Using the RED on the flyer and other suggested systems...

[Charles King]

...is something usually discussed along with other brands. As you all know me, I always like to get my favorite high profile Hollywood Steadicam operator, to say a few words. In this case it's more of a quote from him. You are welcome to post your own suggestions as I am sure many will benifit from this thread. So here goes:

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"If one intends to use the RED on a Flyer, I would suggest stripping everything off it (no rods/brackets/dovetail base/etc). Add the lens (preferably a light one, like a Super/Ultraspeed) and clip on mattebox. Use the mini-rod adaptor to supply mounting point for the motor--you guys DO know that you must have a remotely operated lens motor for at least focus, right? Downconverter (AJA, Decimator) if the monitor on the rig is SD. Power the camera directly from the sled and record onto CF cards. This will keep the weight hovering at the top end of the payload with hopefully a little wiggle room for other accessories.

Why would you want to use the rig's SD monitor rather than the onboard RED monitor? Said onboard monitor has a very limited viewing angle and is not great in sunlight, which makes it a poor choice for Steadicam use. Also having cables travel from the top to the bottom of the rig is an annoyance.

Regarding the FS rigs compared to the Steadicam (Tiffen) brand; I've not used the FS but have heard about them anecdotally. The arms and gimbals on most of the low-end rigs are mediocre to wretched. The Steadicam brand is not inexpensive but nothing can touch the arm design when it comes to the lighter rigs like the Flyer.

Getting up into full-size rigs, I have been impressed with many aspects of the Actioncam especially for RED users.

Beyond that, when you start to talk about MK-V there are a number of manufacturers that should be brought into the conversation including GPI, XCS, Baer Bel as well as the high end Steadicam rigs but all of these will cost more than I think anyone participating in this conversation is looking to shell out. The AR for instance costs $60K or so, and that's ON TOP OFF a $40K sled, plus another $25 or so for vest and arm--and that's without cables or other accessories. No-one ever said this stuff was cheap! But, as they saying goes, that's why we make the big bucks.

Seriously though--my advice is that if you are at all serious about the results you get from your stabilizer, don't cheap out if you can possible help it. It will be a viable tool that will last you for many years (and generations of RED products!) to come, just like a good fluid head. I've seen a number of people end up unhappy with quickly broken parts, lame customer service and a hard time getting their money back when they eventually sell and move up to better stuff (or a lot of time, get frustrated and give up on the whole concept).

If you are absolutely sure that your RED setup will never exceed the weight limit of the Flyer, then you might as well save the money. Remember though that the base Flyer has an SD monitor so you will need to add a downconverter into the mix.

The two most important components of any stabilizer are the gimbal and arm, and both units are well-equipped in this area, better than other rigs in this class. Overall build quality is good also. I do have issues with the configuration of the lower sled components in both rigs, but the Actioncam is more easily reconfigurable than the Flyer.

Really it comes down to whether or not you will ever need to add more accessories to your RED for a given shot--it can certainly happen. Say you want to track someone from the shady side of the street to the sunlight side--you'll need to add another motor to do an iris pull. Or you get into a video transmitter. Or you want to use the Lensbaby for an effects shot. Or you need to be able to shoot longer than the CF cards will allow so you have to fly the hard drive. And so on...it's risky not having capacity to spare."

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Charles Papert, SOC
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N.B. The FS system CP is talking about is the FS pro system.

[Martin Amada]

I may have a shot at shooting a low budget ghost horror movie with my rig here in Cambodia, with the only RED ONE camera in the country.

As some here know, I don't have a Flyer, mine is a custom built rig. It''s performed well with up to about 10kg on it including camera, rod support and accessories. Tomorrow we'll put the RED on it and see how the arm and the sled hold up with the springs tightened.

I re-read Charles P's post. I will see if I can power the cam via the 12 volts I have available from the sled, and remove the battery and hard disk from the cam. Since the movie takes place at night we may be able to do without the matte box entirely. It's not clear to me yet if we will shoot day for night or be shooting after dark.

But here's the biggest challenge perhaps. My sled isn't cabled for the Red. Is the downconverter Charles mentioned in his post now available and if so where? If not, the only other option will be to modifify the sled so I can mount the Red's external monitor on it, and cable it directly into the camera. Might get away with this if the sun has gone done, but we probably want to avoid it.

Martin

[Charles Papert]

Since writing that post I had the opportunity to fly my lightweight rig and RED in relatively stripped-down mode. Pictures here. This was for a Green Day concert shoot (they were great, by the way!) and I had to go 2+ hours straight with the rig so I put a lot of energy into configuring things in a whole new way. Generally we mount all of the goodies on the camera but for this I wanted to add the extra stuff at the bottom of the rig since it is so light. This is my running rig which is 11 lbs, 2 lbs more than a Flyer (and incidentally it uses a Flyer monitor and arm). The blurb on that page describes the setup.

At 31 lbs total camera/sled payload, I was ALMOST able to make this work with the Flyer arm--the lower section was OK fully cranked up but the upper section was drooping. My arm has been reworked at the Tiffen factory and lost a bit of lift due to a change in geometry, so they tell me, and it is due to go back in to have this fixed, so after that it should be able to manage this load. Certainly if it had been a CF card situation instead of the drive I would have been fine.

The key to all this is to lose all extraneous BS off the camera. 19mm steel rods and that awful RED battery cage are a pointless weight to carry onboard your rig. The RED battery was perfectly comfortable powering the camera, drive, downconverter, HD transmitter and my LCD for 20-30 minutes straight which is more than enough for most shoots.

Discovering that the drive was being affected by the blast from the speakers and having to lose the long drive cable was a real pain after the hours of careful tweaking of the original setup (which flew beautifully); mounting the drive on the top of the rig meant shuffling everything around as it raised the CG of the camera considerably. Dropping the RED battery underneath the rods helped considerably but I still had to extend the post a couple of inches to keep the gimbal where I wanted it.

My original comments about foregoing the RED onboard monitor were based on the original smaller onboard; I understand that the "pro" model now available has a much better viewing angle and size for us to use with stabilizers. Of course you will need an extension monitor cable which is not a standard accessory for privately owned RED packages or smaller rental houses. Having an external cable is, as I said, an annoyance but it's by no means a dealbreaker. You remove it to spin balance, put it back in place and go about your day. On this shoot I brought it down the left front side of the rig as it kept out of my view of the monitor; if you have to go into Don Juan this can be a problem but I knew I wasn't going to have to on this shoot. Right down the middle and behind the monitor is a good spot although when the rig is pushed down low it might cross your view of the monitor. Make sure it is tightly cabled to prevent sway during a shot, but can be easily adjusted (leave slack at one end or another that can be fed out) in case you need to lengthen the rig quickly.

Martin, I think you will be fine for your shoot although I would recommend seeing if you can get a clip-on mattebox for the lenses you will be flying. Night exteriors often require an eyebrow if backlights are in use. I got away with this on the concert shoot because I was shooting up into the lights so there was nothing to be done about flares (they looked great actually) but for a feature, they are often a no-no, with the major exception of the new Star Trek!

Finally, my recommendation to you guys who are looking to strip down REDS for Flyers is that you need plenty of time, ingenuity and the right bits and pieces to make this stuff happen. I have a large collection of what I call "Lego" (probably Tinker Toys is more accurate) comprised of different length 15mm rods, dogbones of all sorts, screws and custom bits etc. Maybe someday I'll take pix and post for you guys. Basically this gives me the tools to be able to attach things anywhere on the rig in whatever configuration I choose. For instance, when the RED drive was mounted at the bottom of the rig, I latched on to its 15mm rod mount with a Zacuto 15mm to 15mm right angle adaptor (which allowed me to mount rods perpendicular to each other and stand the drive up vertically), small intermediate rod with dogbone etc. Sorry I didn't get a detail picture of that. But it is important to be able to mount things solidly and with maximum flexibility of placement. In addition, it's important to head into these things armed with plenty of velcro (which I obviously didn't have at the first prep, love the green tape!). Incidentally, the only bracketry we left on the camera were the two top rod holders; my assistant cut a piece of lightweight plastic and we screwed it into the tops of the rod holders as a flat mounting base which we then laden down with the drive etc. Much lighter than the cheeseplate.

[Charles King]

CP as always you have given this thread a lot of info on this subject. I applaud your efforts on this matter. Thank u. Your advice is golden here.

[Martin Amada]

Charles P, thanks for this. You are a mensch.

Those of us who've built our own rigs live in the "lego" environment. Making mods is a way of life. So that is not a problem.

Are you still using the Decimator downconverter? That seems like a great solution for using my existing monitor and inexpensive SD transmittor on my rig with the RED, but I can't find where you where you get the cable needed from the RED's HDMI out to the convertor. Is it offered as an accessory?

What is the HD transmitter you refer to in your post? I found this on the Internet for $399: Brite-View BV-2500. Could not find any specs for it thought. However it seems to me it is moot, if using a downconverter. And most low budget shoots probably won't have an HD viewing monitor in any case.

Martin

[Charles Papert]

Hi Martin:

Clarification on the Lego concept--not so much building and machining parts for particular setups, more about having lots of generic "building blocks" with you that allow for configuring things on the fly as needed. I never know when I will be asked to mount some random device on the rig.

Yes, I am using the Decimator (it's in those pictures of the RED setup). You wouldn't come out of the HDMI, you'd just use one of the HD-SDI outputs of the camera (BNC).

The HD transmitter is the IDX Wevi. It costs around $6000 which is actually quite reasonable considering that it is a very clean image and rock-solid compared to SD RF systems (I don't own one but it is a pretty cheap rental).  For this particular shoot, the director was working from 10 or 12 HD monitors for the different cameras, and I thought it would be to his benefit to have the Steadicam image look just as good as the other cameras. Also it allowed my focus puller to use a small Astro monitor from the side of the stage and view critical focus from there (wasn't enough room for him to follow me).