First ever short film shot with GH1

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pmk396

Well-known member
Hi all,
I bought a GH1 two months ago and I am only still getting used to it's workings such as shutter speed, ISOs and aperture settings. I bought the GH1 solely for the purpose of amateur filmmaking.

Anyhow, I shot this film with very little planning and it was kinda rushed. It's my very first effort ever and I know a few things about it could be better with it. It was shot in 720p format and I think shutter speed was 1/60 or 1/80.

Anyhow, I'd appreciate if you could check it out and let me know what you think of it as a first attempt.

Here's the link:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0SrEA4yHW8

Thanks
 
The color scenes were much too dark and the B/W scenes were a little too contrasty. I'd also get more movement or more scenes in there where you cut to close shots or something. When dealing with emotions you want to "help" the talent portray their plight by using closeups and such.

Otherwise, keep doing it! Shooting for the fun of it will always be better than sitting around talking about it on a forum.. :)
 
You picked some great locations for the B&W shots. Especially, the outside of the pub with the black and white walls. Very nice contrast. The B&W shots look great. Sure, some of the color shots are too dark but, its your first film and, like everyone else, you learn from your mistakes. Keep shooting and experimenting with different lenses and lighting techniques, and composition. That's what makes film making so fun! By the way, I like the wall with the graffiti in the one shot. I'm shooting a short with the GH1 also and one of my locations has A LOT of graffiti in vivid colors. :beer:
 
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Yep, the medium shots of the two guys talking have way too much headroom.

The first shot of you drinking has you dead center, try to avoid that.

I like the medium shot of the guy drinking beer and reading the paper.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. I really do appreciate the advice, as the whole filmmaking thing is new to me. Just so you know, I'm in the scene with the two guys talking. I'm the one with the goatee, dressed in all black and smoking the cigarette.

Just so you know, in the colour scene, I was trying to go for a dimly lit room. I shot that in around ISO 600, I think. The room light itself had a dimmer switch on it and I was trying to play around between that, the ISO settings and the aperture setting.

In the B/W, when you say that the shots look very contrasty, what do you mean by constrasty? The B/W shots were filmed on quite a sunny day. I think ISO was around 100 or 200 and the aperture setting was around f/8. I think it was filmed on the GH1's "Smooth B&W" setting under its film mode.

My biggest question would be the type of shots I did. I would be very inexperienced when it comes to types of shots, ie. close-ups, medium, wide, etc. and how to take those shots properly. I don't know what filling the frame means. Does it mean more close ups? And with regards to the shot of the two guys talking and giving them way to much headroom; does that mean I should of had their heads closer to the top of the frame for those shots?

Not forgetting guys that this was something that was put together very quickly so I didn't give myself much time to experiment with light and lens settings, and different types of shots.

I do really appreciate the comments and advice guys, and would appreciate any further tips or advice on what you have seen.
 
Contrasty means that the bright areas are very white (pretty much blown out looking) and the dark areas are very black(very crushed looking) and there doesn't seem to be many grey tones in between.

Filling the frame can mean a few things but mainly you don't want a lot of empty space in your scenes. It's OK for a few wide scenes to establish context and location but mainly you want an intimate feeling with your talent(actors, etc) so you want good shots of the important parts of them, the face and shoulders usually, so you can see their expressions and such. Watch some old Kubrick films to see how he tends to use wide shots then fill the frame(close shots) on others.

http://sites.google.com/site/bumpphotographylessons/home/lesson-4-fill-the-frame
 
pmk396 said:
Hi all,
...
Anyhow, I shot this film with very little planning and it was kinda rushed. It's my very first effort ever and I know a few things about it could be better with it. It was shot in 720p format and I think shutter speed was 1/60 or 1/80.
....
Thanks
Click to expand...

Over all the shots were too dark. Some of the exteriors were 'ok'. Interior illumination is low, and the stock lens slow, if that's what you were using. Hence, the resulting dark images.

Compositionally, I'll just use one example at about 00:18. Fellow sitting at table drinking.

You have a large expanse 'behind' the fellow. Stronger composition would have been to shift his position in the frame to the left, with just a small gap between the frame of the video and the back of his head.

Then for the frontal shot, a few seconds later, I think would be strengthened by having more of the table running from the foreground to the subject. Rather than having the subject's elbows, and bottle cut off midway down.

Further on several of the outdoors shots are really 'dark' in the shadows, and given the outdoors, perhaps should have been much brighter.

The GH-1 does have a histogram display function, learn how to enable it, and learn to use it. It will be a better indication than 'eyeballing' it at this point.
 
Thanks again for all the replies and advice guys. I really appreciate it.

Just in relation to fixing the contrast in the black and white shots, what would be my best way of fixing this problem? Should I have set the aperture to a higher setting or something? I remember shooting the outdoor scenes and the GH1 settings were still at the settings used for the indoor shots (I think ISO was ~600, aperture was at f/4) as the indoor scenes were shot just before the outdoor shots. Anyway, I remember when switching the camera on for the outdoor scenes, the picture was way to bright and I think I brought the ISO down to 100 and put the aperture at ~f/8, I think. Would I have been better to keep the ISO at around the 400-600 mark and perhaps set the aperture much higher (~f/10 to ~f/20)?

As for the indoor scene, what would be the best settings to use when trying to get that "dimly lit room" look without making the footage appear too dark.

At the moment, I am only using the stock lens but I am in the process of acquiring a canon fd 50mm 1.4 lens. I hear that they are fantastic on the GH1 for low light shots so that probably would have suited better for my indoor shots.

My apologies if I sound naiive to the whole filmmamking thing but I just wanna make sure that I understand the basics of different kind shots and different light for shots. Again, I appreciate all the positive comments.
 
pmk396 said:
Just in relation to fixing the contrast in the black and white shots, what would be my best way of fixing this problem? Should I have set the aperture to a higher setting or something? I remember shooting the outdoor scenes and the GH1 settings were still at the settings used for the indoor shots (I think ISO was ~600, aperture was at f/4) as the indoor scenes were shot just before the outdoor shots. Anyway, I remember when switching the camera on for the outdoor scenes, the picture was way to bright and I think I brought the ISO down to 100 and put the aperture at ~f/8, I think. Would I have been better to keep the ISO at around the 400-600 mark and perhaps set the aperture much higher (~f/10 to ~f/20)?
Click to expand...


A couple of things to remember, or learn. Learn to enable the histogram display, and learn to use it to interpret 'what to do'.

A couple of things that are different between 'still' work and 'moving pictures'. The most significant is that most moving picture camera setups have the shutter speed set at 1/60 or 1/50, which is approximately 1/2 the frame rate of 30 fps or 24 fps (PAL we don't do no stinking PAL...)...

With this in mind, there are then only 2 variables to change on the camera setting, f-stop, or ISO, to change how the camera responds to the scene.

High f-stop values tend to be avoided in moving pictures, so, something more than f/8 would cause people to put neutral density filters in front of the lens, to cut the light, with a 'daytime in broad sunlight' ISO value of 100.

In the case of ISO values, higher ISO values tend to have more 'noise', and in digital images the noise is objectionable, well, more objectionable than 'hight ISO film' grain noise. So, in the case of a 'low light' situation, your 'choice' is higer ISO, more digital noise, or use a faster lens, such as the Canon lens you are contemplating.... or more light... instead of trying to shoot with one tungsten light, get more light. There are some tutorials on this site as well as on Youtube which go over 'lighting' as well as some 'do it your self' lighting solutions (lights bought at Home Depot for 'cheap'...)

In the specific examples of the outdoors shots, lowering the ISO to 100, and upping the f-stop breings the higlights down to a reasonable level... the unfortunate consequence is that the 'shadows' are also brought down. So you mission, impossible though it may seem, is to find a balance between blown out highlights, and blank black shadows.

In the indoors scenes, upping the ISO to 800 and shooting with the lens wide open may 'work', but you may not like the noise, so the solution there is to up the lights, and of course learn to light so that there are not a zillion distracting shadows cast by the lights...

I'm assuming that you've not shot much in the way of 'pro' or 'serious amature' photography, so you may not have a light meter, or experience with film to any great degree.

So, the camera can give you 'hints' about what the resulting image may be, via the histogram display. If the histogram looks like a big hill with the top of the hill roughly in the center, then the shot probably has fairly good lighting. It may not have 'artistic' quality, but it won't have blank blacks, or blasted whites. If the histogram looks like a church steeple shifted to the left... warning 'black/dark' images ahead... if the steep look is shifted to the right... blasted whites ahead... There are many other patterns that the histogram can take, so it takes a certain amount of experience to interpret what it means for any given situation.

In terms of 'aesthetics', while these may vary depending on the individual, the 'principle' that I work on for exposure is to have a small area, usually a 'reflective surface, as 'pure white', and an equally small area as 'pure black', with some 'reasonable' values of grey in between. I'm of course thinking in terms of B&W, but it is a working system for 'color' as well... just substitute 'color' for 'grey'...
 
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