Pro Moviemaker Summer 2015 sample issue

VIDEO BAGS BUYERS’ GUIDE Our pick of the most comfortable, protective and adapative soft bags

LARRY Edit trimming in FCP X

DEN LENNIE’S BUSINESS BOOTCAMP Maximise your email marketing with our pro guide

The ultimate magazine for next generation filmmakers SUMMER 2015 £4.99 @ProMoviemaker

www.promoviemaker.net

NAB SPECIAL REPORT

ALL THE LATEST ultra-HD releases and reviews including Canon, Blackmagic, Arri, JVC and Sony

WIN PRIZES WORTH OVER £3,300!

Samyang 50mm cine lens and CVP goodies

PRO TEST

CLASH OF THE CAMCORDERS

4K camcorders from JVC, Panasonic and Sony battle-it out

GROUP TEST

WHICH RIG?

In-depth pro reviews of four leading shoulder rigs

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PLUS Out-of-the-box drone DJI Inspire 1 hands-on review Learn how crowdfunding is supporting filmmakers Practical postproduction advice for mixing audio

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NAB 2015 It was a tough job, but the Pro Moviemaker team gritted their collective teeth and headed over to Las Vegas to attend the massive NAB trade show, and they’ve come back with the lowdown on some of the amazing products that were launched there.

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CASE STUDY ROB WHITWORTH

WHIRLWIND TOURING

INTO THE FLOW

Filmmaker Rob Whitworth has perfected a dynamic all-action time-lapse technique known as Flow Motion, and his latest production to employ this approach shows the city of Dubai in an entirely new light WORDS TERRY HOPE PICTURES ROB WHITWORTH

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ROB WHITWORTH CASE STUDY

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icture this if you can: from an aerial perspective you’re racing headlong across the city of Dubai, heading at breakneck speed towards the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 828 metres high. As you approach it you soar upwards to arrive at the top and then, in one sweeping motion, you plunge through the heart of this iconic structure and then crash through floor after floor on your downward descent. You know it can’t be for real and yet it’s completely breathtaking – and it’s just one of the eyepopping sequences in a film that’s

packed with full on action from start to finish.

Rob Whitworth specialises in films such as this, and he’s even got a special name for the approach: Flow Motion. After producing a film about Barcelona that was built on this approach, with the camera tearing from one viewpoint to another with everything sped up courtesy of time-lapse, his next commission was a film about the city that’s the jewel of the United Arab Emirates. His brief was to adopt the same Flow Motion approach and give a whirlwind tour around some of the most dynamic

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ACADEMY AUDIO WIZARD PART 4: GETTING THE MIX RIGHT

SOUND DECISIONS

We’re concluding our short series on sound with a look at one of the most creative parts of the whole process, namely how to approach mixing the audio you’ve captured to go alongside your video production

ILLUSTRATION KATY BOWMAN

WORDS CHRIS MACLEAN

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AUDIO WIZARD

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n the last issue we talked about synchronising separately captured audio to HDSLR video — a rather technical, dry process.

Now, in the final part of this series, I’m going to cover the more creative and fun aspects of audio postproduction, namely mixing. On the way, I’ll explain how to lay out your sound sources on separate tracks in audio or video editing software so that it’s approachable, how to mix the various sounds you’ve recorded or added and how to get the most out of the software-based audio tools at your disposal, such as equalisation and reverb.

What all the key audio and video editing software packages have in common is that they allow you to place different sound sources on different ‘tracks’, giving you the ability to independently set the level of each of them throughout your video. This gives you a great deal of flexibility, and allows you to balance the sound to get exactly what you want.

Let’s take the example of an interview recorded in a crowded bar. Where a newcomer to filmmaking might simply point the camera at the interviewee in the middle of the bar and hope to capture as much of their speech as possible over the ambient noise, using their camera’s built-in mic, the more advanced videographer (that’s you!) would put a separate directional mic or audio recorder right up close to the interviewee to exclude as much bar noise as possible. That audio would then go on its own track in the audio editor.

Separately, you’d then capture a long ambient recording in the bar, not featuring the interviewee at all, just the incomprehensible noise of people talking, glasses clinking and so on, and that, likewise, goes on its own track.

Then, when it comes to the audio mix, the sound of the interviewee can be raised or lowered on its track as required (if the speaker becomes quieter and more withdrawn, or louder when agitated, for example) without

also bringing up or reducing the level of the ambient noise, which can be left constant on its own track. The result is a naturalsounding piece of audio where the interview is completely clear.

Of course, professional video, film and TV productions may use dozens of audio tracks, including sound effects, music and overdubbed voice-overs, but this is the advantage of the track-based approach expressed in the most basic of terms: it gives you the ability to individually control and adjust the level and basic sound of the audio sources included in your finished video.

All the key video editing software packages have the track-based audio facilities you need, although some are more focused on the video side and have fewer tracks for audio.

Some videographers synchronise their main audio sources or dialogue to their pictures in their video‑editing software, then export the separate audio tracks to a dedicated audio‑editing package, such as Avid’s Pro Tools, Cockos Reaper or Apple’s Logic to work on them there. The finished, mixed soundtrack can then be exported back into the video-editing software at the end of the process.

Alternatively, you can keep things simple and mix everything within your video editor. Both routes are perfectly acceptable; beginners might prefer to stay in the same software with which they edit the video. The most sensible thing to do is work out what you want to do, and then see if your software can deliver it.

It helps if you can adopt a basic workflow, a fundamental order in which you always undertake video and audio production.

The approach I recommend is to synchronise any dialogue in your video to picture, then to add any music and sound effects on separate tracks, record any voiceovers that are required and add those on separate tracks too, then mix all of the tracks together. I will talk about these stages as separate activities, just to keep things clear.

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MOVIE MATTERS THE BUSINESS OF FILMMAKING

DE N LE NN IE’S BU SI NE SS BO OT CA MP

MARKETING YOUR MOVIES To build a filmmaking business you nee d to shout about your skills, and email marketing can hel p you do this.

Den Lennie explains how it can make sen se to create valuable content and then give it away for free WORDS DEN LENNIE

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THE BUSINESS OF FILMMAKING

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e’re all very familiar with email, and I’m sure the majority of people reading this feature will be faced with torrents of the stuff every day. Some of it will be useful, and we’ll open and read it, and maybe we’ll even respond, while much will be unsolicited and is likely to find itself consigned immediately to the Junk box.

However, even if you become exasperated at times by the amount of communications you receive, you must surely agree that email is a very effective form of communication, and if you can harness its positive points and avoid being seen as a provider of worthless spam, then there is the opportunity to create a highly efficient email marketing campaign to boost awareness of your business and raise your credibility in the eyes of your potential clients. You do this by producing useful and well informed information and then giving it away for free.

When someone is searching the Internet looking to solve a problem, there’s nothing more powerful than landing on a page that not only promises to solve their problem, but actually gives them a free gift that helps them to solve it more quickly. This is sometimes known as ‘free line content’ or ‘lead generation,’ and it’s designed to lure your prospect into signing up (or ‘opting in’) to receive more information from you. The psychology behind this process is designed to create a good impression with a prospective customer. It also puts you in control early on in the buying cycle.

Let me explain: imagine that your ideal client is browsing the internet and looking to find a corporate video production company to

create a promotional video. If they are using the search term ‘corporate video production’, then they’ll no doubt have many companies to choose from. Then let’s say that they click on two or three different companies from there. The chances are that they will all offer a similar kind of service, including headlines like ‘look at our showreel’, ‘click here for a quote...’ and so on.

Now imagine if one of those results offers them a free report called ‘Five tips to help you choose a video production company and how to avoid making an expensive mistake’. I bet they would be intrigued. Potentially this is the answer to their problem, and it will save them from having to wade through lots of other websites, as they now have access to a free report that promises to help them make their decision.

A very important psychological trick here is to include the phrase ‘avoid making an expensive mistake.’ It’s quite possible that the person tasked with finding this production company has some sort of budgetary restraint or at the very least a figure in mind that they want to spend. So it is your job as a marketer to highlight the pain and then offer an easy solution to help put their mind at ease, especially if you run a professional high-quality business that charges premium prices.

This is simply the biggest and easiest no-brainer that you can apply to your business immediately.

How to create your report Creating a report like this is very easy.

You can simply write down the five most commonly asked questions you get from clients when they make their initial enquiry, and then break this down further by giving each of those questions three subheadings, going on to answer those questions in detail.

“It is your job as a marketer to highlight the pain and then offer an easy solution to help put their mind at ease”

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MOVIE MATTERS CROWDFUNDING

WORK THE CROWD Having just premiered their feature-length documentary to packed out audiences at SXSW, filmmakers Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli talk to us about their crowdfunding success story and shooting in Afghanistan WORDS ZENA TOSCANI

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n making the powerful documentary Frame by Frame, Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli have become a part of a growing collective of people determined not to let war-torn countries only be represented by sensationalist media coverage of devastation. Inspired by a beautiful short called Afghanistan Touch Down in Flight, Alexandria was instantly intrigued by this stunning country and its people. She set about listening to local storytellers’ narratives to see how these differed from the view of outsiders and soon discovered that the Taliban had banned photography when they were in power – this small piece of information was the catalyst in what would become a feature-length documentary premiering at this year’s SXSW, with image-makers both in front of and behind the lens. If there was to be any doubt over how dedicated the team were to telling this story right, Alexandria’s actions at the start of the shoot should quash them instantly.

“I sold my truck and emptied my bank account to fund the first production in 2012,” she explains.

“I wanted to be open to finding the real story first before pitching it.” This leap of faith turned out to be crucial to their filmmaking journey, allowing them to avoid prescribing the story ahead of time.

“Afghanistan’s had its story prescribed enough by the outside world; we weren’t interested in doing that,” Mo added.

While the 2012 production revealed an amazing story centring on four Afghan photojournalists, their visit was not long enough for the feature-length film they soon realised the story warranted. “We wanted the film to be more observational than the initial interviews and b-roll provided and that takes time to capture,” IMAGE Alexandria Bombach filming in a small village outside of Kabul in 2012.

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© MO SCARPELLI

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GEAR RIG TEST RIG TEST

KEEP IT STEADY

Choice of rig is crucially important and if you can find one that suits not just your budget but also your way of working it will become an indispensable accessory. Christopher Hughes casts an eye over a selection of options WORDS CHRISTOPHER HUGHES HELP & PHOTOGRAPHY NICK BRIGHT

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ilmmakers are forever looking for a rig that can free them up to get the shots they need to tell the story, but which is also lightweight and flexible enough to take on location and use in all manner of situations. As well as being portable it also needs to pack down small so that it can fit inside hand luggage when required and can be neatly stored between jobs.

Over the years I’ve cobbled together my own, far from perfect, handheld rig made up of parts from Zacuto, Shoot 35, Cinegearpro and Vocas products, and I arrived at this configuration through a long and drawn out process, the rig evolving as my requirements grew. I was just starting out and so had to work to a tight budget, and I only added to my rig when a job came along that required something extra.

With all this in mind I was delighted to have the opportunity to look at a selection of handheld rig kits aimed at the independent filmmaker, each of which is designed to offer a complete stand-alone solution. If truth be told we’re in the market for one of these ourselves, as we’re moving from our current Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras to the Canon EOS C100 as our main shoot camera, and so it was a golden opportunity to look at what’s out there.

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RIG TEST

SHAPE CANON C-SERIES OFFSET RIG THIS SHAPE RIG IS SOLIDLY BUILT, which is great, as it’s a hard wearing and professional piece of kit, but the downside is that it’s consequently quite heavy.

The quality feels very good, however, and you certainly get the impression that it could handle the rough and tumble of active service.

If you don’t own an EVF or monitor/recorder the Shape might be right up your street, since it was designed as an offset rig, ie. it puts the camera right in front of you with the rig on your shoulder, allowing you to see the built-in monitor. Unfortunately this means the weight is primarily upfront and your arms take almost all of it, and after long spells of shooting you could find yourself succumbing to fatigue quite quickly. Having recently purchased a Ronin of the same design I would be looking for a more balanced rig that put more of the weight onto my shoulder, counterbalancing the camera. You could add more weight to the back at additional cost, but you would also need longer rods to do so and the whole set-up then just gets heavier. You’ll have a more stable camera, but you’ll get tired out that much quicker.

The instructions told us to use the 10in rods at the front and the 12in ones on the offset shoulder part at the rear of the camera.

Personally I think it should be the other way around as, to me, they just aren’t long enough in this configuration. We loaded the rig up with a follow focus, clip-on matte box and the trusty Canon 24105mm IS f/4L lens and struggled for space on the rods. If the focus gear had needed to be much further from the camera we would have had to pull off the barrel and, if you have a rod mounted matte

Street price: £762 www.shapewlb.com

“You certainly get the impression that it could handle the rough and tumble of active service”

Quick to assemble, this offset rig from Shape could be a hit with those who regularly switch between tripod and rig.

box, forget it. There simply isn’t the space, especially if you have a zoom lens and are using something like nun’s knickers (flexible universal lens donuts) to go on the lens with the matte box.

You have to be careful how far from the back of the camera you attach the offset bracket; too close and you can’t change the battery. Also you bear in mind that the offset bracket attaches to the front rods, meaning that for every millimetre you move it back from the camera you shorten the frontof-camera usable rods.

On the plus side the baseplate is incredibly well built and attaches easily to a tripod base plate with either 3/8in or 1/4in screw threads.

The tie-down rod knob is, for me, on the wrong side, as it’s almost right under the camera’s handle, meaning that it’s a little fiddly when you need to make adjustments with the rig on your

shoulder. One nice thing about the tie-down knob, however, is the fact that it ratchets, making it easy to use and position out of the way.

The handgrips are comfortable, and are easily adjusted without taking your hands off, a nice touch. They also have rosette styled fittings to prevent slippage, another big plus. Attaching the handgrips is easy since they are secured with just the one tie-down knob – that kind of thoughtful touch is always appreciated. The grips are a bit heavy for my taste, but since buying a Ronin I’m become a tad obsessed with weight.

The shoulder pad is comfortable enough with plenty of give, and again it’s very easy to attach.

One of the major plus points of the rig is how quickly it all goes together and comes apart, which is ideal as most filmmakers will have a regular need to move from tripod to handheld rig quickly.

HOW IT RATES Features Everyone you need for run n’ gun Performance Worked well but rather heavy Handling Can be assembled very quickly Value for money A decent pro rig for the money

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PRO MOVIEMAKER RATING 7.5 Will do a good job, but at a price Pros: Very solidly built Cons: Rather heavy to carry

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GEAR BUYERS’ GUIDE

SOFT BAGS FOR VIDEOGRAPHERS

CARRY ON FILMING

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a ‘run and gun’ filmmaker, the chances are you’ll need to travel with your kit at some point.

Let us help you out with our pick of the most functional (and fashionable) soft bags WORDS ZENA TOSCANI

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bag might not be too high up on your list of priorities when purchasing new gear, but it should be.

Whether you’re a corporate filmmaker or a wedding videographer you’ll need to work on location at some point or another so being able to lug around your load without hassle (and arm ache) is sure to make your life considerably easier. While many filmmakers will have their trusty waterproof, crush proof, bombproof hard cases to store their gear at home and load into vans or flight hold areas, sometimes a job requires a much more pareddown kit that needs to be transported for longer periods of time. Enter the soft bag. Often wearable, rollable or both, this type of bag needs to be comfortable, protective and adaptable. If it looks good to boot that’s a more than welcome bonus.

Being able to rearrange the layout of your bag is incredibly useful as your kit evolves and changes with your projects and with technology advances, it’s also something that foam cut hard cases don’t offer quite so easily. When it comes to the interior design of a bag we’re also strong supporters of brightly coloured inserts which allow you to easily spot rogue body caps and connectors.

In this soft case buyers’ guide we cover everything from messenger bags to backpacks to roller cases suitable to fit in an airplane cabin. You’ll probably discover that it’s horses for courses dependent on the task in hand so unfortunately we can’t promise that this article will help you find ‘the one’ bag to rule them all, but we’re pretty confident it’ll make your gear wish list a little longer.

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BUYERS’ GUIDE

Editor’s Choice ★★★★★

LOWEPRO DSLR VIDEO CAMRADE RUN AND FASTPACK 350 AW GUN BAG MEDIUM From £80 www.lowepro.com 35x25x49cm 1.8kg The Lowepro DSLR Video Fastpack 350 AW is a multipurpose backpack designed with filmmakers in mind. Doing exactly what it says on the tin, the Fastpack 350 AW offers speedy access to the main compartment thanks to a side zip which allows users to swing the pack around to the front and quickly open the camera compartment without having to set the bag down. Meanwhile the all weather (AW) functionality is safely provided by the unobtrusive protective cover.

So what makes this specifically a video backpack rather than a photo backpack I hear you ask? Why the purpose-built audio compartment and removable audio utility pouch of course. Conveniently located at the top of the bag the specific audio compartment is shaped to accommodate sound equipment like headphones, mics and recorders. This section of the bag also contains the aforementioned removable audio utility pouch which is ideal for organising any cables or audio accessories that might otherwise get tangled if left loose in a large space.

The Video Fastpack 350 AW is the largest in this line-up of backpacks from Lowepro and as such can fit a 17in laptop in the designated compartment – perfect if you do rough cuts on the fly.

Pros: Good value, audio friendly Cons: Too large for some

From £144 www.holdan.co.uk 54x25x30cm 2.7kg This new shoulder bag from Alphatron is a great solution for filmmakers who regularly find themselves renting or switching cameras or for those whose main camera is larger than a DSLR. While bags originally intended for photography are often very adaptable, they sometimes struggle to accommodate the larger more traditional ENG style cameras. The oblong shape and large removable dividers make the camRade run and gun medium bag able to carry a fully assembled camera up to 50cm in length.

Heavily padded on the inside, you won’t need to worry about the safety of your gear. This generous padding is also employed on the body strap making the camRade run and gun bag very comfortable to wear. This comfort does come at a somewhat weighty cost however, one that carries a price tag of 2.7kg (before you have any gear inside).

Designed with ‘run and gun’ filmmakers in mind the 1000 denier black Cordura fabric feels tough enough to stand the test of time while the armoured plate on the bottom of the bag provides additional safety reassurance.

Though there aren’t masses of customisation options the large sectioned zip pocket on the front is perfect for storing cables and accessories.

Pros: Suitable for ENG style cameras Cons: Heavy before you start

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