Steve Crow
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks guys for all the input…gave me lots to consider! 🙂
Steve Crow
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Hi Bill,
Yeah I was thinking more like the $850-1200 range for the interview camera, not much I know.
The organization that asked me about this isn’t looking for super great quality for the green screen interviews, they are more interested in purchasing a reliable and simple video camera that will still do the trick for them.
So I was thinking maybe a camcorder might be a solution and this should also allow me to get around the 12 minute or half hour recording limit because the interviews will be of young technical people, not professional actors and so I would anticipate many takes being necessary.
The only thing I worry about with those camcorders is if I can get a clean enough image to key well. I know people used to shoot green screens with mini dv camcorders so maybe I am worrying about nothing.
The C100 would be fantastic for the beauty shots camera but that too would be out of their price range, the 5D I think they already have.
Steve Crow
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Hey Jeff,
Not yet but just the other day I ran across this article saying agreeing that the A/D amp thingy was the way to go and with a promise of a follow-up article with the details
Steve Crow
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The only reason I know of to shoot at 60p is so that you can place it in 24 or 30fps timeline to get a nice slow motion effect. When shooting at 60p keep your shutter speed as close as possible to 1/120 and see if that helps any.
Normally I’d suggest you shoot at 1080 or 720 at 25fps (for PAL) for a much smoother look
I’m not familiar at all with 50fps and what that is used for.
Steve Crow
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Travis – good to hear my intuition wasn’t too far off on this one! 🙂
This field wouldn’t be for me…sounds boring as hell.
Are depos the majority of assignments?
Steve Crow
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Well not definitely not a DSLR, you want a traditional videocamera that can reliably run for say 2-3 hours at a stretch uninterrupted. I don’t know this for a fact but you may need the ability to burn in timecode – maybe even while filming as opposed to adding a timecode window in post.
I am not even sure editing software comes into play because I am not an expert in this field and you really need to research this very carefully. The material you are filming could end up being used as evidence in a civil or even criminal trial. Basically what you want to be able to say to any Judge that asks is “All I did was the mic the person you see on camera, point the camera towards them in a nice wide shot and turn on record” because anything that could be construed as “editing” may invalidate the whole thing. Also there is the whole “chain of possession” of the raw tapes, again I stress I am no expert, I just watch a lot of TV! ha ha
Tread very carefully here, consult with multiple attorneys and people who are experts in this specific field for the real answers.
This is the polar opposite of creative fillmmaking, it’s documenting in the truest sense without any creative input – so good sound, focus and capturing everything that happens is critical (Im thinking here of depositions and the like) Also find out what kind of output your clients will need, some may actually want VHS tapes, CD, DVDs or God knows what.
Since you will be dealing with attorneys and witnesses who may be under pressure, develop a thick skin, always have at least one back up for everything (what happens if your camera suddenly dies at a critical moment or your sound goes out???) and good luck!
Steve Crow
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Thomas – you can transcode automatically upon import (in the background) or any time afterwards. Some people don’t bother ever transcoding their H.264 encoded files and find FCP X can edit them just fine in their native formats but others find that the transcoding into ProRes really speeds up the editing process – I guess it depends on how beefy your Mac is and what you personally can live with in terms of response times.
FCPX can also create Proxy files on import or whenever which are lower resolution versions of your media to edit with – great for working with older Macs.
There’s also a neat thing were you basically create a digital copy of the CF card within FCPX itself and then FCPX protects that digital version of your card so that nothing can ever change the contents of it – but you can still read the files into your editing system. I forget what they call that. Personally I always hang on to the original, physical, cards until the project is done and I am always a bit nervous to format and re-use them even though I manually make copies of the entire card structure and back those up to two drives.
Definitely start thinking about your backup strategy.
Steve Crow
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One of the strongest benefits of FCP X is the meta tagging functionality including such things as roles. I’d suggest you really dig deep into the meta tagging capabilities of FCP X. For instance, you can assign multiple keywords to a single clip and can even assign ranges to show what part of the clip the keyword applies to. Naturally you can favorite clips to allow you to quickly identify which takes are the ones you want to use.
Naming and labeling each clip with the camera (Camera A or B if you are using two cameras), the angle (wide, closeup, extreme closeup) and the location or subject is a best practice I’m told is the way to go but not something I’ve yet disciplined myself to do.
Learn about creating “Auditions” and making multi-cam clips too.
One tip: make sure your preferences are set to use folder names as keyword collections since you said you already spent some time organizing your clips at the finder level.
Another great tool you might check out is called LumberJack
which is designed as a tagging tool supplement to FCPX. While it is designed to be used on set to tag clips as you record them, you can also use Lumberjack to tag video files with meta information that you’ve already captured – they are very easy to import into FCP X.
This discussion of FCP X talks a fair amount about roles and tagging – well worth the look through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDY3xQazhy0
Steve Crow
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It’s a style and I don’t mind it if it’s not overdone. Taken to the extreme, it can look like to the viewer that the shooter is inexperienced and having a lot of trouble finding focus and so is hunting around for it – that can be distracting particularly if it goes from out of focus, to in focus and then out again. However, when a shot goes from out of focus (say a close up of a wedding ring) and then goes into focus that can be a nice effect in my opinion. Just be careful not to overdo. To that end I usually don’t shoot with the lens set to auto focus or if I do, then I focus before hitting the record button
There’s an old joke: one out of focus shot is a mistake, five out of focus shots is a style! 🙂
Steve Crow
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Well clearly this was a low light situation and I imagine your camera is struggling to give you an image – so your ISO probably needed to be set higher to compensate. Also I noticed what to my eye was a strong orange, tungsten color cast to the video. I think this was either your white balance settings or perhaps how it was color corrected during editing.
Steve Crow