Shmayshmill shmusic

      As of now, my plan for the social media aspect of the project is to create a private Instagram account by the name of shmayshmillshmusic (instead of playkill) that will serve as a mock-up of the bands actual account. This way, I will be able to post about the upcoming single and video release without spoiling it too early for the actual public audience. Later, closer to the actual release date for the single, playkill may use the posts I've created on their actual account.

     

Equipment part 3 - Rigging and Lights

     After last years struggle with camera movement, although funny to look back on, I was hyped to be able to work with an actual gimbal and not have to worry about stabilizing in post. 

    Jim taught me how to balance the camera and pair the gimbal up with a bluetooth app for testing. I became familiar with the pre-set modes in the app as well. One that follows pans and tilts, one that only follows panning, and one that works "chickenhead" style. I took mental note of which functions would be best for certain shots, For example, I knew the chickenhead option would be best for my tracking shot where Alex walks past Nik.

    After practicing my ninja walk a bit, we moved on to the tripod.

    The tripod was not a foreign beast to be, although this one was much larger than I was used to. To be honest, the "tripod" I use right now with my phone is just the combination of a chuck e cheese selfie stick from ages ago screwed on to the base of a telescope from a kid's science kit, also from ages ago. I did, however, pick up the habit of testing that everything is locked in place before adding the camera or letting it go.

    The last piece of equipment I loaned out was lighting. I chose not to take out rgb lights because I knew none of my shots required any artistic or colorful lighting. I also chose to take out some batteries rather than rely on plugging the lights in because I knew I wouldn't always have a wall accessible to me while shooting. The way these worked was that one dial on the back adjusted the temperature of the light according to the Kelvin scale, while another dial adjusted the intensity.

Equipment part 2- the DSLR

     Asking for equipment from shortcuts worked out, so I went to pick up everything I needed after school.

    It was a lotta stuff.

    While there, the man who loans out all of the student equipment, Jim, explained to me his camera settings and how to change anything if needed, as well as how to use the other equipment I checked out.

    Some of these things, I already had a pretty good idea about after having learned the filmic pro app inside out last year. That meant it was more so an experience of learning how to manipulate these settings on an actual DSLR.

    The first thing we talked about was frame rate. Just as I never thought about strategically choosing lenses to fit my purpose, I wasn't used to really thinking about frame rate either. I was used to just going with 24fps because that was the film-y option (I learned today that that came from the fact that it was cheaper to do back in the days of physical film rolls), but after thinking about my specific needs for this project, I thought I'd change that. I figured I should shoot in 30fps, because I knew there would be some slow-motion shots. This way, I could film the slow-mo sections in 60fps, slow them down in post, and still have a consistent frame rate throughout the entire piece.

    He also explained shutter speed. I was familiar with the concept and we generally went by the rule of thumb that it should be set to twice the frame rate.

    Aperture was another thing we discussed. He gave me a tip h described as not fully accurate, but easy to remember: the smatter the f-number, the more shallow my depth of field would seem.

    We went over ISO briefly as well. Without going into very much detail, it was described as the final element of brightening/darkening the image. I also read this article to learn that it's best practice to shoot at the lowest ISO possible to reduce noise, and only to bring it up when you can't properly brighten the image by adjusting the aperture, shutter speed, and extra lighting equipment.

    Focus was what I was most familiar with doing manually, and it worked quite similar in-camera to how it did with my app. A turning dial that moves the focus closer and farther. There were also ways to turn on guides for the focus and zebra stripes for exposure just like in my app.

Hardware

     Since I was opting to use more professional equipment for this project, I had a few things to learn.

    A friend of mine shared with me a slideshow she created about DSLRs and lenses for her underclassman TV students, and it helped me understand cameras more than I did before.

    She explained to me how different lenses will affect the field of view of a shot, and how that would consequently affect how the image is distorted.

    Certain types of distortion I was already familiar with. Logically, I already knew that wider fields of view created more horizontally compressed images in order to compensate for a static screen size. I was also familiar with the fact that closer proximity to the lens itself exaggerates the noticeability of the distortion. However, there was one thing she mentioned that I had never thought about, which is how different focal lengths can make objects appear closer or farther from each other.

    An example she showed me of this was with the two photos above. She explained to me that she purposely chose a wide angle lens for the photo on the right because it made the two subjects look much farther apart than they really were. In reality, they were like two feet away from each other, which came as a surprise to me.

    In contrast, she showed me two photos taken on a telephoto lens. In both, she reminded me that the trees in the background look a lot closer to the subjects than they truly were. This made me think a lot about how choosing a specific lens could be done with purpose to create meaning or to tackle certain hindrances of a shoot.

    The comparison here is what really opened my eyes (figuratively and literally because I was actually pretty shocked). On the left is a wide angle, while on the right is telephoto.

    See, the way I had thought about it before was that if this was a wide focal length:

    a photo taken with a telephoto lens would just look like...

that. Practically just a zoom in.

    However, the difference between these two becomes quite noticeable when you notice how far away the children look from each other depending on the lens used. 

 

   I guess that my previous thought process just aligns with the way you would refer to shots compositionally, where the terms wide shot, mid shot, and close up really just refer to how much of the scene is in frame at the moment. 

Notes on shots and angles

    Basically I thought lenses just did that, without taking into account how their distortion might change the look/feel of a particular shot. From here on, though, I will be able to choose lenses strategically to best suit each scenario I'm shooting.