"The Old Samurai": 1200fps on IDT's Y5HDiablo

Archive article, originally written June 16, 2011

I spent this past month working with director Ben Wong on “The Old Samurai,” a contemplative piece about a Samurai at the end of his life coming to terms with his past. The film takes its context and rhythm from the Japanese Iaito practice: a single attack that begins with the sword sheathed and ends with the sword sheathed. An ideal Iaito battle ends in an instant; in “The Old Samurai,” that moment between combatants stretches as we are given a look into how the old swordsman has reached this point in his life. To stretch that moment, locked in battle, we looked to IDT's Y5HDiablo.

The camera came from IDT itself; our rental and training was handled by Ciamac Parhizi, whose expertise covered all my concerns and all the concerns I didn’t know I should have. Phantom’s policy on camera system training is a little more strict: the classes are expensive and if you aren’t certified you don’t get trained. I’m big on wrapping my head around the equipment I’m employing if I have the time, so I was pleased to attend Ciamac’s training on the camera.

On set I was lucky enough to have the Phantom certified and otherwise incredibly resourceful Robyn Buchanan to keep the camera in check. Her presence was a necessity: it’s become common practice in this digital age to handle media very carefully when a camera first comes out, then slowly relax until smaller shows are asking their second assistant to hand over the slate and go download some media; it’s not such a good idea with one of these cameras. IDT’s camera is, like many such cameras, primarily designed for laboratory use, and takes some care to cooperate when placed next to a rain machine in a parking lot at night; although physically rugged, camera settings are accessed and adjusted through the Windows workstation you’ve set up on set. The camera is recognized over a LAN, with an IP address; it’s not that odd from a software engineering perspective but a little odd to discuss with your technician after giving lighting notes to your gaffer. The camera shoots a certain number of frames given a resolution to sample from its sensor, and those frames are chewed through faster or slower depending on the framerate you designate. The killer is that once the mag is depleted it’ll take some time to download; this is dead production time unless you have another camera body, as the IDT camera doesn’t have removable magazines.

Drawbacks taken into account we made our day; we continued the show on a Red MX from Digital Film Studios, and I got to play around with a Tokina 11-16, rehoused by Duclos for PL-Mount use. The lens was a necessity to cover wides on the Y5HDiablo’s approximate Super16mm sensor, but we wore it several times throughout the rest of the show. It’s a very sharp lens, and Duclos’ work makes it a pleasure to use.

IDT Y5HDiablo & Red ONE MX
Lomo Spherical Primes & Duclos Tokina Zoom
Rentals from Digital Film Studios & IDT

Dir. Ben Wong
Gaffer Colin Trenbeath