The Beatle Years Video

A

abeas

Well-known member
I was asked to make an interview video by a colleague who produced an event called "The Beatle Years"
The video entails 4 very different people (personality-wise) who recall 1964, The Beatles and The Ed Sullivan show.
This was my first experience using any lighting, and all I had was a little Lowell 2 piece kit I borrowed. Some of the lighting is spotty. Regardless, I have a new appreciation for it. I did the best I could setting up lights myself, with about 10 minutes of set-up time (not my choice.)
I used the HMC150 (obviously) and did the editing in FCP and Motion and took a map from iMovie. I am going to consider getting a small portable green screen for future use.
I'll take any comments or advice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9-ZwDkZzfM
 
Personally, I feel your lighting was fine for a beginner, with the exception of Mark Pipas' segments. It seemed overexposed, and I could understand why he was wearing sun glasses:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG). I also felt that the black bed sheet type thing wasn't needed. The graphics were great, though. Also, what where your settings?
 
It looks good, and for the intended purpose I think it will play very well -- which is the whole point, after all. I agree with JT_Productions that the Pipas segment wasn't visually up to the quality of the other three -- it was overexposed, and the background was very dull. It also gave the impression of having been shot in a very small space, since the background was so close to the subject. But I think you realize this and will be able to do a better job the next time. You accomplished quite a lot with just those two lights. Nice job with the graphics and still images.

I did find that the audio was very bass-heavy and just on the edge of "muddy" on the system I used to view it (which has very good speakers and a subwoofer). This will vary, of course, depending on how it's played back, but in an auditorium setting I would expect to have to turn the bass down quite a bit to make it intelligible -- otherwise it will be hard to understand the words. Engaging a low-cut filter during recording or, as a second step, introducing some equalization in post to roll off the bottom would be welcome.

From a content perspective, I think it would have been nice to have at least one female fan represented! But I realilze that may not have been under your control.

- GDS
 
Thanks. He was wearing glasses to cover his black eyes he got from slipping on ice. It was shot in a small room, my living room. The reason for the bed sheet was to block out the windows and sun light and just provide some kind of back drop. He was interviewed less than a week before the event, so we were cutting it close. He was about four feet from the bed sheet and I was shooting about ten feet away in my kitchen. I used a color corrector to correct flesh tones and expand contrast with higher whites and darker blacks. I dropped on a broadcast safe filter too. I will admit I did go a little too white on Mark. I guess I cared more about his skin being lined up on the flesh tone line on vectorscope.
We had a couple females lined up. Unfortunatly we lost them on account of heavy snowfall the day it was to be shot.
The audio was recorded with a senheisser wireless lav. No post work was done to it, but there should have been a little low frequency roll off.
I appreciate your comments and welcome anymore. I learned a lot from this......mainly lighting is an art that I am just starting to learn. I guess the next step is to buy some.
Thanks again guys.
 
Oh, the settings I used were simply the Spark scene file with no changes, 1080/30p. Manual white balance, focus and iris. With all the interviews, I tried to get as far as way as possible, zoom through and open the iris as much as I could to get a shallower depth of field.
 
I always like to shoot interviews with people in their element.I actually kind of like the bed sheet. Gives it an industrial feel. And the guy with the sunglasses looks industrial. The DJ looks like he might be in his element also.The other back grounds are pretty boring. Especially the guitar in shadow--very cliche IMHO. Intro was a little long. Not sure about the connection with the graphic going from London to New York. Were the interviews in NYC? Or is this supposed to harken to the Beatles coming to America? Rather than have the text overlay about how the Beatles affect you, I would just go with the interviews. People can make the connection. "So unique about 1964" is bad grammar. "Unique" means one and only, so eliminate the word, "so." Interviewees are looking too far off to the side.
 
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