YOU WANT ME TO GO WHERE?
When Anthony B. Richmond called my to work with him again I was overjoyed. I have always enjoyed working with Tony and I would go anywhere in the world for the opportunity to do it again … but the Canadian prairies in January and February! This was going to be the proof of that willingness and the proof of the equipment that we would be taking.
Our package included an ARRICAM ST, an ARRICAM LT, and an ARRI 435 for lenses we had two complete sets of the Cooke S4 primes and the Angenieux Optima long and short zooms. Candide Franklin, our A camera operator, and Roger Finlay, our B camera operator, did most of their operating with ARRIHEADs.
In addition to all of the regular accessories we brought with us some specialty items made by Clairmont Camera to help us deal with the cold. Denny Clairmont ingeniously designed an insulated magazine case that we could connect to a twenty-four volt battery in order to power the magazine before it is put on the camera. This allowed the magazine motor to work at its second function of being a heater to keep the whole unit warm.
Clairmont’s insulated batteries helped the batteries keep their charge longer in the cold. The camera barnies that were especially designed for the ARRICAMs by Clairmont for Just Friends were hardly used but they contained pockets inside them for hand warmers to keep the cameras warm. I have the aversion to barnies that most camera assistants have and I found that no matter how cold it got for us the cameras still functioned well without extra covering. Most of the time it was too cold for it to snow so we didn’t need a barney for moisture protection.
The ARRICAMs did exceptionally well in the cold outdoor conditions that we were working in. The temperature was rarely above – 20 degrees C. and more often closer to – 40 and lower. On the day that we flew into Regina, Saskatchewan our second assistant David Rumley looked at the weather map in the newspaper and saw that the only place colder in Canada that day was the town of Iqualuit, north of the Arctic Circle. The next day the lift on the back our camera truck could not be lowered because the hydraulic fluid had frozen.
The only effect of the cold on the cameras was an occasional slowness in coming up to speed and a couple of instances of the lenses not lining up as they should. The flange situation is a common problem in the cold with all film cameras and it can be a huge problem with HD cameras, as I have experienced on another shoot. The ARRICAMs had a lower incidence of these flange problems than I would have expected and once you are aware of the possibility of these concerns you can be proactive and plan your work-arounds.
The ARRIHEADs performed well in all but the most extreme cold. At the lowest temperatures we experienced a loss of smoothness in the pan. Clairmont was great in supporting us with detailed instructions on how to loosen the pan and this helped. Our B Camera First AC, Dean Frank, become very adept at creating heating systems for the heads. Dean used a combination of hand-warmers, reflective insulating tape, and deconstructed heating pads to create heating systems that kept everything working, as it should. We had a hard lesson the first night outdoors when we had to heat up a head with an open face 2K lamps to get it functioning again. With the exception of when we were in the worst cold, the ARRIHEAD worked smoothly and we were glad to have it.
There were some procedural changes that we made because of the cold. Any lenses not working were brought in to warm up when we were making a move inside and we carried two sets of primes so that we could have an indoor set and an outdoor set. This really sped things up when we wanted to come inside after we had been shooting outside. An acclimatized set of lenses meant that we were not putting up lenses that were covered in condensation and fogging. Taking warm lenses outside won’t create problems but careful planning has to go into bringing cold equipment indoors. The cameras always have to be sealed in a plastic bag when they are coming inside from the cold so that the bodies do not become wet with condensation as they warm up. I usually leave them plugged in with the main power switch on in hope that they will warm up faster.
My rule in going outside into the cold is to keep things inside and warm for as long as possible to reduce the time that they are exposed to the cold. Once outside if a camera or head was not being used we would cover it an electric blanket to keep it at the ready and as warm as possible. These things help and the cameras themselves are a big help too. Both the camera and the magazines are designed so that their motors do double duty as both motors and heaters. The camera is aided in the cold first by creating a fair amount of heat just in normal usage. Secondly it is equipped with a thermostat to activate the motors to create heat when the temperature is getting low inside the camera body. The system worked well for us.
On cold nights if the camera had not run film for a while the thermostat in the camera would turn the heater on and I would know by the indicator that the heater was working. It is interesting to note that after even a short take on one of those frigid nights that the heater would not come on again for another twenty-five minutes. It generates its own heat as if it had been designed for cold shooting.
Working in cold conditions requires a lot of cooperation and our camera crew accepted the challenge. David Rumley kept all of the equipment well organized with a good sense of anticipation and an eye on the thermometer and the weather report. Jesse Sannerud made sure that magazines were in the proper rotation so that we didn’t have a magazine that had been getting cold for hours going on the camera with cold, brittle film. Candide Franklin and Roger Finlay were understanding about things taking a little longer on occasion because of the conditions. Clairmont Camera offered us wonderful assistance in prep, when they were adapting equipment for us and anticipating solutions, and also throughout the shoot. Working in the center on the continent as we were it was not unusual for us to be calling Clairmont in Toronto in the morning and Los Angeles or Vancouver in the evening. We received great service from every branch.
The many laughs we shared making Just Friends more than made up for the cold and it is always a good shoot when you are working with Tony.
TED OVERTON
