Shooting a Feature Film using the Canon C300 Mark II Part 2 – The Zacuto Gear
Shooting a Feature Film using the Canon C300 Mark II Part 2 – The Zacuto Gear, blog post by Darius Stevens Wilhere
Shooting a Feature Film using the Canon C300 Mark II Part 2 – The Zacuto Gear
This is the second of four parts of my full in depth review on this gear:
Part 1: In depth with shooting a feature film on the C300 Mark II (here)
Part 2: Shooting with the Zacuto Recoil Rig and the Gratical HD Viewfinder
Part 3: Shooting with Canon Cinema Zooms vs Canon Cinema Primes
Part 4: Shooting “Night for Day” with the C300 Mark II.
In this video I take up shooting the film using the Zacuto recoil rig and the Zacuto Gratical HD viewfinder. Both excellent pieces of kit for low-budget filmmaking when you need to be crushing on the set-ups and have to move flat out, full time. Again I want to thank Zacuto for letting us use this gear for the shoot. It definitely helped me make a better movie and move at the speed that I needed to for a micro-budgeted feature with too much to do in too little time with too little money!
Gratical: While I'd used and enjoyed the RED viewfinders as well as several others on the market, I had done a lot of shooting on the C300 just using the included flip down monitor and sometimes with a snap on eyepiece and wow, what a difference the Gratical makes. While it's a bit out of my price range at the moment, no question will I be adding this to the budget of my next big shoot.
Recoil: As a suggestion on the recoil rig, take the time to adjust the rig fully to your body. Have a mate there to help you tweak it until it's ergonomically as friendly as possible. The rig is crazily adjustable and adaptable with all sorts of places to tweak to get it just right. I was dying on the first day when I had kind of thrown it all together and started shooting, and then I spent 30 minutes at the end of the day getting the balances right and it was a night and day difference in muscle/back strain. Realize I held this rig for 22 days usually more than 12 hours a day, so trust me on this: take the time to adjust it to your body and you will thank yourself every single day.
Heads Up: Currently the link between the Canon C300 Mark II handle extender for the recoil rig and the side of the camera needs some love. That little mini-jack cable comes loose too easily and this can drive you bonkers in the course of hectic shooting. Wrap a rubber band around the rig to hold it in tight until a more eloquent solution comes up.
Tornado Focus Knob: I think my only gripe is that I really wished the Tornado focus knob could integrate as system of positive stops to help you hit your marks when doing single operator focus pulling. A small point but sometimes when shooting wide open on an 85mm at 1.3 I was definitely kicking myself for not having a backup follow focus system to help me hit critical focus when actors were moving around.
Anyways, a small request to Zacuto to think about adding to future versions of the Tornado focus knob!
Hope you enjoy the video!
Also a link to a fantastic (and far more to the point and pragmatic review) from Tim Fok on the camera: https://www.cinema5d.com/depth-canon-c300-mark-ii-operators-point-view/
And a couple more behind the scenes photos of this gear in action:
Above the city.
The universal baseplate makes mounting to tripods and slider very fast.
How low can you go?
And one last one.
Shooting a Feature Film using the Canon C300 Mark II Part 2 – The Zacuto Gear, blog post by Darius Stevens Wilhere
