Shooting a House Burn Saturday

P

PatrickR

Active member
I'm going to be doing a house burn on Saturday morning (I'm a firefighter), and was wondering if anyone had had any experience or advice on shooting this type of event. My current plan is to use a 200a shooting onto a P2 card sitting on a tripod to do HD time lapse of the whole burn. I'll have a 200 to do other shots, but due to P2 card limitations (as in not having many, not limitations of the card), I'll be shooting onto MiniDV tape with this camera. I want to have at least a polarizing filter on the cameras to help prevent smoke from getting on the lenses, but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to camera settings/setup or if you want any particular shots. I don't think I'll be taking a camera into the building once the fire is going so as not to destroy the camera with heat or smoke. Let me know if you want any particular shots, too. I'm still pretty new with these cameras, so any little "obvious" pointers are also appreciated.

I have telephoto and wide angle lenses, but not many other accessories for the camera, as our budget is not very high. We're also using FCS2, if that would affect anything concerning shooting.
 
If you do have some sort of budget then I would suggest renting more cards and maybe a P2 store to offload while shooting. Shoot in 720p24pN to save space but retain HD quality. But I would shoot both cameras in HD.

But if that is not an option then I would shoot the more exciting shots in HD with the 200a and use the tape on the 200 with the tripod for the timelapse. This will give you an hour of record time before you need to reload and you can speed it up how you like in post. Shoot the SD stuff in squeeze mode which means 16:9 and uses the cameras whole chipset. Also shoot in either 480i24pA or 480i30p, not 24p or 60i for the SD stuff.

My reasoning behind this is that the best shots will probably be captured by the camera you are operating, not a still shot. I hope you see my reasoning.

As for shots and/or settings. If you are shooting 720p24pN, which you should given your storage limitations, I would use either the cine v or spark. cine v will give you a more film like shot with good color and spark will give good sharpness and a cleaner feel. If you aren't to familiar with the cameras I would suggest trying to create your own settings the defaults will work just fine.

For shots I would do the basics and follow the action. If the guys are hosing down the burning roof then get them attaching the hoses and everything, then when they start the hose follow the stream to the fire. Do this in various lens lengths. Get any depth that you can, meaning subject in focus and foreground and or background out of focus. These types of shots are easier to do when you are zoomed in and have a more open iris. Use a moderate shutter speed (48-120) unless you want a high shutter look. And use a UV filter to give your lens a little more protection. If the polarizer is all you have then turn it until it gives you a darker sky for contrast. This may effect the look of the flames and if it does find the point that you think looks best by turning the polerizer.

Make sure to get some slow motion shots! This will probably be the best shots because there is something inherently awesome about fire fighters running into a burning building surrounded by flames and smoke in slow motion. Note that slow motion can only be achieved in 720p24pN (or 30pN) while using either the cine v or cine d scene files. Click Menu: 1. Scene file: Frame rate. to change the frames per second. The higher the number (36, 48, 60) the more slow the motion.

That should give you a good start hopefully. Good luck and good shooting!

JP
 
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, this is a zero budget project, and I'm really just bringing the cameras to something that I'm already doing, so I don't really want to put money into renting more P2 cards for this event. I would love to capture it all in HD, though. I have a UV filter, also, so I'll use that. The reason we were going to do the time lapse on P2 is because I thought you had to do it on P2 cards, and not MiniDV tape. I haven't tried it on MiniDV tape, only P2, so is it the same type of setup? Or is it not even possible? The way I usually do slow motion is just by recording at 720/60p and taking care of it in post. Do you get a better slow-mo by using 720/24pN at 60 fps, or does it take up less room on the card? I'm really looking forward to doing this, and I plan on posting it when I'm done. I just want to give a short DVD to the Assistant Chief of the hosting department as a "thanks" for inviting my department.
 
as far as i know, you can't do the timelapse on the mini dv unless you do it in post. you could hack one of them to get a 1fps timelapse of it, which should give you a lot of space on 1 p2 card, hopefully freeing up another for your handheld stuff.
 
If you capture a hour of footage on dv tape you would just digitize that in and speed it up to give you the timelapse effects.
 
jcoxshooter said:
If you capture a hour of footage on dv tape you would just digitize that in and speed it up to give you the timelapse effects.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I wanted like a 6 hour time lapse, since we'll be trying to keep the fire under control so we can go in more times to get more out of the training. That's why I wanted to do the time lapse on P2 card so that I can fit about 8 hours in 16 minutes of video.
 
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