Roland @ Hinge measures a bus for modeling in CG later
Ok – let’s get into it. As the on-set link between the VFX team and the production, it’s going to be your job to grab reference. Lots and lots of reference. Reference is king! Much of this can be done with your trusty DSLR, so make sure you have a good one and that you know how to use it. That is item A#1 on the list. Your camera. Plenty of SD cards. Batteries, preferably not empty. Lenses. Also, consider a backup camera. No, your iPhone does not count. A small point and shoot gets the call. I recently switched from my trusty Pentax setup I had for many years to a Canon T3i (decked out with Magic Lantern) and a Canon SD800 for a P&S – it has the widest lens (28mm equiv) of any of the Canons and the CHDK firmware makes it highly customizable. In the end, Canon’s video capability finally got me to switch over, and the T3i has been fantastic.
Item #3 – make sure you have a laptop, and don’t be afraid to use it! Why not pull in some stills from your DSLR right on set to rough out a comp, check layering, push a grade around, get a quick read on a greenscreen or feel out a despill? Drop ’em into Nuke or Photoshop and have a quick look! I have an Eye Fi card and it makes this process pretty quick and painless. The laptop on set has saved me tons of problems. Every once in a while, a quick bash comp will turn up an error in thinking and you’ll see some detail you missed, and occasionally it’s not too late to shoot another take or pass to get what you need. I miss my old 13″ Dell XPS, it was just the right size. I wanted a quad i7 so I’m up to a 15.6″ Samsung now, but hopefully the beefier chips start showing up in smaller packages. Smaller the better.
Now that we’re getting into it, I should offer up a little setup. I meant to keep it strictly about the list but what the heck, let’s tease the class a little. In a nutshell (condensing majorly here): you’ll dream up solutions to execute each shot based on the script. You’ll tag team each shot w/ the Director, DP, cam assistants and other powers that be. You’ll need to take care of business on behalf of the 3D team, and at the very least walking away with a worksheet that serves as a camera report for each shot. And if you know what you’re doing, a whole lot more.
You’ll get a grid shot or do a round of them at the end of the shoot with the various cam & lens combinations, for lens distortion use. You’ll get ’em to cap the lens and shoot a quick grain sample if the shot is at a new exposure or different cam settings (or again, this can be done all in one go at the end). You’ll get a quick pre-take of a reference gray & color card, or better yet you’ll get the 2nd AC to work it into his/her clapper workflow. You’ll get lighting ref if the shot has CG. You’ll get lots of stills and possibly ratchet out a skydome for clean plate or environment reconstruction. You’ll get generic prop & actor photos from all angles and go hi-res with it if you need to do digi-doubles (actor scans are wild!). Usually, there’s a slew of matchmover type data and surveying that needs to be done, and that could fall on your shoulders for any CG shots that will need a camera. I could go on… but you’ll have your hands full and you need to have quite a few things in the bag to cover all the bases. Ugh, now might be a good time to shotgun a “Simpler Times” lager from Trader Joes and think back to when you were just stuck with the hand you were dealt, rather than being the dealer!
I’ll stop rambling and get to it. In no particular order (mostly because this is all being cut and pasted from a round of emails with Courtney).
Lighting ref? Chrome balls you say?
A chrome ball from a Bent Image Lab shoot
Here’s the exact one I have:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/
They don’t sell it anymore but that’s the basic idea. You want a good solid reflective chrome with no cheap plating (nothing that can rub off, usually you can tell with a quick fingernail test), tinting or paint – think huge ball bearing. Solid and weighty is a nice bonus, but most of them aren’t. 6″ is good enough but 8″ or 10″ is better – you want to be able to shoot from a distance with a narrow lens and try to get yourself out of the reflection for the most part, so a bigger one helps. Try to get it locally? Honestly, any garden shop. Fred Meyer, even (that’s a have-everything grocery store in the Kroger brand for you out of towners). This can and should be had for under $50 – usually referred to as a garden or “gazing” ball. Order online only if you have a shoot looming and can’t afford to go shopping in person, where you can verify if it’s a good one or not. I guess the test is – look at it. Ya see yourself? You can tell it’s you? Pick it up – feel good? Your hands haven’t turned green or rubbed off any coating? Bought!
Ok, and to keep going on the subject of chrome balls, even though I rarely use them, I usually attach a suction cup tripod mount to the base of the ball, so it can sit perched on a tripod for photographing. Reliably. You can get the bits for this on Ebay or at B&H. Some people drill one into their chrome balls, but it takes a big steel or titanium coated drill bit so I just do the suction cup. Keep it simple, smarty.
Also, it makes sense to buy a 2nd ball and coat it with a 50% matte gray primer to use as a diffuse ball. Ace hardware, rattle can, $4.99.
Panosaurus panoramic head
I really like Bent’s setup for this, which is the Sigma 4.5mm lens ($600-$800) on an APS-C sensor. Or you can use the good ol’ manual Peleng 8mm (or other) on a 5D or 1D full frame sensor (cheaper, like $250). The best tripod head I’ve used is the Manfrotto 303SPH, what with it’s satsifying click… but you can also use what’s called a “Panosaurus” on any cheapo regular tripod legs for the steal of a price at $99. Actually – when putting legs on it, it helps to choose something good and compact (that could fit into the vfx bag) but also be extendable so it can go from a couple feet off the ground up to eye level if necessary. Like, the type that has 4 extensions instead of 3. I’d go with lightweight sticks that need a little attention to be held in placed solidly (or sandbagged) over putting some heavy duty legs on it that stay put on their own, just because this setup needs to be highly portable and packable into our big bag – and not a grip truck, know what I’m sayin’? It really sucks to have to carry the tripod outside of the bag, or when you have to take your show on the road and get this on a plane. The Panosaurus head is great and what I have at home, and I’d go as far as to call it the hardware store version of the Manfrotto, and it works juuuust fiiiiiiine. In fact, pretty much everything I know, I know from KRS-One the Panosaurus site, and it’s a damn fine way to teach yourself the pano game. Check it out!
Probably the next most important thing to have is reliable tracking markers, in all the right places. And before I drop the goods on you – thanks goes to Joerg Liebold at Psyop for years spent perfecting these bad boys.
Here’s the marker pattern you want. Right click & save the full sheets for printing:
The best thing about Joerg’s tracking pattern was that when in focus, it gives you a pleathora of tracking options, but when out of focus, it still gives you a damn fine pleathora of tracking options. Ha – can you say “bulletproof,” El Guapo?
A good idea is to print a batch out, cut ’em and have ’em ready to go on a moments notice in the kit. Fight the urge to laminate them because you can catch a bad reflection from lamination. Better to just use/abuse and reprint each shoot.
The one time red tape is actually a good thing…
Also have to have tape so you can quickly manufacture any kind of marker. Along with the usual gaffer’s tape (which is great for sticking little X markers on clothing and fabric), also get the 3m 1/2″ electrical tape. Buy mostly red but it also is helpful to have a blue, a green and then even yellow and magenta. But I would buy like 5 reds for each one of the others. Locally I get mine bought every time I’m in Tap Plastic’s shop, but you can pick them up online:
http://www.parts-express.com/
Also – it helps to have 2 other kinds of markers on hand. The quick ones that you can toss up and stick up high on a greenscreen cloth are critical for those wide shots or tricky ankle biter low-angle shots that directors always seem to love to get, and unless you want to pack a 20′ ladder or find one around the set, you’ll never get markers where you need ’em. So get ready to toss! And equally important are some pinpoint LED light based ones for night shoots.
The “sticky” ones are basically ping pong balls covered with velcro in a criss-cross pattern. You won’t always be lucky enough to get a cloth screen (vs. painted) but it does seem more often than not these days. These are commonly called “ball darts” and you can get refills for ball dart games – they work fantastically. But in all honestly, it’s easier to make your own, because ideally you want them to be greenscreen green balls with red velcro. A little paint will go a long way. Basically like this:
And last is something for night shoots that need markers, a few strings of these might save a shot:
Even better are (again) ping pong balls with what’s called an “LED Throwie” inside rigged to an impact sensor… but that’s kind of an advanced move. And some bare throwies sans-ping pong ball are gold, too – it all depends on the shot but I’d definitely have the bare parts available. Some people use clothes pins to attach them to the battery instead of tape – depends on if you need them to be magnetic. They’ll glow for a couple of weeks, so they are usually kind of disposable and only used for one shoot. It’s also helpful to get some of the keychain LED lights with on/off switches for putting further away. They can also be diffused with a ping pong ball. They work well when you’re trying to place some markers, I don’t know, like in the nosebleed section of a stadium shot. I believe many of the flashlights are 3w bulbs instead of the 1w bulbs that are commonly used with throwies, and the extra oomph can come in handy. Clean out your local hardware store of these once you find a cheap source.
Another extension of this for expansive wide shots that I’ve seen out there are garden stakes (wood), painted greenscreen green with an LED light tagged to a tiny LR44 or CR2032 battery on top. Again, you basically want a small footprint, focused, 1w clear (with little, if any, diffusion) LED with minimal glow. Speaking of glow and diffusion, I should mention that the ping pong ball as a diffuser is mostly useful on dark greenscreen set shoots, where you’re more or less throwing out the background in post later. Too much glow makes them hard to paint out, so even though the ping pong ball version is highly visible and easily tracked, you don’t want to use them on any sort of live action shoot where you’re keeping everything in frame, because you’ll have to paint out this big glow area. For any dark shot where you are keeping the background and want minimal paint work, the tighter light of the raw LED is probably the better option, defocus dependant. The strings can work well for super wide establishing shots to give you a nice area of tracking detail, and the throwie versions might work better for tighter shots and closeups where you’re only placing a few of them carefully into the shot. Just make sure whatever you throw down is easily painted out and be efficient with where you put them and how many you put down. Try to get good BG, MG and FG tracking detail on big camera moves. Understand that you don’t always need markers if you have good detail in the frame. Perhaps bring your DLSR and shoot a quick tracking test if you have a few minutes prior to the shoot or have access during the tech scout. You’ll start to build up a catalog of what is and isn’t automatically trackable – you know, the seats in your stadium may make great natural tracking markers but the grass football field up front might throw your tracker for a loop and not have any detail. So you blanket the grass with markers and leave the rest unmarked (and save your paint artists some mind numbing paint outs!). Another tip probably best left for class is to generally try to keep at least 7 decent manually trackable tracking marks visible at all times. I’ve caught myself counting those more than a few times while looking at a monitor tap just so I mentally know things are going to go ok later.
Ha, when it comes to markers, I’ve seen some pretty creative solutions over the years. The on set guys at Psyop had a funny story about being low on resources and trying to source something late night before a shoot – which ended up being neon colored beads from let’s just say a less than reputable source. This was done late, late night after flying into some remote location to shoot a music video the next morning. Ha, that one still makes me laugh out loud 10 years later…. I’ve probably said too much already. I guess the moral is: when in Rome, go with whatever damn tracking markers the Romans have available at 11 at night, even if they are a string of neon colored beads from an “adult” shop. Whatever it takes to get the shot. 🙂
Here are the basic instructions and the file, courtesy of our man in Brooklyn – Eric Alba (thanks Eric). I like the one with the small squares, but not the one w/the XO:
http://log.ericalba.org/post/
Next you need a good light meter for checking green screen lighting. I have an old beater, but I secretly lust for a real Sekonic, like a L-308DC. They run about $180 used, but any good meter will do. If you can get one of the Blue Moon here in NoPo has plenty, just test it a bit first and plan on dropping the prerequisite $50 or so, and you should be fine. Ai’s cage probably has this already but would be good to get a dedicated one for the dept. A good greenscreen should be 1 stop apart across the whole thing, and range between 40 & 70 IRE on the waveform, depending on what you plan to put in the BG in place of the screen, but now we’re getting into juicy class info for another time…
Also good to have a few scrims and diffusing material with clamps to put on the greenscreen lights (make friends and always ask first before you touch another person’s light). 🙂 It does help to have the exact diffusion material with you and know how to use it, because sometimes even greenscreens are not as high on the grip’s priority list as they should be and you don’t want to have to go rifling through their stuff. I swear, if I see another Arri 2k with no diffusion, just raw or barn doors pointed point-blank at a greenscreen… my head hurts just thinking about it. 🙂 Also some blue, red and orange gel scraps should be in your bag for despill filtering purposes. Larger the better – you want big scraps you could diffuse a few Kinos with if necessary. Roll ’em up, they’ll fit in your bag.
X-Rite Passport w/gray card or Datacolor SpyderCheckr
Definitely need to have a Macbeth chart (and also a balanced gray card or black to white ramp) for color consistency reference and neutral grading – these can be had on Ebay or Wayfair for a good price, or at local camera stores. 
I’ve seen bad versions of these built into the clapper (as right) but the best and most usable ones are a little “click click” snap open folder that has the official chart w/a gray card intact – all in one go. I’ve seen ones with a larger gray card you can meter off of if necessary (as left) like the Datacolor SpyderCheckr, but I’ll admit the one I bought in the end is the X-Rite Color Checker – it’s a long story, but X-Rite bought MacBeth years ago and makes some seriously reliable color stuffs. Dig it! I have the “Passport” model and it’s probably the best $75 I’ve ever spent. Toss that bottle of aspirin on your desk into the trash. The Passport has a smaller gray card chart swatch but otherwise is about the same as the SpyderCheckr – both have dependable reference colors and technology you can count on. This should pretty much be your frame 1. Every… single… time.
Ya know, a dedicated copy of the VES Handbook should be in the kit. It would be the textbook for a class like this; don’t leave home without it! It’s absolute gold – a fantastic reference and has helped me on set a lot when I need to quickly brush up or become an expert on something. 🙂 I had one put in the library and could probably request another:
Also – how ’bout a tape measure! 20 ft. Also also need a digital “laser” tape measure. Or more accurately known as a “distance measurer.” I’d recommend you avoid the cheap “ultrasonic” models and pick one up that is actually using a laser – they go for about $70 new but I was able to get mine used on ebay for $25. Also helps to have the iPhone or Android app that will measure camera rotation, etc (there are free versions). Also also also need a laser pointer on your keychain, a cheapie is fine. This comes in handy when trying to measure and survey things, and just generally when trying to point to something on set.
Also need a camera report worksheet for each shot that records all of the lens and camera data. Here’s a nice one I picked up along the way from Niles Heckman:
On set w/Hinge
If you’re going to do the work eventually, fill out what you want – no one cares about this but you and you’ll be able to skip much of it. But if you’re covering for someone else, try to be more complete. There should be like 50 sheets of it printed out in the kit ready to go. Also, a full pad of grid paper is handy… if anything needs to be measured and rebuilt digitally, it’s handy for making a quick blueprint. Index cards are another thing extremely handy to have. I know, I know, I’m getting into knick knacks now but I’m just listing it as I pull it out of my bag.
Never leave home without a small flashlight, if that’s not obvious. A pocket one with some pop – 500 lumens is a good amount. Maybe 200 minimum. These shoots often have deep, dark corners and you’ll want some light on demand when you’re putzing around the lighting grids, running around the forest and such. Something like this.
A couple of cans of that verifiably perfect chroma green & blue screen paint would be handy – sometimes you have to make a quick foam or cardboard prop or something. Red screen? Only time I’ve used that is underwater shoots where everything is desaturated and bluish cast and most caucasian skin almost goes white, but it’s good to be ready for anything. I use the Design Master rattle cans because they’re cheaper than Rosco. Green is still king with the new breed cameras if the rest is equal. Someday someone will invent a blue channel that’s not nasty…
Speaking of nasty, let’s talk about reflections for a moment. It’s handy to have some baby powder and clear matte paint for taking reflections off of various things. “Matting agents” might make a nice use of a google search – there’s some pretty amazing chemicals out there. The paint & roto dept will often have to clean up offending reflections so it’s nice to be able to bury ’em at the source. Also, watch out for camera ops who don’t check the monitor for their own reflection showing up somewhere in the shot. They should know better but it tends to happen – you may have to introduce them to the miracle of polarized lens filters…
Ok, so looking through the bag here, I don’t see anything else in here that seems critical for VFX so I’ll leave it at that. Ha – I have a pack of my wife’s hair ties – those have saved some roto in their day. Which brings us to the wrap up list:
matting agents for reflection help
Windex for cleaning windows, etc, and a quick clean up of the mirror balls (seriously!)
Hair ties/”scrunchies”
Bike frame pump with a blower nozzle or canned air – has a lot of uses
1 can of Simpler Times, for when the going gets rough. An airplane bottle of Wild Turkey is a fair substitute
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On set at Bent Image Lab – that’s Jim Birkett with Modest Mouse
That should cover the basics. A few cool things I’ve come across or done up, but nothing all that profound, really. I hope to add to it as I do more and more of this sort of thing.
Call it a work in progress and a post I will no doubt add to as challenges (and ideas) come and go. Hopefully the class gets the gears churning and we can expand on all of this. Actually, if I’m adding to this kit in the coming years… that means very, very good things.
Wanna chime in on the subject and add anything or an opinion? Drop a comment. I’ll see ya on set!
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