PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

instance, what your house looks like in the morning, about who eats breakfast in your kitchen, where you have to go to work or study, who you meet along the way, where you eat lunch, who you meet in the evening and where you go, what it's like at night in your town. In all these situations, you will have to encounter environments that are very dif­ferent to each other in terms of what the camera sees. Conditions will vary from place to place and from day to night, providing you with opportunities to encounter a wide range of situations.

Before we go further, let's take a look at how to handle sound in-camera. This project can operate on two levels: a basic level that looks at what the camera sees only, and a more advanced level for those who want to start using an external mic. Take the basic for now, if you prefer, and then come back to this project later when you have got to grips with sound recording in Chapter 5:3. But if you want to try using mics, go for a directional mic, which records wherever you point it. Try the built-in mic at least once so that you know how poor the quality is.

The aim of this film is not particularly to produce a great-looking film at the end, but rather to encounter problems. You won't be able to solve all of them and you may need to get some help from the automatic button on the camera, but at least you will know the limits of what you can achieve manu­ally and what you need some help for.

Let's look at some of the problem areas you may encounter:

Light

Usually, you expect your camera to take care of 'exposure' when you enter a new lighting situation. Exposure refers to the amount of light that enters the lens: too much and it is too bright to see anything clearly, too little and it is too dim to see clearly. Let's suppose you start filming in your kitchen in the early morning. You may have a couple of fluorescent lights in the room and some semblance of daylight entering from the window. You have two problems to deal with here: the first involving the intensity of the light within the room and the second concerning the colour temperature of the light. A lack of inten­sity of light is easy to deal with on set simply by adding more light, but at home you are going to have to get the iris control and try various settings until you have what looks like a good image on the LCD monitor. Open the iris up a little if the image looks too dark, or close it down slightly if it is too bright. Go through all the manual options it gives you until you are satisfied with the image, then start filming.