Part one of this two-part series on video camera techniques will focus on “field production”. Simply stated, field production is a term that is used to describe video footage shot outside of a studio/church sanctuary environment.
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Preparation and Equipment
One of the tell-tale signs of amateur video is the lack of a few key components: a stable tripod (not consumer model), quality audio recording and good lighting. You’ll want to make sure you have the basic equipment to make the most of your footage, as it’s painful to arrive at the shoot without being fully prepared. This is most evident when you’ve asked volunteers to take time out of their schedules to help you out, or when you have talent waiting on you to get your gear ready.
You should plan on spending between 30 minutes to an hour in setup for establishing your shot, focusing lighting, checking levels and recording a sample video to check out on the reference monitor.
Rock Solid Support
Let’s just get this point out of the way: “Shaky Cam” is over. Unless you’re making a music video near an earthquake fault line, smooth and steady shots are your best choices the majority of the time. Using a tripod is the best way to ensure your footage isn’t wobbly, but not just any tripod will do. The problem with using inexpensive (under $500) tripods is that the head, which tilts up and down and pans left and right, needs to be large enough to handle the camera and smooth enough to provide varying amounts of tension. The tripod it sits on must also be substantial and heavy enough to provide a solid support for the movement of the head (Figure 1).
Once you’ve got the right tripod, setting up your shot at eye level is a good rule of thumb. However, there will be times when a lower or higher perspective is useful, such as when obtaining B-roll to fill in parts of the interview in post production (editing). Also, adding motion can really give the shot a professional look. It used to take very expensive gear to get a “trucking” shot where the camera moves laterally. Thanks to the innovations of late, your church can have a simple and affordable dolly system such as the Warren Dolly sold by VF Gadgets.com.
Lighting Makes the Difference
Regardless what sort of camera you use to shoot, lighting can make or break your video footage. While lighting is as much art as it is science, we’ll start with the basic three-point lighting arrangement in this article.
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For three-point lighting (Figure 2), you set up the first light (called the “key light”) so that its light shines on one side of the scene/subject. Set up the second light (with less intensity than the first) to fill in shadows cast by the key light (this is called the “fill light”) on the opposite side. The third light, called the “back light” gives overall lighting to the scene, sometimes referred to as “ambient light” and is usually set up to light the scene from above and behind the subject. While helpful in establishing a basic lighting look, this textbook example sometimes isn’t all that convincing since three-point lighting rarely happens in nature or indoors. In other words, it’s a good starting place, but three-point lighting isn’t the final resting place.
I choose to use reflectors to get the key light I desire for most interview/testimony videos with one or two people in the frame. By aiming the key light across the face of the subject a reflector held in place by a C Stand, the reflected light functions as a softer key light, and the spill from the fixture going across the subjects face acts as the fill light (Figure 3).
If you have the equipment, adding a “chimera” or “diffusion box” to your light kit is another great way to achieve the soft lighting look.
Positioning the subject and camera in relation to the background is very important. For most prosumer cameras, the option of adding long zoom lenses is limited. You need to keep the video camera far enough away from the subject to allow for the zoom to be set near, but not at, the “full zoom” point while keeping the subject in frame. This allows you to have a little bit of zoom for when the interview has a poignant moment where a slow zoom in is beneficial while still forcing better depth of field.
For small zoom lens cameras, the distance from the subject to the camera should be between two to five times the distance from the subject to the background. This is because these cameras cannot create good depth of field (defocused background with a sharp focus on the subject) without being zoomed in to the subject. So, for example, if your subject is five feet in front of the background, then your camera should be at least 10 feet and up to 25 feet away to maximize your depth of field.
Framing the Shot
The “rule of thirds” places nine rectangular shapes and divides it into thirds (sort of like Tic Tac Toe). The key elements or objects in a composition should fall on or near one of these thirds lines for most of your shooting (Figure 4).
As with all rules of thumb, there are exceptions to the rule, but this is an excellent one to consider. When doing an interview, I choose to have the subject speak to the interviewer (off camera just to the side of the camera position) so that the subject is looking slightly off to one side. By not centering the subject right in the middle of the image, there is “lead room” (also called “negative space”) for the viewer to recognize that this person is talking to someone outside of the camera’s view.
The shot shown in Figure 4, taken by filmmaker Walter Graff, really does a nice job of placing the eyes just below the top third line while also providing enough lead room to allow us to see that he is talking to someone out of frame. It also gives a great example of using a reflected (bounce) light to provide the key light source. The backlight on his hair helps to separate him from the background, along with the excellent use of depth of field.
If you can’t get the background to look “soft enough”, try adding a break-up pattern to a “kicker” light aimed at the background. These break-up patterns are typically gobos placed in front of a light fixture that have organic or even linear shapes, such as leaves or “blinds” to help cast shadows on the flat lighting.
As you set up your shot, take into account the color and type of clothing the subject is wearing. If they have a dark clothing, you can still make them pop off of the screen by adding color washes and highlights on the background. In fact, color gels and diffusers are indispensable parts of every light kit, as you may need to color correct the ambient lighting or add a warmer look to your subject.
Finally, as you check your video reference monitor, consider adding a filter to the camera lens that softens the image. Some filters, such as the Tiffen Pro Mist, offer a uniform and very slight blur to the image, ideal for flattering close up shots of a face.
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I’ve even used expensive pantyhose in between (not in front of) the lens and the camera body to soften up images when a filter wasn’t available for my lens. You also should consider adding a matte box kit, such as the Century MKII DV, to help keep errant light out of the lens for use around a light kit or even outdoors.
Making Room
As you frame your shots, remember that up to 15% of the image in your viewfinder can be lost by the time the footage makes it to a consumer television set. All good quality cameras provide a “safe zone”, typically denoted by a white box outline near the edge of the viewfinder. You need to make sure all important imagery fits within this space. Some of the nicer cameras also show a “safe title” area. This is a set of lines and/or boxes inside the “safe zone” to denote where graphics or text will normally be placed. If it looks closely cropped in your viewfinder, the potential exists to lose that information in post production.
If you plan on using lower-third graphics, it is critical to make sure you’ve allowed room on the bottom of the image. You don’t want to be stuck on a tight shot when you have a need to add a lower third graphic. A good rule of thumb is to leave 33% of the vertical height of the picture available for lower third graphics (hence the name lower 1/3rd).
For blue-screen or green-screen shooting, it’s best to know what kind of elements will be added into the background before you start shooting. This helps you with your shot framing and gives you some insight into where the talent needs to look if you plan on having them interact with the background.
Above all, we have to remind ourselves to make our gear and the video shoot as transparent to the audience as possible. Some of the very best work can be found on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. Spend some time recording these channels and learn from the best. In an upcoming issue of Church Production Magazine, we will look at camera operations for live video.
