Canon Digital Feature Film Making

Thanks to The Canon Company and the digital camcorders and DSLRs there is an underground digital film revolution happening. This revolution began a few years ago when Canon decided to add the 24 frames per second option into most of its mid range consumer camcorders. Later it would at this as a video option in its DSLR and the revolution has caught fire world wide.

There are so many sites and blogs dedicated to DSLR cameras such has the Canon D7, Mark II and the T2I that I thought that I would go old school and focus on the cameras that started the revolution and with a few add-ons can offer nearly the picture quality at a low price point. I will focus largely on the Canon HV series and the feature films that have been made with these little monsters and when the moment demands it I will get into some of the great work being done with the DSLRs.

Let's begin with why should a low budget film maker consider these cameras. I would say in response that a low budget film maker should not and by low budget I mean if you have fifty thousand dollars or more to spend then you should consider using the Canon Mark II or the Red or a number of the Panasonic pro-sumer camcorders if you want to make a feature film. If you have fifty thousand or more why not go 16mm film. The film cameras are cheap and if you know what you are doing with them then go right ahead. The truth is that I am not here for the low budget film maker. I am here for those who are called ultra low budget or no budget film makers. You fall into this category if you have less than ten thousand dollars to spend on your first feature.

Allow me to describe you. You or a close friend have written the screenplay for your movie. You will be doing this project with the help of friends and family who will work behind the scenes for no pay. You will be shooting on nights and weekends and at locations that you can get for free or get in and out of without being caught filming there. Your actors will be paid little to nothing up front. You will be looking to get the best production value out of the least amount of money spent possible.

In other words you are a lot like me.

You are only willing to pay for what is absolutely unavoidable. The three area where you are going to have to spend money are:

Sound, if your audience can not hear the movie then you are doomed. Viewers will give up on your project the third or fourth time they have to mutter what did he just say? Huh, What was that?

Editing, you may be able to use a free program, but you will need a computer strong enough and quick enough to edit and hopefully do some sound mixing on. If you have such a computer cool, you just saved money.

Camera, you need something that shoots in HD digital and shoots at 24p. Why 24p? That is the industry standard. This is the frame rate that gives you that motion picture look. You are going to have to spend some money on your camera. Money on the lenses and in most cases on a depth of field adapter.

The cameras are why we are here and let us talk about what to do and not to do. Get the best camera at the lowest possible price that will get the job done. Do not blow half of your production budget on your awesome new camera. It will feel wonderful to have that expensive camera and muse about all the things that it is able to do until it is day 12 of shooting and you have no money to feed your cast and crew. You have no money left for transportation, (gas money) and you have just realized that you should have set aside at least a third of your budget for post production cost. Treat your camera like the tool that it is.

A camera is not jewelry. It is not a diamond ring. It is a tool. You could consider it a hammer or a shovel. I think of mine as my axe. Like a good guitar it can make beautiful music if tuned just right.

As a independent movie maker I have want to share the bits of information I have picked up during the years, so I have started a blog dedicated to no budget digital film making. If you wish to learn more about the use of the canon series of camcorders and film making visit me a http://www.cannondigitalfeaturefilmmaking.blogspot.com/.

Original article

The Canon 5D MK2 Video Revolution

On 17/9/2008 Canon unveiled the Canon 5D MK2, this camera has swiftly proved to be very significant for filmmakers all across the globe - at last Canon released an HD full frame DSLR that was ideal for stunning video image recording.

This attribute was put in by Canon, mainly because journalists have been demanding it and also the convergence between stills photography and video within the same camera system was rapidly becoming practicable.

No-one was more surprised than Canon when film maker Vincent Laforet was let loose on the brand new digital camera. His first attempt Nocturne didn't disappoint, the fact is that it's no exaggeration to state that it set the field of film-making on fire.

The reason for this is the way the very large full frame sensor within the camera allows the operator to produce a truly spectacular depth of field that normal small sensor video cameras just cannot replicate.

The standard film cinema look is quiet difficult to outline but one of the major factors is the depth of field that the 35mm film aperture generates. The Sensor (or film gate) in the Canon 5D is a great deal larger than the gate present in a 35mm movie camera, the fact is that it's closer to shooting on 65mm.

Despite this amazing depth of field property and it's very swift adoption within the film making culture, the canon 5D MK2 camera has it's issues when filming video.

One of the major complications is line skipping or moire. The canon is required to get rid of information from the thousands of pixels that make up it's sensor so that it can create a 1920 X 1080 HD file. It does this by losing every 3rd line of information - line skipping. This could certainly prove catastrophic if you are recording a subject that has quite a few horizontal or vertical lines - as the picture steps across the dumped lines of information it can look horrendous. Normally I try to keep away from check shirts!

Another hassle is picture 'skew', this is recognisable when panning left to right quickly - vertical lines bend and twist noticeably - this is a issue on all CMOS video sensors but notably poor on the Canon simply because it's scan rate from the top to the bottom of the sensor is very slow and there is no internal compensation. A way around this is to simply stay away from any quick pans!

Another issue could be the 'form factor'. A DSLR is a very uneasy shape to film with, there is no professional eyepiece so just two points of contact - both hands. In a perfect world three points of contact are necessary to get a steady image whilst filming hand-held video. In the past two years a large number of proprietary camera support systems have been created by a broad array of suppliers but they all generally speaking do the same thing - provide an additional point of contact by means of a shoulder or chest support technique.

The rear LCD monitor can be very difficult to look at in vivid sunlight and there are many 3rd party solutions to deal with this, from inexpensive hoods to really expensive lensed eyepieces and additional displays working off the integral mini HDMI port. There are many issues with the HDMI feed, most significantly, it is really fragile but there's additionally a holdup when feeding the picture from the digital camera to a monitor after initiating record, this means waiting eight or nine seconds ahead of receiving a monitor picture. This can be nerve-racking in a documentary situation.

The camera records data in 8 bit quicktime H264 and while this creates lovely video it isn't really deemed to be a commercial recording format due to the H264 compression setting. That being said the camera has been used for several TV dramas, documentaries and features. It's aesthetic image apparently outranking it's technological restrictions.

Despite the afore mentioned complications, many filmmakers (including myself) put up with these troubles because Canon have produced a seriously great creative film-making dslr resource. When they can correct the grievances with the MK3 then they're going to have made a truly unbelievable camera at a sensational selling price.

The Author, Michael Barnes runs a video production cardiff company and the main website can be found here.

Original article