Léa's Diary

Prep days 

Prep days are extremely important, and will most likely determine how smoothly the shoot will go. If you have a good prep day, it is more likely that the shoot will go well ; if you don’t, the first couple days will be slower and harder to quickly adapt to situations. Let’s try and give you an idea of what you can expect to do.

The objective of a prep day is to go through all the equipment, see if everything is working, and to rig and organise the equipment in the way you need, so that your team is the most efficient it can be when the shoot starts.

When arriving to the rental company, introduce yourself to the technicians, grab a coffee and head on to your test room. You’ll find all your equipment there with the kit list, the lens and filter reports and a white board. During the day, write down on the white board what you need to add or remove from your kit list, and cross them out when it has been sorted. Obviously, the prep day will slightly differ depending on the scale of the job. For a big TV drama with four camera teams (Teams A to D), you’ll have significantly more to go through, and you’ll have to go through it relatively quickly. For a short form project the equipment would be more minimal.

The first thing to do is arrange all the boxes in a square, put all monitor related equipment next to each other and all on board camera equipment next to each other, so that it’s easier and quicker to navigate and access the items you need. Open every box and take reference pictures. This will not only help you to remember how it was packed, but also will help as proof of what’s been provided, in what condition they gave it to you, and what’s been used on set. 

Camera

With the focus puller, build the camera as much as possible prior to the day of filming, so that it’s only a matter of putting a battery and loading the card, once you're at your first location. Test the cards to see if they work properly and that none of them have been corrupted. Check that everything is compatible with the camera build. For example, sometimes the matte box doesn’t match some of the lenses.

Monitors

Set up all the monitors, and check that the Teradeks are paired properly and working. Test the BNC drums, or long BNC cables in case you need to hardwire (it’s alway good to have back ups). Leave the 17-inch monitor on during the day, as it can be useful for the focus puller and/or VFX when executing lens tests.

Once the 5-inch and/or 7-inch monitors have been rigged and are ready to go, find a safe and efficient way of storing them, where it’ll be easy and quick to mount and dismount. Ideally you’d have a monitor liner where you can put your checks monitors secured with a ratchet strap on the top shelf, and your battery bag, smaller monitors, and block batteries at the bottom. Sometimes you’ll have to keep it minimal, with one camera liner holding all your essentials for the day on it and your monitor on a rolling stand. If you can afford it, buy some lens wraps; you can use them to wrap around the small monitors to protect the screens.

Batteries

Charge all your batteries as soon as you get to your test room: TV logic batteries, on-board batteries (v-locks/gold mounts), focus handset batteries, and block batteries. That way when you go on set the next day, everything will be charged and ready to be used. You don’t want to get caught off guard if you arrive at a location that doesn’t have anywhere to charge your batteries.

Make sure you know how many batteries you have and look out for any faulty ones. Have enough batteries for the shoot; this is super important! (Bear in mind that you could possibly have to lend some batteries to the lighting team as well). As a little side note, always check that the voltage of the battery matches the voltage of the battery plate!! 

Lenses and filters

Check that you have been given the right lenses and read through the lens reports. A lens report will show you whether the front and rear of your lens has significant scratches, so go through these one by one and make sure it matches. If it doesn’t or it presents serious problems, let the rental house technicians know. Same goes for the filters! Once that’s done, grab your lens box(es), go over to the projection room, and test that the distances on the lens match the focus. To do this you go through the lenses one by one, from the widest to the tightest. Position your lens at 6 feet precisely from the wall, then focus up at 6 feet on your lens, and see if it is sharp. Repeat at other distances (e.g. 8 feet, 10 feet, 12 feet, etc.) and if it is even the slightest bit off, flag it up to the technicians so that they can either get you a replacement or fix it. It is super important that this task is perfectly executed, as otherwise, it’ll become a handicap for your focus puller on set. If you aren’t sure if the distance corresponds to the lens markings, ask for the lens technician to take a closer look.

You can then start mapping the lens on the focus puller handset. This means entering the focus distance markings of the lens on the focus handset and rings. Be rigorous with this task and don’t forget to mark which focus rings match which focal lengths. 

After all of these have been thoroughly checked, clean them if they aren’t already squeaky clean, and label the lens box. 

Organisation and labelling

Being neat and organised is crucial. Have your own system that is cohesive and clear for your team as well. On set you need to know where everything is, as you’ll be asked to provide them at a moment’s notice. As you all know, time is money and you can’t be the one to slow things down simply because you can’t remember where your equipment is. Take advantage of your prep day to learn where everything is, and never change their location without notifying your team. So let’s talk labelling!

A little reminder that prepping for a long form project is different to prepping for a short form project. If you have a multi-camera shoot, it’s a good idea to label everything according to its camera team. Label all the equipment in red for A cam, blue for B cam and yellow for C cam. On one job, we created switchable colour-coded labels for the monitors that we could velcro on and off the monitor according to which camera was being used on the day. When A and C cam were playing, we’d velcro a red label and a yellow label on the monitors. To go a step further, you can prepare similar labels with the camera operators names on them, and use those for the DOP’s monitors, so that they always know which operator is on which camera.

Batteries

There are different types of batteries, and the likelihood is that you’ll have loads of them on set. To keep track of them, label them as such: 1 of 8, 2 of 8 (if you have eight Vlocks), and do this with all batteries. If some of them become an issue, you can clearly flag them up to your team and then get replacements. It can also be useful to colour code the different batteries and their chargers (e.g. Pink for TV logic batteries, White for V-locks) or, and this is a fun one, give names to your block batteries. On a recent shoot, our block batteries were called Bobby and Tina. It’s a good way to keep things organised and fun! 

Léa prepping kit on a recent shoot.

Lenses

When the focus puller calls out for a lens change, you need to bring that lens safely and rapidly, and make sure that it's clean. So, to make this easier for you when running against time, when you're in prep, take a strip of two inch black tape and place it on the box (from end to end) where the first row of lenses are, and a second strip, where the second row of lenses are. Take a strip of white, red, or blue one-inch tape (depending on your camera team and whether it’s single cam or not), and above each lens placement write its focal length, the close focus, and the T stop at wide open for each of them.

Filters

If they aren’t already labeled, take a very thin and small strip of white tape and write what the filters are on top. This will help you to find them quickly while working, especially if it’s a fast paced shoot. If your team doesn’t have any reusable filter tabs, you can make them or order them if you have the money. You can easily make some tabs using a P-touch label maker and some velcro (which you’ll then be able to attach on your matte box, which you would have already prepped with velcro). Find a way to store them easily, for example, in the filter box itself.

Spares

Take a few pouches to arrange your spare cables. For example, have a TV Logic pouch with spare short and medium BNC cables, a Teradek pouch with spare D-tap to 2 pin Lemo cables, ariels, and 2-pins to 2-pins Lemo cables. Same goes for the cinetape, focus motors and brain. You only need a few spares just in case, no need to take everything that is in the box!

Wet weather

Organise your wet weather gear. Have enough to cover what you need. If you have time, and you haven’t got one already, make a rain cover for the camera. Have a dry bag handy. It’s a good initiative to keep a mag liner cover on the bottom shelf of each of them accompanied by clamps. Same for monitors, you can zip tie the polybags on the leg of the monitor stands or teradek stands. That way, as soon as it rains, you can untie them from the leg and bag the monitors quickly, rather than run back and forth from the truck to get what you need to bag the equipment.

Run bags and floor bags

Run bags, as the name suggests, has to be filled with pieces you’ll need close by and on the go, such as the matte box, batteries, cleaning pouch, mags, floor marks, allan keys, dual lock etc. The floorbag usually stays on the bottom of the mag liner, containing what you need when you have to change something on the camera, such as changing from a tripod set up to a steadicam set up. It is where you’ll find your rigging pouch, tools, ties, your different plates, screws, mounts and so on. Again, this differs on the type of job you’ll work on. If it’s run and gun, keep it simple and light. If it’s a long form job, you’ll have significantly more equipment, meaning more bags to keep organised. Camera assistants are quite specific on how they organise their bags, so next time you’re on a shoot, take a look at how they’ve done it. It can inspire you for your own set up once you get your first floorbag! As a trainee, I used to bring a bucket bag; it was very useful to carry a load of batteries around, and they are quite cheap.

Consumables

On short form shoots, you’ll probably just get a small consumables box with the essentials, to which you can add some stuff that you think you might need. For long form jobs, you’ll have to organise the different consumable boxes into categories. Some of the different categories we used on the last shoot were: Tape, Wet Weather, Stationary, Cans and more. Think of the nature of the shoot and come up with what you’ll need, and be sure to have enough supplies in them.

Truck

It’s time for the equipment to be loaded on the truck! Before anything, check that there is power in the truck, as sometimes production will provide a truck that doesn’t have power. If your truck has power, set a battery station close to the exit, and make it tidy, easy to access and safe. For example, don’t put block batteries to charge on the highest shelf as they are very heavy batteries. Leave empty boxes that you won’t be using and the consumables in the back of the truck as you won’t need them when unloading. Divide the shelves by camera team, such as A cam on the right side of the truck and B cam on the left side of the truck, assuring all A cam equipment is together, and all B cam equipment is together. Always have the camera coffin and the lenses as close to the exit and stored as safely as possible, as those are the first thing you’ll need out in the morning. Try and keep your mag liners built, so that it’s just a matter of wheeling them out in the morning. However, don’t leave anything on the top shelf, it’s risky to leave any valuable equipment there whilst travelling. Always remember to secure everything; be safe, the equipment you are using is very expensive!

If you are working on a job where you need to share the truck with lighting, keep lighting and camera separate, pick one side of the truck and keep it as tidy and efficient as possible. On my last job we had empty boxes at the back, one mag liner with everything we needed on it for the day, which was only one big pelicase as a floor bag (with filters, batteries, matte box, spare cables, etc.), the tall and short sticks, the lenses, rolls of tape, a cinesaddle, block batteries, a wet weather bag, a monitor, and the camera in the camera coffin. This set up worked perfectly for our shoot.

Prep days are essential to the smooth running of the camera team on set, and it is a great place to get to know your team, the rental companies and their techs, and the equipment you’re going to be using for the duration of the shoot. Ask questions, learn, make a good first impression. What a great place to start your shoot on the right foot!