C200: Bees, Beers, and New Beginnings - my beekeeping doc

chris f

chris f

Veteran
Thought I'd share this documentary that I shot, directed, and edited about beekeeping. We shot this on my C200 and C200B with a few shots on my other operator's Panasonic GH-5. It was a super fascinating project to be on as I didn't know anything about beekeeping at all. Was pretty wild to be surrounded by bees - I can't describe how loud the chorus of buzzing is when you're right in the middle of it - pretty surreal to know you're fully protected in your mind, but your body is screaming get out of there!

Most of the project was shot in Cinema Raw Light, but our B-Cam (no pun intended) shot the final hive inspection scene and the last scene at the truck in XF-AVC because we ran out of CFAST cards. When color correcting the film I was really feeling the lack of flexibility of 8-Bit in direct sunlight. B-Cam on those XF-AVC scenes was over exposed and it was hard to pull anything back in. Shooting a doc inside of a full bee suit provided many challenges, one being judging exposure on the fly when you can't put your eye to an eye piece.

Overall it was a really rewarding experience and I'm really happy with how the final product turned out. Principal photography was 2-full days and then I did a half day pick up to get a few more inserts. We used Canon photo primes for the interviews, A-Cam was on a Canon 16-35 f/4 IS L lens, B-Cam was on a Canon 24-105 f/4 IS L lens, and then we used the Laowa 24mm Probe Macro Lens for inserts and close-ups of the bees and hives.

Would be happy to answer any questions!

(Viewable in 4K if you're using Chrome)

 
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I saw 26:43 and couldn't imagine to watch the whole video. But I did! Great story nicely told. Now I want a hive too.
 
Nice work Chris! I liked this a lot and thank goodness we have people who are doing this since Bees seem to be turning into an endangered species.
Are you producing this content to try to grow the YT channel or doing anything commercial with it? Did anyone get paid? Did you pay your crew?
Or was this more of just a volunteer for fun project?
 
puredrifting said:
Nice work Chris! I liked this a lot and thank goodness we have people who are doing this since Bees seem to be turning into an endangered species.
Are you producing this content to try to grow the YT channel or doing anything commercial with it? Did anyone get paid? Did you pay your crew?
Or was this more of just a volunteer for fun project?
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Thanks Dan! This was a paid client gig. The owner of the channel who is now a friend commissioned the project. It was mostly a passion project for her YT channel. Crew was all paid full rate. Shoot days were client, talent, producer, me, 2nd cam, sound op and PA.

The original idea was to follow Tom on his journey and continue to check in on him, but the entertainment value dropped as soon as it became just one person on screen so in post we cut almost all of Day 2 out and just made it about the fun of getting started in this new hobby from Day 1. The client was very gracious and patient with me as I took a lot of time in editing to discover what I thought was the best blend of entertainment and education.

I’d love to turn this into a series if I could find funding. It was such a fun and interesting project.
 
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Very cool. Thanks for sharing details Chris. I love these sorts of films and you and your crew did a great job. I've been working on a project about the youngest Craft Distiller in America for the past two years. Unfortunately it's had to be put on the back burner as we try to finish up our main docu series
but is has some of the same "doing traditional work because it's fun and cool" feel as your documentary. The distillation process is just as interesting. But we have to find a financial backer to go anywhere with it, need to pay for some travel shoots, post, etc. Good work.
 
Interesting. Watched it till the end. Production values nice too. Thanks for sharing.

PS: Nice to see youtube channels paying full rates.
 
Really enjoyed this. Especially the bee closeups!

Curious what you're using for Lav mics on the talent. I generally boom my mics, but I thought the sound was excellent on the parts where it was obvious they were wired...

...andhanks for sharing this project.
 
Thanks Barry! I’ll have to ask my sound guy about the mics. I was blown away as well by the audio quality. I’d say 90% of what you’re hearing throughout the entire doc is lav. Really the only time you’re hearing much boom is when they’re doing stuff like sliding the hive in and out of the trucks, demo’ing tools, or the sound of the bees buzzing. The final hive scene and truck scene was no boom at all. When I was editing the interviews I couldn’t even tell which channel was boom or lav, I had to keep going back to the sound report to figure out - was definitely the best sounding lavs I’ve ever heard.
 
Hey Chris, really enjoyed this, haven't managed to watch all of it as we've got kids off from school with everything going on and they don't let you watch something for more than 3 minutes!

I almost want you to break every single shot down as I own a C200, 16-35mm, 25-105mm and the Laowa 24mm probe but I won't lol, can I ask though how did you find the Laowa? How do you approach focusing and judders? It's new to me but macro is one of my favourite forms of imagery but its definitely a learning curve. Thanks!
 
aygie said:
Hey Chris, really enjoyed this, haven't managed to watch all of it as we've got kids off from school with everything going on and they don't let you watch something for more than 3 minutes!

I almost want you to break every single shot down as I own a C200, 16-35mm, 25-105mm and the Laowa 24mm probe but I won't lol, can I ask though how did you find the Laowa? How do you approach focusing and judders? It's new to me but macro is one of my favourite forms of imagery but its definitely a learning curve. Thanks!
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Thanks! The Laowa is super cool but also tricky for sure. A lot of the times we used it we shot in 60P because the bees move so fast and because it helps smooth out the movements - if you breathe that whole lens will bounce it seems like. While the doc was hand-held, all the probe lens stuff was on sticks to control movement. I ended up buying the cinema version of this lens, but haven’t tried it with a follow focus yet to see if you can pull focus without getting shaky footage. For focus I would just guess for the most part and then do slow camera movements. With all those bees everywhere it was a lot of spray and pray to be honest.
 
Nice work! The sound really was incredible, make sure whoever you work with gets hired for your next project.

May I ask how big was the project in total in the end? Have you since concerted all RAW files into smaller versions? Shooting a project of this length would always make me a little nervous with storage costs.
 
Barry G said:
Really enjoyed this. Especially the bee closeups!

Curious what you're using for Lav mics on the talent. I generally boom my mics, but I thought the sound was excellent on the parts where it was obvious they were wired...

...andhanks for sharing this project.
Click to expand...

From my sound op:

I used the sanken cos11 lav mic’s connected to lectrosonics smqv transmitters.
I placed the mic’s directly on to the chest using an ursa mini mount for protection against clothing noise.

But if I was to be frank, it’s also 20 years of experience knowing where and how to place mic’s to achieve optimal sound. Sometimes you get lucky on your first try and find that sweet spot, and other times you might have to move things around a little. Every item of clothing sounds different and sometimes it’s hard to find that spot. I have many different methods for placement and I use them all.

A lot of my experience hiding mic’s came from working on shows like the amazing race and top chef for the past 10 years and mic’ing up all the hosts and judges.

Oh, and I was mixing on the sound Devices 633 at the time and was using the sennheiser 416 as my boom.
 
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