See Know Evil: Shot a feature doc on DSLR's, ask me anything

[charliecurran]

Hey yall, so sorry I neglected the thread for a bit. We ran out of funding for the doc after our last trip and went off the grid to put together a Kickstarter to finish everything up. We launched it and hit our funding goal in a week so we're super stoked to get to finish everything up.

In case anyone wanted to check out the Kickstarter video out of curiousity it's right here.

@ Spicy61 - I'm a bit confused since I didn't get to see the first video that you took down but it sounds like you're having trouble getting a crisp looking image out of a DSLR.

I definitely agree with all the tips above. Also, one thing I noticed about the youtube video you posted that's still up is that the shot composition doesn't do you a lot of favors. The eye always goes towards writing first, and the sign was decently in focus, but once it was read and registered mentally as a stop sign the eye starts to traces towards the mountains which are blurry even though you're shooting pretty stopped down. With cheaper lenses I always try to trick the eye by forcing the audience's visual path through the frame with shot direction and camera movement.

You can see the shots of the ballerinas in HD on my demo reel a little better than the GIF but the crispness is a bit cheated. We shot the ballerinas really rushed for a class project and didn't have time to get our hands on a better kit so we ended up shooting on a 60D with a Tamron 2.8 zoom lens, not the sharpest lens by any means. But by trying to keep the focus on the flower petals falling, and working with the DP to get good contrast against the background which we further crushed in post we were able to make them pop a bit.

BUT - to get a technically sharper focus pull the big things I would recommend taking time to pull critical focus by zooming in all the way (if you're shooting on a zoom) and then punching in to 10X zoom digitally to pull your marks, and then zooming out to your desired shot(if it's a subject ask them to look into the lens and focus on the eye for a good pull).

Also really expensive glass helps. We were lucky to get to shoot the entire doc and the POV horror short on Zeis primes which goes a long way towards getting the best image out of these cameras.

@Dfigs

I would have to know a bit more about what kinds of shooting environments you're working in to feel comfortable giving any recommendations about specific LCD's or monitor equipment.

*One caveat, don't ever buy a monitor that runs off Canon batteries. It seems so convenient but that will eat through your batteries faster than you'll be able to charge them. By the end of a good steady cam shot you'll already be swapping them out and I've seen it really slow down productions.

For studio settings I generally like to run to a video village with a larger Plasma or LCD monitor since I hate the crowd that gathers around 5 or 7 inch monitors.

In the past I've slowly learned that when running mini HDMI cables out of the cameras to video villages they always somehow manage to get tripped on our pulled out even if properly secured and duck taped to hell. For the past shoot we needed to get a signal from the POV helmet cam off a Mark III to a video village where crew were watching and communicating via walkie talkies to pull off practical effects through the plantation we were shooting in. To try to get around this we ended up getting a wireless HDMI transmitter which we hoped to run off a batter pack and mounted it all on the helmet cam. Of course the adapter for the battery pack got lost in the mail so we had to improvise - but wireless HDMI Transmitters to larger monitors is gonna be the plan on my upcoming productions since we've now bought the kit.

I don't generally like shooting with Loupes. I've been in a few situations when shooting with them where the screen wasn't properly calibrated and the shoots came out blown out so I always just stick to using a light meter for setting exposure as I have no faith in those little monitors anymore for anything critical like doc work that might not be restagable.