Tags
cake, D7000, design, DSRL, DSRL Movie, film, filme, iMovie, movie, Nikon, pastry chef, peliculas, video sequence
Special thanks to Pastry Chef Mariana Vincenzi www.marianavincenzi.com www.facebook.com/marianavincenzi
Today my post is not about photography… But I’ll talk about another art: movies! Before you think I’m a traitor, let me explain why! This post is about movies made with a DSRL (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera! In other words, a photography camera, the same one that made the pictures in this blog (take a look in the pictures galleries in the previous posts).
Recently the DSRL cameras were improved in technology and today they are a great option to record very good films. Possibilities in controlling depth field, exposure, ISO, low light conditions and a lot of lens available make the DSRL cameras more common and preferred by several professionals and amateur film-makers.
In this way, I got motivated to make my first DSRL movie, in true it was my first complete DSRL movie but I had made one Time-lapse some months ago (see: Time-lapse post). It was a very interesting experience, a lot of knowledge learned and I think a good final result to someone beginner like me!
My camera is a Nikon D7000, a good DSRL in DX format. For the movie I took three different lens, a macro 60mm, 18-105mm and the telescopic 55-300mm. A basic knowledge about the camera movie functionality is very important (take your camera manual and eat it!), but the great deal is your planning, light, composition and photographic techniques (again?! If you have read my previous posts it’s possible that you think I’m repeating…).
In true, my planning in this movie was very bad. I started just recording some scenes to understand the camera and how I could control the lens and record parameters. I’m convinced my planning should be better, and so I hadn’t spent much time in the post edition neither a lot of dispensable scenes. First lesson: I must draw a good storyboard in the next time!
My first big challenge was the light control. My model, the pastry chef Mariana Vincenzi, was in her usual cake production and no thought in a movie production! So, to control the camera angles and the light condition was a big issue, one time there was a bad shadow in the main plan, other time her hand was so close to object, etc… I really took a lot of bad scenes to waste them! But, once again, the light condition, light sources, type of light (hard or soft), reflectors, white balance control were very important! I was concerned to record in low ISO and I took reduced noise scenes, my scenes were in ISO 320 and 800 maximum. I used two white continuous lights, soft box light, white umbrella and a 80 cm circular silver reflector.
The second was the editing. My knowledge in movie editing is very, very, very basic and I was surprised how simple is the iMovie software! I had test it in my time-lapse experience but not in editing large scenes and no developed pictures. It’s so easy and a couple of practice hours are enough to you get your first movie.
The last challenge was to choose the right music in my case. The movie looks like a video clip, I’m talking about a cake production, but no words are told, and I wanted a dynamic music to synchronize with the hands movements and the cars. I looked for musics in the Cars movie discography and together with pastry chef we chose one. It’s very important to consider the copyrights and to referrers clear and direct about the authors if you don’t want any problems to reproduce your movie.
I expect that you enjoy the movie and that my short experience could be a motivation to you! Have you made a DSRL movie one time? Please, feel free to comment and remember: keep shooting!
