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Handheld Rigs

Lesson 8 from: Introduction to HDDSLR Cinema

Vincent Laforet

Handheld Rigs

Lesson 8 from: Introduction to HDDSLR Cinema

Vincent Laforet

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Lesson Info

8. Handheld Rigs

Next Lesson: Film Crew

Lesson Info

Handheld Rigs

Welcome everybody uh it's been a great day and a half and we're going to start talking about handheld rigs the final part of gear um the reason I didn't start with handheld rigs first is because, um I think that given what we've discussed, the canon cameras he's a senior sailors have no stabilization built in therefore, while handheld work may be the single most common type of work that you do with any camera that's the most energetic uh and the most uh frankly easy because all you do using your two legs uh or shoot from a vehicle um shooting handheld footage with the five d or the one demark for any of these guys what they are is relatively difficult to get good results and that has to do with the fact that the economics of this camera are really, really wrong for video it's a still camera and a still camera body in case that really wasn't thought through in terms of shooting video and what you'll find is this incredible industry that's been built around uh trying to overcome those de...

ficits and uh there's three main deficits the one we've discussed already, which is the idea that there's no image stabilization built in these lenses that is so specifically constructed for video uh, that has changes I mentioned with the new one hundred millimeter macro lands from cannes version too uh it's priest a significant advancement ah the other big factor is the ability to see what you're shooting as you're shooting it uh the lcd is a very strange spot and you have to put something equivalent to a za kutaisi finder there are other types of fighters out there onto an lcd screen which is not really a high resolution screen to begin with not highly color accurate um and economic be just kind of feels wrong and then of course you've got the issue of the actual form factor uh of that body so jared has a bunch of, uh, units in his hand uh we're going to get to that in a second you can see some of the options that are out there I'm sure you've seen these units from red rock micro or suck uto and many other manufacturers um before we go there I'm going to skip to the keynote real quick and, uh talk about you know I don't have here with me right now um it is amongst some of the stuff that was lost by fedex on the way here so when we don't have stuff to show you it is somewhere out in the ether but this is ah a unit made bye bruce dorn uh I d c um that's called the u boat video rig and it's a very compact simple uh unit bruce dorn was a cinematographer in director himself uh for quite a while and, um it's just one approach to this that you might consider the price point is attractive it's two hundred sixty nine dollars I wish I had, uh, the unit here to show you but umm you could attach to it your zoom h foreign audio recorder um it's got uh effectively hot shoe mounts on top three of them so you can actually also with a hot shoe adapter mount a shotgun microphone um and you could also attach a new lcd screen if you wanted to, um and it's got an interesting wheel on the side that allows you to in a very compact and simple manner um do the follow focusing it all built in one so it's something to consider? Um definitely look into it, try it out and we're going to jump immediately to a separate unit. Red rock micro is a company that, uh I personally have worked with a lot since the beginning. Uh they were able to get me one of the very first prototype units with a very short period of time uh, after the five day march who came out and I've always been a fan of their products. I think that the quality of the products has gotten exponentially better over the last year and a half to the point where the margin between these manufacturers is eroding very quickly um there used to be, uh a huge difference between an artery and a red rock and while there still is a difference and they're probably always will be because of the price point when you sell, you know, a four thousand dollar matt box versus a few hundred dollar one there's going to be a difference uh very few of us are going to buy the already uh I will be using both depending on what I'm doing but red rock is a another fantastic way to enter into this world and they make a variety of models. I am not going to go over every single model out there because we would literally be here between red rock and secure toe and other manufacturers till tomorrow. Um this uh what jared has in his hand right now is, I believe called the captain's doubling or something like that I can't keep track of the model names the event um the event is a extremely compact set up very solid, nothing slipping off. Okay? And, uh, use this this this arm to brace the camera against you. Up goes the viewfinder on your eye and there you go off you go good way to start going to go ahead and place it down and it states which actually is a big factor for a lot of these things I'll flop over fall um it's nine hundred dollars just under nine hundred bucks uh with all these attachments what's great about red rock is that they have a tremendous amount of variety of attachments and when I say that what I use is different I make my own custom riggs based on what I put on my camera so I have almost every single red rock part that exists and I could figure them based on the lens on the camera I'm doing and that's just kind of the way that I work and I think a lot of motion picture people work is to create the absolute best rig for your needs. Um so here is the event I want to go ahead and pass that around and give it a try uh another manufacturer that that I mentioned there's also out there is kyoto um and I don't think we have their small unit priced out. Um you can see it's a similar concept all right? And you can of course attached different attachments here to balance that means they're all they're highly customizable. Ah, yesterday mentioned that uh some cps members were some repair guys were afraid if you stick there's a kyoto onto your out your rear lcd that you might rip off the lcd because it's it's put on there with double sided tape I have never had that problem but this is a great solution for it uh it could go on and off and you can remove these screws and pop it right off so go from still mo to video mode very very quickly um these air also extremely well built and um I recommend you go to their site and see what the price point is for this particular model um in general ah year two goes a kyoto tend to be a little more high priced um then other competition and I know that prices have dropped quite a bit and like I said I'll go ahead and use this part or that part and mix it in with red rock stuff another stuff uh that's just the way I work uh that being said um marcus who's here with me uh kind of does this full time and just like continuously continuously reef reconfiguring these work best so here is that unit the main purpose of these guys is to balance the camera out putting the positions that you can wrest the weight on your body find something closer to the center of gravity be able to see what you're shooting as you go if you come on in view camera one is using another red rock device where the camcorder what's that sir I thought you were saying something um different approach different way of working things these are customizable and here's marcus with the double barrel which I would say is ah xue kudos high end yep. That's our model, this it's, one of their newer, uh, revamped models of their handheld kit. It was actually made. Um, not just for the news. I ce compact prime c p two lenses, but it was made with it in mind because I don't know if you can get like, a close up. Uh, has a new, um, little rod inside here and see you right here, which attach is to a, uh, quarter twenty mounts on the base of the zeiss cp to which helps handle the week mounting bracket that kind of comes lens mounting bracket that's pretty standard on these candid cameras. So that's ah, big plus one of the big issues you'll have with any unit york with just why I mentioned the really write stuff amount that we've been using is that as you go ahead and focus the lens, the focusing well, well, italy flexed the body up and down, depending on the size and weight of your land. And you have to have an extremely, uh, solid foundation to any of these things to be able to pull them off. You will see, however, that why I love the way these work, they're kind of awkward looking. Okay and this is not anyone's fault I hope I don't sound critical but when you walk with one of these around you tend to draw a lot of attention to yourself it's not the same form factor as this up a little camcorder obviously to you have to have a counterweight which is extremely important with any system that you worked red rock over here has a counterweight on john's back okay, so you bring different way two plates the plus of this is you're trying to balance the if you call a camorra front heavy the lenses very heavy it's falling forward or tilting down so you go ahead put some weight on the back as I said wait is your friend in video uh that being said it's sad that we have to travel around with effectively five or ten pound weights on either model um and that's not their fault the manufacture of these models it's kind of cannons fault at this point for having a still body that has the wrong economics obviously when you have you hold a hand quarter um it doesn't need any waits it's kind of built perfectly for the average woman being um so that those air to the units you might look into uh these units uh tend to get higher in price uh in the three is in this case a four thousand dollar range so it can get expensive all right and um that's um you don't have to think about what units work best for you uh isn't too big or too small for you what do you really need are these two gentlemen right here I think cut the camera to um excuse me perfectly happy what they have on those two units or do they need something like this or what's coming up here come on in lawrence this is another completely different uh model made by element technica and uh it's just a different iteration of what we use and this has a different shoulder pad around it you're going to go ahead and as with either the secu toe or the red rock place your arms out you can see that he's in effect bracing his wait right over here he's using all his strength to make a very solid block so that as I push him he's not going to fall over any time soon okay you also have the marshall monitor up here uh people are working on smaller monitors that will allow you to put a loop right up to your eye which is what I've really been waiting for which is what they call it e v s and electronic viewfinder here is uh some more concoction this is mme or the type of thing that I will use it's got a bit of everything um you've got the red rock micro uh matt box in front which is locked in somehow made between mother you don't want to break anything um and also different types of base plates a battery plate in the back from med rock as well so I can have an idea ex battery up here with my black magic down here I could also put a wireless transmitter will talk about it a little bit uh on this model is a remote control follow focus unit which we will get to in a second so go ahead and walk off to the side um I can honestly say without any hesitation that you need to try these out and find out what works best for you every person has different style um a lot of people on the high end well like tend to want to make their own models and um you know um that's kind of part of the deal it's like picking your ultimate device and not one device fits all needs if you have to run in and out of a car the smaller models might be quite nice if you're going to be running around the streets and don't have a steady cam the more weight you have on that body and them or absolutely perfectly balanced it is the better okay um I'm going to yes sir you talk about our display the difference with matt fox why you using math? Yes and why you couldn't get away with using a lens it yes so uh marcus can you bring that unit right back in for me? Okay, so the reason you use matt box um is you can go ahead and drop in filters right here. Okay, this is the square filters we talked about the other day that you can get from tiffin or format you go ahead and drop it right in you could stack a second filter so you have to stop in the four stop but both of the men you've got a six top filter you could also rotate them in the mat box so if you're using a radiated nd filter that goes from dark to light and you want to burn down a sky with a filter because you can't do it in post with the cannons which is not not raw you go within the matchbox and rotate it very easily and had a different heights and just slap a filter and so sun comes out slap a filter in cloud comes in slap of filter out you can keep the same aperture and that the field I really wish it were that simple but you kind of get the idea these matt boxes also khun slide forward or backward up and down depending on the high every camera body in the less the beauty of this especially if you something like this ice compact primes is go ahead, pull the lens out other lands in next shot okay that's what's beautiful about them if you have someone helping you so shooting with a compact crime twenty eight wash quickly caught two in eighty five millimeter shot your assistant is waiting for you right here. Yeah about eighty five one two three four okay as long as at the same aperture and focus your set its speed it's the ability move it forward quickly and back also don't forget jason I'm gonna call jason chen uh jason chen the famous gizmodo guy who just found the iphone for g um oh boy and you'll notice that there's a motor here or you could have the old style fall focusing unit everyone I spoke to you guys about how the compact crimes we're all the same size when you use different lenses that are not built that standard you have to adjust the spacing every single time you change the lens I hope you can see that as ugo being able to quickly swap in and out is going to be a huge huge plus. All right, so the answer for the mat boxes of course I'm not I haven't put any of the the extent of the flags when you call the big matchbox pieces the highbrow on the guy brown okay, so the flaps that go on top of this side I haven't installed them here um and uh they frankly a make you look more professional that's kind of a big deal for some people be you have the access to the filters the quick easy in and out I can tell you there is nothing worse in trying to screw and unscrew a seventy seven millimeter ring when you're in a hurry you will drop them, break them sweat on them flog them up that being said this khun b a big like sale you wouldn't put a mat box without a lot of support mounted on the hood of a car because all the air is gonna rush into it you know kind of fight it so there are pluses and minuses just about everything there enough and obviously flare so you khun very carefully control the flare to paying on the lens because a lot of times light will hit the lens and create flair that you do or don't want to put it in your style and that's what the browser for okay, we're as a fixed uh lens hood um is not as controllable. Okay, thanks very much. Um I'm going to jump into, um a very short section on lighting as many of you have seen in the past day and a half there's so much information out there right now that I'm trying to impart upon you stuff that I've learned from other people and other sources um I believe that lighting is one of the most important parts of film um it's also in terms of equipment one of the most um cumbersome things to deal with so with the fact that we're doing a live workshop streaming on the web to try and give you an adequate run down on cinema lighting it's just asking too much it's not because I don't want to do it it's because I respected enough to not want try and hurry people up through hot lights and have them burned their hand and trying to deal with so if you go ahead when you're ready with camera two and look at the lighting that we have in this room it is not a typical lighting that a still photographer is used to okay uh are you ready john so to my left is a continuous light source that is bouncing for a flag and free diffusion paper okay you have flags all around it to control this spill of the light this is the continuous lightings solution to effectively a medium or large size soft box okay unless you buy sameera or specialized soft box do not use your still soft boxes with continuous light sources they will burn to the ground it's unsafe these things generate tremendous amounts of heat all right so that's one way of doing it and john if you khun point back here you'll see a book end like it's got a two k lite just um a pretty meaty light that is froing er the light onto a reflective um twelve by twelve has it six six by six by six very getting very tired guys um sorry ah white six by six uh that's basically bouncing light back on you with another six by six in front of it that has diffusion material in front of it all right um and what is that that's like videos answer too huge soft box or octa bank all right except it's allowed to air out you've got flags uh video lighting a continuous lighting is so incredibly different then what we're used to as still photographers with soft boxes beauty dishes uh newt's uh grids it's a whole new world and I think it's one of the biggest kicks in the head that you get when you make the transfer from stills into video you know as a still photographer exactly how you want that light to work and you know you're like shaping devices quite well as a gp or filmmaker in general um because you make that transfer get some tea sorry guys learn an entirely new language you're going to have to think about how to um deal with power issues every one of these lights draws a certain amount of power one of the main questions we'll ask on almost any production when you go into a location is how much power can this location handle before you blow all the circuits and then you're gonna have to deal with bringing in power either putt putts, generator trucks, you name it and with that comes cabling. So, um, it's an entirely new world which we're not going to go too much in debt with I will tell you the most important lesson in cinema lighting is never, ever touch a lamp source with your bare hand always wear gloves you will absolutely burn your hand off if someone goes up there right now and touches that two k, they will go to the hospital. Okay? In fact, one of the big costs and any film is the insurance policy because of these hot lips. All right, so, um the other thing I should mention is if you're a photographer transferring to becoming a director and you're not as familiar with cinema lighting, you would hire a great dp who has done this for as many years or more than you have been as a photographer that's perfectly acceptable ah lot of deep peace start off in the camera department, they're experts in lensing and how to move the camera and they may not be experts and lighting it varies all over the place, some of the peace they're number one pride and joy is the way they like now is a dp sole responsibility too light we'll talk about that with the crew a dp works with a person called a gaffer whose job in life is to light things that worked with the grips and setting up lights but a gaffer uh is also pretty much the expert in lighting on a film crew so if you're a photographer transferring to becoming a dp and you're not sure you know like but you don't know what to k is versus a one point something k versus uh you know uh all the different stuff a china ball for now lands etcetera um you're going to hire great gaffer who is going to help you and walk you through that and that's their job it's not as much of an issue as you think might think it is so that's the basic sima lights I want to introduce you what I think for me is one of them or exciting developments in lighting and uh that's this light right here you've seen out throughout this week what I'm about to do you would never ever do with a hot light this thing has been on all day and I'm putting my hand right on it there is very no heat very little toe almost no heat being generated these air led lights lady there are these little bulbs that we all see in the new flashlights it's the new technologies to kind of being going on for the last few years and the beauty of these lights is that they don't generate nearly as much heat and they also could consume ah, lot lot, lot less power, significantly less and their dimmable, which is not something you can easily do with most continuous light sources. If you want to cut down a light that's continuous like a to k, you have to put the fusion in front of it or flags or sheets of nd so if you want to dim it down, just a touch it's not easy. Moving that thing three inches back is not easy. Things might fall not to mention that you change the quality of your light room in the back in a stroll days for the only way you control powers by how close you have them to the subject. Same deal these led lights are dimmable to a very inefficient degree, which is absolutely fat awesome for me. Why? Because these cameras in low light need the light extremely low. They don't need a to k light at times they could do very, very well with anneli alight that you could just look and react to these also come with remote ce that as a dp or on operator you can be over here, diming it from a distance so that if do we have the other different models, call if you have a ring light mounted onto your steady cam. All right we'll see you there uh familiar with bring lights for stroke packs a go round lens and your steadicam is getting closer or further to your subject what's gonna happen with the light get maura less intent your exposure is going to change whereas if you have that remote control us the dp or operator of gaffer or whatever your title maybe are gonna be doing that as you move along and that is really really sexy if I may say so then uh this is the one other light that I had during reverie I call this the brick the technical term for it is the many plus I've always called this my brick ah half of it is led is the other half is a battery pack this is concurrently small and it fits and nooks and crannies and again it's dimmable you can put different types of diffusion in front of it to slap it in it comes with it and um the beauty of this is let's say I want to fill jared's face just ever so slightly now um way too much light write them in all the way down and there you have a very very little key light or fill light on his face all right so if you can zoom in all the way into his eyes john and focused there you go so there that is uh natural light this is what I would call garnish light with the average light, you can knock down enough here you're aware of the light here you stop being aware of light right about there, but you said little catch lighten his eye that is, you know the secret any commercial photographer or film maker is that little extra catch light from here to there? It's extremely subtle, but guess what I'm doing handheld, I could move it around. I could very easily do a rim light and look at how easy it is for me to move the light physically around him with my bare hands. I don't have a camera lens light support don't have c stands or magic arms or whatnot put downs able, you know, use ah a pair of matches to prop it up or a piece of paper to fold two changes direction um, can you get a magic arm real quick? Uh, one of the most common tools that I'll use is a magic car. Ah, whether it's for cameras or for lights, go ahead and screw the magic arm into this life and we'll show you in a second uh, what you can do with them to go ahead and handle this hand this to you guys, and as you can see, you can work with that light for several hours so that light was on the wheel in reverie with gaffer tape lighting the model as he's driving for new york, you go back to that film that we showed yesterday you'll see a scene of him in the twenty millimeter lands with all the smoke and fire the car and you can see jimmy's face lit from below that one little patch like panel was there. That same light panel was at the end of a model pod hanging off the side of the helicopter that's what's lighting jimmy as we're flying over new york it's not the sunset fact, the light was a little too harsh, but you know, a lot of things to think about when you're helicopter and, um, you khun really pull a lot off, I don't have the correct screws or do I cool? He has light back here, so, um one of the most important things you can carry a different types of screws different, you know, what's, um, but basically you would hopefully have adapter, which we have with us, but I hopefully you could understand how this works. This will clamp onto the arm of a chair onto a desk onto any rod or lying device, and you can shape it any way you want. This is a magic arm it's called from man photo, one of the coolest devices that everyone has, whether they're photographers or filmmakers I will go ahead and put these beneath the table in an interview scene just to get that little catch light in the actor's face as their during a little uh back and forth. So like panels to me, if I could, I would like everything with ease, given how lightweight they are, how well they travel, how they use very little power um and how they're battery operated and a c depending what you need in last incredibly long time. What is the one problem with the ladies? They're absolutely fantastic for indoors they are ok for overcast, but they only have so much power, so you cannot fight the sunlight with anneli light, yet we can get there with four of them but direct light. But if you're gonna defuse it down, as you know, the biggest trick and lighting in a tremendous amount of power toe overcome sunlight, especially when you put diffusion in front of it because you're cutting it down exponentially, right? So these are my dream lights. They just announced ones that air fin al ones at n a b just really exciting directional lights. What I have failed to show you is one last detail over here he's the one by ones you probably can't see it, but on the back is can you see that john a flood and dimmer so these can actually flood you could focus them or make them narrow just really quite cool and obviously the dimmer whereas on this one over here, eh but by color go ahead and do a kind of a wide shot our medium shot and uh you can change the color from blue or daylight tungsten or anywhere in between and that's really, really cool blue light daylight on one light and that's a pre incredible level of control people do that anywhere in between uh so you want to shoot at night uh you go ahead and change the johnston if that's what light sources if not what they have which we don't have out here maybe marcus confined it is just gels that civility slide in from the top to bottom one by ones with different colors and different diffusion material. So this, uh I am madly in love with these lights and this is what I travel with as often as I can because I don't have to have big, heavy steve c stands and long cables and electrical concerns. When I travel, I could just do with four of these tremendous amount it's only going to come and hurt me when I try to overpower the sun with these they're simply not meant to do that keep that in mind quickly jump to some very basic um description of different light light lenses that you have the final lens is one of the oldest hollywood hollywood lights it's a very focused light where you control the spread of it um uh what I'm gonna show you here is kind of what language you may not be familiar with do you know what a beam projector is? What a park han an open face zip light space light is no if you're a photographer, you don't complete different language, complete different tools I'm not going to go into it other than to say a space light is kind of fancy soft box coming from the year it's a really nice way of spreading very even light on a stage as you would with, you know, a knock back from above the china ball I have to mention is the single cheapest light source for anyone starting in video. If you don't have a lot of money, go to chinatown or reading to go and buy a paper china ball lantern and put a regular um like bald in it, careful to not set things on fire all right, but that's very soft, even lighting if you have a scene cut back to the wide angle lens to um where four people are seated around the table it's difficult to light all four people without the lights being in the frame hanging china ball in between it's lighting everything evenly around use a few light panels hit accents there your gold so if you want sheep lighting china bowl if you don't have a china ball use white paper to balance light or white styrofoam right? So you you hit a light in the same way he's hitting that light into the six by six over there go buy piece of styrofoam with a regular lamp and bounce it into it'll come out really defuse them much more flattering we're not going to go into the angle of light the quality of light on all that stuff that is an entirely different workshop that can last for days and there's some fantastic people we're going to do that the last thing that I would share with you is kind of cool like called a balloon like we'll see them use that a lot of movies now it is a huge balloon inflatable light with very powerful lights in it that kind of a shower the whole scene with light and it actually floats in midair secure being in the middle of desert as long is not too windy and light with what looks like moonlight coming from the air really cool stuff uh we're goingto quickly jump into the final parts of gear and talk about time last really quickly I mentioned this to you earlier this is a dolly and a pan its hilt head but is not meant necessarily toe work live it is meant to move extremely slowly over time sorry it's by a company called kessler I believe they're based out of indiana correct and um let's go ahead and show them how to move uh this laterally from left to right with the control what you go and do the controls we have uh something called the revolution head on this right now which is a pan until head as well but this also comes just as a slider like very similar to what we're using before but it's it's motorized you can set it to, uh shoot by itself or moved by itself which is great for time lapse especially because you don't want to be there the whole time with it though you might want to monitor it to make sure comes out um right now uh you need to have two of these oracle control boxes to be able to do pan and tilt as well as sliding at the same time. So at the moment we have it set up just for sly in which I'll just demonstrate pretty quickly um it's just a left or right toggle on this control switch and it actually just moves it just like a regular slider but I don't have to actually push it um what's great about two is that you can set different speeds for it so this is this is its slowest that the motor can go which is only one of their motors they actually have a slower motor for even longer time lapse is as well but I don't know if you can tell but it's actually moving right now um just very very, very slowly um or you can bring it all the way up to max speed and this is good for video applications obviously I mean just to be clear it's not intended to be a video application had this is really intended to be ah highly technical piece of equipment that could move this and incredibly so speeds extremely precisely it's built like fort knox this thing does not move if I try two parents helped his head right now it will not move is really built fantastically and if marcus can go ahead and switch this to the pan until ted will show you what that khun d'oh here we go we're gonna plug this in what you'll notice is I have a still camera on here as we talked about before you can do this with a video camera doesn't quite make sense depending on how long your time lapse is going to be when you can work with the raw file at twenty one mega pixels in this case nineteen you'll see a cannon um uh interval ometer over here called the tc eight o nine three catching light over there all right and all this is is interval ometer that fires or triggers the camera every one second every two seconds every fifty seconds for two hours and it can also do bald setting so it can hold up and say I want a five second or a fifty second or five and exposure um which is at the heart of any tilt shift any tilt shift any time lapse is it ready to go? So here you go pretty cool thing todo pretty cool ha! So again, this is not meant to do what we're doing now you wouldn't really use this as a like, you know, fantastic elektronik arm but but you but you can just because you're not supposed to doesn't mean you should, but the thing to keep in mind is actually a very advanced unit to pull this type of work off. So now that I've put the cart before the horse, why in the world would you need something like this? Okay, let me show you a few examples of why so today we shot a time lapse of this room for over two hour period with the one the mark four and you can see a little bit of behind the scenes of what went on here and here's a key point you're gonna find this interesting for a few seconds, but uh the novelty of watching people move around is gonna wear off really, really quickly and I think to me personally and I'm biased I cannot stand time lapse that's not in movement uh because everyone can do it with a tripod it's far too easy to do if you're starting off definitely do that you're going to want to learn about setting the right exposure about you know all the basics but there's that movie let's watch something I've never seen before just kind of doing this on the fly the same thing with this kessler um uh motion rig okay, obviously you can speed this up this was shot every seven seconds with the cranes simply moving from left to right nothing else going on but you can see especially if you were to speed this up let alone do different time raps on it how it's much more engaging because over time you're being shown new information and when we first set this up we went from right to left which didn't make sense to me because you would start on the audience and and on the speaker if you look carefully we start on the left and down the right you see towards the end there it's kind of hit the end of its motion track so this is literally a short little time lapse video that I did with the most basic amount emotion into it so as I mentioned hopefully you've gotten to the point now where you understand that with motion pictures the camera itself most often is moving. I think the exact same principles we've been talking about in terms of photography will apply to timelapse. Not only will you want to move the camera from left to right, you will also want a pan, tilt the head and eventually have a jib arm with those the same. If you go back and watch baraka that's, what they did oodles of years ago and there've been very few things ever since. Done that. Well, uh, tom lowe is out there doing something similar. Go ahead and push press, play and let's, let it load up and switch over to one of his demo reels. Some of tom's work, as you can see, the effect. Is quite entrancing uh the camera itself is in constant motion it's all about the relationship on the foreground elements to the background that was shot with one of these devices or something similar if actually for these tom made some handheld stuff before you got to hold the castle cranes and, um, you know, it's a little step motor if you really don't have the resources to do this yet, you could buy a little step motor uh with two rails and string and have it pull your dolly very slowly if you're kind of technically minded minded um and pull off somebody similar results here he is actually driving in his pickup truck, which is unbelievable way find the reason I love time lapse is I finds an unbelievable way to make any production kind of come to a different level. The big danger with time lapse photography is after a minute or two no matter how good it is, it can really get old but here's tom and that is, uh is, uh email and there's his sight time scapes dot org's so that's time lapse we're going to switch back to mikey. No, uh, I think it's something that, you know, a lot of us who don't want to work with a crew or with actors uh can make arch entry into filmmaking on this level because all it requires is your still camera you're one lens and a lot of patients. Okay, um that's the cast for crane this is a kessler revolution pan and tilt head with the oracle controller uh it's a pretty fantastic design and if your interest in this type of stuff I recommend you look into it this is the really write stuff we didn't have this slide yesterday that fell for the cracks uh you could see all the different models you have down here and like I said, there's no better vote for a sort of camera mounting system there's no way used by still photographers but also by videographers and these cameras uh it's actually fantastic here is the actual unit and you'll go ahead and open it up, place your device in there and titan and it is absolutely rock solid and you can mount the camera based horizontally or vertically and I have to slide it and just drop it in. So this is close to german engineering is we'll get in the united states on and I think it definitely holds up any engineering in the world there's obviously a bubble down there and, um this is a pretty fantastic product so there you go they make a variety of plates and attachments for different types of bodies uh definitely look into one of those we have not discussed our memory cards um you know what one of the biggest arias I find is people who try to save money on their memory cards um if you have to go go for it's okay, but when you think about it of all the points of failure you don't want to have isn't it not losing your data after all the effort you've put into it I mean, think about a simple production little in a complex one where you spent all this money on lighting on camera support on crew on travel and your memories your memory card dies on you um you know um I hate to say but uh you do get what you pay for with lies memory cards um and you don't necessarily need to have the fastest memory cards for most video cameras. Uh today um in other words this is a three hundred speed memory cards they make me move faster now uh but you do need one that you can depend upon there you go is the slight that we didn't have yesterday for the adventurous suction cup to mount stuff on vehicles flat services windows uh and that's the model number up there in the slight this is another thing that was lost with fedex um this is, uh a kind of a really interesting alternative to a dolly or slider it's a device that has three wheels that could be locked are rotated who put a simple camera play on it and you go ahead and move it around on the floor this will work great on again like a dolly on a flat floor or on a table and like the very um existence of what you would call minimalist okay it's not a flight to we're going to use everyday but once a year you'll use it in fact, I don't know if anyone here knows chases last video you did with the skateboarders you'll see what scott uh pushing a nikon d three yes through a tunnel and getting some really great great results because it's hard to get a camera that low to the ground with any other mountain uh that's not really sophisticated next comes, uh really fun stuff that, um we're going to only touch upon here. One of the main challenges with focussing as we talked about is that it's not always realistic to have the first a c move with the operator with his hand uh on the follow focusing unit so marcus go ahead and move a little bit of radically I you know I can't keep up with him and I can't see my marks this is just not really realistic same goes with as we saw before the steadicam or a gyp so now you jump into a completely different world of using a wireless focusing device there are many of them on the market uh made by a variety of cos one of the most exciting ones that's just been announced it and maybe is this wireless focusing device by red rock micro that has operated by an iphone it's not out yet uh but I think the entire dslr world is waiting to see uh, that thing in action that was definitely, I think one of the biggest pieces of news uh on uh, the web that week. If you want to see what it looks like goto my blogged blawg dot vincent law for a dot com and you'll see one or two items down below the creative live it shows this image of an iphone controlling your wireless focusing device, and if you don't want to use an iphone it's more of a simple system that also does the same thing uh in the end, you'll have to buy a motor that connects to your lens. You could buy a second motor to connect your zoom ring and a third motor to connect to your iris, which is your aperture that's. What they mean by fizz is a b high end model that does this on motion picture cost thirty five to forty thousand dollars okay is the industry standard don't know many people are going to spend that much on a follow focusing unit, but that's what the preston fizz does and simply put as you will take the knob, you see, if you go to a close up here of the camera will hit your marks and she's quite that simple, says marcus moves forward. I'm going to change the focusing and member how we marked all of her marks on you. Uh, cut ahead to this camera on the actual focusing wheels so far do the exact same thing on this device here. Okay, so this is one unit you can buy, you're gonna have that red rock micro device coming out soon, and I know that the same coming that makes this view factor is also working on the even smaller model this that plugs straight into you're canon cameras, here's what's fascinating about that, uh, there is no need for a motor anymore, which means there's no need for rod's toe hold the motor in place, which means the camera won't flex as much, which means there's no need for a battery pack that connects the motor, it will engage the u s and motor that the cannon lenses have. I haven't seen it working, uh, in practice yet, so I can't tell you how it will work. I've seen it looks amazing. I can't give you an educated decision, whether or not the u s and molder motors will work well enough in terms of being smooth um as a post using motors my guess it'll work really well for quite a lot of people to be able to just plug either wireless uh, unit or directly we usb into the side of your camera and be able to control focus for their existing cannon lenses and that for some people may make them say, well, do I really need a c p to lens? Do I really need is ice or sticking my cannon glass? I don't know it's gonna be interesting time to find out where all this goes uh no one has shown me in production and I'm not going to say that I've used something unless they've used it for three, four, five, ten days in a riot situations and not seeing the interference of problems so I'm not going to make a decision on what's going on I can tell you that's a really exciting time to be involved in this and to see where this is all going. So now you have your operator with your first pay see your focus puller following marcus around so go ahead, just walk around the room and I will adjust the focus as he moves around okay uh this unit you khun right physical marks on here um you could eventually we're gonna be able to hit the record button and set off your camera from here and stop and on the red rock device you're going to be able to do a number of things you're going to see hyper focal displayed on the iphone it's going to show you the range of what a twenty millimeter is on a one day mark four and you're going to see graphically on the phone that you're within that range and you don't need to to worry about it again if you look at my site there also releasing uh this I believe its sonar device that mounts on the hot shoe rhyme mentioned you the idea of senate ate that sends a signal out and through sonar waves judges distance so it's going also feed into that our iphone and give you the basically it's like autofocus without autofocus yet and it's going to say this is what that device is telling you that your subject is six feet away this is your hyper focal and this is where you're currently focused and then they really done something that is extraordinary and I can't see in practice isn't effectively created autofocus because the iphone will take that data from that device communicated internally to the motor and basically auto focus the camera for you alright so far I have yet to see it yet it was just announced but I am holding my breath because that is incredibly cool uh I don't think there's a single auto focus a system like this in the world well that's that's marcus and you know there you go different strokes for different folks uh granted if you're doing a very precise scene where you're trying to pick which eye to focus on this is going to be a preferred approach or maybe just even the doesn't matter whether you're integrating with the iphone you're still gonna want to use the old techniques but if you're on steadicam walking behind someone I'm a very much like auto focus because I am a single operator who doesn't have the first a c I've got my study camp so if I was casey I put that thing on and say you know, what do your best guess is gonna be better than what I can do by myself we go on the back of marcus's camera you will see uh this little blocks here what it is doing after we mentioned this earlier yesterday is it's taking in the hd my signal here from the camera and coming out as an std I signal all this is is gibberish for different types of connectors and signals what this sd I signal allows you to do is connect to industry standard television monitors in this case a marshal electronics so this marshal electronics uses uh h d s d I ports most tvs and reference monitors that you buy or rent in the television world work off of this system they do not work off in hd that's what that black magic boxes that you should put on the screen real quick um obviously need to power the black magic box you do that by feeding it power off that same idea ex battery here is a new unit we don't have right here right now for a variety of reasons uh call the I d x cam wave this will slap onto this unit back here that marcus will show you um it's a transmitter and receiver he'll go right back here in the back of the camera um and transmit what marcus is seeing live to a receiver which means that marcus could be looking at this monitor at the same time and live and wirelessly I could be seeing it on a handheld monitor in my hand on a marshall monitor as a director or as the first a seat or playing that on twenty foot screen whatever you want wirelessly so that really removes that big headache of those wires dangling all over the place of tripping over hd my cables it brings your production to an entirely different level in good and in bad ways but look what's happened in this camera now it's got a battery pack here another one back here black magic box and I d x cam way follow focusing it guess what this little itty bitty cannon five the mark too is looking a heck of a lot like a professional camera. Why? Because for professional results sometimes you need professional products. They won't look pretty in effect as you see in these things build out, it ends up looking pretty much like a beta camp, you know, like an e m g camera with a block over here, and things build out backwards exactly what it is, except those things you're nicely enclosed with plastic around it so that when it rains, you don't have short circuits. Yeah, I do not shoot with this in the rain. Okay, thank you very much. Marcus, uh, before you leave you no batteries in this case, one of the manufacturers out there that makes rate batteries eyes I d x another one you probably recognize is anton bauer. They're pretty much the leading people in the business. So here on the keynote is, uh, the the lock battery. Nice thing about the v lock is, um, pull him up and slapping down there. You're going to get right and off you go before you leave. I'm sorry. There was one more thing back to the marshall monitor. Okay, marcus, can you just quickly show them how the different features built into the monitor that might help them on their production? Well, this is one of they're older models, um and basically, uh, one of the good things that these miners can do is give you something called a predator vision, which is more commonly referred to in the industry um, which is just kind of ah, color mapping that correlates to ira's, which is a broadcast sort of signal kind of wave form correlation I don't know if I'm getting too complicated here matters they called the number yeah, basically it tells you exposure in one way or another and, uh, they come with these handy dandy stickers on the side here, which kind of give you, uh, the key to what there's means, so to get right down to it to expose vincent's face, I'd keep it somewhere between the pink and the light grey and that's how, you know, something's, expose well for human skin tones. Um, if you're hitting, if you're seeing orange or red, you know you're peeking on your whites and you might wanna drop the exposure down to pay on what you're looking at, like if you're looking at the sun it's gonna be red, you're not gonna explode it down, and if you get really dark blues or even a future, are you guys transmitting the tight shot of the of the martial court, uh, I'll see that that color scale on the left there represents those different types of levels so the red obviously is not a good thing no. Where is the fuchsia on the bottom it's way too low so that marcus is you adjust the exposure uh on that camera you will see those colors move this is extremely useful when you're on a bright sunny day or unmixed lighting and you really can't trust your eye um and effectively what this camera's doing is giving you a false color to help you decide where you're living and where you stand in all of us that's overexposed ok comptel uh which if I turn this off obviously it's super bright white it's not a good picture um some of the other great functions that this uh monarch has is the ability to, um crop in so if I was a focus puller um looking off of one of these monitors and I didn't want to stir my camera operator by using the regular five times ten times zoom on the actual candid camera you can actually, uh, punch in right on the monitor by pushing um in f one f two of three or four, I just set these for these functions you khun customised these anyway, you want, uh, configuration that you're seeing the image one the one it's not a full high def resolution modern given size they don't make those yet I'm sure they will a matter of time so you can go ahead and push the wonder one single you're getting so if these cameras have ever end up outputting full ten eighty that's gonna be a really useful tool tohave um and I would just kind of show them really quick uh flip function if it's exist on that one so put down a steadicam and it will flip your image upside down uh it may not have been sound this but just is a little bit older model right, which is optimized for viewing outside with direct sunlight it's a little bit brighter um but the other models that we have uh my four key is set so that the images as it is now will just flip it upside down so that, uh you can orient the monitor any way you want. Have you ever tried to kind of move your monitor and flip it over because you mounted the wrong way? You press one key and you're upside down very quick thing then there's peking and there's uh zebra a bunch of other functions uh some of larger miners and eventually maybe some of these models will come out with scopes on it, which is kind of like a life history gram that's made for video uh I'm not going to belabor this right now because we got to keep moving but you can see that it's more than just an lcd screen it has to do with all the tools that are associated with it to help you uh, judge color and focus and um things that you are critical to any photographer dp director filmmaker and it also is a cool thing called freeze frame where you can actually uh, freeze the frame and show it to someone so if you saw a moment you can freeze it it's like taking a snapshot onboard um and it looked list goes on and on so let's, go ahead and move out to this aquino slight cannot slide and there are the different types of martial models that are out there uh, you could go all the way up to twenty plus inches have like big reference monitors on set. I believe that is it for this section that will effectively, uh, completely conclude thank god all of the year that we have, uh for this it's been a plethora of year getting it out here. And I want to thank all these manufacturers for us gear over here for this workshop so that you can see it and makes them better decisions and try things out obviously my job's try and get these out so that you can see them I know they exist and you make your own decisions to what you need

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

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

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

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

Marvin Løvenfeldt
 

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

Johnnee Lin
 

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

Student Work

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