OB Van

[matt3001]

Hi guys,

Quick questions, what fundamental equipment would be needed to build a kind of temporary OB van to film an event using approx 6-10 cameras?

It won't be broadcast live or anything but to take a real-time edit from the venue.

Any help appreciated!

[fastfreddy]

How are you intending to link the cameras to the OB van? What sort of quality are you after?

[Simpo Two]

I know a man who has one and has done it for years, but you'd need a budget of some kind, although he won't be expensive in the scheme of things. PM me if interested.

[Fordo]

would be cheaper hiring an OB truck than building one yourself.

A visit to http://www.broadcastvideoexpo.co.uk/ which is coming up soon, might help- theres usually quite a few OB companies there, and you can get to talk to them face to face

Any chance you need a cameraman? time for me to shamelessly plug myself, as i happen to be a cameraman

My showreel can be viewed on my website:

www.peterford.co.uk

Edited by Fordo on Thursday 12th February 19:46

[matt3001]

It needs to be either very high DV or broadcast quality. We ran the event in 2007 and it got broadcast on Motors TV all over Europe last year, and will probably run on Dave/Motors this time around as well.

As the race is for charity, the budget is tiny and we try and arrange as many things for free as possible. The event attracted over 5 million viewers on European TV and a good crowd on the day, a crowd we hope to make bigger this year! So in return for borrowing equipment or people offering their services we can arrange free tickets into the race (for themselves, family and corporate guests) and advertising opportunities etc.

Its still at the pre-plan stage at the minute but if anyone fancies lending their hands cameramen/photographers (have to have own kit though) or just general support on the day i.e. marshalling, helping to fundraise for Cancer Research UK, spectator marshalls etc please don't hesitate to get in touch with me at [e-mail]

[fastfreddy]

I don't think you realise how much money it costs to do what you are hoping to do. You are much better off borrowing/hiring a load of good quality camcorders and editing it all afterwards.

If you want several remote cameras around a circuit linking back to any sort of studio or OB truck so you can cut it 'live' you either need cables or wireless and both methods involve kit which is very expensive.

You may be able to convince someone to provide it all to you for free for the charity, but only if they have nothing else on and are feeling particularly generous.

I'm not trying to put you off and I wish you the best of luck with it, but it just can't be done on the cheap.

[matt3001]

I already have a production team, I just need a few extra bodies and yeah i'm starting to think an OB setup is too £££ and so will film and edit afterwards like last time!

[Celestion84]

Yeah I' afraid a setup of what you're after will cost £££.

Just cabling up the venue is quite an undertaking on it's own.

Have a word with these guys, http://www.arena-tv.com/ if you just want a bit of advice. They are generally very helpful.

[Fordo]

matt3001 said:

I already have a production team, I just need a few extra bodies and yeah i'm starting to think an OB setup is too £££ and so will film and edit afterwards like last time!

id be more than happy to offer my services- sounds like a good cause, i'll drop you an email.

Like the others say, the setup alone for n OB truck could be a headache and cost £££

Ive done some work on a budget production at Silverstone. We had as many cameras as we could lay our hands on, with a couple of remote cameras recording into hard drive units (with 4 hours recording time, so we just left them running).

We were shooting on DV, and we werent going to lay cables all round the track, so we couldnt sync timecode properly, so we got all the cameras together at the beginning of the day, set them all to free running time code at the same time.

All our kit was sony, and they all responded to the same remote control, so i line up all the menus to be on free run time code, turned them all to face me, and hit enter on the remote.

So- over the course of the day, no cameras TC would go more than a few secs out, and meant when editing, we could always time things up correctly. We also asked the cameramen to cut as few times as possible, as multicam editing in FCP goes a bit funny if you have a lot of TC breaks.

But it worked out great. For the stuff round the track, once id got everything into the edit, I arranged all the footage into a multicam edit, pressed play, then i could cut from cam to cam as if it were live. Saved a lot of time in editing.

what format are you hoping to shoot on? I could supply two Sony DU1's, which are dv hard drive recorders, which can take firewire output from a dv cameras. they can record 4 hours of footage- great for an unmanned camera.

I can probably supply a JVC GY-HD101, which records 720p HDV, or DV.

I have editing facilities, so I could always transcode my footage unto whatever format you need for the edit.

Edited by Fordo on Saturday 14th February 10:13