Blog
Articles on filmmaking technique, production planning, and industry knowledge.
Showing 9 of 9 posts
Time Lapse on a Budget: Calculating Intervals, Battery Life, and Card Space Before You Leave the House
A complete pre-production calculation guide for time lapse photography -- covering interval calculation for any desired playback duration, battery life estimation, card capacity planning, and the gear decisions that prevent arriving at a location without enough resources to complete the shot.
How Many SSDs Do You Need for a Feature Film? A Pre-Production Calculation Guide
A step-by-step pre-production calculation guide for determining exactly how many SSDs or hard drives a feature film production needs, covering acquisition volume, backup redundancy, proxy storage, and the timing of drive purchases versus rentals.
RAW vs. ProRes vs. H.265: The Storage Cost of Each Codec in Real Numbers
A line-item storage cost comparison for RAW, ProRes, and H.265 acquisition across a full feature film production, with real bitrate figures, drive counts, hardware costs, and the workflow implications that make cheaper codecs not always cheaper in total.
How Much Data Does a Documentary Actually Generate? A Real-World Breakdown by Shoot Day
A data-driven breakdown of how much storage a documentary generates per shoot day, organized by camera format and shooting style -- from solo BMPCC to multicam observational with Sony FX9 -- covering raw acquisition, proxy, and backup overhead.
Building a Data Management Workflow for a Small Crew: Who Backs Up What and When
A practical data management framework for productions without a dedicated DIT -- covering card offload sequences, checksumming, drive labelling, proxy creation, and how to structure responsibilities across a 2-3 person crew so nothing gets missed.
What Happens If You Run Out of Cards on Set?
A practical recovery protocol for when your media fills up mid-shoot -- covering in-camera offload options, emergency purchasing, and how to restructure the shooting day without losing footage or shutting down production.
How to Calculate How Many Cards You Need for a Shoot Day
The answer is not just codec bitrate divided by card size. It depends on whether you can offload and reuse cards, how many cameras are running, and what happens if offload takes longer than expected. Here is the calculation that covers all three scenarios.
Why Your Storage Estimate Was Wrong: The Variables Most Calculators Ignore
Basic storage calculators return acquisition data only -- camera originals at a given codec and bitrate. The real number a producer needs includes proxy files, dual-system audio, backup copies, overcranked takes, and edit media. Here is how to build the estimate that actually holds up.
How Much Storage Does a Film Production Actually Need? A Data-Driven Guide
Uses real codec bitrates to calculate storage requirements for a range of shoot configurations -- from BRAW on BMPCC to ARRIRAW on ALEXA 35. Includes camera card backup strategy and RAID configuration recommendations.