Snail Bonanza – World Snail Racing Championships from Rii Schroer on Vimeo.

Ready, Steady, Slow was the motto for this quirky little story. But as ever with newspaper work, I was on a tight schedule: shooting on a Saturday afternoon, driving back, and editing to meet a deadline of early Sunday afternoon. I prepared a list of important shots and a rough storyboard the night before, after having spoken to one of the organizers. Being a one-person camera, sound, reporter, and producer team means as much pre-planning as possible, while still leaving enough room for the events to unfold in front of you. Luckily for me, my friend Tansy Sibley was up to join me for this roadtrip to Norfolk and was invaluable for helping out with extra audio.

In the boot of the car were two Canon 5DmkII bodies with one Rode VideoMic and Zacuto Z-finder, Manfrotto tripod with fluid head, Monopod, Zacuto rig with follow focus, Glidetrack slider, Canon Timer remote controller, and my arsenal of Canon lenses plus the Carl Zeiss 100mm macro lens to try out. I’d also brought my stepladder and, still one of the most important assets, the Marantz audio recorder with Sennheiser ME66 shotgun microphone.

We drove two and a half hours through the pouring rain (I’d packed a roll of plastic bags, sellotape, other tape, rain trousers and jacket, and wished I worked in California!) but the downpour miraculously stopped the moment we arrived and, luckily for us, it stayed dry throughout the afternoon.
One pre-planned intro-idea was to do a timelapse sequence of the event being set up with the timer remote controller, but this got scrapped right away; there was not enough setting up going on, with the round table already standing in the middle of the village cricket ground. I switched to plan B, concentrating on the World Championship Snail Racing sign. Shot on the 70-200mm lens locked down on the tripod, pulling focus was done by hand on this one.

As I was there to shoot pictures as well, one 5DmkII dangled around my shoulder for stills while the other was rigged for video. In retrospect that was rather impractical, and I should have rigged up both cameras for filming. Changing plates repeatedly – with one for the Zacuto rig and another one for the Manfrotto tripod head – cost valuable time, and it would have been so easy to have used the camera rigged for the tripod for shooting stills as well. Another alternative would have been to rig up the Zacuto rig on the tripod in the first place. This would have allowed for use of the focus puller on the tripod too.

Rii with the Manfrotto tripodhead plate (L) and the 394 plate used on the Zacuto rig. Photo credit: Graham Fox

Nevertheless, one of the best little gadgets is a Miller key-chain mini screwdriver for changing plates, that I once got given at a trade fair. Invaluable, sturdy, and always with you (unless you lose your keys)!

The Miller keyring screwdriver. Photo credit: Graham Fox

The snail “racing” scenes were mostly filmed with the Zeiss 100mm f2 macro lens , which I tested on the day and got hooked on. Some nice focus pulling shots, alternating between the racing snails, did not make it into the edit as the material on the “humping” seemed to give a funny little twist to the story. Still, it was great to try it out. The longer arc of travel from minimum focus to infinity allows focus pulling to be more precise and smoother due to more resistance in the lens barrel.
Audio was tricky even with Tansy’s assistance as the sound around the racing ring went from quiet murmurs to enthusiastic shrieks. The speakers in the background – which were broadcasting line dancing, alternating with a brass band – did not help matters. It was the kind of situation when easy-to-reach audio controls are desperately needed, as are proper headphones. I managed to do the interviews with the snail racing enthusiasts pointing away from the line dancing/brass band action, and that worked rather well with the Marantz audio recorder and shotgun microphone. The hotshoe-attached Rode microphone without a controlling device can be handy for background sound and quiet interview situations, but could not have done this job on its own. Back home, the files were converted with MPEG Streamclip into Apple ProRes files and edited in Final Cut Pro 7.

I’m always looking out for a front page picture, but my hopes of exposing the Queen as a snail racing enthusiast (her summer residence, Sandringham, is only 3 miles away) were disappointed. The lack of doping controls should occupy the International Olympic Committee until 2012, but I didn’t spot any scandals. However, the Norfolk regional accent and warm welcome of the crowd certainly compensated for those let-downs.

There is always room for improvement on shoots. A smooth and fast workflow for rigging and changing the tools you want to work with is extremely important, especially when time is precious, as is quick focusing, and an always (!) steady hand with the rig support. I was a bit disappointed at not using the Glidetrack as originally planned for some crowd shots alongside the ring, but rigging it up on two stands (the long one-metre version) and hence carrying around even more equipment was just not practical in this case, particularly as there were space restrictions in the ring.

I hope you enjoyed the piece anyway. Comments, suggestions, criticism, and advice are appreciated and welcome.

You can contact Rii at:
RII VISUALS
www.riischroer.de
www.vimeo.com/user1008646

A snapper’s thoughts on how a stint in short-film shooting can provide valuable experience for creating cinematic documentary pieces

I am a newspaper photographer for The Daily/Sunday Telegraph and The Times (UK) and took my first steps into DSLR-video shooting when the Canon 5DmkII came out. I started with a “shut up and shoot” approach and an interest in short pieces I felt were better captured with video than pictures only, such as 16 Teeth, capturing Cumbria’s last traditional rakemakers:

16 TEETH – Cumbria’s last traditional rakemakers from Rii Schroer on Vimeo.

However, a recent stint in short-film making (taking part in the Canon/Vimeo contest: Beyond the Still by Vincent Laforet) was a real eye-opener into the wide possibilities of cinematic DSLR- video shooting. I found some of these experiences of great inspiration and good training for documentary/feature/news reporting.

In short-film making every sequence needs as much planning as possible, and the intensity of the visual side produces the discipline of looking at the shoot in-depth from as many different views as possible. It is about getting to grips with how to achieve certain shots technically and looking into what equipment can be useful in creating those shots.

HEARTBEAT – 5D Mark II from Rii Schroer on Vimeo.

Doing a cinematic short, you try to figure out how emotion, a sense of place, action, or the revealing of layers can be solved technically. What visual look and feel do you want to give your piece to transmit your message? How can this look be created? It is a good playground for trying out various techniques and equipment, such as pulling focus, car suction mounts and Glidetracks. You are also considering when to use static shots or steady/Glidecam/handheld rig images, what ratio of wide, middle, tight shots to go for, or whether a panoramic shot, timelapse or slow motion sequence might add to the story.
Experimenting with creating a short film was a fun experience, although a quite time consuming one. I have been told by a filmmaker, add 2 or 3 times the time you expect it to take, which was about right in this instance.

Day 2: Lucy running her heals off...took us a while to get the stop in the middle of the tree group right, but got there in the end, exactly when the sun came out. Nice!

Day 2: Yorkshire tea break - a finger warm up desperately needed!

Our piece was created in two-and-a-half weeks from the idea, through scriptwriting and three days of shooting, to editing – alongside our day jobs. Locations had to be scouted; permission for shooting in the parks obtained; schedules for team, composer, and actors drawn up (this was a no budget production); equipment, insurance and props organized; whilst praying for the weather to stay stable (no rain or snowstorms!)

We wanted to try out as much equipment as we could get our hands on to get as much experience as possible. Lighting for the moving image proved to be challenging; for example, in the moving car scene, getting rid of reflections from our modelling light flash units. LCD-lighting panels, which we gelled with CTOs, were great to use for the night scenes. As we did not go for much dialogue, we put sound issues to one side during the shoot. In retrospect it proved to be a mistake, costing valuable hours in the editing suite.

Not only did we acquire valuable experience during the shoot, we also learnt a lot in retrospect, analysing what we could have done differently and more coherently – especially regarding the running scenes (shorter edit, more camera movement). Setting a deadline for your project feels important though.

I found that, even if some equipment will not always be of use for documentary film-making (eg if you have to keep it small-scale for a “fly on the wall” approach), gaining knowledge about what works well in certain situations and how to use it is immensely helpful. No matter what field one is in, it is beautiful to create visually attractive pieces, and this is the fun part of using your photographic knowledge.

Day 3: Lantern Theatre, Sheffield was absolutely lovely - what a gem! Wished we could have used it more.

The five amazing entries that made it to the final of the Beyond the Still competition were produced by professional production/videographer teams not by the targeted sector of “photographers becoming filmmakers.” This is an interesting trend that was confirmed at the recent Broadcast Video Expo in London; it seems that it is the professional filmmakers, who are going crazy about DSLR shooting. But watching and creating cinematic shorts can be exciting for the documentary shooter and useful for creating strong sequences and story telling in the documentary field of work. And the amazing technical possibilities offered by HD DSLR cameras leave no excuse not to get your hands on one and use your knowledge and expertise, already acquired through photographic reportage/news work, to create those stories you want to tell.

Rii Schroer
www.riischroer.de
http://www.vimeo.com/user1008646