Part B -video

We were given an opportunity as a part of our professional frameworks 3 to create a video based on the theme of ‘Point of view’ inspired by a reading. Until we were given this brief I didn’t even know my camera was capable of moving image so when I found out it did I thought it would fit perfectly for my PDP part B (learning my own equipment). I have played with video a tiny bit in GCSE media but we used household video camera so this project was like starting again to me because also to be fair I don’t remember that far back. After finalising my reaserch into a concept and planning my shoot it was time to learn to shoot. I went back to my canon 60D manual and read chapter 8 ‘Shooting movies’ . First of all I realised I didn’t have an SD card capable of filming so that was something I had to buy. There was a very useful double page spread in my manual helping my get my head around what size video I needed to shoot and how many frames rate which gave me the correct SD card to buy.

Frame rates

My camera offers 5 different frame rate options and I found it quite cinfussing until I researched what they meant.

60 and 30 frames per second are designed for areas where the TV format is NTSC( North America, Japan, Korea,Mexico ect.)

50 and 25 frame rates per second are designed for areas where the TV format is PAL ( Europe, Russia, China, Australia ect.)

24 frame rates per second are designed for mainly motion picture.

After finding out this information I knew I could only shoot in 50 and 25 .then I had to deside on images size

Image size

(1920x1080)- Full high- Definition recording quality

(1280x720)- High-Definition recording quality

(640x480)- Standard-Definition recording quality.

I would be happy shooting in 1920x1080 or 1280x720 I wouldn’t really want to shoot in 640x480 because I want my video to be better than standard quality.

INSERT TABLE ON PAGE 181

As you can see from this handy table Canon have created. If I shoot in (1280x720) and have my frames rate at 50 I need to buy a 16GB memory card in order to film 44minutes which I think will be plenty of time for what I have in mind .

On receiving the card I was ready to go . I got my model around for a ‘test shoot’ which ended up lasting 4 hours resulting in my getting most of the footage I needed for my film. 

Whilst shooting I used a black backdrop and two studio lights on fill not flash. In my initial PDP before re-writing it to a more feasible short term development plan I had written studio lighting on there so although it’s not a part of my current PDP I’m still interested in practicing and experimenting in this field.  I have used studio lights before but not often and I’m defiantly not expert, it took me a while playing around with shadow and even coverage on my model but I feel my end result show this well and I am slightly more confident in the studio now.

On watching my footage back I didn’t realise the amount of edited that need doing in video making there is twice as much port production as there is actual filming .(I’m going to write about the editing in a different blog post because there’s lots to be talking about)

Here is my final outcome for my video brief. I’m extremely happy with the outcome; I also managed to bag an A- so really happy with my marks too. Working with video has been an enjoyable challenge and I defiantly want to practice this more. If I spend more time working with video format I think this would benefit me in the future because I can offer video and photographic services to potential clients.

Hope you enjoy the video.