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Shoot: Underwater Shots

Lesson 18 from: Storytelling on Location

Corey Rich

Shoot: Underwater Shots

Lesson 18 from: Storytelling on Location

Corey Rich

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Lesson Info

18. Shoot: Underwater Shots

Lesson Info

Shoot: Underwater Shots

Kind of like you're cooking in the kitchen you want to like, lay out all the stuff that you need, although only we're not goingto cook any sushi tonight. This is our fiberglass fish that you've heard so much about and it's not because I have any doubt whether jim can actually nail some fish right now her hooks and fish is that the right spelling? Okay, jim has already been out this morning he already got some fish laid, some fish, but so that we can control the situation. We have our proper fish, which basically what we're going to do, bly is going to get in the water and be kind of controlling the tale of the fish. We're going to put the hook from jim's rot in here and he's going to be wrestling the fish from his kayaked and so it's about creating and and I think what we're going to need to do is figure out on video. What motion of this fish makes it look the most authentic, you know, maybe like pops it out of the water is shaking, it said, but there's a lot of water flipping around t...

hat'll be kind of key for authenticity so that's one of our ingredients on our kitchen counter the other part of the ingredient is we have a d for with the fish islands with our sixteen millimeter fisheye that what it is a sixteen sixteen fisheye too pointed and then we have an awkward tech housing that we're going to put the fish I am now what we're going to do his first try to shoot the video clip and one of my concerns just the exposure on the fish is it going to be bright enough in the foreground between kind of this overcast sky layer and we inconveniently have two big pine trees that are creating a big shade patch on this little beach zone where we're working so we have two options actually, three options for how we might mount some light onto the fish. One option is we have a mirror that we bought from wal mart this morning and it's that same mirror that you have in your ah your bedroom closet door when you're in college so this mirrors and off option it really reflects a lot of light back into the frame, but you need some light to work with. We also have some silver fabric reflectors these air, the photo flex aluminum frames, lots of different options for picking up these reflectors and you can put different fabric surfaces and then the other option if it's just really overcast as we have this light panels helio that will take off the stand and jordan or bligh will actually probably jordan will just stand close as need be and just put some daylight it's a daylight white balanced led light and it doesn't matter how much sun we have in the sky that's equivalent to a five hundred watt light and cool so it's not going to burn your hand so that's pretty nice light as well in terms of just an option for lighting up our fish so one of the things that we did before we actually started um rolling here was bly closed the housing he made sure that the washer on the back of the housing was lubed up and there was no debris on it this washer is kind of the key tio not flooding your housing so this little you know seal pops in and out so he checked that it was lubed up that it wasn't cracked also that there was no debris and then he closed the housing and he dunked in the water with no camera and to make sure that it's actually um watertight and now that we're confident that's working he's going to take his time he's going to put the defore back inside and it looks like the washers popping out there on the side there and so we're going to shoot video first it just feels like once we're rolling it will be we can just play with the scene I'll get position will coach jim into the right position and then once we feel like we've actually captured the motion part of this shot will pull the camera out of the housing going to still photography mode and I can start shooting still photos so let's get that sucker in there and, uh I'm wearing waiters so is bly and the reason we're wearing the waiters is it's not that the water's freezing, but it makes it a lot more ka comfortable if you could be focused on the creative and less focused on just you know, the fact that you're actually frozen so you kind of want to make sure that you're comfortable first before you worry about so that you can focus on creativity if you're sitting there freezing and hypothermic, it means your shots are going to be shaky means you're gonna have a hard time really worrying about being creative at the same time, okay, all right and I, you know, I've said this already, but it's with so we're already rolling, by the way. So this is when we get into post production tomorrow you're going to see a long clip on the d for we can shoot for twenty minutes at a time, so we have kind of a twenty minute window where we need to either get the shot or we need to do a record cycle and to do that record's going to pull the camera out of the housing so okay let's let's experiment here so jim I'm thinking how do we want it let's actually put a hook whichever rod you're going to use okay very hooking these here great great alright excuse me just yesterday two days ago this fish was hanging on the wall in our office now jim is about the slayer is they say and fishing okay perfect all right and this is what it's called a wide mouth no big large mouth mass okay so blind let me see thiss water's pretty murky but that's okay okay I think it's less about whether we're going to get anything underneath the half and half I think it's more about just getting a camera's emerged okay blye let's um can someone give blossom water wings in case okay, so I think we're going to put you just out there about fifteen feet away yeah, I think I think facing would be my guest or maybe forty five degrees almost okay. Why what if you come toward me just every so slightly ah that's perfect right there, jim okay, symbol I think you're gonna have to put your hand under water you know jim, would it be possible to stand up there? I think that might be the ticket and okay, so blood that's my frame right there and she lets see I might have to go a little deeper if that works for you can you walk out here with mabel just so that we don't get the doc in there oh yeah that's cool jim okay said well, I think the fish needs to come more in front of me yep that's perfect even a little more in front of me there we get blind right there and you know, guys is that pop up tent cannot move any farther this way on the doctor is it kind of ah farther out of the shot so I'm really like looking at the edges of my frame I'm just looking at even though it's just threw water housing I can see that with this fish eye perspective we're really getting that pop up tent in the dark so we're going to at least move the pop up tent as much as we can to the left of the dock and the reality is if it's in the edge of the frame it's more about the lesson that's you know that's suspension of disbelief pretend there's no doc there pretend there's no papa tents and the other reality is when we're shooting in full hd like this we can crop a little bit and you're not going to notice if we you know, kind of whack the edges of the frame off just slightly so okay let's get that thing down there that's awesome okay, so let's try I'm rolling and we are getting some cool detail underwater let's let's bring that fish down why? And jim you're looking at your fish it's actually get my thing you're maybe we get you about ten feet farther out but it's coming together I can see that I'm really surprised we don't have anything that's black could we wrap bligh's arm in like a black fabric just so that we don't see it underwater maybe um what we have oh yeah there might be a little black fabric for the one of the reflectors okay we're going to try it while we're getting that black fabric that's perfect. Ok that's fantastic right there, jim that's awesome like and see it underwater okay let's try this for riel and on three blye you're going to come submerge it even more and go for a jim you're gonna pull it out of water let's try that again that actually looks fantastic. I mean, I think from an authenticity standpoint that was probably like an eight out of ten I have a feeling that's what it looks like every time jim this land fish but again we're you know, guys were just trying to create the allure vision of reality I mean, I envisioned this shot is probably going to be one to two seconds in the final edit just short enough that no one's actually going to realize how silly what we're doing, what really what we're really trying to do here in the lake but I'm blown away there's enough light that in fact we can really see underwater the water's clear enough even with all the murk that we're kicking up for all of this debris that we're kicking up you can sort of see the fish underwater and then it looks fantastic when it pops up above water so and now that it looks like we can achieve this shot relatively easily like this he's like the falcon catcher you know, like the falcon lands on his own that's great all right and usually like if we're going to do stuff like this to equipment we try to use the rental houses equipment that's like your goal you want like if you we had two fabrics you go to the rental houses equipment because they'll never know it's just going to smell funny for the rest of its life glaser's camera okay um yep just get sent up here okay? And we are rolling and where's the fish okay, okay dip it down again and go for a gym popping up higher book I think shoot it out of the water like all the way up so it's like detail is, you know, almost yeah basket can you move a little this way, jim yet maybe let's see yeah, yeah yeah no problem there's kind of like one sweet spot out in the distance where you're framed just perfectly in the sky and we're getting a really cool reflection we can actually see jim reflected in the water, which I think adds a lot, it just becomes a more complex shot. Um, I'd say a little farther back that way. Okay, blood, show me where the head of the fish is right about that kay, bring your head back, boy right there and okay, let's do it from right there, jim that's perfect and head back a little blind and three, two, one go for it. That was money that was perfect. And with its splashing on the housing that's really good let's do that one more time a twenty four frames per second gym. And then I think we'll pop the camera out of the housing and ah, and do it at at sixty frames per second. You know, jordan let's, if you don't mind let's, I want to see with the helio pointed at the actual fish if we just get a little bit of pop in the foreground and I'm sure it's going to be subtle, but a little bit of light would be helpful. Yeah, maybe if you're willing to or you could even just sit on the dock I mean, I can already I can see that light on blythe israel subtle, but I think it'll make a difference you know it's possible maybe what makes more sense jordan would be just roll up your pants and walk it in from almost like three quarters behind us a rental house okay, okay let me see what that looks like just hold it in front of me. Yeah, it would be nice to have a little bit of light on that that bright sky okay blocks and then when you do it really splashing around and I think your head is right yeah that's awesome just like that that's the okay, jim I think were money right there, okay? And blow your head out a little bit and then they just don't let me clean the housing and just letting the water drain off the housing bubble right now okay, maybe pull it off a little bit, jordan little more there we go and action that was awesome. Cool. All right, let's let's guy thing we got a nice shot there and I could see the reason I'm saying let's go to sixty frames per second is with all that splashing water that might be if there's anything about the shop that's not authentic. If we go to sixty frames per second it gives us the opportunity to slow it down and just use the best second or two of that shot jim, what are you doing in the background what's your expression? I didn't even notice well what do you do as it as a wrangler do you do you let out like who you know let's do that I mean yeah I think I think we should do that in the background just for authenticity sake. Okay, so bly let me give you a towel can't you just be careful of that dirt when we set this down. Okay all right, so I feel like we got three shots right there we actually went in I saw at least three good kind of out of the water fish jumping shots and what I realized on the first shot actually was that you know, it wasn't dramatic enough we didn't have enough splashing water and then the more bligh worked on kind of, you know, faster up out of the water we evolved this shot until it looked pretty spectacular but when you're working in water it's the same is working in the air with the helicopter there's a lot of variables that you just can't control we're not sending a live signal out of the housing so we're not absolutely certain how it looks until we really review it so let's actually blow if we can question had come in earlier this was from matt jones photog cory who talked about entering foreign countries we kind of talked about this at the beginning of the first day when entering foreign countries do you ever have any problem with all of the scare even like the casing for the waterproof casing or things like that, are they right there wondering what all of this stuff is? Well, first of all, there's certain countries that you actually I always recommend bringing an itemized list of everything that you're bringing into the country with you just so that if there's any questions with customs about what you carried in and what you carried out, you have that itemized list, some countries actually, we require that you have an itemized list, it's car the car in a list and you actually have to get it approved by that country will often times build an excel spreadsheet, which I showed you yesterday, that matty here in the class built for us, and so we'll have an itemized list of everything we're bringing and even though it doesn't mean much will ask the same when we're leaving the united states actually stamp that list and get like the supervisor to sign it, and at least it feels very official when we're coming back in. If there's any question about did we sell equipment overseas? That's usually what the concern is you know you by your gear it at obama, you get an amazing deal, you go to brazil. And it's you know twice is expensive is in brazil and so brazil wants to make sure that if you're selling your gear in brazil you're paying tax to the brazilian government that's really the protection item um I think that the the funniest or the scariest equipment bringing equipment into a country we did a shoot in pakistan which I alluded to yesterday when we brought to rc helicopters or drones into pakistan and as you can imagine bringing drones into pakistan is is a little bit of a concern and so we had them packaged into into pelican cases and red bull was was helping us get into the country so I'm not exactly sure how it went down but I've never walked through customs so efficiently there was a representative from red bull whom I'm assuming handed a few twenty spots to the pakistani government officials when we walked in and they never are open our cases so we actually we flew in with two on in the belly of the plane in pelican cases and then a third we shipped justus back up and we never saw the third helicopter it's gone the third drone so I guess the bottom line is you know, one redundancy to have lists and three ideally carry the absolute mission critical gear on your body or in your roller bags on the plane because you know inevitably when you go to really remote locations if luggage doesn't show up you've got a problem it never showed up we know to this day we've yet to see that helicopter it's ah wow, who knows who knows who's using an if it's perfect for good or for bad. All right, we have some questions in the studio audience cory cory amongst the group here and I'm sure online is what we've got a mix of people like to shoot documentaries plus learning how to do the commercial stuff you recently did a story behind the image on rebecca ruscha's mountain like record attempt and how and you explained how you shot that how it felt like a documentary but some of the scenes were shot afterwards can you maybe go into the difference or how you approach things at a real life events but come across the way we came in to get to all the locations while the events going on? Sure. Well, I think fundamentally the key is just being honest about your work. I mean, I'm never going to be the guy that if if it's really documentary photojournalism or filmmaking, I'm going to tell you that. And if it's setting up moments to help fill in the gaps, I'm just going to explain that teo someone asks its be honest about what your work first of all, um I always like to say that having roots in photojournalism or documentary filmmaking allows you to capture real moments and then when it comes time to create real moments on a commercial style job like we're doing here once you've done it for riel once you've kind of been in that situation where you're sweating bullets and you're just trying to, you know, make images happen rial time where you can't coach the moment you come in with a lot of skill set that really lends itself to coaching moments on demand and so, you know, I think have a well rounded bass, I guess is one bit of advice tried to shoot him documentary style content or photo journalistic style content and then when it comes time to coach the moment you have, you have a better idea of how real moments play out and you can give better direction is my sensibility, but the bottom line is just be honest about when moments ariel and when they're not riel and that keeps you out of trouble. You want to take a couple more questions? Sure, let me ask, how are we doing guys on? How did that footage with looks perfect? All right, looks like we caught a wide mouth large mouth large, large, large mouth bass, so now we're going to switch into did you already switched to twenty four sixty frames per cent? How about one more question while they're taping up his arm I have a question cory about lighting a muse like making sure my subject is especially wearing hats I tried to make sure their eyes or not in shade any tips on since he's way away from the camera any tips on setting up lighting to make sure he's lit in the way you want her well we're super lucky to be honest if we were doing this shot was blue skies this would be pretty brutal because he would have a huge shadow over his face right now I think we're really fortunate to have a white sky you know clouds apparently it's sunny and seattle like three hundred sixty four days a year we just happened to catch the one day with clouds is what nice one cory nice one that's what I'm told I don't know on dh so the reality is I think we're lucky if it were sonny we would definitely be using these reflectors and mirrors trying to bounce light under his face but he's also small enough in the frame we're in a sixteen millimeter lens he's more of a figure in the landscape right now I mean it's not a tight shot of his face I'm a little less concerned about the light on him you know the focus of this shot is really the fish and so it's more concerned about the light on the fish then he's our background object you know foreground is what counts one thought on that front you know, the fish she's pretty close we might want to pre focus on the fish I think we're on infinity so maybe let's uh let's actually test I mean, I bet I was two feet away you know, maybe even two fetes probably about what I was so we're just again all of these little details will affect whether you get the shot we just realized we're on infinity and on the fish islands the fish is gonna look pretty and focus, but the reality is it might have been pretty soft in those last shots and now we're going to change our focus two, two or three feet in front of the camera and we should have a much sharper fish and jim's going to get more out of focus. So in my head I'm constantly thinking about every little detail that we can screw up and you know, whether it's with bly and day and helping or whether it's just me standing here trying to do this, you know it's a hard balance on one hand I want to talk to jim and I want to hear stories about fishing all over the world but then on the other hand, I know that I need to be engaged with what's happening and so that's another dance that you learn how to do it's how do you engage your subject at the same time that you're trying to make cool content and not screw up the content because you're too engaged with talking okay so we've got our focus and one of the other tricks and this sounds a little ridiculous but you do it in a dive mask is well you can actually spit on the port of your dome and kind of rub it and then that that actually helps for the water to kind of wyckoff easier so I'm gonna do that and so and then I'll don't get in it it allowed the report to clear easier okay that's probably let me see just looking fish so that's what the helio yeah that looks good that's a good distance for the helio okay so that sharp um okay so blind maybe move your head out a little bit right there okay and let's submerge it and yeah let's do back up it fills the frame really nicely okay okay let me see that when we could yeah that's cool then they just included the housing hold on hold on stop yep that looks good we just let the port clear well let me cheat the fish this way tiny but there we go okay alright and cameras rolling and action that fish got away that rarely happens to jim but that fish got away from him yeah, okay just just let that clear off okay that's a great angle and okay, I'm sorry I didn't even look up. Okay? You ready? Jim and action yeah, I think you said well, who think that's great, not really. And I noticed the more we stir the waters what? The less visibility we have in the water so it's kind of the the calmer we are, the better this looks let's. See? Well, I gotta scoot the fish this way a little bit, just test it, bring it up. You don't have to splash it. I just want to see the exposure bringing up higher, higher, higher, higher maybe jordan let's back the light off a little bit. Cool. Okay, that helps good. Uh, clear the port, okay, and let us know when you're ready, jim. And this time, you're going to give us a real shout, okay? And action? Yeah, now is now is world class all right? So I think we got the video clip, and one thing to remember is we don't even have audio recording in the housing, but the reason I'm having him do that is you're going to see that body language. It makes a really big difference if he's just asleep on the boat faking it or if he's really excited on the boat that makes a difference visually in the background so it's all that subtlety so we want that to be looked really so the next thing we're going to do switch to shooting the still photos so I feel like we just captured probably an out of focus shot at twenty four frames per second but probably acceptable and then we switch to sixty frames per second and I think we have a really great shot the last last one was fantastic, so now we're going to switch to doing the still and the beauty of going out of video mode, of course, as we can actually go into shooting faster because the challenge with the still photos we want the fish to be in focus and we want jim too, you know? We want it short, meaning we need to freeze that action with water droplets flying around, so we'll probably shoot it like a five hundredth of a second, maybe we'll even get to like a thousand of a second, the de forest so sensitive at high I s so that I'm not afraid to shoot a eight hundred, eight hundred eso if necessary in order to get that really clean in beautiful stopped action thie other thing with still photography, we have the ability to go and do a little more postproduction or retouching work, so I'm a little less concerned about bligh's arm being covered I just want to be comfortable in the shot so if we have to we can go in and photo shop and select his arm and make it disappear in the water you know kind of create the background that looks more like a pond underneath the water so I would say what how are we exposure wise that I would say why don't we go teo I definitely want to be like f or so at least maybe even more like five six and then five hundredth of a second minimum cool and then that's actually pretty good that's three hundred twenty so why don't we go to four hundred sl and goto let's go a little faster like six forty six hundred forty eighth of a second it's a suit that looks like so court you're just talking about your eyes so on how far you're going to put your typically on stills ivan read anywhere from usually sixteen hundred esso on video how far do you guys normally push your eyes on the video side yeah I mean you know this d four is like a game changing camera in terms of how far we'll push it you can go to my website corey rich dotcom and go to the motion section and you can see a piece that we shot for red bull rebecca it's called rush hour with rebecca rush on what's remarkable about that piece is we shot some video footage with the on ly light source was a full moon and we shot with a twenty four millimeter, one point four lens with the full moon and what was our sixty four hundred were sixty, four hundred sl and it looks fantastic, like it looks impossible, actually what we're doing when we're shooting out of an suv while driving on a desert road and rebecca has a headlamp on her head or bike light and then the full moon illuminating the backdrop and it's stunningly beautiful. So depending on the camera that you're shooting with the d for is maybe the most sensitive low light camera in the world, you know, the d a hundred has its own attributes. The d six hundred has its own attributes, but for low light, the d for is really the way to go, so we'll push it right to the edge of mean sixty four hundred, um is totally within reason for those of us who maybe want to start getting into using the underwater housing for video or still, are there things that you, when you first started using it, that you sort of troubleshoot or any tips that you can give us that we can kind of avoid normal like usual pitfalls, that kind of people? Um, I mean, I think the main thing is around one just taking your time, you can't rush this stuff, you've got to make sure that the seal is correct you've got to make sure that it's not leaking and also don't show up on the job trying to do the shot for the first time without having tested the equipment meaning go on shooting your pool the neighborhood pool before you show up on location and really analyze the shots figure out what's working or what's not working for you one of the other things that folks have is a problem with reflection in a dome port eso it's not blacked out correctly or the lens isn't fitting correctly and so you start getting reflection inside of your dome you know it's kind of like operating your camera you'll build a muscle memory on what works for you well with your enclosure can ask a couple more questions about the housing person had asked if it ever leaks if you've ever had a leak and then on johnny asked if you if you have the housing fully submerged would you ever wear like goggles to see the elves sure well there's two different types of housings this is what's called the splash housing this is really designed for shooting and of what we're doing half in half out or surf photography where you really got him getting banged around in the waves very very durable the ports not going to rip off so the beauty of this housing is it's very durable the other type of housing that you can work with is a scuba dive the housing which really allows you to go deep in a hundred plus feet underwater and it's far less durable but it can really take that pressure of going underwater so with the splash housing I'm always I understand what its limits are and with the underwater scuba housing I'm gonna have my head submerged so in that case I'll definitely have a scuba mask on and I'm really looking at the back I mean I'm underwater you know, once you go foot underwater, you really need to have either goggles or a mask on but with scuba housings the mask and you know, self contained breathing apparatus is really the way to go and but they're two different styles of shooting this israel quick and dirty you know, in a wave if you're shooting surfing you know you're getting thrown around if you're shooting white water kayaking or even in the lake like this it's not about precision, you're just roughly looking at the back you're cameron trying to frame that rectangle correctly awesome! I think we're ready to keep cruising along. Okay, how are we doing blood? Okay, so what are we? What did we land at shutter speed wass we're four hundred six hundred fortieth of a second, okay, so six forty I s o the beauty of the awkward tech housing is it allows us to actually see the back of the camera you can see what these buttons are attached to you can actually see what you're pressing versus some of the housings air like metal enclosures and then you have to really remember what each button does where's thousandth of a second okay thousands of a second five six six forty so what a thousandth of a second we can really stop the water droplets in the air and that's pretty valuable six forty I s o looks amazing six forty I sl on andy for or a modern day to camera looks like fuji vell ve a fifty I sl film from six years ago so pretty remarkable the evolution of film to digital okay okay there we go all right perfect. We're in live you okay let's do this again jim that looks fantastic they're looking at you land this fiberglass yeah I think so I think it helps I think that's really helpful but that clean itself off really on this one it's going to be we're still on about that two foot focus distance is that right? Okay we were at two feet I have this set so that I can shoot really fast this is about I think it's eleven frames per second from ten and a half ten and a half almost eleven frames per second so it's what's remarkable about that that's almost a ce fast, you know that's half assed fastest twenty four frames per second video but I'm shooting raw files so that we can really go in and manipulate that file okay jim I mean that's about two feet away just get back into a live view okay I bring your head out of town any minute okay and let's really submerge it and we'll go put one two and action great okay looks like we're maybe a little blown out when the fish is above water see if that's within the threshold of what we can work with yes it's like we're almost correctly exposed underwater so let's go to you know maybe even fifteen hundredths of a second what get back into my view cat sixteen hundred sixteen hundred yeah that's looking better okay alright jim let's uh let's try that again here okay and here we go by head out of the shot one two and three great let me see how bright that looks overexposed I'm still thinking we're a little over exposed it's make another menu adjustment I'm trying to remember how to use this housing because it's been a while and we're definitely in manual hold the fish out for a second maybe pull that light back a tiny bit jordan came back in live you alright and here we know one two and three great I think that's looking pretty good I just want to move the fish farther out left that it looks really good win to make it a pain okay, let me see that one more time above water. All right. I think what's happening is the live view is actually auto exposing so we can see underwater but then the manual exposure looks quite different when we shoot the photo, I'm kind of putting putting the camera just high enough that we still get some of that underwater look, but I also want to get that reflection of jim. Okay, and head back a little blood and one, two, three go for great let's. Try that again. Let's. Just go back to back. Okay? And here we go. One, two, three go. Great. Perfect. Jim. What if we can? Can we get you to just blow in a little bit? You're fine. Yeah, actually. Be nice to come a little this way, if possible. Ok? And bly lets try that one more time. Okay? And one, two, three perfect. Okay, so then the one thing that we want to do because I'm noticing it's pretty darn overcast and it's starting to rain, which it only rains once or twice a year in the pacific northwest is well, so we're really bad luck today. Clouds and we're getting a little rain. I think what we want to do is we're gonna pull the camera out of the housing and just shoot a few plates of the sky so that we can have, like, a nice plate of the sky that's under exposed so that we can later use it to burn down this guy because right now we're here in the shadow, and we're exposing for this dark fish. We added a nice rim light from the light panels, but then what we want to do is have a plate that we can actually drop in in postproduction later, so bligh's gonna pop that out, we'll shoot a couple of frames of the sky, and then I think we're going to move on on our storyboards to our next shot, and if I'm not mistaken, the next shot is going to be we're gonna mount a camera on the back of jim's kayaks, a kind of a point of view perspective. Um, and we're going to use a nikon one so that it's nice and lightweight, we're just going to put a little video tripod on the back of his back of his boat. So, jim, maybe what we'll do is back you in here to the beach and dan and jordan khun start rigging that while we're doing this this plate of the sky and as we're getting set up to shoot this plate, if there's any questions, I can certainly feel the few ah few questions jim good job that was great that's a fun photo all right, I think we're going to start with the studio audience I know that you had another question so you want to stand up? Go ahead. All right, so, uh we have really talked about too much corbett I'm wondering and various client a client I'm sure but logo's while you're shooting commercial shots, how about problems usually try and make those were just trying to work him in real seamlessly? Do you have any experience with capturing the locals wire on this, right? No, you're really right? It depends on the client. I think some clients really like to have their logo front and center and other clients just really don't care. I think when we talk to eric jackson about this boat you know what he wanted to make sure is that at some point we see the jackson logo which we're seeing in a lot of these shots and then we also did that remember this I think was the second shot of the morning where jim was dragging the boat out. We actually had that kudo logo showing fairly was fairly prolific, but in general really depends on the client by the way we're getting enough rain that this could kind of effect our next shot, so let's uh we'll keep on answering questions until until the rain passes, okay sure, the korea when you're shooting like in the water with the housing do you change into your camera settings like the picture styles to get more contrast or you de saturating because there will be more more colors coming in what does the fund the housing even changed the sharpness or the color variants right no you know, even in the water like this um shooting raw and we know that later we're going to go in and manipulate the color I'm not adjusting I'm not adjusting anything else on the camera not trying to increase your decrease contrast I want to get a nice flat image that comes in via the raw file and then we'll go in tomorrow when we're working in photo shop and really show you how we massaged and manipulate that file toe look the way that we wanted to look you know, given this murky water my philosophy is shoot raw and deal with it in postproduction trying not to start fooling around because oftentimes you can get yourself into a situation where you're creating work versus saving yourself work I have a question from the rookie who wanted who has been from vancouver bc and the rookie asked what guidelines you follow if and when you're adding handshake footage to your video right try not to add the handshake footage to your video first of all I mean unless it's intentionally you're trying to create that sort of you know, radical rio authentic look, but if if we if we do have a shaky shot, you know, we'll try to correct it later in post on the way we'll do that it's actually by using warp stabilizer in adobe premiere, which is a pretty powerful tool. So it's, you know, ideally try not to shoot the shaky footage unless that's intentionally what you're going after. All right, cory, have a question from lapd who'd like to know, how do you keep track of your memory cards in order of shooting and that's a really good question? So and when we have a memory card wallet, I used a little low pro wall. What if the card is face up, then that means it's not shot, and as soon as we fill a card, we actually flip the card upside down so that you're seeing the back of the card and then we do it in order in the card wallet, so as they go in there in sequence and they're flipped upside down, so upside down card always means it's been shot, and then when we were doing the download process until the card has actually been downloaded and duplicated the two drives, we won't form out the card, so we always want to have two copies of all of our data. You know, from the minute we depressed that shutter, so shoot it to the card, very stable card, sandisk extreme pro, and then we actually download to a single drive or two to drive simultaneously, and then once you have duplicate back up, then we'll form at the card. I was just going to ask, do you do a lot of your post production in house, or do you have a company that you use and trust? Tio b twenty years on the video side of things? I work a lot with no, this select, which is a production company out of maine, but know this select as a big network of editors and shooters on dh crew. And so oftentimes, dane, shawn and I jordan were oftentimes working on a job that's through no, this select, depending on the level of that it and how involved I need to be, I really like to be close in terms of I might not be pressing the buttons, and you'll see how dane and I do this tomorrow, but we'll both be putting our heads into the into the mix and thinking about what we're doing but again, starting small, you're probably going to shoot the project, then you're going to go back and do post and it's great to actually understand you want that baseline understanding before you started. Outsourcing your post production and on the still photography side we do everything in house in fact, bly is really our wizard in the office for during our photo shop in post production work on still images okay, so we don't mind another technical cannot of course because you know, I've read so much about this but I haven't noticed it in my own shooting do you shoot on lee on certain eso I've heard if you go on third stop increment you could you know think I ignore all that all that I just shoot whatever yeah, I I can never I can't see the difference maybe if you're a total tak weenie yeah, I cannot neither so no, I've never seen that I can't my tomb ii which is pretty critical at sea any difference I'm sure there's someone online right now that's saying corey's grave but the reality is no, I shoot whatever I s so I need to shoot it looks fantastic I mean shutter speed has a greater effect on the you know, final look of your video content, but now I don't worry about that stuff. I mean the goal of buying an expensive camera quite frankly has let that camera do as much work for you as possible now that's why you pay a lot of money for those cameras, you know you don't mean if I could shoot video in an automatic mode and it worked perfectly I'd be shooting an automatic they're just not quite to that level they will be one day then we can almost do what still photography today and then cameras have just come a long way so that's why you spend the money so that you can rely on that technology all right we'll have one more question and I think it's stopped raining since it never rains here in seattle cory question came in from pro photographer who'd like you to speak a little bit more as far as keeping the stills and the video consistent with each other what you're thinking and how you go about doing that right well it really depends on the project that we're working on sometimes we want consistency between still and video and other times we actually don't want consistency between still on video you know this shot in the water we really wanted a very similar look that image the still image is going to look very similar to the video image and that's what we were aiming for but often times that's not what we're trying to accomplish oftentimes we're trying to really create a still image that has a very unique look in a video that has a very unique look and so I think it's more about making a decision in advance what are you trying to accomplish and then sticking to those guidelines so that's kind of that's really what we're thinking when we're shooting video it's having clear guidelines having inspiration content for inspiration images so that you know which path you're going down leading into the shoot so let's get let's head over to the back of jim's kayak and and we'll see how we're doing in terms of rigging this thiss camera so we're using the nikon j three which is a mere a list camera and we have a six point seven to thirteen millimeter lens now there's a crop ratio but I would say that's roughly a sixteen millimeter lens when we're really zoomed out and so we've just taken a set of man photo sticks and he also helpful cam strap this is the same camp strap that you used to like you know, put a surfboard on the top of your car kayak on the top of your car and we're just going to try to ratchet that thing down and the beauty of using a tripod is weaken really you can see dane is rigging it in such a way that you know we're getting it out at an angle it's pretty cool like you know we're three feet off the deck of the boat you know out at about forty five degrees off jim shoulder we've intentionally chose this angle so that we can see him paddling we're going to get a cool over the shoulder p o v shot and we're going to see kind of where he's going, which is nice and so this is an easy shot, you know, I kind of like shots like this because once we rigged the camera press record we just tell jim to head out for sixty seconds or two minutes and then he paddles back at us realistically, the shot that we're gonna want is the one where jim is paddling away from us and the reason is if he's paddling back at us he's going to see us all standing on the dock so it's really as he's heading out into the wild country of alaska here that's that's the shot that we're looking for yeah thing right there towards towards the wilds and then you'll also give us a few cast yeah, suspicion yep that looks good you can kind of see how this is framed up here just kind of over his shoulder and I think we're going to shoot first at normal frame rate and and one thing that's where pointing out is when we were shooting in slow motion on the d for or when we go to slow motion on the d a hundred we're going to sixty frames per second, but we're actually going from full hd, which is nineteen twenty by ten eighty we're going into hd, which is ten seven twenty by ten eighty seven twenty what's hd depends on much hd of seven twenty by twelve eighty in ten eighty by nineteen twenty ten eighty by ninety so bottom line we went from full hd twenty four frames per second to hd at sixty frames per second so it's going to be a lower resolution file but when we put it into post production we're still going to show it to you in full hd and it'll look great like to your eye to most human eyes you won't see the difference between full hd in hd all right let's see that's looking good think we'd let you get in the water a little more will make sure their horizons good and again like this is pretty stable and we trust jim but this again we're using a rental house camera just in case he don't get in the water kidding about that that's our that is our our camera okay hold on jim okay and we're going we are rolling ok and go for it jim you know should I hold on just second? Kim I'm in a level the camera a little bit you're good right there you know why don't you just go until I shout hold on a second okay? Camera's rolling and action and I think just aim aim straight across cool so that's just you know really we've taken a tripod mounted the camera and it allows us to do nice point of view shot and of course we have a lot of control because we're working with an icon one that's the beauty of if we tried to rig that defore out there it's a much ever your camera would require a lot more rigging hey jim, maybe point left a little more yep there we go cool and then I think from right there jim, how about just a few casts like kind of casting out toward those other fishermen? Okay, so we're trying to also maximize the situation we're trying to actually get jim that we got a nice paddling shot, you know, somewhere in those fifty strokes to get out there there's a frame or two that's usable and now really what we're trying to do is just get another usable shot out of that same angle so casting over his shoulder he'll probably end up looking the camera yanking it off the tripod and but we shot on sd card so we can recover the sd card will still have the footage just no camera that's what we're okay and the wind is obviously blowing his boat that's not the optimal location but I bet we'll get something usable and again this is the difference between we're doing this quick and dirty just to show you how we would approach this situation the reality is if we actually were doing this for real, we would take our time and would really massage the situations and you know, review the footage and make sure that we're really nailing the shots all right that's the best part we get to just wait and let jim come in let him do his thing what's our next what is our next shot? Was this the last divorce? This never happens in real life production we're moving really fast that's so typically we're trying to actually do the actually no we did we cut this submerged was paddling away from us one option is we could get a housing in and just do a couple paddle strokes so like can we set up the d for in the house? Yeah let's just go let's go water housing with the d for so we're realizing that we got ahead of our schedule and so we're going to try to take advantage of that time and add one more shot you're never going to regret having mohr shots when you go into post production you will regret if you don't have enough shots toe actually edit together your piece so hey jim hey maybe let's try one more where you actually point the bow of the boat toward the trees and do a few cast okay, so we're gonna set up the housing see if we can't capture a few more what we're thinking is will fill the time by actually shooting jim paddling out and put the water housing really close to the paddle so we can see just water dripping off the paddle then we'll try with how the housing submerged the boat just going right past the housing and again we want we want ideally mohr content for that timeline than less content for that time won the best case scenario is when we get into post production tomorrow we have to decide which clips we can't use because we're out of time versus getting forced into using mediocre clips because that's all we have to work with and that's kind of truth still photography as well as video you really want to try to capture more options more scenarios than less scenarios so we're just going to keep on working it until we're out of time and right now we have this arbitrary timeline of you know we're doing ninety minute segments for creative life but often times your timeline is either the sun is going to set or if we have you know jim's a high profile angler if jim's on a tight schedule and he tells us he's out like a hard out at ten thirty then we have to end ten thirty so I'll keep on shooting right up until ten thirty when we're going to lose our talent or lose the athlete or the person that we're photographing your filming with so while jim's getting ready to head back in feel free if you guys queue up any questions I'm more than happy to answer so, jim, maybe two more casts and then come on back in, okay, the the deal with a guy like jim is he would love to just keep on fishing right now. We really have to call him back in, and this could last the rest of the day, and he'd probably come back with enough fish for dinner for everybody. Emanuel had asked. You sometimes use external recorder versus the right, you know? Very rarely do we use the external recorder, and the reason is those connections, it's just one more thing that can go bad in the field, so the realities I'd rather spend a little more time in postproduction converting to pro rez versus trying to have a pro rest file in the field. But the bottom one, when you start adding pieces of equipment to a dslr camera, there's a lot of cables on a lot of connections that can go bad. And if you lose that signal from your camera to the external recorder, um then you're actually losing shots and that's a big problem. I was wondering, do you ever have to bring lights with you when you go to remote locations? Right? We do oftentimes bring lights with us two remote locations. And for shooting on strobes, if I can get away with just using the nikon strobes that's the ideal because they're so lightweight, so for shooting stills, will you strobes and in those lightweight environment sometimes will use four five nikon speed lights, and the reality is once you start stringing them together, sinking them with the commander unit or some of the other sink devices out their pocket wizards, the ability to actually increase your power is is pretty amazing, and they're so lightweight that you can overpower daylight when we're doing video and we need continuous lighting. More and more, we're using the light panels leads and the beauty of the leads is one they're super light wait to they don't get hot and three you can run them off of battery power when you're in a remote location. Here we have the luxury of we can run a power cord up to the house, but when you're you know deep in the mountains, you can bring a single anton bauer battery for it one by one or even this helio and we can create five hundred five hundred watt light equivalent with a single anton bauer battery, which is pretty nice. There's also much smaller led lights that just take double a batteries. That chroma that I showed yesterday, and our camera bag the chrome off it's just if you were backpacking alone, for example, in interviewing people along the trail that chroma is the kind of light that you could literally sit on your backpack. And you could sit there with your video, your dslr and record a video interview around a campfire. And you could light the individual by simply using that chroma lady like that's. You know, I think it's six double a batteries, so, like continuous lighting has really come a long way, because the drawing power for in l a d is so much less than the draw with conventional lightbulbs. Cory, would you ever collect any natural audio from a situation like this? You know, it really depends on what you're trying to do in your final edit. In my mind, when we talked about this concept, the goal was wade lay down music in the background, so we know we're going to use a fifteen or thirty second music track, and then we decided in advance that the only natural sound that we wanted was the sound of jim's beer cracking open, and then we wanted jim's voice over as he's talking to the camera, so sure there's beautiful natural sound you hear the water you get a boat you hear the birds chirping you know you hear the dog barking across the way but the reality is we don't need that stuff and so we want to stay focused on which ingredients which media assets are we actually going to use for the spot so the goal always is don't get distracted with stuff that's not important you know make those decisions in advance if we were doing more of kind of a documentary style shoot we're going to make those editing decisions in the aftermath then we might actually record some sound because we're not certain if we're going to use it later or not so stay focused you know if there's extra type items that you might want to use record those afterwards but it's after you've shot everything that you could possibly use for your main at it and the still photos for your client so in this case that's why we're avoiding the natural sound well, we have a lot more great questions but I just want to keep them more to the shooting positions right now so we have about fifteen more minutes cori perfect okay, so we're setting up the d for again we're getting into the housing so that we can shoot some more video as jim is going to head out so jim, I think the shot that we're going to do I'll probably put the housing like half submerged and will coordinate it so that you do a paddle stroke right in front of right in front of the housing so you kind of splash the housing a little bit it doesn't have to be a ton of I think just a natural paddle stroke and we'll see the water kind of drip off the end of the paddle that should do the trick and and it might even be that oh yeah, we could pull that off that yeah, I know thanks, george oh, you know, did I haven't stopped the record cycle okay least we recorded this whole session of talking okay, perfect. So we've cleared the boat and why's getting our camera ready and housing back video settings can perfect. Okay, okay, um yeah let's do that. I think that would be good and that was good. Jim actually just brought something up that I wasn't paying attention to from a continuity perspective he's had his fishing bag on the back of the boat and we took it off so that we could rig that cameras and now we're putting it back on so that the shots don't look significantly different when we go to do the added and odds are like with something we're doing such a quick at it, you know, to second clips, probably most folks wouldn't acknowledge that or see that but it's better to be safe than sorry so sticking to that continuity is the key all right and jim was this dry bag on the camera are on the boat okay, perfect let me uh grab the housing okay said set a kind of underwater okay so I think what we'll do gym is I'm going to and we're rolling one okay all right so this is going to be mostly underwater and I'm gonna have you put your paddle right in front of me and go ahead and okay and go ahead and paddle right past me okay I'll tell you what let me come out a little farther kit and go for it perfect it's going back up and we'll try that again and then I'll track and what we'll do is a couple paddle strokes and then I'm gonna try to put the camera under the boat okay from right there is good okay so we've exposed for underwater right now so it's obviously a lot darker underwater sir exposures two hundred at fiftieth of a second and faa and why you looked at this and it looked good why don't we let's pop it out because it kind of looks super dark to me let's actually just check and see if it's barely it's actually looks like correct exposure above water so let me try one or two passes while we have this exposure of just the water dripping off the paddle so let me see jim how about um yeah, right there. Perfect. Okay, I'm going to paddle stroke right past me. Great care let's try that again. No. Okay. Well, that's great when the paddles right about there and so good and paddle right past me in government. Okay, I think we've got to review this because I'm concerned I just can't tell what the camera submerged in the water. What we're getting it's hard to tell. I think once I go out deeper, it might be that if I'm right at the edge and I have sand reflecting, we might be able to see the dirt. Yeah, that's uh, that's really jump in here? Okay, I just want my kit, all right? So I'm gonna fast forward through this footage here just to make sure that we're and where we were focused on infinity then focus about feet, maybe. Okay, maybe itjust moved once we got out. Okay. There's no faster way to review this stuff than actually welling. Okay, here we go. So you can see it's fairly dark there? Yeah. That's looking pretty dark so let's. See? Then I moved closer to shore, so we'll see once we get closer to shore if that water looks looks any better see here, okay well yeah we might have to open up I would say like a full two stops actually underwater let's see what these half and half shots look like in terms of yeah that's just really dark back up again again you have to have patience sometimes it's about looking at your work and then accepting when you made a mistake like I think I blew it exposure wise here okay here we go here's the half and half attempt ok this looks like it's usable he's a little blown out above water but the paddle looks pretty cool him was kind of looking at me I think there's some usable footage right there those bubbles look cool let's see when he tried again how that works for us oh yeah that already looks cool okay, here we go boom that's a beautiful shot hey, jim this time when you do it I know you're looking at the cameras you don't smash the housing but maybe set it up and then just look away cool okay? I'm gonna open up two stops so let's go back into video live you so we're at two hundred two hundred s so we're going to go up to four hundred sl and the reason is we just need to hope put up that water and then I'm going to go to f five six so that's two stops brighter so he's going to be totally blown out above water but underwater it's gonna look much better and we're going to go to three feet cool that's good todo all right thanks can it's rolling okay perfect okay mind my normal paddle stroke out okay let's do it having let's do it show me where your normal paddle stroke isn't it let's do it right there then okay I'm rolling let's just try it great okay let me I'm going to come out farther into this slightly deeper water let's try the same thing you tell me where you want me how far away okay perfect let's try it go on do one right next to cool I think that's great let's try that again and all kind of push in towards you I'm not gonna watch this time okay yeah you know this now it doesn't matter big some underwater great okay jim and then let's try one more thing I wouldn't mind trying to put the housing underwater so that I see the boat pass over the top of the housing so just the tale of your boat actually no we could also do that so that may be why don't you come in straight at the camera so you're just on this side of me I'll just get the front of the boat I'm sure let's do that okay sean pointing the camera this way you're coming in on this side of you okay? So let's see how about on here. Okay, all right, okay, perfect. Come real close to me. Great. Okay, cool. So I think we actually got some pretty nice stuff. Underwater. We have minutes, a nice additional shots that we didn't think we were going to get, which is, you know, the paddle stroke water coming off the paddle from above half and half. And then we also didn't underwater shot where we could see jim's paddle on all the cool bubbles underwater and again, it's all about just telling that story of jim going fishing. And we want to have enough content that we can actually edit together a video clip.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

You should know that this class is from 2013. This isn't made evident anywhere I can see in the description. The content is good, but dated in regard to much of the tech. Corey Rich and his crew are very clearly trying hard to wring as much goodness as possible out of their time to provide value. I'm not so happy that I paid $34 for the course last week, discovered it was over 7 years old, and now it's only $12. For $12 it is an excellent investment. I'd purchase again for $34, but I'd hold CL in higher esteem if they'd been honest about the creation date, and didn't drop the price by so much right after I paid for it.

a Creativelive Student
 

This is awesome, I love his way of teaching. All the information from planning and creating the shots and videos, the commercial part of dealing with your clients small and big, how to be creative thinking of your "feets". He is funny and very very informative. Well done.

a Creativelive Student
 

What a great class it is such a great opportunity to what some real pros at work. This class will inspire you to do what it takes to get the image. You will see that even the pros struggle sometimes.

Student Work

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