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Video Gear

Lesson 4 from: Introduction to HDDSLR Cinema

Vincent Laforet

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Lesson Info

4. Video Gear

Lesson Info

Video Gear

All right, so now starts the fun part for the gearheads we're going to cast start over there this afternoon as we end the day is the last section today we've gone through quite a bit of information for one day to say the least, I think uh, and then tomorrow we'll start on this again and get into more advanced gear uh, we're going to go over this first part is kind of a basic here that I think anyone's should consider and, um, the one thing I really want to hit on uh, is that if you think that photography is an expensive hobby when you go into video, just add a zero or two tow almost everything you d'oh there's no, the sky's the limit because, um, they're just isn't people in general, the reason video prices are so much higher is often the technology may be more complex, but more often than not they're selling to a lot fewer people so it's all the supply and demand change, so you're only going to sell uh maybe five hundred alexa cameras uh to which is a very high end camera that was jus...

t announced then maybe, uh, you're going to sell, I can't tell you the numbers, but well over ten thousand uh five d or seventies or rebels a month in the us alone so that's why when you make a cannon twenty four millimeter lens you can sell it for a few hundred dollars versus if you make a zeiss master prime lens that you're selling maybe a hundred of in their entire history of existence they're gonna be five, ten, twenty, fifty thousand dollars for those very expensive and uh in effect exclusive lend sets uh and that's a very important key besides the men the quantity that's manufactured the other point that you should keep in mind is that when you buy pretty much any one of these pieces of device is, um you're going to pay for something that performs well some of the time are something that performs perfectly every single time obviously if you're photographing a sunrise that's nothing actually special one morning and you're fluid head of your tripod isn't working very well or your camera breaks down it's not the end of the world but if you're shooting a seven million dollars special effects shot where you're only mobile explode that building once ever you can't afford to have any failures so you'll find the people in hollywood and in higher and productions are willing to pay quite a bit of money to get the equipment that does the perfect job every single time or as close to it as you can the very simple concept once you're in the industry when you come into it you go to yourself and say who in the world would pay twenty thousand dollars for a tripod head? And the answer is, when you put an imax camera on it that's, supremely heavy, and you're shooting the one time that volcano will ever erupt for a multi million dollar film, you can't afford to have it failed and it's just that simple. So I want to get that concept out there because what I'm trying to do the best. The best thing, the best I can on the example that are coming up is to share with you the high end, not the highest very often, because that would just be obscene, but the high end, the mid level products and the beginning products so that if you're just testing the waters and as a videographer, I don't know that you need to buy uh, no, connor hit it's five thousand dollars, because three days down the line, you may find out that you don't want to do this anymore, not really any good at it, or you don't enjoy it. Whatever the reason may be, you probably going to want to buy a two hundred dollar tripod head, if anything or you might want to start off with a pillow and just use the most basic way to stabilize your camera, uh, one of the most common ways of stabilizer cameron filmmaking is an apple box just a uh a a wooden box and you put a sandbag on it and you rest the camera on it then gives a little more flexibility but stabilizes and you can move it actually relatively well he often find people on some sophisticated equipment on a dolly with a sandbag again on it just to give that little extra mobility is just not too perfect so we're going to go for a lot of gear over the next day or two or three at this point two days and uh what I'm sharing with you is gear that I found to be reliable that works well from a variety of manufacturers to be fared everybody and more often than I'll describe them as this's a great uh beginner level product in other words, someone who is doing this for a profession probably doesn't want to use this they might might work great what's gonna classify the beginner level is a the price and also mostly the quality uh, whereas I'm going to say, uh, you probably won't buy this four thousand dollars follow focusing unit, which is, you know, super high end, but someone will when they're critically focusing a very big scene with some big name actor at f too on a two hundred millimeter lens you're going to want the best follow focusing unit made by man by some very very anal german engineers, all right, that makes the best mechanical things ever made. So I hope you all get that, uh, and also I went toe maybe this year, which is the biggest conference for video, the biggest trade show. And they call that a lot of people called the year of the dslr, uh, at n a b, which is really interesting because these this is a show for broadcasters and film people from across the world and the amount of products that are coming out for these issues. Solares of insane. I mean, every day I see something new, and I try to keep up with it, but the reality is I find stuff that works for me, and if it doesn't work well enough, I'll investigate something new. But if once I find one that works, I think with it until I have a new need because you could get lost in this er and become destitute by just buying everything that comes out, so we're going to start hammering away at probably the single most basic thing you're going to want to get as you move into any video, and that is, um, unusual density filter. Okay, what an nd is is simply a piece of glass that cuts down the amount of light. That reaches lens, and the best way I can do that is to walk up to this camera right here. Camera. I don't know what air be now with you guys, and you can simply see that this is cutting down the amount of light that's reaching lens simple enough that's all that a nd filter does nd is nancy david a neutral density filter. Why do you need this? Had I shot reverie during the day time, it would've been on average between eleven and f sixteen. Why is that? Remember, as photographers, we can play with the I s o we can play with the aperture and especially the shutter speed so it's possible for us to shoot in bright sunlight at half two point eight at one four thousand or two thousand. The second opinion on the joyu pick in film, you're almost always going to be at one fiftieth of a second, so you only have two things you can control the iast so which only goes so low one hundred essay on these cameras and at a fiftieth of a second at one hundred essay on a bright, sunny day would have sixteen or f eleven and what those hd slr video looked like when it shot it f sixteen or f eleven or twenty two. Everything sharp which makes it look like a like a camcorder that's the key if you shoot these cameras out of the box without one of these in bright sunlight at a fiftieth of a second it will look just like your camcorder at that point you might as well chick stuff in the head because you don't have all the cool stuff the camcorders give you like stabilization, timecode audio and all that fun stuff the reason you're going to these cameras is to be able to shoot a child at the field on average if you want one aperture to aim for its between four and five six all right that's kind of the sweet spot in terms of the uncomfortable area for you shoot him to have enough falloff in terms of depth of field uh at the same time have shallow enough you want to get risky? Go to eight you wanna get very daring good f too I don't know I know very few people in the motion picture industry that ever shoot one for one too it's simply way too shallow and in effect you've probably seen this new crop of videos coming with phds alarms with the depth of phyllis so narrow it's frankly hard to watch okay, so uh first tool you buy is an nd filter this you can buy them for a variety of manufacturers tiffin uh schneider optics remakes b plus w filters and format all make wonderful filters uh think about it. You want to pay good money for these you're buying a five hundred or a thousand dollar lens. Why are you going to put the cheapest filter in front of that? I mean so basic but you know it's all about optics and you don't want to put a piece of glass in front of that wonderful piece of glass that you bought that is subpar so it really makes sense to buy these uh they come in a variety of diameters. So, uh the most common uh diameter for cannon at least for the twenty four seventy and the sands you hundred seventy seven millimeter so I buy a set of seventy seven millimeter at two stops four stops and six stops. Ok, the two stops his point six right? Marcus three stops his point nine two stops his point six andy reese stop his point nine four stop is one point too. Ok? So if you buy a point nine andy that's a three stop it cuts three stops down of light going and you buy a uh a point three that's a one stop andy just different language of saying you don't buy a one stop andy filter is not the way you tell the story and then the second most common size is seventy two millimeter lens so you can buy two sets one seventy seven set with three filters and one seven two millimeters step twice as expensive or you could buy what they call a step down ring which is a seventy seven million ring that is slightly smaller on the inside that will screw into seventy millimeter relents much deeper way of doing it. Okay, um I happen to really like circular filters for a simple reason uh they're what I mean is there also rectangular filters like this? Okay, rectangle pieces of glass these um I've done it I don't recommend use gaffer tape to put this in front of your lens right? These actually have to drop into a mat box you can see over here you want a pan down there so totally different system uh go back to the other camera here you go. So this is a map box over here. We'll get to that later, okay, but matt boxes are entirely different things. Um this is what tends to be used rectangular filters on more professional films because everyone uses a mat box for a variety of reasons but, uh, matt boxes kind of cancel out the value of using an slr and that that's a big that's a big matt box it you know is like a sail on a windy day it changes the weight of your body and your balance so circular filters good quality glass is fantastic I have not used the varying uh nd filters sing rays and the new one that's out um is another one that the fader that correct there's there's a variety of filters that as your right rotate them just like a polarizer lands to become more or less intense and I have found to date uh that the either create a color cast of some kind or change color or aren't sharp enough all right, but, uh I still use thes because to me glasses sacrosanct the old rule in photography was don't spend any money on a camera spent all your money on your lenses. Then came digital cameras where the sensor was just almost as important. So now you gotta spend money on both they got you uh so those air circular filters those directing the filters in the end they're simply there to cut down the amount of light that reached your sensor because you can only go so low with your eyes so someone might ask again, why not just go faster and shutter speed because you're not gonna get that filmic looking in a very jarred uh staccato looking film at a two thousand the second it's not gonna look filmic because going no motion blur you're actually going to see kind of like a strobe a skull pick effect on fast action sequences all right? And I mentioned this earlier, but if you look at the the opening scene from saving private ryan, you'll see that very struggle skull pick effect, but slow down a little bit so it's not as jarring, perhaps one of these single, uh most common well can't find one here was these a courtesy finder. The next thing you're very likely gonna want to buy is some way to actually see what you're shooting as you're shooting. So the kudo has made this easy finder, which is probably one of the most, um common accessories bought by anyone entering into here. As we mentioned, holding the camera out here isn't good for balance, and you've really can't see what's on the screen, especially on a sunny day. So you go ahead and attach this to the camera and you hold it up to your eye and you have a magnified view of the lcd. All right? Um, you can, of course, by these little brackets that you put on the back of the camera and go to the other camera here and it's simply snaps on and off there's a slight danger of doing that in that the screen on the back of the canon cameras is actually held in onto the body with two sided tape, so there is a risk that you'll rip it off the back of the camera. Uh there's now's a could've makes an entirely new system that actually has brackets to hold us in place to avoid that just so you know all right, I haven't ever had a problem with this guy all the cannon uh the, uh the repair technicians kind of freaked out when this first came out uh that being said I think it's you know, people probably already know this is one of the single most popular additions to your body when you buy because the first time you guess you look for the lcd and have a chance of getting a sharp image little and see what you're shooting so that's the easy finder we're going back to the slide and you guys get that enough in terms of timing and then we're going to move over to, uh we're going entirely skip what may be a natural progression for some, which is the handheld rig. So how to actually shoot with this as you walk around with it and move on to that tomorrow because that is a whole other bag of warms there's so many solutions out there kind of want to separate it out so we're gonna go to what I think should be the most natural evolution when you buy this camera's you're gonna want to buy a tripod, okay, I'm have marcus come out here I'm gonna volunteer come out here as well and we're going to kind of walk you through how these, uh, video tripods that we call sticks work a bit different they have different functions they do or don't do and we're gonna walk you through it so who wants to volunteer to come on up? All right, come on. Right up. Now that I think of it is I'm gonna have you shoot uh a few seconds of video handheld I think people are gonna need to get the idea hammered into them that handheld video uh just doesn't cut it so forgive me in advance but I'm definitely gonna make you hopefully look bad on purpose. Um all right, you have you have the video signal? I'd eternal trust me. The I s and here you get nothing you get you get the body out of the box so go ahead and shoot the two guys talking together let's shoot a documentary together and go ahead guys, keep keep talking and I still want one percent of the time it's going to look after my accident the accident classics so it's not a natural foot. Got my six toe taken off my doctor actually recommended. Okay, so, uh hopefully it's a very simple point to make uh, whole thing people who are watching this uh, not only in this room, but on the web I realize that that's absolutely unusable video out of the box right uh I think the point has to be made I want to do one more example with this um and that's why you'll find the single biggest challenge to me there's a few but one of the single biggest challenges with these cameras is stabilizing them okay, so you'll see that with some practice I'm gonna go back to the er in this case the canon camera you'll learn to hold your breath and do the least you can tio not move you see it's ok it's acceptable on a hundred millimeter lens in this case with the one hundred thirty millimeter lens and see that I'll use my arm here to brace the camera against myself, hold my breath and make his little movement as I can. All right now I want to show you something very quick and, uh I'm going to show you what I would call a fig dolly move, so instead of mounting a dolly track, I'm going to try and move left to right this is what you would do. I'm simply lowering my center of gravity and leaning from left to right very simple basic the things you learn a video on how to move the camera let's cut to the live feed coming off the camera and that's what this looks like right here we'll get to that one sight all right uh all right. Interesting. Uh, let's turn on stabilization on this new one hundred one hundred millimeter macro. Hi, lens. And that was the question I was going to ask you if tomlin has it. We're not gonna theron the stabilization on this lens you may not be able to appreciate this is much because there's a bit of a lag on the video and the frame rates are only fifteen. A second. You can get away with murder with this lens has a built in stabilizer in it. It says the on ly lens today that cannon makes with his new stabilization system one hundred millimeter macro. And if you are watching this, I can hear it through. This thing gets sold out very quick because here is let's. Go back to the video. Here I am shaking the camera and look at the video feed not cut to the very tight shot of this camera, right? Look at how much I'm moving this camera. Are you seeing that live now cut to the canon, ralphie. Coming out pretty amazing right now. Let me turn stabilization off. Okay. Turning on bad timing, they're pretty amazing. So the technology that we have in the camp quarters is coming to you on these lenses. Sadly, the new say two hundred that just came out the version too does not have this in it. Big mistake. My opinion on cannons part huge mistake because the lenses you want the most stabilization on her long lenses, but, um you can see the promises there that's where technology is trying to make up so you don't have to have a doll. You're legit because everyone really wants to shoot with just this. No one really wants to work with a jib or dollars, right? I just want to work with hand held camera small and get away with murder because it's got stabilization built in and the story the technology is exists on this lens, it will come. This is a very different stabilization that every other eyes lends a cannon mix. Okay, this is the on ly lens that exists that cannon makes that has this new stabilisation built into it. They need to make every one of their lenses like this. Yes. Does the I s in that lin's work with stills as well? Absolutely. But this is the first I s that they make that actually works well. Video. Every stable lives land you buy today works so, so video you'll find that when you do a pan at the end of it fights you it's just not meant for video cannon needs to pay attention and make all their lenses with a stabilization technology should all right, kanan and say I want the stabilization in these lenses the one hundred macro in every single candle ends that you make from that one because you will become a lot less reliant on other stuff that's a very keith point um and there you go we're gonna go now switched to tripods and sticks and I mean let marcus take over and just give a basic demo stay up here uh on how a set of sticks is different than statistics for still photography we're going to pull out this guy first and I'm going to ask you and I forgot you do dale tio go ahead with this uh still head and please shoot a steady pan or tilt for the audience yes, you are being set up. Okay? This is a a still head a ball head that it has never been intended to use uh for video this is what most photographer zone all right so just pan so that means go from left to right in a continuous study fashion go for it it's pretty terrible right? And we all need to belabor the fact it's not a fluid head fluid head is ahead that's intended to help you make a fluid movement that has some sort of resistance to it. So this is the hard way of showing that a still len's uh ball head that you have is just the worst tool possible to use for video so that's it for that example um I'm going to quickly have you level this tripod uh do you know how to do that? Every tripod comes in the bubble we'll show the camera be right over here and you want to get that little bubble in the center and you know that your base is actually lined up and go ahead and make that level real quick in five seconds I am setting you up it's ok? He did definitely draw the short straw today, okay? And you know that right now he's probably under a lot of pressure but he's had a few thousand people watching him uh but when you're under pressure to catch this news breaking scene or this the most amazing sense that you've ever seen there to me is nothing more maddening in the world and trying to level a tripod okay? Because the more stressed you get the angrier I get, the more impatient you get on the worse it gets. Uh this is not how you level a tripod of video markets if you want to go ahead and grab uh the five twenty six pulled us out of the way um you're going to see the difference between a still tripod that has no base that levels versus a video tripod that actually has a bowl all right, so marcus is gonna cheat and make his life a little more fair and I'm going to say marcus level the tripod go ahead that's it okay don't mess with the legs that will kill you that you could loosen at the bottom and you can see you rotate the entire base of the ball head so if you're at an angle when you mount your tripod you're going very fast you suggested this way and tighten that's video for you I mean it's it's one of the most basic problems because leveling a tripod in video is so much more important stills because you're going to be moving it you're going to be panning and tilting it and if you're off access as you tilt if you're often left you're going to start going up you go right and you go to the left you start going down that makes sense you need a perfectly level base so they have a bull seven hands too in a second you go whole thing comes off screw down there marcus this is a video tripod with a bowl one thing you should keep an eye out is the diameter of the bullet changes does not universal I think seventeen hundred is most common hundred hundred is probably the most common for sure but just keep in mind uh every bull khun b a different size all right so when you get a slider or dolly and you have a fantastic head make sure the diameter of that head is the same on both I've made that mistake. Um go ahead. Put that down. Marcus, go ahead, mount the, uh the head right back on. So would you have preferred to do be giving the example you had or this one level? Yeah. Okay, so that is the biggest difference between ah, video head there, fluid head, uh and a set of sticks that was meant for videos pulled that one out real quick and grab the five oh, one h d v s a light tripod is not necessarily a friend of yours. Light makes your life easier in terms of carrying it around, but guess what? When you bump into it it's going to move a lot more easily. The heavier object you put on here, the more likely to just tip over. So sadly, wait is your friend and video same goes the tripods we talked about the bowl, we talked about leveling the tripod. Ah, you'll see spreaders, which is, you know, three different connectors that go on the place the tripod allow you to kick it down and quickly change the spreading of the feet. There's nothing more maddening than feet that are actually going out like this on a video tripod you're trying to do it with a very heavy camera, you can actually really get hurt that's what spreaders helped to do and I don't think we have a set we do his betters here so uh back here uh I don't have a camera a could get to them ah you have spreaders at the bottom of this man photo a carbon fibre tripod and you can see that they help make sure that you don't have the camera slide out of control and um they're also you can use him this way at the end of your chute just pick them up and go or push him down and go mean video is all about speed especially news um whereas doing that with this set of sticks you know it's hard to illustrate what I think you get the picture uh let's start with the five o one which is right here come on back up. The good news is I showed you that gets so twenty one eighty eleven earlier this is a really good introductory introductory tripod fluid head five o one htv from man photo it screws into a standard tripod it does not have a bowl on it all right? This is actually what we're shooting with on these cameras right here and when you want to try and level these go ahead and level this you really did take the shortest I think people got it you can't level it very quickly that's the one disadvantage of these however ah lot of of the sliders that you buy or other devices don't mislead have a bull attachment somehow the quarter twenty screw that goes into the base so the screws on like your general uh still head yes, of course. Uh, you know, this doesn't come with its own bowl. It does accept full attachments. Okay, so you can add one tooken adebola to this and, uh, make it a much more functional head. This is a really good way to get into video two hundred ten dollars a lot cheaper than I thought it was that price correct and, uh, what a fluid head has is why don't we go ahead and and loosen it up is you'll see that as we move the camera, go ahead and do this and redeem yourself um you will see that the motion is going to be significantly more smooth. Now you have a chance now it's hard to tell because we're seeing very jumpy video on there. Uh if that's coming from the ball head or if it's coming from the jumpy video there's a lot of things, you're going to pay extra money for the ball head ah fluid head and that is the bells and whistles that it has you'll see on the right side here, go ahead and put this towards marcus there's, a friction control knob right there that will allow you to adm or or less friction as you tilt up or down okay come back to that other camera you can see the plus and minus sounds minus signs so the more friction you add no more resistance or in this case the less doing it upside down here resistance you have on your head you wanted quick move no problem if you want to very slow move it's going to go too fast for you have not enough resistance so that's what these fluid head has some sort of resistance the one for the pan is in here and uh frankly is kind of really hard to reach when you're in a rush but for two hundred bucks great deal great way to start I would highly recommend it uh another key thing and hand it to you for a second is with almost every fluid head away too quickly release the camera there you go and slide it on all right uh in other words they have different types of plates that used I am not a big fan of these if you look carefully over here on the tighter camera this little nub I can't do it upside down marcus can you do it uh we'll run into the base of the camera and it's kind of maddening. Okay why? Because the average camcorder is slim it doesn't extend outwards like an hd slr this this head was not intended for nation slr I'm gonna kind of skipped too what is my favorite? I'm sorry I don't have a slide for this well, at at to it my single favorite camera mount in the world um for both stills and video so the one thing that works wonderfully well for both it's a company called really write stuff I want to try and zoom into that you sure this is my poor man's way of making up for not having a slide? I really write stuff it's kind of hard to miss and very simply this is a tripod or a camera base. This is the part that you would have mounted onto the camera and the beauty of it is you simply slide it on and tight knit and it's rock solid went on there what you'll find the reason this is going to have a very important thing in a video is you can have absolutely no flex you know try put on your camera when you start to use the fall of focusing rings or motors, you'll find the entire camera flexes up and down with almost every single mountain out there. This is actually ironically, a still mt that a lot of motion picture people are starting to use because it's really well made and the beauty of it is as it's mounted on your camera you khun quickly go from horizontal to vertical ifyou're still photographer that's really write stuff based out of california and it's been one of the secrets in photography for quite a while and I found it pretty ironic that um you know a big time hollywood people are including this into their kits um and manufacturers will that's the artist was type style mount yeah artist places a bit it's a slightly different than this but it's the same concept uh but I can tell you that I get to see anyone news darkest wishes for this just happens to be the red rock micro shane hurlbut is using this and I sure am converting this because after all this gear that we're going to go through we found out after you know weeks and months of testing but the biggest problem we had is that the camera actually flexes as you change the fall of focusing up so um hands down a record of this right now okay and marcus he was like you know really hard to please and I it's not about pleasing me it's about pleasing marcus half the time to make these things work and he gives it his stamp of approval so that's really cool uh that's the five oh one htv and I'm not joking uh we're gonna go move over to the five twenty six okay thank you. Which is the next model this jumps very quickly from two hundred dollars so fourteen hundred forty bucks used to say it's not cheap uh, but you know what, it's? A, uh a worthwhile investment. I don't have the ratings in front of me, but a key point is not only is that last head have fewer features, it also supports a heck of a lot. What less weight? All right, this five twenty six is what we used for jamie o'brien with the red camera and the five hundred millimeter lands in hawaii and we were definitely over weighing it was not meant to carry that much weight. It's a lot of weight to put on it, but guess what? It held tough and we used it like the five oh one it's got a bowl on the bottom. It's got very easy. Uh, lox and go ahead. Good camera b so that you can quickly disengage, lock and tilt up or down. You will notice, however, that when you let go this it does that that's basically difference queen of fourteen hundred dollar head. And the next thing we're going to show you with four thousand five thousand dollars is it has a counter weight that is way too reactive that doesn't quite lied to being able let go of the camera. All right, you have to stop it and lock it all right, so if you want to see jell o for those of you that geek out you don't really see jello vertically do right because the ship is being scanned from left to right but here you go you should be able to see how it looks like the thing is wobbling a little bit on a seem all sensor okay so back to the head though stay focused uh the tilt lock is right here and then the pan lock is down here as well you can see it's a beef your head that supports more weight and it has dials over here that have different degrees of friction one two and three or zero zero gives you absolutely no friction if you unlock it it's more parent think this one has traveled a bit too much and been damaged but there's absolutely no resistance so if you want to do a quick whip pan zero is perfect for you okay but if you want to go ahead and do a slow pan you'll put it on three and get a bit more resistance okay same goes with tilt and locks and of course all these tend to come with uh handle that khun b you can change the angle of it so if you're shooting on the ground level they want to operate from above you would do this or vice versa and of course extend the arm out if you're further away from the camera right simple tools that air there um to use on these uh slightly more sophisticated uh, video heads um why don't you go ahead and come back and just do a little bit of camera work? We'd have the best lands let me switch this to the hundred macro real quick over here I want you to pan from her head down to his face as smoothly as you can and tilt the same time and back did you see that jerk when he changed directions again? That's gonna be a telltale sign of a fourteen hundred dollar head which is a five thousand dollar head will surely on the o'connor there's no jerk right and it's a bit extreme example but you've gotta understand if you're trying to go for professional looking video when your camera the number one of deficit of this camera is the weight doesn't stabilize well that's where that very expensive ball head is going to make you look like a rock star so on a camcorder stabilization I don't know that you needed o'connor you're gonna get away with this head on this camera which has no room for error it has a huge chip that accentuates any motion that o'connor is gonna become uh something you you you gravitate towards there's a bunch of ball heads in between forty hundred and five thousand dollars out there okay, I just happened to have gone to that one um so that's this head um I'm gonna do a little quick side note the hd eh my port on this camera is one of the most up to choices that could have been made in terms of uh output on a camera that is because this cable here will fall out just from its own weight it will bend and break so what I recommend you buy are these little mini hd m I t h t m my little converters and buy them by the bucket I go to mano price m o and o p r I c dot com I buy them by the dozen because almost every production I break or destroy can't tell how many times I've seen wires coming out of this camera because someone stepped on the camera if the court out but building a cable that is so small and can't support it's own weight that's coming out from the side of the camera that over time it'll rip itself out naturally is obtuse and we've already told can to never do this again um but it is one of the number one uh production headaches with this cameras this is cable always coming out looking at boom there goes your life feet not not a professional standard okay h d m I is meant for televisions not for uh professional video cameras that move around with people tripping over cables all right at least though when you destroy one of these little guys I think two or three dollars a piece like a buck fifty a buck fifty. Hey, you'll live. You destroyed when your cables five dollars, twenty dollars. And if you buy the monster cables, which is a really big mistake, you know, it's seventy dollars. Okay. Much easier to replace these little guys here, then the entire cable. So I really have, uh, quite a few of these with me. And again, it's mano price dot com. Right. And what marcus has done here, he's just put a little piece of tape so that the weight of this cable isn't dragging its its by its own way. It's not unplugging itself naturally. Very simple thing we use velcro is well to do that. But overall, you know, cables are not your friend and video production let's. Go ahead and pull that out. And now I'm going to have you work with the o'connor and, uh, asked you to give me your opinion of, uh, the difference of the two again, the o'connor is significantly more expensive. It's a fifty six hundred dollar head. Not many people are going to get these. I won't leave home without it. Like the american express card, right, but I do this for a living now. Uh there are heads in between you have to go out and test them. I do swear by this and, uh a huge part of if not the majority of definitely majority of motion picture cameras use o'connor heads uh just a fantastic design. You will notice from this camera that it has a bubble down here zoom in much as you can it also has a very clearly marked level of friction and you can apply to it very easily uh on the on this case that's for the pan okay uh there's a lock in front here toe lock the pan until you get nothing revolutionary same thing is on the man photo five twenty six and what it does have here though if you tilt up a little bit is like the easiest way to quickly disengage and engage your head and lock it in terms of tilting it's really? Now is it smooth but it's just very easy to interact with. There is also a very fancy thing on the bottom here called a counterbalance and what that allows you to do if you kind of zoom out a little bit is you khun tilt this camera if it's well balanced and release it now it's fighting back a little bit we could mess with counter balance and idea of the direction you want to go more or less just if you could just the amount of resistance so when you walk away from the camera we need more weight is what's happening? You actually need a heavier camera on this that we've the system we only use actually has more weight in this but you saw the man photo bounce if you let go of it. Ah, one of the most dangerous things you can do with a tripod is put your hand over here and release it because you will have the camera fall and pinch your fingers and you could lose a finger. I mean, on these heavy on these heavy cameras but it's really nice to be able to basically let go of the camera and when we balance it perfectly, it actually states and it does work but uh oh here you guys want to see what broken hd mic cable looks like? Why don't you zoom into right here? There it is. Okay, there is what's left of one of the most obtuse designs ever made by man for a video camera. And if you zoom into the port right here there are the wires sticking out from the hd mic cable. Like I said, I buy these by the dozen right it's probably the worst because as you pan until your camera it's going to tug against the cable this is not a professional standard. The professional standard is over here this is a bnc connector and as you notice as you pull on this cable it's not going anywhere all right it's starting it's a professional connection you have to twist it out and then pull it it push it in around okay? This is a professional connector that the entire video industry uses. Kanan shows that many htm eye not the wisest choice. Alright, hopefully that will change the way I think listening on that one and, uh I would like you to now, uh go ahead and use the o'connor head and go ahead and move it around and give me your honest opinion whether you think it's more fun to use this versus let's say the other has you views because to me there's a big difference so there goes the new ah full hd might to mediation in my plug and go ahead and pan and tilt around tell me what you think, not change direction you see how smooth that was? Relatively other camera he hears voices. Poco yeah. It's night and day. Um, I all people are hearing us I want um what do you think of when you handle this camera versus, uh, the other heads you played with it's worth every penny that zeus unbelievable? Yeah, it's uh, lot smoother transition is definitely silky smooth here we go all right so it's kind of hard to communicate to the audience out there let alone people in this room you guys even get a chance to walk in and try this out on your own uh the best I can do is have him tell you what he honestly feels I'll give you twenty dollar bills from o'connor next for saying that I'm just kidding me it's the best I can do is to give you someone who's never tried the head and has tried the other three and the key here is this video will look and feel professional especially when you put a longer lens on you can't get away with two hundred millimeter lens on this camera on a poor fluid head it'll show and make you look like an amateur immediately whereas you put a beautiful head on your camera and it makes your video look professional because you know what it is all right so that ends the uh fluid head debate um you will find that you know, as a cinematographer not some photographer as a video operator uh whether you're doing documentaries news our narrative the fluid head is probably wanted to see the most important tools that you use you know on on uh every single day so if you buy a five thousand or six thousand dollar head like this granted a lot of money for most people you will keep that for the rest of your life it's like a lifelong investment you don't ever need to change this um it's not like you know a sensor inside a camera that changes every six months or a year uh the next thing we're going to want to dio is besides viewings of kyoto you find her z fire that showed you is using external monitor um this is a monitor that's made by a company called marshall electronics and there's a different variety of sizes the main difference you should notice when you buy any extra modern from any manufacturer is the size of the screen and by the way it's a diagonal measurement okay? And, um I hope that's true for the marshals to introduce when you buy a tv but I'm assuming that's what they mean by seven inches yes, it is good. Uh why did they do diagonal by the way when you sell your tv thanks a bigger anyways. Um the marshall monitor a cz marcus goes ahead and plugs it in is simply a larger lcd made to a higher standard. The reason you have it is as you can see on the life uh broadcast here is we have um this is a coup to arm attached to it. You can very quickly loosen it up and pointed in any direction that you want and lock it so that when the camera's on the floor at your feet you can look up into it when it's above your head vice first up basically you get to angle this lcd monitor in the natural direction this is a very expensive way of making up for the fact that there's no flip out finder on the five d mark two or seventy or when you mark for that comes with every single camcorder known to man ok, but that's that's the solution we have right now uh the good news is also offers several other features one of the things you're really gonna want to watch when you buy these monitors is the back ports and this monitor here uh if you zoom in over here has hd sd I connect reserve what they call being c connectors just you've seen h d m I these air being bnc connectors as you saw you can pull the cord and move it it's not going to fall out okay uh some of you may saying wait a minute how do you get I know uh in hdfc I signal out of the five d mark to get that in the second that actually coming tomorrow uh for this we don't wanna cheat look to the bottom over here and you'll see that we're using a black magic design converter that takes the hd my signal from that camera over here and for the box converts it to in hdfc I signal all right uh and it's velcroed to the bottom of this okay it's a converter box it's one more piece to buy we'll get into why we do this later I don't want to confuse to many people but you can buy these monitors within ht my importance you plug it directly from the camera to the back of the monitor where you can buy them with nature gsd I court uh because it's more of a professional standard and we'll talk about that tomorrow in the advanced section okay um just know that when you buy these moderates there's a seven inch hd my back to the keynote presentation and there the six point five that is a super bright that's meant to be used outdoors and sunlight actually kind of reflects light back and don't forget that beside this size there's also you need to choose whether you want h d s d I or h d m r I and we'll talk about that tomorrow so there's a lot of people if I kind of don't do that I'm not gonna be able to give you in this uh, period of time a very, um expansive discussion about len selection okay um because we're going to kind of get into that in day two and three so why do you choose on altar wide or a wide lens a medium lens, a telephoto lens or super telephoto lens? Anyone okay? So when you go to a camera store they show you this thing on the table that shows you that at twenty millimeters the church's yea big at thirty five it's bigger at eighty five it's tighter at three hundred you can see just the top that's six hundred could you just see the spire that's true personally if someone who has been using lenses for twenty years I think it's the most improper way to communicate how to choose a lens granted when you're in a small environment physical space you may want a wide angle lens to be able to show a wide angle of you there's nothing wrong with that but I'd like you guys to think of whether you're a photographer or a filmmaker no yawning cut you live when you're a film maker uh or photographer you're going to realize that you're choosing lenses based on foreground to background and how you compress information or exaggerate businesses so tomorrow as you can see doing this live right now on switching lenses is a bit more difficult I mean I can go ahead and just put a quick I won't do it now it's actually little complex when you use a wide angle lens whatever is closest to the camera looks bigger you guys have all known that because it has the opposite effect of a telephoto lens which compresses information if you have two people standing front to back five feet from each other if you use a wide angle lens, the person closer of the camera's gonna look ten times bigger, the person that's ten feet behind them. You guys know what I'm talking about the same way. If someone holds their fist out that's a telephoto lens, my fist is not his looks. You know about relatively correctly size. I'm gonna walk up to this camera now and go to the widest angle and you can same camera. My fist is now bigger than my head, okay? And let's do the same thing with the tightest lands you can do on that camera. My fist is more proportional to the reality of what it this that is a very key concept in terms of picking a wide angle lens relative to a telephoto lens. You can use that to help tell your story. This is the key, especially in filmmaking. The foreground subject will become more important and the background subject will become smaller. So if there's someone staying in the foreground, people assume that they're much more powerful because they're much bigger and the frame then the person in the back and which is the bbb small when you use a wide angle lens and we'll talk about how you can use that to help tell a story. Okay, distortion is a big issue as you saw there as well, the wider the angle, the lens, the more distortion you're going to see, you never want to use a wide angle lens and have someone towards the edge of that frame they're going to have an egghead because the distortion that's happening compression also is your friend. If you want to make someone look good general, you don't shoot portrait of the twenty millimeter lens because their nose is going to be too long and distort it shoot it was a long of the lens as you possibly can to make it flattering. Obviously, the wider the angle lens you have, the more that the field, you have the same given aperture on the same focus. Mark all right, so on a sixteen millimeter lens at half two point eight at five feet, you might have this much depth of field on a five hundred millimeter at two point eight, you're gonna have this much, all right? We're not going to go and get the field right now, um, but we'll talk about it a little bit later on sometimes you find you don't have enough that the field when you're shooting a scene and you don't have fallen focusing rings you can't set marks, don't shoot that scene within a five eighty five millimeter lens it's too difficult she was twenty or twenty four millimeter lens will be much more forgiving in terms of focusing this advantages you might make subjects much smaller and bigger and have more distortion. All right? What kind of a different way of thinking of lens choice not just based on how tight or wide or loose or telephoto it is, but based on how the foreground relates to the background got it? Okay, let's now jump into talking about lens choice um this is a cannon lens. This lens was not invented to shoot video. This lens here was invented to be used with an autofocus camera going to cut to the other camera. No, there you go. So this is a lens uh that's meant to be used on auto focus camera ah, how many people here still focused manually? Oh, come on, you're lying sometimes ninety percent of the time you focus manually or more like ninety percent of time your auto focusing right depending on the camera you have most people that I know especially professional photographers use nikon and cannons. Autofocus is because it's unbelievable. Ok, the reason you do that as a machine tends to do better than you do, especially after a long hours of work these lenses air called uh I can see it usm lenses can see that note right here. It says u s m it's an ultrasonic motor. And what that means is there's actually no physical contact being made between this focusing ring over here and the lens lens elements inside it's done with a magnet. Ok, that's, great for auto focus for doing follow focusing it's. Impossible, because look what happens. Go real tight and again. John, look what happens is I continue to rotate my dial and we hit infinity. The ring does not stop. It keeps rotating, but the lances reach infinity so every mark, we have done marks yet, but every painfully etched mark you've put on there with tape or on your focusing wheels just got lost. Same thing the other direction, right? What we're going to do towards the end of this class today, as we near the end, we're going to talk about marking things, but setting marks on the ground to find your focusing marks what you should get right about now if you don't already know this is that, uh, if you set your marks on your lens or you're focusing well, the moment the focus puller goes a little bit too far by mistake, you're going to start all over again from scratch, all right, so this lens effectively was not switch the other camera was not meant to do. Motion picture work zuma's well by the way for those of you that want to zoom lenses does not zoom at the same speed from seven to fifty as from fifty to thirty five or thirty five to twenty eight or twenty twenty four it's not a smooth lens it's not it doesn't do it very smoothly at all this lens was never meant to shoot video okay now incomes the next series of lens made by zeiss caesar is ice z lenses I'm sure you guys have heard about um um one of the things that gave cannon a heart attack when these candidate five mark two's came out is that a lot of the shooters out there using nikon glass on their cannon fire demark twos because the old nikon glass allowed them to set their aperture manually before the time that they had manual exposure and there were also mechanical and uh that was not well received by cannonade they're paying attention to that that there ultrasonic lenses are some of the most modern and fantastic on a focus lenses but for cinema you're going to go back towards in many ways on antiquated way of doing things which is a physical lens can go ahead and zoom in on the infinity mark but as you hit infinity it stops you can't push it any further as you hit macro it stops again simple I hope you get that so as you set your marks if the camera the civic doesn't move nothing's going to change did you notice something else about focusing this lance's were first twenty four seventy look at how long it takes me to get from one meter to infinity okay that's important because on the cannon lenses sometimes you have a quarter inch from infinity to one meter what do you do when you're seventy five feet or six or seven and you're wide open again they were not intended to shoot cinema so there's a much greater degree of rotational on aziz lens right here that is going to make your focus puller or your life significantly easier and hitting those marks that's why these lenses come in for a slice has always made the best class ever you know? And, uh these are great lenses and they are not on ly optically fantastic but they also, um are kind of the go to lens right now. Uh for hd slr filmmaking because they have these heart stops and a much longer arc rotation in the lens element then we're going to go to the last serious letters I'm gonna show you and that's this new compact prime lens uh over here and cut to the other camera there you go. These are cinema style lenses over here you can see go ahead and rotate that over there and the beauty of these lenses as these were actually made for the same glasses in the zealand's supposedly it's a better let but the best pick of the glass you can get but what really makes this different is that look at the degree of rotation that you have if you look can you see the markings up here that cherry too far I'm going to go from, um infinity all the way to macro it's a three hundred degree rotation okay? And you can see they've marked seventeen feet eighteen feet twenty nineteen feet twenty twenty one, twenty two, twenty three inches sorry, two feet two point three two point six two point nine three three point six uh, do you think a focus puller would rather work with this lens versus a cannon ultrasonic where they lose their marks and don't have a three degree rotation? Okay, the cool thing is this is actually the on ly uh, compact crime in the united st today, right here is a kind of cool factor um but these they're brand new, they're coming out, but if you're a filmmaker, uh there's, no doubt you're gonna want to do this. If you're starting off in film, you want to buy a bunch of these? I don't know might be a little bit of ah stretch financially um there I don't know they've been priced officially, but there slightly more expensive than c e glass, but you know relative to the you know the master primes they're signify cheaper also on the back you'll see uh if you zoom back in, there is a nineteen uh blade aperture and you'll see that the rings are actually mounted onto these lenses to help you focus right says no removal you don't have to attach rings is will do in a second to show those examples and also its full manual iris control. So as you maybe moving to become more professional production, you'll see that you can control with the motor the aperture and change it open or close the aperture as you shoot video with motors or manually and that's a big deal because on the cannons right now, you can't do that smoothly as your record you go only thirds of stops and you can see it going tio so if you want to go from endorsed outdoors, this land is going to sing because you know, people do that smoothly and effectively. All right? We're all going to be able to very quickly um, at just connect a focusing wheel onto it, you'll see how the gear just connects right over to it you go ahead and focus lens very easily. The other very key thing is the majority's lenses are the exact same size the same diameter, the same length ah and that means that when you want switch your lens with a match box every time you switch one of these lenses in general not these compact primes they're different length a different width and you're gonna have to adjust your focusing wheel accordingly and extend or retract the uh matt box and that really kills a lot of time on a production where is here open the match box on scribble is put the other one on boom you're ready to shoot next shot you're paying to be able to get a lens that is just manufactured kind of professional standards right obviously take them a lot more effort to make these exact same size uh you know if you look at the front lines element here you'll see it's significantly smaller then uh the ultimate barrel in the front that's because trust trying to make a very uniform size so those zaius compact primes and something really something to look into we're nearing the end we're going to the last thing of this class's first inaugural day and we're gonna look into very quickly uh I'm marcus um have you come over to help us out with this these follow focusing units all right and what that is we'll have you pull one off um done there you go, it's simply a unit that ah as you see mostly systems or you're gonna end up using are built off of a set of rods you see the rods down here and this follow focusing unit just kind of slides right on there and you tight knit and loosen it and you change how far it is to depend on the with your lance and all that this thing does has allow you as a focus puller as you'll see it's much harder to focus a camera pan up a little bit by hand like this smoothly because at one point you're gonna have to start again so being able to do it with a follow focusing wheel it significantly easier for any focus puller not mention this white disc here is gonna allow you to make a physical mark on there and go from point a that you mark there to point b that you mark there and if you want to get your markers that stuff with you next ok that's what? Um these fall focusing units do it's very simple it's a wheel with a gear that connects onto your rod system the red rock micro is five hundred dollars this is one of the single most important tools to actually starting a shoot film and being able to pull focus professionally in hit marks you cannot do it very well with gaffer tape or you know, markers on your lands it's just doesn't work very well repeatedly you're going to jump to a zoo kudo one which is mounted on this camera right now okay uh I would like another volunteer to walk up real quick. Um, money and tell me if you feel any play on that's a kyoto when you rotate it do or do not you okay, that's why this secured? Oh, uh, or the red rock is going to be more than sufficient for most people. But if you're working on a very high and film where you want the absolute best here's uh, quite an expensive but, uh go ahead and go and rotate that no play whatsoever. So this here trying to do too much at once. Guys sorry is the ari many follow focus and you have a micro quicker you speak into mine. It's alright, umm you feel any play on this already? Follow focusing in it whatsoever all right, I mean it's just all about engineering there's a four hundred dollar version five dollar version and in this case at two thousand dollar version. So what we talked about earlier, if you have brad pitt in front of you, I keep going to brad pitt on the why, but, uh, you can't afford to miss you're focusing, mark. All right, you have to nail that, especially in a scene that is extremely dramatic and important it's all about the performance if you're working with one of these you know if you can see when you zoom in there's ever so slightly a bit of play in there and for ninety percent of the people no big deal it's fine for some professionals they want absolutely no play whatsoever and you're gonna pay quite a bit more for we talked about this earlier I'm not going to belabor it but you get what you pay for a lot of times I will say that zach kudos and this new line of fall focusing units I saw from red rocket and a b r really upping the ante getting significantly better and all this this one for example the red rock is a first generation one and they now have even a second or third generation all right so you got to feel what that feels like and basically um what a two thousand dollar follow focusing it feels relative to that I'll show you quickly another big beast this's the o'connor uh which is meant for even larger cameras and that she get an idea of what I said if you wrote it towards the camera is kind of the representation of you know you could just keep going up and up and up in price that's forty five hundred dollars for a fall off those things when you're shooting a hundred million dollar film a forty five hundred dollars focusing it that you're renting anyways you're not buying is an afterthought okay when you're a young or young and heart independent filmmaker the red rock micro is pretty fantastic for the price she want you to understand that illustrate it for you and I think you guys have felt it and there's you can really feel the difference but uh I don't know many people are gonna spend two thousand four thousand dollar unit I will spend it what I do comes to me uh if a scene a slightly out of focus it's unusable doesn't matter how much time I spent lighting it how much time I spent conceiving it how much money I spent on the actors and the crew it has to be tack sharp so to me this is worth every penny and that's kind of a key point is how much um how much trial and error are you going to be willing to put up on your productions? Because if you go to the next slide for some people to the keynote slide this is more than acceptable okay, this is a handmade follow focusing unit with you no rubber bands and for someone out there this works there's nothing wrong with this guy like me in the independent spirit of doing something like this at home but you know you don't want to pull us out when you're doing a big production uh it's just not as reliable the last part of this presentation is going to be to talk about uh setting focus marks it's one of the most basic things you're going to do and we're gonna kind of go through that together focusing marks and blocking I don't know how much we're going to have to do it in terms of blocking but long story short regardless of what lends you have the cannons just think pretty fantastic so many of you may notice how hard it can be to manually focus lens off your hd my monitor no matter how large it iss okay uh take some skill and right here we're like delayed by six seconds to take a lot of skill what you can do if you want to really zoom in super tight on any cannon camera uh is they allow you to engage live you which I think we should be able to put on live from the candid camera and they allow you when you're not recording this is key on the top right of a seventy five d mark to uh or one day mark for you'll see this little blue magnify tool and you'll see this little joystick down here all right, what this allows you do as you go ahead and you guys going to some fancy footwork in terms of cycling back and forth go ahead to the live you press it once and you can see on the right there in the middle a five times magnification press it twice you could see a ten times magnification as I move this joystick around, up and down left to right, flip back to the five d are the one the mark for you can see that you can move that anywhere on that twenty one megapixel in this case nineteen megapixels sensor and look at how we can really carefully choose focus extremely precisely so there it is out there it is it I'm going to the exact same arc of motion without the ten times magnification there it is out and there it is it good luck telling me which ones and focus all right, someone if you don't have fancy lcd monitors fall focussing ring the way reverie were shot was by using live you and I would punch in one two times and you could see that little fish all way back there and I'm going to be able to focus critically on him. You cannot do this in the red camera or any of the most high end chips in the world on a quarter million dollar cameras because their sensor is their sensor. It does not allow you to zoom in on a twenty one mega pixel sensor. This really allows me to push the envelope the only thing I really wish there on which is they can do yes, we will do this as you're shooting all right, that's definitely a future request we've asked and say, wouldn't it be unbelievable if you could have while you're recording the full frame view and also and ten next view, if that ever comes to be, and you can really push the envelope in terms of focus, all right, so that was the way tio kind of help focus or, in other words, set marks with live you again jumping to live you, uh, go ahead and punch in and move that box anywhere you want around the frame, and you can really tell if that sucker is in focus or slightly soft, which you cannot tell when you're magnify away out that is the simplest way to take your marks. I am now going to go ahead and set up the other way of doing it, which is the classical way that a first a sea will actually set marks. All right, I'm gonna have you come over here and have a seat at the edge of this table, okay? And we're going to move the camera really quickly, marcus, pick it up right over here, all right? And what we're going to do if you switch the live you real quick is we're going to set marks if you can lean back in your chair well, quick, yep, we're going, we're going to set a focus mark from person a this is person a right here go even whiter you can see the camera is over here and go ahead and pants so you could get her at the edge of the frame if you can there we go all right the camera is not moving all right so I can focus on this gentleman right here that's mark one and then I can focus to her in the back that's mark too they're relative distance of the cameron to each other if they're not in motion themselves should not change that's why did you bring your fancy tape thing? Yeah you measure all right iet's john fante tape thing um you will see on movie sets people using what looks to me at times to be ridiculous a tape measure from the focal plane I'll let you do it the right way actually go do it this way so they'll be a little notch on the on the film camera and you'll see the first day see measuring with a piece of tape that this is forty one of that meat that's forty meters uh he's exactly five feet from the camera and she is exactly twelve feet from the camera. Okay, this is the old school way of doing things that's why having a compact prime lens wish actually shows you to go to a quick macro shot of this lens the land's measurement over here right over here it might be a little dark you're going to go from five feet twelve feet how if you can see that it's a little better if I let the light hit there so from five feet two, twelve feet do you see how having those markings allows me to effect lee if you go back to the wide lens, pull off this shot or this this shot so without anything more, this is how quickly emotion picture crew does it the first day c says five feet, twelve feet you don't have to do any marks, the guy could do it by sight and rack focus from point a to point b it doesn't matter how narrow that the field is if you've got a good lens and you measure it correctly, you're dead on a lot easier than this to shoot with the average cannon lens, isn't it? Okay, that's, why you really want this incredible three hundred arc and these very specific markings, right? If you don't have a fancy shmancy lens, you're going to go ahead and mark, it is going to show you how to mark this on the wheel we're going to go into live, you go ahead and switch to the camera feet, okay? I'm gonna move my box over to subject a and punch in ten x and visually, whether you have a cannon lands or any lands in the world use live you two hit the focus perfectly and now marcus is going to mark that point on his wheel over here would switch over to camera b okay you can see that white mark on the fall of focusing unit right there that's point a for marcus okay going to go back now to the live you the camera feed and we're going to go over to point b he's gonna mark that as well okay so I'm gonna cheat and just have marcus with the knob go from a to point b for that camera don't change anything so I'm going to yell you know speed camera speed he's going to be ready and you yell action and marcus's job as a first a cr focused floor is going to go to be to go from point a as the first person has a line of dialogue and at a certain point of director determines go toby when she has her dialogue go ahead marcus there you go this is what you use is focussing knob when you don't have fear markings in your lenses okay very simple technique but it's important to show you let's go to the camera feed and show you the scene from camp from uh point focus point a so you're lying hello how are you? I'm fine thank you alright there's uh marking your spots in cinema one oh one you've seen different ways of doing it with live you if you don't have a focusing wheel, what I used for reverie were little pieces of bright electrical tape that I cut into a triangle and I would put one on the barrel and one of the focusing ring and match him so every was shot, which just tape on my cannon glass you'll see, for example, in reverie there's a shot with jimmy walks into frame so he's walking from out of focus if you could switch the camera a wide jimmy the actor walks from point a out of focus to a predetermined spot his mark on the ground marcus is going to show us how to, uh, professionally going on my feet uh set an actress marks there's a universal signal symbol that every actor knows about, uh, that will be marked by the crew with you know, if you have lots of money you have stand in so the big time actors and have to wait here while you pre light them and that is the universal symbol about to be completed for any actor. So you'll have to these and the director were literally say to a professional actor, I want you to go from this mark over here, you have to bother marking it and I want you to start here, deliver your line and I want you to end on your mark right here why is that? That's with cameras could be in focus the entire time because panavision cameras for the most part, are shooting for an actual shutter in a mirror. You can't do the live you thing or judge judge distance with professional film cameras, you do it with the old marks right there, and an actor will be very comfortable doing his scene with his dialogue, interact with another actor while at the same time oh is keeping track of their mark and ending on mark. If the actor ends over here if it's a wide angle lens, they may just be in focus. If it's a fifty or eighty five, I could guarantee you they're soft they're back focused. Okay, um, if they end over here, same difference, so I think conrad hall was it. Gordon willis had a great line where he told an actor who like take after take after take was missing their lines. He told one of his crew members to put one hundred dollar bill on that mark. He told the actor, if you can hit that mark, you can keep the hundred dollar bill okay, because he was exasperated. Um, but as I hope you can see on this final example, this is what you guys will be doing tomorrow and sunday filmmaking is becoming much more of a technical process in that you have marks like these on the ground here marking, focusing marks on your lenses are on you're focusing wheels that you have to continuously think about limitations of your technology on this case you know, canon camera with, uh, lens it doesn't have clear markings and that you're going to try and block out of scene blocking out of scene means that not on ly you're telling your actor is how to move within the environment so you can capture in the best way from your camera angles but also marking focusing points that people are not randomly walking around uh you're seeing there actually going from point a to point b in an arc or a straight line and go ahead seat back there thank you they're actually doing everything avery predetermined orchestrated way because think about it that mark over here is also going to be where the light hits the actor the best so the dp is gonna like the actress that when he or she lands right here, that light is actually perfect and the angle of their face if it's one inch that way or one inch the other way it's not gonna be as nice when the light is very angular and precise so it's a whole different degree of art form and you guys will see what we're doing as we go we'll go into fancier fall focusing units we're not going to talk about is the fact that some a c some first assistance are able to judge distance just by looking around and do it all by sight it support phil time profession and a first day so he could move around with a camera with both the subject moving and the camera moving and just by feel know exactly how many inches and feet they are from the camera all right that's pretty impressive also um there's a fancy called thing called senate tate which is too little radar's little devices actually send a signal and hit the subject and read it back out so you can see we don't have that here today. Um the electrical readout of how far a subject is and you can buy stuff from um home depot marcus but it's a good little distance measure that you can buy from home depot do you have one laser little laser? Yeah. Uh lt hilty laser yeah it's used for construction measure. You know, the distance the wall from you guess what people in the motion picture industry use it as well. Just click it's something and see exactly how far this and match that measurement on a compact prime land zorzi lens or if you're lucky to have a candle and it's well marked um off you go to the races and that deep breath concludes the first day of this workshop so, uh, thanks very much. I will leave you with one last quick link. Ah, on this thing, which is, if you want to find out more about a lot of this stuff, uh, I've written about it on my block. Um, already blogged at vincent law free dot com. I've been writing about a lot of stuff for close to two years now. So if you have a lot of technical questions, don't email me. Uh, go see if it's on the block first, uh, the chances that it isthe, um, and on my block, you'll see a lot of links to other blog's in the cinema world that also, uh, do a great job of answering a lot of these questions. Some very basic and some very advanced. And you'll see quite a few links around there. And, uh, that's. Finally it for the day. So, thanks very much.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

DSLRCinema01-01_Intro.pdf
DSLRCinema01-02_HDDSLRS.pdf
DSLRCinema01-03_Audio.pdf
DSLRCinema01-04_VideoGear.pdf
DSLRCinema02-01_ShotSelection.pdf
DSLRCinema02-02_SupportLight.pdf
DSLRCinema02-03_FilmCrew.pdf
DSLRCinema03-01_ShootWorkflow.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I would recommend this class to anyone needing a refresher on video in a DSLR world, but I would imagine that some of the technical topics might be a bit too much of a deep dive in an introductory course like this. Not everyone is going to be creating staged events and so the attention paid to blocking and focus might be less interest. Overall, for someone who graduated in film/video a while ago, it was great to get up to speed on today's cameras and hardware.

Marvin Løvenfeldt
 

Seems like an update to this class is needed. he talks about the Canon 5D mark II. Several better cameras have come on the market since including several other brands, many better options in 2017.

Johnnee Lin
 

Why should I buy the class again to see it since I have bought the package ?

Student Work

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