Three Cameras, one operator

P

Peternap

Well-known member
I'm going to video a Board of Supervisors meeting tomorrow evening.

I've always covered them with one camera and to be honest, they're dull and kind of flat.

This one will be interesting. The agenda is to remove some shooting restrictions in the county.
There are a lot of pro gun people that will be in attendance as well as an army of anti's.

I have three cameras to take. I thought I'd put one locked on the speakers podium and use the H4N for audio.

I thought I'd use the 7D to roam and take random shots but I'm not sure what to aim the third on a tripod at.

The audience is a thought but it would need to ne a wide shot. I could pan it once in a while and get what I get.

Any ideas.
 
Camera 1: a master shot of some sort. For example a wide shot of the board. Link your audio to this camera.

2: Roaming shot. Hope you are using a finder of some sort to help focus quickly.

3. Audience mic: Will there be a mic that audience members can step up to and address the board? If so, that seems like a logical place to lock down the 3d camera, since there may be some passionate speakers. If you're using a DSLR, you might consider a relatively shallow DOF to blur out the audience sitting behind the speaker. If you have a second mic, this would be a good place to plant it.

The tricky part will be re-setting the 7ds when you hit the recording limit. You'll need to circle back around and restart them. Same thing with the audio recorder, keep an eye on how much card space you're using.

Good luck
 
Thanks Bob. I hadn't thought about locking on the board. They hate that. I love the idea.

I'll only be using one 7D. The other two are HD Camcorders.

I shouldn't have any trouble with card space on the H4n. I have an 8 Gig in it and this will be fairly short.
20 minutes maybe.

The gun people are always good for a show. They all wear orange "Guns Save Lives" stickers and sometimes it looks like a sea of them.
 
Just a thought:

I have one of the cheapo Bescor motorized heads for my crane, though not much good for panning, would allow you to move the cam around. With some remote focus-zoom-iris controls you could really get around the room.

Also, some of the Canon DSLRs can be fully functioned via a laptop with Canon software.

Grant
 
ggrantly said:
Just a thought:

I have one of the cheapo Bescor motorized heads for my crane, though not much good for panning, would allow you to move the cam around. With some remote focus-zoom-iris controls you could really get around the room.

Also, some of the Canon DSLRs can be fully functioned via a laptop with Canon software.

Grant
Click to expand...

It didn't do much good for Tuesday...which went into overtime BTW. Glad I had three cameras because I finished with one that didn't have a dead battery or full card.

Anyway, I am ordering a servo, receiver and RC transmitter on Monday. I'm going to build a remote mount.

Video is a little frustrating for me. At an event like this I can do 50% keepers in still.

My percentage of workable video clips is less. There is just a lot of setup necessary for me to get good, usable video.
 
Peternap said:
...
Video is a little frustrating for me. At an event like this I can do 50% keepers in still.

My percentage of workable video clips is less. There is just a lot of setup necessary for me to get good, usable video.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's definitely true that neither video, nor especially sound," are "set and forget" situations. Each of them requires as much concentration and attention to detail as shooting stills, if you're doing it rght..
 
I use to work and film city counicl meetings back in days and they are a snooze fest (95% are, every once in a while a hot button item would come up).
The way we use to do these is with a turtle camera and it would come with a remote and 6 presets. So we'd preset 1) wide 2) podium, 3) Mayor CU so on and so on and would have a 2nd camera somewhere else to.

You're trying to get water out of a dry sponge from these meetings. Not much you can do here - it's content over camera.
 
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