My Wife Poses For The Camera + Psuedo Multi Cam

V

videomonster

New member
I am new here... I just bought this DVX on Friday. I've taken a photography class before but I have been a musician and graphic designer/marketer for the majority of my life.

So far I am extremely happy with the purchase of the DVX100b, I am learning alot by reading your posts and playing more with the camera. I wanted to contribute something to the newbies like me, and ask for some feedback -however harsh it may be. That's the only way real learning happens.

I have a link to 15mb .mp4 at the end of this mssg.

1.) Knowledge. The more you know the more creative and efficient you can be, but I don't think you have to be an expert in order to make great vids like most people on these forums. The camera is like a house, in order to live happily - you need to understand where the kitchen is, the bathroom, the living room, the towels, etc. There are many settings (in the MENU and scene files) that you should know in order to make the most out of your shot.

2) Lighting From my understanding, with the DVX you need plenty lighting. Don't expect film look if you're composing a shot with one 70watt bulb. Always have headroom to adjust iris and shutter. If your video is poor/grainy, then check these settings over again, and white balance.

3) You need creative lighting. (which is diferent than #2). Which means if you are using a storyboard it will help you figure out which shots will give you the most of shadows and blacks (which are really important for film look). I currently have a softbox and a tota light, but did not use them in my first vid. (Absolutely bad choice!)

4) Sound. Audio is 50% of your story telling and viewers will perceive your work as being "home video" the minute they hear excessive sound. I work mostly with audio, so I recommend ALWAYS getting some noise reduction plug-ins.

My lapel mic cost around $200...and it's not wireless. But a lapel is a requirement, not something you should debate. The mic used in movies is called a Sanken - they manufacture lapels and shotguns. Expect to spend $500 - $700; but considering its used by Major Films - that's actually pennies... if you are really working on a critical short film or feature. It costs far less than your DVX.

IF you are getting wind or room ambient (youtube like, "oh i used my video camera's mic" quality sound) then you should use some noise reduction audio-plugins.

Here is one (FREE) - http://vellocet.com/software/VNoiseGate.html

They will work in FCP and Adobe Premier, or any audio editing program. If you don't have noise reduction then you may want to use a LOW PASS FILTER on your audio track and basically remove some of the upper high range frequencies (8-12k) OH and always use a compressor on audio tracks to smooth out the levels.

5) Angles. I am no expert on angles. But I am aware that you need competent actors in order to do MASTER SHOT and over-shoulders, because you will need to work with the audio in post to keep the dialogue (inflections) consistent and keep the cuts looking nice. If not, then you need some good B-roll footage.

6) Time. I have a large problem with over-reaching and expecting that my vids will equal up to many of the ones I've seen on this forum. I just got my dvx friday; so I should relax and enjoy the learning curve. It will come with work and lots of time behind the cam.

Every little bit counts, the details will make the difference.

7) DOF. If you are aiming for a film look or thinking about getting an adapter for your DVX, but you don't know how to use Detail Coring; then you should't buy a letus, brevis, or red-rock just yet. In order to get DOF on the DVX you need to turn

AUTO-FOCUS OFF. No one told me this at first. But its tricky because with just a few slight adjustments you can go from blur to nearfield - to farfield.

8) THE MANUAL. The manual won't tell you what you want to know, that's why no one reads it. It doesn't tell you which gidget and which feature is going to give you the look you want. What it does tell you, is how all of these little tools will help you shape your composition into getting that look.

9) Post & After Effects. I am on a mac, but I use Adobe Premier and After Effects; mostly because I am familiar with Adobe products and it didn't make sense to switch. BUT... I recommend a program like Adobe Premier / or FCP. Of course After Effects is all the rave - and in there you'll have a lot of options for color correction.

Andrew Kramer has an incredibly powerful set of PRESETS called "Epic Presets" which will help you get a more fim contrast/look. But again, if you don't have a filmic shot with depth...then it will still look like a home video camera with just a different tint. :)

10) TOOLS. You need a dolly and you need a jib. I'd be more careful with a Jib than the dolly because unless you bought an HVX you probably did not buy insurance right away. I didn't, but I will. I have already ready stories of people who dropped their camera. Very sad.

If you need a dolly, then use a computer chair - lower your tripod (probably as low as it can go) and work it out. If the wheels are too loud for your thugged-out dolly, then get WD-40 (of course). If the floor makes noise, get a sheet or something that will help eliminate that noise but will still allow you to move about.

JIB - if you are creative you can use an ironing board as a jib. Strap it in, you can even use a belt as a tie down. Put it on top of a computer chair safely or skateboard. Use in moderation but maybe that will help you until you can pay the extra cash. Good thing about the ironing board is that it is adjustable.

11) Music. If you have bad mics, then you can sorta mask some noise by adding low music. But of course you probably don't want music running all the way through. But you WILL need good music period - so maybe this has been mentioned before but this is where I got some music : > www.freeplaymusic.com - and it will ALWAYS work in your favor unless you plan on selling DVDs of your work or going commercial.

-------------
This is a video that I did a day after I got my camera. I did NOT apply all this knowledge to the video below, because I hadn't learned much then. But I got a lot of noise, mostly because of low light and... of course I do not yet "command" the camera. It knows me more than I know it.

The CC is not as great because of above. But I did use an epic preset in After Effects with maybe at least 4 or 5 different CC filters from brightness/curves/hue-sat, and so forth. This is a first - done with one camera. It was very unpleasant to get the edits because Adobe Premier has a "Audio Follows Video" Feature - which would have helped me get this done in a fraction of the time, but it wasn't working. If anyone knows why - please let me know.

Anyway - I'm happy to be here, honored to be here, and this is fun. I'll only get better. Comments and hate mail appreciated!

http://www.nyelagraham.com/nyela.mp4
 
Hey Videomonster,

Nice post! I am also new to all of this and I can relate to every point you made! Which is why I also want to give your post a bump: all of us newbies should read it.
Especially the point about reading the manual!

And nice vid clip to go along with it - can I ask how you got the "multi cam" effect? And what mic did you use for sound? You mentioned your lav - did you use that?

Thanks and keep on filming!
:thumbup:
 
If you're doing film-style shooting, you almost never want to use lavalieres, and by "almost," I mean 99.99% of the time. You'll want to boom it, with a hypercardioid for indoors, and a shotgun for outdoors. Shouldn't use a shotgun indoors.

But you're absolutely, 100% correct that you want to get the microphone as close to your sound as you possibly can.

And remember, noise reduction software costs you quality -- much better just to record clean audio to begin with. :)
 
David Jimerson said:
If you're doing film-style shooting, you almost never want to use lavalieres, and by "almost," I mean 99.99% of the time. You'll want to boom it, with a hypercardioid for indoors, and a shotgun for outdoors. Shouldn't use a shotgun indoors.

But you're absolutely, 100% correct that you want to get the microphone as close to your sound as you possibly can.

And remember, noise reduction software costs you quality -- much better just to record clean audio to begin with. :)
Click to expand...

I am fairly new to DVXUser, though I've been reading a lot the past couple months and learning a ton.

David, could you elaborate some on this. Why should you not use a shotgun indoors for film-style shooting?

Thanks! It's great to be here!
 
Because the pickup pattern isn't ideal for it -- it's tight and long, which might make it more difficult to get actors in the pattern, especially if you're trying to boom for than one. A wider, more forgiving pattern like a hypercardioid or cardioid is better for that. Also, a shotgun has a bigger tail -- it picks up more sound directly behind it than a hypercardioid or cardioid would, so if you have an echo off a wall behind you, you're more lilely to pick it up with a shotgun than you would another type of mic.

Shotguns are GREAT for outdoors for the same reasons -- you don't have walls which are going to give you an echo, but not having walls also means that you'll have more unwanted sounds around -- cars, sirens, whatever -- and the tight pattern of the shotgun gives you more rejection of those sounds. Its length also allows for the mic to be slightly farther away, which is useful in outdoor shoots because the angles tend to be a bit wider.

Now, shotguns are used indoors sometimes. They're especially used in sit-down interview type situations where the shots can be wide or close -- think David Letterman, for example.

But for normal, indoor dialogue recording, the hypercardioid is simply best-suited.
 
Perfect! Thanks for the insight! It makes perfect sense.

I'm an eight-year one man band local news veteran and I'm just beginning to explore cinematic/film-style video. I've used a shotgun mic for almost every news shoot during my career. The only issue is to just make sure I get audible audio, no matter the quality. lol

Very enlightening. Thanks again!
 
Re:MultiCam Effect

Re:MultiCam Effect

I am sorry I am way late responding. For some reason I didn't get any notices that there were replies.

Remember, I did this all in one day - with horrible lighting. It took maybe an hour. And I did (not) use a storyboard. It was just on a whim. Basically she just repeated what she said 3 different times and I shot from different angles.

At some spots in her monologue, I knew I wanted to have certain angles, so I would really pick the important parts of her dialogue and have her nail those.

This meant that for the most part, she couldn't move around alot. You won't have this luxury in normal film style shooting. Especially if your shooting across different days. I am not expert at that - but that's where storyboards would come in. Because organization is key - when you're dealing with multiple actors.

If you are limited on equipment and only have one camera -- then you have to think so much harder. Especially if you have more than one subject.

Although I did find that doing over the shoulder & dialogues were alot easier - because you can use so much b-roll footage. Good actors will be able to re-do what they did.

If you watch BucketList with Morgan Freeman & Jack Nicholson, there's a part towards the end when they are outside Jack's daughter's house and he's yelling at Morgan for taking him there. You'll see the synch is bad - the b-roll footage is piss poor sloppy. Watch that whole scene. Or maybe that was just in the special "internet edition" I watched ;)

You can avoid these mistakes by KNOWING the script and not just thinking about the camera. I think most newbies are not into the script, they are not treating this as an artform and working with the actors. You can't just think about the camera, you have to gel with the actors otherwise it will be disconnected no matter how good you think the multi-cam is, it will look choppy and misaligned because you simply didn't "DIRECT" it good enough to give yourself enough footage to edit and mix and match together.

As for how I edited it in Premiere? Oh that was pure hell. Because the whole multi-cam thing worked... it would record the different camera switches as I programmed them into premiere. But it would not sync the audio WITH the camera view that I selected. So if I had 4 camera views and I switched from camera 1 to camera 4 - well it never would switch to camera 4s audio. So I wound up having to play audio editor in premiere and that sucked. There's no words of how heartbreaking that was. If anything was hard - THAT was hard.

HOURS and HOURS of muting and fading and etc.

Okay now for audio.

The guys here in NY @ B&H specifically recommended a lavalier and discouraged me from getting a shotgun. But they were very specific (and have always been) about saying that for a lavalier you need to spend upwards of $500 for a DECENT lavalier.

I did some research and found that Sanken lavaliers were used in the film THE INTERPRETER.

HEre is a link - http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_sanken_helps_interpreter/

But... it's easier to work with audio when you have a perfectly clean signal and have to process less.

The lavalier I have is a $240 audio technia - and it was NOT wireless. The main problem I had with it, was that for what I "wanted" it just wasn't clean enough - it picked up too much room noise.

It's NOT as crisp as I wanted it. The more I work with the panasonic, the more these cheap mics make my videos look bad. It wasn't that big of a deal until I started shooting more, for critical projects. Websites, ads, other projects, etc. The mic must go.

I didn't mean to write so long. But multi-cam is a thinking game. As long as you have patient actors and actors who are good - you can simply have them repeat the parts that you [know] you want to have multi-cam.

Audio is a gear game. There's no way around it. You can buy cheap mics all you want, I've tried it - but in the end, you're just going to disappoint yourself. And a $300 mic and a $3,000 camera don't match. Even if you look at the economics of it.

Another newbie mistake. Looking for the "big picture" but only making the "small investment". Doesn't work that way.

STORYBOARDS - if you are doing multi-cam with more than one actor. Storyboards should be a must. You will waste time, battery use, actor enthusiasm by working without them. Plus this will help you pinpoin spots in the script where multi-cam is necessary or desired.

Oh-- and always record "ambient noise" or "room noise" - maybe like 3 or 5 minutes worth. Because you'll need it - when you start editing audio and trying to mesh together the audio from your different camera angles/takes.

One more reason why you need a good mic is because you need damn good levels. The actors will not say everything at the same tone the same intonation all the time. Make your MIC do more work for you. That's the mistake I made, but I was able to cover it up abit by overprocessing.

Which was stated earlier.

Glad some people liked the post.
 
Just a word of caution: Don't get equipment advice from sales clerks. BH is a reputable dealer, but its their job to sell you equipment, not give advice. No disrespect to the sales force at BH or any other place. I've found the reputable stores to be generally honest. Although the level of knowledge and experience of the individual sales person can vary...and that's what you need to be most careful about.

That being said ( not that you really asked ) my advice is that you spend time in the different sections of this site. Audio, Lighting, etc. Every question I have has already been asked by someone and answered by a user with professional experience.

BTW, I'm not among the great answer givers. I've only just figured out how to ask the right questions....

Clearly you've already done a lot of research and using the Search command on this site will not just help you refine your knowledge, but prepare you to ask better questions.

Seriously, there are some real experts on this site. Use them. They are very cool about sharing. But, they do expect you to have searched the board prior to posting a question.

You're absolutely right about sound-the importance of it-and I strongly suggest Barry Green and David Jimerson's SOUND FOR FILM and TELEVISION.
You'll see Matt Gettemeier in there as well. It's a must have.

It took me a while to figure it out, so let me give thos who are new a head start: In each section you'll quickly start recognizing the experts. Click on their name and bring up their past posts. Read that stuff. Read the stickies. Soon you'll develop your personal go-to list of people with good advice/opinions.

Finally, I like the idea of lavs, and I have access to some, but I have only used them in interviews, and only occasionally. I prefer a shotgun outside and a cardioid or Hyper-cardioid indoors. I'm not suggesting right or wrong here. Just giving my personal opinion. Do what works for you.

Again, you've certainly done a lot of work already, so maybe I'm just stating the obvious. In that case, just ignore me. Either way, nice clip of your wife and hope to see more of your work soon.:beer:
 
I can't watch the video, which is a shame. After reading through your post, I was wanting to see how you pulled it together. Unfortunately, my PC doesn't seem to like QT these days.
 
nashmotionpictures said:
Can you please explain what one will lose if one is to use a shotgun indoors?
Click to expand...

Ummm, he did:

Because the pickup pattern isn't ideal for it -- it's tight and long, which might make it more difficult to get actors in the pattern, especially if you're trying to boom for than one. A wider, more forgiving pattern like a hypercardioid or cardioid is better for that. Also, a shotgun has a bigger tail -- it picks up more sound directly behind it than a hypercardioid or cardioid would, so if you have an echo off a wall behind you, you're more lilely to pick it up with a shotgun than you would another type of mic.
Click to expand...
 
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