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General Q&A

you've done a side shot in the side shot so you want to amount of shop would you cut to a detail and then you can do that I don't know where you can look directly at her face there's no problem there and just have one off center and you'll see that in a lot of like documentaries also talking to somebody that's because like myself for like somebody who isn't used to being behind the camera they start stuttering and they're like I don't know what I'm looking for grace to say yes for way but I think it's what you're asking you are you planning your edit as you're shooting so that's what this specific sheet is its remember before that lindsay showed you what she was going to shoot and she had visual pictures I write things out I'm more of like okay I like this I like I think this would look that way in my head the pictures that she has on paper is what I have in my head at the present moment so for me I'm breaking down what the lines are based on shot types they're inside my head as oppose...

d to lindsay's very visual search I'm visual to the children mark it down on a piece of paper that's from her boudoir like she took from her but you are at more or less how things should be posed things that look correct on a female in regards to posing for a video yes I'm gonna direct him for the upset face he's not giving me a very upset face but I noticed this place and his job his muscles flare out so I'm going back to that way we'll see I just wanted to understand as you were going through this process if your guests visually cutting already and how much of that comes from working as your own editor so that you know what usable and what's not when you can move on those kinds of it's a great question right now the way that I'm seeing everything is the way that it's going to be laid out in the video which isn't normally always the case right now I'm doing it in regards to timeline I'm starting I'm starting off the set and I'm filming my away forward that's not always the case when you're filming everything I say that because we shot the boudoir section we mentioned this yesterday was using an app to say the beginning that we were going to shoot at the beginning if we would if we would have shot it progressively throughout the day I would have missed the whole scenario whole whole scene because it wasn't lit so it really depends on a couple different factors how you edit versus what's reasonable for out today throughout the day this scene is completely lit stationary all the time if I really wanted to I could just focus on this on then afterwards I can get little details even when he's gone so I have to like plan my day out that way if he was if he's only available from twelve to one and he's the president united states and that's the only thing the only our that aiken what to go photograph and I can't say shoot so photograph him I know that I don't have time to shoot details I know I don't have time for certain things I will plan out my day accordingly and say ok if he's speaking he's a president united states and I have to film new york and I have to film you know different pictures see at new york washington d c and a bunch of little clips throughout the white house I want my whole our dedicated towards him so I'm gonna I'm gonna get the shots that I need that I'm thinking for him for someone it stylistically think what shots do I need for mr president and then go out and take my time to shoot the other shots so it really depends on who your client is what you're doing and how you're setting up your day you like I said you wouldn't see this normally you wouldn't see this on my set normal sounds like you're saying that your details are usually filled so you don't know where you're gonna put them starting out usually do you have ever likes a three minute video ever have like a set amount that you feel like you need to have a different details because you know when you go into a wedding some people have great shoes and some people have you know fabulous decorations or whatever and you have more details do you ever have feel like you need like a minute like I need twenty different details if your thing is deep tails is a photographer and you want to shoot those details that's great there's a lot of photographers that don't shoot details and only shoot the like the actual ceremony is a video for video like the like you know the scan across the phone but again what I'm what I'm trying to get to is it depends on your stylistic approach to shooting things between the two of us we shoot a lot of details so that's our stylistic approach to things so if your photographers that shoots the details that's great so you can do as much as you want as long as you have the time to do so if I was in a in a wedding environment and I need to set my time to do a whole wedding throughout the day so I have stills and have video to do throughout the day and it sounds completely logical to dio um I would go ahead and focus on what's the most important for my client the first thing is is photos or video more important to you then the detail aspect okay do I have enough time to get the details do I have enough time to get certain things and judging based on time what you can do so if details is the last again details like the last you know icing on the cake and you can't get it and the most important shot is her dancing with her father and you've got that record I'd rather have that little minute details so it really is up to you your day and what you're doing in your workflow again and how fast you are shooting things again it's it's improbable to get one hundred oh in twenty percent out of yourself and shoot stills and video and have like a perfect perfect situation like that because you're only gonna get one time that the bride and groom kiss you only get one time that the father dances with his daughter for the first time so what do you great at how fast can you capture yes thank somebody for today you know many believe it I broke it down this was actually five paragraph so one point and I knew it was taking too long this will probably cuts about thirty forty five seconds this isn't anything so not a long piece whatsoever and the reason I'm doing that is for editing purposes for tomorrow if I could do that in three hours I cannot teach you guys how to do a three minute for minute video because it could take me a lot longer than three hours it could take me eight nine ten hours to make sure everything's color grated right everything's perfectly in focus I want and I'll tell you guys this tomorrow when I'm editing I'm constantly making excuses what I'm shooting I'm constantly making the uh camera synch up to save myself time and editing I make sure that I make a preset for colored rating which will discuss tomorrow as well and just basically changed my brightness in my contrasts and then I can kind of export the quickest file possible it's just I try to save myself time because time to me is money and time means that I spend more time with other clients and doing other projects but she said so so as I've been here lindsey's been shooting lots of detail shots so that goes back to if I don't have enough time and I'm working with my clients say all this time instead of talking I was shooting I don't have time to do that having a second shooter on site helps so that's why video sometimes is easier having two people there but it isn't improbable to do it yourself I would just make a distinction what's important for what you're trying to get for that and I know you had a question was wondering for fun things like this how often are you shooting test shoots like this and how often are you only like are you mostly only shooting paid between the two of us we do very very limited test shoes so we've already mixed it into our portfolio so we're selling this soup clients and as an added value or as personal projects yesterday we showed you guys a designer that wind it up using that specific footage for their fashion week video on a longboard walk that they wanted renting out so they rented out like pier fifty whatever it is and they played it on a giant screen up there and then the second it finished that was a creepy first video we showed you which is the first one he walks out on stage with the same outfit that he was winding up wearing there so it's it's still usable in that specific capacity that's just with the with the harley stuff that's not trade that's payment like that's that's more or less and then the a couple of fashion videos will do it for our portfolios only because it's more attractive to different clients because we're trying to make sure that client see that we do two different things not just look books because we'll get paid to do look books but what happens if you get a look book and commercial it's depending on the client that you know you're trying to pitch to um we've done stuff like mock ads which I guess you would call like a test shoot but mock ads are for us and a lot of videographers will do that just to pick up work they'll say oh I can shoot the specific style with hopes to shoot for that specific client same way that you doing photography so jeff have you what else do we need for this shot what are you looking at that is still needed for for the movement well as I've been speaking I've been watching her detail shots right so at this point I turned to lindsay if I wasn't shooting and I'm just directing for the dancy lindsay we got all detail shots can we get a couple of wider shots because I don't think we had enough material to shoot and lindsay is still shooting the you're fine I'm just I'm explaining right now so she's still shooting detail shot so what do I know I need to do I need to get wide shots to complement what she's shooting so I'll go in I'm going to take this off I'm gonna go ahead and shoot on a shoulder rig just a couple different shots and we'll mix the two because if not what happens is all I got is detail shots for the day I'm just going to take one or two shots so we have something running the other thing I can do is just set this up record and cut back and forth like frame it up and just let it run that was my next question was do you ever get wide shots while your second shooter is getting the details do you ever just to get exactly the same motion absolutely so in an instance like this if I wanted to I could just bring this up let me actually do it nicely and not like haphazardly and lock it in focus I'm not gonna actually you know what I'll shoot so for her right now the frame it up you guys don't see it on there it's focusing so I'm also looking at the way that she's shooting and I noticed that his hands were very red on that screen but that's because of the screen so I know that we're both in sync I'm not really worried about that you go ahead and press record lens can you continue to shoot his action there so there goes an example of hims hyping and match action with her detail shots so aiken merged the two together that's an instance where we're shooting together to have two different set scenes are you in my shop now the only thing that's in my shop is our of your hair jeff can I ask another technical question a lot of people have been asking about white balance customizing a white balance with mixed light and if you guys got together and set up your white balance the same yeah everything everything that we do is in sync so because we use the same camera because we use the same lenses um all day long lenses that we're using your signal lenses a lot of times she has more lenses than I do and she's a sigma shooter so I'll just borrow her lens and I'll use their so everything looks similar so like we mentioned before this looks a little red so I would generally change my white balance but for I mentioned today I'm just gonna shoot whatever looks good out of the camera for right now and switching in color correction so we'll discuss that tomorrow aggressive color correction between the two but we're in sync all the time settings lenses cameras everything and could you talk just a little bit about how you approached white balance for this particular scene sure especially with the mixed light with all the different difficulties in this situation this one here's hell I just pressed that like if he was actually gonna work it's actually just pull this underneath under here I figure how to pull it out sounds wrong this's actually it's fake it's there's no light in here whatsoever it's just a little magnet underneath um I generally would gel this so where it is tungsten light that was the only thing that's mixed in that specific set so I'm making sure not to shoot the it's still rolling that way so you guys now like that still recording so everything that they're doing he's still there so just know it's it's multipurpose I'm not shooting the background I'm avoiding shooting anything on the white because that's a different color matters I can switch everything but for purposes again of today I'm just taking the easy route that makes any sense so any other questions receiving it and setting it what do you put your aperture at if he's sitting there and he's not moving what would you put it out so that all his head movement is in focus or do you mind if he goes in and out of focus as they're interacting it depends on what I'm trying to shoot so for right now it's at four it's not like a two eight or one eight so it's far enough away I think to not have any major issues of going in and out of focus in that specific instance I don't mind because I'm going to use cuts of it I'm using the whole scene so I don't mind that as much if I was shooting an event I try to shoot kind of a natural set like f ate or f eleven so I have everything and focus all the time spending on when I'm shooting wait that was my family blanche you said you're all sigma so I have some nikon lenses now and I'm looking at getting some other land is if you were to mix in a sigma and there would the colors change it all as faras white balance goes okay so teo colors can change depending on the length but that's not necessarily the brand so you're one night home runs to another might be slightly different there's supposed to be neutral okay I would say it's based on the quality of the glass that you pick and so a long time and I was like really a less expensive uh zoom from seventeen to three hundred is gonna have color shift even throughout the spectrum versus like a fifty one four should be neutral perfect so I think the only thing that we're missing parts the shots is that there's a fake cigarette and a fake apple juice on that desk so I think we need to figure out how to get him to drink it it's apple juice it's okay you can't get drunk on set yeah I'm just gonna move this light it's not correct your mission on again because no one you know if I can figure it out you know we're going to be so close it doesn't really matter but I mean if you want to get do you want us to add him to the white balance um one thing about white bones is if you really look at him if there's not mixed light on him then you just set the white balance for whatever's predominant in the scene so yes some of the background might go blue but as long as it's not tainting him it's not really a big deal if say we had a window over here and it was getting a little bit of phil on the side of his face what we do is we take a black piece of foam core put it right off to the side of the set so it wouldn't be interacting a lot of times in movies if you notice they have white balance is all over the place on purpose because it ends to lend to having more dramatic mood so the fact that like I'm looking at that back white wall were on tungsten it's lit by the daylight balanced lights that we have here in the in the studio that's fine it's not that's not a big focus but if he was looking a little bit blue that would be where I would make a change a custom white balance actually won't really help you because what's hit by daylight we'll still be daylight what's hit by thompson leaves so be hit by tungsten unless it's either really mixed or they're not really tungsten there much warmer or is not really daylight it's much later in the day so it's really blue so that's when a custom y pounds would help you out and again I talked about earlier how you would use an expo disc to get accustomed white balance and set in your video you need to do it for both cameras so the other thing I'm thinking about right now is that she's been speaking I've been recording him if you notice he's more fluid he doesn't notice that I'm recording him and he's been doing the little natural movements I like that I like I have that over late in my video so while I'm sitting there you know we're just chan I'm literally recording the whole time because I know at some point they're going to something that's natural that I wanted them to do anyway that they can't do acting so just know that kind of always have your camera recorded certain aspects just press record and try to make people feel comfortable so I think you find your camera shake you know what I mean if you're holding it and if you're using am trifon you're fun I wouldn't use a mono pod and sometimes and people on the chat room we're going to hate me I do this and just press record and talk to I'm not far enough away where if this thing starts the fault I'm speaking to them but I'm really looking at this in my peripheral vision so if this thing starts to fall over but this thing is very very still right now and it's consistently rolling so I have this isn't rolling right now let me just so it's consistently rolling looking at that specific subject I can talk to him the whole time they feel more more comfortable perfect I don't mind doing that a lot of time so um did we have an issue with this in life you're no this marked no we're fine um because I just wanted to show lunch choices you can keep fielding questions while I try to forget it's out of fuel any questions definitely uh let's go with rick escalante question about timing do you have an idea of how much put it you need to match the length of the spoken scene is there a way that you approach that um it depends on what I'm trying to shoot I've shot things in storyboard it where I only needed twelve different shots so I'll have like thirty six different times anything three times each specific clip but if I'm just trying to be creative like today I might end up with like fifty gigs I mean it really depends I've ended up the baby video what do we end up with two hundred gigs of information that I think was like eighty five okay I'm being facetious it's like eighty five hundred gigs and that's just because we let it roll on certain cameras so it's rolling for hours like unset like it's almost like behind the scenes video I'll speed it up and just you know see what happened when lindsay and I are on set going back to the photography thing were videotaping ourselves shooting on set so we have a behind the scenes video jeff can I ask a follow up question about timing sure you know I see lindsay shitting all these details and I could see myself just getting carried away with time do you find that how do you how do you control yourselves how do you know about each other how do you have two hours to get this done and how do you not how does that not aunt I'm taking four I personally do storyboarding with if I'm gonna do a shot I didn't we didn't know the set that we were going to dio I'm doing things that the way that lindsey would do them for coming forward to shot I'm not drawing everything out I liked to draw so for me and every you know what I'm going to mock up and I'm going to wind up utilizing the end so I have a rough estimate that I need I'll make from those drawings for the storyboards I'm covering with cameras are from the storyboards more or less how many seconds each specific shots supposed to be and what my final product is supposed to pay if I'm lindsay for the day and I'm only following lindsay I might record indefinitely until I find that I mean you're getting hours and hours and hours of recording if you do it this way but I know that I have what I need if that makes any sense like her detail shots right now I know that that's not apiece unless it's a detail shot piece but if that's your thing that's your thing you know for two minutes and if I don't think it's long enough to be a whole three minutes song I'll fade out the song and just leave it as a forty five second piece or in one minute fifteen second piece which is kind of her one fifteen minutes of one minute fifteen second rule offends at home working with it's interesting to me because you know everyone has their strength and weakness so you guys are so different and for someone like lindsay I guess what her what she needs to work on is the storyboarding and making sure she gets the shots and maybe I'm not saying you protect in particular but you know and maybe if you're more of ah if you're more strategic you need to think more about getting those creative shots so that's kind of cool confident depending on how you work and I think that we've we've basically said that many times which is be creative be yourself and just stave motivated to finish the day don't don't feel like god I can't do this delete format there's something usable and everybody's flooded you just really have to learning from our mistakes there's a lot of times were like that shot sucked and the one that we did good in let's if we were doing a slider shot was never focused to begin with so it looks better to use the less than great clip than it was to use the movement and the other one if that makes any sense so what I want you to same shot and I want you to take it well haven't drinking first he's like what do you want me to do okay focus in your lips so we have one time to do this right there's no more apple juice in there watch I'm lying it's not apple justice whiskey so which hand you won't take a minute there you go one two three perfect perfect good acting he's like right onto the cigarette perfect he's never acted before which is kind of cool and I just want to know about the amount of footage how much to shoot keep in mind what you're supposed to aim for is about it totally depends obviously but you're even for like two to three seconds of clip but you might have one clip that like it's two seconds here two seconds here and you interspersed with things so yeah one clip could go much longer but you don't really want to stay in one shot for any longer than maybe four five seconds because then it's communicating like something is building or something forlorn door it's really quiet but if you want it to kind of move ford and like a tournament in two to three minute piece if you're on if your clips on the screen for ten seconds that's usually not a good thing unless it's like the ok go video because they're talking about they do one shot one take of like these like just epic dances and it's awesome so look up ok go and if you have a piece like the grandfather piece that we did yesterday which is it's a beautiful piece an entirety but it's actually from a longer a longer story when it was written it was written with the intent to write it to a grandson but what happens is you have all of these kind of things you want to tell your grandkids that you overwrite right and what he originally was absolutely beautiful but we started do doing was taking things out in post processing because we wanted to keep it within a certain time period so you're still interested and although it was really beautiful it was even more beautiful in the original file so by no by no means do you have too much or too little information as long as you get something that people are interested in length like obviously for commercial you would but I mean in like the grandfather situation like both safer package you're pricing you know and you're like a three minute video you know and it comes out to forty five or whatever have you ever made it longer than you originally wanted it to be over deliver I would always overdeliver but at the same time be very upfront and honest with your client what are you looking for if it's not supposed to be a documentary by all means and it's just supposed to be for like their website and or their facebook or with their family just say listen look we'll do it if you're just starting out my recommendation is do it as an added value and just say it's an added value I'm not going to charge you two to begin with but you can charge me your photography prices if that's what you want to do just include that and you could make it your length don't make any guarantees and so you feel comfortable the length that you're trying to edit on my situation it's usually like for music videos were like you shot it's a very specific lincoln you're like crap I don't have enough footage so you just kind of like use those clips that you were like oh man I'm only supposed to use this one then I just use it a little bit more or like I remixed it with like special effects on the next time through um that what you want to do let me just preface that but that's not usually the case