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Johnnie Behiri shoots National Geographic ‘Africa’ on Canon 7D

Johnnie — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:23:52 +0000

BBC freelance cameraman Johnnie Behiri shoots his second commercial film for National Geographic bags.

NG “Africa” from Johnnie Behiri on Vimeo.

Following my last National Geographic bags film ‘Desert Adventure’, I was asked to produce, direct, film and edit ‘Africa’, to be shown in megastores, at exhibitions and in shops. The initial idea was to film in Africa, however budget and time constraints forced us to come up with a more creative idea. We thought how about making a nice, easygoing, fun music video? It may be 180 degrees away from National Geographic’s DNA but why not?

We began by asking Carol Alston-Bukowsky, an amazing singer and jazz teacher at Vienna’s State Opera Ballet School, to help create a dance that would “bring Africa into our urban jungle life” whilst featuring the new National Geographic Media Bags collection. Next, we chose our talented dancers, all but one recent graduates of the State Opera Ballet School.

We needed an original music score, so turned to Yehuda Ashash, who did a great job on “Desert Adventure”. Endless nights of back and forth exchanging of ideas evolved into a musical masterpiece which I love!

Rebecca with National Geograhic bag rain cover practicing turtle position

Having fun pretending to be monkeys

After two weekend rehearsals and a lot of time negotiating location permits, the day of the shoot came. While Vienna is a great place to live and very photogenic, the weather can be unpredictable, and the partly cloudy sky lost us some valuable shooting time. Originally I considered a multi-camera shoot but with some careful preparation I decided to shoot it solo.

Where is Johnnie?

Here's Johnnie

Equipped with the Canon 7D, Zacuto Z-finder, Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM, Canon 70-200mm f4 IS USM, MkII Fader ND and Vocas DSLR shoulder rig (all nicely fitting into Kata’s Resource 61 bag) we met early morning ahead of a long shooting day. Joining me on the set were Cpm3 who shot the “making of”, and Alfred who assisted when needed.

The location I chose for shooting had the two things I was looking for: a highly reflective bright floor, to help enhance the colours of the clothes and the relatively dark bags; and a lot of people. It was an extremely busy place full of people during weekends. My aim was to “feel” the people but not to “see” them, with a background made up of moving, anonymous figures. The 7D and the lenses I chose helped me to achieve that.

The clip is made from two principal sequences, the main one shot in the full sunshine at 1080/25p. The other, shot during late afternoon to help get a rainy feeling, at 720/50p to be slowed down later in editing

Take a look at the “making of” video below, I hope you see that this project was all about simplicity and fun!

NG-”Africa bag collection” making of from Johnnie Behiri on Vimeo.

Editing was done on Adobe Premiere CS2. All files were converted to the Cineform codec using the Neo 4K plug-in prior to editing. Colour enhancement was done with Cineform’s “First Light”.

Johnnie is working in Vienna, Austria.
Johnnie also films documentaries, commercials, music videos, and marketing videos when not working for the BBC.

Travis Fox uses a Canon 7D rig to shoot for PBS/FRONTLINE

Travis Fox — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:48:41 +0000

The Canon Eos7D 'Franken camera' rig used by Travis Fox

Recently, a couple people have asked me about my (and these are not my words) ghetto fabulous or franken-camera Canon Eos 7D video system. In some ways, the DSLR system for me simply represents a better camera, not a fundamental shift in video storytelling. Over the years, I’ve changed cameras when technology changed and quality got better but my style has more-or-less remained constant.

The biggest reason I had for not adopting DSLRs sooner was ergonomics. I could deal with the lack of timecode, the audio fixes and the overheating, but I simply couldn’t handhold the thing steady and interact with my characters at the same time. I wanted a DSLR built like the Sony Z1U, which I used lovingly for years. I checked out all the standard “rigs”, the Zacuto and the Redrockmicro, but they seemed to push me towards holding the camera like a Betacam, not cradling it like a baby or a football as is my practice.

In the end, I ended up saving money and getting a kit I could deal with. A $8 bracket (it’s literally the cheapest flash bracket that B&H stocks) holds the Ikan V5600 monitor out in front to the left of the lens just like the Sony Z1U. I splurged on another bracket (it was a hundred bucks), which holds the audio gear and balances the camera out by moving weight to the back of the camera.

The Canon 7D rig 'in the field'

When setting up a DSLR rig, it always seems to be two steps forward and one step back. I was concerned about weight so I opted for the M-Audio Microtrack audio recorder instead of the other options with XLR inputs. (I had long ago abandoned trying to deal with the camera’s audio) But the battery on the Microtrack sucks, so I had to use a separate USB battery to charge the thing when its non-replaceable battery dies in the middle of the day. Still, the weight of both units is still considerably less than the other options.

With the ergonomics worked out, one of the first assignments I had was a series of stories with NPR’s Adam Davidson in Haiti for PBS/FRONTLINE. As soon as I headed out in the hot Haitian sun I was confronted with new issues to work out. The biggest surprise was the overheating. I had worked with a 5DmkII in the Chihuahuan desert in July, so I thought I was prepared, but in Haiti the 7D would shut down sometimes after only 30 minutes of shooting in the heat of the day. I quickly changed the way I work in order to minimize this DSLR flaw.

The other big headache was one I expected. My plan was to sync the audio at the end of each day of shooting. I used Pluraleyes and it worked about 90 percent of the time. Great, but that other 10 percent had a detrimental effect on my sleep during the 12 days I was in Haiti. After I had synced the audio, I exported the whole day’s shoot into one file in XDCAM422 30p format (This is a standard at FRONTLINE and we chose the format so it would more easily integrate with their Avid systems). That exported file became, for all practical purposes, my raw file. I imported into a new project to edit the piece. I also sent these files to FRONTLINE for them to prep the films for television broadcast.

Solving the Tap Tap Puzzle from Travis Fox on Vimeo.

Since the Haitian trip, the newest headache is keeping pace of changes to the DSLR system. Manual audio controls on the 5DmkII has made me question my decision to go with the 7D and makes me wonder if a similar audio fix will come to the 7D or if I should switch back to the 5DmkII. And with the release of Avid 5, the technical folks at FRONTLINE report that they will soon be able to deal with native 5DmkII/7D files, which will (thank god!) save me tons of time converting everything to other formats.

Travis with a Gyro stabilised 7D rig on his latest project

For more info in Travis and his work head over to his new blog http://blog.travisfox.com/

TV Cameraman Matt Jasper unboxes and rigs up his new 7D

Dan Chung — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:51:51 +0000

Matt Jasper, a cameraman for the UK’s Channel 4 news, picked up his Canon Eos7D this weekend and promptly rigged it up with some cool toys so he can use it for ENG. He’s planning to blog here about the experience of changing from a big, heavy ENG camera to a 7D rig, stay tuned. Here’s a quick video we did as his first instalment.

Products from Canon, Redrockmicro, Genus, Zacuto, Zoom, Sony and Pinknoise systems.

Canon 7D – TV cameraman Matt Jasper unboxes and rigs up his new 7D from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

You can see more about Matt and his work covering the Chinese earthquake on the Channel 4 news website here