A Video I Took 2015

[jamsomito]

Ok guys I finally have a video to start this thread. It's not great, just something I threw together, but I'm hoping this can be a place for those of us who are into videography to post what we've got and get feedback so we can keep improving.

I took this video over memorial day weekend, just playing around with a Canon 800mm f/5.6 lens I got to borrow for the day. Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated. This took me about 3.5 hours of editing.

Spring


^click the picture for the youtube link

EDIT: link here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jGlAqcJJwA&feature=youtu.be

 

[stinger608]

I don't know if its a Chrome issue or not, but I don't get anything when clicking on the picture.

Maybe just put the YouTube link in the post?

 

[jamsomito]

I don't know if its a Chrome issue or not, but I don't get anything when clicking on the picture.

Maybe just put the YouTube link in the post?

I'm in Chrome and it works for me. I put the standalone link in my post anyway though. Hope that helps.

 

[erek]

Memorial Day Weekend :


https://vimeo.com/128721841

 

[jamsomito]

Cool event, reminds me of my childhood area, very rural and lots of tractors. Are you looking for critiques on your video?

 

[erek]

Cool event, reminds me of my childhood area, very rural and lots of tractors. Are you looking for critiques on your video?

Yes, I have a lot to learn and have been a hobbyist ... eventually going to be getting a half decent color grading monitor setup because I'm currently on a very cheap 6-bit TN panel (not calibrated). I'm familiar with around two basic rules from photography involving composition ...


Rule of Thirds (haven't figured out how this applies to video)... and Golden Hours (1 hour after sunrise, and 1 hour before sunset)




Been attempting to focus on lighting in terms of the position of the light source (say the Sun) and making sure I'm not shooting into / against the light source.


I have been attempting to keep my pans and tilts isolated instead of doing a pan and tilt at the same time, but this is sort of contradicting something else I've heard ...


With the camera you're attempting to make it so the audience isn't aware that it's a camera, but consider it as just another person in the scenario .... audience is to forget it's a camera

 

[jamsomito]

I have a few comments about things that stuck out to me, but please take this with a grain of salt as im just a hobbyist as well.

I recently bought a couple ASUS PB278Q monitors. I do everything you can do on a computer so I needed something good all-around. There are some with better color accuracy, but this one is still pretty good, and it makes a subtly big difference, if that makes sense. I really like having the better color accuracy myself. Check out NCX and =DEAD=, they do fantastic monitor reviews.

As far as I know the rule of thirds still applies to video, and the golden hours still give the best lighting. Lighting is a bigger challenge with video than still photography though, because in order to get natural looking motion, you need to use the 180 rule. Meaning if you're shooting at 30 fps you need to use a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, and with 60fps you need 1/120th of a second (or as close to those as you can get). It just so happens that in the middle of the day, its way too bright at those shutter speeds to use anything but your smallest aperture, and you can't get a very narrow depth of field for a more artistic effect. So, the golden hour (and even the blue hour) provides the additional benefit of shallower depth of field for a more artistic effect for videographers, unless you spend a lot on neutral density filters to dim the light entering the camera. But the light quality is still softer dueing these times and better for videos the same as photos as well.

As for pans and tilts, I say its fine to do them both at once (bear in mind I'm an amateur, his could be a big no-no *shrugs*); however, the difficulty may be getting them to be smooth. Yours were very smooth though, so I dont think you have to worry about that. But, one of your pans ended up not being level to the ground so by the time it was done panning, the camera was tilted. It might make sense to get a cheap level for your tripod if you plan to do big wide pans a lot.

I agree about the crowd thing... People always stop in their tracks when they see it and ruin my shots. Maybe pretend its not on? I find wide angle lenses work well for this because its not always pointing right at people and the don't think they're in the shot. They also tend to be smaller. I think this effect is worse with bigger lenses. If you ever read the B&H review of the Canon 1200mm lens, they hit the nail on the head there (though that lens is comically large).

As far as my comments, I would say try to keep each of your clips a bit shorter. I shamefully admit that I skipped ahead a couple times because I was losing interest. Make your pans faster (but watch out for rolling shutter distortions!), and keep the film moving to get viewer retention up.

Also, audio. This is tough, I know. I usually just can the audio from my footage altogether because its just bad. Bad quality, bad levels, wind noise, background noise. I think what would have made your video better is to get rid of the audio, maybe find some clean engine sounds from your footage to loop (nobody will know if its relocated, its background noise) and add your comments as a voice over when you're back home in a quiet environment. If you dont have a microphone, just record more footage from your camera, at least it will have consistent levels and no background noise. Oh, and best comment was "that's a nice camera!". Haha.

I dont mean to insult your intelligence with any of this (or insult you either for that matter). This was my hope for this thread, to share our work, and get feedback on it if its wanted. Cudos to you for putting this together, looks like a fun event, and you've got some good shots in there. Take this for what it's worth!

Edit: sorry for the wall of text. And sorry for the typos, this was written on my phone.

 

[erek]

I have a few comments about things that stuck out to me, but please take this with a grain of salt as im just a hobbyist as well.

I recently bought a couple ASUS PB278Q monitors. I do everything you can do on a computer so I needed something good all-around. There are some with better color accuracy, but this one is still pretty good, and it makes a subtly big difference, if that makes sense. I really like having the better color accuracy myself. Check out NCX and :EAD::, they do fantastic monitor reviews.

As far as I know the rule of thirds still applies to video, and the golden hours still give the best lighting. Lighting is a bigger challenge with video than still photography though, because in order to get natural looking motion, you need to use the 180 rule. Meaning if you're shooting at 30 fps you need to use a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, and with 60fps you need 1/120th of a second (or as close to those as you can get). It just so happens that in the middle of the day, its way too bright at those shutter speeds to use anything but your smallest aperture, and you can't get a very narrow depth of field for a more artistic effect. So, the golden hour (and even the blue hour) provides the additional benefit of shallower depth of field for a more artistic effect for videographers, unless you spend a lot on neutral density filters to dim the light entering the camera. But the light quality is still softer dueing these times and better for videos the same as photos as well.

As for pans and tilts, I say its fine to do them both at once (bear in mind I'm an amateur, his could be a big no-no *shrugs*); however, the difficulty may be getting them to be smooth. Yours were very smooth though, so I dont think you have to worry about that. But, one of your pans ended up not being level to the ground so by the time it was done panning, the camera was tilted. It might make sense to get a cheap level for your tripod if you plan to do big wide pans a lot.

I agree about the crowd thing... People always stop in their tracks when they see it and ruin my shots. Maybe pretend its not on? I find wide angle lenses work well for this because its not always pointing right at people and the don't think they're in the shot. They also tend to be smaller. I think this effect is worse with bigger lenses. If you ever read the B&H review of the Canon 1200mm lens, they hit the nail on the head there (though that lens is comically large).

As far as my comments, I would say try to keep each of your clips a bit shorter. I shamefully admit that I skipped ahead a couple times because I was losing interest. Make your pans faster (but watch out for rolling shutter distortions!), and keep the film moving to get viewer retention up.

Also, audio. This is tough, I know. I usually just can the audio from my footage altogether because its just bad. Bad quality, bad levels, wind noise, background noise. I think what would have made your video better is to get rid of the audio, maybe find some clean engine sounds from your footage to loop (nobody will know if its relocated, its background noise) and add your comments as a voice over when you're back home in a quiet environment. If you dont have a microphone, just record more footage from your camera, at least it will have consistent levels and no background noise. Oh, and best comment was "that's a nice camera!". Haha.

I dont mean to insult your intelligence with any of this (or insult you either for that matter). This was my hope for this thread, to share our work, and get feedback on it if its wanted. Cudos to you for putting this together, looks like a fun event, and you've got some good shots in there. Take this for what it's worth!

Edit: sorry for the wall of text. And sorry for the typos, this was written on my phone.

Thank you. I just have had a tough time syncing audio outside of the camera source... with an external audio recorder with a wind muff on... always noticably out of sync.


I need to consider more about forcing the ~1/48 shutter speed during the broad day because i shoot at 24.00 fps ... i hesitate to move my pans too quickly due to rolling shutter artifacts


do you have a canon body? i've been using ETTR (Expose To The Right) with my canon :

https://luminous-landscape.com/expose-right/


I do have a bubble level on the tripod, but was fiddling around a lot while being pressed for time and didn't get it leveled properly a few times :-\

 

[madFive]

^^Good info.
I really like that video, Erek. Something about that scene, I can just smell the grass and the country air. Love that smell.

Biggest critique I can give is definitely keep each shot shorter and more to the point. I would try to keep each shot to around 3-4 seconds, seems like several of them dragged on for 8+ seconds, and I too felt a need to skip ahead. Same for your opening & closing titles, keep 'em to around 3-4 seconds, unless there's a ton of text to read.

I'm not a video guy, but you guys are definitely making me want to get into it more! I just recently learned the rule of shutter-speed = 2x frame-rate. Good to know.

I don't know how difficult this is in most video-processing software, but your video could really use some tweaking to the exposure, contrast, & saturation to make it pop more. If your software has a histogram for the light/dark curves, try to balance it so the main curve is weighted in the middle, and it just barely hits the ends on the white/black ends. And turning up the saturation would be a good idea too.

As far as learning composition, all the rules of 2D stationary composition still apply in video, they're just harder to achieve and keep in place throughout the motion in a video shot. If you're really interested in learning that stuff, picking up a book on 2D design & composition would be a very good idea. Learn all the rules, then learn how to use them, then learn when you can break them and what that will do for your composition when you do. After a while you just learn to feel when it's right.

Happy shooting! You guys are definitely making me want to do more video stuff...

 

[madFive]

Oh! I didn't have the audio on the first couple times I watched the tractor video. Those long slow pans make a little more sense with the audio in there, but still seems a little too slow and drawn-out to me.

(oops, [H] is acting up here, sorry for double-post)

 

[jamsomito]

Thank you. I just have had a tough time syncing audio outside of the camera source... with an external audio recorder with a wind muff on... always noticably out of sync.

What software are you using to edit your videos? I struggle with this too. I've found two ways to do it in my software though (Cyberlink PowerDirector 12). I can either join them as a multi-angle scene and it will match up the audio track to the video, or I can put it in manually and line them up manually on the timeline. I've actually opted for the latter recently because the former requires me to watch the entire clip while it records over the top of itself with the new audio (it's actually wanting me to click the different camera angles to make one scene, but since I only have one and audio, I just click the one video I have and let it run). And lining them up manually isn't too bad, you just have to be able to view your waveforms, and zoom in as far as the program will go and match them up.

I need to consider more about forcing the ~1/48 shutter speed during the broad day because i shoot at 24.00 fps ... i hesitate to move my pans too quickly due to rolling shutter artifacts

I think this is something you'll just have to experiment with. I think you'll find that you can move decently quick before the effect is noticeable.

do you have a canon body? i've been using ETTR (Expose To The Right) with my canon :

https://luminous-landscape.com/expose-right/

I do, I use a Canon 70D. I have heard that over exposing is better for post production than underexposing, but this is a fantastic article to lay out all the details. Thanks!

Are you trying to do this with your videos though? Keep in mind it only works with RAW. If you're shooting raw video, you've got to have some huge memory cards and hard drives . If you're not shooting RAW, then you're actually losing detail by overexposing and bringing it back in post.

I'm not a video guy, but you guys are definitely making me want to get into it more!
*snip*
Happy shooting! You guys are definitely making me want to do more video stuff...

You should .

 

[erek]

What software are you using to edit your videos?

Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Lite

I think this is something you'll just have to experiment with. I think you'll find that you can move decently quick before the effect is noticeable.

I will test movements at a faster pace and also while using a rubber band on the handle and around my finger to reduce unwanted vibrations, etc (rubber band trick)

Are you trying to do this with your videos though? Keep in mind it only works with RAW. If you're shooting raw video, you've got to have some huge memory cards and hard drives

I currently employ Magic Lantern for 14-bit RAW Uncompressed 1080p 24.00 fps Video with 3x Lexar 64GB 1066x Compact Flash cards. Magic Lantern has an ETTR module you may be interested that with the push of a button will Automatically Expose To The Right for you


http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5693.0