Less than 24 hours ago I was walking down fifth avenue after a walk through central park. As previously stated I have shot the abstract shots for my video in New York city. Whilst in New York I shot and collected over 15GB worth of footage. Obviously some of those shots will be semi identical with others being retakes and outtakes. However at this stage it gives me a good bedrock of footage that I can start to edit and use to further form my ideas for the rest of the video, the performance scenes.
Prior to flying out to NY I had to gather, buy and borrow certain pieces of equipment. Obviously as with any creative process the ideas are important and too a certain extent the technology and level of equipment used doesn't create a coherent successful piece. However it is undeniable that well shot high definition footage gifts a body of work a more professional look. As a media student producing a music video for my coursework I am keen to avoid it looking like a music video produced by a media student. Because I want to work in the creative field I was happy to invest in some not so expensive but valuable equipment and tools. Therefore my use and selection of equipment was key. With that in mind I had to carefully consider what I was taking with me.
Up until this point I had been using a four gigabyte SD card however it was well over half a decade old and at the time wasn't particularly high end. To the average consumer this wouldn't be an issue. However, apart from the capacity of the card, the read and write speeds were far inferior to the cards I bought. With my camera, although only an entry level Nikon, a certain level of SD card was an important choice because of the ability to film and higher quality and higher frame rates. As a keen photographer I was also taking huge amounts of photos so the cards I chose had to be able to handle the high work load. After some research I decided to purchase two SanDisk Extreme SD cards. Each card is 32GB class 10 U3 with a write speed of 40MB/s and a read/transfer speed of 90MB/s. Because I wanted to spend as much time out in the streets of Manhattan shooting the high transfer speed allowed me to quickly copy my files and clean the cards each day. After copying the files I would use Disk Utility an Apple piece of software used for, in this case, erasing the disks properly so that there was no data taking up unnecessary space.
To protect my lens I borrowed a Bower UV filter from a friend and classmate. Although the one I have included a picture of is for a 77mm lens it just simply demonstrates what a UV filter looks like. It works by screwing it onto the end of a lens. By doing this you stop the dust present in the air from landing on the lens. Because this was also a UV filter it was designed to reduce the amount of ultraviolet light that would travel through the lens and hit the sensor.
I also borrowed a broken tripod from school. I wasn't planning on using or taking a tripod with me until a couple of days before I left however I decided it would be best to bring it even if I wasn't planning on using it constantly. Whilst there I did use it on a couple of occasions. Sometimes I wanted to get motion in the shots therefore I wouldn't use it but for steady shots it worked well. Although it was broken it was only the center pole, however I managed to jam it into place for long enough to get my shots.
Preparation:
Prior to flying out to NY I had to gather, buy and borrow certain pieces of equipment. Obviously as with any creative process the ideas are important and too a certain extent the technology and level of equipment used doesn't create a coherent successful piece. However it is undeniable that well shot high definition footage gifts a body of work a more professional look. As a media student producing a music video for my coursework I am keen to avoid it looking like a music video produced by a media student. Because I want to work in the creative field I was happy to invest in some not so expensive but valuable equipment and tools. Therefore my use and selection of equipment was key. With that in mind I had to carefully consider what I was taking with me.
Up until this point I had been using a four gigabyte SD card however it was well over half a decade old and at the time wasn't particularly high end. To the average consumer this wouldn't be an issue. However, apart from the capacity of the card, the read and write speeds were far inferior to the cards I bought. With my camera, although only an entry level Nikon, a certain level of SD card was an important choice because of the ability to film and higher quality and higher frame rates. As a keen photographer I was also taking huge amounts of photos so the cards I chose had to be able to handle the high work load. After some research I decided to purchase two SanDisk Extreme SD cards. Each card is 32GB class 10 U3 with a write speed of 40MB/s and a read/transfer speed of 90MB/s. Because I wanted to spend as much time out in the streets of Manhattan shooting the high transfer speed allowed me to quickly copy my files and clean the cards each day. After copying the files I would use Disk Utility an Apple piece of software used for, in this case, erasing the disks properly so that there was no data taking up unnecessary space.
I also brought two batteries as well as the two SD's. Apart from the idea of having a backup of each incase for some reason a battery or SD card might fail, it was a smart move as it allowed me to stay out longer each day. I was staying on East 48th and spending days walking down to and around Brooklyn, Soho, Downtown, Lower East, Chinatown, the Bowery and Greenwich village. Obviously it would of been completely impractical to of had to make trips back to where I was staying to charge my camera and transfer files.
To protect my lens I borrowed a Bower UV filter from a friend and classmate. Although the one I have included a picture of is for a 77mm lens it just simply demonstrates what a UV filter looks like. It works by screwing it onto the end of a lens. By doing this you stop the dust present in the air from landing on the lens. Because this was also a UV filter it was designed to reduce the amount of ultraviolet light that would travel through the lens and hit the sensor.
I also took with me a spirit level attachment. This easily slides into the hot shoe on top of the camera and allows me to be able to check the level of the camera. Although I didn't end up using it all that much it was still a valid tool for when I wanted to get level shots.
I also borrowed a broken tripod from school. I wasn't planning on using or taking a tripod with me until a couple of days before I left however I decided it would be best to bring it even if I wasn't planning on using it constantly. Whilst there I did use it on a couple of occasions. Sometimes I wanted to get motion in the shots therefore I wouldn't use it but for steady shots it worked well. Although it was broken it was only the center pole, however I managed to jam it into place for long enough to get my shots. Footage Analysis:
Whilst in New York when i had spare time I checked back over the footage. There were a couple of shots in particular that looked extremely cinematic once loaded into the editing suite. When applying a slight colour grade and letterbox to the footage it gave me a much better idea of how the footage I was capturing with the camera actually came out on screen.
Moving Forward:
In conclusion so far I feel like my filming has gone well and I'm looking forward filming the performance shots and in the meantime editing some of the shots taken in New York. For the moment I'm going to sift through the footage and use the tag feature in finder to mark the footage that I consider to be best. By doing that I can I then whittle it down to the best shots which I will start to experiment with in terms of colour grading.
