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Gear Breakdown

Lesson 5 from: Keep it Simple: Video for Photographers

Lindsay Adler, Jeff Rojas

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Lesson Info

5. Gear Breakdown

Lesson Info

Gear Breakdown

I'm going to start off with talking about variety because maybe some of you that our wedding photographers no that you need to get a variety of shots to design an album so this is a little bit similar but when you watch a movie usually and you can do this opposite you see what they do is they say okay movie wide shot introduced the scene so you know where you are the zoom in a little bit so you can see who the characters are then they get like an over the shoulder a close up shot of each character so you get to know each one of them and they get a detail shots you can feel like you're there and then they get like a super detail really close up uh that's what you guys want to be able to do so you have something to edit with so I would say shoot more angles than you think you need it doesn't necessarily mean run more time like I'm not saying like you know if you get the shot and it's relatively still for like two three minutes but shoot a couple different angles moving closer we've been ...

a little bit pull back a little bit they have a variety so I'm going to give you that example of how you take basically a girl a couch in a bed and turn it into a two minute piece that can actually be interesting because that could be something that a lot of you guys would do uh so important to remember that this is where those camera shots that thea lenses I was talking about before you will want to bury your lens usage you could stick with one lens the whole time but it's gonna take a lot a lot more difficult so all those things we talked about before I usually have my one fifty macro um fifty and in eighty five maybe and this is this leads actually extremely important it's always important to remember you're on into saying what you're shooting not vice versa what you're seeing is totally different than what they're getting at what you're getting out of camera times so psychologically you have to kind of into everything that I I'm shooting everything that I'm editing post somebody's goingto watch this and it's their total perception that's why people going to stories when they're editing video because they want to keep it intriguing for somebody to watch it for the two three minutes into of a piece but by all means every camera shake every movement anything that you do in camera somebody's interpreting that in their own way so it's again it's extremely important that you meant you remember that so if you forget the wide shot people might have no idea where you are in other words so I can't say for granted that they know what's going on you have to shoot that so let's take a look at a couple of things um camera shots like I said introduces seen meet the characters engaged with the characters experienced detail so I'm going to run through a few this would be a wide shot you see the bedroom establishing the scene you could go super wide and even go with the wider lens and that not necessary it's probably actually no that's with my twenty four to seventy at I think was at around twenty four twenty four to thirty five establishing the scene all right let's move in a little bit meet the character a little bit more so here I mean I still have some of the environment seeing mid length before it was full length I was moving a little closer going teo know her a little bit more and closer shot so it's not like an extreme close up yet but getting a little more portrait notice and all of these these are poses that you would do for photography like that's the great still invention so were the rest of them so everything was photography still applies and then we can go for close up and then extreme close up and this is with the one fifty so the lenses that we used for this particular shoot we both shot we had a twenty four to seventy in eighty five of fifty and a one fifty just so you know so I mean you know everything four lenses a lot or a little but if I'm trying to make a whole piece out of a girl on a bed or a couch the variety lenses does help me versus a ton of action everything going on like maybe I have a model like the one that I did before that I showed you guys the high contrast black and white that is one angle one shot one lens on the tripod because I don't need the variety of angles to make a difference it's her movement and the clothing that's making interesting so for this the variety of shots makes a big difference I'm going to give you a couple of tips for when you're shooting these riders shots first of all make a shot list just just so you know I know I want a picture ah close up of the eyes a close up of the lips maybe a close up of her hand on the pearls I want a mid length shot like make mood boards so what I do in fashion photography is I put together a collection of images to express what I'm looking for so maybe I just bring four five boudoir poses that I want to make sure I get at some point doesn't have to be any particular order is just I want to make sure I have that so I'll bring that as well so here's a shooting tips for your six shots wait wait wait so we had we did have a quote unquote set there really what we did is we rented a hotel room at a local of bread and breakfast about maybe an hour outside the city and so really we had the chaise and the bed but there is a wide range of different shots and you could take stills from those shots and put together an album like I think kind of album mentality for example have a boudoir session and you know they want a twenty page album and you're like oh my god that's hot pictures same thing you want to do for video just think like twenty page album of stills but now it's for video to make it two minutes one of the things that we did with this is you want to you want to make sure that you're kind of position in your shots if you're gonna shoot video right so this specific section there's two rooms there's a living room and a bedroom on the opposite side of the sons completely backlit and it's obviously moving in the background so how do you prepare for that you're gonna make sure where's the son in positions where I'm planning to shoot that specific day from shooting that's all natural light so depending where I'm going to shoot so we use an app called sun seeker and what it does it lets us view more or less where the sun is in relation to what time we're going to be shooting so if we're walking into a room and we're saying okay when is this specific background going be backlit or when there's gonna be light in that specific room that's when we shoot so we kind of organize ourselves that way it's really cool because it's fun I've had so when you when you you have it you can actually have it be camera so you're seeing the scene and then it shows you where the sun will be so you can actually like and at a specific time so you can see seven o'clock it puts a dot for where it will be so yeah if I if he was really smart cause I didn't think to bring out the sunseeker because again like you said this was one hundred percent naturally I think we pull out a reflector like twice um oh just reflect her note before I forget to say this reflectors are great but if you have a assistant that moves its video you see is it so you see the reflector wiggling so it's actually better one of the things that I recommend it's made by westcott and it is a reflector holding arm a reflector holding immobile arm is better than a voice activated person light stand you know so how get one of those instead you'll be able to see in the video and what kind of confused because like why is the light moving right now in your water right looks like good wriggling so yeah one hundred percent natural light and I think we used a silver reflector once or twice uh so just again preparing shots making sure you know what you need and then organizing everything and regrets today before you shoot same thing that you would do in photography walking into a situation knowing what you're going to do before you actually do it yeah he was great like I said he I would've didn't even don't even occur to me that the light would be totally gone from that first room by the time we would if we did it the other way around which is what I originally thought so preparation that's amount of planning and so that was one of the questions about like talking to your clients and figuring out I mean it's you know unless there's a big budget I'm not doing like a massive amount of preparation but like at least knowing where your light issues also sunseeker just when it comes to conscious setting expectations I'm more or less what time to be their etcetera etcetera okay so just a couple of shooting tips hears something different for video that doesn't exist in photography for when you're shooting to keep in mind the first thing is you want to avoid jump jump cuts here's what that means let's say for example I am photographing you okay so somebody straight in front of me right now and I go ahead and I film a little bit at twenty four millimeters I keep my feet completely planted my camera on the tripod I film I stopped filming then I zoom in to say to say the twenty first seventy zoom in at seventy and record again so what I have is the exact same angle the exact same height two clips one at twenty four and one at seventy if you edit those together the video looks like it stutters it jumps because although there's no perspective change so it just jumps forward the times that they do that in the movies is to make you uneasy so jump cuts is probably a really big mistake that a lot of photographers make we got your tripod set up a tripod team me means don't move so what they'll do is they'll take it and go zoom in if you try to edit that together it won't work so if you want to avoid jump cuts it's not even that big of a deal I can do my twenty four millimeters here and if I just do my seventy from here that's enough it just needs to be a little bit of off access maybe if your numbers person it's recommended like fifteen to twenty degrees minimum off axis just a little bit of a jump not breaking the one eighty just from here to maybe here so that's one way to avoid jump cuts the next thing is while you were filming don't zoom don't zoom okay of course it's always breaking the rules when you're zooming it's like a feeling of impending doom you're like moving in never seen like that albert hitchcock I kind of feel where he's pulling out like zooming in at the same time basically that's cool that's a really cool you have you ever seen the ones in uniform movies where goto like it looks like the background is expanding while you're moving in there physically darling or physically moving in wall zooming in or out yeah it's a really cool it freaks me out but I've never used it but it's good uh so you don't want to zoom basically use your huge your feet move around and if you are in a shot on a mid shot you don't want to zoom but you could maybe have a camera movement so we'll talk about that um basically think about it this way when you're looking at somebody your eyes don't zoom in but if you want to get closer you walk closer so it's just it's a matter of like if you're going for you know verisimilitude reality something like that it looks more cinema to move in versace zoom in er and then last one something to keep in mind is do not move your camera too quickly we're going to talk about camera movements in a moment but if you have on a tripod on the slight or whatever quick movements are jarring to somebody but also our cameras are designed a specific way that you actually get in error visually called rolling shutter so do you want to talk about that real quick just the way the camera basically what it looked like just like a jell o ng effect the edges it basically just sue's everything which is very very interesting just try it put on a twenty four seconds twenty four frames a saying we'll talk about settings later so that's part of that perfect so yeah voit dumb cuts don't zoom zoom with your feet lindsay yeah so as faras these this overview of these shots that you should take kobe one two three four five wants to know how about a list never do these shots because they're just plain cheesy do you have a list our future but he does more than I do if you like I like to hear both your list so you know what cheese e I mean for me I was shooting a ton of super wide shots for a long time but then when I'm trying to edit together to make a story doesn't make sense they got twenty four millimeter and he taught me that because I was like thieves don't fit these don't flow because we would go from seventy two hundred two point two a twelve to twenty four at faro and it just it wouldn't work together so I don't think there's anything in particular I mean a lot of what they just twelve to twenty four thing I think it was the most mind boggling aside from that like from a psychologically you should do it sometimes and I'm like you know zoom in thirty five yeah so I'm just saying it's more more what effect are you going for if it but again you can break the rules on anything if that's your thing that's your thing no one's in any aspect of this all creativity right so if you feel it's appropriate for your specific style by all means use it no one's going to kill you no one's gonna don't argue with you there like that's not technically correct but they do that in photography way from form with her exact with her I mean she should sleds flair lens flare you know twenty years ago ten years ago five years ago everyone hated you know that's not correct it's not technically technically style even you mentioned zooms I mean those air straight out of the seventies every single wc in the seventies as these crash zooms on people and it's and it's very distinctive for that era so it depends on what you're looking for example if you wanted to do uh my my friends gave him bonnie to bridge photography they did a whole series of engagement shoot where the couple was reenacting their favorite movies so if they're reenacting a seventies movie zoom ok use the corny dialogue whatever it may be so there's no right or wrong answer the section that we're in right now the whole point of this section is none of this you should have had to buy new stuff yet write all the same camera the same lens is all the same stuff so right now we're going to talk about some stability tools because you can't handled that's a big that's never that's it you can't hand hold and make it work so one thing we recommend would be this modified do and this this is the model you want this is this is also self defence you need it for everyone to showcase the model phone itself I mean it's a great versatile tool because you can you move around with it it's lightweight we use in low light situations for photography but you have several accesses of movement based off this one model part because it has feet this kind of thing is you're okay if I sit this way randy that's freaking so I have multiple access is a movement for video aiken literally use a fluid head on top and be able to move access whichever way I need which is nice because it gives you several points it's kind of like the cheapest solution for video you know you can run and gun with this you're not locked on a tripod and still give you the stability that you need because your hand holding on with two hands which is great event photographers yes and you had a question about said once before this is a great sports told because you can literally just running in with it you don't have to sit there and work with the likes its one leg I mean literally all you have to just loosen this up your tools for actually tightening it should get loose that's right built in it a lot faster you're just running down with this thing which is really cool in the second you go to switch teo still radio excuse me stills I mean you can shoot in low light situations a lot better than you can hand helps and the biggest downside perhaps is let's say you're trying to do what people commonly called fusion right so mixing photo and video so the biggest downside is you're like well I'm on a tripod so if I do the video and then I wanted to a vertical I can't do that there is a workaround I don't have the lens out here but for example let's say that you're shooting a twenty four to seventy or don't let's say a seventy two hundred those lenses have lens colors so you can actually mount the tripod mounted onto the lens collar so you could be using your bond pod to film and then switch it vertical to shoot still so that would be a way around it but in my opinion you can when you can still move in it's quick release so it pops off easily we'll discuss this a little later about fluid heads but I mean you have another access here this is just up in the emotion we'll discuss more less with those terms we called the little later as well and all right so some photographers have a mono pod some don't it would be something I'd recommend if you get into video especially if it's event but something that is different is that most of us have one of these probably write a ball head if you plan on moving the tripod moving your mono pod we're moving the shot so were you actually planning doing is maybe panning left to right going up and down a ball head wouldn't be the tool you'd want to do it it gives you kind of jagged movements a little bit rough the second you go to loosen this I think everything so if this weight on here it's completely wobbly and this anyway this is not for video versus these things are not what you want to have people see unless you doing some like I'm drunk effect that's about it so I shot that before um okay see on the side here this is tension so I can control the flood had so actually could actually loosen attention and have the way to the camera facility out forcefully down or I can make it so have supply a little bit more fort force versus it just flops over so this would be the toward recommend you would want the fluid that's information right there so that is the one you would want and it's really come back to me you can throw this inside of two cases take this everywhere with you think this's actually the wrong fluid head for it just because it has that horizontal access on the side this comes with the fluid head itself which is building yeah okay yeah so you don't actually if you're tryingto save money this is actually the uh the one you need because it doesn't move this way it's not on that access because you wouldn't do that in amman a pot on the model pod you would turn the model of that accident this is uh actually this one right here without that next access there okay let's look at another one so tribe hot here you absolutely positively can use a photo tripod except so we'll talk about that image is completely fine is completely stable unless you have big rigs on it so you start building up things with monitors and big lenses and barn doors and all of that stuff it's not gonna be strong enough um the other thing is this is a mistake we made in the very very first video we showed you which was my client for fashion and the shipwreck and things like that we had this tripod and so I went ahead and we rented a slider I told you about that so slider helps give product val you were going to go over that in detail sliders and photo tripods do not play well together because what ends up happening is it's not strong enough so your shot will go all your all your weight is actually on the center shackle so all the way it's literally held by this one little tiny clip that's here so the second I move this around you can imagine having a lot of weight on there there's a lot of movement exactly I have my camera on one side or the opposite side on a slide and we'll discuss that later it literally just bends over so you're gonna get this ark to your video and we had that issue the first time again we're learning from our mistakes clearly it's cheaper if you guys learn from our mistakes but that way so if you don't have a tripod and you were thinking like okay I want a multi purpose for video and so I want to go out and get a photo of you try but if you don't have anything maybe a video type would be better if you know you're going to want to do slider shots so just before you spend the money so the one e think little okay so the differences okay so a photo tripod you see it there video tripod is heftier can handle a lot more weight so it is right here so this is the mack daddy version of tripods some extremely stable and in the chat rooms we have the exact model that we use listed this isn't actually ours for the traveling here to bring every piece of gear we had was it would be a little overwhelming so we actually just source this one the one we have has a kind of a connecting base in the bottom so that exact one is listed in the chat rooms then again on my website going back to the way that these things balance this one's a leveling head so I can loosen this up and literally like level the whole top and changed the angle I don't have to move his legs at this point so I have to keep continually trying to readjust likes to get my shop which is great because if I have something like a slider we'll discuss that a little later on it I can completely keep it level without having to really focus on adjusting it likes this one specifically the more weight you put on it the more ballot incidence it doesn't have senator shackles in between each of the legs which is nice but this is a little more versatile it is heavier it's like five times so but it'll last year as long we've taken this tio not this specific innit we've taken them till I do by turkey everywhere in our personal suitcases and you know how thie is they threw everything around they've survived some problem right you're you're using it it's in your hand what if you take a shot and it's completely unlevel can you crop it the same as a picture and post it great question wonderful question okay so um you cannot cross if you were shooting at say ten eighty and you want the output to be a ten eighty because when you crop you're throwing out information and so you will see a difference in resolution but let's say that for some reason you know it's only going in the web and you're okay with seven twenty you could actually crop all you want as long as the resolution doesn't go below below seven twenty I wouldn't recommend it it's doable but maybe it maybe it was something where you're mixing like you shot most of the ana go pro and that was at seven twenty so you're you gotta match it kind of the lowest common denominator then big something something similar and we'll speak about this the third day but postproduction premier if you want to do image stabilization it'll actually interpret the footage and rotate the footage depending on where you need to be in order to get that footage but believe what's actually built into premier itself so it'll it'll literally counter act everything but leave these little black edges and then you kind of have to fit to frame in order to get it but you lose like you said lose the data that's within that so if you're downgrading to seven twenty you have all this wiggle room tio take your ten eighty footage back down seven twenty you have you know area to rotate it just depends on what you're shooting so in other words avoid it and well says they're going to say about that oh this is the place where it matters most when is your clear horizons like drugs there's the end of the ocean the horizon and you're a little bit in trouble that's a that's a big one uh so practicing with the fluid heads we covered those a little bit fluid head merciful hands it's great all right so we're talking about all the things that we have in common you guys have tripods maybe trying to hear what head to get um all right some ofyou as photographers may have viewfinders particularly if you like to shoot outdoors maybe sports midday and you want to go to see the back of that lcd screen so there are a lot of viewfinders we're going to go into it more in depth but would you like to answer that okay so a lot of these have different uses by all means I personally use viewfinders because I had lasik surgery on my eyes and I'm very very sensitive to light so I couldn't shoot for like three or four months because of that whole scenario I had to find a solution this was my solution just something small something simple like the goodman home in itself is one of their custom viewfinders everything can be manipulated based off the little brackets that has and it has its own quick release you can put onto a man photo on top of a man photo quick release if you'd like everything is removable I can literally just take this off if I need to so it's kind of running gun on the go has its own built in little allen key at the back of it so I can adjust everything as necessary every every single camel have different sizes funny enough the smaller sizes are the smaller version of this is meant for nikon and cannon fire demark two's this is meant for the candidate five mark three the screen's a little bigger so just before your violin check what what size you have for the five demark two's you know what can I have one of the five team are twos if you don't mind described with camera five di marta and I just want to go ahead and annotate this was never designed which everyone's fine was never designed for thank you for dslr video especially with few finders if you look it's an afterthought suit if you look at the candid five the mark to the on off button right here which completely impedes every single viewfinder of every used for meat from actually accessing this so you have to use like a pen or something you know just turn on or off so if I lets just take any which one if I mark this on there so if you want to take a close up shot of this looking my on off but and if you if you pay attention I can't turn it on or off and you didn't do anything wrong it's just it was thought it's just it doesn't have a few fighters and on the cameras and so different different manufacturers have come out with different setups by all man so that's what they have these little quick releases so you can easily turn it on or off if you need to but it was never it was an afterthought so the video itself was an afterthought then you have I used this specifically because of my eyes I upgraded my favorite so this is this's one of the other ones that we're using right now for video specifically this turns your lcd screen into a forty inch monitor just by looking through here and it looks very nerdy but it's very awesome it's it's actually extremely nerdy it has it's actually built with the macro lens and sign so they're they're synovate it's the synovate cyclops right to their whole thing is thie macro lens that's built in inside could be multipurpose for right over your lens so if you need a quick macro lens you can just swap out to that which is really really cool this itself will probably cost you if you had to buy out of pocket like three four hundred bucks the unit is pretty expensive it runs about seven hundred but it's it's my video piece like I take it everywhere with may the hood hman is less expensive if I needed to do photography on the run this would be my go to each of these has a different a price point I mean it really depends on your budget something like this this is the hokuto finder it's a beautiful beautiful piece the one downside to the goodman zoo kudo is they have their own quick releases so you have to mount it teo whatever quick release that you're using as opposed to the synovate one it has a quick release for manfred amendment so recommending if you have try pons everything it just it's a quick on off and when I'm on set I don't want to have to find quick releases for this and quick release is for that I just want to get everything done as quickly as possible so just know that everything does have a different price point this is cheaper you can put the quick release for a man photo underneath but each one is going to be on your taste on what you're likes are you guys will be very pleased to know that later on in the presentation like I said we broke down the different kids we recommend so in the mack daddy version and I think in the pro version we have the synovate cyclops of I he tried to convince me for a full year to buy that thing like seven hundred dollars are you serious so it isn't worth every penny and I'm like I'm I'm not one of those people that's like by the most offensive things I usually find you don't need it that's that's one of them so that's the mack daddy those those would do the job but this is the point I wanted to make there is no auto focus in video some of them have the capability but you don't want to do it because auto focusing while you're actually filming it jumps and then a lot of times this shutter opens and closes so that it can focus it doesn't work so you will be manual focusing and so I don't really personally consider a viewfinder optional for video uh you can and we'll talk about this you can zoom into the back of your screen but if you want to check that you have critical focus you can't in post like you can for ah photograph I can fake it pretty good with the still image you're not saving it in video so one of these is something that you're going to want for sure so ideally if you have something already that's great so you actually when you're when you're shooting you're actually looking at the back of the screen rather than through the regular you find her right so when you're filming the way that it works because it's a mirror you cannot look the defender it goes black you see nothing so you have to see the back of the screen so either you are fighting with the elements on reflect his grain or it's it's a critical focus I mean you can zoom ins we're gonna show you you can zoom in on the back your camera but it is a lot easier to see when you have uh viewfinder and that thing is if you wanna get focused on that so ultimately this is live at the present moment look at me so you have your center point if I will discuss focusing it a bit but I would always set your grids on there like this is a little confusing if you're trying to the rule of thirds or if you try to get anything on there so set your grids make sure that you can see everything so if you're using something like let's say easy finder it's nice to see through but at the same time there's still a little bit of vignette ing around so it helps you in regards to a position and things like that so it's really nice yeah gotta you got to get one so that would be one of my things it's like okay you might have one already in your kit cool but if you're gonna do video seriously you would like one of those for sure controlling focus is definitely one of the hardest things because you can save it so we talked about that perfect so those are some of the ones in the second you invest in one of these for video you're going to bring it into your photography you'll notice how crisp and clear your shots are even with back button focus you you'll want to get that that manual focus even yourself I just feel like it's search transferring back into photography you just I totally want to use everything again I can't well I can see it all so I rely like totally completely on auto focus and like very very blind so it's essential for me so we're gonna switch over now on now we're going before you do just a couple of reminders folks that this is intended to be a course not for cinematographers this is not talking about using really expensive fancy riggs this is about using the gear that you own and supplementing it with small pieces so while there's a lot of places that you could go there are a ton of amazing products out there that you could go to this is really more about keeping it simple and about working with the stuff you've already got as a photographer these air we've brought today's what we actually use there's lots of products on the market by all means but this is what we physically own and physics we used I don't want to direct you guys in a way that I said you could try that and I've never used it before but make sure you guys know that these were things they have their positives and negatives but at the same time I actually use them and for the tech people out there I am going to cover external monitors at some point so if that's something that the chat rooms you're asking about I am going to cover external monitors in case you're curious someone didn't mention extra monitors and the other thing that they want to know about is shoulder rig's do you ever use those at all and we'll discuss those in a little bit so we're gonna we're gonna touch one of those to this lovett's we have entire we actually shot an entire video on shoulder rig on lee so you'll see the money shake that exists and if you like it if you don't like it

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bonus material

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This great workshop helps me to start a new experience with video, Lindsay and Jeff are so clever with a teaching very easy to follow, now I know the basics to work with movement, I got a new vision on how to take advantage of many years of photography experience, this is a new medium but image itself is the same, I recommend this to any newbie interested on getting a solid base to start.

Elly Alenka Dream
 

Fantastic class! Watching it in 2019 - and still finding relevant. Excellent way to ease photographers into the scary waters of video footage and production... and perfect for somebody who already has some basics to take it up a notch and challenge themselves quite a bit! Loved this class, very helpful.

a Creativelive Student
 

I bought this class because, I recently bought my first DSLR with filming capabilities. But when I start looking at it and after watching a couple of instructionvideos on YouTube I kinda got overwhelmed. This class broke it all down into clear pieces for me. Lindsay and Jeff have nice and clear teaching style. They covered everything but didn't get to far into the nitty gritty details. They always told how important something was and if you have to do it in a certain way or that is your artistic choice. I certainly can start off with making video with a lot more confidence now. The course is packed with information. It took me much longer then 3 days to watch and take 37 pages of notes!

Student Work

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