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Crew and Roles

I want to move on to some shooting techniques because what's gonna happen tomorrow is I'm gonna give You were gonna get there to the venue, and I'm gonna give you a brief overview of what I'm gonna show you, and then we're gonna be like, into it, and we're not going to stop. It's gonna be pretty, pretty crazy, Onley because we want to show you every part of the day. And it's not just preps ceremony, photo session reception we're talking about. Okay, there's preps than this. Establish er's. There's hair and makeup. There's her getting dressed. There was the groom getting dressed. One of the guys doing What's the story over there? Are they hanging out with each other? What's what sort of activity are they doing? Pre ceremony people coming into the reception reception establishes the reception or the ceremony itself. Rather ceremony scavengers. So there's all these different parts of all of each part of the day, and we have to get through them quickly. So I want to talk a little bit about...

shooting, all right. And I want to give you guys my tips on how to effectively shoot with a mono pod to really get high quality stuff. Okay, So what I want to do is grab them on a pot, actually. Already have a camera set up over here. Grab that. And let's just give you a quick tutorial. We talked about setting up the camera before. Now that the cameras set up, let's assume we are in a situation where we're shooting a bride, okay? And I don't have a bride here. Here's my bride. Okay, So when I shoot with my mono pod and this gives me the most flexibility and mobility, I can move around and be wherever I gotta go, I can move up, down I can. You know, this really gives me a lot of mobility. And if you properly use this, it's rock solid. And it looks really good, you know, for basic shooting. So when shooting with, I'm going to get into focusing and exposure and all that I want talk about steadiness. When we get into shooting with the mono pod. It's very easy to do this. How many of you guys shoot leads? I appreciate Like this don't, right. You don't want to do this because you're introducing body motion and any any little motion there is gonna be really exaggerated by, you know, by by the optics and camera itself. Longer lens is going to be more shaky. So we really want to eliminate that. We want to try to get as many points of contact as possible on our camera. Okay. The MTA pot itself is one point of contact. My hand on the side is another point of contact. My hand on the lens is the third point of contact and three points of contact is good if it's not held out here. Okay. You want to bring the camera and a little bit closer, maybe make use of the pivot arm and this kind of lock it in. Now you've got to study your shot, pressing it up against my body. It's locked down. I'm not doing a whole lot of this. Okay, that's a little bit more advanced. Like there will be times I'm shooting abroad, getting makeup done, and I pay I might pan up from here to here or might move from here to here. But I'm really not trying to follow action with this. With a shallow depth of field, you're gonna find yourself missing focus by doing that. So a lot of points of contact, Just trying to get as many, you know, locked down points as I can on this On this device, who has one of these? Anybody here is a cozy finder, expensive little doohickey, but really valuable in helping to shoot steady and focus because it'll really magnify the back of the screen and really help you to get quality shots. So having now the arm and the Z Finder and my three points of contact, I can really get some study footage here. Okay? I am not always shooting from this perspective, okay? This is a very boring perspective. Why? Because we're all this tall. We're all I level so shooting down. It's something like this is boring. It's not thinking outside the box. Whenever I try to shoot something, I'm really trying toe get down into a level where I'm, you know, my eyes usually not and try to think dynamically in that respect. Okay, so we'll get into sequencing a few minutes, which is really the backbone of how we tell the story visually. But before I do that, I know the chat rooms were lit up with a lot of questions about focus and exposure with with the DSLR. Um, I've become so comfortable working with these cameras that really becomes an extension of my body. And I don't even have to think about exposure, change and aperture change as I'm shooting because it just it just okay, I know I need to get down to, you know, hundreds of a second. And I know I need to be a to eight. Boom. It's done. So teaching it is sort of I have to, like, remember to slow down, but basically, what you want to do whenever you're shooting any sort of shallow depth of field is think about this rule of thumb watch movies. Depth of field is something that's used to bring you into a scene. Okay, One thing I see a lot of cinematographers doing and weddings is the shooting. Everything it like 20 everything. Why? Shots, close ups, everything. Shot with a shallow depth of field. Well, one, What does that do? Wide shots tend to be more out of focus, right? Because you're trying to focus a big scene with a shallow depth of field and you're missing focus in your far away objects, right? But up close, it looks really nice. It's really dynamic, you know, watch movies and look at dialogue scenes when two people are facing each other and they're talking to each other and the cameras air switching back and forth over the shoulder. A lot of times they're shooting at a very shallow that the field because it brings you into the scene. It draws you in there and makes it intimate, like almost here as if you're a part of the conversation. Now notice when the camera pulls back and you're looking at wide shots or medium shots, it's very rare that they're shooting very shallow. Okay, you've got to consider what kind of I'm so much the mood. What kind of what kind of seeing you want to set when doing wide shots? All right, I don't necessarily maybe want If I was going to shoot you guys all lined up in this chair and I still want to have the background behind you. I wouldn't want you guys to blend into the background so I wouldn't shoot it f 20 because then you're gonna look in as the same focuses the background. What I do is probably shoot at f eight, you know, or somewhere women BF 10 or 11 somewhere in there. And there would be a separation between you in the background. But you also wouldn't be ridiculously out of focus cause shooting a 20 just your noses, Aaron, focus. You know what I mean? So I'm always thinking about that when I'm shooting and I used to shoot everything shall always be like I got these great cameras and shoot depth of field tuo tuo tuo tuo tuo and trying to whenever I could because it just looks so cool. But now when I shoot, I'm like, you know why? If I'm gonna back off a subject, I'm gonna drop down my aperture and it's gonna look great. It's gonna look, it is getting sharp. It's gonna clean. And when I blow it up on my screen later on, I'm not gonna be so disappointed that I shot in a 20 or what? Is it gonna focus? You're gonna know why. Because he shot too shallow, So steadiness, really important and depth of field. They go hand in hand when you're shooting together. So let's consider that This is our bride back here. OK, here I am. I've got an millimeter lens on five D. Mark two full frame sensor. Okay. This is a very bright environment. A lot of times, brides preps are not usually this bright. So in here, I really gotta dial down my shutter. I'm 80th of a 2nd 32 on the aperture, and I also 400. Okay, it's shallow. And I wonder if I can tether in. One of the guys in the booth could help me out with this. I know I won't be able to see my live you, but I will be able to see it on the screen behind me. I'm gonna plug in here. Let's try this. Oh, there we go. Awesome. Cool. Very nice. Okay, so that's a three to okay. And you notice that it's really the background is really out of focus. I mean, it's it's a really nice deep shot. I kind of rack focus. My background, show you that there's a lot of separation there between the background and the foreground of this image, and I'm a 32 So don't phone to the trap where you feel like you have to be at, you know, 16 to get nice. Step the field. Now I'm just now only a part of its and focus. So I always started. Tell people who are shooting at first if you're a new shooter and you're having trouble focusing and you're having trouble getting things to look crisp. If you're up close on an object, don't drop below Okay, because you can see here at 1 25th of a second at 25 400. So that's nice. It's in focus. And maybe I could even drop down a little bit more because I'm still seeing with this front image right here where the white part is over. It's still a little out of focus at this framing, so we actually go to 35 opening up a little bit on the shutter. There you go. It's still a nice deep shot telling the same story, but you're getting a lot more crispness out of the image. The one thing that I've been telling my crew lately is that Aziz we go into the next season. I want everybody to take their apertures what they think they would shoot at and move it up and don't shoot so deep. Go toward the other way, wide it up a little bit. Andi. Just just for clarity's sake. You know, when I watch films, I'm noticing that the images is so crisp and clear because the depth of field is not out of control. You know you'll notice is now when you watch movies, you'll see a shot where you have two or three people standing around talking and it's a medium shot and there on the subjects. But their backgrounds don't look really that much out of focus. Okay, still, tell us a story, but you're not getting carried away with depth of field. You're gonna notice your images of sharper and you're finding your You know, your images look better overall, so don't fall into the trap of feeling like you have to really be shallow for something to look really good. This is something I've kind of learned by, just by, you know, just by trial and error. And just just by studying my footage and looking at other people's footage here, you know, to to is very hard to keep in focus. And even if I have all my my contact points. Let's throw this back on. It's put back on the other way the right way. And if I get in here and of course, I can't really press my eye because I can't see the viewfinder. You know I can get a city shot here, but it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of effort to do that. So, you know, try not to shoot a shallow and you'll find it a little bit easier to keep things in focus when the time comes. So for those of you who are learning to shoot manual rule of thumb, don't drop less than 25 up close. If you're far away, you should not be less than like eight. Try that. If you're in a low light situation, bump up your eyes a little bit, okay, because it's while noise stinks. It's things. Have noise in your image. It's almost better to have noise than your image be out of focus. I think the noise can be removed in processing a little bit, but once an image is out of focus is not much you can really do about it. So I would really try to focus on focus, really try to concentrate on getting focused without going too crazy. On the on the depth of field. Let's talk a little bit about exposure itself and shutter speed. So you guys have any questions about shutter speed and how it relates to images? Because a lot of the common questions I get is our, you know, whats the difference between shooting at 60th of a second, which is what I'm out right now, okay? Or shooting at 5/100 of a second. And if I crank my I s so up here, that's really high. But you'll get the sense it's almost the same thing, right? So whats the difference? Why is it the same shot? Just two different apertures into different shutter speeds? Well, there's no difference on a static image. Okay? The differences in the motion okay, this is this monitor is not gonna give me a true example. See the ghosting there? That's cause we're lining in with Elektronik signal. But basically, what happens at higher shutter speeds is you get crisper image, you get jagged edges. Okay? So if you're outdoors in a brace any day and you're shooting at 5/100 of a second or thousands of a second and something goes by like a guy on a bike, you're gonna see a lot of details. That person goes by, right? That's what higher shutter speeds relate to. That's what they equate to when you know you're trying to balance shutter speed aperture. And I s o Okay, the higher you go on the shutter, the mawr jagged them or sharp the images. Gonna look. Now, here's the flipside of that. Everybody take your hand. Do this look in your hand. What do you see? He's calling out numbers. His 60th of a second. You see, Blur, right. This is motion blur. Well, your brain is not digital. You bring his analog. Okay, so it's processing this signal in an analog world. All right, So it's seeing trails of motion based on light and based on the fact that your brain's not processing the information fast enough, Okay, that's what lower shutter speeds are. All right, So if I drop down and again, I don't know if this is gonna be a great example on this screen, let's drop my I s. So again, let's open up my shutter to 50th of a second. It's a little bit more fluid. It's not as if I really, really pull it. You're gonna see. But it blurs. Okay, you got you have motion blur. And if you're still frame that at any point on there, what's gonna happen while you're images that a focus photographers? What happens if you move the camera shooting 1/30 of a second get blurry images? Right. So the way I answer this question to photographers who asked me all the time like what? Well, there really is no difference. If you're shooting at a lower shutter speed, you're going to get that blur introduced. If you're shooting at higher shutter speeds and you want to take a still frame, you're gonna get a cleaner image, a crisper image. So how does that relate to us video shooters? Well, a lot of different ways. You don't want to be shooting at 4/1000 of a second on a bright, sunny day outside, because any movement at all, it's gonna look like really unnatural. Okay, it's gonna be like godly. I don't know, like brides gonna move on. Her hair's in a flip and it's gonna look just like like the movie. Three hundreds are gonna have that real crisp quality. Not like it's out of focus but are slow mo. But it's gonna It's just gonna not look natural to the I, because again, your eye is analog. So there's a happy medium. We have to find a happy medium. We have to find a nice middle ground of which to shoot, so we're not getting that motion blur in ideal environments. I try to shoot no less than 60th of a second. Okay, I like 60th of a second. I love 80th of a second. I love 125th of a second. Those air frame rates or enough room rates? I'm sorry, shutter speeds that cinematographers generally try to shoot for when lighting and shooting a scene because their natural to the eye and the give good Chris promotion. It's the perfect balance. And at those shutter speeds, okay, then you have room to play with your aperture. Then you can drop your aperture down for shallow depth of field, or you can increase it for a wider scene. Those shutter speeds will accommodate that. If your light is good enough. The problem runs into when we walk into a church and it's like, Are there? You turn the lights on. You guys run into that shooting. I know some of you guys shoot Indian weddings, and I am jealous because I've done Indian weddings, but they're always so bright and vibrant. Am I? Is my experience matching yours because good, like I always finally would be so great to walk into an environment and not have to think about light. But we walk into somebody Roman Catholic churches where it is just dark is this table and there's the only ambient light's coming through stained glass windows, and it's like, Wow, I want to be like 2000 S o B wide. Open it to eight. If they even move an inch, I'm gonna be really in trouble. And that tends to be the norm for a lot of the videographers and cinematographers that I know. Reception Hall is very easily could only later room so much we can't go and completely take over the room, put up big 1000 watt lights like this. So we have to be, you know, we have to find a way to make our camera work with that? So one of the techniques that we used to do that it's called pre focusing. And anybody here ever shoot with film, like not video stills. Okay. You ever shoot a wedding with with film? No. Talking about 16 millimeter. Oh, yeah, That's great stuff too. I was thinking more like still photographers back in the day when still photographers were shooting weddings and they wanted to capture the bride coming down the aisle in a dark church. They had the pre focus on an area, and when she walked into that planet, focus take pictures. Pretty straightforward. We do the same thing with video, okay? And you're gonna learn tomorrow when we block our cameras. Blocking for those of you don't know is a term for placing our cameras. We block our cameras tomorrow, you're going to see that we create a kill shoot for this for the ceremony. I'll because we cannot cover that. I'll in focus 100% all the time during ceremony or during the processional Can't be done. You know, unless we're shooting at F 11 and I'm not gonna have that much light to do that. We have to pre focus and hope that when the bride walks into that image, she's got a nice expression on her face because we're taking a gamble on, you know, pre focusing on an area that they walk into and echoes for all the girls coming down the aisle in the guise. Whoever's coming up the aisle were, you know, is one camera in front, pre focused and letting the action coming to focus. And again because we're creating short form films and we're not making his long form, you know, coverage features. We have to shoot for our creative shots, and that's what we're aiming for, that two or three seconds of the bride's gonna be in focus coming down the aisle all right. Steadicam gets really tricky there in those situations because I'm using a really wide lens, and wide lenses are more forgiving with focus and light. The wider the lens, the more light that's coming into the lens. Hitting the sensor gives you a little bit of play on your focus, so you can. There's a technique called hyper focus, and if you have IPhones or you have access to, like a smartphone, download a depth of field calculator and it will tell you what you're hyper focal is. So basically what hyper focal means is if I have that glide cam with a 24 millimeter lens on it, I can program into the app my depth of field, my I s o my shutter speed and my sensor size meaning it will say five DeMARE to it will tell me focus your camera 7.2 feet in front of you, and everything beyond that point will be in focus. And that's true. That's photography. Fact. Hyper focal in the lens will help you maintain focus, but usually it's with wide angle lenses, so that helps with that aspect. But for for, you know, shallot of the field, you know, for that look that you want to achieve and dealing with low light, we have to pretty focus. So that's one thing we do. So in the center of our ceremony, we've got a tripod. We've got a camera, usually their 7200 and 85 on it, and we've pre focused. Now let's say we're able to get I'm gonna go back to the camera here for a second. Let me see if I can mimic this year. I'm gonna use our camera Operator over here is R. Okay, I'm actually standing right in front of you guys can say, Let me let me move a little bit here. So let's say, for instance, I'm 1/15 of a second at 32 at 400 s. Oh, all right. I would be very happy with that in a church because then I could bump up my I s o drop down my aperture. And now now I'm a 50 and much more of that plane is gonna be in focus. It gives me a little wiggle room when playing with the bride coming down and again, Let's go back to what we said before. You don't have the shooter a 20 coming down the aisle to make it look depth of field. If it's a deep I'll on your shooting a 56 look phenomenal, and she's gonna be in focus and she's gonna be sharp. I guess following me with that so I don't feel like again. I don't feel like you have to be trapped into that low aperture fast aperture stuff to get nice step the field I'd much rather be able to to to increase my eyes so a little bit and play around with my aperture to get a little bit a little bit deeper. Okay? No, Some of 30th of a second. That's like I don't wanna be 1/30 of a second. Everything is blurry and it's not blurry as you're watching in real time. But if you freeze frame is gonna be blurry. So I'm gonna play with that even Mawr to kind of get somewhere where I'm comfortable with the focus and happy with the image itself. There's that sweet spot 55 6 I'm loving that. That looks really good. I know the audience is probably going. What? No, no. Just would love Teoh. Nail down and clarify again. Yeah, the shutter speeds because you're 33. Dave Owen, Alper from Germany, Bobo in Bulgaria all kind of ask the same question on clarification. They were always told that 1/50 of a second was the way to go. Isn't their rule of thumb about double the frame rate to keep under 50th? To keep that cinematic look? So could you could you adjust that one about Second is like sort of a standard. That's where you want to, because then you can jump up in increments of 5100 200 that sort of thing 1 50 And it gives you a nice you go maintain the same look across those those separate frame shutter speeds. Basically 1/ 24 frames per second. That kind of fits along with the 24 25 round number, psychologically satisfying number. And mathematically, it works. Weddings. We usually don't have that much time to think about things, do we? We usually have to walk in and go. What am I gonna do? Oh, wait, do this quick. You know, So you're usually just going with what works as much as you can. What My what I'm saying is, yeah, 50th of a second is ideal. And if I have to crank up my I s so a little bit to get 50th of a second, I'd rather have that while on the ice on a five D Mark two is not gonna look the greatest. It's gonna be a little noisy, and it's not really looking that bad here, But I know when I put it on an LCD screen. When I put it on a computer screen, it's not gonna look the greatest. You're gonna have that noise introduced into their into their. We can still crunch out some of that noise. I'd rather have noise and out of focus, and I'd rather have no shutter speed than 30th of a second. So against that balance. But yeah, 50th of a second is through the cinematic rule like That's the point you want to be. Yet I give you a range of more like 6225. Yeah, multiple camera. Are you making sure they also have the same center? Unfortunately, we we try, but it's not always possible and again, if you're were not lighting the scene a lot of the time. So we don't have control over what we're hot spots are. So you might have a church that has, like, let's say, a skylight over the altar. That area is gonna be way brighter than the back of the church, so if we're all shooting in that direction, we might be able to get close. But if one person's pointed up the aisle, one person's on the groom, one person's flying with Steadicam. That's three different exposures. Completely. What's more important at that point? The point is white balance, which actually get to in a minute. But yeah, that would be a perfect Segway into that, too. But yeah, I mean, we want to try if it's the reception and we've lit the reception with two lights and we've got a speaker and a bribing room and they're facing each other giving toasts weaken. Usually get it close. I will call it out. We'll communicate. That's important. We'll call it out and I'll say, OK, I'm that 50th that 28 608 100 I so and then we'll try to match it. And if my second looks at and goes, that's a little dark for me. Hill compensate. At that point, he'll adjust, so we'll try. But it's not too easy. Easy to get there. Yeah. Are you using a headset? Sneer pieces to talk to each other? We do. We use on basic Motorola to a radios and then, just like the year pieces with a little push to talk thing on. And they're very helpful on certain situations. We have also developed a system of eye gestures and hand signals. It's really were not like baseball. It's not like we're doing this, but it's way have a rule that if we're all on tripods and I'm gonna put my camera down to do this. But, you know, we're always I can't we always maintaining eye contact. So we're always like looking around like this during the ceremony because once the vow start, hands air off the camera, That's it. Your hands air down at your sides or behind your back. And you're just looking around like this You're scanning. We know what's happening in front of the cameras. We know the bridegroom. Given their vows, we don't have to be like this staring into the camera. What I'm looking at is my I o camera, my second mile camera, my second. And I'm looking like this and I'm looking like this. I'm looking like this. And if I notice Mom is crying over here and I noticed that the other two were like this, I could move my camera right, But if I look over and my seconds going, I'm not touching my camera because that's gonna make it a nightmare. Later on, when I go go for editing. All right, so this communication happening there, even if we have pushed to talk radio's, I'm not going to use them during the ceremony. You know, I'm not going to say it's just people are gonna hear us. It's gonna draw attention to us. What we use the radios for is if it's an on site ceremony where the ceremony and reception happening in one place and I've got my second is upstairs doing room details or they're setting up the ceremony and then I need him downstairs because the bride's gonna open her gift from the groom and I want to double shoot it. You'll get your butt down here right now. He comes flying down the stairs when we start shooting it, so it's great for communicating in that respect. It's great for reception venues that are big, and you're trying to coordinate getting everybody in the same room. It's fantastic for that sort of thing, but we definitely communicate. I totally lost my train of thought because I just went off on a tangent on that. But basically, yeah, we do try to match our exposures whenever possible, and we definitely try to you know when we're working together in the same room, try to maintain eye contact at all times. Okay. All right. So let's talk about, um, Malcolm X, but we'll talk about exposure a little bit more here because it's something else. I want to mention the I want to go back to the camera, guys, just for a second. So you're gonna see what is it gonna talk about here? Okay, so if we're in a dark, dark, dark, dark room, get back in my life, You here? Great. If we're in a dark, dark, dark, dark room and I have to increase my eyes so really high on. But, you know, I say I don't really go past 12 50 1600. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you have to, because there's no other way to get the exposure that that's gonna look good without without cranking it up. A lot of times, if we're shooting, if we're shooting on neutral on our picture profile like we do like, we shoot flat and we know we have to crank up our eyes so well, actually, knock this down. Two standard, All right, because it'll crunch my blacks for me and eliminate some of the noise, all right. And sometimes it actually helps, you know, But it's just something to think about. If you really have to crank up that I s o drop down because on a flat image you're really going to see that noise. You're going to see it in all areas because your evening out, all your tones, so you know, if I have to crank it up to 4500 will knock it down into standard and just doing that, it creates a little bit more post production work. It creates a little bit more headache in the post, but dealing with noises so difficult, so we really have to try to minimize it where we can. All right. Like any questions about exposure, that sort of thing. When I'm shooting guys the one the one thing I try not to do is change my exposure wall in filming. Alright, for obvious reasons. If I do this, look what's happening. Click, click, click, click, click and the exposures changing all over the place. You know, I don't really want to see that my films and especially you know I don't want to edit around that. So if it's the ceremony and the lightest changing, we have to adjust. That's fine. But if we're preps and you're just doing this trying to get your shot while you're rolling, I'm just gonna get annoyed in post, because now I'm gonna edit through you trying to get your exposure while you're shooting video lights. Yeah, yeah, we use would never use on camera lighting. That's a no no for cinema. It just doesn't look. Cinema. It looks like video. And we won't do that. Yeah, I do use lights. Three. Only time I really use lights. That, perhaps is if I'm doing it like a ring shot or detail shot. I might do something really creative with lighting, but I'm not going to use it to shine on people at preps. Usually, if anything will use a reflector screen, you know, just have my assistant pop out of Big Reflector and point light where we need it. That really helps specially rooms. We have a lot of sidelight on one wall, and it's to contrast every shooting into It's a really dark on one side of the face, really light on the other will fill it with a little little bump light that helps for the reception's. We use thes thes air Ari 6 50 lights. They retail for about 50 each. Not including the ball. Bowled, I think, is a 30 to 60 bucks, whatever it is. 600 of the Watts of pure bright white light. Really nice, really nice lights for receptions. We will get into the lighting diagram and how we set up for receptions and tomorrow. But basically, yeah, we do. We do like the reception we want to make sure it looks good, and then we also have a light on a portable poll that we kind of walk around with it. If we need some light somewhere else, we just It's on a dimmer. It's battery powered so we can use that. That's great, Rob, because there were thank you for asking that because there were other folks asking that chat rooms about you ever use led lights tongues tonight. So we're looking forward to seeing that definitely primarily I am. I do try to be a natural light shooter, but the reception's no, definitely we will be like, but during the preps, we try not to. All right. So how many of you guys know about your magnifier tool? You guys use it good. Every hand went up in the studio and that's fantastic for those of you. Don't know if you need to focus quickly, and I should have mentioned before. We're talking about focus, but I'm jumping around here by pressing a little magnifier on the five d mark to Aiken. Really? Zoom in. I can rack my focus and that I consume back out. Okay, I use this all the time, all the time when I'm shooting something in, and the more I've been playing around with not so shallow depth of field, the more I'm liking when I see my zoom in. So I'm like, Wow, that's really sharp. Let's look at that tack sharp. I'm really happy with that. And there's still depth of field, you know, if I pull out, you know, there's still a little bit of out of focus in the background, so that's what I'm going for. So it's the deficit I just wanted bounced back to next. I realize I hadn't talked about that before. Exposure wise again. Don't click while you're exposing. It's just gonna create problems in the edit. If you have to change your exposure because of changing light outside and doing photo sessions, stop the camera and restart and shoot like that. Trying to make things easier on the editor if you can. Um, let's talk about white balance. Actually, we have another question, please. So a couple of wanted to know. How are you? How do you know you've got your focus or you're looking to the back of your in your viewfinder? You have an external monitor. What are you looking? I always use just the camera exactly the way it is I might put on the Z Finder. But that's the only external aid that I will use. I don't use Ah monitor. Now, tomorrow, when we do the film, when we do that the wedding. I'm gonna have a monitor on here. But it's for creative live. So they could take a tether out of my camera as we're moving around. So I normally wouldn't shoot. But I'm gonna have a seven inch monitor on the camera tomorrow, so I just want to throw that out there. But basically, yeah, Z finder is the only thing I'll really used Teoh Aid My focus, and it's great. On bright, sunny days when I'm outside, I could really see what my image looks like through here. Magnifies the screen big if you have it in the budget. To get one of these, they make a smaller one called the Z Finder Junior. It's a lot less expensive. Does relatively the same thing. You know, it's doesn't magnify it as much. But these air really great. They're really great devices. Otherwise, yeah, I'm looking at the back of the screen and I'm looking at the edges of my image when I'm focusing. So, for example, I want to focus on this image. Let's drop this. I s o down. Let's get back to a reasonable exposure here and let's open this up a little bit. Gilmore shallow. Let's drop, are shut her down. So let's say, for instance, I want make sure I'm focused here. I'm looking at the edges of my image, and I'm waiting to see that little peek right there. If you notice right there on the edge of the text, this is almost a little white outline, a chromatic aberration, and it's gone when we have. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that. I'm looking for that focus. Point air is right there. No. And it's not always easy to get, so I mean, we're definitely, you know, having the Z finer definitely helps that a lot. But now I'm not using. I'm not running around with big rings on the camera medios wanting to know. What about noise reduction in camera? Do you turn that on ever in camera noise reduction? I played around with it once before. I didn't like what it made my image look like. It almost made the faces look a little bit pastel. So I didn't Didn't pursue it after that. Did you ever question No, but I saw a hand go. Okay. Was anymore. Yes, there are a key visuals. Do you stay on Canon's native Iess owes, or do you use them all? I use them all. Yeah. There's debate over whether multiples of 1 60 II eso can look better. My wife swears up and down. There's no difference. I I don't know. I'm kind of like the jury's out on anybody else have experience with that. I mean, what I've found is that when you're on the mark. Two, there isn't a huge difference in low light, like making it better between 1,602,000. You are gonna increase a lot more noise. So sticking with like 50 has been better. But of course, with the mark three, we're going all the way. 326,400. And it's looking way better than the mark to do so. For us, it's, you know, making a four lenses way more versatile, like the 24 to 15 Because now F four is great for, you know, inside when it used to not be possible with the mark to right, right? Yeah, That's the one thing about having the mark threes. And I was telling these guys early the reason I haven't appearing to deal with the Mark three because I just don't feel like the bride's noticed that the quality difference. I'm not going to spend 10 grand right now. To do that, I have to buy four of them. If I do make a job up, it's gonna be to the four k to four k resolution. So waiting for that to become the reality But yeah, I played around with the ISOS and things like that, and I just don't notice that much of a difference. Not enough to make me think about it consciously. So where my mind is not thinking about this story? I'd rather be thinking about this story thinking about capturing what's important to tell the story on the wedding day. And if the image quality is a slight bit better for being on different, so that's great. But I'm not gonna making an effort to try and nail that every time. Okay, Marry photo like No. So how do you deal with changing exposures, oxide? Like, say, some going in and out of the clouds during the ceremony every few seconds, right? That sort of goes right along the lines with the with communication with my camera people. So, yeah, we obviously can't stop rolling during the ceremony, So we have to We have to change exposures. We have to be able to make the image look good. So if we're again, if we're all standing there, we've got our hands down and everything's copasetic. And then all of a sudden, the sun changes the soil like a pecking order. It's like, Well, what's the most important shot? Well, to me, the bride's faces will be taking the particular moment. The bride's face is probably the most important shot over the shoulder, so I'll do mine. Hands down. Somebody will change. There's hands down. Somebody will change. There's hands down. We're all kind of looking around us, making sure we have time to do that. It does limit us a little bit. It doesn't really give us the opportunity to turn for reactions and that sort of thing. So that kind of stinks. Yeah, working outside and changing light conditions can definitely pose a lot of challenges, but that's how we'll do it. We don't ever. We don't really just try to avoid all of us changing something at the same time. Okay, a couple more questions on exposure. Kevin DK and the film Marie wanted to know if you use the history RAM ever the summary says. I don't like it because it interferes, interferes with my image, I guess when looking. And then Danielle Danielle O. Bronson says to you gauger exposure with the cameras guide or by Look, I asked because the guide, I guess the said The light meter said that it was under exposed, but you said that you liked it. I go right by what I'm seeing on the back of the camera. Always. And it's not always accurate. But if I go by the light meter that I'm not looking at the scene, I want to keep myself in the scene. I want to keep myself on the action. Um, what's in front of my lens? I'm not I don't really wanna Mr Graham's now, like I can tell when an image is over exposed. I can tell when the compositions not right. It's too bright here and not operate enough here. I don't need a history to tell me that from shooting raw photos. I might want to look at that. Is that I can go. Okay. Well, I could fix this part later and maybe an all ticket reshoot click. I don't know. I see a need and a use for history. Ram and video. But for weddings, running gun, we're just trying to get what we can. We're trying to do the best job we can with what we got, so I don't have time to be looking down on instagram. Marta Gap would like to know. Do you use follow? Focus? Never. Uh, here's my issue with follow focus Follow Focus is no different than this. If I introduce follow focus, I'm losing a point of contact on my camera. Now, when I twist my follow focus, it's gonna is gonna be the slight like it's gonna pull my camera in one direction. I don't want to hold my camera like this. I want to hold it like this. Follow. Focus is going to take me out of that. It's gonna put my hand in the position that's gonna make it awkward for me and for people who don't know what fellow focuses. Follow focus is basically a knob that attaches to the lens, which allows for focusing without touching the actual focus. Ring on the lens you do. It's sort of on the side, and there used a lot in feature filmmaking because when a camera is moving a lot of times, they have to change the focus as the camera moves the maintain depth of field and maintain focus and you actually in movies, you have a person who is called the focus puller, and that's their job is to focus. Poll. So if the cameras on a Steadicam and the Steadicam operators walking the focus pullers walking right alongside of him and he's adjusting, focus may be remotely if the cameras on a vista glider on a crane he's he's polling focus, and they've marked off points of where he's gonna pull. Focus. It's the kind of technique that on a wedding I just don't feel a need for. I've got my focus, Paul right here. That's everything I need. And it keeps me into my camera a little bit more. Okay, I know you mentioned the Indy filters, but, um, branded channels would like to know why not use the very Indies in the fast changing lights Cloud son. Yeah, we could use them. I just I haven't had a need to the various You can actually change the nd filter intensity. It's basically two pieces of glass, and they and they turn like this. I have used them before for time lapse. I don't don't keep them on. The lenses were constantly switching lenses and constant moving things around. I haven't bought on nd filter variable for every one of my lenses. It's just I have, um, team lenses. I'm not gonna buy one for each other, But, you know, if that's all you got if you got one or two lenses and you've got indie filters on them and use them primarily outdoors There you go. You're all set. Another lens question quickly from four in design. What about lenses with I s? Are they making a big difference or not? Do you have that honor off? And when do you have it on? Yeah, that's a great question. They can actually help you tremendously. Depending on your situation. I have the 7200. The mark was the 1st 1 that came out with the ice. And I love these because if I'm on a tripod and I have to make a small adjustment on the tripod, it's not this, like, shaky and then makes the adjustment. It's kind of like a smoother transition, so it gives me a little bit more. It's a little bit more forgiving if if I come across a shot in the edit where I had to move the camera little bits a little bit more forgiving. The 24 has wonderful image stabilization in it if I was ever gonna shoot handheld, that's exactly what I would use to shoot handles in 24 to 105 To do that would be great. Well, I think it's important at this point. I want to cover white balance real quick, and I want to talk about crew. Teoh, get into CRU in the next segment. So I want to kind of clear out all this now. So let's talk about white balance a little bit. How many of you are manually white balancing? Okay, good. Most of you are. That's great. Yeah, we do everything using the Kelvin setting on the camera for manual white balance. I do not trust the auto, especially across three cameras, even if you have three cameras and in the same lighting. I've just found that the auto white eternally a little bit, and it just kind of it takes into a different realm of color. I don't want that to happen, so we manually dial everything in and we call out Kelvin temperatures to each other as we need. We try to do it discreetly. We're not gonna shout across the bride's problem. 32. You know we try to keep it. You know, like, 32 Free to something like that. But we want to let each other know where we're at, especially like crazy parts of the reception. So if we're all running around trying to film the cake cutting and we've got leaving like two cameras across shooting, the bride and groom feed on each other and no one from behind this shooting up into the lights Get this beautiful shot we want to match. Well, just quickly, right before they start. Hey, guys. What? He at 55. 55 55 55. A little bit to worm. I'll drop it down to 54 you know, something like that. But we're always manually changing that on that comes along with being flexible as being a cinematographer. I remember the good old days and I call him the Good old Days because they were lazy. Easy days when I used to walk around the wedding with a video camera on automatic. Like this is way early on before I started. Didn't get to get creative a nice just walk around. But I didn't have to think about life balance and it just did everything for me. And if I pointed it here, it changed the light. I would love to be able to have that capability again. I just don't trust it. I've had too many issues with with the auto white balance. So you manually, Della Donnelly and Kelvin's. I want to demonstrate this on camera For those of the people who don't understand what I'm talking about right now, I've got my white balance set to about 46. The lights and here are very white is a very white environment. A lot of the lights in here, all daylight balanced. So let's just go through sort of the auto here. The auto doesn't look very bad. Doesn't bad near it all. Actually, it's pretty true to my Kelvin, which is actually very, very good. So I mean, in this situation, it might be good, but if I were to point this now at a window, it's gonna change slightly. And if there were yellow light somewhere in the room and I pointed out the yellow tungsten light, it's really gonna change. So we don't We're not really trusting the auto white. Okay, if I move through these daylights gonna add a little bit more warmth to it. It's gonna read the what Lloyd is a little bit more warmer. Same thing with shade cloudy. Same thing. Tungsten lights really blue. It's looking for that 32 Kelvin degree light 32 Indoor white balance. Okay, White fluorescent fluorescent lights tend to be a little bit of green, so it's compensating with a little bit of red. So I'm not going to use that as much flash, really looking for stark blue light. So it's gets going to try to compensate for that custom setting. We're gonna skip over. And then here's my Kelvin, so I like to shoot a little bit on the cooler side. I find that in color grading, it's easier to add back in warmth, and it is to take away warmth out of skin tones. And I'm a fanatic when it comes to skin tones. I don't want people's faces to look real saturated and red and or deep in color. I want them to look a little bit more palatable, more natural, a little bit more what I'm looking for a little bit more fair. You know I don't like it when a bride's face just looks like orange. She's under 32 white, white balance and nobody really compensated for that. So, you know, that's generally what I'm looking for. So I guess in here 43 looks pretty good and pointed out, Somebody here, Here we go. I'm kind of happy with that. Looks good. And it's just a matter of quickly dialing it in. So the Calvin settings all the way on the ratified the mark two. I'm basically pressing one button to get to the white balance. Kelvin option is on there, and I can just use my finger real to dial that whatever kelvin temperature I want. So obviously, the higher number on the scale, the warmer it's going to be in the lower number, the cooler, it's gonna bay. And I'm always adjusting this. It's really important to do that. So, andan, tomorrow you're going to see when we have you guys help me shoot. As we set up each shot for what we're gonna be shooting, I will come around, actually help you set the camera toe what we'd be looking for in that scenario. And I know we have some experience shooters and some who are just starting out, so we'll be able to kind of mix the two and kind of work with both of you on that just kind of a feel for what we expect when when somebody is shooting for us in the three person crew. But wait pounds is really important because nothing, I just don't like color grading and having to pull out really harsh tones. So the combination of shooting flat and dialing in my white balance is really gonna save me a lot of headaches and post. It's gonna it's gonna clear things up a lot. Any questions about white balance for Yeah, go for it. Do you ever use the trying to figure out who asked that question? You ever use the ex? Potus? Yes, from O R. Figures. Yeah, the Expo Disguise really cool. Vanessa actually has won, and we were recently in a bride's prep where it was just brutally orange in the whole room that has had it was dark outside, so they just had all of tungsten lights on and the bride and I don't understand why makeup artists insist on doing makeup, sometimes under yellow orange light. It doesn't look anything like what they're doing when the bride goes outside completely. Every broad, ever every make a border should have, like some sort of an led to or daylight balance late because it just would be so much more natural for the skin tones. But we go in and the makeup artist has her under like a warming lamp, and the bride's just orange like looks like in Colombia. And we re live in Jersey, so people like Tan. It's like really bad as privates are. So I was struggling. I'm kind of like, Wow, you know, if I dial down my white balance, just little it looks now looks blue. She's wearing white, right? It's got a white hoody on it says Mr is soon to be whatever right? So I'm sort of like, Well, I don't want that to look blue if I color graded afterwards and I was gonna bring the orange back into her face. So this is constant tug of war between orange and blue, orange and blue, orange and blue. Vanessa goes put. The extra discount goes, not point. The Expo disk goes on the lens. Who you guys ever use. It goes on the lens you pointed at your light source. You take a picture, and then you load that into your custom setting of your white balance on your camera, and it uses what is. I think it measures 18% gray or something like that, and it balances it for the scene and adjusts all your white balance brackets everything. It's fantastic. And I went on shooting the rest of that that brides prep with and the Light was true and looked really good. Yes, the Expo discuss phenomenal. I think it's cheap if there's a 100 bucks and those air from Expo imaging is breaking okay, the film we would like to know. Isn't it actually pretty simple to fix white balance and post, I use Claressa and color. Pick the white point in this shot. Yeah, absolutely. You can fix color balance relatively easily. I'm more concerned with skin tone. It's very easy to take something warm and make it cool. That's fine, but what I'm looking at is what it does to the fate. What it does. The skin tones. Once you have a lot of orange and skin tones, you could pull it out, but then everything else is blue, so the bride's face a look true and natural. But then her white shirt is blue so you can get into secondary color correction, and you can kind of mask out the. Actually, it's a great plug in, and we're gonna actually give away a couple during this workshop, made by new blue effects called Color Fast. Really powerful stuff for you splits a plug in for final cut and premier in Avid. I think they make it for Abbott to, but it's great because you can actually select the skin tone on the bride's face and it'll pull out. You know, you'll see it will isolate Onley, that skin tone, and then you can just only the color of that skin tone. That's awesome. So, yeah, adjusting White Balance is relatively simple on more concerned with making sure that I have a plug in that allow me to correct faces, too. But we still want to get it as close as we can, because the less color processing I'm doing in post the more time I have just the more free time I have. And basically it's less work on the editor. Teoh not have to do all that processing for every shot. So 34 cameras trying to get a close. Pretty important, we have a question from Redhead. Do the white balance. Calvin on the five. D mark two in the 70 match. The same value. I'm pretty sure they do. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they all go for between. I want to say 10, and 24. Let me see. 10,000. And I think it goes all the way down to 24. I'm pretty sure the seventies the same. I could be mistaken. 25. It drops down to 25. Simply just turn on the camera. Look, I didn't really even paid attention to that. I never I mean, it's very rare. I'm shooting a 25. The room would have to be extremely orange for me to be shooting a 25 and I'd have to be in a really, really our blue setting to be shooting a 10,000. I'm not sure if the question was, if you're using the five d mark two in the 70 and you set them both at a certain elvin number, are they getting the same thing is it doesn't match generally. Right? At that point, we would look at the back of each camera and get it as close as we can. A lot of times with different lenses will affect your white balance. A lot of times, you know, we have 35 d mark twos, but I've got an 85. My seconds got 1 35 the other person 35. Well, yeah, they're all gonna look different. I know for a fact that the light that comes through this lens is very warm. Very, very yellow, very orange, whereas, like that comes through a wider lens is a little bit more blue. So, yeah, that'll affected at that point. So we're calling out white balances, but if we have the opportunity to get over and look, we will, it just depends on the amount of time we have. So we just have about five more minutes before our next break. Do you wanna Was there more that you wanted to cover? We could take the more questions. I was pretty good. I thought I covered exposure and focused. You guys have any questions about exposure and focus about how we maintain focus or rack focus during the With that, let me talk about Rack. Yeah. What tips do you give to the people who are doing speeches to make sure that they're not walking around all over the place during the reception? That's a great question, and we will address it tomorrow when we actually do this speech was gonna have her do it one standing still on, then once when she's moving around because, yeah, it's a problem. And again, a member of the little lesson I gave you guys about trying to keep your depth of field not so shallow. I'd rather have a little bit of noise and keep the depth of field a little bit more under control for that because you do get times when people were just doing this. I just try to rack him. Basically, I'm locked down on a tripod, and I'm just trying toe. Keep him in where I can, and I know that my second cameras always on the bribing room and they're not moving. So I've always got a cut away. And then I always got 1/3 person who's getting people's reactions, so there's always cutaways to go back and forth, but again for the film, for the feature film to three second shots. So I can pretty much edit around That happens all the time, follow and focus trying to do that. And I don't recommend following focus, But an instance like that You really don't have a choice. All right, We're gonna do some rapid fire questions for the next two minutes because there still so many Good. Okay, so, silky photo says from Denver, Colorado, Do you change white mounds? Well, recording. If so, does the click wheel introduce noise or motion? Well, yeah, absolutely. If you're changing white balance Well, I don't think you can actually change your white bounds while filming. You could change your eyes. So while you're filming. So while you're doing that, yes. Any clicks air going to introduce motion into the into the light? If it's a reference situation and I'm only capturing for reference, I don't really care. But if I'm doing Brides Prep and she's opening the gift from the groom, I'm not doing this because it's ruining my audio. Right, Go. Okay. Patrick, you like? No. Do you ever use a light meter to dial and Kelvin? Exactly. No, I don't have that much time. I if I'm doing corporate shoots? Absolutely. But if I know if on a wedding, I don't kind of like Okay, well, it's just I mean, you might, but I'm more if I would rather be focused on what can I shoot now to tell the strain? I'm sensing a theme here. Way story story. I love tech stuff, and I love the fact that we can do all this great stuff, but I really want to be in the wedding day. Yes. I don't want to be in here going. Well, how perfect can I get it? I just wanted to be close. Let's get it close. So in post, we're not going crazy. Awesome thing to keep in mind. Okay? From Heather, do you spot metering or what is the metering that you use? I don't use any media ring. I look at the back of the camera generally, um, you know, I mean, I might I might use my light meter on outside on a really bright day. And I don't have my sea finder because my Z finder, I can pop it on the back and I don't need to worry about the sun blinding me and not being able to see. I see everything perfectly and I can adjust my exposure and I could get a good image. But if I don't have this with me and I'm outside and this thing's glare e and I can't see, I will look at my light meter and I will expose for that. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't. It just depends. I always try to go under. If I am going by the light meter in an extreme skin extreme case like that, I'll under exposed. I always rather under exposing overexposed. Why once detail is lost, it's lost and even under exposing posted his own problems. If it's not gonna look, is rich and vibrant. Beautiful. But at least the details there. And I'm not, you know, making a Bradley. She's a big white spot on her forehead. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, um, branded channels would like to know. Do you shoot continuously redoing Quick. Short takes great question when I'm shooting preps, photo session, um, dancing footage. Anything except the ceremony in the toasts were shooting for creative shots. Beauty shots, short clips. If it's a ceremony. We roll the whole time. If it's the toasts, we roll the whole time. Parents dances first dance and introductions roll the whole time. You know, during those times, yes, we are changing exposures and running around because what we're doing is we're not just putting three cameras and then sitting there and filming things for in three different places, and we'll get into this. Tomorrow you'll see. But during the parents dances, let's say while Mom, if bride and Dad are dancing one camera with a 1 35 a tight shot. I'm moving all around the room. Three seconds here. Four seconds here. Five seconds there. Go back through the crowd, shoot through the centerpiece five seconds there. Meantime, I've got another Cameron, the main action shooting over like through people or over their heads to the main action. Just staying there, rolling the whole time. And then I got 1/ person doing reaction shots. Moms over there crying, watching her daughter dance with Dad. He's on that. So, but even still, he's not staying on. Mommy gets Mom for 5 10 seconds and he moves on and gets other people, so we're constantly moving around and looking, shooting into our lights and looking for different dynamic angles. So you question in the audience were doing like their ceremonies. You say you shoot like more continuous shots. Like, do you ever have issues with, um, overheating? I know I do with the 70. So I was there, and I know they also have, like, time limits on the cameras. So how do you guess? Work around those issues. Communicate. It goes back to the eye contact communication. We know that these cameras have a 12 minute limit. We know that I'm fine with it. Like everybody was. Well, if you put the hack on you, you put the black magic hack. You get 29 minutes. I I honestly don't care. It's fine. As long as we all know what to expect, we can deal with it. It doesn't really affect us. Even a 29 minutes of its Catholic mass. It would have to stop my camera eventually anyway. So, you know, in that situation, with hands down, we're all looking around like this. We all know that if a hand is touching a camera, don't touch your camera. You know, it was like, OK, Well, she's not touching her camera. Stop! Start. Good. My second. Look across. Stop. Start. Good. We're always watching, You know, we're looking, but the camera to make sure that the counter is we tried to go about 10 minutes. Here's a point is a good up a pointer. I don't never let my camera record more than 10 minutes. I've had corruptions going with larger files. Be very, very careful. Make sure you're the card speed that you're using his 90 megs per second or higher if you're gonna record larger clips because the buffering when you when you get into larger file clips, you run the risk of corrupting once you corrupted your beat. You know, it's tough to recover video files from a the dis recovery, so just be careful of that. What about what they overheating? Yeah, The seven D used to overheat a lot. The firmware update that they just came out with. I think they helped solve the issue a little bit on hot days. You have had it over. He It's rare that we use the 70 we do have. It's really use it. I haven't had much of an issue with the five d mark to overheating. So, yeah, pretty good cane. I have a question for Do you have any issues with overheating with the funky mark? Three. No, never. That's good, but the 70 used to overheat, although you have to put wet towels over it. Yeah, on things like the fact that the mark three never overheat or just changing the battery. Yes, fresh battery and usually help. We're using a battery grip right in time. Self insulated? Yes, because I think it's hot, really fast number You would like to know. What about rooms with colored lights, something unnatural, like green consuming at receptions waiting to the funny story. We did a Russian wedding recently where I don't know who designed the lighting at the reception, but they must have been a Hulk fan like it was not just like splashes of green light. The entire room was bathed in green light, and I know my crew is home right now watching us laughing because we walked into the room and went, Oh, that's gonna be fun. We know that that everything's gonna look green and everything looked and we even had our lights. We had our lights full blast, 600 watts blasted for the toasts, and it was still like it was enough to give a little like a little highlight. But it was just green, like their hair was still green. The dress was still green. It was just bad green light. At that point, we just said, You know what? Balance for our lights, and it is what it is because you're not going to be able to pull out that much saturation from a room like that. If it's bathed in green light, when it comes to DJs colored lights like their lights, that kind of go over, I let that go. That's cool, man. I'll let that play into my shots and I'll show you something in the next thing that we're kind of like. You could use that for dramatic effect in fund effect. That's fine, all right. It's about time to go to break. But I want to ask one more clarification question because several people were asking about the time limit limit the 12 minutes on the five d mark, too. And that is what you said that I just have to stay in communication. So you're saying that you will overlap on the coverage. Yes. Explain that, right? Yes. So if we're looking around the room and hands or down during the ceremony, we know we have to stop. Our cameras were hitting a time limit. We all have this sort of sense. We've been working together long enough that we know that at some point we're gonna and we're all gonna have to stop our cameras. Yeah, what'll happen is in the sink. When you sync it up later, you'll see overlap. The audio recording still going the whole time. So that's not an issue. But yeah, I'll stop mine. I'll restart. They'll be like a two second gap between the two shots and then somebody else to do it, then somebody else to do it so they're staggered out.