Canon Live Learning Tour: Boston
A couple of weeks ago I zipped out to Boston for a Canon Live Learning event. I offered a lecture on Saturday and taught a day-long session on Sunday. My topic, on this occasion, was HD capture with the Canon 5D MK II.
I walked into the Sunday session with a plenty to share about tools, technique, and workflow but no particular idea as to subject matter for our capture session. I had requested actors, rather than models, and figured we would come up with some sort of concept, in the moment. Our venue was the tiny light-drenched interior of a talent agency and there simply wasn’t a lot of inspiration to be found in either the offices or the surrounding neighborhood.
Upon meeting our two young players, however - Erica and Steve - I instantly conceived a scene. Steve arrived with a stylish two-day stubble and Erica was polished to a fine sheen. I instantly pictured Steve as a street-wise Suspect and Erica as a clever-beyond-her-years Good Cop. Add one Canon field rep, Eric Stoner, as the stoic Bad Cop and we began to improvise.
My goal was to create a classic scene where I could demonstrate talent motivation, simple-but-dramatic lighting, shot blocking, focal length selection, scene coverage, and low-buck audio recording. We did pretty well on all but the last bit, I think. I recorded all of the audio from a single wireless lavaliere microphone that was stuffed in the coffee cup. I confess that I was so busy teaching and shooting that I failed to properly monitor the sound after an initial sound check. Bad Brucie, bad…
Hindsight is 20/20, but I clearly should have mic’d the Bad Cop separately as he was way too far from the coffee cup and the tiny lavaliere microphone. I have plans to do a little ADR and insert a better line reading when the Bad Cop gets done pistol whipping all his perps…
Anyway, lighting was accomplished with just two daylight fluorescent sources from FJ Westcott. Fill was from a big 54” x 72” BDS Shallow Softbox on a Spiderlite TD5 and our Key was an inexpensive little 20” x 20” Photo Basics uLITE. While I shot with my own 5D MK II, interested students mimicked the set-ups from around my camera position. I did everything with the Canon 24-105mm f4 IS L. My fluid head was a Gitzo G1380 on GT3541LS sticks. We did a lot of “Dutching”, much to the glee of all in attendance…
Audio, as I mentioned above was from a sadly unattended Sennheiser G2 Lavaliere microphone that transmitted nearby sound to an on-camera receiver that, in turn, fed its signal into a Beachtek adapter mounted to the camera.
We also played with a prototype of my new iDC Follow-Focus assembly and I encouraged a Guest Camera Assistant to take a humbling first try at following the movements of our energetic young talent. Sometimes we coordinated well and other times, well, not so much. Like anything, practice makes perfect. We had fun and I think the final look feels pretty appropriate to the times.
Actors Steve Rossignol and Erica Spyres did a great job. Thanks for contributing your talent to a fun day. Canon’s Joanna Wong was my First Assistant and all over the slating process while Canon’s Senior Technical Advisor, Chuck Westfall, was pressed into service as our general purpose scapegoat and Continuity Supervisor. If you see any continuity missteps, please feel free to contact Chuck directly!
Editing and sound work required a bit more time than the day’s schedule allowed so we completed the piece in between other projects here at Studio B.
Kudo’s to my Ace Assistant and Editor Paulie for another fine job!
Before you leave, check out this link for a nifty iDC editing tutorial where clever Paul walks you through a complete edit of 5D MK II footage - from start to finish…
Hope you enjoyed our little project! Who knows what we’ll do on the next stop of the Canon Live Learning Tour…
