I work with a small news team of mostly writers at Florida International University in Miami. The institution is fairly young and we created a news website just a year ago; the department only recently began incorporating videography in its coverage. We’re still working out what videos we do and how we do them, but the introduction of video has definitely opened up all sorts of possibilities for storytelling.

I try to create videos that take a deeper look into the news, life and personalities of a college campus. Instead of just making a news report about a recent law school graduation, I want to know what it really means to have a law degree. I have been shooting on my Panasonic GH1 for the past seven months and my most recent piece was a pre-season weight training video for the Florida International University football team.

 

It was the team’s last day of weight training before they moved on to training camp, so this was the heaviest lifting that they would do all season. I wanted to capture the raw power of these athletes. At 5:45 a.m. I arrived at the quiet and empty weight room before the team arrived. Fifteen minutes later the air was filled with shouting, grunting and weights slamming onto racks. The noise was deafening.

For another football video I created the previous week, we wanted to feature the voices of the players with more journalistic storytelling. 

This time, I wanted to try something different and create a piece that was less journalistic and more stylized, capturing the intensity of the atmosphere. I believe some stories are told better with images than words. For this particular video I used a Panasonic GH1 mounted on a Barska Accu Grip, a Dynex Video Accesory Bracket, and a Tascam DR-07 portable recorder. This is a very simple and affordable set up that really works well. I have nicer rigs than this, but it seems to be my favorite run-and-gun setup right now. 

I keep changing my rig and eliminating more and more gear because I get frustrated with how limiting shoulder rigs are to my mobility and I usually end up going hand-held. The dolly shots were done using the Motion Slider 36, mounted on a Velbon DV-7000 tripod. My camera has the Tester13 firmware hack installed and the difference in image quality is quite astonishing. The Tascam DR-07 is much more affordable than the commonly used Zoom H4N and it has wonderful sound quality, especially with the Redhead Windscreen. I use various prime lenses such as the Canon 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.8 or Panasonic’s 20mm f1.7 and Leica’s 25mm f1.4, I even use some CCTV lenses. Whenever I go out to an event, I go along with a reporter who organizes everything and gets the interviews but I never actually show the reporter in the video. This is as much a stylistic choice as it is because we don’t have anyone trained to do on-camera work. I edit all of my videos in Adobe Premiere CS5 and do my coloring in Magic Bullet looks. 

Please take a look at some of my other pieces on our YouTube page, such as our recent video on the White Coat Ceremony.  

This is an annual event where incoming medical students are given their medical coats for the first time. We used a wireless Sennheiser G3 microphone and plugged it directly into the GH1 for the interviews. For event filming with large crowds, I find that the wireless hand-held mic gives the most isolated audio possible.

I post my personal work on Vimeo.com/DougGarland

Anamorphic Miami from Doug Garland on Vimeo.

 

Haiti Earthquake Aftermath Montage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

When two international TV networks asked me to go to Haiti to shoot ENG footage I was very uncertain about what to expect. Like many others I was getting my information on what was happening on the ground from the news and occasionally by word of mouth. Almost everyone who knew of my trip tried to talk me out of it, which in itself was very frustrating. The networks wanted us there as soon as possible and there was no time for preproduction or coordination.

Almost all the images and videos coming out of Haiti had become all too familiar and I knew that was not how I wanted to capture a story of this significance. The idea that life goes on even in the most horrific state of despair was fascinating to me and getting that concept across was my main goal in shooting this montage. I wanted to focus on the Haitian people and the lives that had been affected by this devastating earthquake as well as showcase how modern technology can revolutionize journalism and the way news coverage is shot.

Our team of four, which also included two correspondents and a second shooter, traveled from New York City to Santa Domingo and with great uncertainty, took a bus across the border to Haiti. Our 15-hour trip ended when we were dropped off at the heavily guarded US embassy in the Haitian capital. From there we found our way to the United Nations base, where we pitched a tent and settled in along with the many other journalists based there. For the next week that tent would be our home.

Production
All the ENG footage was shot with a Panasonic HPX-500. The second shooter was my good friend Raymond Bishir, who is a photographer and wanted to shoot his personal work as well. Every day we not only had to shoot, edit, and transmit two three-minute reports but to make enough time to shoot our personal stuff. We established a workflow in which we would alternate between news shooting and personal shooting. We were fortunate enough that the two journalists we were working with (Susan Modaress and Hassan Abu Zaytoon) were very supportive and patient with us.

Working in an earthquake zone is physically and emotionally overwhelming. Aside from the documentary I shot in Egypt and Lebanon this was my first time shooting with a journalistic mindset. Having to document a natural disaster of this magnitude was very difficult to grasp. One of the main factors that we were all concerned about the logistical challenges such as housing, food, water, transportation, and safety; however I tried not think about the obstacles as they tend to be distracting. That being said, we packed very lightly. Each of us only brought a limited amount of personal belongings and the bare essential tools to get the job done.

Tools I used for the montage.
-Tenba shootout rolling backpack
-Canon 5D mark2
-Kessler Pocket Dolly
-Miller solo ENG legs w/ the Arrow 25 head, a few lenses
-Canon 16-35, 24-70, 70-200 2.8 L series),
-Marshall 7inch HDMI monitor
-5 Canon BPE-6 camera batteries.
-Apple Macbook pro

It’s crucial to keep a low profile when shooting in disaster zones so I chose not to bring a mattebox, follow focus, filters, and barely ever shot with the monitor. The pocket dolly was almost always part of the setup as it takes seconds to build and works flawlessly. I strongly believe that a dolly shot is far more powerful than a static shot so I tried using it any chance I could. I chose to shoot everything between a 100-320 ISO and nothing faster than a 5.6 f-stop. I tried to keep my shutter speed around 1/60 of a second to get it closest to a film shutter degree. I cranked up the shutter speed for all the water distribution shots to crystallize the water.

One of my biggest challenges when it came to shooting was the contrast between the darker skin complexions and direct sunlight. I worked around it by finding a midpoint between the two and exposing for it. Turning down the on-camera contrast also helped significantly with the latitude. I knew I wouldn’t achieve the look I wanted in camera so I shot everything with a standard pictures style and tweaked the look in post.

Post Production

I’ve been listening to Eric Wollo ’s music for quite some time now and I knew that “Sounds of the Seen Part 1” was the track I wanted to use. I edited everything in the native H.264 codec and exported as Apple ProRes 422 after I was done editing. The montage was edited in a couple of days using Final Cut Pro and most of the time was spent grading.

My first step in grading is almost always retouching a screenshot from the clip in Photoshop. I then use the Photoshopped still as a reference for my color grading. I started the grade in FCP using the three-way color corrector to shift the mids and shadows to a warmer color tone. From here on out I live in Magic Bullet Looks to fine-tune the exposure and colors. I rarely ever use the looks presets as they are overused and can get more precise results by building my own.

Some of the most useful tools in Magic Bullet are the spot exposure, grad exposure, vignette, contrast and curves. I faced major latitude issues due to the dark skin completions and the skin tones were almost always too bright or too dark. The spot exposure really helped in solving this issue.

The grad exposure is an essential tool to draw attention to your subjects. I used it to bring the exposure of the foreground or background up or down a few stops.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time recently trying to learn Apple Color, as its tweaking tools are far more precise than Final Cut Pro or Magic Bullet.

Khalid was born in Doha Qatar in December 1985. He spent his childhood traveling from one country to another, until his father was relocated to Wayne New Jersey in 1993. Inspired by music, math, and independent film khalid discovered his passion for filmmaking at an early age. In 2004 he attended the New York Film Academy and later won best screen play at the 2005 New York International Film Festival for his short feature “Optimistic”. After graduating he started working on commercials, music videos, and corporate events in hope to finance his personal projects.
His website is here

I’m just back from the UK after speaking at the Canon Pro Solutions Expo in London. It was really great to meet those who managed to attend and good to catch up with some old friends, too. I finally met the very talented 5DmkII shooter Danfung Dennis and got to see a bit more of his upcoming documentary from Afghanistan – it’s looking seriously good.

The main attraction at the Canon show was of course the 1DmkIV; I managed to have a pretty good look at the camera’s video functions and in the next day or two should have more for you.

I met F-Stop academy’s Den Lennie at the show; he showed me the company’s latest 5DmkII and 7D training DVDs. For me, these plug a huge hole for anyone wanting to learn about how to shoot pro video with these cams. Previously you’ve had to spend a long time scouring the net for all the answers – now you can learn what took me months just by sitting down with F-Stops classes which lay everything out in a simple way.

I also have some new toys to test. First up are a duo of Panasonic Micro 4/3rds HD capable cameras – the Lumix GH-1 and GF-1. The GH-1 can shoot 1080p and 720p with full control and a mic input, while the smaller GF-1 is only 720p, but has a much cuter form factor. These are much smaller than the 5DmkII or 7D and can still take an interesting variety of lenses. Both cameras shoot AVCHD but have a relatively low bit rate – not sure how that’s going to work out but I plan a more comprehensive review at some point in the future.

Next up is the new Thinktankphoto Airport Takeoff rolling camera bag that converts quickly into a backpack. I’ve loved Thinktank bags since they came out a few years ago and use their rollers, backpacks and pouches frequently, but I always thought the lack of a backpack/roller was a serious omission. Now they’ve taken my favourite backpack and added wheels and a handle – great stuff. It will carry my full 5DmkII video kit including two bodies, and 300mm lens and my Macbook Pro. Again I’ll be giving this one a thorough working out and will report back. If your in the UK and can’t wait for a full review then you can head over to Snapperstuff to pick one up now.

Gadget three is the new 5DmkII fitting camera armour. I’ve been waiting for this one as the original 5D armor made famous by Vincent Laforet to disguise the 5DmkII during filming of ‘Reverie’ doesn’t fit the MKII well. The new version is a snug fit and gives a really chunky rubber bumper around much of the camera’s body. Whilst it’s a little cumbersome to leave it on the whole time I will put it on the camera for really rough environments or during remote control shoots where the camera is left in a vulnerable position like a soccer goal mouth.

Gadget four is the Litepanels MicroPro LED light – no time to play with this at all yet so no firm opinion; I’m assuming it’s a better, more powerful version of the little Litepanels LPmicro – which I love – but again I’ll report later.

Lastly, I’ve picked up a lovely Manfrotto video monopod from Bogen imaging. The 561BHDV (who makes up these catchy names??) . It’s a monopod with added fluid head and little pop out feet at the base to give extra stability and some smoother panning motion. I tested it a few days ago and found that with wide to moderate length lenses it was very easy to get stable shots. The little feet were easy to use and although you can’t stand the monopod up on them alone they do make the base feel more rooted to the ground and stop it from slipping around. I also tried attaching my Redrockmicro rig to the it and used the handgrips for extra stability; this worked really well. My only gripe is that it’s quite heavy and would benefit from a carbon fibre rather than aluminium leg, although I guess that would push the price up. I think this monopod will be going with me in future unless I’m close to my airline weight limit, when I might switch to a carbon fibre one instead.

Anyway, enough new toys. Hopefully back to some serious shooting this week.