need some eyes and comments

I'm working threw a rough draft of my first shoot with my 5d centered rig, didn't exactly go as planned, trying to salvage something watchable out of it.



insights, comments, your the first besides the actors to even know this exists.

edit: The original plan was to have a panning establishing shot and a few different angles on the actors, but I wanted to get the base work done first and it ended up taking my entire scheduled time just to get threw the dialogue once. the script is quite a bit longer. I think I might be able to fix the exposer, it isn't blown out. I tried to get them to stay still but they moved around quite a bit during their takes and I was so focused just on trying to get them to say their lines correctly I couldn't even really watch it while filming.

This was mostly a test just to see if I could shoot something and edit it together, I tried to write to much, it didn't occur to me that someone would actually have to memorize and say all of it. I was hoping to be able to use some of this to help get people in my area interested in helping me on future stuff but...

oh and the audio was coming threw the 5d audio port, there was no way I was going to be able to sync it up in post so I had the line out on my digital recorder feeding into the 5d2 mic port. I think the 5d may have been boosting the gain or doing something to the feed if anything I had expected it to come out to quite.

it really seemed like a better idea on paper. What is up here is maybe a 1/3rd of the script spliced together.

My ears hurt...seriously, you need to salvage the audio. It's way too hot. There are a few frames where your mic is visible. Not very pleasing grading and also the overall exposure needs to be brought down, especially on the girl.

I'm assuming we are not seeing the entire video because what is missing is an establishing shot, showing all three actors. Need to mix up the individual shots, including the other actors in the same frame. I could go on, but without putting this clip in context to the whole package, it's difficult to critique.

Well, obviously there is an issue with the sound. But I assume you already figured that out
Did you use the in-camera microphone?

Second major problem I saw was the framing of the guy sitting to the right.
He probably sat upright while you framed the shot and then leaned forward when you started shooting.
Now you have him in the left corner of the shot talking to the left. Try to avoid that dead space behind him.

Edit: Didn't see the boom the first time. So no in-camera microphone.
Looks like the recording was bad or you messed it up in post

Bradley,

Thanks for the added info.

As you've learned, pumping audio through the 5D is not a good idea. You'll get the best audio by recording to a digital recorder while listening to it to assure quality and syncing later in post, which is really not difficult if you remember to clap with each take.

And even better, if your budget will allow it, you may want to consider getting Plural Eyes http://www.singularsoftware.com/ if you edit in Final Cut or Vegas Pro. It works like a charm in syncing audio to your video clip. I've shot all day with my audio going into an H4N. Have dozens of separate video and audio clips and Plural Eyes syncs it all perfectly in minutes. Worth every penny to me.

I have a samsung zoom H4 that I'm recording on, it seemed to eat up way more battery power when it was recording and it only takes 2gig cards. When I'm shooting over 4 hours and it's just me, having those batteries go dead can ruin a couple takes or more if I'm occupied. I actually lost a good 20 minutes of footage because of that and for the rest of the session I just turned monitoring on and pumped the line out feed into the 5d. I remember reading something about a custom 5d firmware that will give me control of the audio gain in camera. it's just simplifys my work flow so much to get that audio attached at the point of recording. when I was done my shooting I had two 32gig cards filled and like two dozen files, I just really want to believe I can avoid yet another level of things to go wrong. I'm going to do some more shooting this week and see if I can get that audio working the way I want it.

I'm still pretty confident the audio quality is so bad because it was auto gaining I had that shotgun mic right in there faces and I had the gain on the recorder set low. i should go back and check the quality of the H4 recording to the SD card. I'd much rather it recorded with to low a volume then what it did.

This was a relatively good learning experience I'm a little disappointed I can't really use the footage the way I wanted but now I at least know where to focus my attention. Also learned it's not a good idea to give actors you have never met 20 pages of dialogue and expect them to breeze threw it. it was all intended to be delivered so much quicker but they could only say things as fast as they could remember them, I don't get how movies and t.v get those actors to do rapid dialogue. If only I could pay them a wage I could get so much more out of them.

I could really eliminate a lot of these problems if I just had a couple competent assistants, I know a couple people I could use but an extra pair of hands but they aren't of much use unless they are willing to put in the effort to understand what they are doing and be able to fix problems with some level of independence. again hard to find people like that when you can't really pay them anything. also man do I wish I had a better way to mount my HDMI computer monitor while shooting, that little lcd is very hard to check focus on while recording.

I went back and looked at plural, I still don't get how it does the syncing. when I do shooting with the audio recording separate I just end up with one long audio file and many video files, how does it know which parts of the audio actually correspond with video footage?

Well I'm screwed, magic lantern doesn't work with the updated firmware. I'm pretty seriously considering just selling this 5d and trying to find one with the 1.1 firmware. I'm not going to sync that audio in post. Even if it's possible I'll never end up doing it. fucking Canon why did they have to make that mic port completely useless. it's literally of zero use now that I know I can't control the gain, it wrecks my entire workflow it's impossible to do what I want to do with it now.

edit: well actually now I'm not to sure, it says it works with 1.10 which is the update that added manual exposer. I know I made that update but I'm not sure if I updated it again after that. I'm away from my camera at the moment, I better have no updated it. I'm not going to sync that audio in post I'm just not going to do it, I know I won't, even if I have no choice I might do it for a couple shoots but I'm not going to have the patience nor the time to clap every take and reencode all of my footage just to get the audio that could just as easily be captured by the camera with this firmware. I'm going to lose like a thousand dollars on this camera if I end up needing to sell this camera and buy a used one with the old firmware. I can't sync it all up it's not practical for the amount of shooting I want to do.

uhhggg I have access to a computer but I my camera bag is hours away, I'm going to delete this post when I get home and check. I really don't think I would have updated it to 1.2.4 it doesn't add anything of use to me, I wouldn't have gone threw the hassle. if I updated that firmware I basically wrecked my camera, it's like the same as if I had dropped it down the stairs. I knew the audio gain was going to be a problem I just didn't want to face up to it and deal with the problem, I should have put magic lantern on it right when it came out and started following what those guys are doing. Canon is not going to help with this issue, I really am pretty confident they don't want people to use this thing the way I want to use it. they are going to come out with some ten thousand dollar dedicated video camera and they don't want people to have control of the audio gain because leaving it on cripples it.

I went back and looked at plural, I still don't get how it does the syncing. when I do shooting with the audio recording separate I just end up with one long audio file and many video files, how does it know which parts of the audio actually correspond with video footage?

You still need the 5D to record audio with the build-in microphone. Then PluralEyes can sync the audio with the track that was recorded separately.

Check out Philip's tutorial on PluralEyes.
http://philipbloom.co.uk/tutorials/cano ... lurayeyes/

I can not see the video .It says that is a private video and you have to acceptd bla bla bla.
Sorry

I can not see the video .It says that is a private video and you have to acceptd bla bla bla.
Sorry

should be working now, I thought if I put the special link it gave me I could keep it private, i guess it doesn't matter.