Category Archives: User Stories

John Harper on the set of The Three Musketeers. Photo Credit:Rolf Konow, SMPSP

We generally like to shoot 3 to 4 rigs during a scene so it’s a challenge getting lens and the rigs lined up and preparing to shoot. The first camera assistant and the convergence puller sort of work as a team to get the size offsets, the roll, the near/far, and everything in line just before we shoot.  The thing is, you’ve got one man at the rig, one man back at the convergence cart and they’re talking over walkie to help each other line the rig up.

As well as my conventional role as a DP, setting up shots and lighting, organizing camera moves, I also look after the 3D. So I work on a shot-by-shot basis with the director to find a satisfying and exciting 3D experience for the audience.  Something that compliments that scene and creates a 3D look that feels real to the audience.  Because a 3D space has to be relatively narrowly defined we can’t accommodate the world in the way we do with our own eyes. So the difficulty for me is trying to put a realistic or satisfying amount of volume into a scene while accommodating all of the aspects of that scene.  I’ll have to try to control the shape and the size of the scene and the elements that appear within it. Particularly with nature documentary, my difficulties are often dealing with branches and foliage that exist closer to the camera than I’d like, and accommodating various elements of the scene that aren’t predicted because you’re working with a constantly evolving scene that you can’t necessarily rehearse.

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David Stuart

I’m typically a second assistant camera and mirror rig technician. In the 3D department I’m the one responsible for making sure the cameras are aligned. Sometimes depending on how many cameras we have I’ll also pull convergence, but most of the time I align all of the rigs and get everything evened out for the stereographer so that he can do his job properly.

The biggest challenge on set is working within an already existing camera department, a lot of the times first assistants that don’t have a lot of 3D experience are generally quite hesitant about me being around the camera and letting me do my job.  So a lot of the time I spend just getting in whenever I have a few moments to tweak the rig. On some of the longer format things I’ve done, more studio based typically, I don’t get very much time at all around the camera.  I get a few minutes, whereas to do a proper alignment you need at least five minutes. I’ve even been aligning as the Steadicam goes to set more than once so a lot of my time I spend just chasing the camera. (more…)