Tips on a 3 cam shoot?

[Ryan E. Walters]

So I'm prepping for my first three camera shoot and I was wondering if any of you out there with lots of multi-camera experience would be kind enough to offer up some tips / advice? I have limited experience shooting 2 cameras, and the vast majority of stuff I've done has always been with one camera. The project I am working on will be an action flick, and we are using the three cameras to get the coverage we need in the time we have available to us.

So- what should I look out for? What should I be aware of? And from your experience, what are somethings you know now after doing a lot of multi-cam that you wish you knew when you started?

Thanks for your help / input! :)

[Cail Young]

With a fair bit of studio multicam in my past and coming off a 3 camera (mostly interiors) short this week...

There will be a lot of cross-coverage (single CUs or mids) from A and B and a two-shot or wide on C. The trick is keeping the blocking fresh in each setup (depends on your style, I suppose).

Lighting will be a pain. Outdoors you'll only be able to use small reflection and maybe some ceiling scrims as you'll likely be seeing too far in each direction to hide kickers or backlighting. Indoors you will run into having nowhere to put lights as you'll be covering too much. Prelight with multiple angles in mind, and let the blocking drive everything.

As to multicam specifically for action; all I can say is find great operators and consider grabbing zooms for your cameras. Also, wireless split systems will be a godsend.

[Ryan E. Walters]

Cail,

Thanks for the recommendations and thoughts- greatly appreciated.

As far as coverage goes, say A cam gets a couple of good takes, but B & C need another go at it- would / should A cam change it up to get another angle, or is it best to keep it the same until all three get what they need? (I'm sure some of that choice will be up to the director as well.)

[onsighthawaii]

when doing action sequences set the cameras and let everything fly, SOP. for dialog scenes with tight blocking keep in mind that you are utilizing an "A", and a "B" camera and not a first and second "unit" sharing a set. sounds SOP but ive found within the last few years people are less able to discern the difference. A and B cams on a narrative show will often be quite close together shooting the same thing only with different framing. they are not shooting the scene from completely different angles trying to cover the "turn-around" simultaneously. not only will this drive your gaffer nuts but the time saved will be negated by the time it takes to set everything up. rarely do you save much time with more cameras. when A cam can get what you need in a scene then feel free to turn B cam into a splinter unit to get pick-ups etc.

from an engineering perspective make sure each camera has a full compliment of gear. use the same lenses. ive seen allot of people put two reds shooting an actor, one with a nikon and one with a cook zoom or equivalently unmatched lens. id personally just shoot with a single camera at that point.

[Joel Kaye]

rarely do you save much time with more cameras.

How about from an acting perspective? Are you more likely to get both sides of a good performance thereby saving time and making life easier on your talent?

[onsighthawaii]

cant think of a time where i personally saw that work for the express sake of saving time. im sure it has for some projects. for an example, im thinking a scene in the spike lee movie 'Mo' Better Blues' looks as though they let a couple cameras run on a group scene in an attempt to get a fresh read with possible improv. the result was pretty effective with some great talent. every shoot is different and the story drives the technique. generally good actors know when they are not on-camera and save it for their shot.

[Andrew McCarrick]

If you're shooting close-ups and a wider shot... light for the close-ups.

[Ryan E. Walters]

Great suggestions and input- I appreciate it. :)

We will have a matching set of lenses- we are going to be shooting with a set of the RPP's. My plan of attack is going to follow along the lines of what has been suggested of shooting the WS / MS / CU's at the same time from the same side of the set. The lighting should be fairly straight forward, as most of what we have planned to do involves a lot of hard, contrasty lighting.

[KETCH ROSSi]

I mostly have been in multicam shoots, and prefer it to single cam shots, even so lighting and setting up for multicam is more of a pain, it will produce what I need at a faster time, with less takes, saving not only time but also saving on the Actors and the rest of the crew, while giving shots which other whise would not likely have been captured.

In action you need to cover "A" Camera on to the most important subject of your shot, and this should determine the use of the focal length to cover it, Prime or Zoom, "B" camera and "C" camera can have same Focal but I prefer to have them in different Focal and positions as to cover an entire different angle and look of the shot.

Aperture is also something I like to play with, even so this gets a bit more difficult as you will light the scene for a single aperture to be set on all your lenses, but again, not always, as the shot can allow easily to have different readings on different angles, off course depending how large is the area you are Photographing.

I try never to do dialogue in one or two cams, but always use a three cam set up, with a minimum amount of takes, and I like to create drama so I use Long focal on "A" (main character) and a shorter on "B" ( co-start) while the wide angle goes to the Master shot cam, but even here I usually prefer to capture little outside of the talent, keeping the cam close to them, and not to their surroundings.

If in an action scene were the point of interest is pretty tight and in a small area I will then use same long focal on two cams and a wider focal on the third cam, possibly a wide to medium zoom, like the RPZ 18-85.