BobDiaz
12-29-2010, 10:08 AM
Background:
From December 26 to December 30, volunteers are hard at work decorating the Rose parade Floats. On Monday, I went down to the City Of Torrance Rose Float to shoot the video of the decorating; however, rather than do it in normal motion, I decided that time-lapse might be more interesting:
http://vimeo.com/18260702
http://vimeo.com/18260702
Shooting The Video:
For the indoor shots, I decided to use a 1 frame per second rate and to add to the feel of movement, I set the exposure to 1/2 a second. If you think about it, 1/2 a second is a 180 degree shutter for 1 frame per second and provides the right amount of motion blur to the image.
For each shot, I would set the exposure to 1/60 of a second, zoom in to focus, lock the focus setting, and zoom out as needed. Then I would change the exposure to 1/2 a second. I used the faster frame rate for focus, because it opened the iris and was easier to see the correct focus.
In setting the exposure, I used the waveform monitor to judge how much to open the iris to get the key parts. Many times people were in shadow and I needed to correct for that. Next, I double checked with the zebras to make sure I wasn't blowing out the parts I wanted. I kept both the iris and focus in manual mode to avoid any unexpected changes during shooting.
One nice thing about the HMC40 is the fact that it gives the time of the footage you recorded, not how long you have been standing there. This allowed me to judge when I've shot enough footage. At first I chose to only shoot only 12 to 13 seconds of finished footage, but later on decided to increase that to around 20 to 30 seconds. It turned out in editing, that the extra time allowed me some extra wiggle room to shift things around and find the best parts.
In general, you don't shoot time-lapse hand held, but when I followed June (the woman with the red shirt and red hair), the results were better than I would have expected. Most of the pans and zooms were done in post. Taking 1080/24p to 720 allows for up to a 1.5x zoom without loss of sharpness. A few times I went a little above that. There was one spot in the video where the girl stood up and I had to VERY slowly pan the camera upward to follow her.
The spot in the video where I give a thumbs up (2:45), I had to count the seconds to get the speed of my arm to look correct. Unfortunately, EVERYONE had to ask me what the heck I was doing, so my lips move a mile a minute.
The outdoor shots were done at 1080/24p and speeded up 10x in post. I lacked a strong enough ND filter to be able to slow the shutter speed down to 1/2 a second.
By the way, having done Rose Float Decorating for many years, I can safely say that the video does show what it feels during the decorating. We only have 5 hectic days to get this done and there's a lot of work to be done.
I return on Thursday to help finish the City Of Torrance's Float.
Bob Diaz
From December 26 to December 30, volunteers are hard at work decorating the Rose parade Floats. On Monday, I went down to the City Of Torrance Rose Float to shoot the video of the decorating; however, rather than do it in normal motion, I decided that time-lapse might be more interesting:
http://vimeo.com/18260702
http://vimeo.com/18260702
Shooting The Video:
For the indoor shots, I decided to use a 1 frame per second rate and to add to the feel of movement, I set the exposure to 1/2 a second. If you think about it, 1/2 a second is a 180 degree shutter for 1 frame per second and provides the right amount of motion blur to the image.
For each shot, I would set the exposure to 1/60 of a second, zoom in to focus, lock the focus setting, and zoom out as needed. Then I would change the exposure to 1/2 a second. I used the faster frame rate for focus, because it opened the iris and was easier to see the correct focus.
In setting the exposure, I used the waveform monitor to judge how much to open the iris to get the key parts. Many times people were in shadow and I needed to correct for that. Next, I double checked with the zebras to make sure I wasn't blowing out the parts I wanted. I kept both the iris and focus in manual mode to avoid any unexpected changes during shooting.
One nice thing about the HMC40 is the fact that it gives the time of the footage you recorded, not how long you have been standing there. This allowed me to judge when I've shot enough footage. At first I chose to only shoot only 12 to 13 seconds of finished footage, but later on decided to increase that to around 20 to 30 seconds. It turned out in editing, that the extra time allowed me some extra wiggle room to shift things around and find the best parts.
In general, you don't shoot time-lapse hand held, but when I followed June (the woman with the red shirt and red hair), the results were better than I would have expected. Most of the pans and zooms were done in post. Taking 1080/24p to 720 allows for up to a 1.5x zoom without loss of sharpness. A few times I went a little above that. There was one spot in the video where the girl stood up and I had to VERY slowly pan the camera upward to follow her.
The spot in the video where I give a thumbs up (2:45), I had to count the seconds to get the speed of my arm to look correct. Unfortunately, EVERYONE had to ask me what the heck I was doing, so my lips move a mile a minute.
The outdoor shots were done at 1080/24p and speeded up 10x in post. I lacked a strong enough ND filter to be able to slow the shutter speed down to 1/2 a second.
By the way, having done Rose Float Decorating for many years, I can safely say that the video does show what it feels during the decorating. We only have 5 hectic days to get this done and there's a lot of work to be done.
I return on Thursday to help finish the City Of Torrance's Float.
Bob Diaz