In recent months I have been heavily interested in amateur prosumer videography. In fact my wallet has suffered recently with all sorts of camera accessories, though I love my Canon Vixia HV30!

So I recently shot and put together this little "music video" (I suppose you could call it that... it's more of a mini-story/montage) with a younger university friend of mine, and I would appreciate your comments. No, I don't own the music of course as it's an Hoobastank song, but really the music is just an excuse to keep the viewer somewhat interested in the nice eye-candy quality video that this camera is capable of producing, and it's just a little personal project for fun, though not necessarily part of my chosen career field. I'm not in this particular portion as I did all the camera and editing work.

This clip at just over 2 minutes long is the first half preview of the whole video which should be completely done by around mid-June if everything works out. I would embed the clip directly here in the post, but I'd prefer that you go straight to my Vimeo page to view the larger, downloadable 720p HD version. An smaller embedded version is available on my website along with other info. The video may stutter on older/slower hardware, so let me know if it does and I'll post a smaller embedded version here. Adjust your monitor brightness as necessary.

Here's the link (http://www.vimeo.com/3900258). Thanks for watching!

Was pretty cool man! some nice scenery shots. wonder if the have color filters available for that camera.

Thanks for the compliment! Yeah a little goal of mine was to give it a surreal/dark kind of cinematic look, and as you can see a good amount of 'depth of focus' or artistic blurriness was used in some shots.

By color filters what exactly do you mean? The HV30 has a CMOS sensor which effectively combines RGB into one, unlike CCD sensors which have one for each color (as far as I understand it). There are pros and cons to each, but a number of more modern cameras make do with large CMOS sensors.

Its a cinematic trick essentialy putting a colored film over the lens that enhances the desired color and mutes other. in your panoramic shots you can make the sky a vivid blue or the green of the hills stand out more.

Was a movie about the drug war made in the late 90's that is a great example of it. scenes shot inside the USA were a all "blue". scences representing Mexico were a garish "yellow".

Cados, well done! That's a great first video. Going to throw in a little criticism, but I've been doing this for years and you're just starting so feel free to disregard it all if you want :)

The shot you used as the video loads (from 1:06) is great. Your lighting, aperture, focus and all that look excellent - and a little hand held movement is ok. However the push at 0:36 was a bit haphazard and jerky and you lost your focus a little bit. There's a lot to be said for a zoom controller on some sticks for pushes and pulls since having your hands on a camera can move the camera to places you don't want it to go. One of the problems you were having as you zoomed was that you were getting towards the end of your lens where camera movement is amplified; instead next time try physically moving your body with camera in hand closer - it will be a lot smoother. You'll notice in the bigger budget productions they rarely use a zoom at all, some of the best lenses are singular focal length and the movement is provided through the use of a jib, crane, dolly, or Steadycam (and you don't need professional equipment for this, either - a wheelchair makes a great dolly!)

I dig the rack focuses, good use of depth of field and shifting focus. For your indoor shots you probably noticed that your camera's aperture is so wide open though you're depth of field is massive. Should you ever want to work through this, its easily corrected with 2 cheap tungsten lights (one key, one backlight, I'd be happy to explain more if you need but Google will work wonders here). Bring up the lights in the room, and tighten up the aperture to bring the depth back.

Also, I wouldn't juxtapose sticks with hand held shaky cam unless you can get the hand held stuff really smooth or the one stands out over the other - and any time someone is distracted by things of that nature, you aren't telling them your story.

As for the single chip / tri chip and filter discussion: A single chip camera (your CMOS) is nice, but if you were to put a single and a tri chip camera side by side you would see missing colorspace, all the colors are a bit more muted. These are depicted numerically per camera in a format like 4:2:2 where the first number is your green colorspace as well as your luminence, then your red, and then your blue.

Also filters of that nature Velvet have been replaced by modern color correction software. The only filters you will really see anymore are different types of glass that do different things, like how Barbara Walters uses ProMist which irons out her wrinkles, or a UV filter to cut some of the haze out, and cameras shooting sports have star filters on which break the large field lights into 4 point stars. The only time I ever put a gel in front of a lens is to change my white balance (reference color temperature) to "warm up" or "cool down" a shot but I take it away for the actual shooting of the scene.

*edit* Check out this thread: http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=17469
The shoulder mount here would bring some stability in, as well.

Also filters of that nature Velvet have been replaced by modern color correction software.

not suprising to hear you say that although i find it sad. the true art of cinemetography is doomed to the CG

not suprising to hear you say that although i find it sad. the true art of cinemetography is doomed to the CG

You can't overlook the usefulness of color correcting to any color in the visible spectrum later in a controlled environment instead of trying to do it in the field where you are spending a lot more money per minute and have to deal with all sorts of uncontrollable factors (like clouds). However, even with all of the advances in digital technology (the newish Red camera shoots 4096 x 2304 pixels which is close to how many grains of aluminum you'll find on a 35mm cell) you can't beat the look of film and the chaos of which piece of aluminum will catch what piece of light ... and that's why most people still shoot film if they can afford to. But I'll take my FCP (non-linear computer editing) over a Steenbeck and a roll of scotch tape any day.

Wow Kelraz, thanks a ton for the tips and pointers!

The footage you see in the video clip so far was shot in about 1.5 hours, and since it was my first real time out "in the field," I felt pretty rushed and didn't pay enough attention to some of the finer details, even though I had studied a lot of technical things prior to the shoot. In fact, most of the shots were though of on the spot, including the beginning with the camera filming from behind the brush. I'm just lucky that I had enough usable footage to make the song work with the actor lip synching, etc.

I did remember to lock exposure in some shots, but others I forgot, though in the end it didn't turn out too bad in that respect. In hindsight as well I would have used to tripod a lot more, but for some reason I was lazy and thought it was too inconvenient. I color corrected using a Magic Bullet plugin with Vegas Pro, and I was pretty happy with the results. In some of the scenes where it seems a little dark that is mostly because I probably over-adjusted the color correction just a tad.

My DOF and focus was done manually with a focus ring (standard lens... no 35mm DOF adaptor yet), which would explain some of the shakiness. I will keep in mind your tip about avoiding zoom, which makes a lot of sense.

Anyways thanks again for watching and for your comments!

Also the best book I got back in film school, which I still reference today, was $9 and its called "The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film And Video" by Tom Schroeppel. You can probably find a copy of this online somewhere, its a great cheap reference.

Just a little update:

The complete version of my video is now available for viewing here (http://www.vimeo.com/3900258) on Vimeo (downloadable 720p HD).

I wonder if theatrical gels used on lights would work in the same fashion? Something to try...

I wonder if theatrical gels used on lights would work in the same fashion? Something to try...

Certainly but not as effective as a filter because of wrinkles and creases and stuff, and its a lot easier to just do it in post. Though, often I'll white balance through a piece of CTO or a quarter blue to make the shot warmer / cooler.

Certainly but not as effective as a filter because of wrinkles and creases and stuff, and its a lot easier to just do it in post. Though, often I'll white balance through a piece of CTO or a quarter blue to make the shot warmer / cooler.Wrinkles! Keep your gel flat :)

Want to see a great little self made video depicting the exploits of RiP lately?

www.guildrip.com

Want to see a great little self made video depicting the exploits of RiP lately?

www.guildrip.com (http://www.guildrip.com)

Yeah, when nothing happened after 15 seconds I turned it off. Why is it that everyone who makes an internet video feels the need to make an annoyingly long title sequence?

your loss, Nastard hand drew the entire thing and it's flat out awesome....the little blonde toon with a shield is Starrla ;P