Revolutionizing Cinematic Production from ANY Location with Versatile In-Vehicle Connectivity

Revolutionizing Cinematic Production from ANY Location with Versatile In-Vehicle Connectivity

Brie Clayton November 8, 2022

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Dejero and First Mile Technologies drive down costs and accelerate efficiencies for vehicle camera specialists KALA

In partnership with Dejero, First Mile Technologies and camera car specialists, KALA, are changing the face of cinematic production sets in challenging outdoor environments with a unique proposition: a full-service production vehicle that can streamline workflows while shooting dynamic content for film, television, and commercials.

About the client

KALA are professionals in the art of storytelling with moving cameras. As a dedicated team of specialists, they've spent more than 20 years searching for the best ways to capture high-end content for a wide range of clients in television, film, and commercials. Their passion for dynamic camera movement has enabled them to design a solution which adds incredible value to any project. www.kala.ltd

KALA production vehicle exterior

Overview

Capturing and producing high-quality dynamic and fast-paced vehicle footage creates some of the most testing logistical challenges that film, television, and commercial production teams contend with.

Vehicle-to-vehicle shoots, in particular, are highly specialized and have traditionally involved at least three vehicles; one as the subject for the content, another to capture the content, and the last one acts as a chase vehicle to ensure a line-of-sight video signal for the creatives to direct the action.

Factor in working in remote locations or challenging terrain, keeping multiple stakeholders informed, transporting production personnel-not to mention hiring some of the best drivers in the business to keep all the support vehicles out of shot-and the logistical headaches and costs can quickly start to spiral.

Production efficiencies are key to managing costs and logistics in these fast-paced environments. At the same time, reliable and easy connectivity is vital to keeping everybody in the loop, whether on set or working remotely.

New streamlined communication workflows, using unmatched connectivity solutions that enable real-time remote collaboration, significantly save the time and cost a production would typically require to coordinate multiple moving vehicles on set. They can entirely remove the requirement for a temporary local base camp or video village that would usually host directors, producers, and commercial teams.

KALA co-founder and cinematographer Vinit Borrison

Challenge

KALA, a production and dynamic camera movement company based in Canada, is all too aware of the challenges of shooting moving vehicles.

For any of these types of shoots, whether a vehicle commercial or stunt scene, the camera vehicle is packed, says KALA co-founder and cinematographer Vinit Borrison. It has a remote-control crane arm that one person is assigned to, a camera operator assigned to move the camera on that arm, a focus puller in the rear of the vehicle to ensure the pictures are sharp and a driver who responds to direction as to how and where to drive the vehicle.

Capturing these high-speed scenes requires a chase vehicle to carry the creative team to ensure they generate the right shots. That vehicle must be close enough to receive line-of-sight video transmission and coordinated enough to stay out of sight.

Maintaining formation and avoiding being in the shot takes a lot of skill, explains BrandonCooper, president, film and new media at First Mile Technologies. A key issue is that live video transmission has traditionally been short range, which is why multiple vehicles have been required to shoot motion picture projects.

In addition, outdoor location work has typically required other stakeholders to be on site to assess shots for creative input. For commercial work, collaboration is key, with stakeholders from the agency and the client needing editorial input as well as the production crew. If a shoot takes place on a mountainside, for example-or another location where connectivity is limited-there is every possibility that the crew may return to a base camp with only a few clips for review, which hinders off-set creatives and slows the collaboration process.

That's a big deal because we're usually having to drive some distance from base camps to be able to shoot remote scenery, and often adding environmental effects like rain, says Borrison. Those things aren't easy to reset for another shot quickly, so if the creatives only see footage after returning to basecamp we have to reset a lot of elements to capture another take.

Most productions require a video village and a data dumping station, which presents additional challenges in reviewing footage to the wider creative team. Besides just reviewing footage on set, often we are copying and backing up large amounts of raw data from the camera. Backups are generally done on site, however with the resilient connectivity provided by Dejero, KALA can transfer proxy-based files, as they shoot, to the cloud. Raw content is still delivered on physical hard drives, but being able to send proxies over the air eliminates significant delays whenever distance from the city is a factor.

KALA production vehicle interior

Solution

To streamline these processes, KALA worked with First Mile Technologies to integrate Dejero solutions directly into its ground-breaking cinematic production vehicle. It ultimately combines camera systems, connectivity, and creative decision-making functionalities into one. KALA's vision was to streamline the entire production and post-production processes and facilitate remote collaboration in real-time.

Since many of KALA's shoots are in remote locations, limited network coverage is not uncommon, so KALA needed a solution that ensured reli

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