Shooting in China remotely requires more than one stable solutions, over the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, we have been helping a lot of clients with their projects in China, offering the China remote shooting solutions to achieve their project success, we are here to share some tips today about what we been doing so you can save some time when you are in the similar situations.
Latency is always you enemy when it comes to Remote Shooting
Having huge latency is problematic for the production, when your remote crews are on set, hearing your voice after few seconds can be confusing and time consuming, what you really want is the no-latency solutions, we really recommand our clients to keep the options open, while using the ZOOM, you also need to have something back up, such as wechat/whatsapp, or microsoft team, blue jeans, whatever as a backup for texting if the voice chatting platform performs badly.
China has 5G network, so it’s usually quite easy to set up the onsite hotspot for your crews, however, you always want to use the wifi as much as possible, in this case, WIFI will work better most of the time because it comes from the cable network, which means it outperforms the roaming network.
Communication can be messy, keep it short and limited
Throughout the whole year, our remote shooting projects all use this rule, that we only keep limited access to the channel, only 1-3 persons are allows to access from the crew side, make it easy for information to spread through the 1-3 persons on site, same thing should be applied to the clients, only director and key clients should be able to talk back on the channel with the crew, this way, we keep the information with the essential members.
We also understand that there are many different situations in different project, if clients have a lot of people need to oversee the production, they should be on the ZOOM but they should keep mute, or open a separate channel for director and clients only, so they can keep the discussion private and not distracting the local crews.
Video monitoring on site solutions
While a lot of people think monitoring the 4K or 6K is tricky, we have achieved most of monitoring through IM platform and Qtake monitor, these applications transmit the signal from the camera directly and in good times, it won’t have huge delay, keep everyone on the same page.
Having Rehearsal is always better
Whether you are shooting with the celebrity or some talents, we find it so much better to have a rehearsal day, by doing everything once before the shooting day, you make sure everything on set is ready, and shots are all cleared with the camera crews and on site assistant directors, more over, you can test your network in the same situation, so you know which set up works better for you.
Bilingual, Native Language Assistant Director & Cameraman
You need bilingual or native language crews for your shoot in China, we have a solid team that speaks good English and also native English producers that can join the communication to assist the shoot.
Bilingual film crews are not translators, as film crews hands on the production and they need to work fast to catch up the pace during the day, at the same time, they also need to talk back to the clients & director for communications.
Last but not least: Positive attitude
That’s everything we find useful when it comes to remote shooting, we find it very useful when you keep the communication as early as possible, keep everyone on the project positive about the project is important, so everyone can have a good vibe on the shooting day.
We are far from the production super star level, but we hope our experience can help your next project in China.
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