Blog « dvDepot

BET’s Rising Icons with Hal Linton

Posted by: Adam on Oct 7 2009 / Comments (0)

Hal Linton enjoys his snow cone. That's Ethan Goldberger's mic hanging over him.

BET is launching a new series, (Rising Icons). The show focuses emerging talent, showcasing their music and their story.

Dv Depot sent out a crew to work on an episode with Hal Linton, an R&B/Soul artist. We followed him to recording sessions and concerts in New York for several days. Then we went to his hometown in Barbados to get a little of his history.

Luckily, we have lots of pictures from Barbados. Our camera operator, Alex Sierra, and our audio tech, Ethan Goldberger, trailed Hal for a few days and got to hang out with him at night. They had a great time. We love working with BET and hope to do more work on this exciting new show.

You can see more photos on dv Depot’s flickr page.

Hal Linton walks through his hometown as camera operator Alex Sierra shoots.

Hal Linton, the artist, bonded with Ethan Goldberger, our audio tech. The way they're lounging together, women might mistake Ethan for a musical artist and try to get to know him!

Alex Sierra shoots while Ethan Goldberger trails behind him with the boom mic.

Demo of our HD/SD Flypack

Posted by: Adam on Oct 7 2009 / Comments (1)

Our VP, Pete Zappulla got his start as a camera operator and loves the opportunity to get his hands dirty when we do in house demos.

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.

Our flypack has 6 Marshall HD/SD LCD monitors.

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.

Our flypack is ideal for doing live cuts of events.

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MoPictive Digital Filmmakers Panel

Posted by: Adam on Oct 7 2009 / Comments (0)

Anthony Q. Artis, Patrick Inhofer, Pete Levin, and Michael Vitti were the panelists.

Cal, one of dvDepot's staff members, taped the presentation from behind the glass.

The Moving Pictures Collective of NYC, MoPictive for those in the know, is a non-profit community that works to support filmmakers in New York City. They provide a helpful environment for their members to learn new techniques, discuss resources they can use and share their work. They host monthly meetings to help these ends. Their website is http://www.movingpicturescollective.org/.

dv Depot was excited to host their April meeting, a panel of experts in various fields of digital filmmaking. The speakers included Anthony Q. Artis, (producer and author) Patrick Inhofer (color corrector and finisher), Pete Levin (audio mixer and sound designer) and Michael Vitti (shooter and editor). They talked to the audience about the realities of digital and tapeless production. The event was highly interactive, including videos from the speakers and a lot of questions from the audience. They took more than two hours of questions, trying to help people decide what equipment to use, weighing cost against artistic ambitions against network and studio requirements. The enthusiastic crowd was a mix of MoPictive members and the general public.

The dv Depot space was ideal for the event. We also lit the event and set up the audio. We shot the event, which is to be edited into a podcast (available to MoPictive members only, unfortunately). We also ended up helping the speakers. Our technicians were able to answer questions about various camera formats that the audience brought up.

You can see more pictures of the event at our Flickr site.

The audience was a great crowd. dvDepot looks on from behind the bar.

Sadly, Michael Vitti died a few weeks after this event. He was the founder of MoPictive and leader of the community. He was a friend of dv Depot and it was through him that we were able to host this event. There is a tribute page for him at http://www.imugonline.com/events/2009/michaelvitti.shtml. Helping people was Mike’s passion and MoPictive is the child of that passion. Nobody cared more about creating a collaborative environment in which people can share their knowledge. He was a fixture in the New York film world and he will be missed.

Michael Vitti, one of the leaders of the Collective, takes a moment to rock out.

BET HD Crew Demo

Posted by: Adam on Oct 7 2009 / Comments (0)

We set up all the cameras on monitors so people could compare the picture quality of each camera.

We set up mannequins to simulate a multicam shoot.

When BET made the switch to HD, they came to our offices to learn more about our HD crews. Pete and Deb lead groups from the network around to meet with the crew at the Depot. Adam explained our crewing processes, Nick showed off the standard gear packages, Mike and Cal showed off the cameras and Nayim showed them our HD editing capabilities. Alan, our rep from JVC even came by to help talk about HD monitors.

We have a wide range of HD cameras and send them out as rentals or in crew packages. Our cameras include those that use tapes and memory cards. If you want a private demo, you can contact dv Depot and weâ€™ll set one up for you.

You can see more pictures at our flickr site.