F35: The old girl does Bollywood

[Grug]

Hey guys,

I'm over in India at the moment on a Bollywood feature, and I've got the F35 pulling A-camera duties, so I thought you might like a glimpse of the old girl in action the heat and humidity here are oppressive, but the only technical issues I've had with the cameras so far are that the built-in SDI cables for both of my Zacuto Gratical Eyes have conked out (I suspect it's to do with the heat). The EVFs are still trucking along beautifully though, I've just had to swap in spare SDI cables for the moment while Zacuto are couriering over some replacements for me.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[DarkMatter]

Glad to hear the heat and humidity are not affecting the F35. Bringing mine to Japan with me next month and was worried about the oppressive humidity here!
Do you have any screens you can share?

 

[David W. Jones]

May sound odd, but I have always wanted to shoot a Bollywood feature.

 

[Greg_E]

I guess you don't like to change batteries very often, that AB brick is huge on that camera.

 

[Grug]

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Glad to hear the heat and humidity are not affecting the F35. Bringing mine to Japan with me next month and was worried about the oppressive humidity here!
Do you have any screens you can share?

She's done well with the heat, I'm glad I'm shooting primarily with zooms though, there's so much dust and gack in the air, that minimising lens changes in these conditions is definitely a good thing.

I'll ask my producers if they mind me sharing a framegrab or two.

May sound odd, but I have always wanted to shoot a Bollywood feature.

It's certainly an experience! And they love foreign cameramen over here, so I'm sure if you wanted to find some work here, you'd be able to.

Just be aware that it's VERY different to working with western crews - out here I have a lighting crew of six, a camera crew of six and a grip crew of five, and back home I'd get more done in less time with a grand total of six people for camera, lighting and grip combined!

It takes a bit of getting used to

I guess you don't like to change batteries very often, that AB brick is huge on that camera.

It's actually just a 150Wh (nice though because it'll output 12 amps, so it can cruise along with the F35 and any and all accessories I care to add to it), I was only able to bring two with me on the plane due to lithium regulations, but weirdly, because everything's been moving so glacially slowly here, I've actually never needed to use the three Chinese rental v-mounts that we picked up to supplement my ABs - the first battery is always fully charged before the second runs out! I've never seen anything quite like it.

 

[robmneilson]

Love to see the F35 getting some love. What lead you to using it on the production? I'd imagine it may be a hard sell to some producers in a RED world for low budget features.

 

[Mitch Gross]

A friend of mine shot a Bollywood picture and the most disconcerting thing to him was his "personal assistant." There was a guy who's only job was to get him whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. Need a drink? He fetches it. Where's my script? In his hand. Use the restroom? He was escorted to the facilities and then the guy would stand by to bring him back again to set. And the weirdest part was that the guy followed him home at night as well! Creepers.

 

[wannabeapilot]

Those BTS photos are super cool!

Is that a proaim crane you're using?

 

[Grug]

A friend of mine shot a Bollywood picture and the most disconcerting thing to him was his "personal assistant." There was a guy who's only job was to get him whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. Need a drink? He fetches it. Where's my script? In his hand. Use the restroom? He was escorted to the facilities and then the guy would stand by to bring him back again to set. And the weirdest part was that the guy followed him home at night as well! Creepers.

The people factor is a big one. I keep turning around from the camera to find myself literally surrounded by a throng of people 20-30 deep, inches away from me, who've been watching the scene over my shoulder. It scares the bejesus out of me every time, and I have to order everyone away.

You fit four people on a motorcycle here, and a car is game for anything up to about 10-12 people. So there's a very different approach to the concept of personal space I find.

Love to see the F35 getting some love. What lead you to using it on the production? I'd imagine it may be a hard sell to some producers in a RED world for low budget features.

Hey Rob, I posted this tale in another thread a few weeks back, but this one's probably a more appropriate place for it. It's a bit of a long story, but I think it might have some value to people, so (for what it's worth) here it is... I'm shooting this feature on the F35 with an F3 as B-cam, the plan was to have both cameras recording uncompressed 4:4:4 HD to .dpx on Odyssey 7Q recorders (in 12-bit and 10-bit respectively) - unfortunately our data wrangling facilities here proved very limited, and the harddrives the producer bought are cheap and slow, so I had to abandon uncompressed recording in favour of ProRes4444 XQ after the first four days of the shoot in order to keep shooting. The lenses for the picture are my Zeiss CZ.2 Compact Zooms.

Now the obsolete Sonys weren't my first choice for this film, nor my second. In fact, if I'd had to create a list of my preferred camera packages for this film, they'd probably have fallen somewhere around my 6th or 7th choice. So how did I end up there?

Well initially I wasn't going to be bringing any gear over with me. Just my light meter and my little box of lens filters. And I was perfectly happy with that. The producer was planning to purchase two Ursa Mini 4.6k cameras for the film, and has a set of EF-mount Leica Rs that we'd be using on them. Now I'm not a fan of SLR glass for narrative production (due to the mechanics), but the Leica glass is lovely, and it's my ACs who'd have to worry about pulling focus with the lenses, so I was okay with it The specs on the new Ursas seemed pretty great, so that's what we were going to do (my main concern was the cheap tripods, matte boxes, follow focusses - just accessories in general, that we'd be working with).

However, as soon as the new Ursas started shipping, consistent and very concerning reports came in of serious issues with build quality, reliability, and bizarre artefacts like the magenta vignette that was showing up in a lot of people's new cameras. And since we’ll be shooting around Delhi, which isn't a film-hub like Mumbai (where equipment is easily sourced), I had serious concerns about the cameras being able to last the distance on a 52 day shoot (through an Indian summer and into the Monsoon). We have an Academy Award nominee and an Emmy winner working on this film, and frankly, I wasn't willing to take the risk of having the cameras shut down production just because they're very new, and built to a price.

The producer agreed; and since budget, the length of the shoot, and certain idiosyncrasies of renting gear in India ruled out simply hiring two camera packages locally - we decided that I’d bring my Sony F5/R5 package over to function as our A-camera, and we’d scrounge up whatever we could to function as our B-cam.

At that point however, production was pushed back a couple of months. And I just had to sit on things. In that time I decided to sell my F5 and move on to a camera better suited to the sort of productions I generally do, so I was looking at either a used Alexa or maybe an F65 or possibly a new Varicam LT (the Dragon was an outside option, mainly because I’ve been burned by it out on location, and have been pretty wary of it since then).

When production got back on track though, my producer told me he’d need me to bring two camera packages with me. And this really threw a spanner in the works. The budget we had for camera gear would MAYBE cover the rental fee for ONE 2nd-tier/obsolete camera for the length of our shoot, and we needed two. So I was going to have to supply the kit myself.

Now the funds from the F5 gave me enough to purchase a nice, current, used camera (for which I already had all the support gear I’d need). However a second camera would require a second tripod, matte box, follow focus, AC monitor, with some cameras an EVF, and in the case of the Alexa or Dragon a full set of ND filters (as I’d only need up to a 1.2 with internal ND cameras).

Now I’ve been burnt by crappy support gear before - follow focusses that slip, matte boxes with filter trays that get stuck (and cause filters to crack or fall out when you force the stuck tray out), tripod heads that you simply can’t get smooth moves from. All of these things are serious issues. And ones I really didn’t want to contend with in a foreign country, where we weren’t going to be able to get the sort of rental house support that I could usually count on. So I talked it over with the producer and made the call that we’d go with good (i.e. expensive) support gear, and ‘obsolete’ cameras - as that was the only way I could cobble two decent camera packages together with the money I had available and the rental fee that could be supplied.

I was actually much more zen about this decision than I’d feared, and I think it comes down to the simple fact that all the cameras are great these days, and the real differences between most of the current cameras (versus the obsolete ones) are less to do with overall image quality, and more to do with feature-sets (Ks of resolution, high frame-rates etc.) neither of which we were really going to need for this film.

With that decision made, I had to whittle down the list of options I could afford:

2x FS7s (prosumer build-quality, dodgy raw support means heavily compressed XAVC for recording)
2x C500s (external recording, limited dynamic range, poor highlight handling, awkward form factor to rig)
2x Scarlet MX (limited dynamic range, poor highlight handling, my aforementioned reliability concerns)
2x F35 (1080p only, external recording, awkward form factor, heavy, low sensitivity, 50fps max)
2x F3 modified with Element Technica Body Armour (1080p only, external recording, 10-bit limitation, 60fps max)

Choosing between these options was a serious challenge, as each and every camera presented its own unique set of caveats. In the end, the key drivers in my decision making were build-quality/reliability and dynamic range/highlight handling - as I needed to trust that the cameras would survive the rigours of the shoot, and I needed the highlight latitude to be able to get pretty pictures with a potentially limited lighting and grip package. This pushed me towards pairing the F35 with the F3 in the end, as the big Sony (in my experience) trounces the rest of the options for overall image quality, and the body-armoured F3 would match it closer than the rest, but be light enough for possible gimbal work, and be able to shoot comfortably at up to 3200 ISO when we have seriously low-light situations that the bigger camera couldn’t handle.

Paired with Zacuto Gratical Eye EVFs and Odyssey 7Qs, we’d also be able to use consistent LUTs with both cameras for monitoring. And, thanks to the producer having bought 120 TB of storage for all of the 4.6k raw footage we were planning to shoot with the Ursa Minis, we were (in theory at least) going to be able to record uncompressed 1080p 4:4:4 DPX files from both of the old Sonys, to give us extremely high-quality masters - which I was confident enough with for a final DCP deliverable (now it's going to be ProRes XQ instead, but I'm not too fussed about that, it's a superb codec).

So there you have it. That’s how you end up shooting a feature film on an F35 and F3 in 2016!

 

[Grug]

Those BTS photos are super cool!

Is that a proaim crane you're using?

Nope! That's a Jimmy Jib, born and bred in Phoenix Arizona. Great piece of kit, the one we had goes out to 25 feet I think.

...just a shame the operators have been totally and utterly incompetent. They could build the jib, but were completely unable to operate it. There was no monitor for the guy booming the crane and zero capacity for the team to pull off even the most simple shots that I planned (or scaled back my original shots to). I was barely able to salvage a single workable shot from god only knows how many hours of trying. In the end, we basically just have some static overhead shots from it, and that's about all we can use :/

The Proaim kit is terrifyingly bad. Poorly designed, shoddily constructed, and their customer support is virtually non-existant (and they're just about the only manufacturer we can readily source kit from here). I'd advise anyone to steer well clear.

 

[VinceinLA]

How do you keep from getting sick? If I ate one plate of food there, I doubt I'd make it back to set the next day on time... one of many reasons I'd never shoot there, but I wasn't built for 3rd world water and food for whatever reason. I assume it's a genetic thing.

I know a DP who shot there some years ago and he said the same things you do about the crews. He also said sound was almost impossible on their shoot because they would talk during takes all the time, or if not during a take, they would take like 3 minutes to finally stop talking after action was called. Like one guy would say "quiet!" and then 10 other guys would tell each other to be quiet, and so on. Why is this the case?

Btw I think Proaim is Chinese or Indian made... so it's junk.

 

[Grug]

How do you keep from getting sick? If I ate one plate of food there, I doubt I'd make it back to set the next day on time... one of many reasons I'd never shoot there, but I wasn't built for 3rd world water and food for whatever reason. I assume it's a genetic thing.

Ciprofloxacin! That's the antibiotic I'm on at the moment to combat my second bout of Delhi Belly. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with stomach cramps or vomiting, it's just the rear end of things that's had some trouble pretty much par for the course from everything I've been told.

So far, between the heat, the stress and purely vegetarian food I've probably lost about 4-5kg in the three weeks I've been here. I'm down one belt notch so far, and probably have another to go before we reach the end.

You can only drink bottled water here. But unfortunately dishes are still washed in the tap water, rice is probably cooked in tap water. Personal hygiene is incredibly lax compared to the west, so at a certain level, there simply isn't much more you can do to protect yourself. Hell, one of our locations is a private hospital. I needed to use the bathroom there when we visited it on a scout, and I swear to god, it was the closest thing I've ever seen to the toilet scene from Trainspotting. I almost threw up on the spot - and that was in a PRIVATE HOSPITAL! So yeah, things are very different out here.

We've basically had our entire crew of between 50-70 people, staying in a single 3-level house with 13 rooms. I'm the only person here with a room (and an ensuite, thank god!) to myself, so I'm able to keep my own space reasonably clean, but everywhere else in the house... not so much.

I actually just had meat yesterday (a chicken dish) for the first time in about two and half weeks. I don't think I've gone that long without meat since I first grew teeth! It was heaven, I felt energy coursing back into my body from the first mouthful. But you have to be wary, quite a few people advised me to go vegetarian the whole time I'm here, it's safer. But I think that's a bit beyond me for an over two month stay.

We have a mango tree right in front of the house, and so yesterday I got to have some fresh mango - which was one of the nicest moments of my stay so far - sweet, delicious fruit (the heat basically ruins most of the fruit here, I've found everything else - apples, bananas - inedible so far)... but then I looked down at the piece of fruit I was eating and saw what looked like two tiny maggot writhing around... so I promptly threw up and lost my appetite. I asked the internet, and they're probably not maggots, but fruit fly larvae - but it was still less than fun.

India is... an experience. That's for sure.

I know a DP who shot there some years ago and he said the same things you do about the crews. He also said sound was almost impossible on their shoot because they would talk during takes all the time, or if not during a take, they would take like 3 minutes to finally stop talking after action was called. Like one guy would say "quiet!" and then 10 other guys would tell each other to be quiet, and so on. Why is this the case?

Btw I think Proaim is Chinese or Indian made... so it's junk.

Well we're actually shooting in a place called Greater Noida, about an hour east of Delhi, specifically because it's much quieter, so sync sound is an actual possibility.

No one shoots sync sound over here, not even the biggest films - there's simply to much external noise for it to work in any major city. Everything is ADR'd normally - which has been problematic for us, because it also means that no one is used to shooting sync sound, so the entire approach to working/talking on set is totally foreign to them. No one seems to give a damn about remaining quiet on set, even during takes - so a lot of yelling goes on, trying to get people to shutup and stop moving.

And yes, I shout 'quiet on set' and then a chorus of 5-6 voices shout the same thing over the top of each other - which doesn't really help much since no one can make out what any of them is saying over the rest

My sound recordist has been working in film/tv for twelve years, and apparently I'm the first person he's ever worked with who has asked about his needs for recording sound. It's simply a foreign concept here.

 

[VinceinLA]

You are more man than me! I just couldn't deal with that stuff. The bathroom thing made me ill just reading what you typed!

Well, maggots are fly larvae.

I worked with a partial crew from there years ago. The only person on that crew who would always get close to me, a female producer, didn't know what deodorant was. She was a skinny, 100lb 25yo that smelled like a 250lb football player after the game. :bath:

 

[CharlesPapert]

I'm really not sure which is a more fascinating story, the intricacies of shooting in India with the large crews (Garrett Brown tells of having an indvidual who acted as a human Steadicam dock--no other job than taking the rig when not in use and patiently standing around with it) or the food or hygiene stories. It's all interesting and echoing VinceinLA's sentiments, no thank you for me!

I did some research last year when shooting a Bollywood-flavored number for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and realized I hadn't watched anything from that genre. Some of it is pretty elaborate!

 

[DLD]

I'm really not sure which is a more fascinating story, the intricacies of shooting in India with the large crews (Garrett Brown tells of having an indvidual who acted as a human Steadicam dock--no other job than taking the rig when not in use and patiently standing around with it) or the food or hygiene stories. It's all interesting and echoing VinceinLA's sentiments, no thank you for me! ...

A few years ago, I went out with the Indian (actually, one half Swiss) gal. She was in her early 40's, born and raised in London but whisked away to Punjab before "escaping" to Switzerland in her late teens. We would exchange our, "but we were even poorer than you" stories. Before we met she told me she'd wear a traditional Indian dress to the date. I totally fell for it too.

She did like the typical Bollywood music though. Some things just get stuck inside one's psyche.

 

[trafficn]

This is becoming such a good thread. Grug you're a natural writer and storyteller- keep us updated please! I love hearing about all the cultural differences on sets.. in the end I bet you guys will have a nice film to show for your efforts. Also what speed drives did production show up? I read 120tb slow drives and imagining to myself them showing up with (40) 3tb western digital pocket drives with mini usb 2.0 -- you seem inordinately patient through the whole ordeal, good man!

 

[Grug]

This is becoming such a good thread. Grug you're a natural writer and storyteller- keep us updated please! I love hearing about all the cultural differences on sets.. in the end I bet you guys will have a nice film to show for your efforts. Also what speed drives did production show up? I read 120tb slow drives and imagining to myself them showing up with (40) 3tb western digital pocket drives with mini usb 2.0 -- you seem inordinately patient through the whole ordeal, good man!

Now, now, there's no need to exaggerate. It's an unpadded suitcase with 24 5TB seagate drives...











No, seriously - it's an unpadded suitcase with 24 5TB seagate drives. :grin::huh:

They're USB3 in theory, but so far a third of the drives I've tried won't go higher than 30-40MB/sec, and most of the others seem to slow down to that speed after an hour or two. It's been taking 12-18 hours to transfer two 512GB cards most of the time (hence abandoning uncompressed for ProRes XQ).

And I consider myself very lucky that my mother raised me on the maxim that patience is a virtue!

 

[trafficn]

Oh dear lord. I would be sweating bullets every roll. This would be me in that hot, claustrophobic, loud set. Seriously- once you get this one under your belt other gigs should be breezy.

 

[dhessel]

USB 3.0 is just a standard, it isn't going to do much for you if you are spinning 5200 rpm drives. Very interesting thread indeed please keep sharing your experiences and what ever else you can, I think it is safe to say there will be several of us tuning in.

 

[CharlesPapert]

Oh dear lord. I would be sweating bullets every roll. This would be me in that hot, claustrophobic, loud set. Seriously- once you get this one under your belt other gigs should be breezy.

Haha, NOOICE!