Today, our guest instructor is Alicia Pascual who provides tips and techniques for the proper way to slate. For many that are trying to break in to filmmaking, especially in the camera department, this is must-have information. Your first job on the set could very well be slating. It’s broken into two parts below. Enjoy! For more info from the SFilms165 lessons, click here.
Hedge Software for File Management Hedge is a great tool for video production file management. The biggest advantage is that the file transfer from your card to the harddrive is faster through Hedge versus file manager. Because Hedge bypasses the bus on your computer. It also is able to verify the transfer, whereas File Manager doesn’t do that. This short blog is to show you how to use the software. For learning about file management, visit our other instructionals: The File Management Intro File Management for Small Crews File Management for Large Crews Step 1 To begin, open Hedge. You will have the Connected Discs window, which shows you which hard drives you have connected. Make sure your primary and secondary harddrives are connected and show up in the center. Then connect the card you want to transfer. It will…
Large Video Production Crew File Management We started this SFilms165 series on File Management for video production crews to do our part to stamp out horror stories of lost/missing footage from the video and film sets. Yes, it’s happened to us. In several different ways with different results. Make sure you watch/read the Intro to File Management before watching this one. Also, you can read Small Crew File Management here. The Large Video Production Crews First let’s define large crew: Greater than 4 crew people. This is a set that has many moving pieces and many crew people doing very specific tasked jobs. In corporate video, it’s a little more rare to see large crews, but in commercial production, feature film making, and television, you can very easily have large crews. Commercials can have 30 or more depending on…
File Management Part 2 This continues our campaign to squash file mis-management once and for all. In this part 2, we cover file management for the small video production crew. As long as there’s been digital acquisition on the film and video sets, there’s been the need to ensure that digital content makes it back safe and sound to the edit room. One time of losing a camera card is one time too many. For Part 1, click here. Small Video Production Crew Okay, so first let’s define what we mean by a “small crew” for video production. Sometimes, one person goes out with a camera and shoots all he or she can for the client. Then maybe a second person is there to help carry the gear. For interviews, a third person might be added to cover sound. Or…
On Set File Management Production Companies Problems One of the biggest “gotchas” that production companies can encounter is lost or corrupted footage. It sounds simple: “Copy camera cards over to hard drive.” But it’s the most critical job on the set. You mess this up, and you can lose that great performance, that wonderful camera work, those awesome sets. So to avoid this pitfall, let’s look at the tools you need. File Management Tools First of all you need a computer and hard drives. Preferably two (or more). Industry best practice is to take the camera card, copy it over to two different hard drives. And make sure you copy to each hard drive from the card—don’t copy to a hard drive, eject the card, and copy from the first hard drive over to your back up hard drive. If…
History of the Camera Part 2 For part 1, click here. The importance of this information is in giving you, the new camera production person, background into why things are the way that they are. We discussed progressive film rate and interlace film rate in part 1. The 1990’s The call was out for quality. For decades, the television signals and standards stayed exactly the same. But technology was starting to improve and though the television industry resisted change, eventually it to caved. Why did they resist? They have millions of dollars invested in equipment. You change to HD and all that expensive gear would become garage sale material. But eventually, the call for quality started to overcome the call for everything to stay the same. Everyone agreed it would be called “High Definition” or HD, compared to Standard Definition…
Intro to the Camera For incoming interns and new students of corporate film and video, we cover the basics of the camera and answer questions such as “what is progressive scanning?” and “what’s the difference between component and composite video?” and more. Brief History of the Camera Cameras were created in the 19th Century by utilizing glass to focus light onto a chemically treated surface. As technology improved, glass got better and the chemically treated surfaces were improved. By the early 20th Century, the cameras had become somewhat standardized. Then motion picture cameras came along. Same principle- but instead of taking one frame or picture, now a motor was created to speed the chemically treated surface (film) through the housing to enable taking many pictures each second. This started by hand cranking the film through (resulting in variable speed– notice…
The Top 4 things every Freelancer needs to know about Video Production History of the Freelancer The word freelancer comes from medieval times– when a fiefdom needed an extra lance or two for the defense of their city or for the attack on someone else’s city, the would hire an extra knight or two to bring their sword and lance along. A “free lancer” did not belong to anyone or any fiefdom. Today, a freelancer is usually not employed, but works job to job, gig to gig. And they usually make more money for working less days than someone employed. And it’s easy to start a freelancing career in corporate video. You can begin at the entry level– a production assistant. And this goes all the way up to directors and producers. How you set yourself apart will determine how…
Corporate Video Versus Movie Making For all those film students who are graduating from different colleges and some film schools, one of the first choices you have to make is money or art? (It’s a trick question we’ll address below). You’ve just spent two or four (or six) years studying film and video. You’ve learned to shoot and you’ve learned to edit. You might have learned how to work with a crew. You’ve problem-solved and you are now looking for that job (career) you’ve invested so heavily in both time and money. If you’re driving goal, you’re burning obsession is to make narrative feature films, then really this article is not for you. This is for the film and video professional who enjoys shooting or editing one person corporate stuff, or working with a three to five person crew in…
Serendipitous Films is a film and video company offering services from script to screen. We started as a film and video production company (and have produced four feature films as well with actors Lou Diamond Phillips, Sean Patrick Flanery, Adam Baldwin, and Mimi Rogers) and have won over 30 industry awards for our work and consider our greatest accomplishment customer satisfaction. Whether you need a video produced for your company, or you need a camera crew or an editor, we’re ready to help with a great attitude and outstanding ability. Read More
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