Our Monday Morning Post #5
Hope you're all enjoying a very happy Monday morning.
This weekend Sean I drove with Arpit and Vicente (our partners in crime) to the kind of industrial location reserved for drug deals and concealing weapons-grade plutonium. Aside from an old dog and the looming threat of being shot, the afternoon passed like a day at the beach. On any other day it'd be swell to shoot here with a legal permit. Perhaps an execution scene ala Miller's Crossing.
We took pictures for the website Sean put together. Take Zer0 Productions crossed with Industrialism Films. Should be interesting.
On the topic of art, I don't consider just *anything* to be art; that's the easy way out for those who want to avoid thinking. As for entertainment: I once considered a major in English. In that field, the gap between Dan Brown and Jane Austen is a bottomless void. But wanting to thrill someone and wanting provoke them is a task worth discerning. I think artists and entertainers benefit from this line drawn in the sand. Everybody leaves each other alone and everyone wins; it's the audience that matters.
Points of Interest: X-Minus One
This is a great radio show. In the vlog I say it's from the forties. Correction: fifties. All you gotta know is that it's great. Since there are so many episodes to choose from, allow me to recommend: The Tunnel Under the World, C-Chute, The Cold Equations, Universe. Most of these are adaptations of now-classic pulps and sci-fi, which is of course why the show is so great. Do check it out.
Great comparison with radio. They really do have to get to the point.
I’ve often thought about getting a radio host to help with scripting. Some one that knows about describing an image with words (dialog).
To paraphrase Chef Gusteau from Ratatouille — Not anything is art, but anything can be art. I don’t know why I just wrote that, it just seemed relevant at the time.
Downloaded the radio episodes you mentioned, will give them a listen.
PS: Does the 7D also have a recoding limit, or did you exhaust the memory card or battery?
It seems to cap at five gigabytes, which is roughly 12-15 minutes of 1080p video. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the encoding or if it’s an option that can be adjusted.
I think it’s the camera’s limitation, but I could be wrong. I know my 500D stops at 4GB, which is about 28 minutes of 720p footage. If you plan to talk long next time, maybe you should record at 720p.
For some strange reason, the 7D only records 720p at 60fps. Which, of course, can be converted to 24 nicely, though you lose a couple stops of light due to shutter speed.
Ah, so that’s why sometimes my videos look slightly darker on Vimeo than Youtube — The 24p conversion. Got it!
Conversion in post/encoding shouldn’t change the brightness too much. I meant it happens in-camera. You’re forced to use a shutter speed of 1/60 instead of 1/30.
Now I have to find another explanation for my videos getting darker on Vimeo
PS: Wouldn’t 1/30 be too blurry? I thought 1/48 is the more “filmic” shutter speed.
I haven’t noticed a difference, but it could be the type of file you’re uploading. Maybe different formats get encoded slightly differently?
1/48 would be a perfect 180 shutter for 24p, but unfortunately DSLR’s don’t let you shoot video with that shutter speed. 1/40 or 1/50 would be closer, but I’ve been pretty happy with how 1/30 looks on my 7D.
What equipment are you using to record audio?
For most of our vlogs we just use a Zoom H4n. But for short films and all other work, we use a Sennheiser MKH-60 (which we plug into the Zoom). Totally mobile sound, it’s great!