RitM: About the Aaton XTR and a Day Eighteen Update
Rain in the Mountains is being shot with an Aaton XTR, a camera billed by the manufacturer as "the ultimate shooting machine." True? Well, I don't have much to compare it with (although I'd say this also falls into the category of shooting machine.)The second half of the camera kit is a Canon 7/63 zoom lens. Joel considered ordering some prime lenses -- I'm not sure what brand -- with the camera package. Price was a factor, but also set-up speed. Because we're not changing lenses all the time, the production moves swifter. 35mm film was also considered, but again speed and price were a factor. A mag of 35mm is twice as heavy and shoots for half as long. (And I thought I was in the changing bag all the time!)
Weight is important because Joel insists on doing everything handheld...
Up a tree:
On the ground:
In the water:
I'm not really qualified to speak to its operation, so maybe Joel will comment below. [UPDATE: He has!] What I can talk about is how to load and unload the mags. Another post with a tutorial on that has been delayed, due to the fact I need to eat dinner right now.
About Day Eighteen
This was our slowest start yet. We were filming north of Tacoma at a unique convenience store called Ravensdale Market. Traffic delayed us quite a bit. The owner closed up for the morning while we filmed two scenes that simulate the power being out. That's not as easy as you think. There are lots of things that are tough to turn off, or that a store owner doesn't particularly want off. Jameson and Danny figured out the breaker box so we could turn off all the freezers before each take and turn them back on when the directors called 'cut'.
Outside the market, we grabbed a third quick scene involving Todd and Eric with belly-aches after eating too much ice cream. Pretty funny. (See last photo below.)
The sun was bright outside and since we are low on the Kodak 50D film stock (7245) we were using a Fuji 250D (8662, more light sensitive) today. That meant we needed to use ND filters to reduce the amount of light hitting the lens. I'd read all about how to calculate the f-stop compensation of ND filters in my Camera Assistant's Manual. The short of it is that an ND3 reduces light one stop; ND6 and ND9, two and three stops, respectively. We needed two stops less, so I pulled out the ND6. It makes me happy to put such knowledge to use.
posted by J. Ott @ 8/08/2005 06:10:00 PM
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1 Comments:
The Aaton is very easy to load and use. For 16mm in the past, I have primarily used the Arri SR2 or SR3, but we decided to go with the Aaton because the timecode feature allows us to sync the dailies quickly and easily and therefore add accuracy and cut down on the cost of dailies. I had the video tap removed from the camera when we rented it because we wouldn't utilize it, and it actually cuts the amount of light going to viewfinder. The viewfinder is already fairly dark, and when ND filters are added, it can be very hard to see what exactly is going on in the frame. I had many viewfinder problems with our last shoot, RESCUE & SEARCH, because the cold, wet weather always fogged up everything. We've had no such problems in this dry summer! The Aaton is fairly quiet, but still requires a sound blanket - which for me is an endless annoyance, but a necessary one. I don't think I mentioned it to John, but we also used the variable speed motor recently to record scenes on a television set, speeding up the film to 29.97 fps to avoid crawling lines on the screen. I also like this camera because of the small screen on the side which gives very accurate footage, timecode, and frame rate readings. It even remembers how much footage there is in each different mag. There are certain aspects which I wish were better. I would like a more flexible, longer eyepiece that could accomodate the strange ways I hold the camera at times so I don't have to bend my neck all funny, but I'm sure there are such extensions out there and that our rental house simply didn't have them around when I asked. I would also prefer that it had a manual inching nob on it somewhere. The way it is set up now, you have to have a battery attached to the camera in order to open the gate and have a look inside. Other than that, I believe it is an excellent camera that is reliable, sturdy, and easy to use.
-JOEL
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