 Welcome to the Crimson Engine, my name is Rubidium. Today we are talking about the video village, the private area where the director produces, sometimes the script supervisor, watch what's happening as they're filming it. So way back in the day before video assist and before video tap onto 35mm film cameras, the director used to stand next to the camera and guess what the image looked like that they were capturing and he would only see what was shot the day after once the film had been developed in a process called rushes. It left a lot to the imagination and the director had to put a lot more trust in the cinematographer, maybe they could like look through the eyepiece and check the frame beforehand but mainly it was up to the DOP to deliver on what the director wanted. Nowadays of course shooting on a digital cinema camera you have an STI out, you have wireless video and you're able to watch exactly what the camera is shooting as it's shooting it. Now smaller sets it's fine for the director to look over the DP's shoulder so it's not something that I particularly like doing. Other sets have an individual directors monitor, sort of a you know little seven or maybe ten inch handheld monitor that's fed into the wireless signal from the camera and they can see what's happening, they could stand next to the DP still they can still check their frame and they can be there available for the actors. On multi-camera shoots and more complicated shoots usually you set up a thing called a video village which is a 15 to 20 inch display that is either directly fed into the camera through STI or usually using some kind of wireless video transmission system that's you know kind of at the other side of the room or down the hall or somewhere that the director can watch what's been shot on multiple cameras at the same time on a big enough screen that they can see performance they can see what's in focus they can see what's dark and what's light basically just kind of be the first audience for the film as it's been shot. It used to be that Flanders Scientific and Panasonic and Sony all had production monitors that were you know $5,000 and up that would appear on TV commercial sets and some big Hollywood movie sets the idea being that when a lot of money is at stake it's not just the director that needs to see what's being shot it's usually the producers the client and it's hard to ask them to like look into a tiny little monitor and guess what the final image would look like. Over the past few years quite a few different companies have come up with between 15 and 20 inch monitors that give a really beautiful 1080 or higher image that lets you know either one person the director see what's being shot on a large screen or an entire group of people be they clients or producers the kind of people that I talked about before anyone who has veto power over the image it's much better that they see it as it's being shot and change what they want to change than waiting until you get into the editing room or god forbid present it to the client and the client says no that's the wrong type of can or that's the the car we don't like the car from the side any of those things you get the client to come on set you get the the producers to come on set and you know watch what's being shot only in the last couple of months have I finally put together a video village that I'm happy with and I really enjoy using I don't always use it on set um maybe I watch it as we're lighting or setting up um often I stand still stand next to the camera so I can sort of see and be there for the actors because you know usually this is an amazing thing taking place I don't want to be down the hall from it I want to be right there watching it but it is a really great tool and there are a bunch of monitors now that really put this in the realm of possibility of a lot of filmmakers so the heart of the video village is the monitor I got the TV logic lvm 171 s it is a super high quality display has all kinds of features like multiple sdi inputs that let you do double picture which is what we use when we did the aria lexa versus c200 comparison you can apply lots to the image coming from the camera you can use focus you can use zoom you do all kinds of interesting things you can change the aspect ratio if you're shooting anamorphic you can put guidelines up to see if there's picture safe all kinds of things you would want to do on a set as you're shooting you compare it with mains ac power or you can run it off a v mount or goldman battery I actually really like plugging it in because I also use the video village as my sort of charging station while I'm on set so I have my monitor plugged in I have my battery charger for v mounts and lp batteries behind then I get the image into the monitor by using this wireless transmission system this one's called the ghost diodes from synegears I power this off I power the transmitter of the v mount that's attached to the camera and I power the receiver of another v mount that sits next to the monitor I also have a TV logic seven inch camera monitor so I like the fact that these two are consistent across the board so what the DP is seeing and exposing for or and what the director is seeing and adjusting directing are going to be the same thing I got this very cool case from skb thank you skb for sending it to me that it's big enough for my monitor my charger my cables the transmitter all in one place I used to you know juggle 10 little tiny pelican cases to set that's really likely that one's going to get lost so I prefer this larger one that rolls that can carry the weight of everything and I know it's all in one place it's a really good solution for getting your video village to and from set if you're unable to get all the way to the video village from the camera which if you're in a kind of built up office you know lots of concrete sort of wall situations often the case what I do is have a 50 foot or a couple of 50 foot sdi cables send the image from the camera to sort of a antenna tree with the receiver on it then I run cables down the hall to where the video village is if I'm directing and I'm next to the camera and the video village is for a client that I don't really want to have bugging me every time I turn around I'll purposely put the video village a couple hundred feet away so that if they really have a note for me they have to walk all the way to set to tell me and by that time we've usually moved on anyway I found that it's great to make your video village as comfortable as possible if you want the people that are at the village not to turn up to set it is great to put a little note on your monitor if other people are watching it not to touch the screen it's not a touch screen and you don't want greasy finger marks all over it so it's nice to tape a little thing down the bottom of people to keep their hands to themselves that's my look at the video village as I use it on set it's been probably the best addition to my shooting setup in the last couple of months it's really helped me get a much better idea of what my image is going to be and the last thing you want on in your post-production process is a surprise that that little hair that was on the actor's face you didn't see because the monitor was too small well in a video village you totally can you can see that image in a much closer state to what it's going to be when the viewer sees it which I think is really important thanks very much for watching guys leave your questions in the comments I will see you next time