Panther Dolly. In my previous post I talked about the camera the Arri Alexa, in this post and in part 2 I’m going to be looking at the Panther Dolly, the Vario Jib and Track.

The Panther Dolly (Twister Dolly)

This panther dolly has two sets of pneumatic tyres, wheels on each axle and these axles can act independently of each other or can be locked so that they both are steerable, meaning small turning circles and great manoeuvrability when used on the studio floor. To disengage the axle linking you just pull a small pin at each end of the platform to lock or release the axles. This is particularly necessary when using the dolly on a track, notice the smaller double wheels between the tyres, these are for running on the rails of the track. So the 3 options for the wheels are:- front steer, rear steer and round and round.

The panther dolly has a steering bar and a separate fixed pushing bar for pulling or pushing the dolly. This pushing bar can be adjusted for height/angle using the locking/release levers.

For this workshop we first fitted the side platforms, which sit between the wheels, extending the sides to allow for operators to stand/sit on the dolly.

The next jobs are to install the small raised platform at the back of the dolly and then the seat supports and then the seats themselves. There are two seats one on each side one for the camera operator the other for the focus puller in this configuration.

Bazooka, Rotary Adapter and Bowls

For this workshop the Bazooka the Rotary Adapter and the Bowl was already fitted. The Bazooka (That’s the central post that the camera is mounted onto) is height adjustable by turning the lever at the top anti clockwise being very careful not standing immediately over it as it is gas powered and rises under considerable pressure when the lever is released particularly if unloaded, that is without the tripod head and camera installed. There’s a bowl integrated into one side of the dolly platform for mounting a camera via a tripos head directly to the platform for low level shots.

The last job before factually itting the camera is to fit the tripod head onto the Bazookas bowl, being careful not to damage the bowl with the heads fixing screw. I noticed that the head had to be supported slightly above the bowl to allow for the locking nut to be threaded onto the fixing screw before fully lowering into the bowl. Finally it was just a case of levelling the camera head before mounting the camera and balancing as I described in the Arri Alexa posts.

Previous linked posts:-

• Arri Alexa 2
• Arri Alexa

#arrialexa #smudgerhuntfilm #filmproduction #videoproduction

Arri Alexa Blog Post Part 2
In my previous blog post I covered some of the basics of setting up the camera and configuring it ready to start filming.

Arri Alexa, settings before filming

There are some simple things that should be done before actually starting filming. Firstly I’d start setting up the camera on a tripod raised just to the first extension.

The camera is quite tall so unless you want to lift this heavy camera above shoulder height start with the tripod set low. With the tripod I used in this workshop there is the ability to balance the camera. With this you can balance the camera so that it nether drops forward or tilts back without pressure being applied through the pan/tilt handle. To do this roughly balance the camera using the base plates, which are marked with a scale against a white marker.

There is a small fold away handle on the right side of the tripod, which adjust a counterbalance, rotate this until balance is achieved. For this workshop I found the mid 40’s (There is a small display in the handle assembly) was good for the prime lenses in the kit and upper 50’s for the long/heavy Zoom.

Arri Alexa on location

I’m going to state the obvious again , this camera is heavy and definitely not for the sole shooter (unless you are some kind of hero 😉 ), you need a crew of two and best if it’s three. We needed to move the camera between shots for this interview and this was certainly easier with two of us to manage the heavy lifting. BTW the Tripod is carbon fibre it’s the head that is all the weight.

On location we decided to set the monitor to show Log C rather than REC 709 because of the high contrast natural lighting and to make sure we could make sure we were not losing too much detail in the shadows. In retrospect this did not really offer any advantage as it was much more more important to correctly expose for the actors faces rather than for the background detail. On an actual shoot I’d probably put up some silk to balance the natural sunlight with the shadow of the background or at least reduce the high contrast between the two. As you can see in the above picture the crew cast long shadows even though this was around noon. The only solution was to avoid anything other than mid shots, another solution would have been to use a longer lens and move the crew and camera further back.

Exposure and No ND Filter

As I mentioned before the Arri does not have a built in ND Filter that’s why when you see Arri Alexa’s they always seem to have a Matte Box setup to carry the filters as well as shield the lens from unwanted light. For this shoot we didn’t have an ND Filter to hand so we maxed out, closing down the aperture to F22, when ideally a 6x ND would have been perfect for this shoot to get that shallow depth of field. It is possible to modify/accessorise the Lens mount to provide ND filtering, check with Arri for more information on this.

Exposure and no Histogram

I’ve covered this before but it’s helpful to remind you that there are no Histogram or Zebras waveform monitors built into the Arri Alexa, which is not a major problem if the camera is feeding to an external monitor with these options.

The monitor we were using does not have these so there was a bit of guessing but if you slightly underexpose with Log C you should be OK but best to avoid over exposing the image in particular the actors faces. The other solution is to usual an actual light meter and take a reading in front of the actors faces. So make a note book out a light meter and make sure you know how to use it correctly. The EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) has a false colour button which others some exposure guidance and I’m guessing with practice this maybe all you need to correctly judge exposure.

Next time I’ll be looking at ways of moving the camera using a jib and dolly. I might even try some shoulder rig if I’m feeling strong.

back to Part 1

Arri Alexa selfie

Getting Hands on with the Arri Alexa

I’ve used the Arri Alexa a few times now when the project justifies its use. It’s a big and heavy camera so not the camera of choice when setup time is short or certainly not when the project calls for hand held operation (I mean it when I say this camera is heavy – 7.7 Kg or nearly 17 lbs, and that’s without the lens and accessories i.e. Battery, Matte Box, External Monitor and any audio).

Batteries, well it is power hungry the standard battery gives about 20 minutes of filming/standby so turn it off when not actually filming.

So that’s some of the negatives and things to consider when given a camera choice, but of course there is a good reason why this camera is the choice of professionals and that’s the quality of the image. Where other cameras you are always thinking about how you can achieve that look/quality of image, that cinematic look, this camera just does it so the DOP can concentrate on the composition, camera movement and focus.

So it’s a simple camera to use, everything is manual, there’s no feedback from the lens (no aperture reading indicators no histogram/vector scopes, there is peaking but no Zebras) to the camera so what you see in the EVF is what you get. The lens mount is PL (Positive Lock) and I’m using Arri Cinema prime lenses in the main and a 15.5 to 45mm FUJINON Alura Zoom. Now when I say this camera is simple you would struggle to do everything yourself so I’d say the camera crew would need to be at least 2 person for operation maybe 3 to cover everything excluding sound.

Did I say it is a heavy camera? it really is so don’t expect to get away with a standard heavy duty video tripod, you need something more substantial than that to support this camera.

Surprisingly the camera comes with a shoulder pad and a couple of hand grips for hand held operation but again I say you must be a professional weightlifter to spend anything but the shortest period of time working with the camera in this mode.

Setting the camera up for basic recording is simplicity itself just a menu button, buttons above each section and a rotary selection knob with push operation for selecting options.  My typical default settings would be Prores 4444 (yeah I know that extra 4 😉 ) and HD at 25FPS. Then just set the Shutter angle to 180 and White Balance to auto to start and then adjust the actual white balance between shots using a grey card. Native ISO is 800 so leave that as is unless you need to work in anything but optimum lighting conditions (Note there is no ND filters built into the camera). Keeping it simple use the Log C setting but if you have your own personal LUT you can import those. There’s an SD card slot for adding and storing personal settings.

I’ll go into more detail on actually using the camera in my next post and hopefully there will be a short video to go with it.