Short Doc using 7D, 10mm & 10-50mm Sigma lenses

8string

8string

Well-known member
Just put up on the web a 13 minute documentary shot for the local Marine Resource Committee to show a day sampling water on Puget Sound. This is done with the State Department of Health to monitor fecal coliform to protect against shellfish biotoxin illness. Nothing fancy here...just a run & gun 1 day shoot and edited by myself with the goal of educating on the issues.

Audio was with an AT897 mounted on camera (pushed back when using the 10mm!), with the low filter turned on, and I used post processing in Vegas 10.d for audio to remove audio noise of the boats engine by adding the ExpressFX Audio Restoration function & filtering the noise floor below -40 db. This was my first shoot with the 10mm and it really made a difference, as I could not have achieved some of these shots,even with the 17mm as the boat was very small. I highly recommend it if you can afford a specialty lens. As a famous photog once said, "my advice is 'get close, then get closer'".

The guys I went out with were great and helped explain the issues they face with sampling, some of which are very contentious here in the Pacific NW, like the issue of live aboards in areas of shellfish beds. Any critiques from folks are welcome.

 
I love the look of the video; to me, this what regular newscast should look like. However, the thing I can't stand is the skin tones - just too orange and red. Does anyone have any tips on how to control this? Does having a small LCD light on top of the camera help give a general tone to the skin, or is this more in the picture style/white balance? To be honest, it seems that the good ol newcasting cameras never have this skin problem...I notice that the red and orange objects are also very strong in this video - could be a sign that the red levels are a bit too high, or something...

Also, can I ask how you got exposure for this? There are some blown out whites and such, but overall, it transitions well from inside the boat to out, and you didn't seem to have to change it. The exposure all around seemed great for a simple, documentary look, and worked well.
 
^ I've seen the technicolor picture style assist in correcting the pasty skin tones. I dont have any links handy, but that is what i've seen since it came out..
 
Well, I've been trying to test Cinestyle and generally, it's the same old problem - DSLR's seem horrible for skin tones. Quite literally, you can pull out any old VHS camera or newcasting camera, and it seems the the skin tones will at least look like you got a few tips from Lars von Trier. DSLR's however seem to turn everything into a strawberry or a zombie. It's one thing if you're trying to shoot Mission Impossible and generally have all the lights you could want to work with, but when you're out on a small boat like this (or hey, if you're trying to shoot the next Dogme 95 film), you have to generally have a great picture style and white balance right in camera. Nothing perfectionist or cinemagrade, just nothing extreme that looks more like a vacation camcorder's colors rather than a newsdoc camera.
 
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Hi guys, just back from a couple of days of deadline work. Thanks for the feedback. Snapper, while I have experienced much worse skin tone orange than this with the 7D, (i.e. inside at high ISO numbers under florescent)I don't feel that this has orange skin tones by and large. I'm viewing this on a Macbook, and edited it on a Windows machine using Vegas 10.d. I did do some minor post color correction, actually dialing it down a bit more in the saturation range. Could it be something you are experincing in the way your monitor displays reds? I admit they are, in my view, *slightly* yellowish, but the whites seem in good balance on all my monitors with this. Maybe my monitors are the ones out of sync? Could you help me by pointing out which scenes seem *too orange & red* to you? I do agree that HDSLR's like the Canon have more yellowish tinges to them than my camcorders.

Also Canon tends to head more towards yellow and red than other cameras. I'm not wild about the Canon color range on the 7D, but have seen such fabulous footage with it by others that I think a reference monitor would help my work. As such, I've actually toned down my picture style and have it at a user defined NEUTRAL setting of 0,-2,0,0 as recommended by Philip Bloom when I attended his workshop last fall.

I white balance out when starting my day. I just allowed the camera to do the balancing but set the exposure myself by managing aperture. But honestly I was so busy I didn't really mess with it much. I'm finding that the camera is often as right as I am, so I'm trusting it a bit more. Moving inside and out on a cloudy bright day I purposely let the highlights go to get the inside of the cab correct and at other times I let the cab go so I could include the beautiful green shoreline to help the viewer see where we were. I thought that just talking heads inside a tin can would be boring. I could have brought lights, but...this was a low budget shoot, and I was just lucky to be along. An on camera light would have been a good add here, and a glidecam,and a sound man/woman...but anyway...thanks for viewing, and I'll try some of these ideas next time! I also think I could work on letting the narration ride over the top and intercut more. But I like the slower feel to this.
 
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Well, I wouldn't rule out my monitor has issues - it's always confusing what electronics do to footage, and uploading to places like Youtube only makes saturation and contrast worse. However, I study a good number of films every day on my monitor and I never see these issues on the big productions - not often even the documentaries. Here's a good example of what skin tones should look like, all true and honest. And then the standard sort of becomes more lax as you head toward documentary genres.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7XHwwBp8AA

Now, I know that that's just a cinema example, but that scene (and entire filme) was shot relatively like your production (no lights, just shade, sun, and weather). I mean, your bright-condition skin tones look good - still slightly orange-red-ish, but very acceptable - but it's really inside the boat's control seats where it shows how extreme your saturation/coloration may be. I know that skin just gets severe in shadows, but I believe this is still a sign that your reds or oranges may just be too strong and that it'd probably suit your productions in the long run to have this somehow a bit more balanced out. Like you said it's truly not as severe as things we all see elsewhere and for this production, it doesn't really make a problem, just saying that I face this issue as well and I'm just looking for a solution myself how to truly 100% eliminate the problem.

Basically, neutral seems to be too strong for many folks, the new Cinestyle really gets that saturation down and flat, and seems to produce a more film-like skin palette. It's not usually good for out-of-cam products, but I've it's been the only style for me that seems to produce a very neutral skin tone without suffering from the zombie effect. However, I guess some actors and subjects just have very red tones, especially men who tend to stay out in the sun - this might have been the case with your subjects.

Idk, overall the video you posted looks amazing both cinematography wise and generally color wise - there's nothing in it that would stop me watching a nature documentary, and I feel you have a true talent for this type of work. The whole color thing is just something I think everyone suffers on and I wish there were more learning options available for it.
 
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