Documentary Disaster

[djkoz]

I’m sure I made every mistake in the book, and then some.

On Monday Cleveland played host to a speech given by President Bush. I went downtown with the intent of filming the demonstrations and interviewing people on both sides of the Iraqi war issue. This was really my first attempt at using the camera in a serious way other than taking some footage of a family event and some video on a vacation.

My video footage did not turn out very well and I am looking for some advice as to how to improve my next attempt. I have a few questions, but even if you could answer only one I would very much appreciate it.

For background I was using a Panasonic DVX 100A, and I shot in 24pA squeeze mode with a CINE LIKE setting. It was a cold, mostly cloudy day in Cleveland, but then again, what day isn’t?

• CAMERA MOVEMENT: I did not use a tripod because I needed to be very mobile and I was doing this shoot myself. In spite of my best efforts to hold the camera steady many of my close up and pan shots came out jerky (I’m not talking about strobbing.) OIS was on. Without using a tripod, are there any tricks or other convenient and cost effective ways to add stability to the camera so that the footage is smoother? I have seen ads for various “stedi-cam” products but most of those are way too expensive for me at the moment.

• EXPOSURE AND ZEBRAS: I had the camera set for automatic exposure and focusing since I knew I would be running around a lot and not have time, nor the presence of mind to make all sorts of adjustments. Zebra setting one was set at 80% and setting two at 100%. In spite of the fact that it was a cloudy day I kept getting zebra marks whenever the clouds came into view. I also periodically received notice that I should engage the ND filters, mostly 1/8. So I played around with the ND filters but still the zebras kept appearing and I later found out that much of my footage was a bit underexposed. So what to do? I was surprised that for a somewhat cloudy day that I got the zebras at all. What’s the best approach to take in a situation like this so I don’t blow out the clouds (they did not appear to be blown out on the video when I later viewed it at home) but yet at the same time not underexpose the main subject?

• SOUND: I only used the built-in mic on the DVX100A and as you might expect I had problems. For the most part when playing back the tape I could hear my voice asking questions from behind the lens but far too often I could not hear the interviewee who was only a few feet away, or there was too much background noise being picked up. I recently purchased a very small lavaliere mic, wired. I am considering turning off the built-in mic and attaching the lavaliere to my lapel and feeding that sound into one channel. But what about the interviewee? What is the best way to capture their voice while eliminating the background chatter and chants? I thought about buying a more directional mic and mounting it on top of the camera in such a way that I could quickly take it off and hand it to the interviewee in certain situations, and feeding that audio into the second channel. Is that a good idea or would a second lavaliere mic be better? Any suggestions that the mic to get?

• COLOR BALANCE: This question might be better posed on the Vegas forum but I’ll reference it here as well. I did not set the color balance before the actual shooting, I thought I had the Auto Tracking White feature engaged. However, I must have somehow set the switch to either position A or B for fully 2/3 of my footage came out with a red / crimson cast. I can probably figure out what to do next time, but what to do with the footage I have? I’ve experimented with various color FX in Vegas and managed to improve the color somewhat but not really to the point where it looks natural. (I probably don’t know how to use the FX properly. It would be nice if there were a Vegas FX that simply allowed you to set a slider with the color temperature of the actual light source (say 6500K for a cloudy day) and then set or experiment with a second slider to represent the color temperature at which the camera was incorrectly set, and them magically correct the color. Is there such a beast? and if so, where can I get it?

• FOCUSING: It is my understanding that the auto focus in the DVX is more like a focus assist when it is in 24pA mode. Yet in some cases it took the camera 3,4,5 seconds to focus, especially (it seemed) when shooting subjects that were around 20 feet away. Is this normal? Any suggestions?

• RESOURCES: If you know of any good resources from which I can get more information about filming techniques for documentaries please let me know.

Thank you very much in advance for your suggestions and advice.

Dan K

 

[HybridCreations]

Whew! Well at least you found all these problems on one day! Let's take em one at a time.


CAMERA MOVEMENT: Get closer to the stage. If you're shooting from far away and zooming in, even with the OIS on, it'll never be steady. You could look at a shoulder brace ( www.spiderbrace.com ) Some people seem to be jazzed about this one and it's dirt cheap. But even one of these won't help THAT much, you need to get close and widen out your lens.

EXPOSURE/ZEBRA: You had your zebras set to come on at 80. That's way low for the sky, even when it's cloudy. I have mine set at 95 so that once I get rid of the zebras in the sky, the exposure is good (maybe slightly under, but that can be fixed in post much easier than overexposed video). Subjects then would have to either be turned towards the sun or provided with some bounce light from a reflector to be properly exposed, provided you don't have HMI's, which I'm assuming you do not.

SOUND: Screw the on-camera mic. You will NEVER get good sound from the on-camera mic. Your idea about the lav is a good one, why not give that to the interviewee and keep a channel on your on-camera mic for your questions (that theoretically you won't be using anyway). You could go with a mic that you will have the interviewee hold, but they have a tendency of playing with it and making noise during key soundbites. You could also go with a shotgun mic on a boom, but that would require someone other than you to hold.

COLOR BALANCE: Screw the ATW feature. Yes it's for run-n-gun type situations, but it's really not that difficult to toggle between presets (3200k, 5600k) or set two whitebalances (one on A for outside, another on B for inside, or vice-versa). The reddish footage you got will be easier to color correct than if it were very blue, but you'll most likely desaturate the image considerably in the process. The Vegas guys in the forum would be able to help you with that.

FOCUSING: Screw the Auto-Focus. Especially in 24p mode, it will take that long sometimes to focus. It's because there is less frames to reference the focus from. So turn it off. It will be more accurate overall, at least when it's out of focus you'll be able to change it when you want to.

RESOURCES: DVXUser.com. Seriously, there's a LOT of stuff here, do some searches, check out the categories and read up. You'll most likely find what you're looking for. Also, keep shooting stuff like you did. That's the best way to learn. Good luck.
-Ryan

 

[bcheong]

Hi Dan -

A few tip and hints:

1) Try cradling the camera from underneath with both hands instead of the conventional sliding your hand into the strap method. Keeping your arms tucked into your body helps a lot too. Try to use a wider focal length on your lens to help minimize any movement that you make. Keep practicing!

2) Anything automatic is just a bad idea in my opinion. Camera's rarely ever do what you need them to do in automatic setting. Always take as much control as you can even in run and gun situations. As for the sky and clouds (especially on a cloudy day) it's difficult to keep both your subject and the sky within exposure. The camera just doesn't have the kind of dynamic range to deal with that kind of contrast. You can either try to get some kind of light (bounce, etc) into the subject and stop down to get the sky, use some kind of ND grad filter - which will only work with locked off shots, frame carefully to reduce the amount of sky in the frame, or just let it go hot to get the subject exposed properly. A little zebra is not too bad.

3) Best bet is to get/rent a shotgun mic. I've had success with the Sennheiser ME66.

4) Again always use manual settings including white balance. In terms of fixing it afterwards I'm not familiar with Vegas but I know in Final Cut Pro there's a colour selector tool in the 3 wheel colour corrector that allow you to definine what is white in the frame and then it balances everything to that. It works really great in most cases.

5) Focus asssist is almost useless especially in run and gun shooting. I've never used it myself. The 5-6 seconds is normal since in 24P mode there's less motion info for the camera to analyze and adjust the focus. Best way is to zoom in, find focus and zoom back out. Stopping down and zooming out will also help with increasing DOF which will help with focus.

Hope that helps! Keep shooting!

 

[mehnkle]

Another thing no one has mentioned for stabilization is a monopod, you might want to check that out.