DV Production Techniques ....

[trevlac]

Anyone know a good place to talk about tips and experience of DV production ... home and fun kind. Has a big effect on editing, but I guess the editing forum is not the place ...

Experience of mine:

I put together a kit to go with my cam. Here are some things in it ... (BTW I go cheap unless I know what I'm buying.)

- AUDIO TECHNICA ATR-55 Condenser Shotgun Mic ~ $60 it's mono but comes with a cam mount and a pole mount. Works well for voice. I made a stand from a block of wood. My cam mic is better but ... um ... on the cam. :)

- Kenko KNW-05 Hi 0.5x Wide Angle ~ $50 used. Little vinette and blur but worth the different look. For indoors I almost always use it. 0.5x is a bit much. I'd like to try a .63 to see the distortion

- Olympus WS-200S 128MB Digital Voice Recorder ~ $90 and well worth it. I can record up to 4hrs off the cam. I set it up and let it run. Sometimes those comments come when the cam is off. I can also hook up my mic and record sound seperate from the cam

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Any tips on cheap tripods ... mono pods ... home made dollies ... home made steady cams ?

I'm also interested in quick setups. If I film my kids ... I don't really have too much time for white balance, lenses, filters, exposure, focus, framing, ... how do you do it fast ?

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I'm really lookin for a good place to talk about these types of things ... I'm guessing other people here are on the home/consumer side of things and just trying to make better video like me.

Thanks :D

[mic]

dv.com

[trevlac]

dv.com

Purrrfict! Thanks

[2B]

http://www.dvinfo.net/
has also a forum with verrry interesting content

[theReal]

- AUDIO TECHNICA ATR-55 Condenser Shotgun Mic ~ $60 it's mono but comes with a cam mount and a pole mount. Works well for voice. I made a stand from a block of wood. My cam mic is better but ... um ... on the cam.Usually all pro mics are mono (stereo is only worth the effort when you have a real elaborate stereo setup, the "stereo" mics on camcorders are in that sense not a real stereo setup). But you got a mic for 60$ and the camcorder's mic is still better? Then I guess you paid too much for that audio technica thingy...
I'm not an expert for microphones, but a colleague recently gave me a 60€ electret condenser microphone to test in the field. It had two switchable characteristics (don't know what the characteristics are called in English, one was broad, like a stage mic, the other was "aimed" like a film mic). The mic was pretty good - not as good as a 300€ Sennheiser electret condenser mic, but definitely better than any mic from an amateur camcorder.
60€, that's something like 70$ at most! If you're interested, I'll ask my colleague what brand and type it was.

I'm also interested in quick setups. If I film my kids ... I don't really have too much time for white balance, lenses, filters, exposure, focus, framing, ... how do you do it fast ?
White balance: use presets (indoor/outdoor). Works quite well in almost all situations.

Focus: if your camcorder supports quick switching between auto and manual then zoom in on auto focus until it's focussed, then switch to manual, zoom back and shoot (or leave at auto focus - with consumer camcorders, even with very good ones like Panasonic DVX100 AE or Canon XL1/2, it's very hard to focus manually because they don't have a real mechanical focus wheel. It's almost impossible when you have to be quick). However, as long as you're open (wide angle, not zoomed) you don't need to pull focus anyways (depending on lens, exposure and chip size - but chips are so small on consumer camcorders that usually everything's in focus unless you zoom in on something or unless you come into makro-range)

Exposure: Set to auto and see what you get, then switch to manual and start shooting. If you have a person as a main character in the scene, zoom in on the face and let the auto exposure do its job, then set to manual and zoom back --> the face will now be lit correctly, no matter if there's backlight or anything. This is not 100% fool-proof - you'll have to test your camcorder a little and see how good its auto-exposure works.
Only re-adjust the exposure during a scene when really necessary. One exposure for a scene looks much more professional. If you really need to re-adjust (like when panning from very bright to very dark) then leave the auto exposure on (manual adjustment on consumer camcorders without a real mechanical exposure wheel never looks good...)

Another important point: LIGHTING
Most camcorders are advertised that they can record with only 1 Lux. They can, but they use a lot of digital gain, which looks cheap and grainy. Use additional lights when there's no daylight! A soft (diffused) video light (20-30W or more) very much improves your pictures (it eliminates shadows in people's faces).
Also one or two 800-1000W halogen lamps (cheap ones are ok) pointed to the ceiling will extremely improve your shots inside rooms.

Framing: it's up to you... :) Even with the worst camcorder you can do very good. If you're ambiguous you might be interested in reading "Visualizing from Concept to Screen" by Steven D. Katz

Lenses: you can't change anything quickly here - and quite frankly I'm not a fan of cheap wide-angle adapters. A real wide angle adapter has almost no blur at all - there are some available for the better amateur camcorders which are ok, but definitely not for 50 or 100$ ...
If you don't want to spend much more, better don't use any (just my personal opinion - if you like the blurry look then go ahead :) )

Filters: Outdoors, an UV filter can be helpsome (you'll get better contrast). Also an ND filter would be good. ND means "Neutral Density", it's basically a grey filter that reduces the amount of light which goes through your lens (i.e. with an "1/64 ND" filter only 1/64 of the light will go through). Pro camcorders always have switchable ND filters while amateur camcorders usually just increase their shutter speed when there's too much light. Increased shutter speed makes your pictures look different, very sharp even in fast movement. This might sometimes be wanted, but most of the time it's not and the pictures look much better (and more consistent) when the amount of light is reduced through an ND filter.

Hope this helps a little - there's so much more to tell, I tried to keep to the most important things

- Olympus WS-200S 128MB Digital Voice Recorder ~ $90 and well worth it. I can record up to 4hrs off the cam. I set it up and let it run. Sometimes those comments come when the cam is off. I can also hook up my mic and record sound seperate from the cam
That's a pretty good idea! Could be useful for documentary kind of stuff (however it's only suitable for private use because you trick people into believing that they're not being recorded...)

[trevlac]

@2B,

Thanks. I did a quick look and it looks nice and active.


@theReal,

Thanks for the tips. I have a TRV900 and the mic provides nice quality sound (I'm no expert, just using my ears in my editor w/ headphones). But off cam is just down right required to get it close to someone's face. Please do post the make/model of the $70 mic you mentioned, if you can. I had lunch the other day with a guy who mixes for a bunch of reality shows (trading spaces is one) and I was asking about mics. Well he is not a field guy ... but he urged quality and close.

And thanks for the other tips. I've been using my cam for about 4 years now (itching for a HDV) ... and have found setting white balance and exposure are what works for me. Manual focus is not worth the effort seeing the depth of field is so long ... and messing with the frame rate changes the 'look'.

My cam as a built in ND filter and I ususally use an additional on the lense when outside. This gives me the best range and then I use manual exposure. Good tip on the zoom on face and back out. I'll give it a try. I've also got a graduated ND filter (like a polarizer) that I intended to use to adjust for windows inside, and sky out. But i've not found it practical. Because it's completely graduated, and light sources are more abrupt, i still have a problem if I want say sky and a reasonable forground. It would work better if it was 1/2 ND and 1/2 clear with a slight ramp in the middle.


Thanks again for the comments ... and I will certainly check out the book ... and since you have lots of this info and are happy to share ... I'll start another thread on a specific topic. :D :D

[theReal]

I have a TRV900 and the mic provides nice quality sound (I'm no expert, just using my ears in my editor w/ headphones) Seems like your camera is pretty good (built-in nd filter sounds like it is a pro-sumer model) - then maybe the mic I mentioned isn't that much better?
It was actually a t.bone EM9600 (http://www.thomann.de/thoiw2_the_tbone_em_9600_prodinfo.html). We are normally using Sennheiser MKE (the cheaper electret series for around 200-300 Euro) for interviews and my colleague and I agreed that the t.bone wasn't quite as good, but good enough for video reporter purposes. The difference I heard first was that it didn't sound as "full" as the Sennheiser MKE, a little thinner (I didn't listen to it with headphones or a real good equipment neither, just some medium grade monitor speakers in a non-optimized room).
I guess to be sure you'd have to go somewhere and test-listen to different models (there's also much personal preference involved in the sound of a micophone). You also have to consider if you need a shotgun characteristic or if you can live with a good dynamic cardioid mic which is much cheaper at comparable quality, but needs to be much closer to the people speaking (but then also suppresses unwanted noise very well)

The best shotgun microphone I ever held in my hands was a Sennheiser MKH 416 (http://www.thomann.de/thoiw2_sennheiser_mkh416p48u3_prodinfo.html) (fully equipped with windprotection on a boom, connected to an SQN3 and with AKG 270 headphones). Believe me there's worlds between this mic and the Sennheiser MKE series... there's people standing over 5 meters away from you and you can hear them talk clearly without too much background noise - with the MKE electret models you'd have to come seriously closer for the same level of speech clarity.
The price, however, totally disqualifies it (even for small tv stations) :eek:


Manual focus is not worth the effort seeing the depth of field is so long ... We have a Panasonic DVX 100AE at work that we sometimes use (or have to use, because one of our DVCAM shoulder mount camcorders is broken again...) and even it has a rather good manual focus control and 1/3" chips, I mostly use the auto focus because I don't trust the display too much plus there's still no reference to where the focus is at (the wheel just turns round endlessly)
With our big DVCAM camcorders (2/3" chips and 16x zoom lens) the focus has fixed values with a start and end point where I know that hard left is 0.9 meters and hard right is infinite. Also the display is a b/w crt monitor with adjustable peaking where you can easily see when you're in or out of focus (but even with the 2/3" chips you don't need to pull focus when you're not zoomed and the exposure is above 4.

btw. I've also shot a few pictures with the by independant filmmakers oh-so-beloved Canon XL1S. Picture quality is a tad better than with the DVX 100AE, but the handling is horrible. Pulling focus manually? Totally forget it! Manual exposure? Same as with all other consumer camcorders. What works is fixed values (first set the focus and exposure, then start shooting) but that is true for all camcorders

btw. the focus wheel on the Sony HDV FX cam seems to be quite promising for manual exposure control (plus Sony copied a lot from the Panasonic DVX 100AE in regards to manual controls, which is nice)