The Twelve Films Project

Doubling Down

This blog is going to be winding down soon, now that the 12 Films Project is done, but I wanted to post up one last gear post before I was finished.

Now that the year is coming to a close, and there's a lot on the horizon, I decided to go ahead and buy another Canon 7D.  The camera has been a real workhorse for me and I decided that a 2nd camera is going be a real necessity for my next projects.

Since I've got all the lenses I've been lusting after, I just bought the body without a lens.  No sense in spending money on a lens that I wasn't going to use.  To go with the new 7D body, I got a couple more CF Cards and batteries.

I got the Cavision Shoulder Pad Package for the 7D which comes with an LCD Viewfinder and will allow me to mount my follow focus on the rails.  Working in documentaries, I'm doing more and more handheld work and having a shoulder mount, especially one that I can mount my follow focus to, is going to come in really handy.

I finally broke down and bought the Rode VideoMic which will hopefully be a lot better than the on-camera mic on the 7D.  I've used it on a few jobs and I've always been happy with the results.

And last, but not least, I got a small light kit which comes with three softboxes (two front facing and one that can hang downward as a hair light) as well as a backdrop stand with a white, black and green screen muslin.

I'm in the middle or writing up a recap of all 12 Films which I'll be posting up sometime next week.  I'll also be posting up info in a couple weeks about my projects for 2012 and info about a new blog where you can follow my next projects.

Some New Gear

I've been talking about new lenses a lot lately and I wanted to also talk about some of the other new gear that I've recently bought.  Primarily, a new support system for my slider.

Anyone who watches my movies knows that I love a good slider shot, and I had come up with an inexpensive support system for my Glidetrack Hybrid.  I bought a couple mid-weight light stands and put Manfrotto quick release plates on the top.  While this worked, even the mid-weight stands got a little wobbly, and if you tried to extend them up past about 5 feet, it was unusable.

I decided to buy another set of the Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod legs to use as the support.  Since I won't be using my tripod at the same time as the slider, I can take the head of my current tripod off and put the quick release plate on it (and do the same with the new legs) and voila!  I'll have a much steadier support system.  I'll also have more flexibility as the tripod will go higher (if you extend the center column) than the light stands and it will go lower than the light stands were able.  All in all, it's a much better choice.

I also decided to invest in a reflector kit.  Too often I'm in a space where I need a little bounce or fill and don't have the lighting or time to really get it right.  So I bought the Interfit 5-in-1 reflector kit.  The coolest part about this kit is that it comes with a bracket that allows you to mount the reflector on to a light stand, so I'll still have some use for the light stands that I have.  It's a 42-inch (in diameter) reflector that comes with Gold, Silver, White, Translucent and Black.

I decided to pick up another battery as I've been shooting more and more and find myself running low in the field.  I had experimented with some off-brand batteries and some of them are good and some are crap, so I just went ahead and got a new Canon battery which I'm sure will work great.  

Picked up some lens cleaning supplies and some other odds and ends, but I'm most excited about the new slider support.  I'm directing a piece for a local restaurant today and it'll be the first time that I get to try it out.  And I'm sure whatever the Decemeber film ends up being (seriously, I have no idea right now), there will be a little slider in there too...

PluralEyes

So this is gonna be a quick post about some software that I should have tried a LONG time ago.

As an editor, I've had to synch audio by hand for a long time.  If we shot an interview with two cameras, we'd normally record the audio into one camera and then synch the audio in a timeline later.  As it turns out, I got really good at doing it and so it's just how I always did it.

Now that I'm shooting primarily on DSLR, you have to record all the audio separately and synch it later.  Since I was already used to doing it by hand (so to speak), I never really looked into the PluralEyes option.  I was an idiot.

My current sound guy had been telling to me to give it a try and, with about 10 hours of interviews for my new documentary staring me in the face, I went ahead and downloaded the free 30-day trial.  I put all the audio/video on a timeline in Final Cut Pro, opened PluralEyes and hit the "synch" button.  What would have taken me 20-30 minutes was done in 3 minutes.  I was sold.  I immediately went back to their site and spent the $150.

I'll never go back...

Fader ND

One of the biggest problems that I've had in shooting outdoors is the bright Texas sun.  Most days, when I'm shooting outside, I have to close the aperture down to f13-f16 (sometimes f22!) in order to get a good exposure.  Doing this means there's very little depth of field which is one of the reasons I'm shooting with the film lenses to begin with.

The best way to fix this is to put ND filters in front of the lens.  ND filters are essentially dark glass that makes you open the aperture up to get a good exposure.  Usually, you have ND filters that screw on to the front of the lens.  You can stack the ND filters, one on top of the other, making it darker and darker so you can open the iris.  The issue with this is, if you're shooting video and moving around, you can end up taking time figuring out how much ND you want in front of the lens.

In comes the Fader ND filter.  With the Fader ND filter, you screw it on and then rotate it one way to increase the ND and the other way to decrease it.  This allows for quick adjustments and shallow DOF, which is what we all want.  I used one today (my buddy Paul has one for his camera), shooting at Richardson Farms, and I loved it.  Mine should arrive next week and I can't wait to strap it on.

My two new lenses (the 11-16mm Tokina and the 24-70mm Canon L-Series) both have 77mm filter sizes, so I went ahead and got the 77mm version.  My two primes both have 58mm filter sizes, so I may order another one later on if I feel like I might need it.  To be honest, I haven't busted out either of my primes since I got the new lenses, but they may end up on my camera for a job that I'm directing next week...we'll see.

UPDATE: My buddy Paul Toohey made a good point last night which is that, since the 58mm filter size on my prime lenses is smaller than the 77mm filter that I bought, I can just get a step-down ring and use the Fader ND on my primes as well.

Talking about lenses

I posted about a new lens I got (the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8) a little while ago and was very excited to pick one up.  While I used it a little on October's Instant Lovers music video, I really got to use it today, shooting for my November film, and I'm kind of in love.

One of the biggest issues I had when shooting my other two docs (as well as Bryce Gilmore's reel) was shooting in kitchens.  For the most part, kitchens in retaurants are tight spaces with people working in close quarters.  There's not a lot of room to step back and get nice wide shots with a longer lens.  The Tokina provided some amazing views today and I was able to put the camera in some interesting places and get a lot of the action.  Here are some quick frames, not color corrected or graded, just so you can see what I'm talking about.

I'm sure it's hard to tell from these shots, but the kitchen at Contigo (where I shot on Thurday) is pretty cramped.  But the Tokina really opens it up and makes it seem quite spacious...it's similar to the trick that New York real estate agents use when they photograph the cramped apartments and make them look huge.

Now that I've got my wide-end handled (heh), I've been looking at improving my zoom lens.  Currently, I'm using a Sigma 18-250mm zoom which goes from f3.5 (at the widest) to f6.3 (at the longest).  Stopping down that much when you zoom in makes it almost impossible to shoot in low-light situations without upping the ISO and getting a lot of grain.  Plus, if I'm rolling as I zoom, you see the image get darker as it zooms in and the iris closes.  Not a pretty look.

As a Canon user, I'm always drooling over the L-Series lenses and one in particular, the 24mm-70mm f2.8, has been winking at me a lot lately.  So I finally took the plunge and bought one.  It's my first L-Series lens and I can't wait to use it.  I'm mostly excited that I'll have a fast zoom that is a constant f-stop so I can zoom while rolling without the image getting darker.  The icing on the cake are the optics in this lens.  Canon has always been known for their lenses and they don't get any better than the L-Series.  This is one of the best-reviewed zoom lenses that Canon offers and I think it's going to get a lot of use.

The other lens that I'm buying is the Rokinon 8mm f3.5 fisheye.  I had been borrowing my dad's fisheye for a long time and really fell in love with what you could do with it.  While it probably won't get as much use as any of my other lenses, it's a great trick to pull out of my bag when I want to do something fun or weird.  

The Rokinon is an inexpensive lens because it's 100% manual...focus and aperture, so it's not a great lens for taking still photos.  But for video (or time lapse), it's pretty awesome.  I've talked to some people who own them and they say that it's a sharp lens, even around the edges, at f3.5.  That lens arrives next week and I'm sure I'll find a place for one or two ultra-wide angle shots in the doc.

I still have my mid-range primes (28mm f1.8 and 85mm f1.8) which serve me very well.  I don't think I'll be upgrading those any time soon.  The new L-Series lens is arriving on Friday, so I'll be able to use it on all my shoots next week (shooting Mon-Fri for the new doc).

My next gear addition

With the November film looming on the horizon, I've stepped back to look at my gear and see what's missing.  The fact that it's a documentary means that I'm going to be doing a lot of interviews (more than any of the other docs I've done) and the one thing I'm missing is a good microphone.  I've used a couple mics in the past, but the one that's stood out for me was the Rode VideoMic.

It's a good, solid mic that is great for recording dialogue or interviews.  I'm going to be purchasing a few accessories to go along with the mic that are going to help in different situations.

The first thing I'm buying is the Rode Dead Cat Wind Muff.  I've used the Rode VideoMic in windy situations and the included wind screen doesn't do much to cut the sound.  The Dead Cat is supposed to go a long way to cutting removing the wind sound.

As I sometimes end up shooting these interviews on my own, I'm going to get the Rode Mini Boompole in case I want to frame the interview a little further away from the camera (and the microphone).  I can set up the Rode VideoMic on the boom, put the boom on a light stand (using a boompole cradle) and run a long mini cable to the camera.

I think this setup is going to work well for me.  Planning on ordering it soon as I need to get a head-start on the November film.

The Tokina 11mm-16mm f2.8

For the past eight months, I've been talking about getting the Tokina 11mm-16mm f2.8 lens.  Every time I talk about buying gear, I've talked about wanting this lens...and now, I got one.

A good friend of mine in NYC (Selene Preston, the DP who shot our wedding on Super-8mm film) has decided to get rid of her 7D kit so she can upgrade to a 5D with some different lenses.  She was originally selling the whole kit together, but decided it would go faster if she broke it up and sold stuff separately, so she got in touch (knowing I've been wanting the Tokina) and offered me the lens at a very good price.  Since she's a DP and a photographer, I know she takes good care of her gear, so I didn't have to worry about it being dinged up.

The Tokina is an amazing lens.  Everyone who shoots video (and stills) with the 7D talks about how great this lens is when you want a nice wide image.  I directed a commercial for Verizon a while back (in an airport) and my DP put the Tokina (the Nikon version) on the RED.  Even wide open (f2.8) at 11mm, the image was sharp, beautiful and you could see the world.

The Tokina is a renticular lens which means straight lines stay straight.  You don't get the barrell distortion that you would get with an 8mm fisheye.  The key to using this lens is to put something in the foreground and let the wide vista of the background provide the backdrop for whatever you're trying to highlight in the foreground.

Also, if you're planning on doing any time-lapse, this lens will be wonderful.  You'll be able to get wide sunset or cloud timelapse shots with no problem.  And the fact that it's so fast means you'll be able to shoot star timelapses as well, opening it up to f2.8 to let as much light in as possible.  Here's an amazing video shot on the 60D and T2i using the Tokina:

 

The Tokina is made for the crop sensor (APS-C) on the Canon 7D.  That means, if you put it on a full frame camera like the 5D II, you'll see the edge of the lens (basically, some severe vignetting) in your shots because the full-frame sensor is bigger than the Tokina allows for.

And here's a fun test video that shows the lens at different focal lengths:

 

My buddy Paul Toohey has this lens and we used it on the September film, Layover, to shoot the car insert.  At 13mm (not even the widest it goes), the lens was able to get the entire interior of the car as well as the street going by the windows.  It made for a very cool shot that was made funnier by just being one wide shot instead of cuts to show the action.

The lens arrives tomorrow, just in time for the October film, a music video shoot that I'm setting up for next week.  Gonna be a fun one!

MacBook Pro

I've been talking about buying a MacBook Pro for a while.  

I had a laptop (an older, 17-inch PowerBook) which I used when clients would fly me out to edit for them remotely.  I stopped taking those jobs after a while and the laptop stopped getting used.  When Julie and I moved from New York, I sold it and really never missed it.

Cut to the beginning of this year when I started the Project.  Shooting all the video and not being able to off-load the CF Cards or watch the footage back on something larger than the on-board LCD kind of sucked.  The ability of off-load the cards really was something I wanted badly.  I'm not the kind of person that puts 100% of their faith in technology (even though I use technology quite a bit...or maybe it's because I use it quite a bit) and so having all my footage sitting on the cards until I got home never set right with me.  Plus, if I ever needed to shoot more footage than I had room for, I was screwed.

So I started looking at the new line of MacBook Pro's about 2 months ago, when they came out.  I decided on the 15-inch display (the 17-inch is just too big for it to really be portable) with the Quad 2.2GHz processor.  I maxed out the RAM at 8GB and got the best graphics card they make for the MacBook Pro line.  Overall, this machine is about as good as it gets for a portable Mac.

The screen quality is realy amazing, and as much as I thought I'd mind the glossy screen, I don't.  I haven't used it anywhere except inside, so maybe that will change, but for now, it's one of the best displays I've ever seen.

It also came installed with the new OS, Lion, which is really beautiful.  I've been doing so much work lately on my tower system that I didn't want to update the system or change anything, just in case some software decided it didn't like the new OS and I wasn't able to work.  But playing with it now, on the new laptop, I'm psyched for the next lull in work so I can back everything up and install Lion.

Lion is fast and intuitive.  You can see the influence of the iOS in some of the design, but it's still built to be used on a real computer, not a device (though the lines are certainly being blurred with each new release of the iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air).  I like the design of the interfaces, the buttons are smaller, making the overall interfaces smaller.  The attention to screen real estate is one of the main influences from the iOS that I can see.

I just picked it up today from the Apple Store and I'm actually writing this blog post on it now as Final Cut Studio 3 installs in the background.  While we were there, we finally upgraded Julie's iPhone to an iPhone4 (she was hobbling along on a first-gen iPhone and it was on its last legs)...she got it in white and is very, VERY happy.

I'll be testing the new laptop out in the coming weeks and will be using it on-set for the September film.  Not sure when we're shooting yet as my work schedule is still in flux a bit, but I'm sure I'll start putting up posts soon as I'll be auditioning cast and all that in the next week or so.  I'm excited to be getting back to narrative filmmaking and this one's going to be a lot of fun.

GoPro

I posted this up on my personal blog, but I figured since I haven't done a gear post in a while, I'd put it up here as well.

I've been wanting a GoPro for a while and since I've been renting them for a while, I decided to just go ahead and buy one as I'd end up spending the same amount if I rented it a few more times.  I got the new HD Hero camera along with the LCD screen and the car mount.

If you've seen those videos where a camera is mounted to the end of a surfboard or on the wrist of a skydiver, chances are you've seen a GoPro in action.  They're amazingly small cameras with a very wide angle lens on them.  They shoot full 1080p video and do really well in bright light.  Take it into a low-light situation, and they get pretty grainy, but if you're shooting outdoors during the day, or at night with some good lighting, they can be really effective.

I was heading out to get my morning coffee and decided to test out the car mount.  Shot some video and cut it together:

I think you can see where the camera works and where it doesn't.  The shots with me in the car are tough as the camera struggles a bit to find the right exposure, but the shots where the camera is pointing outwards or down at the ground are pretty amazing for such a small camera.  The best thing about the GoPro is that you can buy a lot of different mounting brackets for it and really put it just about anywhere.

For one shoot I directed a couple months ago, we mounted it to a golf club and shot slow motion (the camera will do 60fps at 1280x720) as the golfer hit a ball.  It's a cool POV shot and really couldn't be done with any other camera.

The entire rig including the LCD screen, mounts, etc. was only $450.  The camera can go underwater, withstand shocks and falls, do time lapse, take 5MP stills and is unbelievably versatile.  I'm psyched to see how I can use this new camera and already have some ideas...I'll post stuff up as it comes.

Monitor

Finally got around to ordering a monitor today.  After going back and forth on a few, I settled on a Marshall M-LCD7-HDMI-CE6 monitor.  I ordered a bundle that Amazon had which includes the battery plate that allows you to mount the LP-E6 battery on it.  That's the same battery that the 7D uses, so you can use the same batteries for both pieces of equipment which is nice.  I also ordered a few new batteries and a new charger that does two batteries at once (the Canon charger that comes with the 7D only does one battery at a time).

The bundle also includes a Marshal D-Mount for the 7D so you can attach the monitor to your camera's hot shoe bracket, a table stand, HDMI-mini to HDMI cable for the camera, AC adapter, car adapter, sun hood and some other cables, etc.  For the price ($400), it's a really good deal.  The monitor is 800x480 with a contrast of 500:1, so it'll be perfect for framing up low-angle shots (when you can't see the camera's LCD) and pulling critical focus, especially when I'm shooting in low light and have to keep the aperture open wide.

The monitor gets pretty good reviews on B&H and other websites, with the only negative being that the batter can fall out of the plate if the monitor is upside down.  People using the monitor in conjunction with lens adapters can need to turn the monitor upside down because the 35mm lens adapter can often flip the image.  Since the 7D doesn't do that, I feel like I should be fine.

I get everything tomorrow and will probably run some tests this weekend in preparation for a shoot next week.  I'll post up a quick review of the monitor once I've had some time using it.  I'll also be posting up some info on my June film later this week.