- Make a list of your kit. Print out the list, laminated and put it in the kit bag on the top. Before you go out on location, check the kit against the list. That way you avoid forgetting something really important (like your sound recorder!)
- The lavalliere microphone doesn't work very well plugged straight in to the camera. I think this is because of the lack of ambient noise from the mic. The camera turns its auto-gain right up and the speech is distorted because it can't react fast enough when you start talking.
- Get enough wild-track at each location to cover the entire shooting duration. Otherwise you will spend ages piecing together bits of sound to try and make a decent wildtrack in the edit
- Record all the bits that are supposed to sound the same with the same mic. So if you are doing something to camera with a lavalliere in one shot, use the lavalliere for all pieces to camera (unless you have an obvious mic in shot, as I did for one piece.
- The auto-focus in live view mode is rubbish for close-ups. It's better to switch to a picture mode, focus and then switch back
- Have a big pause at the start of each scene (at least 2 seconds) and hold for a similar time at the end of the scene. Makes editing a lot easier.
- Consider getting a clapper board and saying "Scene 3, Take 4" at the start of each scene. This will make matching the audio and video a lot easier. If the clapper board is in view at the start of the shot, it will show up in the preview mode when you edit
- Before each shot check the microphone is on, then the sound recorder, then hit record on the camera.
- At the end of each shot turn off the microphone! Sounds like a pain but otherwise you will forget to do it and will run the battery down on the mic (as I am typing this at work I am wondering whether I turned my lavalliere off!)
Buses with Bowties from Steve Green on Vimeo.
Steve
ReplyDeleteI liked the Brian May gag at the end
Colin