Low end gear can do the job

Have I worked with pro gear? Yes – cameras costing upwards of $50,000, $8,000 tripods and $2,000 mikes. Does the gear make a difference? Yes and no. If it’s going on air, yes you want the good stuff. If you’re posting to the Internet or working on a project for school or just having fun, not really. I’ve shown video from $300 cameras next to $3,000 cameras next to $20,000 cameras and most consumers can’t tell the difference. Photogs and engineers can – they look for detail in the dark areas.

If you take a look at the videos posted on this blog, you should see the two versions of Wyoming Cattle Drive – both edited with the same video & information. It’s a very simple feature story. I intentionally shot this with a low end camera (Canon ZR60 purchased on eBay for about $80), a nine dollar mike, and a thirty dollar tripod. The point is, you don’t need a ton of money to tell a story. Todays consumer cameras have remarkable quality and if you look carefully, you’ll find the features you need to get by.

Decent zoom (1:20 is nice)
Mike input (usually indicated by a small red input)
Headset out (usually indicated by a small yellow input, which also doubles as the A/V out)
Manual focus, iris, white balance (if you’re not picky, you can get by without the latter)

The ZR60 fits the bill for me – you may already have the camera you need. Once at a workshop a particpant asked why pros like manual controls. Stopped me for a moment – I had never thought about it. Just seemed obvious. Manual aperature/iris, focus, white balance all allow you to contol situations that are out of control. Try shooting an interview in checkerboard weather (sun behind the clouds, sun out, sun gone). Try following a subject from outside to inside and then into a room with strong backlighting. Don’t even try racking focus with an auto focus camera. Being in control of your camera and video means you can determine what the final images will look like. My only complaint is that the lens is not wide enough when zoomed out fully (note: my Christmas gift to myself was a $35 wide angle adapter!). I added a BP522 battery – good for up to four hours before charging.

The manual iris allows me to control shots like the one with “Whitey” the white cow – on auto iris my exposure might have “woweed” and the shot would have suddenly gotten darker or lighter. I was also able to get the wide shots with sky without worrying about losing my ground detail and exposure.

The auto white wasn’t used, but I can think of several ways to use it to improve or control video. Main one is shooting sunsets/rises. If you use manual white balance and shoot a cool white (the shady side of a white car), your sunset/rise will come out much warmer. You can use this same trick to make warmer skin tones in interviews.

Mike input is a no-brainer. Anytime the subject you are interviewing is more than twelve inches away from the camera mike, quality will deteriorate. Yep. You have to get the mike up near the sound source to get good sound. Try this. Have a friend stand about two or three feet away from the camera and talk in a normal voice while you listen on your headset. Not bad. Now have them move ten feet away. Bad. Good audio is just as essential as good video in storytelling. In the story I only miked the main interview. The interviews with the little girl and young cowboy were grabbed on the run. I was about fourteen inches away from the girl (she had a very soft voice) and four feet away from the boy. All of you who live in Wyoming say, “Yippeee!” Your state in most places is one giant sound booth – there is little overwhelming ambiant sound, so I was able to get a bit futher back than usual and still use the camera mike.

For the interview with Winn Brown I used an old tape recorder microphone I found in a box while cleaning up the workshop. I’ve since replaced it with a Sony F-V100 stick mike…it has a nine foot cable and a mini-jack terminater and allows me more freedom to move away from the camera.

Headset? Any cheap set that covers your ears so ambiant noise doesn’t bother you will work. Mine are an old set belonging to one of my daughters. (Am I cheap? Maybe. Maybe not.)

I got the tripod (a Velbon Videomate 601) on eBay for $14.95. Might cost you $20-30 in a store. I tripoded nearly everything. This one is light enough so I can easily carry it and the camera with one hand, slap it down, adjust and be shooting in seconds.

Manual focus? The ZR has it…and I do use it, but it ain’t easy. I have to move the shooting mode from auto to manual and then push the focus button on the side of the camera and then focus using the little tiny dial on the side of the camera (and I need my reading glasses to boot cause the screen is so small). There’s one shot in the cattle drive story of some blades of grass in focus with cattle moving behind out of focus – that was done with the manual focus.

Stay posted – I’ll shoot another story over winter break and we’ll see how it goes. Again, the point is it is not the gear that makes the story – it’s all in the mind of the videojournalist. Once you know the process and have the basic gear, you can do nearly anything.

Videojournalist Etiquette: Microphones Part One

Put yourself in the position of one of your subjects. There’s a cameraman coming at you – both hands out – holding a microphone. He’s aiming at your chest. Time to panic, especially if you’re female. What IS this guy up to?

Face it – we’re in a strange business. We ask personal questions, get answers from people that they might never confide to family members, and we constantly invade personal space. And there are times we may forget how strange our actions really are. We walk around with thirty pounds of technology on our shoulders, sometimes forgetting how it looks because it is so much a part of us. And we try to draw others into our fantasy world.

Nowhere does it get stranger than when we mike an interview. We need good sound, but the fantasy side of the business requires that we hide the mike so the viewer can watch our stories without seeing cables. So in my time I’ve reached up the backs and fronts of both male and female subjects, dropped cables down the backs of their pants/skirts and retrieved cables from said locations.

Obviously I prefer shotgun and stick mikes, but they really don’t allow freedom of movement like a well-concealed lav (clip on) mike. So how do you tell someone you are about to really invade their personal space?

My first preference is to avoid personal contact – this works if the subject has a jacket or suit. Just clip the lav to the inner lapel and run the transmitter and cable down and clip on the waist. But sometimes circumstances require you to place your gear under the subject’s shirt or other clothing – where you have to get personal.

First have the right attitude – be objective. As I walk up to the subject, I say, “Excuse me, but I have to attach this mike to you. We need to conceal the cables, so may I drop it down the back of your shirt?” Generally I am ready to perform the act at this point and most of the time I get the nod of consent. As I begin my maneuvers, I explain what I am doing at each step, so that there are no suprises. And here it is:

I’m pulling the back of your shirt away and dropping the wireless transmitter (or cable for the mike). It may feel a bit cold.
Now I have to reach under the bottom or your shirt to retrieve the transmitter/cable. Next I’m going to have to clip the transmitter to your pants (or put in a pocket or whatever action I need to do).
All right, now I have to adjust the mike. Let me clip it on your collar and hide the cable. I may need to use a bit of tape to make certain it doesn’t slip.
Great – that’s it. Could you talk for a minute so I can get a sound check?

Get the idea? Talking the subject through the process educates them and tells them exactly what you are doing as you do it and there are no surprises. Keeping your voice objective removes any tension they might have that you have other motives. Kind of like a doctor as she does an intimate exam. You have a job to do and you’re a pro.

Sometimes the subject may not be comfortable with you placing the mike – so you have to let them do it. Just explain why you need to hide the mike and cable and tell them what to do. You’ll probably have to position the mike before doing the sound check.

Retrieving the mike is pretty easy – tell your subject you are going to pull the transmitter cable out and then either unclip the mike and gently pull it down the back of the shirt or pull the transmitter up the back of the shirt.

Why not have the subject do it every time? First – they are amateurs and I don’t want them damaging my wireless gear. It’s expensive. If they place the mike, most of them won’t place it properly and I have to put it where it needs to be once they’ve placed the transmitter. I can do it in half the time or less than they can. This is especially important in news – time is critical.

News photogs all have at least one fun story about wireless mikes. I’ve found that people who are “professional interviews” – politicians and others who are interviewed frequently, often begin unbuttoning their shirts when they see the mike coming.

Shotgun mikes and stick mikes require a different approach. More on that later.