Picture This! Backpack Diaries: Africa
December 25, 2011
One of my pet production peeves is something I’ll call ‘equipment creep,’ basically taking a big hammer (or many hammers) to a job when a single, small hammer will do.
In a production environment there are lots of reasons to want extra equipment, (extra cameras, lights, tripods, etc.) since every shoot is unique and it’s impossible to entirely predict what kind of unique problems a location might offer.
This is one of the reasons that most camera people come with an entire mini-van full of equipment. At q media, we felt this was overkill for many production situations, so we bought a video camera with a basic sound and lighting package for smaller shooting situations. This gave us the capability to offer clients better prices on smaller productions, especially on videos for not-for-profit organizations on tight budgets.
Initially our basic kit was able to fit into the trunk of a car. But inevitably equipment creep began to set in. DIVA lights, a favourite of the higher end crews were purchased to augment our basic lighting kit. But with DIVAs, grip stands were necessary – and with grip stands sand bags became necessary for stability. Suddenly the trunk was stuffed and equipment was going into the back seat. Then new, smaller SLR cameras came along. A solution right? Not exactly. Since the cameras were so small – they could be easily mounted on a small crane to give us great moving camera shots.
Well the crane was the tipping point (and the mini-van we had to buy to transport it) – all of a sudden we had replaced a traditional approach with a slightly different traditional approach. Owning all of this equipment gives us incredible capability – we can shoot multi-camera commercial quality work with our in-house team, but inevitably we were falling into a production trap. Extra equipment means extra people to operate – which means costs rise.
Inevitably, reality intervenes. In our case it was the opportunity to follow a medical team from SickKids going to Ethiopia to train foreign surgical teams. The budget was very tight. So tight in fact that we could only send one person – director Graeme Mathieson. Extra bags would have meant extra baggage fees and the stress of managing multiple bags in an unfamiliar environment. So we set ourselves the goal of sending Graeme with one production bag – a backpack and a bag for clothes and personal items.
Stripping down the production package to its essentials was a great process. Throw in the added challenge of shooting in Africa. What happens if a camera breaks down? That meant redundancy was necessary. The result of the process was a backpack with 2 CANON 5D DLSR camera bodies, 2 lenses, 2 lavalier microphones, reflectors, power adapters, extra cards, etc. It all fit into one backpack. The meant that Graeme could shoot and carry his equipment at the same time.
The result – was a powerful video shot and produced in full 1080p HD. It looked great. Twelve months later Graeme was back in Africa –to produce a series of videos, again for SickKids – this time focusing on their efforts to train pediatric nurses in Ghana.
In this video – you’ll notice a couple of things. First it looks great – since we are shooting on great cameras. But secondly – you’ll notice a level of intimacy that is difficult to achieve in the most ideal situations. Because of Graeme’s minimal equipment set up – he was able to react to the situations around him. The kids were a nervous but curious. And because of language barriers there was no asking for extra takes. Bottom line – a traditional production approach likely wouldn’t have worked.
The production was a great lesson for all of us – a reminder to analyze shooting situations, choose the appropriate tools and not to fall into the trap of ‘equipment creep.”
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