Christopher Mills

On 1/5/2017 at 2:46 AM, Steve Foy said:

More likely to be a dodgy BNC connector spraying RF.......... this has been documented on a number of occasions.

 

Absolutely!  Damaged or poorly shielded BNC cables plugged into this camera body "leak" rf, interfering with our tools.

And yes, wireless FF is also a possibility, but not quite as frequent as the BNC cable issue.  power camera down, then try powering on with one new cable at a time on the camera.

When dealing with many companies, having a penalty rate in the contract (repeated on the invoice) and a discount of 5% for speedy payment often triggers a mandatory speedy payment to you.  The government of our state (GA) and the accounting rules for subcontractors to that state enforce their taking advantage of any discount of 5%.   Many companies mirror this required practice.  And it can make a "net Whenever" client into a "net 10 day" client.

Make sure your base rate reflects a high enough fee to have this be worth your while.

If I have to request a late fee at 60 days or later, I want to fire that client anyway, and I will try to collect the late fee.

Which receivers are currently compatible, please?

mozgear Tig?  should give you pass through audio and timecode on an audio track.

can you borrow another system to compare?  just a single transmitter and receiver.  You may have a bad transmitter.  You still won't get a headphone signal out of the receiver with bnc antenna

I have been pondering this as well.  The Cl-12 will work with a 664.  the 664 will record 12 inputs. 

The fact that the analog side of the 664 keeps right on mixing and passing through signal has helped me on an efp job or two which had client provided bad media cause recording lockups. 

the 688 won't do this.  if it locks up, the outputs quit as well.

I have mixed commercials and overlap days on tv, and dialog unit on features on the 664.

I would have liked the imporved matrix assignment capabilities of the 688, but they were not essential.

used an arri mini all week.  it was 2 frames off with a Ambient lockit connected all day long.  But a stable 2 frames offset.

recorder was SD664

I worked with Tippi in the early 1990's and while she was willing to discuss Shangri La, her rescue camp for big cats, she did not mention the film at all.  She did say that she was glad to have some TV acting to help her financially recover and not just abandon the animals back home, as they could not be re-introduced to the wild.

I suppose there's a provision for a safe hot swap?  For reality tv gigs?

Oh.. if they insist on vhs, I expect it to be either NTSC 29.97 or PAL 25 fps   fwiw on your record settings. The ingest path is likely to be imprecise and non frame accurate, though.

I like the idea of recording the feed from the camera to a Kipro or better a PIX, with a TC lockit on that device .

An SVHS camera is more likely to have a video out than a VHS one... and will look enough like VHS to preserve the look.

This is simply put, a bad idea.  Use a pro camera, use paper tape on the monitor and eyepiece to mask aspect ratio, and alter the look in post. 

Last year I worked on a batch of VOD projects for a VH1 TV series where we used vintage betacams, which I could at least Daisy chain timecode. (they didn't want to pay for genlock capable TC Lockits).

We discovered that the ingest and transfer costs (and failure rate on the camera bodies) was so high, that they would have done better to use an Arri, Sony, or Red camera and apply a lockit.

coban here in the steamy SE USA

$450 a day is on the low side of the rate for up to 6 channel cart in my market.  Try to get them to rent the slates and TC boxes outside of your kit, if you don't own them. 

about 10 comteks and 2 IFBs would be the support for this kind of package on a pilot or low budget film in my market.  this does not include labor at all.

If its a project you want to do, and they can agree to a labor rate you can afford to accept,

but requires extra gear, invite them to rent that gear.

In Canada, you have well stocked rental houses. While you can cross rent on their behalf, and may be able to negotiate a little on the published rates, you are taking on some liability with an indie if there is loss or damage.

The line in the sand that I have drawn is on production insurance.

Your gear must be covered by a binder which lists you as a loss payee and co-insured certificate holder (thats the legal language in the USA).

AND the production must agree in writing to cover the deductible costs.  Also, they need to clearly take responsibility for any loss and damage that they are unwilling to submit as claims to their insurance.

4 hours ago, Jaymz said:

Doesn't seem to be anywhere offering a vampire clip for the Slim series yet. Anyone else find one? 

Tram one with sticky stuff or super topstick?

Or..

Sennheiser ZH100-ANT... looks perfect

Are the wheels all from Starcase as well?

Loved the Rod Stewart one as well.

18 minutes ago, Dan Smith said:

Guys, guys. Sorry. I don't mean to come off defensive. You're preaching to the choir here. I'm a post mixer, with a background in broadcast in production. I realize this isn't an ideal business decision from our perspective.

I hope they don't get the gear because of all the things you've brought up. I'm not here to defend their business decisions. I'm just trying to help out a personal friend that works for the company. I was just giving the backstory and explanation so you can understand the gear choices I was making. Just looking for some feedback on the kit itself. Thanks again.

No offense taken. 

1 hour ago, gpiegari said:

The FS7 does provide metering with a visible scale. Press "status" and scroll to the second page.

Thank you.  That helps the seeing the db value of my signal. 

I am not a likely hire for your company under those conditions, because I will charge you as much for my labor as I would for my labor and gear combined.

Rycote supershield instead of WS4... easier to use and rig.. equal results.

Add  wind protection for the MKH50

consider an mkh-416 instead of the Rode NTG-3... I find they are better RF shielded. They sound very similar, and are both very durable, however.

Absolutely agree about having one of  our sound vendors package this for you..

Just re-read your note about travel..

consider the newer "wide band" Tx-RX sets (lectro, Zax, Wisycom) that cover 3 blocks instead of 1....

and the 2 channel receivers.. more compact, lighter, more flexible for varying jobs.

even if I give up wattage for bandwidth, in most interview/field situations, the bandwidth choice is MUCH more important.

Used these 4 of my last 8 days of work...

1st shoot... 3 cameras, all with v lock backs.. provided a TC box to each camera AND stereo audio feeds of my mix.

Nobody has cared about lack of genlock.. though I could have furnished... since I was using genlock capable sync boxes.

second shoot.. one man band, no accessory back... they wanted the audio output from my mixer, and a copy of my recording.

client on second shoot works this way all the time, and is comfortable that way.. I had brought TC box in case he wanted to add the AX accessory...

By breakaway tails (made by PSC) were very hard to line up with the core (on body) xlr sockets on the FS7.. thinking about using my right angle shorties as adapters next time.

I did find that lining up my tone at 50% mark on the camera meter (which had no scale visible) led to -10db peaks on dialog being dangerously near over modulating on the camera.... this was at line level our of 664, line level in settings on FS-7

I brought my mix down a little.

Not on a 6 series Sound Device product, but did  have lint/crud block contact twice (in 8 years) on a 442.... felt very silly about it when I realized what had happened

The Empire - seeking a Senior Death Star Engineer (Milky Way)

Everyone brace yourselves for the producer to request that you jam sync this camera and send it reference audio.

Well, syncing a smart slate wouldn't be completely stupid here..