Tips from a Professional Camera Operator

Useful advice to smooth and finesse your moves and tune your viewfinder eye!


"No one taught me how to be an operator. At a young age I found myself drawn to strong compositions in certain TV shows and movies, and I sought to emulate those compositions with my Regular 8mm camera. Over time I learned, through trial and error and the occasional tip from those more experienced than I, how to move the camera predictably and repeatedly.

There’s a lot more to being an operator than skill in moving the camera. It’s a very political job as well. I’ll address some of both aspects in this article." ~Art Adams

TOPICS COVERED:
- Learn the Geared Head
- When In Doubt, Keep Moving
- Half of Operating is Knowing When Not to Move the Camera
- Body Language is Our Friend
- Feedback
- Weight Distribution
- Compositions Don't Have to be Balanced
- Adjust the Camera, Not the Actor
- Walk the Set
- Look Around the Viewfinder
- Focus is Your Problem Too
- Learn When the Rules Don't Apply
- Over-the-Shoulder Shots
- Use Crosshairs and Frame Markers for Reference
- Find the Payoff of the Shot
- Don't Put Yourself At Risk
- A Little Bit of Trivia
- Check Your Space Before A Move
- Learn to Balance Your Head
- Ending a Tough Move

This is a great read for really anyone involved with filmmaking, but camera operators will benefit from it the most! Read the Full Article Here.

Rescue Haiti's Children: Trailer

LeclercBrothers.com

Another Great ADR Session

"This past Monday I braved the wintry Wisconsin roads down to Nate Sisson's sound studio for another ADR session.  It was great to see Molly Kunz (who plays Kate Carter) and her mom Debbie again.  As I've said before, things are much more laid back when recording ADR so it's fun to spend time with the actors in this less stressful environment."  ~Nathan Webster

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source article

Dropbox

"Dropbox is a cross-platform cloud-based storage application and service operated by Dropbox, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers and share files and folders with others using file synchronization.  There are both free and paid services, each with varying options.

The Dropbox client enables users to drop any file into a designated folder that is then synced to the cloud and to any other of the user's computers with the Dropbox client. Files in the Dropbox folder may then be shared with other Dropbox users or accessed from the web. Users may also upload files manually through a web browser."

- What I like about Dropbox is that anyone you have shared a folder with can put a file into the folder and it is instantly downloaded to your computer. Now I have the file even when I don't internet access!

Key Features:
- File Sync
- File Sharing
- Online Backup
- Web Access
- Security and Privacy
- Mobile Device Access

Click here to visit the Dropbox website.

Interview With Filmmaker Jon Erwin

"Dramatic TV series, documentaries, reality television, shorts, music videos and commercials. All of these are regulars for Jon Erwin of the Erwin brothers, a writer/director duo from Birmingham, Alabama.

These young and unorthodox artists are anything but traditional. They focus on new and innovative ways to produce a diverse portfolio of work – from their multi-award winning documentary The Cross and the Towers to the dramatic TV series Life After, to the international short film series God Provides.

Jon Erwin was writer, director, executive producer and director of photography for The Mysterious Islands, a documentary filmed in the Galapagos Islands, in partnership with Vision Forum.

Christian-Movie.com: Did the idea of taking a RED One and a lot of other film equipment to the "world’s end" make you nervous?

Jon Erwin: Very nervous. We’ve named our RED "Elley May" and there were a few times I thought she wasn’t gonna make it back home. But hey, that’s what insurance policies are for! I believe we were the first people to take the RED camera to the Galapagos. It’s very heavy – about 50 pounds. My poor 1st AC had to lug it everywhere. But the final images were stunning and made it completely worth it.

Christian-Movie.com: Your underwater shots required scuba diving to significant depths with your equipment. What challenges were involved in this process? Are you an experienced scuba diver?

Jon Erwin: Yes, I do scuba dive. My father-in-law owns a dive quarry and we dive there now and then. I also love to free dive. Having said that, diving in the Galapagos was extremely difficult. The currents are harsh and the water was pretty cold. But we used the Canon 5D Mark II, which is very small, and that made things a lot easier.

Jon Erwin (right) prepares for a scuba dive

Life underwater in Galapagos is unbelievable. We dove with hundreds of black tip sharks and even a few hammerheads. It’s also incredible that we could swim with marine iguanas and penguins at the same time!"

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To read the full interview - click here

Location Scouting Photos

John Moore is working on a new feature film!

"Just wanted to share a handful of photos from our recent location scouting trip up in East Tennessee. In spite of massive snowstorms across the state, we've found some fantastic locations."

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To see more pictures visit John's blog post here!

Visual FX - Camera Projection

Anyone who does any kind of After Effects work probably knows about Andrew Kramer and Video Copilot. He has a lot of great resources on the site and he also posts a lot of free tutorials on his blog. One of his recent posts is titled "Camera Projection.'

"One visual technique that I find so fascinating is Camera Projection. It allows you to project imagery on 3D surfaces and then fly a camera around in 3D. It has it’s limits but the capabilities are amazing."

Camera projection test from Bart Janssen on Vimeo.

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Tutorial links and another video can be found here.

Color Correction & Memory Colors

"Memory colors are colors that are, in the minds of your audience, inseparable from certain common objects or events. For example, the sky is so associated with blue that you might feel that you see those two words together as often as you see them individually. The same goes for green and grass.

The most basic idea of color correcting is that you are making colors correct, which is to say that you are making objects on the screen appear to be the colors that we know them to be.

The funny thing about this seemingly simple task is that it can be quite difficult. And it’s difficult for exactly the reason that it’s important.

Here’s a very simple example. I bought some espresso beans today from my favorite local roaster, Blue Bottle coffee. As I was transferring them to an air-tight container, my 7D was right there, so I popped off a quick 720p60 shot of the process—because who doesn’t like seeing coffee beans tumble in slow motion? (see the video here)

When looking at the footage on my computer, I noticed a funny thing. The beans, which in life have a vivid, sumptuous brown tone, appeared gray-black on my screen. I almost didn’t notice, because I know they are brown, but on close inspection it was clear that I had been fooled by my brain into seeing what I knew rather than what was actually there. The cool color temperature of the indirect sun lighting the shot was reflecting off the beans and cooling their color down to near neutral.

There’s nothing unnatural or wrong about this, except that the audience for my espresso epic doesn’t know about the cool light source outside of the frame. They don’t even necessarily know what the falling objects are. I have to communicate that visually, so I need to preserve—or, in this case, recreate—the memory color of perfectly roasted coffee beans.

Here’s the shot with a Colorista Power Mask for just the beans:

And here’s that same shot with an overall look applied after the bean color fix.

To really see the importance of the local correction, look at the shot with the look, but without the bean fix:

Not only do the beans look more appetizing with the fix, they also survive the subsequent look adjustment better. In fact, since the look cools down the shot a bit, the warm color of the beans stands out all the more. Without the bean fix, the look utterly clobbers the brown beans. As a bonus, in the corrected version, the metal canister and the corner of the grinder on the right take on a steely blue color, better matching the viewer’s idea of what color metal should be.

If you pick your memory colors for a scene, and preserve and enhance them through your look, you’ll wind up with shots that pop without looking clobbered by a heavy-handed “preset” look." ~Stu Maschwitz

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If this information was helpful, I recommend reading the full article on the ProLost Blog here.

Panasonic Equipment Brings First All-HD Winter Games to the World!

"From Friday night’s amazing opening ceremonies to the closing ceremonies on February 28th, Panasonic professional high definition video equipment is bringing the thrills and spills of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games to television viewers worldwide.

For the first all-HD Winter Games, Panasonic’s P2 HD solid-state recording system is the official recording format. And an array of Panasonic pro HD video gear is playing a vital role for the Games’ host broadcaster and for broadcasters worldwide who are capturing, recording and displaying the 17 days of sporting events and ceremonies."

- To read more info and see a full list of Panasonic HD equipment being used at the Winter Games - Click Here!

Budget Estimates

This isn't always the way it happens but I still found it humorous. :) Blog Source