Philm Takes

I’ve recently spent a good few hours testing a Canon 7D and workflows into Final Cut Pro 7. Our first production was a real test for the system, an observational documentary.
We were commissioned to shoot a short doco for Sydney dancer Louie George rehearsing his new show. The shoot was done at three separate rehearsal sessions. We shot rehearsals as they happened only once having to ask for second take of a dance we only had one angle.
The equipment we used comprised of four lenses, a Sigma 10-20mm, a Canon 17-85mm, a Sigma 70-200mm and for the interviews a Mamiya 645 55mm with Fotodiox adaptor. We a used a Steadicam Flyer for some shots, a perfect rig for the Canon 7D, as well as lots of handheld and a Manfrotto 504HD tripod that I’ve been asked to evaluate.
Audio was recorded on a Zoom H4, with Rode NTG 1 shotgun mike on one channel and Sony radio mike from Louie feeding the second channel. An output split from the monitor output of the radio mike was in turn sent to the Canon 7D via another radio mike for a guide track when post syncing with PluralEyes in post.
The Zoom H4 batteries drained very quickly when supplying phantom power for NTG 1. In future we’ll supply sound to the H4 with a mixer.
The only lighting used was for Louie’s interview. All the dance footage and Elizabeth’s interview were shot under available light. The Mamiya 55mm lens was used for both interviews at f2.8.
I made the decision to shoot all the footage at 720 50p as I was sure we’d use some slo mo. The slow motion shots were created by duplicating the original files of the shots required and conforming them to 25p in Cinema Tools. These shots were then slowed a further 50% in Final Cut with frame bending off.

Producer and sound recordist was my partner Alison Ray.

I use a JVC HD111E camera for a lot of my everyday work. Normally I use the Quicktime files recorded to the onboard Firestore DR-HD100, every now again however I need to import from the videotape into Final Cut Pro 6.

Bringing the files in as Apple ProRes via firewire works very smoothly, retaining the original camera timecode and the loss of only 6 frames of video between each camera start stop.

Here’s a video of the workflow I use.

JVC HDV video into Final Cut Pro from Phil Balsdon on Vimeo.

I’ve just returned from Hobart where late in January I conducted a Steadicam Workshop for the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Cinematographers Society. The workshop was organised by ACS Tasmania President Paul Di Benedetto and other participants were Joe Shemesh of Red Film Australia, Richard Williams of CineStill and Adrian Barrett.

Renowned director and cinematographer Dick Marks, OAM, (The Australian Film Company) generously offered his elegant historic home in Hobart as the location for the workshop. The fine weather allowed us to make excellent use of the verandahs and narrow paths that meander through the luxuriant gardens.

Three Steadicam Flyers between the four students made for a lot of hands on operating time for each of them.

As always, before getting into the rigs, setting up, balancing and trimming the Steadicams was thoroughly covered;

I always like to make sure everyone has a thorough understanding of the set up process because if it’s not done correctly flying the rig will be a struggle and once learnt on the lightweight Steadicam Flyer the process is identical for all Steadicams, larger or smaller.

Each rig had a different weight camera, Paul’s Flyer LE carried his Panasonic HVX 502 – the heaviest camera, on my Flyer we put my JVC HD111E and the lightest camera a Sony Z1P was mounted on the Steadicam Flyer loaned from Lemac, who have always been very supportive of the workshops. This variation in set ups gave a variation in the set up and balance and a feel for how different weight cameras effect the inertia of a rig when operating.

Yes generally a heavier rig is easier to control – but more of a physical strain on the body.

Paul Di Benedetto with Steadicam Flyer and Panasonic HVX 502 Photo Dick Marks OAM

By lunch time everyone was suited up and flying the rigs, practicing the “missionary” and “Don Juan” positions. Through the afternoon exercises expanded and varied working on “soft hands”, relaxed shoulders and arms, foot work and techniques for tight locations. These guys picked it all up very quickly and fast progress was made.

We spent the evening in the home theatre at Paul’s house looking at and discussing some examples of steadicam shots. I love the Dunkirk evacuation sequence in “Atonement”; so well choreographed and carried out.

Day 2 we reassembled the rigs, just to make sure I’d got across the procedure and it’s importance thoroughly enough. Next we progressed to low mode and operating the rig on the other side of the body. Paul never changed his set up back, finding operating with sled flying on the right side of his body far more natural.

Joe brought his RED camera in and we fitted it to a Flyer. Because we didn’t have custom made power or monitor cables / convertors we had to retain the RED’s brick battery, heavy stainless steel rods, battery cradle and use the RED LCD as a monitor, not an ideal set up but it did work and the Flyer arm was still able to handle the extra weight.

Finally the afternoon was dedicated to performing a challenging 3 minute long Grand Prix shot. The shot included some faster movement in “Don Juan” stance as well as slower “missionary” operating, a couple of sets of steps, some lock offs and framing techniques. Once everyone had a good look at the shot and was happy with their rehearsals I pushed things along a bit for the actual takes, just so they could get a feel for the pressure to get things done on a set. Each operator got two takes before we reviewed them together.

This enthusiastic group were really good, quick to pick up the techniques and put them into practice.

After the workshop I had a few days driving around this beautiful tranquil island with my partner, Alison. We stayed in some of the best self contained cottage and bed and breakfast accommodation I’ve experienced anywhere in the world. The pub food was well above average and cuisine at The Banc restaurant in Swansea was exquisite, but that was where we got a taste of the Freycinet chardonnay and that meant a visit to the nearby Freycinet Vineyard.

Now we’re back in the hustle and bustle of the mainland.

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Well my first blog, and you’ve probably found it through my redesigned and upgraded web site, so for my first blog I thought I’d talk about the experience of the upgrading and redesigning the site.

The former design had been around for about 5 years and whilst much of the information about steadicams was still relevant the technology for video delivery over the internet has improved enormously during this time. This area was where I could see the most need to upgrade the design. I used CSS for the layout this time, which went well with standards compliant browsers but not being a web developer I struggled with the necessary patches for correct layout in Internet Explorer, its still not quite right but it’s almost there.

The old site used small Quicktime files only 240px by 180px, as a cinematographer showing his work this was not ideal. Also Flash is a delivery format more widely accessible across browsers and computer operating systems than Quicktime. I had tried using Flash for the video elements 5 years ago but back then the quality of flash video just wasn’t there, the file sizes were bigger than Quicktime and faster internet systems were less common. Flash however has come a way long since then.

The redesign took about six months, busy periods of video production were the main cause of delay and I spent many hours spent experimenting with video compression and Flash to find the best optimal quality video for file size. Looking at the Google Analytics tracker than I run on my website I was able to deduce that most visitors are using Flash 9 or 10, in fact 98.8% of them. This meant I was able to do some comparisons between the flv and H264 Quicktime codecs for the video compression, these are both compatible with Flash 9 and higher. What I found was that, generally, the quality when using H264 was slightly better (and the file size slightly smaller) than flv. For my purposes the quality of the video is a very high priority. Also more and more of my video work these days is for internet delivery so I need clients to be able to see how good the final results can be. Compressing to the flv format I found areas of intense detail in a moving image were more prone to a “fuzziness” or “blockiness”, such as on the road surface at the beginning of the Ben Lee, Something Borrowed, Something Blue clip on my steadicam reel page (last clip on gallery). This is one of only two videos compressed to flv on the site, the other is the ”Wines of Italy” on the cinematography reel page. I’m unsure why, but both these videos displayed glitches when loaded into Flash as H264. It’s interesting that they are the two longest clips on the site and both had to be cropped on left and right sides to remove black edges. The images are now 600 pixels wide, almost five times the screen size of the former Quicktimes, but less than twice the file size.

For creating the H264 files I used Compressor, part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2 suite and I used Adobe’s Flash CS3 Video Encoder to create Flash Video. Of the two systems I found Flash Video Encoder a more user friendly system, perhaps because it’s designed to only create a single format, where as Compressor is designed for many forms of video output. Both systems though gave me the ability to crop to the edge of images that were originally letterboxed in a 4:3 frame.

I’m no expert with Flash and being visual creative with so much Action Script coding isn’t my thing. The site went through a couple of layouts that I wasn’t happy with before I found SlideShowPro. This Flash based application made it easy for me to create the video and still image slide shows you see on my site. Online information is very good and I was able create customized slide and video galleries easily. Considering the hours it saved me and the formatting options the price of SlideShowPro was extremely good value.

Now I just need to work on the blog design.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank my partner Alison Ray for her encouragement, her expert knowledge of all things on the internet and her writing and creative contributions to the design of the site.