Archive for the ‘Craft of the Video Shooter’ Category

PostHeaderIcon Exclude! Exclude! Exclude! Takes on New Meaning

Varicam 35With the advent of cameras like the extreme low-light ISO 5000 Varicam 35 the imperative to exclude, exclude, exclude, unhelpful story elements inside the frame takes on a more dramatic dimension. Shooting with the new Varicam in very low light at night, for example, means that streetlights suddenly appear blown out, the night sky over major cities is way too bright, and the intensity of incidental TV monitor and screens in the background must be substantially reduced.

This way of working is a revolution in how camera folks have managed the world until now. In the film days of years ago we needed light and plenty of it to gain even a minimum exposure. Moderately sensitive digital cameras like the Alexa of several years ago gave us the freedom to illuminate scenes with smaller low-wattage, more economical, cooler units. A blessing to be sure!

Today given the latest ultra sensitive digital cinema cameras entering the market we are back to spending a lot of time addressing the lighting in our setups, not so much by adding massive hot lights of course, but by employing more extensive lighting control, that is, by taking light away.

Given the new technology my old harangue to students to exclude everything not supportive of the visual story has taken on even greater relevance and urgency.

PostHeaderIcon Children of the Desert

I’m in Abu Dhabi this week continuing my ongoing travels around the globe offering camera workshops and pontificating about one irrelevant thing or another. This morning a major sandstorm blew in from Saudi Arabia and completely enveloped the NYU campus where I’m currently holed up.

The extremely fine sand less than 50 microns in diameter is highly abrasive and can lodge dangerously deep in one’s lungs. It is also damaging to cameras and especially camera lenses, a lesson learned the hard way by many filmmakers and shooters in the region who are drawn inexorably, like I am, to the eerie other world feeling imparted on the landscape.

Emirati children visiting the NYU campus in Abu Dhabi navigate a major sandstorm 3 April 2015.

Emirati children visiting the NYU campus in Abu Dhabi navigate an early morning sandstorm 3 April 2015.

PostHeaderIcon The Lesson Taught & Learned

This week I am teaching a camera storytelling workshop at the London Film School.  My students enrolled in the masters program here seem motivated and especially eager to embrace my lessons of life, business, and the camera craft.

For me offering such workshops at schools and universities around the world is a way of giving back.  My mentor, Albert Maysles, who died earlier this month at 88, made it a point every year to spend a few weeks sharing his prodigious expertise with aspiring young filmmakers.

I am grateful  to be able to follow in my mentor’s footsteps.

Vishen Lakhiani, the great entrepreneur and founder of MindValley in Kuala Lumpur, often speaks of the threes pillars of happiness. To find happiness  in our lives, he says, we need to have a wealth of experiences. We need to feel we’re growing each day.  And we need to know we are contributing in some way, somehow, to the betterment of others.

Camera Storytelling Workshop at London Film School

London Film School Camera & Visual Storytelling Workshop with Barry Braverman 20 March 2015

 

 

PostHeaderIcon Albert Maysles, my mentor, RIP

My mentor Albert Maysles died yesterday at the age of 88.

I will remember him fondly.

In 1976 Albert Maysles urged me to make Murita Cycles, a film about my very unconventional dad. He said the best documentaries are made by folks who are the closest to their subjects.

At the time Al was riding the trains around America carrying his modified 16mm Auricon and tiny (for its time) Nagra SN recorder. Utilizing his direct cinema approach he wanted to capture strangers meeting and getting to know each other on their respective journeys.

I don’t think he ever completed that project but he sure did complete many other great works.

I will miss him. He was a great filmmaker and a great source of inspiration in my life.

Albert Maysles (right) with his brother David, in the 1970s.

Albert Maysles (right) with his brother David, in the 1970s.

PostHeaderIcon Smaller Is Better Sometimes

If your bread and butter is shooting news, non-fiction, or documentaries, which covers at least three-quarters of us, a smallish-sensor camcorder fitted with a 1/3-inch, ½-inch, or 2/3-inch sensor makes a lot of sense.

Sony’s new PXW-X180 fitted with a 1/3-type sensor means in terms of imager size you can actually find and hold critical focus at the long end of its long 25X integrated zoom. I admit the whisker-thin narrow depth of field look currently in vogue offers some storytelling advantage: a blurry background with a  shallow focus can help direct the viewer’s eye to what’s important inside the frame.

For documentary non-fiction shooters however our emphasis ought not to be so much on achieving the least amount of depth of field but rather how to capture the most compelling close ups. For those of us who earn a living every day in the non-fiction genre we know that close ups account for 80%-90% of our storytelling, which usually require longer focal length lenses with an inherently narrow depth of field.

Thus the full-frame sensor so ardently demanded by many shooters today may work against the exercise of a documentarian’s good craft; the extreme narrow focus in close ups may render such critical scenes objectionably soft, and thus communicate an amateurish feel to viewers.

The Sony PXW-X180 features a  very much out of fashion 1/3-type sensor. Just what you might need for your next documentary project!

Sony’s new PXW-X180 features a very out of fashion 1/3-type sensor. Just what you may very well need for your next documentary project!

PostHeaderIcon LEDs Are the Future But Some Specialized LEDs Have Problems Now

The current trend to use LED lighting exclusively on feature films and high-end commercials has carried with it some interesting dichotomies. On the one hand the advent of LED instruments designed for cinema applications like the Litepanels remarkable new Astra 1×1 delivers a very bright flattering light with an exceptionally smooth color output.  The RGB/RGBW LED fixtures on the other hand increasingly requested by DPs tend to be borrowed from live theater and stage. The use of such lighting for feature production introduces a bevy of potentially serious problems; the dimmed output as low as two percent in my latest project contributing to a pronounced flicker that can be most difficult to read and compensate for.

Shooting in Japan and Singapore in August and September I found myself capturing the movie’s behind-the-scenes featurette at 29.976FPS with various shutter settings of 216º, 225º, and 230º, the middle setting seeming to me especially illogical given the 50Hz operating environment. The syhchro shutter in professional cameras can of course accommodate virtually any setting no matter how weird; the real problem is addressing the other discharge lighting that may be present in a scene like the rear projection screens in my particular  operating at 24FPS (actually 23.976FPS) that require a shutter of 230º, the neon, fluorescent, and even the studio house lights that require 216º, and the RGB LEDs that would strobe obnoxiously if not captured at 225º.

With new suitably designed flicker-free LED fixtures entering the market from Litepanels, Kino Flo, and others, one can finally see some hope at the end of the tunnel for keeping all of this. Once the same manufacturers introduce RGB fixtures with the same flicker free characteristics we as shooters will be finally able to escape the LED flicker menace once and for all.

After my experience over the last ten weeks I for one am eager to embrace a more orderly RGB LED shooting environment.

Shooting with RGB+blue LEDs is becoming increasingly common given the current trend. The potential introduction of annoying flicker is a threat that requires constant.vigilance.

Shooting with RGB+blue LEDs is becoming increasingly common given the current trend. The potential introduction of annoying flicker is a threat that requires constant vigilance.

We need a wider range of flicker-free LED instruments like the new Litepanels Astra.  Will the company introduce an RGB version? I hope so.

We need a wider range of flicker-free LED instruments like the new Litepanels Astra. Will the company introduce an RGB version? I hope so.

PostHeaderIcon The Demand for Uncoated Optics

Normally when light strikes a glass surface a portion of the beam is reflected. This loss of light is compounded in lenses with many elements, which can lead to a serious reduction in light transmission and speed. More and better lens coatings can reduce the light loss dramatically enabling lenses to maintain high speed with good resolution.

Now it may be a figment of my imagination but lately it seems more and more DPs are employing uncoated lenses. At a time when 4K and higher resolution cameras are all the rage and most shooters are indeed insisting on them it strikes me as deeply ironic and even macabre that many shooters are choosing to capture images with vastly increased flare and much much less resolution.

Of course, resolution, like wardrobe, music, and everything else, is and always has been another function of the visual story. For decades shooters used diffusion filters, metal gratings, and silk stockings, to effect a scene, to add fog or atmosphere, and yes, reduce resolution.

The great director Sidney Lumet once said that story is the conduit through which all decisions flow. The lowering of resolution is simply another storytelling device to be used and abused by shooter-storytellers of every stripe. The use of uncoated optics (as in the case of my current project shooting in Japan) is simply a reflection of this craft-oriented thinking.

PostHeaderIcon A Flicker of Truth

Whether you’re shooting time-lapse, fast or slow motion, or even more routine scenes under temperamental fluorescent lighting, chances are you’ve confronted flicker and have thrown up your French flag in frustration. Today the flicker menace seems even greater owing to most cameras’ tiny viewfinders that make it difficult to spot on location, increased use of LEDs and other discharge lighting, and greater availability of cameras capable of shooting at off frame rates.

Flicker may be seen as a faint background pulsating effect, or more dramatically as a significant fluctuation in exposure from frame to frame. In most cases the flicker may be reduced or eliminated through use of the ClearScan or Synchroscan shutter found in newer video and hybrid cameras like the Panasonic GH4. Fine shutter tweaking should always be your first course of action. Shooting 24p in 50Hz countries? Set the camera shutter (in degrees) to 172.8º. Shooting 30p in 50Hz countries? Set the camera shutter to 108º, 216º, or 324º. The use of a camera’s fine shutter is imperative if one is to avoid flicker stemming from the field frequency mismatch when shooting abroad.

Nevertheless regardless of our best efforts the specter of objectionable flicker will occasionally raise its ugly head, and this is where Digital Anarchy’s Flicker Free plug-in can save your backside. Compatible with Final Cut Pro 7 & X, Avid, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe After Effects, the plug-in can be especially effective for eliminating flicker in time-lapse and slow-motion footage, and in certain scenes illuminated by HMIs, fluorescents, and LEDs.

The Flicker Free software is simple to use with presets for time lapse, slow motion, computer/TV screen, and archival film restoration. This level of simplicity is possible because the flicker cadence in most cases is a regular pattern. In case of need further tweaking of the underlying parameters is still possible from within the plug-in.

Flicker Free’s THRESHHOLD setting specifies how much change in brightness is tolerated from frame to frame. While significant changes in brightness from frame to frame are usually deliberate, this is not the case when shooting neon or in an out of sync 50Hz/60Hz environment.  In such scenes exhibiting a brightness fluctuation in excess of 20 percent from frame to frame Flicker Free is not likely to offer much help.

Fig 2 Flickerfree PRESETS

Digital Anarchy’s Flicker Free plug-in is supported in most major editing platforms. It will work either very well. Or not at all.

 

PostHeaderIcon The Truth About Crop Factors

A reader wrote me recently regarding an online merchant’s ad touting the benefits of a 50mm DSLR lens on a smaller format camera. The ad claimed that due to the 2X crop factor in a Micro Four-Thirds camera like the Panasonic GH3 the 50mm lens could serve as the functional equivalent of a moderate telephoto, a popular choice for portrait photographers.  At first the reader accepted the ‘equivalency’ assertion, but now he is no longer sure. Since the narrow angle of view is due to the smaller imaging target rather than magnification, can a 50mm lens ever be functionally or aesthetically equivalent  to an 85mm or 105mm?

A 50mm lens is still a 50mm lens regardless of the camera’s target or sensor size.  While it’s true that the 2x crop factor reduces the viewing angle and field of view the foreshortening of perspective one expects from a moderate telephoto is not present. This contributes to an unnatural cropped look; this look characterized by the increased depth of field of the 50mm focal length compared to an 85mm or 105mm.

The same logic should occur to camera folks touting the virtues of 4K image capture which they say makes possible significant cropping to HD 1920 x 1080 inside the 4096 pixel frame. The cropping may indeed constrain the field of view  but the unnatural perspective inside the cropped frame may appear be potentially disturbing to audiences.

SLR portrait lenses 85mm – 105mm are effective because they help preserve a normal i.e. realistic roundness in the face of subjects when shooting at normal distances of six to eight feet (1.5m – 2.5m).  A 50mm lens at only a few feet from the subject may produce too much roundness and thus produce a look like an ogre. Maybe this is what you want. Maybe it isn’t.

Canon 50mm Prime

Given a 2X crop factor this 50mm can never be the functional equivalent of a moderate telephoto portrait lens.

PostHeaderIcon Sony FS700RH: Economical 4K But We Need the Optics To Go With It

It goes without saying the FS700 performs very well. At 4K its images have a pleasing organic look that can be honed or tweaked during grading and finishing almost without limitation. In pro-level cameras the SDI output is typically 10-bit but in RAW mode the FS700 outputs a 12-bit proprietary signal via 3G-SDI. Sony has thus far not permitted third parties like Convergent Design to capture the 4K RAW data. For this shooters must use Sony’s 4K recorder and interface – the AXS-R5 coupled to the HXR-IFR5.

Aside from the storage and associated workflow issues the real drawback to 4K image capture is the need for high-quality optics; satisfactorily capturing high resolution images in 4K demands the highest performance (i.e. expensive) lenses we can find to offset the increased visibility of once well-concealed optical defects.

Recently I had the opportunity to shoot with the updated FS700 for SPACE COWGIRLS, a new web series written by Allyson Adams and directed by Adele Slaughter.  The vintage Canon FD series lenses available offered a nice range of focal lengths from 20mm to 135mm with decent functionality. Still I couldn’t help but notice at 4K resolution their less than stellar performance: reduced contrast, increased flare, curvature of field, and many visible chromatic aberrations, The FS700 recording in 4K may indeed be the most economical solution around, but let us recall that 4K capture doesn’t in and of itself produce 4K images; we still need the appropriate optics to go with it.

The Sony FS700RH on the set of SPACE COWGIRLS, directed by Adele Slaughter

The Sony FS700RH on the set of SPACE COWGIRLS, directed by Adele Slaughter.

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