The Caregivers: Shooting 2:the gear

Come to think of it, we had a pretty small shooting kit. Let me try and recollect:

1. The camera-Sony PMW 200, with a regular tripod. Why did we use this camera? Our sponsors wanted us to use a camera that recorded  at a data rate of 50 mbps with a 4:2:2 colour sampling rate, at HD 1920 x 1080 lines, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Plenty of cameras do this these days, but I wasn't keen on a dual system shooting, as we had no budget for a sound person. So it had to be a conventional video camera. The PMW series met all the requirements, this one came with two S&S cards, a 32 GB one and a 64 GB one. And it was a camera known to my cameraperson, so I said lets go for it. 
2. The sound gear was a Sony wireless lapel mike and a Sennhieser 416 'gun' mike. Both these came from a friendly rental house in Noida, Delhi, and were standard rental gear- battered and war weary, but did the job despite being held together by cello tape. We bought batteries for the wireless microphones every other day as in India people do not use re-chargeable batteries.
3. The lighting gear was a single one square foot LED panel. I liked the versatility of this light and it was battery powered, so easy to use. One single light proved ample for us, as we were shooting in late August when there is plenty of sunlight in North India. The light can be adjusted for daylight and indoors, so even more flexibility.
4. The lighting accessories: we bought thermocole sheets, plenty of translucent paper and black paper, along with black cloth and white cloth. Plus lots of clips to hang all these in various conditions. I think  the total expense on these was less than Re 500/-. All bought locally in Meerut. And to think that in Kenya I couldn't get these for love or for money! (more on that another day).

That was it for shooting gear.

OK, we had no lightboys or electricians, so anything more would have hiked up our costs. This much lighting gear our Assistant Cameraman could rig up with help from any of my students around.

Knowing this was the way we were going to be working, we used daylight carefully, shooting mainly in the morning and evening hours, when the light is a bit more angular.  No, we did not sleep in the afternoons, used that time to download our shot material.

The unit fitted into a rickety old Chevorlet Tavera with a driver who fancied himself as a rally driver. I took my father's old Maruti 800 around to the shoot. So it became a full unit with two vehicles.

Lunch, drinking water etc happened where it did, so no caterers get involved. It permitted the unit to sample Meerut's various food delicacies, of the vegetarian type.

Next up, planning and scheduling the shoot.