The problem of defining what a DIT is, stems from the fact that "DITs" are often assigned different jobs on different production levels. On lower-budget productions, some DITs are actually doing what is technically DMT's(Data Management or Loaders) work as discussed in the latter part of the video, backing up files and doing checksums to ensure the integrity of the footage. This also happens in bigger budget productions. But in some higher-end production, DIT's main job is to oversee the exposure through scopes of different cameras and provide the DP with an accurate preview of the footage with show lut, especially calibrated monitor and a blackout tent. Some of the DITs do livegrading, for instance: Deakins' famous CDL+Lut workflow. If this is involved, DITs have to make sure related metadata are correctly relayed to the post or correctly applied to dailies. As for setting up cameras, a DIT may provide a printed guideline file to the 1st/2nd AC so that all cameras(or one) are correct, they may not necessarily physically touch the camera. I would argue DITs on huge budget shows may also act as a old fashioned Video assist operators, serving as a hub for all incoming signals and redistribute them to other departments, but I can be wrong
Calculating drive requirements can be really difficult. I worked as a DIT on a film a couple of years ago that I thought I had bought more than enough drives for. Single camera, Alexa Mini, ProRes 4444, anamorphic. And then I realized that this particular director liked to keep rolling, rolling, rolling for super long takes all day every day and I had to go begging the production for more hard drives like 3 weeks into a 6 week shoot. Not very fun. (Also the editing assitant wasn't thrilled having to sift through all that footage. "Why are you shooting such LONG TAKES?!" "The director wants it that way." "Oh for fucks saaaaake...!")
You literally do nothing. That’s why there is a loader. I’m sure if anything you begged the loader to grab you some tea from crafty and that’s about it.
@@Ajidam Well, there was technically no loader on that shoot since it was shot digitally. I guess if anything, I was the loader, because I did it all. Data wrangling, making proxies, adding metadata, syncing audio, uploading, keeping in touch with the editing assistant... it was just me doing everything and keeping track of everything which isn't at all stressful. *Eye twitch*
@@eruannster That's fairly normal. I find the 2nd AC will hand me cards, and I deal with everything between that and handing clean cards back to them. I have never in my career seen a dedicated loader. But you should have been able to calculate the average shooting ratio after the first week, and then known you'd run out. At that point you'd relay storage concerns to production and they can handle the conversations with the DoP.
@@RichardStrong86 Yeah, the problem was that the director shot longer and longer shots. So at first it was completely fine and manageable, but as time dragged on into the first month (out of three) I noticed that we were running out of storage faster than I had anticipated. I did speak to the line producer about it, and she went up the flagpole and got more money to buy hard drives. They tried speaking to the director, but he wasn't particularly interested in changing his "vision", which was apparently to not stop rolling the camera.
Worth noting that the DIT department's role can be very different between countries and productions. As a DIT in the UK, I've never physically checked the sensor each morning, but I will always have a two-camera Livegrade cart so I can make colour corrections to the footage on the fly, something that wasn't really touched on here. I'll be watching every take live with the DoP and gaffer, looking for lighting inconsistencies, lens artifacts, etc. I like to think that I am to the DoP what the script supervisor is to the director.
I work as a DIT in Sweden, and I agree. It's also not customary for the DIT to poke around on camera settings here, that usually gets passed on to the 1st AC who does the actual settings changes. Grading also depends on the job. Sometimes they just want a basic Rec 709 LUT, sometimes they want a short grade pass and sometimes the DOP will have prepared a LUT that they want some small adjustments to (contrast tweaks, etc.)
@@eruannster Settings for me pretty much depends on the job, sometimes I do it, sometimes I ask the focus puller - it generally depend on how the camera team likes to work, I'll just go along with their preference. On bigger jobs I'll have multiple settings presets loaded into the camera so we can swap shooting modes really fast.
I'm just a beginning hobby photographer and didn't even shoot video once with my camera, but I do have a question regarding the comments above: Why would you ask someone else to change the settings? In my mind it's just a few clicks to change the settings to achieve decent exposure, frame rate, motion blur etc. I know it's a lot more complicated than that, but I'd like to know what makes it complicated enough to delegate these tasks to someone else 🙃
@@ExecuteOrder.66 some of it is practical, some of it is politics. It's the focus puller's camera, they know exactly how it's been set up and some don't like anyone else to touch it, which is fair enough. Also sometimes the camera won't be very easily accessible, so they'll have to coordinate with the grip team to get it into a position where you can actually press a button on it. Some focus puller's handsets have a lot of control functionality, so they don't even have to move to change a setting. Also, a lot of DoPs want me to be always at the monitors next to them, so stepping away to tweak a setting isn't a great idea. In these cases it's much easier to radio the camera team to get the setting changed.
Could be commonplace elsewhere but I've also never seen them touch a camera in the states. I swing between AC and DIT all the time. Usually the only cam gear they touch is a reader. I still enjoyed this video and the creator got a ton right, so overall its a good vid imo.
@@_trismegistus Don't know about other areas, but in the UK the DIT rate is about the same as a focus puller, data manager is about the same as a 2nd AC.
He gets a lot of stuff wrong though because roles are different in every country. Canadian crews operate differently than US and both operate differently than UK, etc etc.
My last ever production I worked as a DIT on was a nightmare. Somehow, the director/producer thought I would be production assistant when I was taking care of 4 different camera teams as a camera technician and data wrangler/onsite editor/DIT. I had to run 4 flights with gear and craft, because "you'll mostly do nothing for hours on end". I was left alone at set at 11pm, having to call a moving company to pick up the rented gear, call security to let me out AND STILL deliver the material before 8am to the customer that I had to edit. It was my highest income on for a 2 day shoot, but fuck that production and producer!
@I Am JTEK yea, being a DIT is rarely fun if you're the only one left cleaning house for everyone else. 😂 I've had similar experiences on other shoots, but where the directors typically stick around and help out. Hell, one directors even stayed and played the piano with some of us while waiting for the delivery guy, and security to do a lap. Even got to keep a lot of the expensive food that was left over. I just wish more shoots was like with those guys.
That is why there are unions. Freelance gigs are ripe for abuse like that. Also make sure you are only doing the job you got hired for and nothing more.
You could literally make a video about a DIT going into the honey wagon and whacking off all day between takes bc that’s all they do. They are worthless. This video is a lie and made by someone who obviously has no experience with a real movie or tv production crew. I should start making little videos that actually tell the truth.
6:50 What? A D.I.T. SHOULD NOT BE TOUCHING THE CAMERA SENSOR.. Smh that’s the AC’s role. A DIT doesnt operate the camera in any physical way. This is just plain wrong information.
It depends, we are more flexible here in France, as a DIT wich is also Phantom Operator i touch and clean cameras on almost every projects i worked on and it's pretty commun here. So ...
I leave the handling of camera settings to the AC for the most part. The DoP on higher end productions (in the UK) will require me to work with them to create custom looks and be next to them.
Canada - 1AC handles all things camera and is usually pulling focus. 2nd ac handles lenses and clapper board. trainee handles cables, batteries and coffees. Camera Operators are the laziest bunch as they just point the thing these days (steady cam ops not included - seen those folks run miles in a condensed area to the detriment of the grip who has to keep them from falling).
It was definitely original, but I think it was overrated. The insane in-your-face editing and sound towards the end went on for way too long and just became tedious.
They do a LOT, such as budgeting, scheduling, hiring, scouting, legal, etc. A book called “Producer To Producer” has a vast amount of knowledge on what a producer does at a Feature Film level (which is honestly overwhelming to take in imo.)
It's pretty hard to do that honestly, if you even vaguely know what you're doing. Also, on any major production the edit assistants will check through all the footage and make sure everything is there before cards are formatted and returned to camera.
I've looked up what LUT stands for, but I would still like to see a video about what a LUT *is*, what they do, and how they are used and so on. I'm sure this isn't the first video I've watched that carefully explains what a person or piece of equipment does, while also talking about LUTs like everyone already knows what they are.
A LUT is just a way of transforming colour in a preset way. A lot of filmmakers use them kind of like Instagram filters, but on a professional set we use as a way of previewing the final grade on the on-set monitors.
After minutes trying to explain what's a lut to my bf's girlfriend she just spit out "aaah ok, it's like an instagram filter". It haunt me for a while to realise how much it's true, but i come up with an answer; you can buy frozen lasagna in your local supermarket and you can ordrer lasagna in a fancy restaurant with a good chef, they are both lasagne, 5$ and 50$ lasagna.
DIT is Digital Imaging technician AKA making a Good image with the DP. You are explaining the roll of an off-loader. Crating CDL's/ LUT's networking the cameras together for changing settings and judging exposure with scopes and Wireless iris controls is more of what you would be doing. Offloading Digital Negative is not the roll.
@RichardStrong86 a DiT is more the Glue between The edit team and camera team If you are running a cheap producing then even the sound person can sort out your lenses, but on a serious production with a decent budget everyone has there place and job and the Dit is responsible for date , meta date, Settings ect. But should no go anywhere near your lenses that,s for Focus pullers and camera Assistants. Next you gonna tell me the grip should the sound.
This is all the technical geeky stuff im totally into, i think i have 10x more experience with proxies, transcoding, codecs etc than i do actually working with a camera hmm... Really great video, glad to learn more about the industry
LOTS of AC duties being delegated to DIT for some reason here, but thats coming from SoCal/Hollywood so roles might be diff elsewhere. I've never seen a DIT really touch cameras, sensors, lenses, etc. Otherwise this vid covered a whole bunch of great info. Parashoot scares the shit out of me and I'll never understand it! Format your cards IN CAMERA not on a computer, ESPECIALLY not AUTOMATICALLY ERASING CARDS before you have a chance to verify backup(s!) stuck.
Parashoot is not at all scary. Parashoot does not format cards, it simply flips 1 bit in the header information of the file structure which causes the camera to see it as not valid, and therefore forcing an in-camera format. But parashoot can reverse that erasure before you format. It will also verify that card is backed up to the destination before you even do that. You'd know that if you looked into the software.
Keeping track of the LUTs used for a shoot allows for an easier colorgrade process in post. Since good LUTs require some tameness (saturating or grading too hard looks bad on reference monitors since you need them for a general shoot, vs the Lumerti color you end up in post for that specific shot), they can be a great starting point that can help with shot matching. When you only need to load one LUT for a scene, it makes the process of managing color much easier.
Data Wrangler (also called Data Manager) is just responsible for copying and backing up cards. A DIT is more concerned with colour, exposure, workflow, image continuity, etc, making sure the DoP is getting what they want out of the camera sensor. On smaller productions the jobs kind of roll into one, and you end up having one person doing it all. On bigger productions the DIT department will be the DIT, a data manager, a DIT assistant, and maybe a trainee as well. You unfortunately end up with people who have just done data management work calling themselves DITs when they don't know the first thing about how to plan a workflow, etc.
I think it's as complicated as you make it. Some digital cameras already provide feedback on their exposure and colors. But in the industry they seem to split up every function into separate roles for people to ensure that everything is perfect. It seems very tedious tbh but maybe in the end it's just less stress on the cinematographer to ensure they do their job better.
Well, I mean... with film you don't know what you get until like a week later when the film is developed. Remember, you only see vaguely what the final image will look like from the video tap on film cameras. Shot digitally you have it all right there and you can see exposure and settings immediately. Also if you're out in the boonies, good luck transporting film back and forth. With digital you just need power and hard drives.
@@ReactionShot Definitely how you get fired. Also not sure how that would be done accidentally as film canisters are pretty damn well sealed/taped up most of the time.
@@eruannster I've seen it happen. First hand. It was a nightmare. Almost comically horrible. Thank god it wasn't me financing it. It's just the nature of the business. There are so many things that can go wrong that it's almost certain, something will go wrong. That's what makes it so much fun🙂
It can be caused by a lot of things, but it's usually when you have lights that are at a different frequency than your camera shutter, you end up with a rolling strobe down the frame. But I've had imaging issues caused by things as weird as a bad power regulator on the camera's sharkfin.
@@charlie9086 o WOW I'm sorry I wasn't trying to be rude I was just saying it because it's a little difficult for me to concentrate on the information in the video if all the time I'm only focusing on his accent ( Obviously it's not his fault) but believe me I didn't say it in an offending tone. i just use the word annoying as an expression but in that case i'm sorry it wasn't my intention
@@DIEGORICARDOPERDOMOAMADO Eh, regardless it's still really rude to mock someone's accent or say you don't like it. He is perfectly intelligible and even if you find it distracting, that's not a HIM problem, that's a YOU problem, so why bother pointing it out in the first place?
