Back in February I was asked to help out on a few shorts for South By Southwest that will play before screenings during the film festival during spring break. Little did I know that I'd have a chance to work with a version of the Phantom.
After the first day of filming on a couple Canon 7Ds, things began to slow down - no really, not just because the second day had us shooting at 600 fps. The sequence was a mob scene full of colorful extras in costume and money falling from the sky as they chased a thief down the downtown streets of Austin.
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| Half the Rig - couldn't fit the computer in even though the camera is SO tiny |
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| PHANTOM (hey everybody, look at my massive heatsink!) |
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| The whole setup - sorry about the quality |
A quick rundown of the Phantom - The camera is entirely opperated by a separate laptop running software that controls the fps, recording start/stop, clip duration, and a variety of other things. The ISO on the camera is locked in (I believe it was at 600). After choosing your fps, the program tells you your maximum clip duration (somewhere between 4s-8s depending on how many frames you're shooting). The bulk of the recorded file is saved to the camera after each take and you have an option to review a rough rendering of the clip (around 200fps view played back at 24) before either Dumping the take or saving it. Once you save a take, there's about 15min of downtime on top of the 5 or so min it takes to review the mostly un-rendered clip (it's worse than waiting for the RED to power up). So after the data travels from the camera, through a CAT-5 cable, to the laptop, you're good for another go. The mount on the Phantom (we were using) was a Nikon F-mount. The top of the camera is almost completely open to vent the heat and an extremity of cables are flowing out of the back to various locations.
Enough complaining about the Time it takes to shoot on this thing. The Footage is INCREDIBLE! All the moving equipment to set up for a different angle, wrangling cables, resetting of extras - ITS WORTH IT!
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| Top Down: Power, CAT-5 adapter, BnC for Monitor |
I'll try and get a link for the footage we shot posted soon so you can see what i'm talking about.
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| My Dolly makes a Cameo |
My take aways from working with the Phantom is just the continued emphasis on preparation. You can get some incredible shots with this tool that will blow your mind, but unless you adequately prepare and know what you're trying to get out of it, you won't be happy with the results (or maybe you will).
Anyway, hope this one was intresting - now back to work on my thesis. We're going for broke and shooting 35mm!
+john
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