My Work Experience Weekend With Couch Potato Films

If you thought that my work experience on Emerald Lake was the last one for a while…

Well, then you’ll be surprised reading that I was asked to partake in another work experience taking place less than a week after my last one finished!

On Tuesday last week, I was called by the producer of Couch Potato Films, asking me whether I would be able to come work for them in the camera department on Friday and Sunday. The aim was to film two short comedies in two days for BBC Channel 4, with me working as a camera trainee and 2nd AC for Ross Marshall – DoP of Famalam (2018) and Dark_Net (2015). Without missing a beat, I accepted the offer and prepared myself as well as the important paperwork for another round of work experience.

Already on Thursday, I was thrilled to learn that we were using the Arri Alexa Mini with a kit of Cooke lenses. Since I haven’t yet worked with either, I was happy to expand my knowledge of camera systems and lens kits even further and thus was looking forward to Friday.

Friday, 18 October 2019 On Friday, I was not only introduced to the other members of the camera department, I was also further introduced to the Arri Alexa Mini, the Cooke lenses, and the Teradek transmitters, which we aimed to use not only for the director’s monitor, but also for the wireless focus.

The Arri Alexa Mini

The Arri Alexa Mini as a camera has been around since 2015. With a price of about £42,000 ex VAT it is definitely somewhat expensive. It does not have a true full frame sensor and does not shoot 4k, which is why it is not Netflix approved, however, it is still a nice camera to work with as it does not only come with a dynamic range of 14+ stops, inbuilt ND-filters, but does allow to work in a rather wide temperature range from -20°C to +45°C . Its body is also comparatively light in weight with only 2,3kg, and thus also easier to use and film with than with her big sister, the Arri Alexa.

The Cooke S4/i Lenses

The Cooke lenses now were a joy to (be)hold! Although being quite heavy compared to the Sigma and Canon lenses I used so far and using a different mount than what I was hitherto used to (PL-mounts), I was happy to learn all the more about them. With a set of 18mm, 25mm, 32mm, 50mm and 75mm (all together being worth roughly the same as the camera itself), I found it interesting to see that all lenses – regardless of their focal length – had the same physical length.

This was especially useful for the setup of the matte box, as it would not be fastened on rails, but on the barrel of the lenses itself – which requires less time screwing, unscrewing, and adjusting the matte box during each lens change.

Teradek Bolt LT Transmitters

For the Teradek Bolt LT transmitters, the first thing I learned was their greatest fault in terms of signal transmission. From the 1st AC I’ve learned that the Teradek manufacturers sadly set the transmission frequency of their equipment to the same frequency of mobile phones, which can (and spoiler alert: does) massively interfere with the signal, thus either prohibiting the transmitter to connect to the camera transmitter’s signal or to relay the visual information properly to either the director’s monitor or the wireless focus.

As such, and speaking of the devil, the Teradek transmitter did not work properly and required a lot of time fixing the issue. While most people would think that this problem would have been easily solved by just setting all crew member’s phones to flight mode, it would have been no viable option as we 1) our producer, production manager, and runners needed to stay in contact at all times, 2) we did not have access to walkie-talkies that could replace the phones, and 3) the Teradek’s sensitivity is set so high that even phones of people walking past the building outside – a good 40 to 50 yards away –would be able to interfere with the signal.

Because of this, our 1st AC forewent using the wireless transmission and instead connected the camera and monitors using long BNG-cables which then needed to be bashed by the clapper loader throughout the entirety of the shoot to make sure our cinematographer does not trip over the cables.

All in all, the amount of equipment I was exposed to was overwhelming, which was also reflected in the fact that our production hired from three companies – mostly from Picture Canning though.

The Easyrig Vario 5

But apart from the aforementioned equipment, another interesting piece of equipment was the Easyrig Vario 5 our DoP was using, which is essentially a vest-backpack solution with an extended arm that helps you carry the load of the camera.

My Tasks and My Learning

On this first day I not only got used to the equipment and the specific workflow of the DoP and his camera assistants, I was also able to help out with the lighting and grip setup, the timely charging and swapping of batteries and with the use of the hazer. Being in charge of the hazer, I was thus able to shadow the 1st AC using the wireless focus.

Here, in terms of the efficient use of Cooke lenses and focus pulling, it is interesting to note that each lens – once it was being attached to the camera – would inform the camera about its individual calibration – will mean about its individual focus points at certain distances.

But because this automated recognition of the correct focal length of the lens does not always run smoothly and the software might sometimes misread e.g. a 25mm Cooke lens for a 50mm Cooke lens, our 1st AC made sure to manually set the right setting whenever the lens was swapped.

In addition to that, with each lens swap, he also swapped the focus ring template for each lens we were using; thus making sure it was matching the lens we were currently using and to have the correct correlating distance markers on his focus ring match up with the lens’ calibration in terms of distance.

Lastly, this first day on this production really taught me that you need to be able to be quick-witted and on your feet not only in anticipating what your DoP needs, but also in getting acquainted with the different pieces of equipment and where and how they are stored.

Getting an overview and being able to work seamlessly and to the point and demands of the DoP is a vital skill that cannot be stressed enough.

Sunday, 20 October 2019

Although I woke up on Sunday morning suffering from a bad migraine, I refused to step down and take a sick leave for the day. Since the camera department was already stripped to its skeleton crew, I decided to power through this opportunity.

My Tasks and my Learning

As such, I was promoted to 2nd AC and helped out with setting up the kit, keeping the batteries charged, storing away the lenses and – as a matter of course – also slating. While it took me a bit getting used to slating again after all the time since my work experience on Girl Fight – especially in regard to announcing second sticks and pickups – I really benefitted from the brilliant thing that is body memory.

Changing Lenses

On this day, our DoP furthermore showed me the proper procedure of changing lenses in the industry, especially with these heavy and expensive lenses. Turns out it wasn’t too different from what I’ve learned hitherto reading David Elkin’s Manual I’ve already mentioned in my previous blog entry “Of Emerald Lake And Job Offers”.

However, since practice makes perfect, it surely cannot hurt to listen to how professionals do it and keep repeating it as much as possible. Even though it might be repetitive, I’ve usually picked up nice pointers and additional quick hacks along the way. And Sunday was no exception to that, because I was shown how to hold and hand over the lens in a way that was quick, efficient, and safe in terms of avoiding fingerprints, scratches, unnecessary (and thus time-consuming) fumbling of lenses, etc.

As such, you would always take the lens caps off first, hold the lens at the front end and make sure to hand it over to the 1st AC or DoP so that they can take the lens at the front end as well. Furthermore, as soon as a lens is being given to you, you would always confirm a steady grip by saying “Mine.” If being asked for a certain focal length, you would always repeat the focal length back to the DoP to signal that you’ve understood correctly and are on your way retrieving said lens.

I furthermore learned that it was considered good practice for a 1st AC or an AC in general to always set the lens to the widest aperture and to infinity focus when storing it away and/or handing it over, which I tried to implement immediately.

Remote Focus

Lastly, during one break I was even given the opportunity to experiment with the remote focus pull, which was at the same time exciting, but also counter-intuitive to use as the direction of the focus ring was set to “reverse”, meaning that instead of turning the wheel “towards” the actor whenever the actor was approaching the camera and turning it “away” from the actor when the actor was moving further away from camera, it was set to the opposite, which took a bit getting used to as I was still used to the usual setting from my work at Emerald Lake.

After eight hours of exciting (and exhilarating) work, our shoot was entirely finished and everything neatly packed up and stored away again. The brilliant part of that day however was yet to come when our DoP asked me for my mobile phone number for future collaborations.

What can I say? I am not only happy to have learned so much, but also happy to be in someone else’s books again, which I always consider to be a really good compliment! Now I’m just waiting for the BTS photos to come around and put them into the

References:

IMDB (2019) Ross Marshall [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3822966/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1 [Accessed on 21 October 2019]

Elkins, D. E. (2013) The Camera Assistant’s Manual Sixth Edition. New York and London: Focal Press

Cooke Optics (2019) Cooke S4/i [online] Image taken from: https://www.cookeoptics.com/l/s4i.html [Accessed on 21 October 2019]

Arri (2019) Arri Alexa Mini [online] Available at: https://www.arri.com/en/camera-systems/cameras/alexa-mini [Accessed on 21 October 2019]

Easyrig (2019) Easyrig Vario 5 [online] Image taken from: https://easyrig.se/products/vario-5/ [Accessed on 21 October 2019]

Teradek (2019) Teradek Bolt [online] Image taken from: https://teradek.com/collections/bolt-family [Accessed on 21 October 2019]