The Long Telegram

Filming from the top of the Citadel in Erbil, Iraq. Courtesy: Jon Vidar / The Tiziano Project

Here in Iraq, I’m free from the constraints of what would normally be considered a j-o-b. Luckily with The Tiziano Project, I have mostly free reign to play photography and video for the next month and a half. I’m hoping to make a few more leaps forward before the summer ends and I take a short hiatus from video to finish grad school at Medill’s Washington, D.C., campus.

While I’ve made a lot of strides in the last year learning the ins and outs of dSLR video, I look at the great work being produced by others and realize I have a lot to learn.  As I’ve done in the past, I wanted to hammer out some of my frustrations here in public so anyone else doing this might be able to look them over.

Courtesy: Jon Vidar / The Tiziano Project

Sound

In the last couple of months, I’ve ditched any efforts to use the on-camera sound. I’d used the Magic Lantern hack with a Beachtek DXA-2S since last year, but in the span of three months, the microphone jack on my Canon 5D Mark II fried three times, forcing me to replace the main control board. To this day, I have no idea if it was the hack or the box that did it. But I decided to stop using both. Also, even with the hack, the monitoring level was too low to do any real good.

Now I miss the zebra stripes and a couple of other things the hack provided, but I’m much happier now with a Zoom H4N audio recorder. The on-camera mic gathers enough sound to sync the footage in post with PluralEyes. It even works when there’s significant wind or background noise. My two microphone set-up, shotgun and lavelier works great to isolate sound. I’m looking forward to getting back to the States so I can get a bracket to mount the Zoom. Then I can record 4-track sound on interviews: 2 stereo tracks from the zoom, an overhead or under boom with the shotgun and the lavalier. If that won’t do it, nothing will.

With the next project, I’m going to start bring the audio into Soundbooth to master it at some point in my workflow.

Courtesy: Jon Vidar / The Tiziano Project

Video

The biggest thing is that I bought a Canon 7D to supplement my 5D. This has allowed me to do two things: two camera positions and slow-motion video with the 7D. I was really happy with the first results for both of these techniques. The slow-motion video looked great after I slowed it down with Cinema Tools. I’m thinking I might be able to slow it down even further with Adobe Premiere, something I’ll try in the next few weeks.

I still have issues with focus. The Canon’s LED screen gives me fits with this, especially in daylight. Shots that I think are sharp in the field come back barely out of focus. I usually shoot video portraits at low aperture (2.8 – 4) even in daylight so I can really pop the subject. But about half the time, this comes back to bite me. I’m trying to decide if I want to bring a monitor into the set-up, but at that point, you really lose all ability to pretend you can do photos and videos simultaneously. I’m not sure if I want to give that up.

Timelapses

I bought an intervalometer (remote control that allows you take pictures at regular intervals) in Jerusalem and muddled my way through about five failed attempts to create a timelapse. Most of my time lapses have been of the sunset and I shot them in Av to factor in the light change. But, as I’ve learned, this creates a pretty significant flicker in the finished product. I batch edit the jpegs in Lightroom then throw the photos together with Quicktime 7.

Some things I’m considering:

• Shooting in manual to decrease flicker.
• Using a deflicker program.
• Shutter drags (longer exposures) to create a more video-like effect.
• Locking the iris open so the aperture never changes. (Not sure yet how to do this one.)

Post-production

I learned the hard way that Final Cut Pro hates any images in the CMYK workspace. They will shut down any ability to render the final product. So, check your images before you import. I still have kind of a haphazard method to color correction with Magic Bullet Looks and the Color Corrector 3-Way. I’m really hoping to find a good tutorial on this in the near future. Also, I leave it until last and usually rush it. So, I need to build in more time for this.