The World Cup Trek is an epic race from Berlin, Germany, the location of the 2006 World Cup, to Cape Town, South Africa, the 2010 tournament venue. The contest, organized by dvDepot client Rob Evans, involves three teams, each comprised of two volunteer members, driving 10,000 miles through sixteen countries on two continents to reach the southern tip of Africa in time for the Cup’s final game. Sponsored by dvDepot and produced by both Burgess Productions and Nomadic Nation, Mr. Evans and his team will film their seven week adventure with the intent to transform their journey into an adventure/reality program.

Race for Charity

Contest organizer Rob Evans

As a social activist, Mr. Evans has been involved in several charity initiatives. Some of his recent projects include establishing and maintaining a storage facility for charities in his hometown of Phoenix/Tempe, Arizona, helping organize community projects, creating an arts community in Scottsdale, Arizona, and becoming an organ donor by donating one of his kidneys. Mr. Evans’ conception of and participation in the World Cup Trek is yet another of his charitable endeavors.

Benefiting from the race are three non-government organizations: Grassroot Soccer, Kick 4 Life, Coaching for Hope. These multifaceted organizations work in third world African countries to both coach underprivileged children and aspiring soccer players and provide education and preventative measures to combat the AIDs epidemic.

The Gear

dvDepot is sponsoring World Cup Trek’s production and furnishing the teams with video equipment, including two Sony PMW-EX1R HD cameras, six 16GB cards for footage, two 7” Nebtek monitors to review the footage before uploading it into a computer for editing, and other accessories. With the pristine quality of the Sony EX1, and the durability and storage capacity of the memory cards, no moment of the weeks-long journey will be missed.

View World Cup Trek 2010 in a larger map

After being equipped with dvDepot gear, the World Cup Trek teams began their exciting trip. Departing on May 9th from the United States, the volunteers set out for Berlin, Germany. The teams and the production crew stopped at Berlin’s co-sponsor hostel CityStay to finalize travel plans, go over the route, get all the needed vaccinations and load the last of their supplies into their Renaults.

On the Road

The World Cup Trek cars on the Autobahn

On May 18th, the team hit the Autobahn and almost immediately ran into their first setback. One of the three cars blew a head gasket 200km into the race, a frustrating mishap that could have been avoided. The car, driven by team members Jonathan and Susan, had to wait for the production vehicle to send for a tow truck; however, that car struck a flat tire and its spare tire was coincidentally flat. With two vehicles down, the team had to wait for tow trucks to arrive for both cars. To compound an already rocky beginning to their journey, the police declined to deal with cars that were ill-equipped to handle the Autobahn to begin with.

Into France and Spain

Barcalona Harbor

After two days of camping outside a McDonald’s in Hof, the team was back on the road in rainy, foggy weather. After seventeen full hours of continuous driving through miserable weather, the team left Germany and finally entered France nearly two days behind schedule and in dour spirits. The fair weather and sunshine in France, however, lifted team spirits. The group even had time to stop for a rest at Beziers, a picturesque city with a large winemaking industry. A 10-hour scenic road trip from Beziers to Barcelona (effectively avoiding traffic and tolls) was the next course of action for the team. From Barcelona the team managed to rest up before catching the last ferry out of Tarifa and into Marakech.

With any luck, the team will reach South Africa around July 5th, a few days earlier than planned. We hope to continue providing support and enthusiasm for the entire team on their amazing trip! Be sure to follow updates about the World Cup Trek on dvDepot’s Twitter and Facebook.

With EX1, HVX200, and other cameras that shoot to memory cards becoming more popular every day, the work flow on sets is changing. Log and capture used to be an important phase of post-production, but now, data transfer is a part of production. We’ve had our share of trial and error here at dvDepot trying to figure out how the future is going to look.

1. What to call them?

Nobody seems to have any idea of what to call this position. Data wrangler comes up a bunch. More common is “a guy to, like, do transfers and stuff.” Some people just call them camera utilities or assistant cameras. We eventually settled on memory card transfer technician, so that the duties are specific. We’ll shorten this to “card tech” or “transfer tech” most of the time.

2. Can a camera utility or AC do this?

A lot of utilities will know how to do this. But a lot don’t. We sent one of our best utilities on a job to do P2 transfers and he ended up taking twice as along as expected. Any time there was a problem with the camera, he jumped in to help fix it. This is what he’s good at, so it makes sense. This shoot also only ordered two 16GB cards per camera for several multicam interviews in a pretty short time. He had to be constantly dumping and wiping cards to keep up with shooting. We didn’t have time for him to do anything else.

3. Can I send an editor or assistant editor?

It’s tempting to send post people out. They have experience doing file transfers. They know the different formats post requires. We had an editor out once who really knew the transfers down pat and how to format the drives. However, when the camera decided not to recognize the memory card, he had no idea what to do. We sent one of our in-house technicians to solve the problem pretty quickly, but somebody without any knowledge of using the camera on set is missing an important piece of the puzzle.

4. How do you keep the cards organized?

We worked on one shoot when they were making fast transfers. The transfer tech noticed that he was missing the last batch of footage from camera B. None of the cards were labeled. We had to go through each card again and figure out which one had the missing footage. Most camera operators know to label their tapes, but some overlook labeling their memory cards. Labeling your cards is more important than labeling your tapes because cards will be wiped and then the footage is lost forever.

Most people don’t realize it, but P2 cards have an area on the back that is designed for using dry erase markers. You can easily label the cards with A2 or something similar. SxS cards unfortunately don’t have this same convenience. For now, we use paper tape because gaff tape is too thick and can get stuck in the camera. The important thing is training our transfer techs in making sure that all cards are labeled and that they never accept a card from a camera without it being properly labeled.

5. So who do you send?

We decided that we needed people who are specifically suited to being card transfer techs. They need experience working on set, often as an AC or camera utility. The techs are often called upon to assist in the camera department and they need to be prepared. Additionally, the best candidates are often trained editors. They understand the problems that can arise with file transfers and can deal with them. A lot of our techs are working toward becoming full time editors. Using this as our starting criteria, we have recruited a pool of freelancers who are specifically assigned as transfer card technicians.

By finding the right people to handle the job and making sure the process they use is correct, we’ve turned memory card transfers into a smooth process. We are curious to find out how other people are dealing with this situation. Let us know what you’re doing in the comments below.

If you’re shooting with a camera that uses memory cards, we highly recommend assigning a qualified crew member to this position. If you’re like to hire somebody from dvDepot, please contact our crewing department, by emailing crewing@dvdepot.com or by calling 212.333.5100.

Today, we’re prepping for a multicam reality shoot in January. Those sorts of shoots require a lot of preparation and often take days to get ready.

One exciting piece of gear on this shoot is our Starlink wireless monitor system. The Starlink is a powerful wireless transmitter and receiver that can be mounted onto the camera. We’ve cameras down to the street and received the signal in our seventh floor office. On a multicam reality project, it allows a producer to monitor all cameras from a centralized location, no matter what environment they’re in.

Has anybody else used the Starlink? Are you as excited by them as we are?

dvDepot works a great deal with BET. In September, we worked on the pilot episode of the “Food for Thought” series, featuring Jay-Z. This month we were back for another episode: “Food for Thought: Conversations with 50 cent”. The series is a major event for BET and they pull out all stops in the production. We shot with four HDX900 cameras, including one on steadicam. The beautiful location required a full lighting package. BET’s production team and our crew worked together and created an exciting product to watch.

The show features three media personalities, sports journalist Stephen A. Smith, Harry Allen– the Media Assassin– and Hot 97’s Angie Martinez. They each bring their own perspective and style to the interviews. Smith is an expert on image and media. Martinez knows music and has an ability to get stars to answer personal questions. Harry Allen always asks the difficult questions and got some lively answers out of 50 Cent.

This episode was shot in Bobby Van’s Steakhouse (25 Broad St). Bobby Van’s is well worth a look for those of you who haven’t been there before. The restaurant has an upstairs formal dining room and another room in the basement, which used to be a bank vault. This gives the restaurant a luxurious and distinctive feel which made it an ideal location for 50 Cent’s interviews.

50 Cent was great to have on set and was a pleasure to work with. 50 is very busy at the moment with the release of his new album “Before I Self Destruct” which is available in all record stores now.

We had a great crew on this shoot. Alex Sierra was the DP again, Chris Piazza and Jeremy Leach were also camera operators with Jon Beattie operating the steadicam. Michael Correa was the Audio/Video tech. Audio was by Ethan Goldberger with Brett Hammond doing the breakaway audio. Jeff Clark was our utility and Chad Williams and Gabriel Cassia were our PAs. It was great to work with BET again and we’re already prepping the next episode of “Food for Thought.” The new episode, “Conversations with 50″ Cent premiers Thursday November 19th at 7:30pm on BET.

You can see all the photos from the shoot on our flickr site.

Jay-Z’s new album, The Blueprint 3 drops on September 11th. As part of the publicity blitz, Jay agreed to be interviewed by other celebrities on BET. Jon Marc Sandifer, a producer we work with on “Rising Icons,” wanted to get the crew from dv Depot.

We sent five camera operators, two audio ops and our ace utility Derek Edwards. Our DP, Alex Sierra, set up two cameras to cover the interviews in close up. He shot the close ups of Jay-Z while Christine Ka’aloa covered the interviewers. Jeremy Leach worked on steadicam, getting two shots and tracking shots. Meanwhile, Daniel McKeown was put on a roving camera, getting a wide range of shots to make for a more exciting edit. Ethan Goldberger handled the audio. Another crew rode in the cab with the interviewers as they headed out to meet Jay-Z. Chris Piazza and Gabriel Cyr were on this crew.

The interviews were great to watch. All of the celebrities were friends with Jay-Z and this worked to create a casual, intimate atmosphere. They were able to ask real questions that required real answers.

The first interviewer was Angie Martinez of Hot 97, the highest rated DJ in New York. She and Jay discussed fame, among other things. She found that Jay had a remarkable ability to live his life naturally in front of dozens of cameras (including ours).

Stephen A. Smith interviewed next. He’s most famous for his show “Quite Frankly” on ESPN. He talked at length with Jay about his part ownership of the New Jersey Nets and his long friendship with LeBron James. They also discussed personal branding and imaging, something that both have mastered.

Hip hop journalist Harry Allen presented Jay with the hardest questions of the day, asking questions about music and black culture and Jay’s place in it. The two Brooklyn natives also had a chance to discuss their love of the borough in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was a challenging day. We shot on Panasonic HVX200 cameras and the utility Derek was kept busy dumping the cards and wiping them, trying to keep ahead of the cameras needs. P2 memory cards on a multicam shoot can be challenging, but the reward is that you can start editing the next day, with all your footage already

digitized.

We’re always excited to work with BET. Jay-Z and the interviewers were also nice people and easy to work with. At the end of the day, everybody went home exhausted, but proud of the work we did. As he was leaving, Jay complimented Jon Marc on how well everything went. Nothing could have pleased us more.

You can see all of the pictures from the day at our flickr site.

Watch for the special to air on BET on Monday, September 7th.

Our clients came to us with a new idea: rap battles on mobile video. They wanted to shoot MCs battling each other, then give let mobile phone viewers the opportunity to vote for who advances on to the next round. The project was called “The Rap Game.”

We worked with them through preproduction and provided the shooting crew. We had five cameras, three on stick, one handheld and one Steadicam. Our crew lit the whole club. While the performances happened on the stage, we were also shooting the audience, wanting them to be as much a part of the

experience as the performers. Our audio crew had mics on the two battlings rappers, the host, the audience and a feed from the DJ. We also handled communications.

It was a fun experience for everybody and it went smoothly thanks to our awesome crew, which included DP Daniel McKeown, camera ops Matthew Kulvicki, Andreas Wagner, and Liz Rubin, steadicam op David George Ellis, audio supervisor Diana Milani, audio tech Gabriel

Cyr, utility Kara Haas and PAs Tory Clark and Mike Misslin.

The Rap Game was the first large shoot after I started working at dvDepot. It was great to go into the field and see our crew in action. It helped me to understand the ways they worked and in what situations they worked best. And nothing is more thrilling than taking on a challenge and succeeding.

You can see more pictures from the shoot at our flickr page

At dv Depot, we get a lot of requests for multi-camera shoots. Musical performances are the most common reason, but people also want to shoot boxing matches, corporate events and other things. We have an excellent HD/SD flypack we like to send on these shoots and decided to host a demo for our clients to get a better feeling for it.

The flypack can shoot with six cameras and is compatible with a variety of HD and standard definition cameras. It has a 16 channel mixer for audio.

While each camera records its shots separately, we can also do a live cut during taping. Some people want it recorded to a tape deck, but we can also record it to a Final Cut Pro file. The client can then open the project in FCP with a near finished product. This can speed up editing drastically.

The demo went over very well. We have an upcoming job with the system for six cameras shooting a Chinese language musical performance.

You can see more pictures from the demo at our flickr site.

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