Steve Crow
Forum Replies Created
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I would expect anything at 18fps to have flicker in it…much like the “old timey” handcranked keystone cop type films from the early 1900’s. You can try some motion bluring filters and maybe limit the effect to just the portion of your video frame showing the projection screen.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Canon 50mm 1.4 (better) or 1.8 (really pretty good and CHEAP!)
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Hannah, the truth is I can pretty much guarantee that when you try to do everything from sound, lighting, camera operation, direction, talent coordination, craft services etc etc, mistakes will occur. But you know what? So what! It’s worth it not only for the look you can get but how much you will learn.
Frankly I act as a one man professionally and I’m ALWAYS somewhat anxious about things going wrong particularly because I’m charging money for this. I think it makes me a bit sharper in some ways. Just set up your interview process so that you have an opportunity to test and double check your captured video AND audio before your interview subjects leaves your set…let them know this is “guerilla filmmaking” at its best and that you are new and most people will be more than happy to cut you a little slack. Everyone has made embarrassing mistakes or had equipment failures – that just goes with the territory, it’s how you deal with it and how you minimize the impact of your mistakes on clients and interview subjects that really matters. A person who hasn’t blundered at some point must be playing it so safe that their work is dead boring – take a risk, what is the worst thing that could really happen?
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Yeah Rob’s comments made me think of this: you do realize that the camera settings in effect while shooting stills are completely independent from the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings when you switch over to video mode? When you mentioned how good the image looked on the camera’s LCD – the camera was in video live view mode at the time correct?
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
With those settings the footage shouldn’t be dark, have you looked at the RAW video shot by the camera on your computer – I mean before doing any transcoding, does it look better? The only other thing I can think of is that your LCD brightness setting for your HDDSLR is set too high – that would give you a false impression of what you are actually capturing.
The other thing I would investigate is your HD monitor, can you swap it out temporarily with another monitor just to double check that it isn’t somehow the cause? Finally, could there be something going on with the ingestion process that you are using? Again, if the RAW video looks okay that would be a big hint. Anyways, that’s all I can think of.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
There are a variety of flat picture styles that you can download and use in your camera or you can make your own using the camera’s internal picture style settings but most probably this look was also manipulated in post to get that flat look you like even if they shot “normal” looking video to begin with.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
ISO is the correct control to increase brightness but 100 is far too low for the lighting situation with the dog, try something like 200, 300 or 400 and adjust up and down from there.
If you really want to learn how to adjust your camera to get great shots then you must shoot in manual mode – later when you understand how the camera works THEN it makes more sense to film in the other “easier” modes
I don’t know if your particular camera allows Manual control while in Video mode but I hope that is the case. Try seeing if this article helps you: https://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1670198&seqNum=7
Also it sounds like you turned up the screen brightness so that it is now showing you a brighter picture than you are actually filming, turn it back down to the middle setting so it more accurately reflects what you are actually filming
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Start by using the “Philip Bloom” DSLR camera settings:
Sharpness and contrast all the down to ZERO
Saturation down 2 notches to -2In editing you can add back in as much sharpness, contrast and saturation as your eye likes, just enough to be soft as in “filmic” but not so much that it appears out of focus.
The second sample of video that was more similar to yours had what I would call a more contrasty, saturated blacks kind of look (note: your eyes are different from mine and so your results may vary) and often there was only a strong key light and not much of a bounce light on the other side of the face to balanced it out.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Be sure you check carefully the specs for the HDMI out on your DSLR – some don’t provide a “clean” signal meaning the video will be overlayed with some of the onscreen camera setting information like shutter speed, aperture instead of being just the video itself which I assume is what you want.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com -
Heard of it, haven’t tried it….if the subject doesn’t move I guess it could work out allright….although I am not sure if the increased resolution is going to make that huge a difference, I think the color space and data rate of the video would have more to do with green screen quality (oh and even lighting of course) but then I avoid green screen and haven’t done any green screen keying since the DV days.
Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com