Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Settings

I want to talk about second shooters for a second because this is very before we jump into the camera settings I want to talk about this because second shooters are so important to everything that we do they're they're half of our footage if you think about it a second shooter because you're good you're here you're being trained and you're getting all this knowledge but your second shooter's aren't here and your third shooter's aren't here so what happens these guys show up and maybe there aren't a completely different mode than you are and the important thing to do is get them on the same page get them in that same zone that urine as faras attention to detail especially you know with their focusing their shoot techniques what whatever your style is you want to make sure they're kind of on the same page as faras what do we rely on second shooters for primarily b roll just be solid rights be solid and cover my tail just in case I missed something I need you to be there to cover my tail ...

but if your second shooter is not applying the basics good lighting good composition he's moving all over the place was generally ah typical problem with second shooter's when you get back to post what do you do pull it or you're here because you're just like what is this guy done he's killed me because I had the potential to make to produce this incredible film and now half of my footage his garbage it's really just garbage so now half of your film is gonna look good and half it's going to be such an imbalance I know when I look at somebody's work if they have a second shooter problem because some of the shots just look unbelievable and then there's a drop off and I was like wow this guy's dealing with some second shooter was and we all deal with second years I don't deal with second shooter was because my second shooters might wife right she's the best she's probably watching right now now but she is really really good but we've both progressed together and gotten better as a team which is great I know we have a husband and wife team here but a lot of us aren't functioning as a husband and wife team it's kind of you know just a business owner and employee which sometimes is it's a good relation tohave you know you just you just tell the employees what to do and hopefully they'll do it she in my case my wife so I can't really tell her what I do is so much you know so I have to be very careful so it's a different situation but the good thing is that you both equally love your craft and you're both equally trying to get better whereas sometimes with a second third shooter that you maybe pick it up off the street they don't have that same passion in that same care for your company things like that so you just really have to make sure that they're on the same page because they are responsible for fifty percent of your footage keep that in mind at least for the present your foot is going to come from your second shooter and you really need somebody there that's going to cover your tail so hold them accountable I'm sure you're paying them money right you pay your second third shooter right you have to hold them accountable what are you paying for you certainly I don't want to pay for garbage that you can't use so if you're paying the money and you're going to use them a lot make sure they're on the same page I review footage with my wife right after the wedding even sometimes the night of the wedding she doesn't want to hear it like amy alone out here and I just wanna you know I tell you ninety percent of the stuff that we dio is great but I just want to address the ten percent that's could have been done better and not that it was bad it's just areas of improvement that I feel because you should always be aiming towards perfection and we're never going to be perfect but aimed towards perfection you know and always challenge each other too get better always even now I feel like I have so much work to do because honestly I've never been to a school for this we've only been doing this a few years so I always feel like there's stuff to learn there's listen there's always stuff to learn in regards to audio lighting camera work you know you have that kind of down you know you're out every weekend you're doing this stuff but all the technical stuff there's there's tons of stuff to learn I learned stuff every week because I'm not I'm not a lighting engineer I'm not I'm not a sound tech so once I get in there and I start learning this stuff I'm like why I don't even know this stuff and really it makes my job so much easier because maybe I was doing I was doing that was doing stuff so backwards that was taking me forever I was getting the same result but it was taking me forever worse if I just learned that one thing I did it so much faster so there's there's always things to learn right you've so piqued my interest when you said you want your wife to sit down at the end of the night and she's like leave me alone like I want to watch a whole segment on the dynamics between you and your wife and that's like a reality tv show of itself right that's what I want to watch it sounds amazing so but you know the funny thing is even sometimes when when she acts like she's not listening we'll go out the very next week and anything that I talked about the week prior gets addressed so I knew she was even though we bumped heads a little bit and I think you know all husbands and wives you know bump heads a little bit and way never want to be critiqued right because we go out on the wedding day and we work so hard right we've busted our tail the last thing we want to hear is like the things that we did wrong you know and one of the mistakes that I used to make with her was I never addressed the things that she did properly and it got to the point I tell you one time where she just said maybe you should just hire somebody else because I'm not good and I was just like what crazy you're amazing she's like the best second shooter I could ever use and I realized I wasn't given her any positive feedback I was only kind of talking about the little bit of bad that could have been corrected and things like that so I've kind of changed things up and think in my approach to given feedback so when you talk to your second shooters and the shooters always give them the pause hopefully there's some positive that they did that you could give them back but give them some positive so I don't think they're horrible and they just put bury their heads in the sand things like that but definitely addressed the things that could be made to look better even sometimes she addresses stuff that I do just like you should have done more of this and more that yeah so I'm like leave me alone you know I'd tell her lee miller but but then the next event I address it you know I start doing more so just hold your second shooter accountable because it's so important review footage be careful with this too many chiefs and not enough indians ah lot of time a lot of these new studios that air starting up you have what you have to three guys that I'll want to be creative they all want to be the most creative guy on the team they want to like compete with one another to get all these creative shots the problem with creative shots or what their usual short like the shots are short in your short but what else are they their risk we're taking a risk with moments that are never gonna happen again a bride coming down now with her dad I could just put a video camera on a tripod with a nice solid shot in focus good lighting good composition and I would have an okay shot or I could try to achieve like the most incredible shot that's ever been taken of a bride and her father coming down now with you know a slider a glide camera something else and I missed the shot and then it's gone forever and that's why you need to assign tasks you need to say hey I'm going to try this crazy shot but there's a chance you know if somebody steps in front of camera or something happens I'm going to lose the shot but I need a reliable second shooter to cover my tail you know hopefully but you've got to make sure that everybody is not trying to be creative all at once because of you all miss that very important shot you might have to answer some questions later on so just be careful you know just even if you're right I've been at a shoot where you know it was like three creative guys and we still had to say you know what today you know for this you're going to be solid not so created for this you're going to be creative and not so solid and vice versa we kind of took turns but we all understood our roles and at the end of the day everything kind of came together and look great but definitely be careful with that one it just always make sure you have a solid shooter pressure always tried to be better of course my secret camera settings I don't have any secret camera settings this is what I use always this is the exact camera settings that I have on my camera always and only thing that I'm doing here is I'm dropping the default settings for sharpness contrast and saturation because these are all things that could be added back later on in post production you don't really have to have them baked in camera things like that and if you do have a baked in camera the default settings and these cameras look amazing if you shoot this stuff properly and you're satisfied and you don't want to do any type of post work so this just gives you a little bit of latitude as faras getting into post and maybe uh playing with highlights in the blacks and and adding back some of this stuff later on white balance shift does anybody use this in the camorra use this why do you use it for petar you do video on lee right yeah I'm still making on lee and uh one of my cameras is slightly different than the other and so to get them to match ones a little more magenta with a little more green and so just for matching cameras got one to another do you ever use it tio remove say a certain color cast that you may be getting an image not live on set I never dig into that while I'm on a shoot because I'll forget to set it back set about of course I do too so it's in our camera a lot of us know it's there but someone of us don't understand the functionality you understand the functionally obviously he has cameras that he's trying to match and this is great for matching cameras especially if you have you know kind of one camera greener than the next more magenta you can actually go in there and remove some of this color caste that's coming into them and sometimes you're at the you might be out of reception that that's the time that I may use it is at a wedding reception where you have a lot of these like purple florescent lights especially on the dance floor and I just tried tone that down a little bit by may making adjustment here and you just kind of you basically want to push away from the culture that you want to remove uh this is why balan ship of this incorrect so this is this is for uh you're you're white balance in your camera I definitely recommend that use manual kelvin for this to avoid certain color shifts that you may get if you just have it on auto say you know because if you're going from one environment to the next you may get some color shit's going on in there I always recommend that you dahlin um the color temperature with this manual kelvin control check focus this is very very important like I told you before the imagery from these cameras looks amazing when it's in focus I check focus depending on where your check focus is set up on your camera I checked focus for every single shot every single shot during you name it I've checked focus whether it's ceremony bride perhaps groom perhaps first looks reception I check focus for absolutely everything because this imagery looks stunning when it's tax sharpened focus as soon as it soft focus it's just it's not the same camera you know I think you just kind of you're developing the work and it's not the same so if you're if you're one of these shooters that I know they're shooters out there that just hit record and they leave it on record safer like an entire ceremony even if they're doing cutaway shots and they're coming back and they're filming the vowels and the speeches and the readers and the fish on and doing all this and it's just one file it's very risky because you're relying on your eyes andi I work contact some people here wear glasses and things like that but unless you really have like sharp sharp vision there's a chance that you're not going to be in focus you know and that that could be devastating later on if you're not in focus especially we have a lot of like a lot of great shots but they want to focus and then you can't use them you know or you don't really want to use them you know hopefully those aren't your only shot and you have some other shots that are in focus but it could be a color