S106 Directors Blog

After being off the radar for nearly two months it seems fair to give you an update. I have been spending my time prepping for a big project and after signing the production contract I can now share my plans with you.

The project is a two month shooting period in east Africa, during this time we will be visiting five countries; Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi. We will be making 13 episodes for Dutch television about Dutch traders, aid workers and foundations in these countries fulfilling an important economic and social role. Each broadcast we will portrait one of these businesses through the eyes of our reporter Leon van der Zanden. It is a road movie where the crew plays a major role during this trip. The program is made possible to date by COS Brabant, Cordaid, Liliane Fund and Mundial Productions.

My responsibilities are twofold,  I am the director and cameraman, so I am preparing on a contextual and technical level. Since this is blog is mainly about production gear  I will give you a rundown on what we are packing and how we plan to use it. It’s quite a challenge to be packing a very minimal kit since we will be doing a lot of travel.

At first i was planning to shoot on the P+S Technik mini35c but after giving it some thought I figured it would be the wrong tool for the job, it’s fragile compared to a broadcast lens and it would be a lot of work pulling focus myself on the run and gun style job. So I was stuck with the kit lens provided with the HPX300. A Th17×5BRM made by Fujinon, an ok lens but it won’t win you any prizes… The main problem with this lens is the angle and MOD being 5mm and 0.9 metres. So shooting in a car is no option.  I decided to by  a Th13×3.5BRMU, this lens has an angle of 3.5mm and the MOD is 0.4 metres. This seems like the proper lens for the job more in this post.

Having a good P2 workflow is crucial, so I have done a lot of research in this area and came up with the following workflow. We will be shooting on 4 32GB P2 cards, providing us with 2 days worth of shooting. These cards will be backed up on two G-tech mini drives via a Macbook Pro running Shotput Pro. After both disk are full one will stay with the production team and the other will be sent to the broadcaster in The Netherlands.  After some calculating and guesswork I decided to bring a whopping 10 500GB drives with me.

Here is a list of gear that I will be hauling around Africa for two months;

If you have any suggestions about this kit or the workflow please feel free to let me know.