Before you leave, normalize your gear
I have been working in the field quite a bit lately which is why I haven’t been able to write very many articles in the past two months. However, it has given me the opportunity to jot down some ideas that need to be discussed. The one that sticks in my mind right now is normalizing your equipment.
Leave the gear the way you found it
Nothing bothers me more than getting a camera that has been tweaked to death. In most cases, like with bigger companies, there is a tech person assigned to the gear and it is their job to make sure that the equipment is functioning properly. However, on some of the smaller jobs that I have been working lately, the gear comes back with some funky settings. So I make the public plea here – on Production Apprentice – that if you are using gear that is shared and you feel the need to adjust settings in the menu, please put it back to normal when you are done.
This is called “normalizing” your equipment and it simply means that if you change a menu setting when you start your shoot, change it back to the “normal” setting when you’re done. In many cases, the next person may not have the luxury of having an hour or so to look over all of the menus in the camera. They may need to grab it and go – which seems to be a planning problem on the part of the producer, but who am I to judge? We have all been there – and we have all experienced a camera that “just doesn’t look right” in the monitor.
So help out your fellow production buddies and put your gear back the way that you found it. This applies to you audio guys too!
