Transition Unit - Kit That Was Used & My Reasoning

This blog post is explaining why I chose certain pieces of kit for our production. As the director, I wanted to make sure that the camera equipment that I was using would produce the shots that I wanted. I had spent a lot of time planning the shots and I needed to make sure the equipment was capable of creating those.

Panasonic DVX 200:

The Universities 4K Panasonic is capable of creating incredible shots and has complex manual controls. I was eager to get another opportunity to film with the Panasonic's after we had not used them in the most recent studio production. The high quality linked with the adaptability on the move was important to me as a director and I was happy we were able to secure the use of one. The Panasonic went on to be our main camera for this project, recording the "Main" shots in both the PTC and the Vox Pops. I was a little disappointed with the Panasonic's screen as it is actually worse than that on the old Sony's.

This makes understanding if a shot is in focus very hard. This coupled with the shot on the screen looking inherently darker than it would when exported onto a PC. This meant that when editing Cailan is going to have to adjust the clips recorded on the Panasonic as they all seem a little overexposed. To be clear on the screen these shots looked fine, but when on the laptop they needed a little editing. It was not much of an issue and all our shots were in great working order and more importantly had very solid focus.

Sony AX 53:

I had a Camcorder which also shot in 4K and I was eager to give it a go in this unit. It has impressive auto-focus (which can be turned off) as well as incredibly impressive Balanced Optical Steady focus. This enables you to walk along and have a silky smooth shot without having to use special effects in the edit. This very useful feature was important when creating the super smooth and slick project we had intended all along. These slick shots would not have been possible on the Panasonic as it weighed a lot more and did not have the lens feature. The Sony was often used on a shoulder rig for cutaway shots and the alternate Vox Pop angle. From what I am seeing in the edit, this camera is being used more than the sony in the vox pop segment due to its perfect focus and steadiness.

I was happy to be controlling this camera and was really impressed with the shots I was able to achieve. This camera exceeded my expectations in this shoot and I will most likely end up using it in my final year's project. It's adaptability and size give it the edge over a Panasonic, while at the same time creating a very high-quality shot. The wide angle lens also gave us extra opportunities when filming as we had a lot of tight areas where it was hard to film. This was especially helpful in the PTC segment at the cafe which we filmed the alternate angle with this camera. It was a very tight area and we actually shot it from less than a meter away. The wide-angle gave us the opportunity to get the shot we wanted and have some depth of field.

Rode Microphone:

For the vox pop segments, I took the decision to use the RODE shotgun Microphone as our only microphone for this scene. This may not be what the microphone was intended for, but with there being the lack of one in the store, we had to work with it. Ideally, we would have used a reporter microphone which would be more dynamic and less bulky. However, saying this, the audio quality was great and the presenter holding the microphone lower down meant we had no distortion or peaking. I was happy with the audio quality out in the public especially with the wind we encountered.

Clip Microphone:

I took the decision to use a clip microphone for the PTC in the cafe as I hoped this would be less intrusive and less obvious for the viewer. The other option for this segment would have been the RODE microphone on a boom pole over the presenter. I went for the clip microphone as we tried the boom but we could not get the audio quality that I wished for. The clip microphone worked well, even though the cafe was extremely noisy we managed to achieve some great quality and made sure to adjust it to make sure we had no peaking once again.

Sadly there were still noises in the background which you could hear, like the coffee machine and people speaking but it is not that obvious. In the scenario of a busy cafe, it would have been hard to have perfect audio so I was pleased with how it came out.

Reason for Natural Lighting:

Finally, I wanted to explain why we chose to use natural lighting for the entirety of our piece. Firstly when booking out kit, Cailan did not book any lights which were the main reasons for not using them. However, after further analysis and thought I decided not to bring my own lights as I wanted the scene to look natural and not forced or set up. I knew adding in extra light from an external source would make the shot look overproduced for the scenario we were in. This decision went well as when looking back at the clips we had used the window shot well to equal out the light on each side of the presenters face. When looking back at this scenario I am happy I made the decision not to bring extra lights as it would have only provided hassle with the little room we had to work with at the cafe. In the future, however, I will make sure whoever books the kit out gets lights as they may be useful in most scenarios.