Another nice element of OnLocation that was useful to us as we shot this film was the variable letterbox feature, which allows you to see guidelines that will show you exactly what will and will not be in your shot. While this many not be needed folks using 16:9 ratio squeezed image in which no additional matting is intended, it’s terribly useful for folks who want to create the 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 film mattes, which look the most professional. We were matting this for 1.85:1, so this allowed us to see when the boom mic was actually out of the shot and when it was blatantly in frame.
One issue that we did run into with OnLocationCS3 was the difficulty in switching between active camera and preview monitor. As you can preview all the clips you’ve recorded and type in XML tags for each clip, it’s vital to switch between this feature and your live camera. Unfortunately, for the first part of the shoot, we didn’t have the manual with us (which is the only way to know that there’s only one way to switch between these features, the obscure shortcut key of “F7”). The fact that this option isn’t a menu command and that it is so obscure, kept us from making as much use of all the features in OnLocation for the first half of the shoot. However, once we tracked down the manual and figured out the command, we really liked being able to add comments and other XML tags about the takes which the editor could search through with Bridge or inside Premiere Pro. (We were using an Adobe editing solution in this situation, but XML data can be read by most of the main editing solutions on the market, including Final Cut Pro.)
Obviously, with as much footage as we recorded for Collide, we couldn’t store it all in the laptop’s sixty gig hard drive. As such, at the end of each shoot day, we linked the laptop up to the portable hard drive (which I showed how to build in the PC to Mac conversion article last issue) and downloaded the files from the hard drive. As our audio guy was recording audio on his standalone Nuendo laptop from the three lavs we used for much of the film, we also dumped that audio at the end of each day into the portable hard drive. At the end of the shoot, the hard drive went off to the editor, who edited the rest of the film on the drive itself, without ever having to digitize a single clip. (Technically, I had to digitize a few clips for him because our laptop died in an outdoor scene. However, OnLocation will allow a playback stream to be treated like a recordable video stream, which means you can digitize any missed shots on your laptop without any editing software loaded on it.)
All in all, OnLocationCS3 helped us get the film that we wanted to shoot and be assured of that it would look as good in post as we intended it to. I shot my first without a proper monitor and ended up with a number of problematic shots that had focus, dust, and coloration issues. After being able to see everything ahead of time and remove the digitizing step, I have no intention of ever shooting another film without it. (Unfortunately, at this time, OnLocation isn’t available for our Mac readers.)
If you’re interested in reading more about the packages that include OnLocation, you can read our standalone review of Premiere Pro CS3, which includes OnLocationCS3, and our review of Adobe CS3: Production Premium, which includes OnLocationCS3 and Serious Magic’s other package, UltraCS3.
The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films,
Jeremy Hanke
founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.
