Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: A Set Up Shot

We are now going to cover the setup shoot that we did. So, we plan to look at this setup shoot we did with the young violinist, who you met during the earlier pre-shoot video. And then we're gonna go through the workflow of bringing all of this content into premier and how to start to distill that content into the best usable bits that are going to create the final documentary. And then, you'll get to see, later this afternoon, what that finished piece look like. So, you'll get to actually see those building blocks and in my mind, this is really where, it's the great mystery to most people because we understand what it takes to get out there and shoot the footage. We understand what it is to deal with people and relate to people and then there's this black magic that seems to happen between that and then watching something really polished that somehow, by a magic wand, turned from raw content into finished film. So, we're gonna go through all those steps. So, to get started. Yeah, bu...

t first, the set-up shot. (both laughs) So, we felt that in the context of this film, the fact that we were given this gift of Takumi, this young violinist, and I think Julie, she came up with this idea and this was actually before we came here to Seattle while we were doing pre-production calls with the CreativeLife folks and this is typical of how it would work, whoever are your liaisons or client or what have you, the liaisons to the subject matter that Julie thought, well, if we can get this violinist to play a full piece and recorded in a clean sound so that the very least we have a complete piece played, laid down with perfect sound. And so, the CreativeLive folks, fortunately had a nice studio to work with. We don't always have that luxury. And then, what you're gonna see here is what we produced, what we shot and you're gonna see pretty much at least, I think we had him play twice. So we had him redo it. And, again, audio is critical in this. Lighting is critical. We took care, well, again, we were able to benefit from the lighting that CreativeLive did. Good job, thank you, guys. And then, camera angles, right? Right. Again, always looking for different camera angles. And the way we dealt with this was we had one camera on a tripod in a fixed position, and so we just, again, we know we have a safe shot, that we can always come back to it. And then I was on, actually with a 400, a really long lens, on a tripod doing kinda details and more abstracted, well, not that abstracted, but more abstracted kinds of shots. Right, and doing a piece about music, obviously, the music is paramount and the idea of having someone perform a live piece absolved me of the responsibility of having to find music to put onto this video. So, isn't that a wonderful thing? There's nothing more satisfying than being able to record something authentic to the situation and not having to go to some royalty-free music site to find something that we'll have to do in a pinch. I know, maybe this is a good moment, hadn't planned on talking about how you normally deal with audio for the sound. Yeah. So, I do use royalty-free sites a lot. I have opted, after many years, to actually have a blanket license with one of the suppliers. Over the years, many years I did not have a blanket license, an annual license with anybody because as we all know, you can go through royalty-free sites and listen to a thousand pieces of music to find one that you like. And, for most of us, I know, that I might know the genre of music I need for a scene but I can't articulate exactly what I want until I hear it, and so, you just, it's very time consuming to go through track after track after track. Sometimes, what I'll do is I have certain royalty-free sites I go to often. So, what I'll do is create folders of sentimental music, emotional, dark, I'll make my own folders because I might come across something I like, and I don't wanna have to try to find it again. So, it helps a lot, while you're doing your research to be building folders within each of the royalty-free sites to save you time in the future. Typically, I don't want to skimp on music if it's going to really help my edit because music creates emotion. I will qualify that. I think you wanna use as little music as possible in the course of your film, but use it in a way that really enhances and adds a dimension that is not created through the footage itself. And by that, I mean like, it drives me up the wall when I watch a short doc and there is music playing the entire time. To me, what that says is you couldn't pull it out from your visuals. That's all it says to me. It says to me that you needed that music to make it feel like it was moving along. So, it's really important to recognize that music is not, it's not the antidote to slow editing. If the editing is that slow, or you don't have the content, the music, don't try to just mask it with music. Figure out how to make that edit more dynamic. So, that said, then music is another sensory experience and it's a manipulative experience as well, 'cause I know that I can tug at your heart strings by playing an emotional piece of music. I know I can get you a little more anxious by some sort of a bed that's a little tense. So, I wanna use that in a really, really intentional way, not a lazy way and not in exchange for the other elements of the film, spoken word and visual. So, I think it's also interesting when you're editing to swap out musics and try a couple of different tracks to see how it influences what that edit feels like 'cause it really can change your entire experience of a scene if there's music there or not. When I'm cutting something that I know is music-driven, then the music has to come in as I'm editing, it's gotta be there already. Whereas if I'm cutting more of a variety situation or just building my narrative, it's fine. I don't want any music 'cause it's a bit of a distraction. So, you do have to decide, is the music motivating the edit or vice versa. Right. Let's let it go here. Okay, you're in for a treat. So we're back at the CreativeLive studio and we're gonna film Takumi playing the violin. We've set up a couple of lights, we did that in advance. And, we've got a rug underneath him to absorb some of the sound. We've already determined that we want him pulled away from the wall, so that we can blur the wall a little bit, and really focus all of the light and camera attention on Takumi while he plays. We decided to use two different lenses, we've got a 50 on this camera, so that we can get the shallow depth of feel, that'll be a static camera, and then we've got a Four. 400, a 400 on this camera. So, we'll get very, very, very tight details on him to interplay between the two. Ready? Okay, great. So, just give us a minute and let's make sure you're still in position. (Takumi speaks faintly) Sorry. Will I be playing through a piece? Yeah, you're gonna. Just play the whole piece start to finish. And so, what I would like you to do is, you're probably okay, I may have you just a hairline to your right again. Yes, perfect. That's it. Okay, so we're ready. You good? Julie. I'm good. I'm rolling. Okay, rolling. (violin music) Wow. (Ed exhales sharply) Wow. Awesome. Truly, truly beautiful. I feel like crying actually. Oh. (Ed exhaling sharply) How does it feel to play something like that? I mean, it's fine, (laughs) I think I'm playing good. This setting makes me a little nervous. Yeah. Well, you don't seem nervous. Thank you. At all, at all. That was amazing. Oh, inspiring. Yeah. You wanna do one more time or, of course you do. That's a dumb question. I've always wanna do one more time. (Ed laughs) You know what I'd love to do? What? Could we, I know you're gonna hate me for this, but could we pull a Osmo out and let him do one and let's move on it. Okay, so then. No, if you don't wanna do that. No, no, no. I understand. I'm happy to play, happy to play, so. And what do we, just put this camera aside for now, or. Well, we. Actually, you seem to hold your position very well. Yeah. You're not moving, I mean, you're moving but you're not really. So, I could, there is a vision there that was so gorgeous. Yeah. You know what? Actually, we do this way. You don't need to monitor this. No. We'll just let this roll, you play with this. I'll do the Osmo, okay? Deal. I like that. (violin music) Wow. (humming in approval) Pretty cool, huh? Wow, you weren't kidding. Yeah. When I said, how long have you been playing? He said, "12 years." I said, how old are you? He said, "15." Yeah. That's commitment. That's 10,000 hours. Yeah. Already. Yeah. And he's only 15. Puts us to shame. Right. So. (Julie exhales sharply) Yeah, I feel emotional just even. Yup, mm-hmm. This is the third or fourth time going through it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. We're very lucky, very lucky to experience that. So, what are the takeaways? All right, so we did two takes of the song. Obviously, it's a static subject. We were able to shoot it and work this situation from different angles. The first round you saw, we did in a very safe, stationary way. The second round, it didn't make sense to repeat what we had done because it's not like he was performing a different song. I'm also assuming that the two takes were close enough that it was easy to cut between version one and version two. Partly because our ears are not trained nearly as well. He was probably off 1/100 of it, pace, in his beat or something. But we would never know the difference. So, in the multiple takes, it gave us that kind of latitude to then mix it up, play a little bit and just see what else we could pull from that situation. If we had more time, we would have done more than two take. Oh yeah. I think he certainly has it within him to do more. Yeah, yeah. The audio you saw that we had a boom pole set-up, we decided that would be the best in that situation. Because he's also moving quite a lot, that's just the logical way to capture that sound. We had a lav on him when he was at David shop and so, any of the audio where he's playing in the shop is through the lav, which was blowing the lav out when he would start. So, there was a lot of, kind of adjusting and then there's also the hitting of the lav because it's where his violin is. So, the boom mic made the most sense. The sound quality is beautiful. The rug underneath helped because it was quite a large room, that just helped to buffer a little bit the resonance. And then that mic, if you saw it was quite close also. It's as close as it can be and still remain out of frame. In the second take, that first camera with the 50 millimeter lens, you were still running that on the tripod, was that purely for audio off the boom and do you just throw away that footage with that hand-held camera? Never throw any, we don't throw any of the footage away. And part of what we did is we thought, you know what, so this is gonna be the shot that you see beyond the seams also because Ed is coming and going and it was in such a context that it was one of those things that you never know. What if you wanted to break it down so it doesn't feel like you're pretending, this visual is disembodied. To break the fourth wall. Breaking the fourth wall. So, you never know. It could be useful as footage. So, we never throw it away. Storage space is so cheap too, and it feels like I'd rather store everything, hold on to it, until it's just so outdated, nobody can use it for anything. And also, I had told Takumi, I said to he and his mother afterwards, that I'm happy to give you a polished start to finish edit of this performance. So what I'll do, is I've multi-cammed it and I'll just cut between shots, paste it all up, and then they will have for their own sake, a copy of this to keep when he's applying to schools it was a beautiful performance. All right, so lessons learned in terms of, sort of overall comments about making a short film and in relation to what we've done also as well. I hope you've seen like, use your time efficiently. Also, don't overshoot, which is kind of, maybe goes against the answer of the last question. But that as much as possible, when you're working on a tight timeline and if you know you're only gonna produce a short piece in the end, 'cause we don't always know that. A lot of the films we enter into, we know that it's not gonna be 30, 60, 90 minutes but we don't know if it'll be three minutes or 15 minutes. So, we don't restrict our shooting. But when it comes to either client work or let's say something like this where there's real finite goal here. It's better not to overshoot because it creates all these other backend responsibilities and issues. They're time consuming.