Cinematography thread: No film vs. video talk, dammit

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Cinematography thread: No film vs. video talk, dammit

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VoodooXT: Feb 24, 2006; I want Tong Po! Give me Tong Po!

Yeah, it's hard to recommend cameras without knowing what this videographer is going to be shooting. If you're just shooting stuff on a prelit stage, I could easily see Canon, Sony, or Blackmagic doing well, but if you're doing something in addition like outdoors lowlight material, then Canon or Sony would be better at that.

# ? Apr 25, 2024 18:04

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# ? May 15, 2024 08:56

Olympic Mathlete: Feb 25, 2011

powderific posted:

What kind of budget are we talking here? What will the video person's main duties be / what are they gonna be filming?

Budget is an unknown, I've been told to spend some money otherwise lose it, it's the same dumb poo poo that happens every year but say a solid £30k (I'm in the UK). I know our HR team are crazy slow so the job will go out after the deadline I need to have spent and have the kit here, so I'm attempting to put something together that isn't going to suck despite people obviously having kit preferences (like myself, a Canon guy).

As far as content goes the things we've done before and will be getting more of will be stuff like interviews with researchers, footage of various manufacturing processes and machinery we have, some occasional green screen stuff. I imagine most will be indoors, we have a small studio space but we'll be getting a lot more footage out 'in the field' in labs/research areas for digital signage content, YouTube and our own website. We produce a reasonable amount of extra teaching content and this is the stuff done in the studio which is another thing I'd like to improve by acquiring a larger space for it. But that's another argument/project.

I apologise if that's fairly vague but I appreciate the help so far and the various comments. It gives me a starting point to go do some reading.

*edit number 8 or something: Having a chat with the boss I'm going to try put together a few quotes, one base level but which would be an improvement over what we have, one 'would be nice to have these' and a stupid shoot for the moon one. :v:

Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Apr 26, 2024

# ? Apr 26, 2024 07:18

frytechnician: Jan 8, 2004; Happy to see me?

Olympic Mathlete posted:

Budget is an unknown, I've been told to spend some money otherwise lose it, it's the same dumb poo poo that happens every year but say a solid £30k (I'm in the UK). I know our HR team are crazy slow so the job will go out after the deadline I need to have spent and have the kit here, so I'm attempting to put something together that isn't going to suck despite people obviously having kit preferences (like myself, a Canon guy).

As far as content goes the things we've done before and will be getting more of will be stuff like interviews with researchers, footage of various manufacturing processes and machinery we have, some occasional green screen stuff. I imagine most will be indoors, we have a small studio space but we'll be getting a lot more footage out 'in the field' in labs/research areas for digital signage content, YouTube and our own website. We produce a reasonable amount of extra teaching content and this is the stuff done in the studio which is another thing I'd like to improve by acquiring a larger space for it. But that's another argument/project.

I apologise if that's fairly vague but I appreciate the help so far and the various comments. It gives me a starting point to go do some reading.

*edit number 8 or something: Having a chat with the boss I'm going to try put together a few quotes, one base level but which would be an improvement over what we have, one 'would be nice to have these' and a stupid shoot for the moon one.

�30K is a lot of money. 2x or 3x C70's then + lights + lenses + audio gear + tripods will do you well imo. C300 MkIII or FX6 if you want to go a bit above.

# ? Apr 26, 2024 11:18

powderific: May 13, 2004; Grimey Drawer

Yeah I think for that budget/use case something in the realm of a C70 or a C300 MkIII would be a safe bet. Whatever you do, you may want to work through someone like CVP who will have sales people who can help build out the quotes and make sure you aren't missing anything. You can run it by us here if you're worried about being oversold or whatever but even as someone who knows what they're doing I've found having sales people at Abelcine etc. helpful.

# ? Apr 26, 2024 17:37

Olympic Mathlete: Feb 25, 2011

powderific posted:

Yeah I think for that budget/use case something in the realm of a C70 or a C300 MkIII would be a safe bet. Whatever you do, you may want to work through someone like CVP who will have sales people who can help build out the quotes and make sure you aren't missing anything. You can run it by us here if you're worried about being oversold or whatever but even as someone who knows what they're doing I've found having sales people at Abelcine etc. helpful.

That's actually a great point, I'll fire off an email on Monday, see what they can put together for me.

Thanks again.

# ? Apr 27, 2024 06:55

tanglewood1420: Oct 28, 2010; The importance of this mission cannot be overemphasized

CVP will be helpful and should give you a decent package discount if you are ordering 30k worth of gear.

A simple videography set up to that budget would be something like:

Sony FX6
Set of G Master zooms (16-35, 24-70, 70-200)
Sachtler/Miller 100mm bowl tripod (do not cheap out on a 75mm bowl)
2 x Sennheiser radio mic kits
1 X boom mic and stand with XLR cables
13" Director monitor with BNC cables
2 x cheap panel lights (Felloni or whatever the new Chinese hotness is)
1 x more directional light (Apeture 600D or something) with a soft box (soft box essential)
A set of Dedos or similar smaller output directional lights
Stands and batteries for lighting and monitor

Nice to haves if you can make the budget stretch would be (in order of priority)

Some polyboard, reflectors, scrims, flags etc. for light control
A Zoom sound recorder for easier monitoring of audio
Wireless video transmission system (ideally Teradek, maybe Vaxis for budget)
EasyRig (if you're going to be doing handheld a lot)
An onboard monitor 5" or 7" (the camera LCD screens at this budget level are not that great)

And if you still have money left over, you can never have too much lighting!

tanglewood1420 fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Apr 27, 2024

# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:18

powderific: May 13, 2004; Grimey Drawer

Good list! I have a couple thoughts too, though obviously this is all just my opinion:

Sounds like they already have a Sony wireless set � I'd maybe get nicer mics for it, COS-11s perhaps, just make sure they're wired Sony.
Jumping up to a 100mm half ball for a kit that small seems like overkill � I'm running a flowtech 75 / aktiv8 combo with my ~18lb ursa mini pro rig and it's great. Even handles a 24" slider. I wouldn't mind having a bit of extra stability at times, but for me at least that's a big chunk of change for mostly diminishing returns and I suspect for the internal video person too.
Depending on the balance of studio to field and supervised to solo, I'd think about moving the 13" monitor down to the nice to have and the on-camera monitor up to must have. And, again depending on use, I'd think about a smaller wireless directors monitor that can be carried around with a battery vs. a 13".
Battery powered lights / batteries for the lights you get. A lot of panels, and the 600d, will take v-mount or gold mount batteries, or there are options that are more self contained.
I'd get bicolor or RGB lights if you can as they'll probably be in goofy mixed lighting situations where it'll be handy
This may be obvious, but good bags to carry the gear in. I like Think Tank and Portabrace.
For a university I imagine they have carts kicking around anyway, but a dedicated junior cart (or even just a folding mac wagon) would be good.
Get some shot bags for your stands

# ? Apr 27, 2024 14:52

Organic Lube User: Apr 15, 2005

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but I'll bet a lot of the folks here would have an expert opinion on this so here goes:

My six year old seems interested in making and editing videos. I'm happy to support her (as long as she doesn't get sucked into any exploitative poo poo - I probably won't let her post anything online for a few years just to be cautious), but I'm not sure where to start. I'd like something that's easy enough for her to sink her teeth into the basics intuitively, and that makes it easy to explore more advanced concepts when she feels ready. I know very little about the subject personally, I'm just an IT guy. Just toss a copy of Premiere at her? I'm sure there are better tools than that out there now, and possibly specifically for this, but you never know. She prefers a tablet (she has an iPad and a Fire tablet), but I have a weakass laptop I could let her use as well until we could get a better one.

Any advice on where to get her started?

# ? May 13, 2024 23:49

frytechnician: Jan 8, 2004; Happy to see me?

Organic Lube User posted:

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but I'll bet a lot of the folks here would have an expert opinion on this so here goes:

My six year old seems interested in making and editing videos. I'm happy to support her (as long as she doesn't get sucked into any exploitative poo poo - I probably won't let her post anything online for a few years just to be cautious), but I'm not sure where to start. I'd like something that's easy enough for her to sink her teeth into the basics intuitively, and that makes it easy to explore more advanced concepts when she feels ready. I know very little about the subject personally, I'm just an IT guy. Just toss a copy of Premiere at her? I'm sure there are better tools than that out there now, and possibly specifically for this, but you never know. She prefers a tablet (she has an iPad and a Fire tablet), but I have a weakass laptop I could let her use as well until we could get a better one.

Any advice on where to get her started?

Premiere or Resolve. Resolve free is basically 85% of the studio version but is a bit irritating to use as an NLE over Premiere. It's grading features and sound mixing capabilities are second to none though.

# ? May 14, 2024 07:58

Sagacity: May 2, 2003; Hopefully my epitaph will be funnier than my custom title.

frytechnician posted:

Premiere or Resolve. Resolve free is basically 85% of the studio version but is a bit irritating to use as an NLE over Premiere. It's grading features and sound mixing capabilities are second to none though.

For a six year old? Why not just let her mess around with iMovie on the tablet?

# ? May 14, 2024 08:37

frytechnician: Jan 8, 2004; Happy to see me?

Sagacity posted:

For a six year old? Why not just let her mess around with iMovie on the tablet?

No! iMovie is for 4 and under! Welcome to the real world, kid - get cracking on your bin structures and colour space export settings now!

# ? May 14, 2024 12:31

Sagacity: May 2, 2003; Hopefully my epitaph will be funnier than my custom title.

frytechnician posted:

No! iMovie is for 4 and under! Welcome to the real world, kid - get cracking on your bin structures and colour space export settings now!

Fair enough, I never understood why they're teaching h.265 at my kid's school but it's all falling into place.

# ? May 14, 2024 14:01

ynohtna: Feb 16, 2007; backwoods compatible; Illegal Hen

"The best place to start is with ffmpeg -hide_banner -h, kiddo. Have fun!"

# ? May 14, 2024 16:11

Mordiceius: Nov 10, 2007; If you think calling me names is gonna get a rise out me, think again. I like my life as an idiot!

Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around converting video footage between 24fps and 23.98fps. Why does the actual duration of the film change? What happens to the .02 frame difference?

If you're going from 24fps to 23.98, will the film be longer or shorter? Is it just speeding up and slowing down the footage to match the framerate? Like, essentially, is the film going 0.08% faster/slower?

Let's say I take a handful of timecodes:

code:

Base Timecode   Converting from    Converting from
                24 to 23.98        23.98 to 24

00:02:56:13     00:02:56:09        00:02:56:17
00:04:50:21     00:04:50:14        00:04:51:04
00:07:58:15     00:07:58:04        00:07:59:02
00:09:13:06     00:09:12:17        00:09:13:19
00:10:57:05     00:10:56:13        00:10:57:21

It feels like that is opposite of how it should be. I would think taking 24 frames and converting it to 23.98 would make the film longer, not shorter, because you're taking 24 per second and only getting to show 23.98 per second, thus making that .02 overflow to the next second? But it doesn't seem to work that way?

This makes my brain hurt. Can anyone help me understand this?

# ? May 14, 2024 23:24

1st AD: Dec 3, 2004; Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: sometimes passing just isn't an option.

There�s a difference between time code and frame rate. Drop frame timecodes are a legacy of working in NTSC, and it just literally means frames numbers are dropped (no alteration of the broadcast length or speed of playback actually happens, just the frame numbers themselves)

# ? May 14, 2024 23:55

Mordiceius: Nov 10, 2007; If you think calling me names is gonna get a rise out me, think again. I like my life as an idiot!

1st AD posted:

There�s a difference between time code and frame rate. Drop frame timecodes are a legacy of working in NTSC, and it just literally means frames numbers are dropped (no alteration of the broadcast length or speed of playback actually happens, just the frame numbers themselves)

I don't think I understand. I'm a complete idiot when it comes to this kind of stuff.

My idiot brain is just confused why did number get bigger/smaller.

# ? May 14, 2024 23:57

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# ? May 15, 2024 08:56

tanglewood1420: Oct 28, 2010; The importance of this mission cannot be overemphasized

Organic Lube User posted:

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but I'll bet a lot of the folks here would have an expert opinion on this so here goes:

My six year old seems interested in making and editing videos. I'm happy to support her (as long as she doesn't get sucked into any exploitative poo poo - I probably won't let her post anything online for a few years just to be cautious), but I'm not sure where to start. I'd like something that's easy enough for her to sink her teeth into the basics intuitively, and that makes it easy to explore more advanced concepts when she feels ready. I know very little about the subject personally, I'm just an IT guy. Just toss a copy of Premiere at her? I'm sure there are better tools than that out there now, and possibly specifically for this, but you never know. She prefers a tablet (she has an iPad and a Fire tablet), but I have a weakass laptop I could let her use as well until we could get a better one.

Any advice on where to get her started?

Don't give a six year old Resolve lmao

iMovie or whatever free app that comes with iPad will be fine. Anyone, including kids, will progress much much faster by learning first principles and universal techniques of filming and editing first, rather than obsessing about the ins and outs of any particular software package.

Editing on the iPad is fine. She can shoot using the iPad too, keeps it all on one device which makes everything easier.

One great exercise for any beginner is to film something (a short two minute sequence of dad making toast or getting dressed in the morning or something really simple is great) where you 'edit in camera'. I.e. you shoot everything in the exact order of the finished edit. This is a wonderful way of making a beginner really think about editing and shot composition, rather than just shooting a bunch of poo poo and spending way too long 'finding it in the edit'. Paradoxically, not doing any editing at all is a great way to learn the power of editing.

Do not be tempted to cheat either when you see what you've shot this way! The point is it will suck, you will see why pretty straight away, you do the exercise again and it is better. After doing this three or four times you will get the general idea, but it will inform your approach when you allow yourself to shoot traditionally going forward.

# ? May 15, 2024 06:58

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Cinematography thread: No film vs. video talk, dammit

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