gear, their rig cost about €50,000.00

Did you happen to get footage or even a picture of this drone?

 

[Josh Bass]

One touch AF is my friend. I used to go through everything you are talking about with the 5D MKIII, a good portion would always be soft. Ever since I have used the C300 and C100 with DPAF, I rarely have an out of focus shot anymore. This piece gives you a good idea of how frantic and crazy shooting BTS can be because you have to capture what is going on, stay off camera when they are rolling two to three cameras on these scenes, stay out of the way of the ADs, background extras, stay out of the actors eyelines, avoid getting hit or run over by the vehicles, cranes, drones and all at the same time as you are trying to capture artistic and well shot footage. I would venture that if you have not shot a lot of BTS, you could easily get killed on a shoot like this one, there was a lot going on in every scene, a few scenes had hundreds of extras, cars zipping all over the place, etc. It was fun but frantic. I love BTS shooting but it is not for the timid or those without high situational awareness.

Thanks. Yes, I WOULD get killed. I'll try to see if there are any BTS gigs on movies or shows where people sit in a living room and talk about their relationships.

 

[puredrifting]

Thanks. Yes, I WOULD get killed. I'll try to see if there are any BTS gigs on movies or shows where people sit in a living room and talk about their relationships.

I've shot plenty of those too. Believe it or not, still a lot of the same issues, although not with cars and explosions. But I have been in the eyeline of more than one Hollywood A-lister who yelled at me. It happens. So not getting killed literally, but getting killed by pissing off talent isn't a picnic either.

 

[puredrifting]

Did you happen to get footage or even a picture of this drone?

Actually shot quite a bit of the drone launching/landing, pilots, director working with them but for some reason they did not use that footage in this cut. That means there will still be other pieces where they may use it or for reasons unbeknownst to me, they will not use it.

 

[Josh Bass]

HA! Hopefully not Christian Bale. BTW you mean the one shot AF and not the continuous AF (but only turning it on for a sec to get focus then back off) right?

 

[puredrifting]

HA! Hopefully not Christian Bale. BTW you mean the one shot AF and not the continuous AF (but only turning it on for a sec to get focus then back off) right?

One shot for sure, although the continuous on my 80D is pretty good with the face tracking. Use that on my Zhiyun Crane with great results. But Crane is usually with a wider angle lens, while C100 I am typically on longer lens from greater distance.

 

[puredrifting]

Too funny, I just found out that this aired on Fox on March 4th in Prime Time as a 30 minutes special, I had no idea, nobody from Fox told us. This piece was put together by Fox Special Ops, we still have another piece that is shorter that is more character driven. In that piece, there are a few drone shots and some interviews I shot with the Drone pilots and the director.

 

[indiawilds]

The DP on this show was very good, Jeff Mygatt, I've worked with him before on Prison Break and 24. This show used an Arri Alexa SXT, two Arri Alexa Minis (sometimes one on a Steadicam but mostly shoulder mounted) interestingly teamed with Panavision Primo zooms and the drone shots are Arri Alexa Mini, some with the Canon 16-35 2.8 and some with some Zeiss primes. I did not do the aerials, they hired one of the best drone teams in the world from Finland, flew them to Africa just to shoot the aerials for three days, then they were headed out to shoot a feature in China. The pilots were A-list, very good at what they did, I filmed their monitors on their controllers and listened in as the director was directing the drone shots. This shoot is partly why I find it funny that people think that professionals in Hollywood use consumer drones like the P4Pro and prosumer drones like the Inspire. The drones these guys flew was huge, custom made, an Octocopter that could fly with an Alexa Mini, lens, focus, zoom controls, etc. It was about four to six times as large as the Inspire and the pilots told me that without the camera gear, their rig cost about €50,000.00

I know that the IQ shooting with Alexa Mini would be completely different. However, I found one instance of a 3DR Solo being used for a Michael Bay film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mILcAcSGwBA