Cameraman Challenges - Bourdain's TV Crew

The ocean itself can unexpectedly interrupt your shoot Before they knew it the entire crew and equipment was in the drain sending a Bourdain crew out often comes down to two things where they're going and what Tony wants to do . We've gotten really good at shooting off the grid with essentially thirty pounds of gear they can go out for several days We shoot all over the world cause of that we have to make sure all of our equipment is in functional order before it leaves cause oftentimes it won't all be in functional order when it gets back Shooting in the cold is a unique challenge for reasons you wouldn't necessarily think of A camera as long you keep batteries in it and you don't drop it will normally function fine as long as you've got it acclimated to that weather However camera people a lot of times have it harder than the equipment in the cold because they're soft spongy human beings A person out in the cold all day for sixteen hours is gonna need some TLC otherwise the cameras are great in the cold . This is rocking hard ! car scenes can be especially difficult because you wanna get the best footage you possibly can and that means you'll wanna use your big nice expensive camera you can't put those into tiny spaces . If we have a spare camera . So a lot of times we'll resort to smaller types of cameras You can put 'em anywhere you can put many of them inside a car you can put several of them outside the car because they're not terribly expensive if you knock one off by running into another vehicle it's not the end of the world . One of the most challenging environments to shoot in is in or around the ocean for a lot of reasons number one salt spray just wreaks havoc on electronics But more importantly the ocean itself can unexpectedly interrupt your shoot Some of our camera people and producers were shooting just off the coast of hawaii They weren't paying attention to the waves they were paying attention to what was going on on shore Before they knew it the entire crew and equipment was in the drain We don't go out with assistance we don't go out with gofers we don't go out with grips The camera people are essentially the lighting and camera department all in one person because they're good at what they do and it shows in the footage they bring back .