It’s not an uncommon occurrence on set to find yourself, another camera assistant, and even the director of photography all keeping busy on an iPhone during downtime. Take this as a warning of good or bad things to come, but regardless the iPhone can still be an incredibly versatile and useful tool to have in a kit.
So here are five more apps to help make life on set easier…
AJA DataCalc
Price: Free
Download in Apple App Store
AJA is a company that is widely known for offering HD recording decks for prosumer and up cameras. For instance, when I shot with the Arri Alexa we used the AJA Ki Pro. It was a very respectable product.
Well AJA has now come out with a DataCalc app that doesn’t need to be used with its own products – it stands alone as a data storage/time calculator for various formats, including RED.
The app calculates storage requirements based on frame-rate, compression, resolution and other options and is compatible with popular digital formats such as “Apple ProRes, DVCProHD, HDV, XDCAM, DV, CineForm, REDCODE, Avid DNxHD” as well as standards of NTSC, PAL, 720p, 1080i/p, 2K and 4K.
It’s much more versatile than I was expecting and was pleased to see it included REDCODE and other non-AJA standards. The free pricetag can’t hurt either along with the clean and simple looks. Good app for AC’s and DIT’s alike.
FilmCalc
Price: $24.99
Download in Apple App Store
Where the AJA DataCalc app will help you translate those 1’s and 0’s into tangible numbers, there are still plenty of persons shooting on celluloid.
That’s where FilmCalc comes in.
The app is a comprehensive companion to those shooting on any sort of film stock (although it’s useful for those shooting digital cinema too). Where the AJA DataCalc merely calculated data storage, FilmCalc provides not only footage to time conversion, but a host of other useful calculations.
Among some of the highlights, FilmCalc can calculate split focus, sunrise, sunset and sun position, HMI flicker, and lens matching along with traditional depth-of-field, field-of-view, and film footage/data storage.
It truly is one app that has it all. It’s sort of like the Toland ASC app but cheaper and with far more going for it.
It also seems to be updated on a regular basis since, at the time of this writing, the Alexa had already been added in to the app. While the price is still a bit steep, this might be the only app you’d have to pay for and you can’t put a price on usefulness on set. Especially when you consider how much some of the other tools in a kit cost.
MatchLens
Price: $9.99
Download in Apple App Store
MatchLens is a pretty cool app that will allow you to match the same field of view between two different camera systems and lenses. As the description states, the program will “produce the closest equivalent angle of view lens, in millimeters, for both vertical and horizontal frames, between the original camera’s focal length and the current camera’s focal length.”
The app covers professional motion picture cameras from IMAX to Super 16 to even Super 8. Its digital cinema offerings include Phantom HD, RED, Alexa and smaller chip consumer cameras. The app can even help you match lenses with a still camera system.
This app would be useful to help match some location scouting images or to help homage some photography cited in pre-production. As long as you know the camera and the lens of the original photograph/film, MatchLens can help you come up with an equivalent solution to whatever system is being used. Pretty nifty.
Vis-a-vis
Price: $9.99
Website
Update: Since the release of the RED Epic and Scarlet, Vis-a-vis is no longer available.
It’s no secret to anybody who has used a RED camera before that the menu’s are complicated and numerous. I’ve mentioned it many times and it’s one of my main complaints about the camera that I feel the need to carry around menu maps in my kit on any RED gig.
Vis-a-vis removes those menu maps from my kit and places them in the palm of my hand. That’s essentially what it is: a searchable menu map, with a few bonus features.
While the price may seem a little much for a glorified menu, if RED shoots are your cup of tea and the menu is still confusing you, Vis-a-vis could be a lifesaver. It allows you to search for settings and then tells you where to find them amongst the camera’s labyrinth menu.
The app then goes one step further and provides charts that explain the false color (“Predator vision”) of the RED, REDCODE max frame rates and even a time vs. space calculator. This app can single handedly take care of many of those 10 things I wrote each camera assistant should know about the RED.
I haven’t used it before, but the next RED gig I get, I will strongly consider having it in my back pocket just in case I’m in a pinch.
Drylab Camera Report
Price: $14.99
Download in Apple App Store
My dream when the iPad came out was to see somebody throw some sticks on top of one, make a slate app, then have the same slate app transform into digital camera reports that I could email out at the end of the day.
While that hasn’t quite come true yet, KeyFrame is one of few camera report apps that I have seen out there.
Designed to replace traditional paper camera reports, KeyFrame is a digital rendition of those reports and was designed with camera assistant’s in mind. Keeping reports is one of the main duties of an AC and is important to not just the camera department but also to editorial and production.
I downloaded KeyFrame to mess around with it a bit, but I haven’t yet used it on a job. The interface confused me a bit and seemed to have a bit of a learning curve. It’s also hard to argue with pen and paper which don’t have to load, don’t crash and are the most portable items one can own.
The app does, however, add some features like GPS location and using the iPhone’s gyroscope to take angle and orientation readings. For those shooting run n’ gun this might be useful or if someone took the time to nail down the usability of the app it could be a time saver, but right now KeyFrame has a long way to go to digitize its paperwork namesake.
It’s a good start, however $29.99 is a premium price for an app.
Increased Technology = Increased Efficiency
The more time goes by the more that technology, and especially the iPhone, are improving the efficiency on film sets. This post only scrapes the tip of the iceberg on the available amount of apps that can help.
There are plenty of apps that have repeat functions (i.e. depth-of-field calculator), but the amount of variety out there should make it easy to find one that suits your preference. Now more than ever it’s becoming attractive to own an iPhone or iPod Touch solely to keep in your toolkit or pocket on set.
Find more Useful Cinematography iPhone Apps from this series of posts.