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Thanks!

Thanks for all the good stuff on the blog!

And alternatively, how about looking a little higher and considering a kind of base quality Red / lenses / Lighting / Audio package that you could confidently say ok I can make my film and only need to rent a little extra top up equipment here and there.

I ask this because I know a bunch of people who post 28 Days Later purchased XL 1’s and 2’s and real basic lighting kits and went off making all kinds of stuff, from the tawdry to the inspired. But covered their budgets running off corporates and education videos and the like, as well as renting themselves and their cameras out, working what they could, when they could. these days the Red, and it upcoming variants, are obviously a huge leap above that, in cost also. But we also now have a number of people shooting EPK’s and the like on the Canon 5d MKII. So I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

I guess they could be called Filmmaker survival kits, basically stuff you almost get a loan for and start working, for yourself, but also for what I see as a burgeoning underground movement that is begging for low cost film basics and the people who can come along with it and know how use it. Like those guys with their old Canon XL’s.

Thanks

Nick

Mike

I’ve basically carried around this kit (minus the extra monitor) with the two 1gb Lacie quads for three years now, across continents, time zones and multiple airline baggage checks, Those Lacie’s are still ticking. it’s always worked for me.

Nick

But you need to be careful to keep things in perspective. There is virtually no better monitor than the Viewsonic VX2233wm for the price; its clear, sharp, bright. Yes, technically the panel is a little lower in contrast ratio than some others but contrast and colour accuracy is infinitely more influenced by the colour of the room you’re working in, the lighting in the room, how you’re seated in front of it and what your workflow requirements are (presumably you’re not making theatrical release features in your home studio…!) Getting hung up on this technical element is futile. 900 out of 1000 people couldn’t tell the difference. I would even strongly suggest that if I put two such images from 2 different monitors in front of you that You couldnt tell the difference unless you looked at a still frame very very closely which is of course not how an audience will see it anyway.

The fact is that you will only ever get vaguely close to true colour accuracy and contrast precision if you spend several thousand dollars on a broadcast monitor in a dedicated viewing room. (Not withstanding the fact that no one is likely to ever view it in that same way)

So assuming that spending such money isnt an option, the monitor above is amoung the best low cost secondary display options serving as both an extended desktop display and a full-screen timeline preview. To give this some direct context – in the school most of your work is done on an iMac screen which is a rather good LCD panel. The results students get a very very good. And yet the Viewsonic above is arguably better than the iMac screen, so quibbling over negligible issues of “Twisted Neumatic” panels seems redundant.

As for Lacie’s. i think you’re mislead there my friend. For starters, using a common internal drive in a simple external enclosure is asking for trouble and far from ideal as these drives wont have and shock protection and are designed to be fixed and not mobile, not carried around in a bag. A plain case around the drive doesnt offer any real protection or robustness. This is where the Lacie Quadras have always been very good. Very sturdily built.

I dont know where you get the idea that a self-assembled internal drive in an external enclosure is faster? – thats just not correct as there are far too many variables to make such a statement. Lacie drives are solid as a rock and so long as spin speed is up (7200rpm) with a 16 or 32bit chache then Lacie’s will perform every bit as fast as any other other external hardrive where the base specs are comparable. It is computer performance and data type that influence hard drive performance much more significantly.

Again, keep things in perspective – What does ‘faster’ and ‘hard drive performance’ really mean in real-world working terms? Firewire 400 and 800 already have many many times more bandwidth than say ProResHD requires for real-time. Assuming you’re not going to move to a RAID stack which would be more expensive – a ‘faster’ drive than the Quadra above may make you’re renders all of 10-20seconds faster, maybe a whole minute… Rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And nothing to get hung up on. Ive used scores of different external drives and none that I have ever used have been as tough, robust, shock resistant and reliable as those lacie’s and with the ability to play Lossless intermediate codec 1080 in HD in real-time, what more do you need?

Vidit, there is always better, always faster but these two always come as more expensive. The above kits aim for efficiency, flexibility and productivity – to be fully functional, self contained, home-studio setups that will let you work very easilly and flexibly without braking the bank or spending extra money on stuff that really doesnt matter all that much.

You are right however that I neglected sound. You mention the HD280 PRO and cite its ability to “block out noise”. Why is that an issue? Surely you’re mixing inside in a fairly quiet room, so this would be spending extra cash on irrelevant or negligible things. Audio purists will want the best, but lets assume you just need functional and good not ‘amazing’ (id also argue strongly again that 8 out of 10 people couldnt tell the difference between a $50 pair of headphones and $500 pair, not to mention that liek monitors, most people who see you’re filsm will see tem on crappy home TV speakers). So why spend $150 when you can spend less than $50 on a simple pair of HD202’s which will serve just fine. You wouldnt use them for full mix anyway; for that you will always need speakers. Much better putting that money towards a good audio interface than the headphones; you’ll see more benefit.

If you want to be able to do your own mixing to a higher standard than headphones offer, I’d recommend the KRK Rokit RP5G2 – Powered 5″ monitors. Just $329 and they work great. you dont need big monitors because presumably you’ll be monitoring in a small room. Much better you save money for spending on the room itself to make it quiet and non-reflective than on the speakers. KRK speakers are used in TV stations and broadcast environments the world over. You dont need big bucks to get a good sound.

There’s always better gear Vidit. And if you want to spend $15000 instead of less than $10000 on you’re home studio then its fine and dandy to go for better LCD and better headphones and RAID harddrives but the cost vs benefit you’ll get from these for small productions is highly questionable.

Mike

Mike