Remote Monitoring – May 2020

Osaka has re-opened its economy today which had been closed for about one and half months due to the pandemic worldwide. 

Something has been changed and nothing has ended. 

My question is simple: 

Will there be any new demand in this market now and in close future?

I’ve already heard some foreign productions cancelled their plans to come to Japan because of this pandemic. Instead. some of them decided to use local filmmakers to do their job remotely. This kind of demands have been there since long time ago, though. Nothing new and I have done a number of such projects in past.  

Wireless video transmitter/receiver systems on site have been often used since long ago. It’s a video assist.  Directors, clients, or focus pullers stay away from the camera and watching what a camera see, remotely. We are equiped with wireless monitoring systems like Hollyland Mars 400S. If you come to Japan, you can watch framing by using this traditional system and you can stay away from a shooter as you like (5m, 10m, or 100m? Your choise)   

What is new is when you want to direct or supervise shooting remotely while you are not in Japan. This is a possible future which some potential productions want. It is surely different from the traditional demands. 

Through the Internet

I heard a recent production used a video conference app for live communications between a cameraman and director during a shoot. This can be at least the best way to do live-remote-monitoring at this moment. It is still challenging, however. It is afterall a private live streaming through the Internet. 

It is ideal that Remote Monitoring has at least two eyes for directors or clients who want to perceive the world around a cameraman. 

  1. Environmental Eye
  2. Camera Eye

The environmental eye is captured with a wide angle lens and camera. It can be smartphone camera, Gopro, or like. You see the world like how a robot cameraman usually see the world in front of him/her. The director have a freedom to see anything in the frame. I’m trying to “stabilize” this eye so that watchers can stand monitoing for long duration. 

The camera eye is what a main camera see and a human cameraman decides to see through the camera lens. For this private monitoring, we can use LiveU Solo, VIdiu Go, or similar systems in current market.  

This new system can be used even in interviews. As you can imagine, the environmental eye sees intervewee’s eyes (because it can be your eye). This can be done popular video conference apps. The camera eye sees the interviewee look off-camera. 

This new system is still challenging for both sides. It will be awkward experience at first. It is worth trying it, however. 

Let me know about your project and I will go with it.