No Woman, No Cry. More than just a Bob Marley song, it is also the name of Christy Turlington’s new documentary on the issue of maternal mortality. Best known for being one of the top supermodels of the ‘90s, Turlington has shifted her focus to social activism. The film seeks to raise awareness and inspire others to get involved by telling the stories of dedicated individuals working around the world to lower maternal mortality rates.

Working with Turlington on this project is her friend Dallas Brennan Rexer, Producer of the Emmy-nominated Deadline and the wife of long-time Abel friend & client Will Rexer. The Director of Deadline, Kirsten Johnson is also on board as the Director of Photography. Abel’s Mitch Gross and NY Rental Manager Daniel Gurzi worked closely with Rexer and Johnson, providing technical advice on equipment and workflow.

Turlington’s production company, Turly Pictures, rented the Panasonic HDX900 for use on the documentary. The camera’s versatility and image quality made it the perfect choice for shooting in far-flung locations such as Bangladesh, Tanzania and Guatemala. Additionally, the project was one of the first to rent the Cam-Wave, allowing them to have wireless uncompressed HD transmission in a lightweight, camera-mounted solution.

No Woman, No Cry is slated for a theatrical release in 2010 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals, goals established by the United Nations as part of a global agenda to reduce poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and discrimination against women. For more information on the documentary and the issue of maternal mortality, visit ChristyTurlington.com.

Abel has a couple of exclusive products that we developed with Switronix for the RED one camera. The GP-TS-RED is a dual battery adapter that mounts to the RED’s battery mount, and the GP-TS-RED2 is a a dual battery mount that completely replaces the battery mount. There are a couple of other fun items as well. The S-GP-S plate is a v-mount battery pass through, which allows space for the use of other accessories such as the IDX CAM WAVE video transmitter.

Check out the video to see how they all fit together.

These two devices work great together, but there is one little trick that’s good to know. The RED has a slightly unique way of carrying the video signal over HD-SDI. You must manually adjust the signal frequency of the video. It’s not a big deal and in fact most monitors will self-compensate for it. But the carrier signal of the Cam-Wave cannot (it doesn’t know it’s supposed to because it is just a carrier, not a display or recorder).

Why does this matter and what do you do about it? It’s really simple: If you’re shooting at 24fps or 30fps, then the video frequency must be set to 59.97i. If you are shooting at 25fps then the frequency must be set to 50i. I get this question all the time on rental jobs where people have a strange rolling image from the Cam-Wave. Every time it turns out they are shooting 25fps but never switched the camera to 50i.  Here’s the menu path to adjust this on the RED:

SYSTEM — MONITOR — HD-SDI — 50i/59.97i.

Takes just a few seconds once you know where to look.

In the past, wireless reference monitoring from the camera meant a fuzzy standard definition image that was prone to interference. Now with the IDX Wevi CW-5HD Cam-Wave (that’s a mouthful so I’ll just call it the Cam-Wave), uncompressed HD transmission is available in a lightweight, small, camera-mounted solution. Both transmitter and receiver have male & female battery plates so they will fit between a camera (transmitter) and battery or monitor (receiver) and battery. Cam-Wave can also use outboard 12v or AC power. Units lock to one another automatically, and multiple receivers can connect to a single transmitter. The signal is rock-solid and perfect with a 150+ foot range. Oh, and it can handle standard definition SD-SDI as well. Abel rents the Cam-Wave in Anton Bauer mount with optional V-lock adapters or it can be purchased in V-lock (and Anton Bauer adapters are available).

The Cam-Wave is available from Abel to purchase or rent.