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Africa 2009: Filming Woes

birdc

Once we had our destination locked, I started bombarding Craig Berger from Oasis Africa about filming in Kruger. The problem I quickly learned was that you can’t shoot from the roof like you can in so many other parts of Africa. Getting out of the vehicle is also strictly prohibited except in a few very isolated spots.

Normally you lay a beanbag or some other support on top of the roof and you have a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding area.

So, I’m going to Africa, I’m taking a brand new camera from Panasonic to get them some good footage and I have to sit inside a van and shoot out of a sliding window. The alarm bells were already going off.

So, I tried to find out what other crews did when filming in a situation like that. Well, there really isn’t much info out there. The information that I could find was all on setups that were on top of the vehicle or in an open vehicle.

My first thought was to order a Molar beanbag support. This beanbag looks like a big molar, hence its name. I picked one up, filled it with birdseed and headed out to do some test shooting on the river near my house. The camera picked up any movement or vibration. This wasn’t going to work.

Craig had made some buckwheat hull bag supports that fit over the windowsill. He said that they would absorb a lot of vibration. We also brought along a Cinnesaddle which is basically a beanbag with a cradle shape so that the camera is supported on both sides which normally works great in situations where you can lock down the camera.

I wanted to try and get some time-lapse sequences inside the camps so I wanted to bring a tripod along for those as well.

The State Department has you so scared that I was afraid to pack my Miller carbon fiber tripod legs in my checked luggage for fear I’d never see the $800 legs again. So what to do?

There are plenty of small lightweight carbon fiber tripods for still cameras. I could easily get one of these and make it sort of work for video, but I wanted something that was more than a one use deal. If I was going to spend several hundred dollars, I wanted a tripod that was more suited for video.

Video tripods have what’s called a bowl that sits between your tripod legs and the head. This allows you to loosen one knob and level the entire tripod head so that you can pan and tilt while keeping the camera level. Think of it as an upside down ball head for still cameras.

I finally found a carbon fiber tripod that had a bowl for video and was small enough to put in my carry on bag. It was half the cost of my Miller sticks but for $400 I could put this in my carry on bag and not have to worry if it was going to show up in Kruger or not.

So, I packed a Bogen 503 fluid head, my Feisol CT-3342 carbon fiber tripod and I was good to go.

We arrived in Kruger early enough that we can go out on an afternoon game drive.

We just met Craig, piled everything in the van and we’re off to go film already.

Usually I like to get to know an area a bit so I can get a vibe for how I want to shoot. Not here.

We stopped long enough to check into our lodging, unload everything, heat up some Chakalaka and we were out the door.

Craig has some fantastic buckwheat husk bags that are attached to a metal frame work that fit over the windowsill. For still photography they are fantastic. Plus they make a great arm support when you’re travelling down the road looking for wildlife.

The problem with shooting video is that you have to take this 14 pound camera and BALANCE it on the beanbag. If you let go, the camera tumbles to the ground, game over.

So after a couple days of shooting I had to come up with something else. The footage was ok in many instances but it looked handheld instead of supported.

We tried just about everything we could think of but it was Angi who suggested I sit in the middle seat, flip up the seat closest to the door and wedge my tripod inside and shoot out the window.

So, I scrambled in the van, set up the tripod, mounted the camera and pointed it at some impalas that were grazing on the far side of the camp.

Well what do ya know, as long as I didn’t move inside the van, I was able to get fairly steady footage. As long as we didn’t move around too much it worked out great.

I did the same thing once we moved over to the other van but with its stiffer suspension, even breathing would rock the camera.

So why not go back in Craig’s van? In hind sight I probably should have. But I thought if no one moved, we could make this other van work. We wanted to be able to use Craig as a forward scout. Craig had a pair of radios so we could stay in contact with each other. So if I was filming some impala, Craig could go up ahead and say “Hey, there’s some lions up here.” And off we’d go.

It was a great system because I could stay with a subject and not worry that I was missing something just around the bend. Because of Craig’s forward scouting, I was able to get some fantastic shots that I would have missed if we had stayed where we were.

After each drive, we had one in the morning and one in the afternoon, we’d return back to camp and I would recharge the batteries and transfer the footage to hard drives.

With two 32 gig P2 cards, I never had to worry about running out of capacity. Although I shot so much, I was worried I was going to run out of portable hard drive space. ☺

I brought along 320 gig Western Digital hard drives to back up the footage after each drive. They’re small, lightweight and reliable. They easily travelled in my carry-on bag.

Africa 2009: The Safari Begins

monkey

I had done a lot of research on Safari companies in preparation for the trip. A lot of web surfing, a lot of emails. One company really stood out of the crowd to me and that was Craig Berger’s Oasis Africa.

Craig is Oasis Africa. So you’re not dealing with a company that has a lot of overhead which keeps prices reasonable.

You really can’t compare Oasis Africa’s prices with other companies because, most often, you get more by hiring Craig.

Not only will Craig help you plan your Safari, he’s also your guide while you’re there. So there’s no miscommunication because you deal only with Craig. He sends out emails not only on what to pack, what to wear but also sends a detailed series of questions about your likes and dislikes so he can plan based on YOUR desires and not some canned tour where you have to conform to their schedule.

I would not hesitate to recommend Oasis Africa to anyone. If you book a Safari with Craig, tell him I sent you. Maybe he’ll whip up a batch of his famous Chakalaka for you. Yes. Chakalaka is really a dish and it’s AWESOME! Just a side note, if you bring home some Chakalaka spice, make sure you use it sparingly and not a whole box of spice at once! 🙂

Kevin & Angi with the HPX-300
Now that Panasonic has held their press conference I can let you in on what part of our mission was. You see, Panasonic is introducing a new camera this year. It’s the HPX-300. It’s a fantastic camera. When they unveil these new cameras, people want to see what they can do. What better way to do that then put one in the hands of a wildlife cinematographer and send him off to Africa and see what he can do with it.

So, that’s what happened. Panasonic shipped the camera to me to give me a few days to familiarize myself with it before we left. Now, this camera is a full size professional camera, you know the kind you see sitting on the shoulders of news cameramen etc. So it was no easy task to get the camera, lens and batteries all in one carry-on bag that would fit in the overhead bin of a small regional jet. Thankfully I had picked up a ThinkTank Airport Acceleration bag.

It’s different than the Lowe Trekker series bags I have for my still cameras in that it’s not rounded near the top so it has a larger useable area inside to pack the big HPX-300 in. I wanted to get the roller but was concerned that if they weighed the bag with the 300 inside along with the lens and batteries, it would be over the allowed weight. So I went with the backpack.

Another nice thing about it is that it comes with a case for my laptop which can slide inside the front pocket of the pack so I could carry everything in one bag and take out the laptop when I needed to squeeze the pack into the overhead of the regional jets.

Ok, so back to the Safari.

Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport by Angi Railsback

Since Iowa weather is so unpredictable, we decided to fly out a few days early to make sure we didn’t encounter any weather delays or cancellations. Iowa weather can turn on a dime and it’s not uncommon for flights to be cancelled because of a winter storm.

Because we came in early, Craig was busy picking up provisions for the tour and prepping his vehicle for the brutal assault on dirt roads. We were met at the airport by his friend Achim who operates Thokozani Lodge

Achim and his wife Monika make you feel like your a part of their family with their generous hospitality. We would be staying with them later during our trip but for now waiting on the patio and enjoyed the silence and incredible beauty of their gardens.

Craig arrived shortly fully provisioned and ready to go into the park. The Safari wasn’t going to officially start for a few days but it was nice to get into the park and do some scouting and see what the filming situations would be like.

As soon as we entered the park we were greeted by a herd of impala. Of course we were all excited. I mean here is a herd of impala that until this moment we had only seen on Animal Planet or in zoos. Craig said that impalas were the parks “fast food” and that there are thousands upon thousands born every year. He said you’ll see them everywhere and eventually not even slow down when you see a huge herd. How can that be? I mean these are impala!!! But he was right, within a few days we would pass by herd after herd and not even bother to turn on the camera. 🙂

Something that I thought was interesting is Craig explained that impala are pretty smart compared to our whitetail deer back home. On about any road in Iowa, you’ll find deer dead on the side of the road, the victim of a collision with a vehicle. But here, the impala were smart enough not to get in the way. Even though we drove past hundreds on the side of the road, none would jump in front of us or crossed well before they would have met with our bumper.

Of course the park is full of predators that would make an easy meal out of a road killed impala, in all the miles we covered, I never did see sign of any animal that had been hit by a vehicle.

We drove to our first camp, Pretoriuskop. It’s the oldest rest camp in Kruger and has a large population of white rhino in the area.

The lodging was very nice. Certainly not what I was expecting. Craig had arranged for us to have a guest house. So we had a three bedroom two bath cottage with kitchen and living/dining room. All the bedrooms had air conditioning. Durning the day we would open our bedroom doors to cool off the main area of the house. This would be enough to keep the entire house cool all day and night.

We unloaded all our gear, rested a bit then headed out on our first game drive.

It turned out that it was a good thing we arrived early. Trying to shoot out of a window with a 14 pound camera sitting on a bean bag proved almost impossible.

In the next installment of Africa 2009, I’ll cover the problems we had and ultimately what we had to do in order to solve them and get some good footage.