Movie tools on my iPad and iPhone

I find myself using more and more movie tools on my iPad and iPhone these days. I am filming more and with some of my new productions using the amazing HDSLR cameras. These offer amazing quality plus unique challenges and there are apps that make life easier. Here are a few:

Movie slate

This has become a standard for all recordings, be it video recordings, multi-camera recordings, or dual film style HDSLR recordings. I just love it.

Movie Slater is a clapperboard and a record of takes. Each shot is recorded and labeled with all the details you could want, including FPS, camera, roll, and full camera optics, including ISO, shutter speed, etc.

I started using the iPhone version, but it was a bit small for me. When I got my iPad, Movie Slate was the first thing I included.

Two cool features are the ability to take notes during or after a shot and also the ability to take an audio note. Back at the editing ranch, you can quickly see your day, shot to shot, camera to camera, roll to roll. If your memory is anything like mine, you will appreciate it.

Movie Slate supports multiple projects, so your registry is always clean, and it’s easy to navigate and export. By following some basic workflows, you can have a complete log with notes, circled shots, take names, and more.

For multi-camera projects, you can sync multiple movie lists together. You can also remotely control one whiteboard from another (control your iPad from your iPhone, for example). This is useful in larger stages and stages with multiple cameras in use.

Speaking of stages, there is a very cool iTunes sync feature. You can set playback ‘areas’ to a tune and Movie Slate will play the area, update shots, sync time code and bingo … music video production heaven.

If you do your research, you’ll find that a standard electronic whiteboard costs around $ 1500 (and that’s without any logging feature). Movie Slate is $ 19.95 and worth it. IPads cost around $ 500. Tell your partner you need an iPad to save you $ 1000.

Sagebrush

Artemis is a modern electronic director’s viewer. Being on my iPhone it adds a few features that take it from a gimmick to a useful tool.

First, Artemis allows you to choose which camera you have and which set of lenses you will use. When composing a shot (I use it as a preview tool), Artemis, using your iPhone’s camera, gives you a view from whatever lens you choose to use. You can then take and save the photo to your photo gallery and include notes that include GPS coordinates.

Understand that during the early part of my camera career I was a documentary shoot-and-go VIDEO guy with a ZOOM lens. Now that I’m working with prime (non-zoom) lenses, I find that this type of tool really helps me determine my lens options ahead of time. If I have the luxury of arriving on site before the shooting date, I can choose some lenses and then rent the equipment I need from lensrentals.com.

I have also used Artemis to collect images and put them into a storyboard.

I can run and shoot with the best of them, but if I get a chance to take a tour and preview first … it’s priceless.

Storyboard by Cinemek

Speaking of storyboards, yes, this is SICK! I come from a professional background in commercial publishing. We did NOTHING without a storyboard. Makes everyone on the same page at the same time. Speilberg uses stoyboards to define shots for his movies. I can’t begin to tell you how much time and money a good storyboard saves your production.

Storyboard rocks. You can add shots that you have taken with your iPhone and add people (silhouettes), add camera movements, add notes, organize and rearrange shots, and more.

Now get this, in addition to creating a complete exportable storyboard in PDF with the indicated camera movements, you can even PLAY your storyboard with all the movements you indicated! That’s right … Enter a PAN and the scene scrolls in real time. Zoom, pan, shot tracking too. Then export this file in QuickTime and you get a handy little preview tool that’s great.

Simple DoF

This is an easy to use depth of field indicator. Set your camera, choose your lens, select your focus distance, and Simple DoF will show you what will be in focus. For example, my Canon T2i with a 50mm lens when focusing on a subject 8 feet away with a 1.4 aperture – the focal range is 7.80 feet to 8.21 feet. Again, coming strictly from video (where EVERYTHING is in focus due to chip size) and now also working with HDSLR, this is essential.

ProPrompter

I have this on both my iPhone and my iPad. It’s great for quick little scripts or even scrolling bullets to remind me of what I want to say. It has a great editor so you can edit the script or just cut and paste from email. You can also upload scripts to the ProPrompter Producer website.

One cool feature is that you can remotely control the speed of one ProPrompter with another ProPrompter (your iPhone can control your iPad, for example). For serious Prompting work, I use PrompDog on a laptop, but to keep it quick and easy, I use ProPrompter on my iPad.

AJA Data Calc

This app lets you see how much disk space your 3-hour talking head presentation will take up. Image format and codec settings allow you to compare. (One hour of HDV = 12.3GB) You can email your findings from within the app. So now your customers can see why you are charging them for the additional units. 😉

iTimeLapse

I have started taking time lapse videos of my settings. It’s a fun snippet that I can use in production if I choose to. iTimeLapse is an iPhone application that does exactly what it says. Take high-quality images at predefined intervals.

You can set the interval from 1 per second to one per day. You can set the resolution from 120×160 to 1536×2048 (3GS)

Cool features include the ability to start at a particular date / time, as well as stop after a certain number of frames have been taken or after a set period of time OR a particular date has passed.

Once you’ve taken your time lapse, you can turn it into quicktime and even include a soundtrack. Very fun tool.

Non-film tools that I use to get the job done.

FlightTrack (flight tracking)

Dragon Dictation (amazing instant transcripts)

TweetDeck (follow clients, friends, trends, topics)

Facebook (post reports)

Kayak (find a cheap flight / hotel)

Skype (calls, chats, etc.)

Apple Gallery (ideal for displaying your work)

iDisk (ideal for accessing your work)

GPS Drive (ideal to find your job)

SoundHound (great for finding the name and artist of a song on the radio)

Where (Find things near you)

Netflix (watch movies, works on iPhone and iPad!)

Terminal CC (immediate check-in)

Godaddy (buy that domain name that came to you while I was away)

OpenTable (find a great restaurant, make a reservation)

Mashable (What’s the latest?)

Bento (beautiful database)

Flipboard (the future of online publishing: awesome)

What are YOUR faces? Let me know below by posting a comment!