First event shooting - what settings do you recommend?

F

fr8

Member
Equipment:
One DVX100B
One DVX100A

Getting ready to do our first event shooting. Its a boxing event. With a mixed camera setup. We will only be shooting the ring which is very well lit. Since im sure alot of you have already done some event shooting. I was wondering what settings the community would recommend for this kind of event?
 
Are you using an external microphone where you can mount to your DVX & hook the other end into the XLR connector of your DVX? I heard that the DVX's built-in stereo gives less that desirable sound quality & is way too sensitive in that if you whisper behind the camera while shooting, the built-in mic picks that up too.

Try & get an external mic for each of your DVX cameras. Shoot on a tripod if possible to reduce those shaky hand-held images. You might also want to disable the optical image stabilization when shooting on tripods, else when you pan your camera, the OIS will think that the pans are shaky & try to stabilze the images. This will make the recorded images look somewhat wierd. Since the boxing match will be quite long, try & hook your 2 DVXs to the mains & run extention cords to your cameras. Remember to bring extra rolls of gaffer tape to tape the power wires to the floor. You don't want people tripping up on those power cables. During the intervals, you can remove your DVX from the tripod & take some candid close-ups of the crowd, or the boxers on their stools. Some close-ups, some far shots (wide angle shots). Remember to engage OIS again when doing hand-held shots & disengage OIS again when shooting back on tripod.

Dedicate 1 DVX to only close-up shots of the boxers & the other DVX for medium to wide-angle shots. Position each camera & different angles to get different perspective of the same event. When you edit the footage in your NLE, you have flexibility to choose the close-up shots or far shots. Make sure that the scene file settings on both cameras match & that white balance matches for both cameras, else the color differences will be obvious during post.

If you want to slow mo some of the images in your NLE, shooting in interlaced mode will be best. It's quite a challenge, but not impossible to do slow mo on progressive footage. Else, shoot in progressive as image quality of progressive is always better.

Remember to adjust your exposure correctly with the help of the DVX's zebra settings. If you turn on zebra, you will see stripped lines on parts of the image that are very bright. Use the iris dial to reduce the exposure until you see most of the zebra stripes dissappear, or at least almost dissappear. Gosh, I don't know what else to include. Ask me questions & I'll gladly answer them for you.

Another important thing about shooting these events is to capture the action, the dynamism & excitment of the crowd (occasionally) & of the boxers. Also try & get many expressions of the boxers' faces to show that they're really putting up a tough fight.

Andrew
 
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Actually if possible it would be best to stay focused on your boxers and any incidentary crowd reaction will be shoot through them ...... try to get your cams relatively high so you can shoot down on the action rather than from below.

Just a thought... do they have commentators? You could position one cam not too far from them and run an xlr with mic to their table then mix that with the other cam.
 
I guess I should also say that this is our first two camera setup. We use to do one video camera and one still camera.

Matching the cameras video is my biggest worrie. As I dont want to spend that much time in post fixing it.

The more information on that subject the less I will worrie. :)
 
andybiz_2005 said:
Are you using an external microphone where you can mount to your DVX & hook the other end into the XLR connector of your DVX? I heard that the DVX's built-in stereo gives less that desirable sound quality & is way too sensitive in that if you whisper behind the camera while shooting, the built-in mic picks that up too.

Try & get an external mic for each of your DVX cameras. Shoot on a tripod if possible to reduce those shaky hand-held images. You might also want to disable the optical image stabilization when shooting on tripods, else when you pan your camera, the OIS will think that the pans are shaky & try to stabilze the images. This will make the recorded images look somewhat wierd. Since the boxing match will be quite long, try & hook your 2 DVXs to the mains & run extention cords to your cameras. Remember to bring extra rolls of gaffer tape to tape the power wires to the floor. You don't want people tripping up on those power cables. During the intervals, you can remove your DVX from the tripod & take some candid close-ups of the crowd, or the boxers on their stools. Some close-ups, some far shots (wide angle shots). Remember to engage OIS again when doing hand-held shots & disengage OIS again when shooting back on tripod.

Dedicate 1 DVX to only close-up shots of the boxers & the other DVX for medium to wide-angle shots. Position each camera & different angles to get different perspective of the same event. When you edit the footage in your NLE, you have flexibility to choose the close-up shots or far shots. Make sure that the scene file settings on both cameras match & that white balance matches for both cameras, else the color differences will be obvious during post.

If you want to slow mo some of the images in your NLE, shooting in interlaced mode will be best. It's quite a challenge, but not impossible to do slow mo on progressive footage. Else, shoot in progressive as image quality of progressive is always better.

Remember to adjust your exposure correctly with the help of the DVX's zebra settings. If you turn on zebra, you will see stripped lines on parts of the image that are very bright. Use the iris dial to reduce the exposure until you see most of the zebra stripes dissappear, or at least almost dissappear. Gosh, I don't know what else to include. Ask me questions & I'll gladly answer them for you.

Another important thing about shooting these events is to capture the action, the dynamism & excitment of the crowd (occasionally) & of the boxers. Also try & get many expressions of the boxers' faces to show that they're really putting up a tough fight.

Andrew
Click to expand...

yes. trust the person, shooting interlace is better for slow motion effect.
 
besides the technical details, a very important aspect you should consider is how to plan the shots.

a- the hardest case is when a full coverage of the event is needed (ie for TV), cause you dont want 'holes' in your timeline. If so, you will have to make sure that the footage from cam 1 will be usable all over the timeline (keep it on wide angle, always on the boxeurs and always move it smooth and in a way which will be good in editing), while cam2 can do details, close ups, audience, etc jumping from here to there. Interlaced 4:3 is probably the best way here.

b- on the other hand, if you will just have to 'summarize' the event in a strngly edited clip, possibly also with music, slow-mo, effects... then you have much more freedom (and less pressure) with cams, but still i would keep the wide-closeup hierarchy as a general rule. in this case you might even decide to go for cine-mode (it will look very good) and possibly even letterbox it.

In both cases, if you will stuck with camera positions, i would put them, if possible, to form about a 120 degrees angle with the ring. this shouldn't create too rough cuts and still allow you to get different points of view in order to appreciate the action.

good luck
Andrea
 
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