Video assist is a system used in filmmaking that allows filmmakers to view and distribute a video version of a take immediately after it is filmed. On set, the location where the assist is reviewed is called a video village.
Usage
Originally developed to show the camera's view to more people than the one looking through the eyepiece, today video assist is the name of a complex system, consisting of monitors, recorders, video transmitters, video switchers, IT and RF equipment, and hundreds of yards of cables. The video assist crew—the video assist operator, assistant operator, cable guy and video trainee—are in charge of moving, plugging in cables, and troubleshoot. The whole system can easily fill a medium-sized truck. Their job is to set up the video village, consisting of the central video cart and accessories, and in the same or separate villages: director's monitors, producer's monitors, and sometimes DP's monitors (however that nowadays usually done by the DIT). Modern video assist is not only about signal reception and distribution, but recording, rough editing, visual effect previz and streaming.
All the camera connections coming into the video village go into the video trolley. On the cart are the video recorders, the most important equipment of a VA op. The cart usually holds a video matrix, for making quick interconnections, two small operator monitors, a powerful computer, an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and a collection of small tools. The camera images are fed to the larger monitors for the director, and sometimes for secondary arrays of monitors for the producers, clients, etc. More often than not the director and DP request a smaller, more private monitor set, and then the second array can be watched by everyone else. Hair, make-up, costume or Art Department members can watch streamed video on iPads. Off-set crew members like producers or clients from remote locations can watch and give notes/directions over video streams. On-board monitors, mounted directly on the camera, helps the focus puller to follow the shot.
History
Comedian and director Jerry Lewis is widely credited with inventing the precursor to this system, although some similar systems existed before Lewis first used a video camera to simultaneously record scenes alongside his film camera during production of The Bellboy in 1960. Director Blake Edwards was the first to use the beam-splitter single-camera system invented by engineer Jim Songer in the 1968 film The Party.