1-minute documentary commercial - lots of slider shots!

A

averan

Well-known member
here's one of the latest documercials i shot with the hmc150 and my slider.
large objects like houses can be hard to capture well, so i tried to find points of interest that, together, would paint the whole picture.
i can see how a portable jib would be ideal for shooting real estate and other large subjects or panoramic scenes.
if i were to do this again, i wouldn't put the owner looking into the sun. can you say 'doh!' :grin:
i wanted to get some of the house in the background and in hindsight, i should've just framed him tighter in the shade with some nice out-of-focus texture/colors behind him.

please let me know what yall think about this video...what works or doesn't work for you.

thanks!

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I AGREE
 
Overall short and sweet and to the point. (Roofing spot) The only thing that really I noticed is that you were shooting in auto iris. Very distracting.....try to use manual and ride the settings when panning from dark to light and vice versa.
 
thanks for the feedback.
i'm curious, what is it about the auto iris that you find distracting?
is it that it adjusts a little late/slowly?
 
Not bad, not bad. I like the editing, pace and questions you asked the owner. Auto iris always looks amateur though, don't use it. Shooting the owner in the shade would have been better and getting a few more shots UP WITH the guys up on the roof looking down instead of always looking up would have been nice. But it gets the point across and the owner comes across as genuine. If I had a shake roof still, I would hire them.

Thanks for sharing.

Dan
 
thanks Dan!
those roofs were pretty darn steep!
you saw how they had to use ropes and even special shoes with nails in the bottom....i got up there finally, but then on top of the challenge of not falling off from 3 stories up i had to deal with the spray from their hose constantly misting onto the lens. pretty challenging stuff.
but i agree, which is why i climbed up whenever possible to grab at least a few shots at eye-level.
riding the iris is something i have yet to adopt.....i either have it set manually or let auto handle the changes in high-contrast scenes. i'd love to know what exactly it is about the auto iris that actually 'looks amateur' so that i have a true understanding and not just 'well, everyone said so'. ;)
thanks again for the feedback!
 
auto iris looks amateurish because you can see the exposure shift happening. the one shot where you panned up from the ground to the roof you could see it happen a lot. its best for shots like that to expose for the brighteest scene (the roof & sky) manually and then do your pan or tilt to that scene. if your object is too underexposed before your brightest object thats where bouncing sunlight or picking a different time of the day to shoot helps.
 
interesting that being able to see what's in the shot is considered amateur! =)
i understand if the shot spends very little time in the area that the camera is not exposed for, but for shots where it's about 50/50 i like being able to see what the heck is in those shadows.

appreciate the info matt, thank you.
 
true, auto iris is to be used cautiosly- but this video looked fine to me. Trained camera people will scrutinize this subtle shifting, but I doubt the "regular schmo" would find an issue
 
hehe...and it's the 'schmo's of the world that pay my bills!
thanks for putting it in perspective ed.
 
averan said:
interesting that being able to see what's in the shot is considered amateur! =)
Click to expand...

Thats not what i really meant :). Seriously though watch anything shot professionally and 99% of it you wont see any shift in exposure in a scene. The reason we said it looks amateurish is because almost all consumer cameras dont let you control exposure like a pro cam or if they do most hobbyists or non pros dont know how to use it etc. so they use all auto settings. The only time I feel its ok to see a shift in exposure is run & gun doc/ ENG work where you need the shot and cant edit around it and you have to go from inside to outside and you see the ND kick on and the iris adjusted and the like. Honestly learning how to control exposure and learning to see light in a scene is all part of becoming a better camera operator and it will set you apart from those who throw everything on auto. just my $.02.
 
i hear ya matt, i was just being funny. ;)
most of the time i've got the iris set to manual, but i do a lot of run-n-gun type shoots and regularly use the auto iris when needed, just as you described.
i'm totally aware of the light in my shots, but still make mistakes from time to time in situations where i have to make a very quick judgement call.
only time and experience will fix that.
thanks again.
 
Nice commercial Averan. I had no complaints Exposure shift,, its sooo slight and it only happens twice for a short time so IMO it really had no impact on the final outcome, it actually looked like it was meant to be.
 
I read this topic first expecting to be bothered by auto-iris (which tends to distract me a lot), but IMO it wasn't that bad. Would probably have been better in manual but I quite enjoyed the video regardless--nice job :).
 
hah!
after everyone's input and reviewing the video several times, 2 things have happened:
1. i can barely even notice that i have the iris on auto in this video!
2. i can see how those shots probably would have been totally fine with manual exposure. =)

thanks for your comment allen.

ps. to those who would like to redo the lens flare shots: me too! there was no way while on-location that i would have been able to clean the roofing oil spray off the lens without simply smearing it. i was concerned that i was going to make things worse by trying to clean that stuff off with my lens cloth and wouldn't be able to finish shooting.
 
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