DSLR video workshop

More and more customers are asking for small video segments to go with the photography we do. But not only small video segments, last year I started doing videoclips and to be honest I love it. Before I started model photography I actually was very active with video (but only as a hobby) in that time I still needed to use tape and the incredibly (at that time) AVmaster cards from Fast… looking back it’s not something I want to go back to 🙂

Today it’s all very easy with programs like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro X.
When Final Cut Pro X was released I was very impressed but also very disappointed that they left out Multicam, well I have some great news… since the last update (last week) Apple added Multicam and some AMAZING keying options. So for the moment I’m using Final Cut Pro X again as my main editing suite, but to be honest I still love to work in Adobe Premiere, so for the time being I will switch between the two and hope that when one of the suites proves to be the best I can switch without loosing too much time and experience.

The DSLR video workshop
Although labeled “for beginners” the students I taught up until now told me that this title was maybe a bit misleading because the material taught is not really basic. Well to be honest I agree but somehow I also don’t think it’s that difficult and the problem is that if you advertise something with “advanced” people expect something like the advanced photography I teach and well…. there is a difference.

So what do we do during the workshop.
First of all I try to give the students 3 assignments at the start.
In this case they had to film the following :
1. Small video in the snow with Marie, using Multicam and one slow motion effect.
2. Blue screen introduction
3. Instructional video with Multicam and audio sync.

During the video I will participate of course as one of the shooters.
For this workshop we used 2x 5DMKII, 1x Canon HF11, 1x Canon 7D.
The main problem a lot of people experience during the editing is matching colors and exposure between the cameras. Normally when we film we spend a lot of time on this, but during the workshop I will not tell too much about it when we start,  however during editing it’s plainly clear that some things can be better and faster when you spend more time “syncing” the cameras, hoping they will never again make that mistake 🙂

All assignments, expect the intro, are shot with Multicam recordings and audio sync.
In both Premiere (with the help of Plural eyes) and in Final Cut Pro X (build in) we will do the sync of the files and work on the multi cam sequences to make something that “flows” nicely. I can REALLY advise you to check out Plural eyes, for example during the first multi cam video I did not tell the students that they had to start at the same time and stop at the same time, meaning we had some cameras with 16 clips and some with 4 clips, Not too much to my surprise Final Cut Pro X was not able to sync this correctly…. HOWEVER Plural Eyes did it FLAWLESS (very impressive seeing the fact that it really was a mess).

With the second clip (the instructional piece) the students did shoot the video as one take, and now Final Cut Pro X did the syncing up very nicely. To be honest I LOVE working in Multicam with Final Cut Pro X, being able to see up to 64 different camera angles is just awesome (you will have to use proxy media when you are doing a lot of angles, and make sure you use a RAID0 drive for extra speed). Audio is added via a Zoom recorder and Lavallière mic.

After filming the segments it’s time to edit.
The idea of the workshop is to work within a set time frame (deadline).
This means that I sometimes have to cut some corners because actually what I want to do is almost impossible to do professionally within the set time frame (well at least for me), mainly because I don’t tell about all the problems that can occur during the video so I have a lot to correct. But anyway, here you can see the result of this workshop, hope you like it 🙂