I returned from a shoot in Juarez, Mexico, using only the GH3. Bottom line – it’s an amazing DSLR. I also rented some of the new Panasonic lenses. Everything in the video above was shot with the GH3.
You can read my full review at Filmmaker Magazine.
A MacGyver 3-D rig? No.
I adapted this hack from a post on the NY Times Lens blog from photographer Doug Mills. It lets me get a wide and close-up shot simultaneously while doing one man band interviews.
I simply mount my GH2/GH3 directly on top of my Sony EX1. I keep the EX1 wide and put a 50mm on the GH for a tight shot with soft focus. The EX1 has the added advantage of also recording the audio. Two cameras, one set of sticks, one operator.
Of course you could always punch in on an HD clip, but this lets you maintain full resolution.
Obviously you’ll need two camera bodies, and one should be a DSLR or something light. You’ll also need a micro ball head.
In post I sync all the angles as a multicam clip. I originally sync’d them as a compound clip in FCPX, but this was harder to work with.
I received the GH3 last week and did some quick shooting with it this weekend. This is the first time I’ve ever pre-ordered a camera, and I’ll just say I’m not at all disappointed. It’s everything from the hacked GH2 and then some.
I’m not going to write about how great the expected features are, because they were obviously expected (audio in and out, timecode, iOS control, QuickTime files). But they are great.
The unexpected: The feel is solid. It feels more like a professional camera. And overall it’s a bigger body. Ergonomics are vastly improved. Now there are two toggle wheels and better placed buttons for quick access to settings. There’s also seven function buttons customizing controls to your preference. Well, actually there’s five real buttons. Two are on the touch screen. There’s actually room for two more on the touch screen but for whatever reason it’s just empty space.
Speaking of the touch screen, I actually want to touch this one. With the GH2 I’d usually forget I could touch menu options because it was hard to be accurate. Part of the problem was a border around the screen. The GH3 did away with that and is completely flat, making it easier to touch the controls that are on the edge. The menu has been redesigned as well to make changing settings much quicker.
For example, before to adjust audio levels you’d have to go deep into the menus. Now there’s a quick setting right from the screen. And before you only had 4 levels to choose from. Now there’s 13.
The video is a quick collection of initial thoughts and some sample footage shot in different conditions. At the end I blow some up to 200% and 400%. I think it really holds together.
Here’s how I sum up DSLRs: Nikon and Canon are still cameras that can shoot video. The GH2 and GH3 are still and video cameras.
Technical specs for footage in the film:
Coffee footage shot at ISO 200, Nikon 50mm 1.8
Axis & Allies footage shot at ISO 6400 3.5 – 5.6
Basel footage ISO varies
All shot at 1080 24p MOV 50mbps
If you have any questions about the camera or would like to see something specific, let me know.
You want to get a top notch DSLR kit. What comes to mind when you need to buy and build this kit? Canon 5D or 7D, Zoom H4n recorder, Zacuto rig. What if I told you all of these (and more) have less expensive alternatives that provide an equal if not better user experience and quality footage.
This is a list that goes against the status quo, a head to head showdown of popular gear and its underdog alternatives. For some the price difference is a few bucks. For others, it’s thousands.
Every recommended piece of equipment I personally bought and own, usually after doing extensive research. Like saving money? Read on.
I love, love, love the GH2. I’ve had it for a little less than a year and it’s become my go-to camera, pushing out the solid Sony EX1. Amazing quality, wide range of lens adapters, fast and flexible touch screen monitor. No overheating. No clip limits. I’ve shot two and a half hour interviews on it, uncut, without a problem. I have very little complaints.
Out of the Canon lineup, the only camera I’ve had positive experiences with is the 5D. The 7D and T2i always become overheating duds, bringing production to a halt. And the full frame sensor of the 5D is gorgeous. But for maximum return of kick-assness to dollar spent, the GH2 can’t be beat.
Now unlocking a good portion of that kick-assness comes from hacking the camera, but it is extremely easy to do. The GH3, coming out in December, eliminates most of the benefits you got from hacking, so the kick-assness should come out of the box. High bitrate, timecode, audio in/out – it’s ready to shoot video, whereas video still feels secondary on Canons.
The Zoom H4N is the standard audio recorder paired with a lot of DSLR kits, and it’s great. But the Tascam DR-40 does everything the H4N does, has a much more solid build, and is about $100 cheaper. $100 that can be used for more toys.
If you’re shooting handheld with a DSLR you’ll want some sort of rig. With the GH2, if I use a Panasonic lens it has a pretty good image stabilizer. But going handheld with my Nikon lenses and an adapter produces an unacceptable wobble.
Zacuto is the gold standard of rigs. Per ounce, it also trades at a higher value than gold. OK, not really, but they’re damn expensive. And I just felt kind of silly spending 2 – 3 times more than the cost of my camera on a rig.
Behold, globalization and the Gini Rig.
Made in South Korea (Gangnam, actually) the Extreme 17 is a huge bang for the buck. It’s all modular, but you get enough pieces to build a shoulder mount rig with two handles, counter weight, shoulder brace, camera cage, two flexible arms, AND a follow focus.
Ordering overseas I’m always worried about quality. Fear not, these parts are SOLID. Screws are tight, nothing wiggles. The follow focus has a nice weight and build. And the sizes are standard, so you can easily add a custom Zacuto or Red Rock part without having to buy the whole kit.
Two notes if you get this: Shipping is pricey. Budget roughly another $100, and make sure you get everything you want so you don’t have to order and ship again. Also, the rig doesn’t come with a lens ring for the follow focus (well, they have a holiday special where they’re throwing one in for free for now). They sell one, and like the rig it’s a nice build, but it’s a big hassle to put on and off. I’m planning on buying a pack of these zip tie focus gears.
I love Kinos. They produce great, soft light and keep the set and your subject cool. They’re also a fortune.
Browsing B&H, I came across a different brand of fluorescent rig. This Flolight kit comes with 3 fixtures comparable to the Kino Diva 200 plus stands, all for $550.
I just shot some interviews with them and I was very pleased with the results and light quality. Do they have the build of Kinos? No. There is no dimmer, but that was easily fixed with some diffusion. The website doesn’t list this, but they actually come with both 3000K and 5500K bulbs. And the fixture is compatible with Kino bulbs.
As for LEDs, I’d say stick to name brands like Arri or Litepanels. I bought one of those low cost fixtures and the light quality made people look ill without some gels.
This one’s a close call and more of a cautionary tale. There’s lots of sliders out there, so this is a pretty competitive field and prices have come down.
My first entry into sliders was buying the raw parts from Igus. These parts are exactly the same parts that a lot of other sliders use, but only cost $150. However, it’s friction based. There’s no wheels involved.
My engineer friend, who was helping me drill the holes in the parts so I could use it with the tripod, laughed. He said it was going to get gunked up and stop working and that I needed something bearing based. He was right. (Though I did manage to shoot everything in this film on the slider, but not without a lot of creative applications of pressure and awkwardly contorting my body to keep it steady.)
So if you’re looking at a slider that doesn’t have bearings (like the Glidetrack above), beware.
Hunting for a new slider, I settled on the Konova K5. The whole unit is self contained, it’s bearing based, and there’s lots of available accessories for creative mounting and time-lapse control. I’ve been really impressed with the slider.
(I know, it’s not the K3 pictured above, but I’ve used the K3 and had the same positive experience.)
C-Stand and Flag Kit – I found Digital Juice to have the best price for these grip staples. Sign up for their emails – they run specials regularly, like $50 off and free shipping. It’ll save you some extra money on these items.
If you have a Costco membership, check out the electronics. Usually it’s consumer stuff, but occasionally they have some good finds. Right now they have GoPro HERO2 for less than Amazon.
Lastly, a shout-out for my favorite editor and one of the greatest bargains. FCPX is faster than anything else out there in so many ways. Whether it’s how you organize and find media or make edits, it just lets you get things done quicker. And for $300 it’s a steal and far cheaper than anything else out there.
A while back while talking about why I like Final Cut Pro X, I devoted a whole post to Compound Clips. If you’re familiar with nested sequences, it’s like that but on steroids.
And there’s tons of ways you can use them. Up top is one way I’ve been using it while cutting Strike (bigger picture). The story has very definitive sections. I’ve been editing the assembly of interviews based on that. Now that I’ve whittled it down, I want to start reorganizing sections. So I grouped all the clips in a section into a Compound Clip. Now I have a birds eye view of the whole film, and can easily rearrange sections. Plus, I can also see where the bloat is and cut some more.
Just as easily as I created the clips I can ungroup them and restore my timeline.
FCPX 10.0.6 just came out. It’s got a lot of improvements, and one of the big ones is better Compound Clip (which I will now call CC) syncing. Up to now, you could create a CC in the Event, or on the timeline. But if you drag a CC from an Event to a timeline and then make changes in the Event, they wouldn’t sync to the timeline. Similarly, if you make a CC on the timeline, you can’t bring it to an Event.
10.0.6 changes that. Changes in an Event show up in the timeline. CCs on a timeline show up in the Event. Plus there’s lots more goodies. This Philip Hodgetts post covers them all.
The MOU between the two campaigns was released last night with regard to the rules of the debate. It’s an attempt to script the unknown and leave nothing to chance. There’s been a lot of hoopla about tonight with regards to the role of the moderator, or ‘moderator,’ Candy Crowley. They just want someone to play referee and not ask followup questions to the question posed by an audience member (in fact the rules go all O’Reilly with instructions to cut the microphone as soon as the question is asked, or if the audience member goes off script).
Thankfully Crowley has said she will ask follow up questions - you know, stuff a debate moderator should be doing. Seems like they got scared from the kick-ass job Raddatz did.
From a camera coverage point of view, here’s the most interesting stipulation:
“There will be no TV cut-aways to any candidate who is not responding to a question while another candidate is answering a question…”
Pretty much every broadcast has not followed this rule as the debates have been broadcasted split screen. But not all. For the first debate I watched it over Xbox (kudos to Xbox btw for streaming the debate live) and they did not do a split screen broadcast. I still got the impression that Romney did better, but Obama looking down and taking notes did not seem as big a deal to me because I hardly saw it. But that became one of the main talking points about that debate. Same can be said for Biden’s laughs and reactions to Ryan when answering questions.
Split screen has really shaped the perception of the debate. You’re not just on while answering the question. You’re always on.
Another interesting thing about tonight is the candidates have a designated area they’re not supposed to leave, and they don’t overlap. I suppose this is to prevent another wandering McCain (though maybe they also had their own zones and McCain just forgot).
Tonight I’ll probably watch the debate on CNN.com, but have the Xbox on in the background, to compare the coverage.
The 2012 Debates – Memorandum of Understanding Between the Obama and Romney Campaigns
My final year in college I took on an additional project that wasn’t required. During college I got immersed in life hacks and GTD and productivity pr0n. I had always been about finding the most efficient way to do something, and I always had a lot of projects I wanted to do but would get sidetracked with procrastination. Thanks to the internet I realized I’m not alone – there were tons of blogs and books that wrote about this. Lifehacker.com, Getting Things Done, 4-Hour Work Week, etc.
So like many people I read the books, read the blogs on a daily basis, and toyed around with a lot of to-do lists app, calendars, and productivity systems. And it was a lot of fun. But eventually you realize you’re reading about productivity and doing things you think are productive, but they aren’t really.
You can also look at the rise in productivity blogs as a response to people looking for solutions in how to navigate work in the modern age. Emails, texts, Twitter, Facebook – we’re constantly getting pinged, which challenges us to find ways to handle all this information while performing complex and creative work.
These were ideas that really interested me and I wanted to explore further. So I went out to California to interview these writers on a variety of topics, ranging from creativity to the challenges of the modern worker. I was fortunate enough that some very busy people gave me a few hours of their time, from Tim Ferriss to David Allen.
What came out of this was a short documentary called You 2.0 along with 3 hours of extra interview clips that I know anyone like me would find extremely interesting. I’ll say that You 2.0 was not the film I had set out to make. My original ambitions were a feature film, possibly following a few modern workers who forgo their current ways and completely embrace everything in the various productivity books and blogs, to see how things work out. But that didn’t work out (however, it’s still an idea that’s still been on the back burner. Let me know if this is something you’d find interesting).
Interviewing the people in the film was an enlightening experience. It by far had the greatest effect on what I decided to do post college (remain independent and make movies).
You 2.0So I’ve had the film and interviews available online for about 2 years now. But now I’ve adapted it to some cool mediums. Here’s how you can get it:
You 2.0 – The Interviews on Life Hacking [Kindle] - Free ’til Thursday and Prime members. $0.99
I edited some of the transcripts from the interviews into an eBook, which you can get on the Kindle store. From Monday, October 8 to Thursday, October 11, you can download this for free. It’s also always free if you’re a Prime member on a Kindle. After Thursday it will only be $0.99.
You 2.0 – iBook - $7.99
This is my favorite format and it was a lot of fun to make, but obviously you need an iPad. This is a multimedia iBook. It contains the short film, plus a chapter for each person interviewed, featuring their extended interview clips and the edited transcript from the interview. You get the best of both worlds in a fancy iBook format.
Some interviewees just have an extended interview, and some just have edited transcript. But most have both.
You 2.0 – Documentary and Interviews – $9.99
This is everything as a DRM free MP4. Put it on your iPad, iPhone, computer. Listen to it in the car. Basically you can watch this whenever and wherever you want. Plus you get a PDF of the interviews.
Here’s the full list of everyone in the film:
To celebrate this launch week, I’m giving away 5 downloads of the iBook. Just tweet this post and I’ll randomly select 5 tweets. Make sure my handle @C47 is in the tweet so I can track it. Or just click here for the full tweet.
An article over the weekend from WSJ talks about investing in independent films. Interesting to look at this through the prism of someone with decent wealth who is looking for some high risk investments to diversify their portfolio. Here’s how they paint the ideal investor:
Ms. Andrews keeps the investment in its own “sandbox,” outside of Dr. Mattar’s portfolio. “The odds of making money on his brother’s independent film are better than the lottery, but worse than blackjack,” she says. “His financial security cannot rest on investments like this.”
Such investments are best suited for people who already have put aside between $3 million and $5 million to retire and have between $5 million and $10 million in net worth, says Christopher Jones, a fee-only financial adviser in Las Vegas.
The few examples they cite are the outliers of indie films that had small budgets with huge returns, like Paranormal Activity or Supersize Me. Their definition of indie feels more like Hollywood Indie vs true indie. Crowd-funding doesn’t even get a mention, though as of now there’s no platform that’s setup to offer percentages to investors.
As my friend likes to say, it’s basically for people that have Fuck You Money. It’s more interactive than the art you can put on your wall!
Putting your money in a film can pay out in other ways, says Mr. Schwarzman. Unlike art, which arrives already completed, film production is a collaborative, dynamic process investors can witness up close.
It also offers other perks, such as set visits, dinners with actors and directors, tickets to film festivals and on-screen credit.
Update: LaCie responded with a link to the product on their website: LaCie Rugged USB3 Thunderbolt Series. It comes in the below mentioned 1 TB flavor, as well as 120 GB and 256 GB SSD. You can win one on their website here.
Was in the Apple store yesterday when I spotted something that seemed too good to be true. A LacCie Rugged drive with Thunderbolt, priced at $249 – Thunderbolt cable included!
This is what I’ve been waiting for with Thunderbolt – a portable, bus powered drive that doesn’t cost $400. I hadn’t heard anything about this drive, yet here it is, right in the Apple store. I would have bought it on the spot except for one thing – the drive was only 5400 RPM. Why go full throttle with Thunderbolt, only to kill the speed boost with a slow hard drive? Made no sense. And the Apple specialists didn’t know anything.
What’s strange is I can’t find this hard drive anywhere on the Internet. Not even on Lacie’s website. Or Apple’s. Was this stocked too early? Hopefully more will come soon, in a 7200 RPM flavor.
And so this will remain the Thunderbolt Skunk-Ape (Yeti or Bigfoot if you’re not in Florida).
Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was on The Colbert Report last week, promoting his new book A Wilderness of Error. Among filmmakers Morris is also popular for creating his unique interview style and method. Dubbed the Interrotron, it entails two cameras with teleprompters, displaying the feed of each other. Interviewee on one end, Morris on another, the interview is conducted with direct eye contact recorded.
Colbert asked him about this and presented his own interview device, the Ask-o-Matic. Colbert’s device gives this technique a fresh, 21st century update utilizing iPads for a real, human connection. ”It makes you more approachable, more likeable,” says Morris. Watch out future interviewees. You may be talking to an Ask-o-Matic before you know it.
But seriously, I’ve watched this three times and I still die laughing.
I do think there’s a way of adapting an iPad to the Interrotron. 2 iPads, 1 iPad teleprompter adapter, and FaceTime. Only thing is I’m not sure if there’s a way to connect without internet. Could get pretty data heavy if you’re on 3G or LTE.
While doing a Google search I did come across this KISS version of the device. EyeDirect Mark II. Little pricey and limiting on movement for the interviewer, but simple and no electronics, which means less to go wrong.
As for Morris’ book, A Wilderness of Error, I have to say I’m not familiar with the murder case of Jeffrey MacDonald. But after reading this NY Times piece on the book, I want to read it soley to watch Morris go to work in disecting the case and tearing apart the conclusions of the previously written books and 60 Minute special.
“I do…one word – evidence.”
