For today’s interactive feature on the Rampant Blog, we want to know what you use for equipment when you work on the road.
We’ve all had to do a little edit at a client site, or work from a hotel room, and – depending on the work you do – it can be interesting or challenging to assemble a good road rig. Heck, it’s next to impossible to lug a giant Mac or PC tower on the road, so what do you choose? Editors, motion graphic designers, demo artists, and product evangelists all need solid road gear and a stable, reliable setup that won’t let us down whether we’re in Tulsa or Toronto.
So there it is. In the comments, leave us a comment with your on-the-road workstation and peripheral choice. Bonus points if you tell us why you chose it, what makes it awesome, or what’s on your wishlist for 2014 and beyond.
I’ll kick us off. On the road I use a 2012 15″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display. The screen is nice, but the fast SSD is the draw. It’s nice and quick. I wish I had the 2013 refresh with a 2GB GPU, but this one does the trick for now. I also never leave home without two 2TB Western Digital portable drives for footage and my Rampant Extreme Drive. That said, a 2014 Mac Pro with a small LCD could be stuck in a Pelican Case pretty easily…maybe in 2015?
Alrighty. Let’s hear from you!
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Ok, so nobody is really into this just yet. No problem – we’re just getting started.
I’ve got three shoots this week, so I’ll let you know how I’m going to address them. Tuesday we’re shooting a pharmaceutical demonstration at a hotel downtown. First of all, that dictates the dress. Snazzy hotel = formal business attire for everybody representing my company. For Tuesday I’ll have two staff plus myself there, both shooting. Shooter A will be shooting the demonstration using a reliable workhorse camera – a Sony NX5U, and Shooter B will be capturing b-roll of the venue using another NX5, wider shots of the demo, and also helping test out some new equipment. He’ll have an iOgrapher set up to capture a wide shot of the shoot for our own purposes.
For shoot number two we’ll be shooting a television personality to help promote a product they use on their show. I’ll be shooting this one myself, as I’m working for another agency for the shoot and they’ll have plenty of staff. I’ll have two Canon 5D Mark IIs for cameras, I’m testing two Diva Ring Lights for RFShow.tv, and I’ll get behind the scenes footage with a Canon EOS M. I’ll keep my trusty Westcott TD-5 Spiderlites in the trunk, just in case the Divas don’t have enough juice, though I think they’ll be fine.
For both shoots I’ll have a Macbook Pro and two portable USB 3.0 drives in a shoulder bag – one drive to hold footage from the cameras if the client wants to see some of the raw shoot, and the second is always the Rampant Extreme Drive. If the client wants to see raw footage looking like something closer to a finished product, the RDT light effects will get me there quickly.
The third shoot is just a bit of b-roll content for a small client. They need their venue captured and rolled into a nice little 30 second vignette. I’ll probably do all of the work at their location.
To do that I will bring a Blackmagic Cinema Camera, an SSD dock, and my RDT Extreme drive. The shoot should take about 40 minutes, then I’ll import their footage with the SSD dock hooked to one of my Macbook Pros. I’ll cut their footage around the music track they picked out (using PremiumBeat.com or Audio Jungle) in about 20 minutes, I’ll add some Rampant effects to their footage for transitions and effects, and show them a rough. If need be, I’ll make a revision or two, but this is a pretty small budget shoot – I’ll likely just take a credit card payment on the spot, and render out and hand off a final.
Sorry to be so detailed, but I just figured out the week myself and it was fresh in my head!
What are you guys shooting this week and what are you bringing?
When I’m on the road, I use a 17″ Mac Book Pro with Adobe Production Suite. I use 2TB My Passport drives.
Equipment wise I usually take 2 canon 7D’s a variety of lenses, GoPro, tripod, Kesler Pocket Dolly, Kesler Pocket Jib. Lowel Rifa lights and an arri or two.
It all depends on the shoot and what is needed. Sometimes it’s just a camera, other times I ship 7 or 8 closet sized boxes.
Everything listed above, except the tripod can fit in a suitcase, not that I do that, but I have in the past and it’s possible.
As far as shoots this week, I shot a corporate video in Miami, Shipped about 7 huge boxes of equipment. The day after I got back I shot an event and I took my camera, a few lenses (all in a backpack) and 1 light, which I didn’t use. This week I have a few studio shoots on green screen, so no need to ship equipment. Plus a few talking head shoots.