I just stumbled upon another interesting video filmed with the GoPro HD video camera. It’s not really an informative video but hopefully it will give you guys some inspiration. You can easily film things with these ultra small/light cameras that simply were not possible a few years ago. What could you film in a different way?
Update: Sorry about the title. I’ve not heard of “squash” before.
When it comes to giving great tutorials on DSLR video, the guys at Stillmotion are full of helpful tips and tricks. This latest video discusses some of the advantages you have in setting your camera’s white balance and color profiles. Since DSLR cameras still do not allow you to record in a RAW format, you must make many decisions in camera much like you would if you were shooting jpeg (which is great for events like weddings). Lee and I are big fans of getting it right in camera which is crucial when filming video because a compressed video has so much less room for error than a large 12+ megapixel photograph. Seeing real time comparisons of how white balance, sharpness, contrast, and color shifts can change the look of your final video is really helpful and should become a part of your workflow everytime you start filming video. Hopefully many of you can use this info when filming your BTS contest videos. We’ve featured Stillmotion a lot here on Fstoppers so be sure to check out their older videos as well.
A green screen, also known as a chromakey, can make life really easy if you are doing a lot of video work and want a simple solution for dropping in different backgrounds. David Dugdale created a great tutorial for green screen which shows how to effectively light a chromakey background and key it out in Premiere. ReflecMedia has created a different solution for chromakeying with their Chroma Background Kit. It uses a green LED ringlight that illuminates their special background made up of glass beads. Even with the lovely Olivia Tech explaining how it works, I’m still a bit shocked that such a small ringlight can illuminate the background without affecting the subject. This system isn’t cheap but I can see the advantage of not having to carry extra lights just to evenly light a huge background especially out on location.
Footage like this scares the bejesus out of me but also makes me wish I knew how to surf. Tahiti is home of Teahupoo, the world’s most dangerous naturally occurring wave. If you’ve watched the documentary Riding Giants then you’ve seen how monsterous these waves can become. I’m not sure that Teahupoo is actually larger than Peahi or Mavericks but it must be called the most dangerous wave for a reason. This video was shot with the Phantom in all it’s slo-mo glory. Click the full post to see more footage in real time as 32 of the world’s top surfers try to wrangle the beast.
TheUnderwaterRealm.com is a blog that is following the production of an independent film that will take place completely underwater. Each week the guys and gals are releasing a BTSV which shows exactly what they have been working on. If you are interested in movie production, I highly suggest checking out their website. In the video below the team is forced to build an underwater Kino Flo lighting system. This video is 1 of 29 so there is a lot more quality content to be seen.
Hurricane Irene down here in Charleston, SC was pretty unmemorable. However, up in NYC it seems most everyone pretty much followed the precautions and got the $@*# out of dodge. So what did the city that never sleeps look like when hit overnight by a historic storm? Check out this interesting black and white video shot by some daring videographers as they visit the subways and streets. Also be sure to head over to the Buffalo Picture House for some other great films and documentaries. Let’s hope they still have working gear after all that rain!
If you’ve been shooting stills or video for any length of time, chances are you’ve often thought about making a product that could make your life a bit easier. Cinetics designer Justin Jensen’s own idea was to make a simple dolly system for DSLR cameras that was also portable. He designed and launched his CineSkates on Kickstarter and the response has been huge. So far Justin has raised more than 6x his initial goal of $20,000 so it looks like this production version will soon be in photographers’ bags world wide. The system basically adds skateboard wheels to the versatile Joby Gorilla Pods and creates a system that gives your video footage high production movement. You can also the CineSkates for timelapse photography. Check out the video below to see exactly how the system works.
Tom Guilmette is now a pretty regular name on Fstoppers because his BTSVs in the field of video are some of the best we have seen. In the video below Tom travels out west with Eric Kessler to film BTS footage of some of the top timelapse shooters of our time. My personal favorite is Tom Lowe and we haven’t heard much from him in the last year because he is still working on his timelapse feature film. Check out the video below to learn from the best.
If you are a fan of iphone photo apps, huge CGI production movies, and sexy girls fighting with mystical powers then you will probably love this behind the scenes video. The Demon Cam is an iphone app that allows you to turn your face into a demon zombie. In order to promote the release of the Demon Cam, the guys over at Video Copilot created an unbelievably complex promo video that showcases how the application works. The behind the scenes video has a lot of CGI and chromakey trickery but it also has a bunch of clever ideas any photographer could use in their own productions. After reading the reviews of this app and seeing the amount of work that went into the opening video, I’m kind of curious to see what a Patrick Hall demon would look like. Click the full post to see how everything came together in the final video and head over to the app store to pick up the $.99 iphone cam.
If you are planning a behind the scenes video for our 2011 photo contest, you probably also need to setup an interesting interview segment to explain the details of your photoshoot. Most photographers spend a lot of money on their flash equipment but often don’t have much in the way of constant lights. The guys over at SLRlounge have come up with a great BTS video on how you can create an interesting interview set on a budget. In this video, Pye Jirsa used basic work lights mixed with natural ambient light. In our contest video we either shot completely natural light or mixed in some of these inexpensive LED lights to make it a little more interesting. Taking a little bit of time to make your interview footage look good always goes a long way and is often just as fun designing as the actual photoshoot itself.
It’s really exciting that every new DSLR now takes amazing, cinema quality HD video. One of the main reason it looks so different from video cameras of the past is the super shallow depth of field that large sensor sizes produce. It looks really cool BUT you will have to learn to manually focus the camera just like they have to do with movie cameras. If you are looking for a great tutorial on the basics check out the BTSV by Still Motion below.
Stop motion videos are becoming increasingly more popular as digital cameras and software make them easier to create. Dave Wallace decided to make things quite a bit harder when he shot 2335 images, had them printed out, and then shot them a second time in picture frames on the wall. It took hours of work but the finished product is well worth the time. Check it out in the full post.
One of the unfortunate problems with running a website is you are inevitably going to send traffic to a misdirected URL or even worse a page that flat out doesn’t exist. You are probably used to seeing pages that look something like this. Well the guys over at Nosh.me came up with a funny little way to track down their own 404 pages and fix the issue or flat out take them down. Check out the final video below and hit the full post to see some BTS on how the guys conceptualized the scenes. If you really enjoy this sort of thing then you will find some really helpful tips about color grading, after effects, and detailed production notes over at the 404 process page. Who knew it was so violent behind each of our websites?
Nosh: 404 from Firespotter Labs on Vimeo.
Being a child of 80s and having lived through all of the video game consoles, I really got a kick out of this evolution of games video. Figuring out a clever way to film a scene can be daunting at the least but building an entire video around a single frame can be even tougher. Joe Penna aka MysteryGuitarMan and his friends came together to produce a collaborative video showcasing different video games through the years. It’s creativity like this that we are looking for in your own BTS videos. Click the full post to see the final video.
Have you ever wondered how DSLR cameras match up when compared to film and high end HD video cameras? Last year, Zacuto brought together some of the biggest names in the movie industry to see how well the first round of video capable DSLRs compared to the industry’s standard film and HD video cameras in The Great Camera Shoot Out of 2010. This year they have started another series which compares some of the top cameras including 35mm Kodak 5213/5219, Arri Alexa, Red One M-X, Phantom Flex, Sony F3, Panasonic AF100, Canon 1D Mark IV, and Nikon D7000 (where is the D3s?), and a bunch of other professional video cameras. The Great Camera Shootout is a must watch if you are a gearhead or simply enjoy seeing how well the current crop of DSLR cameras are at video. It’s pretty amazing to see the consumer Nikon D7000 holds its own against such a competitive group; I can only imagine what the next crop of Nikon cameras is going to do! Check out the trailer below and hit the full post for the first episode that outlines exactly what sort of tests Zacuto is going to run.
