Yesterday we held an open forum for cinematographers, editors, colourists, and other interested parties to check out the latest and greatest gear from all kinds of suppliers, including some generously loaned Epic Ms from Deakin University.

For us it was a chance to get feedback from the industry about what works and what doesn't, and I think on the whole everyone came away with a better understanding of their options in the digital realm.

On display were:

• An Epic M in "micro mode" with a Zeiss CP2 prime lens, a Red onboard 5" touchscreen monitor, and a Teradek Cube HD transmitter
• An Epic M in studio mode, with an Angenieux 17-80, Red's new "Bomb" EVF and a SmallHD DP6 onboard 5" monitor, and a Boxx HD transmitter
• An Alexa Plus on a Steadicam, with a Red 17-50 compact zoom, Arri CLM2 motors and cmotion handunit, and a Teradek Cube and Camwave HD transmitters
• A Sony F35 with docked SRW1 recorder, and a 12mm Zeiss Master Prime
• A Red MX with SSD module, with a Cooke 5/i prime lens, and a Red onboard 5" LCD and EVF.
• A Sony F3 in an MKV AR stabiliser, with an Angenieux 15-40 zoom
• Our Instant Rushes system, being driven automatically from the micro Epic M and the steadicam Alexa, recording rushes as each camera rolled and streaming on demand to multiple iPads.

Plus, Angela from The Local Taphouse drew up an amazing "matched beer" list for us that you have to see to believe.

More photos from the day are up on our Facebook Page.

Finally, I'd like to thank our friends at Hubgear and Video Australasia for providing additional equipment for the day, and a special thanks to Deakin University for bringing along two Epic Ms and allowing us to kit them up.

We're considering putting on events like this regularly, so if you have any ideas as to what you'd like to see in an environment like this please get in touch and we'll do it all over again soon.

A surprisingly effective demonstration of the Cooke 5/i Primes in low light. Inspiration Studios second installment of Sensible Digital Cinema.

 or the you tube link: click here

A Red MX with a Zeiss 12mm Standard Speed was mounted on a motion control head in the centre of the room to allow 12 full 360° rotations while tilting from ceiling to floor while thousands of paper planes were launched into the room.

Eight Canon 5Ds were also placed around the room for alternate angles.

Here's a sneak peek at the aftermath:

DOP Simon Chapman with the new ARRI Alexa

Woodley is written by and starring one of Australia’s much loved comedians, Frank Woodley. Filled with virtuosic physical mayhem, Woodley is an unashamedly sentimental comedy the whole family will enjoy.

The Woodley production team, faced with budgetary contraints, were still able to put together a combination of Zeiss Ultra Primes and an Angenieux 15-40mm zoom to complete their main shooting package and start rolling on the 17th January this year.

Our Instant Rushes system, however, is proving to be as much of a hit on set as the new ARRI camera. We are trialling the system on Woodley and will be posting about its capabilities in depth later on.

For now though, imagine a production where instead of asking a split operator to play back a shot from days ago, you can just pull the shot up yourself on your own iPad/iPod/iPhone or laptop and see full resolution rushes with sync sound any time you like, without tying up your production monitor.

Trent O'Donnell, director of "Woodley", uses his iPad to review a take.

Big deal, you say, digital rushes have been around for a few years now - what's so special about your system?

Well, you can be watching these high resolution sync-sound rushes within seconds of the take finishing. This is a huge leap from DVDs full of H264s, a concept considered "good enough" for the last few years. Now you can stream to your device high quality synced rushes without waiting.

Dailies just became instant-lies.

Instant Rushes will be available as a service to any size production at a very reasonable price (comparable to a high end HD split operator) from mid-March.

However, if you missed it in cinemas and would like to see it, the DVD is out via Madman on the 2nd of March with the usual special features.

No Bluray, sadly - Madman (along with every other Australian distributor) has been fairly shortsighted on Bluray releases of Australian films; either that or the cost to master a Bluray is much, much higher than I think it is. (For example, another Australian film we worked on, "Van Diemen's Land", is available on Bluray in Norway, but not in its country of origin).

And it's all about reel numbering.

"WHAT?", I hear you ask. Well, it goes back to the dawn of tapeless acquisition, but I'll spare you a discussion on the ins and outs of P2 and XDCAM EX data management. Let's cut to the first tapeless system that really made sense at a file-based level.

The Red MX - currently the darling of TVCs and lower budget features (at least in Australia). As it stands at the moment, you have two main choices in how you deal with reel number assignment. You can either wipe cards (or drives or SSDs) off-camera and format them as you use them (the camera will keep track of your reel numbers) or you can preformat all your cards before you start rolling. Whilst the second option may save you the 10 seconds it takes to format a CF card (much longer for a drive) you do run the risk of accidentally using them out of order, which will make your loader look like a chump when they put the wrong reel number on the slate.

Sidebar: The Red One has a few different ways of formatting your cards. First is the "vanilla format" - just format the card and assign the next reel number. There is also a "reset format" where you change the camera's internal reel counter to whatever you like and it will count upwards from there.

However, there is a pestilent evil lurking in the SYSTEM->MEDIA menu, and it is the CHANGE option. What this nasty little guy does is alter the current card's reel number (via reformat) without changing the camera's reel counter. This causes havoc when a new card is given a number and then a card is formatted (usually in a hurry) with the "vanilla format" and given the same number. Fortunately the camera adds random letters to the volume name but it is still a nightmare for paperwork and set procedure.

So please. Spread the word. Don't use the CHANGE menu.

So, with all this rigmarole on the Red, how have Arri approached this issue?

Thankfully, there is only one formatting option on the Alexa - "wipe the card and prepare for use". Reel number assignment occurs as you use new cards.

Let me give you an example:

Big budget TVC is shooting today, so you take your Alexa out of the roadcase and set it up. You insert all the SxS cards provided with the camera and make sure they're all formatted and there's no data left on any of them. Then, you reset the reel counter to 001. Now, whatever card you shoot next will be reel 001. The next empty card you insert will be assigned 002 as soon as you shoot something on it. If you were to then put the original card 001 back in and shoot some more, that's OK. If you then put 002 back in, that's OK as well. Then, if you put another empty card in, it will be assigned 003. All of this without any interruption to the monitors or thought on the part of the camera operator.

Now, compared to the hassle of being super careful about reel numbers on the Red, that sounds sensible to me.

If you're yet to get your hands on an Alexa, try this great menu simulator in the meantime!

We are using the Teradek devices to provide the production with two things:

•  "instant rushes" - a system allowing near-instant replay and review of shots completed moments before-hand on both a traditional 20" HD LCD video monitor as well as iPads and iPhones on set through Wifi
• wireless director's monitor, using a decoder paired with a SmallHD DP6-SDI.

Now, if this system was in use on a Red MX shoot you can tell the Teradek to drive the recording system automatically because Red was nice enough to share the format of the run/stop flag that is embedded in the HDSDI output from the camera (along with some other cool things like clip name which simplifies the external recording process).

However, even though the Arri Alexa has an "SDI Remote" feature which will trigger devices like the S.Two OB-1 and the Codex Onboard, nobody seems to be able to tell Teradek what format that flag takes. I have asked the wonderful Stefan Sedlmeier of Arri Australia to chase up any information he can get about the flag in the hopes of passing it on to Teradek but for the moment our legend of an on set tech Pete is manually triggering recording for the Alexa.

Personally I think that the traditional video split recorder with attached operator has a limited future in a world with semi- or fully-automated recording and user-driven playback on multiple devices. Teradek has come to the party, and certainly on a Red MX shoot the system works without any intervention - now we just need Arri to come to the table and make public the format of the SDI Remote flag for the Alexa.

We've almost finished transitioning our site to Squarespace from the static iWeb-based site that was hosted on what was evidently the slowest host in North America.

The transition was mainly to allow this blog and other parts of the site to be updated more often - hopefully you find some of our musings interesting!