Pro Moviemaker Autumn 2014 Sampler

HEADPHONES SUPERTEST We uncover the best models for honest sound recording

AUDIO

WIZARD

Part 1: Mics & recorders

WHICH EDITING SOFTWARE? Everything you need to know about the top offerings from Apple, Adobe and Avid

The ultimate magazine for next generation filmmakers AUTUMN 2014 ÂŁ4.99 @ProMoviemaker

VINCENT LAFORET

MOTION SPECIAL Exclusive advice for adding pace into your productions PLUS your complete guide to essential action gear

SMALL WONDERS

Rise of the 4K CSC

Why filmmakers are taking full advantage of the latest compact system cameras

IS IT TIME TO UPGRADE TO A CINEMA LENS?

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Packed with reviews, features and more!

SEE THE LIGHT

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Why you should switch on to the latest LED technology

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WELCOME The ultimate magazine for next generation filmmakers Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridgeshire CB22 3HJ

Editorial Editor Terry Hope Deputy editor Zena Toscani Sub editor Lisa Clatworthy Sub editor Hannah Bealey Advertising Sales director 01223 499453 Matt Snow mattsnow@bright-publishing.com Key accounts Maria Francis 01223 499457 mariafrancis@bright-publishing.com Sales executive Krishan Parmar 01223 499462 krishanparmar@bright-publishing.com Design Design director Andy Jennings Senior designer Alan Gray Senior designer Mark George Designer Emily Stowe Designer Katy Bowman Publishing Managing directors Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck When you have finished with this magazine, please recycle it

Well, here we are, a full fledged and vibrant magazine in our own right now rather than a mere supplement, with lots more pages, a new name that more correctly encompasses the fast-changing environment that we’re writing about and an enhanced line up of expert contributors. It’s been a busy few months planning the first issue of Pro Moviemaker but I hope you like what you see, and it’s been a fascinating experience to see how the whole field has moved on in the three years since we first took the decision to produce a standalone publication devoted to DSLR filmmaking.

The reason for the phenomenal growth of this title has been the fact that it’s mirrored the growth of the sector itself. When the launch of the Canon 5D Mark II introduced photographers to the potential of HD SLR filmmaking there were many who considered this was just a passing fad. Instead it instigated a whole new movement, with prices coming down and new tools appearing from every direction.

Of course it’s no longer just DSLRs that those moving into filmmaking are looking at, which is why we’ve changed the name and why this field is exploding in the way it is. I’m loving being at the helm of a title that’s reporting on this growth, and I think we’re in for an exciting ride!

Pro Moviemaker is published quarterly by Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridge CB22 3HJ. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of Bright Publishing Ltd. ISSN number: 2045-3892. Pro Moviemaker is a registered trademark of Bright Publishing Ltd. The advertisements published in Pro Moviemaker that have been written, designed or produced by employees of Bright Publishing Ltd remain the copyright of Bright Publishing Ltd and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

Terry Hope TERRY HOPE, EDITOR

MEET OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS ZENA TOSCANI DEPUTY EDITOR When she’s not writing features and reviews for Pro Moviemaker, or getting overly excited about new camera gear and cinema releases, Zena puts her 1st class film degree and love of adventure to good use by shooting action sports shorts and documentaries.

AUDREY AQUILINA FILM LIGHTING With many years of lighting experience working on large scale productions for the likes of BBC, Channel Four, Five and Discovery US, Audrey, who comes from a background in photography and design, is equally at home in the studio and on location.

VINCENT LAFORET FILM DIRECTOR One of the original and most influential driving forces behind the emergence of DSLR filmmaking, Vincent is now established as a director and trainer. He’s just finished a huge tour of the US, where he’s been talking about the importance of introducing pace into film.

IAN NUTTALL OWNER TIZA VIDEO Ian is a professional filmmaker and the owner of the TIZA creative video agency, which produces films for a host of big name clients and SMEs. Ian has also recently developed a clapperboard app called the TIZA DSLR Slate 20/20, available from http://tizaslate.com, price £1.49.

JAMES VELLACOTT FILMMAKER James was first introduced to filmmaking while a photographer with the Daily Mirror working with 5D Mark IIs, and he now runs Cherry Duck at Tower Bridge, a busy production house making everything from commercials to films that are designed to be web hosted.

SIMON HALL SOFTWARE EXPERT Simon has been a professional film editor for the past 11 years. As well as editing he became a trainer for Apple, teaching Final Cut Pro. He currently works as Soho Editors’ lead trainer in London, and he’s still a working editor using a variety of software.

LORRAINE GRULER VIDEO BLOGGER Based in the US, Lorraine is a long time video production professional with an emphasis on documentary style production and jornalism. Today she runs a blog called Video Production Tips, which helps people all over the world learn how to make their own videos.

MATT BELL AUDIO SPECIALIST At various times Matt has been an audio engineer, video editor, photographer, PR consultant, managing editor, courier and translator, and he was very nearly an accountant, but escaped. He’s now a technical writer on broadcast and audio technology.

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AUTUMN 2014

CONTENTS

FEATURES

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SHOOTING WEDDING VIDEOS

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FOLLOWING FOCUS

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Paul Cryer tells us how he’s carved out a niche for himself with cinematic style wedding videos.

Trainer James Sharpe talks about his career and a move across from photography to filmmaking.

DON’T LOOK DOWN!

The story of how one very popular YouTube video was produced.

MOTION SPECIAL: THE SECRETS OF MOVEMENT

Filmmaking legend Vincent Laforet talks about the techniques that will lift your movie making.

MOTION SPECIAL: ALL SET FOR ACTION

We take a look at the accessories that will help you to include fastpaced action in your video footage.

SPECIAL FEATURE

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GUIDE TO VIDEO LENSES

In association with Samyang, we look at the advantages of working with dedicated cinema lenses.

ACADEMY

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APPEARING ON CAMERA

Scared of putting yourself in front of the camera? Lorraine Gruler has some tips to help you out.

WHICH EDITING SOFTWARE?

Trainer Simon Hall talks through the pros and cons of the top three professional editing softwares.

EXPLAINING AUDIO

Expert Matt Bell starts a new series that talks through the A-Z of audio.

HOW TO LIGHT INTERVIEWS

Audrey Aquilina presents a run through of one of the most common video lighting situations you’ll face.

MOVIE MATTERS

Our line up of experts answers your queries and invites new questions.

GEAR

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SMOOTH OPERATOR

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THE RISE OF LED LIGHTING

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James Vellacott tests out the revolutionary Syrp Genie and talks about his approach to movement.

Rising to the challenge, why LED lighting is a perfect video partner.

CSCS COME OF AGE

A full test of the new Panasonic Lumix GH4 and an overview looking at the rise of the CSC video camera.

104 DEDICATED CINEMA LENSES

We test out three specialist lenses from Canon, Samyang and Zeiss.

108 BUYERS’ GUIDE: HEADPHONES Here’s a round up of the latest headphones for the filmmaker.

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CASE STUDY JAMES SHARPE

THE CRAFT OF FILM

FOLLOWING FOCUS Striving to incite emotional responses in his audience, James Sharpe’s background in photography has galvanised a diverse filmmaking career with beautiful imagery and powerful storytelling at its heart WORDS ZENA TOSCANI

S

ome people know what they want to do from a very young age. For James Sharpe this was storytelling: making comics and carrying out Lego performances as a young boy soon developed into designing characters and scripting animated scenes. A burgeoning interest in stills photography combined with a late night accidental viewing of David Lynch’s surrealist classic Eraserhead disturbed and fascinated James enough to begin a long-standing love affair with movies and live action storytelling.

Learning the craft Realising that movies were the object of his affections in his teenage years allowed James to make wise further education choices. With a BTEC in media, A-levels in film studies and photography, James embarked on his media production undergraduate degree with a host of

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technical knowledge under his belt.

However it wasn’t until he began work on his award-winning graduation short A Man Walks Into a Bar that his film education truly began. Being unable to work with his crew of choice he sought an alternative to working with different peers. “I opted to work by myself and source my own actors and crew from outside the university,” he says.

“Ultimately, I learnt more about the craft of film on that shoot than I did in my entire time at university.”

While James found the theoretical elements of his course eye opening he admits that “you just can’t learn everything there; nothing beats real life on-set experience.”

With some solid directing experience in hand, James left university with the knowledge that he wanted to be a writer/ director. “I’m interested in, and get

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James directing a scene from FIBS on Clevedon pier in an ice cold downpour.

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MOTION SPECIAL CINEMATOGRAPHY TECHNIQUE

THE SECRETS OF

MOVEMENT Celebrated filmmaker, Vincent Laforet, has just completed an epic US tour addressing the whole issue of incorporating motion into your productions. Here he explains why this is an essential element to master WORDS TERRY HOPE

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THE MOST DYNAMIC AND CREATIVE PEOPLE ON THE PLANET ARE NOT THE TYPES TO SIT AROUND AND WAIT FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN. SO WHEN ONE OF THEM, NAMELY PHOTOGRAPHER, DSLR FILMMAKING TRAILBLAZER AND LATTERLY FULL-TIME DIRECTOR, VINCENT LAFORET, FOUND HIMSELF FORCIBLY SEPARATED FROM HIS CAMERAS FOR A WHILE AFTER BREAKING HIS ARM, IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT HE WOULD RESPOND IN A CREATIVE WAY. VINCENT USED THE UNEXPECTED SPARE TIME TO CATCH UP ON THINGS HE HAD NEVER BEFORE FOUND THE TIME TO GET AROUND TO. IN HIS CASE THIS MEANT SITTING DOWN TO WATCH AND ANALYSE CLASSIC ACTION SEQUENCES PRODUCED BY A SELECTION OF LEGENDARY CINEMATOGRAPHERS, AND TO PULL OUT LESSONS FROM THESE THAT COULD BE LEARNED AND PASSED ON TO OTHERS.

Vincent’s misfortune has ultimately proved to be of benefit to a positive army of filmmakers, since he used the insights he gained as the bedrock on which to build a Zacuto-sponsored tour, Directing Motion, which has been crossing the US, visiting 32 major cities for the past nine weeks. The workshop has attracted rave reviews, and for those who weren’t able to attend, the whole presentation has been recorded and will shortly be released as a download from tour organiser MZED, to join its impressive library of essential training materials aimed at filmmakers, photographers and designers.

We caught up towards the end of a long day with an exhausted but clearly exhilarated Laforet, who fully deserves his reputation as an aficionado, who eats, sleeps and breathes movies. He’s been in love with the film world since accompanying his father – who was also a photographer and worked for a time for Premiere magazine – to film sets. “As a kid I would go on Bertolucci films,” says Vincent, “which was amazing. An early memory is of being on a film set and seeing a Mercedes being shot at with fake machine guns and driving into another car: it’s pretty spectacular when you see it live.”

A Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and director, Vincent was at the vanguard of the DSLR filmmaking movement, being handed the groundbreaking Canon EOS 5D Mark II before launch and using it to make his first film, Reverie, in 2009, which received over two million views in the first week of its release.

Subsequently, he helped to democratise the filmmaking process and was heavily involved in launching the first wave of hybrid photographers/filmmakers, and he’s now regarded as one of the world’s best trainers and educators in this field.

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ACADEMY AUDIO WIZARD PART 1: MICS & RECORDERS

SOUND DECISIONS In the first of a new series that explores the whole area of sound and explains how to master it in your video productions, Matt Bell introduces the concept of audio and talks about the tools of the trade

ILLUSTRATION KATY BOWMAN

WORDS MATT BELL

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AUDIO WIZARD

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f you’ve moved into HDSLR video from stills photography, working with audio can be one of your biggest new challenges. In this series, we’ll explain some of the unfamiliar terminology, consider different approaches for capturing high-quality sound and also take a look at some of the equipment you’ll need. We begin the series with an overview of the basics of audio capture.

As photographers we should be on top of our visual game and, as such, can be pretty sure that our video is going to look interesting at the very least. How can we then make sure that the sound isn’t going to let our productions down?

Photographers can soon start to feel lost working in this completely different medium. If you’re stuck in a torrential downpour, next to an eight-lane motorway, or on a blustery building site (or all three), you can still potentially create brilliant photography without compromising your work. Capturing meaningful and interesting audio in the same environments, however, is infinitely harder, and involves knowledge of a new discipline in which the equipment and terminology may be unfamiliar.

Fortunately, as we’ll see in this series, there’s nothing in the business of audio capture and post-production for video that’s inherently more complex than any of the disciplines you’ve learnt on your journey to taking and processing great pictures. Some of the concepts you’re familiar with from photography can even be applied to audio capture in a slightly different context. The most obvious of these is the means of capture. Just as you

capture light with a lens and a light-recording device (be it film or a sensor), so you capture audio with a microphone and an audiorecording device. But even at this basic level, there is confusion.

Aren’t there different kinds of microphone and recorder, and how are they connected? Is an external mic even required?

Capturing sound It’s often said that there are three basic ways to capture sound with an HDSLR: firstly, buy one that has an on-board microphone (not all of them do); secondly, add an external microphone (or microphones) but still record audio on the camera; and thirdly, resort to using a completely separate recorder (or recorders) for the audio, and sync the audio back to the video at the post-production stage. In this feature we’ll be looking at the strengths and weaknesses of each of these three basic approaches.

Just as you can shoot great photographs with a minimum of equipment, the same is true of HDSLR video capture. One of the early attractions of HDSLR video was the idea that you could make video with the same basic kit as you were using for your photography, and you can, but you should be aware of the relative merits and demerits of travelling light, and why you might nonetheless choose to add more equipment depending on the kind of video you’re trying to create.

Choosing an HDSLR with built-in audio facilities appears to have a lot to commend it to video beginners. You don’t then need to buy an additional stand-alone microphone, and audio can be recorded along with all the video you shoot in the same file on the camera. Your rig is as portable

“As we’ll see, there’s nothing in the business of audio capture and post-production for video that’s inherently more complex that any of the disciplines you’ve learnt on your journey to taking great pictures”

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MOVIE MATTERS Our panel of experts is waiting to receive your queries and is ready with words of advice that can help you to sort out issues that range from audio through to business-related matters such as insurance and finance ROOKIE RENTERS Simon Browitt, Rental Manager at Calumet First-time renters often make the mistake of leaving their booking too late and can be sorely disappointed if their preferred items are already on loan, so planning ahead is definitely the first rule of renting. Planning your rental can also get you a great deal if you’re wanting to test out a new piece of equipment before a live shoot, as there are often extended bank holiday offers, weekend deals and four day week options available at a reduced rates. Similarly, here at Calumet we offer a ‘try before you buy’ scheme, which entitles customers up to a 50% refund on the rental fee should the item be purchased within 14 days of the loan stock being returned.

If you’re unsure about what item might best suit your needs, come in store and we’ll show you the kit and will be there to answer any questions – this service can also be provided over the phone or via email if you are having your rental

gear delivered. We also have a range of seminars that run throughout the year so that customers can learn more about their chosen field.

Consider how much you will use your next planned purchase. If it isn’t going to be a kitbag essential or has a hefty price tag then rental is the way forward. Aside from the initial high investment of purchasing new gear, you will also have to deal with servicing costs or getting the item to your shoots. Specialist rental companies like Calumet will deliver and collect from most locations and pick up the servicing costs, saving you money and hassle.

Simon Browitt is the Rental Manager at Calumet, digital equipment rental specialists with a network of centres across Europe. Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker. net with RENTAL in the subject line. www.calumetrental.co.uk

“If your next purchase isn’t a kitbag essential then rental is the way forward”

TRENDING Chloe Baxter, Marketing Manager at CVP As a retailer managed by broadcast and professional video practitioners we’re in a pretty unique position here at CVP to be able get a really good overview of where the industry is going and truthfully inform and advise our customers. We’re seeing a number of exciting trends so far in 2014, with a massive uptake of modern stabilisation solutions that are allowing filmmakers to discover new ways of using their equipment.

The stabilisation methods that are of particular interest right now are handheld three-axis digital stabilised camera gimbal systems, such as those

by Freefly as these are incredibly versatile pieces of equipment.

It seems like an increasing number of photographers and professionals from other backgrounds are also appreciating the longevity of moviemaking and so longer-term investments like high-quality cine lenses are proving popular. These lenses are easier to finance because they don’t depreciate in the same way that cameras do, and we’re finding the Cooke S4/i Prime, Arri Ultra Prime and Angenieux Optimo to be particularly popular at the moment.

When it comes to cameras, the following models are the ones our customers are currently showing an interest in, whether from a purchase perspective or feedback from people: Leica M Alexa XT Arri Amira Sony F5

Chloe Baxter is the Marketing Manager at the CVP Group, one of the leading Broadcast and Professional Video Solutions Providers in the UK and Europe.

Send your questions for this column to experts@promoviemaker.net with GEAR in the subject line. www.cvp.com

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GEAR LED LIGHTING

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LED LIGHTING

LIGHT RELIEF ILLUMINATION FOR FILM

As a surge of interest in filmmaking increases demand for continuous lighting, LED technology is becoming ever more advanced. We look closer at what it has to offer those moving over from photography WORDS TERRY HOPE

T

o adapt a time-worn saying just a little, cometh the hour, cometh the technology…

In other words, just as HDSLR capability was ramping up the interest in filmmaking amongst a whole new generation, ensuring that the need for a simple, convenient and economical form of continuous lighting was really starting to make itself felt, so LED technology was coming of age. It’s now presenting itself as a truly viable alternative to traditional forms of continuous lighting, such as tungsten and HMI, and comes with a whole heap of benefits that potentially make it a winner both for those shooting stills and those interested in making movies.

Like any kind of emerging technology, of course, this is an area that has had a few teething problems, and some early products were struggling to produce the power of output and stability of colour that was required. Times have changed, however, and the latest generation of LED lights is truly capable of living up to the requirements of the most demanding of operators.

Its key benefit is the fact that it truly can do a job right across the spectrum; it’s powerful, reliable, stable, cool, safe and lightweight, and fully controllable to boot, so that its power and even its colour temperature can be adjusted at will. It all means that it has the potential to be the perfect tool for those who don’t want the expense or the inconvenience of having to invest in two completely separate lighting systems.

Pros and cons The idea of emitting light from a solid-state substance has been around since 1907 when British scientist H J Round was experimenting in his laboratory with a crystal known as silicon carbide. When he applied a charge of electricity to it, light was emitted, and the concept was born: 20 years later others found a way to make the whole idea work outside of the lab and the first lightemitting diode followed shortly afterwards.

So much for the history lesson: what exactly are the key benefits of LED lighting? And are there still some areas in which it’s struggling to do the job demanded by the professional? We’ve mentioned the efficiency of this source and LEDs have a remarkably long lifespan and are very resistant to damage since there is no glass to break and no filament to damage via vibration.

They are also more environmentally friendly since they last longer, they don’t give out emissions of gases such as CO2 and they don’t contain any toxic material, such as mercury vapour.

Because they have a lower heat output than their continuous light rivals they are the perfect partner for the studio. It means that the working environment doesn’t become uncomfortable, while those shooting perishable subjects, such as food or flowers, don’t face the issue of their subject literally wilting in front of their eyes.

For good measure they’re also very safe since their typically lower infrared and ultraviolet

LEFT LED lighting, like this Litepanels Sola 9, is flooding the market, and it’s becoming ever more highly specified, economic to power and useable.

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