Rick Wise
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The sharpening FX included with Vegas is pretty good. Just apply lightly. If you want to sharpen only a part of the image, copy to the line above, sharpen the top, then use cookie-cutter to pass the sharp area onto the bottom.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Dennis, great advice. I’d add Blain Brown’s book on Lighting to your list, but it too is for more advanced shooters. (I use Blain’s book in my grad school lighting class, in spite of a significant number of text errors which I hope will be corrected in the next printing.) Your “reading about water” analogy is just terrific. Nothing beats doing it.
I suspect “I can’t afford” is a false position. If one can afford such an expensive kit, one can afford at least a day’s time of a good gaffer. In the SF Bay Area, one of the highest paid in the US, Gaffers go out for up to $650/ 10 hours, but I know you could find a very good one willing to guide and advise for $450-$500. This would be a very low-stress job for him or her. Or, you could make an arrangement to go to his place for, say, 3 mornings. The suggestion of access to your gear for free in exchange for “lessons” is surely another possibility. There are so many different ways someone with some get-up-and-go can get good help learning to light.
In short, the poster needs to get his feet and mind in gear, and start lighting.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Try a Googlesearch for: video editing school new york.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
I am guessing from your post that you have the Glidecam 4000 without the Steadicam-like body brace. I own the smaller Glidecam 2000. I find it marginally OK to use with a very, very light camera, and then only for a short while. All the weight goes on your extended forearm, which you can build up with weight-lifting but no matter how strong you are you will not be able to use this system for very long stretches at a time. It also takes lots and lots of practice to be able to make smooth pans as you walk or run.
You can spend serious bucks on the body-brace part to turn this device into a relatively cheap Steadicam-type system. I don’t know how well that works.
Any variation on the steadicam will produce very different results from any variation on a shoulder brace/support. The last one you list looks terrific, by the way, especially if you add a quick-release plate that also marries to your tripod. But no shoulder mount will ever get you the smooth, gliding shots of a steadicam-type rig.
On the other hand, do you need those kind of steadicam shots? So much depends on what you are shooting. Since you already have the Glicecam 400, why not invest in the cheap shoulder-mount device and see if that takes care of your needs? Note that there a a huge number of similar devices out there. Here’s a link to B&H’s listing, from cheapest to most expensive: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=sort&A=search&Q=&sortDrop=Price%3A+Low+to+High&bl=&atl=&pn=1&st=categoryNavigation&mnp=0.0&mxp=0.0&sv=3925&bhs=t&shs=&ac=&fi=all&pn=1&ci=3925&cmpsrch=&cltp=&clsgr=. There are numerous others that B&H does not sell, such as the two you mention. Again, the Dynamic Motion Video device you mention looks like one of the very best solutions for a very cheap price. The only obvious problem I see is there appears to be no way to adjust the forward-back position of the camera.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Now that is one wild idea: shoot in negative mode and then invert in post. I just tried it with a an old Panasonic GS400. A definite if somewhat slight improvement in low light: cleaner, richer, truer colors. In good light, however, the footage looks slightly worse when shot in negative and then flipped in post.
The downside: much harder to “see” what you are shooting in negative, though I suspect the eye will soon adapt.
By all means, shoot a test first!
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Film and video tripods have the ability to pan and tilt. The better ones have means to adjust the tension/friction/resistance for pans, and separately for tilts. They also have a way (usually a knob you turn) to individually lock both the pan and the tilt in any position. It’s not a squeeze thingy. To understand these mechanisms more fully, go to any store selling video cameras and ask to see a video-camera tripod.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Lots of tripods for film and video come with quick-release plates that allow you to snap the camera off the tripod and then back on. And if you have one that does not have the plate, you can buy one. Just be sure to get both the part that screws on to the tripod, and also the part the screws into the base of the camera.
As for your Crank 2 question, I took a quick look at the trailer. Lots of wide-angle lens up-close shooting. Quick cuts. Some green screen. Many stunts. Guns that fire syc with the camera shutter. Colors tweaked in post, etc., etc. No, there’s no “name” for this, other than experienced filmmakers doing their best with an action thriller.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Well there’s the answer to a lot of our questions. Boy, with 4 robotic cameras mounted close to the ceiling, I’m guessing there is absolutely no place to hide additional lights. Further, with the cameras mounted close to the ceiling, all the lighting is extremely flat.
Possibly there’s a partial solution: use the windows: place some lights outside, raking in to give a back edge to one side of the table, and possibly (depending on how much angle you can get) some kickers / “ratio” to both sides. This can work only if the camera angles do not look out the windows.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
I’m going to jump in here with some disagreement. The basic rule of thumb is to light from the direction the camera is shooting. Actually, a basic rule of thumb is to never light from the direction the camera is shooting.
But first of all, Dennis is absolutely correct that if all you have is overhead lighting, your subjects will have “raccoon eyes” — big shadows around their eye sockets. So then comes the question: what to do about that?
A common solution is to fly either Kino Flos or else individual fresnel lights angled to reach into the eyes of people across the table, like this rather crude drawing:
An alternative is to place some fill-light on the floor, left and right of the camera, high enough to reach over the backs of heads on one side and into the eye sockets on the other.
A third alternative is a very flat solution: place the fill right over the camera.
In my view, the first key to good lighting is shadows. That means, light in a way that you create shadows that you want. If there are no shadows at all, the image tends to look flat. You can take some of the curse of that flatness away by adding raking kickers to make part of one cheek (or sometimes both cheeks) much hotter than the front of the face. But I suspect you will not have any place to put such a kicker in this board room.
One of the issues you have not addressed is just where is the camera? Is it stationary shooting down the middle of the table, with zooms and pans to speakers? Does it rove around? Answers to those questions will help determine where you can place lights that are not in the shot(s).
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Any artist who pretends that there are no rules is the one to be laughed at. All of us face and live with rules. A few make new ones. Or just break the old ones, as did Orson Wells, Bergman, Godard. Tarantino, to name just a few.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com