Video is back on the table with my clients, buoyed by the new sense of control in my work flow and some clarity in the roles my cameras play.
The G9II is the movement cam, limited to V-Log, but otherwise not limited at all, the GH5s is the static cam with the big rig and B-Raw and the S5 is the hand held, semi-static, semi-movement cam, again in B-Raw.
You cannot control some things though and that is what they pay professionals to deal with.
When they can.
I had to record a rock group the other day, junior kids, but a springboard programme to the next level and a special thing in the junior campus.
I was excited, I felt ready to nail this one after minor disasters last year.
Boy, can things go wrong, even when you know the space, the people and the job.
Like previous jobs in this space, things have a habit of changing from booking to brief to actual performance, even if that is only a day or two.
I turned up with the GH5s ready to do the band and a second camera to do cut aways (S5) I knew I would likely be stuck in place, so I needed to be able to control angles in other ways.
A 7 person ensemble, it has a fairly small footprint, but also expected to have little room to move. The light was going to be adequate at best in the space (school gym). It was likely to be flat and poorly directed as the lights are for a gym, not a stage and there is a screen a great big screen.
It turned out that at the last minute, i.e that morning, it was decided the entire yr4 and 5 choir was added, taking up the entire space, the band was then squashed into a dark corner, so flat, poorly directed and as it went, not much of either. As a bonus the choir was backed by the huge screen with a white page projected on it!
Two nightmare scenarios for the price of one.
This I can handle with stills processes, accepting compromise as part of the deal, but I am still getting the hang of it with video. The light was flat and dingy, the cameras pushed, all my experience tapped.
Flat, low, non directional, mixed value spill light from crappy overheads on the band, about ISO 3200 and 3400k (some older globes were warmer), or silhouettes against a screen and even the 12mm on my GH5s (21mm equivalent) was not wide enough to get them all in, and that is even if a wall of tiny kids would be acceptable. I was planted about 8-10 metres from them and no way to set up differently.
The other nightmare, poor front light, even worse behind. Both images EM1.2 ISO 6400 f2.8.
Choose your pain, we had plenty.
The solution on the spot was point camera “A” at the band as planned, use the movement or “B” cam to include the rest of the kids, all while taking stills.
I had it covered I felt. B-Raw into both cams, both are low light comfortable, focus etc were pretty easy. All good.
When I got the footage into Resolve, it hit me. It is not for nothing that lighting is probably the first thing on a cinematographers mind when setting up a shot. I can handle most things with stills, but still recognise the signs when expectations and realities collide. Flash for example is most often used to pretty things up, not just make them take-able.
This is what they pay me for, to choose when and how to add that extra something needed to take an image from merely recorded to well recorded.
In video, it is even more important, because you have fewer options in post and as moving footage, it has to work as a cohesive flow.
Where is the problem rooted.
With me basically. This, as the title says is what they pay me for.
In my years of stills shooting, much more in the last ten or so, making the bad better or even good has been an automatic assumption on a daily basis. When shooting for myself and occasional other jobs, I used to place jobs into ideal where I controlled the when-where-why and desperate where the situation controlled me categories, I now have a sliding scale with ideal as a rarity, almost a luxury. The reality is, when everything is easy* anyone with a phone can do it.
With my video, the issues have been the same, but the tools less known to me and I have hidden behind various excuses, but the reality is, I need to up my game, take more control and responsibility and lower my self-criticism threshold when I know I have been beaten by circumstances. With video there is often more of a need to control the space, or you will face tougher post processing fixes (well, I do anyway), or face the reality or compromise.
*good light, no magnification or exposure issues, no movement and a conducive subject.