I got these from Eric Trageser.  He was a great camera assistant and is now an extremely gifted cinematographer (a fine teacher too). 

He passed them on to me and I'm now passing them on to you.  They're a little dated now but easily updateable.  You should have orders on standby wating for the UPM to ask for them.  It shouldn't be a big deal to do an order for a package.  You shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel everytime.  Take these forms and customize them for your use.

Kind of hard to work efficiently without a PDA these days.  In my opinion the PalmOne line is as good as these things get.

In my opinion Planetarium for the Palm works every bit as well as sunPath.  It also has the virtue of allowing for last minute changes as you stand on the set.  It will also track just about anything in the sky, day or night.

I highly recomend the Suunto line of compasses and clinometers for use in day exterior cinematography to track and predict the position of the sun.  The reletively inexpensive MC-2G works just fine.  At some point, though you will prefer the sturdiness and precision of the higher end units.

Sunpath is a fine program for use, primarily but not exclusively in day exterior cinematography.  Widescreen Software is the publisher.

DDH Software are the publishers of HanDBase.  It's a great program for organizing information.

This is an entire system to help you organize your approach to a project.  This works with the popular Palm OS database program HanDBase.

The central hub of the system is a file called Cinebase.pdb.  This is the file which accumulates info from your camera assistant (Camerabase.pdb) and your gaffer (Lightingbase.pdb)  The general approach is that you breakdown the show with Breakdownbase.pdb.  Then you give these other files to your gaffer and camera assistant and at the end of each day you receive the info collecteb by them.  At the end of each day you now have a good solid summary of the work done.  You can sort and search this info as you continue to shoot your film.  There are various pop up menus to speed up the entry of info (Filmpop.pdb, Cameraeqpop.pdb, Primepop.pdb, Zoompop.pdb).  These will need to be updated from time to time.  They are just provided as a guide. 

All of this can be modified to suit your needs of course.  If you have any questions about this system feel free to contact me.

If you have suggestions for changes, this is a good way to use the blog.

This is the first of two sets of files.

This the second of two sets of files. These are the pop up menus which will help speed up the entering of info.

This is an Excel spreadsheet which you can use as a simple camera log.  It's obviously not as extensive or sophisticated as cineBASE, which I've also published here but you should use at least something like this to keep track of the huge volume of info you need to follow on the set. 

You can just print these out, fold them and write on them on the set or you can use a spreadsheet program on a Palm Pilot.  The advantage of the software approach is your ability to search, sort and, select.  This can be a real time/life saver.

This year's event was terrific blessed with good weather after a threatening forecast.   more »

I've been thinking about this for about a year now...   more »