Video Assist

Here is how the work lines up. Our video-help op roster pulls from the IATSE 891 BC, 873 Toronto and 514 Quebec video-and-data-management bench that runs the country's senior video villages. Inventory is drawn from William F. White Global (the largest national rental footprint in Canada), Sim Digital, Panavision Toronto and Vancouver and ARRI Rental Toronto.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Ops arrive trained on the Pinewood Toronto Studios 250,000-square-foot stage footprint, Vancouver Film Studios' fourteen-stage complex, the Pixomondo Toronto Vol LED-stage where Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds shoot, and MELS Cité du cinéma Montreal — meaning they know how to route video village across long throws, into directors' tents pulled away from base camp, and through LED-stage op pits where playback has to interleave with the Vol's content-feed timecode. The bench is bilingual EN/FR for Radio-Canada, TVA and Quebec feature work, and rate cards pull directly from the published IATSE local sheets. Each booking carries the fitting provincial workplace-insurance records — WorkSafeBC, WSIB or CNESST — cleared in advance.

Here is how the picture comes together. On hardware our ops run SmallHD 503, 703 OLED and 1703 OLED reference monitors with Cine 7 director monitors carried on the C-stand or boom-arm bench, Atomos Shogun Connect 7 recorders for in-village proxy capture, and Teradek Bolt 4K 750, 1500 and 3000 wireless video transmitter blocks for cable-difficult locations. Hollyland Mars 4K wireless video stock is carried for second-unit and budget-conscious shoots.

Here is what we have to work with. Frequency planning runs under ISED (Fresh ideas, Science and Economic Development Canada) range-management licences confirmed against the daily RF scan — key in central downtown Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal where wireless congestion drives Teradek block selection. Bilingual op-to-director communication is standard on Radio-Canada, TVA and Quebec feature shoots, and our ops are as well fluent in the SOCAN and Téléfilm-funded slate as in the US-studio production-runner pipeline that drives Toronto and Vancouver volume. We match video-help op to brief on confirmed credits, RF settings and the playback editor's workflow attached.