Looked at my site today and I realized that it's been a while since I've posted a proper post. It reminded me of the funny balance of being busy and looking busy. Any casual viewer of my site might think I haven't had anything worth posting about, but the truth is, it's been too busy to post... I've been working on a large corporate gig, a few more art videos, and doing some TV work for some Discovery Channel recreation crime shows. I've been able to tweet fun stuff from these jobs, including pictures from the set and other things worth sharing, but that's all on my smart phone. It's difficult to actually get some time to sit down and write a post. Hopefully by moving my Twitter feed to a more featured location, it will help convey that I am actually working, even if I'm not posting a lot on this blog.
Here's something new, another art video I recently shot for Particle Productions:
Produced and directed by Philip Dolin
Lighting cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Ben Berger
Production Company: Particle Productions
Showing posts with label dslr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dslr. Show all posts
25 November, 2012
07 May, 2012
Video As Art
Here's another video about a video I shot for Philip Dolin of Particle Productions. Unlike the Bill Viola piece I posted a while back, the one is more about the artist, Hiraki Sawa's body of work. It's a cool piece with a lot of clips of the actual work - very different, very out there stuff (definitely worth checking out). Enjoy!
Produced and directed by Philip Dolin
Lighting cameraman: me
Sound recordist: Bret Scheinfeld
Production company: Particle Productions
Produced and directed by Philip Dolin
Lighting cameraman: me
Sound recordist: Bret Scheinfeld
Production company: Particle Productions
16 August, 2011
A Founder's Vision
If you've been following this blog, you'll remember a certain star-studded video I shot last year for Philip Dolin of Particle Productions and the American Jewish World Service ("And Many Happy Returns..."). In March, Philip and I headed down to Florida to shoot a follow-up piece on one of the founders of AJWS, Larry Phillips (of the Van Heusen apparel company). It's a simple interview-based piece, like the Ruth Messinger tribute, with a similar style to the previous video. Enjoy.
Produced, Directed & Edited by Philip Dolin & Molly Bernstein
Cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Roy Chase
Production Company: Particle Productions
Produced, Directed & Edited by Philip Dolin & Molly Bernstein
Cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Roy Chase
Production Company: Particle Productions
13 July, 2011
Flip Flop Gorilla
The last few years have been really interesting for me, at least as far as equipment goes. Regarding DSLR video, I went from they're nice but not video-friendly enough, to basically swearing by them for certain styles of production...
I now am of the camp that HDSLR (Canon, particularly) cameras are among the best options for guerilla and low-profile filmmaking - as long as you know how to focus and expose manually (those out there who are used auto focus, exposure and other auto features as a crutch should stay away). Here's why:
I now am of the camp that HDSLR (Canon, particularly) cameras are among the best options for guerilla and low-profile filmmaking - as long as you know how to focus and expose manually (those out there who are used auto focus, exposure and other auto features as a crutch should stay away). Here's why:
- In "guerilla" or run and gun filmmaking we often don't have time or permission to light. The DSLR cams have the ability to shoot at a very high ISO (sensitivity). And they're so good that the digital noise typically associated with doing this (raising your gain on a conventional video camera) is often hardly noticeable, and rarely distracting.
- Shallow depth of field. Now this is where I really sound like I'm flip-flopping. I used to be of the opinion that the shallow DoF was a pain for doc shooting... don't get me wrong, it does make things difficult for those out there who are used to letting the auto focus work. However, I discovered on a recent shoot that the shallow DoF actually made things easier for a run 'n gun shoot I was on. I was shooting footage on a nighttime police ride-along (awesome, yes, I know) and much of the interview was done while the officer was on duty, patrolling in the squad-car. I used the shallow DoF (especially shallow because I needed to be wide open for exposure) to let the world outside of the vehicle get milky. It let lights and signs blend together for this beautifully milky wash of moving, breathing color in the background. It really made for a beautiful shot in a pinch.
- They're SMALL. DSLR cameras are tiny and they look like still cameras. Ok, fine, they are still cameras. In the first bullet point, I mentioned lack of permission regarding lighting. While most of my projects, big and small, are on the up and up as far as permits and permissions go, there's a good 10% that are done on the DL. On those few projects, there are always any number of valid reasons for going that way, but we're not here to discuss those sorts of things. Whether you're not supposed to be filming or you've been asked to be inconspicuous, the small form factor of DSLR cameras lets you be just that. It's not a whole lot more than you just standing there. In addition to avoiding attention, it also lets you shoot differently than you would with a larger camera. You can essentially shoot anywhere your body fits - while a large-format camera ads considerable depth to your figure, so you're limited.
As I've said in previous posts, I'm not an advocate of any do-all camera or format, but the current crop of DSLR cameras, in particular, are certainly establishing a solid footing in professional video production.
26 April, 2011
Russian Invasion!
A few weeks ago I traveled to Nürburg, Germany with Kinetic Fin to shoot material for a documentary series on Jim Glickenhaus and his Ferrari P 4/5 Competizione, a remarkable one-off supercar. In June, the car will compete in the 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance race. Last week was qualifying and testing.
Going into this first trip (we'll be going again for the 24H, and possibly one more time before), very few details were known by the crew. Where were we to stage? Where could we shoot from? What exactly is the schedule for the race? We knew the car, we knew what it set out to do in Nürburg, but we were in the dark as far as logistics went. So we considered this trip somewhat of a scout and just went into it open-minded, ready to adapt.
I knew that even if there were prime press areas to shoot from, I'd need a lens on the long end to get great shots of the car and the action. I already had an 80-300mm zoom in my arsenal, but it's a long and thin beast and can get a bit wobbly on occasion. Ideally, I'd use that on rods with a lens support but with Kinetic Fin, we like to roll light and scaled back as much as possible. Also, I wanted closer than 300mm. Enter the Russian-made Zenit 3M-5CA 500mm f/8 lens...
This beast is a reflex lens, that is, it accomplishes its focal length with the use of mirrors in the lens, rather than the traditional design. This allows it to be lighter and -let's not dance around it- cheaper than comparable-length telephotos. The problems with reflex lenses are that you usually sacrifice some contrast and the bokeh is ellipsoidal. The bokeh thing was not a problem for me. I don't mind interesting stuff going on back there. The contrast issue, however, was a concern. So I researched and researched and stumbled upon the Zenit. A few videos later and I was sold. A quick search found me a mint one for a reasonable price and a week later, I had the lens in my hand...
As you can see from the video, it holds up nicely. Being on the longer end, there is considerable "jello" (DSLR sensor-related wobble) but while following fast cars or completely locked off, that is hardly an issue. The biggest problem I found was that the lens is a fixed-aperture lens. It's f/8 and f/8 only. Normally, I would've loved to stop down on a long lens like this and increase my DoF. But of course, compromises must be made if you want to save literally thousands of dollars on a telephoto lens like this. So I had to rack focus. Luckily there was time to practice - if I had to roll live, this would not have been the ideal lens, but shooting to edit leaves room to rehearse your shots and practice your racks... let me tell you, maintaining focus on cars going this fast towards and then past you is no easy task.
Going into this first trip (we'll be going again for the 24H, and possibly one more time before), very few details were known by the crew. Where were we to stage? Where could we shoot from? What exactly is the schedule for the race? We knew the car, we knew what it set out to do in Nürburg, but we were in the dark as far as logistics went. So we considered this trip somewhat of a scout and just went into it open-minded, ready to adapt.
I knew that even if there were prime press areas to shoot from, I'd need a lens on the long end to get great shots of the car and the action. I already had an 80-300mm zoom in my arsenal, but it's a long and thin beast and can get a bit wobbly on occasion. Ideally, I'd use that on rods with a lens support but with Kinetic Fin, we like to roll light and scaled back as much as possible. Also, I wanted closer than 300mm. Enter the Russian-made Zenit 3M-5CA 500mm f/8 lens...
This beast is a reflex lens, that is, it accomplishes its focal length with the use of mirrors in the lens, rather than the traditional design. This allows it to be lighter and -let's not dance around it- cheaper than comparable-length telephotos. The problems with reflex lenses are that you usually sacrifice some contrast and the bokeh is ellipsoidal. The bokeh thing was not a problem for me. I don't mind interesting stuff going on back there. The contrast issue, however, was a concern. So I researched and researched and stumbled upon the Zenit. A few videos later and I was sold. A quick search found me a mint one for a reasonable price and a week later, I had the lens in my hand...
As you can see from the video, it holds up nicely. Being on the longer end, there is considerable "jello" (DSLR sensor-related wobble) but while following fast cars or completely locked off, that is hardly an issue. The biggest problem I found was that the lens is a fixed-aperture lens. It's f/8 and f/8 only. Normally, I would've loved to stop down on a long lens like this and increase my DoF. But of course, compromises must be made if you want to save literally thousands of dollars on a telephoto lens like this. So I had to rack focus. Luckily there was time to practice - if I had to roll live, this would not have been the ideal lens, but shooting to edit leaves room to rehearse your shots and practice your racks... let me tell you, maintaining focus on cars going this fast towards and then past you is no easy task.
Anyway, I managed and got what I needed for the job. I'm definitely looking forward to shooting with this bad boy again in June. Here are some selects using this lens (there's a lot more good stuff on this lens but until the film comes out, I'm limited to what I can show).
30 October, 2010
And Many Happy Returns...
Over the last few months, I've been shooting a piece for Philip Dolin of Particle Productions for former Manhattan Borough President and humanitarian, Ruth Messinger's 70th birthday. The video was commissioned by the organization she currently runs, AJWS (American Jewish World Service). Though there is some nice archival material throughout, the piece rests solidly on interviews with an impressive roster of names including Mia Farrow, Elie Wiesel, former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, and NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
I shot all of the interviews (except for the Bill Clinton one, which was provided by his own office's media people). The A-cam (close coverage) was a Sony EX-1 and the B-cam (locked-off wide) was my trusty 550D. Just to note - the last interview was shot last Monday and the piece was completed and screened to an audience of around 1000 people on Thursday night. It's already a great piece, but even moreso considering the rapid turnaround. Take a look...
Produced, Directed, & edited by Philip Dolin & Molly Bernstein
Cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Bret Scheinfeld
Production Assistant: Alex McBean
Production Company: Particle Productions
For the lighting geeks... for most of these interviews, we were very limited in terms of time and space, so our setups and gear needed to be versatile but compact and quick. My lighting package for this whole piece consisted of my trusty 4bank fluorescent, 2 Lowel Pro Lights (250w), a 5-in-1 reflector, my faithful unbleached muslin reflector, and a small soft gold/white flexfill. Philip and I decided that the look was to be naturalistic but not boring. Whether motivated or not, every key was an inside key. If there was a window in the right spot, I could force in an edge. Without motivation, I would try to sneak one past if I needed the separation. This package was the perfect compromise of versatility and compactness.
On the camera end, the 550D was almost always fitted with my 28-50mm Contax/Yashica Zoom. In general, I (and many others) find it to be good practice to have zooms on hand in most doc situations (though on a recent Gevalia shoot, I shot for a solid hour on just a 50mm prime). Especially when time is so tight, being able to nudge a few mm tighter or wider is so valuable. In the Joy Levitt interview, however, I decided to go with my 24mm Pentax, because I wanted a wider field of view than the C/Y could give me.
One of the more difficult things about this shoot was crippling the DSLR to match the EX as best as possible. The standard picture styles and some of my favorite non-standard ones are incredibly beautiful in how they handle contrast and skin tones. However, the A-cam EX1 has a much flatter image. I didn't have the prep time to go in and match everything as well as I'd have liked. It would have required days of testing as the settings are vastly different. The EX has gamma and knee adjustments as well as a dozen other things that make a difference, while in-camera, the DSLR has contrast, saturation, sharpness and a couple of others. On most of these shoots, I opted for a more flat setup on the 550D to match the lower contrast EX but it's funny - even held back like that, I much prefer how the DSLR shots look. With a reasonable amount of time, Particle Productions could have matched the two perfectly but to be honest, I'm glad the finish was so quick - it's really nice to see the two cams side-by-side in the same lighting environments.
Here are some of my setups. In some situations, I used everything I brought and in some I didn't. Mia Farrow's interview, for instance, was shot using just the flexfills.
I shot all of the interviews (except for the Bill Clinton one, which was provided by his own office's media people). The A-cam (close coverage) was a Sony EX-1 and the B-cam (locked-off wide) was my trusty 550D. Just to note - the last interview was shot last Monday and the piece was completed and screened to an audience of around 1000 people on Thursday night. It's already a great piece, but even moreso considering the rapid turnaround. Take a look...
Produced, Directed, & edited by Philip Dolin & Molly Bernstein
Cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Bret Scheinfeld
Production Assistant: Alex McBean
Production Company: Particle Productions
For the lighting geeks... for most of these interviews, we were very limited in terms of time and space, so our setups and gear needed to be versatile but compact and quick. My lighting package for this whole piece consisted of my trusty 4bank fluorescent, 2 Lowel Pro Lights (250w), a 5-in-1 reflector, my faithful unbleached muslin reflector, and a small soft gold/white flexfill. Philip and I decided that the look was to be naturalistic but not boring. Whether motivated or not, every key was an inside key. If there was a window in the right spot, I could force in an edge. Without motivation, I would try to sneak one past if I needed the separation. This package was the perfect compromise of versatility and compactness.
On the camera end, the 550D was almost always fitted with my 28-50mm Contax/Yashica Zoom. In general, I (and many others) find it to be good practice to have zooms on hand in most doc situations (though on a recent Gevalia shoot, I shot for a solid hour on just a 50mm prime). Especially when time is so tight, being able to nudge a few mm tighter or wider is so valuable. In the Joy Levitt interview, however, I decided to go with my 24mm Pentax, because I wanted a wider field of view than the C/Y could give me.
One of the more difficult things about this shoot was crippling the DSLR to match the EX as best as possible. The standard picture styles and some of my favorite non-standard ones are incredibly beautiful in how they handle contrast and skin tones. However, the A-cam EX1 has a much flatter image. I didn't have the prep time to go in and match everything as well as I'd have liked. It would have required days of testing as the settings are vastly different. The EX has gamma and knee adjustments as well as a dozen other things that make a difference, while in-camera, the DSLR has contrast, saturation, sharpness and a couple of others. On most of these shoots, I opted for a more flat setup on the 550D to match the lower contrast EX but it's funny - even held back like that, I much prefer how the DSLR shots look. With a reasonable amount of time, Particle Productions could have matched the two perfectly but to be honest, I'm glad the finish was so quick - it's really nice to see the two cams side-by-side in the same lighting environments.
Here are some of my setups. In some situations, I used everything I brought and in some I didn't. Mia Farrow's interview, for instance, was shot using just the flexfills.
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| The only time I used a diff frame. Joy Levitt's interview. |
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| Sound guy Bret sitting in for Elie Wiesel. |
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| Setup for Dr. Sakeena Yacoobi. |
15 October, 2010
Follow Up: A Greenscreen in Harlem
UnemployedWorkers.org has launched and features the material I blogged about last. I shot the interview with Christine Owens (bright office) and Roger Grange & I shared the duties of shooting all of the interviews against black. Those particular interviews were shot on greenscreen (see "A Greenscreen in Harlem") - the decision to go black background was done late in the game. Otherwise, we'd have shot it on black for real.
And... segue... Here's another video I worked on recently that features interviews against black.
Producer/director Larry Locke shot the b-roll, while I lensed and lit the interviews (against actual black). There are a lot of digital effects over the video, diffusion, color stuff FX, etc., but the solid work is there. I'm happy with how the interviews came out.
The setup (forgive the Blackberry photo quality):
Simple duvetyne backdrop (velvety side towards camera), 4bank flo for key, Lowel Pro Light for edge, and an unbleached muslin reflector for fill. A lot of blackwrap and black foam core for control (which, along with a good amount of distance between subject and BG, is essential for good interviews against black).
Soon to come - a big post on interview lighting (and shooting). Stay tuned!
And... segue... Here's another video I worked on recently that features interviews against black.
Producer/director Larry Locke shot the b-roll, while I lensed and lit the interviews (against actual black). There are a lot of digital effects over the video, diffusion, color stuff FX, etc., but the solid work is there. I'm happy with how the interviews came out.
The setup (forgive the Blackberry photo quality):
Simple duvetyne backdrop (velvety side towards camera), 4bank flo for key, Lowel Pro Light for edge, and an unbleached muslin reflector for fill. A lot of blackwrap and black foam core for control (which, along with a good amount of distance between subject and BG, is essential for good interviews against black).
Soon to come - a big post on interview lighting (and shooting). Stay tuned!
30 July, 2010
Versatility (a quickie)
Part of what I love about DSLR for video is the versatility of the cameras. They can be built up to the size of a full-size cinema camera or used in a very simple, compact configuration.
Case in point, my normal bag (below, left) comes with me with all my lenses, the Hoodloupe, battery grip, charger, cards, cables and more. Today, however, I'm heading out to shoot some Second Unit stuff for a feature (getting NYC establishing shots and more) and I want to stay very light, so I packed a tiny camera case with just the camera body, 24mm, 58mm, and 100mm lenses, cards and 3 charged batteries. This package is less than half the size of the usual kit and will work perfectly for my needs today. Love it :)
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| A Cinvate rig |
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| My 550D mini setup |
15 July, 2010
29 June, 2010
The DSLR Arsenal
I'd like to introduce my DSLR kit.
The Canon EOS 550D/T2i built with a Yashica 28-50mm f/3.5 and Hoodman loupe
The wides. (L to R) Pentax 24mm f/2.8, Nikon 35mm f/2.5
The 50's. (L to R) Rikkenon 50mm f/2, Super Takumar 55mm f/1.8, Helios 58mm f/2
The lone tele, Nikon 100mm f/2.8
The slow, but awesome 80-300mm f/5
02 December, 2009
Testing, testing...
"Hi, my name is Dave, and I don't own an HD camera." "Welcome, Dave. We're all here to help."
(from a Cinematographers Who Haven't Made the Jump to HD Anonymous meeting)
I've shot HD before and it sure is lovely. I've actually used just about every different HD format currently available - they're all great. But they're not for me. I must admit, I'm wary to make an investment. Things are just shifting so rapidly, that I don't think I can safely make an investment that will pay out over time. If I always had my way regarding shooting format, I could get something, but for most of my for-hire shoots, the production decides. What if they want to use a different camera?!
That said, I think the time may be fast approaching when I should buy an HD camera - so, what to do? There are a plethora of options. If I wanted to spend more than ten grand, the decision is easier, but frankly, that's not what I want.
One of the current trends is HDSLR cameras - small cameras intended for still photography that are also quite capable hidef beauties. So, lately, I've been researching the different cameras out there - particularly the Canon 7D and 5D, and the Panasonic GH1. Number one research method is searching online for sample footage. So, I go on www.vimeo.com and search "7D." Results come up - countless videos titled "7D test." Great. Someone did the work for me. Click, open, load the video... WTF?!
By now, I've seen hundreds of shaky, out of focus, poorly lit, crappily composed, unstable footage set to great music. This tells me nothing. Just like when 35mm lens adapters were coming out, none of the videos online help me at all. What I need is real world film-style testing. Good composition, good lighting, appropriate camera movement - stuff that reflects what I'll be doing with the camera. Among the thousands of 7D videos online, but a few dozen are appropriate for my research, and they're damned hard to find.
So that's it for this post. Sorry it's just a rant, but that's what I felt like today. Tomorrow I'm shooting some product work for Gevalia coffee - I think I'll have a nice amount of freedom to do my thing, so I'm looking forward to it. If I remember, I'll take stills and finally have some shots to share.
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