EXTENDING THE WARRANTY: GETTING MORE OUT OF YOUR CAMERA

It's obvious but I feel it needs to be said: a better camera doesn't guarantee a better video. I've been involved with enough of them to know that in competitions rarely is the winning entry the one with biggest crew and most expensive gear.

The inverse is true, too; in general a half-decent camera can hit above its proverbial weight class. Practically ever year a movie is shown at Cannes that really shakes things up. One documentary used old footage from a family camera and cut together on a $50 editing program caused major ripples some years back.

There are limits, of course. From the side of technical fidelity, you can think of camcorder shopping as flirting with the law of diminishing returns. There is no upper limit to how much can be spent on a camera, but generally speaking the higher you go in price the more you have to spend to get a significant and noticeable jump in quality.

The fantastic thing about videomaking is that the audience neither knows nor cares about technical specs. If anything I find people simply assume it's 'better than what I have' and leave it at that. Heh.

And while not all cameras are created equally (a good camera really does make a difference), there are ways to get more out of yours regardless of the price tag.

Don't believe me? Need proof? This video and this video were made with the same model of camera.

Yeah.

ZOOM DIFFERENTLY
When you hit the zoom button on your camera the pieces of glass inside the lens are physically moving further apart. This effectively making the lens longer, or more telephoto.

Most often this is used as simply a way to get closer to whatever you're recording. Moving in from a Long Shot to a Medium Close-Up, say. If you instead move the camera back so that your Long Shot STAYS a Long shot, some interesting things happen.

If you're scratching your head as to what a Medium Close-Up is, I covered shot sizes in a previous article.

The first thing you'll notice when you've zoomed in is that space is compressed. Jimmy, standing 3 feet behind Bob, appears about the same size as his friend. If you zoom out and move close enough that Jimmy is again in a Long Shot you'll see Bob appearing closer. A Medium Close-Up, say. It's all about ratios and distance from the camera.

The second thing that happens is that the area in focus, the depth of field, becomes narrower. If you have your subject move away from the background until he is the only thing in focus, the audience attention is more sharply focused on the subject and the shot is more intimate.

I won't go into too much detail as to why, but the depth of field is all about how open the iris is. On most consumer camcorders there is no way to control the iris manually. If you shoot somewhere with a lot of light, such as outside on a bright day, more of the frame will be in focus. If you shoot somewhere with less light, such as inside, the depth of field will be tighter. Knowing what's going on inside your camcorder means you have more control of your image.

STOP SEEING EYE TO EYE
The most common place people will place the camera is at eye level. Sometimes this is appropriate. Sometimes it's not. Even just getting the camera lower to the ground will often completely change the feel of the shot. Or a few feet higher.

Famously Orson Wells dug a hole in the floor of a set to get the camera lower to the ground. You probably don't need to go that far.

SK8ER B0Y
If there is a mantra of this blog, I'd like to think it's "Everything communicates.". Half of what makes movies feel cinematic is the way they move the camera. From a simple dolly to those smooth sweeping shots of expansive vistas. And while you don't have access to the tens of thousands of dollars of equipment the big guys do, I'll bet you've a buddy with a skateboard.

Or a car.

A wheelchair.

A shopping cart.

The basic principles still apply; wheels on a smooth surface gives you smoother movement than hand holding it. And if you want a crane, think outside the box. If you're setting is in a playground, why not get a couple people on one end of a teeter-toter smoothly lifting you on the other end with the camera?

Your ultimate goal is to make the camera man invisible to the audience. If that happens, it ultimately doesn't matter if you achieved it with a $10,000 a day rental package or a broom handle and some duct tape.

Of course, most of the above methods still require an operator physically holding the camera and soften any vibration. The final word on that? Lock elbows to your side and move the camera with your whole body.

FINAL WORDS
Camcorders are pretty incredible pieces of technology regardless of their price points. You're holding in your hands the culmination of 100 years of film history. Pretty cool stuff, all in all. The best thing you can do is push back against the comfort zone.

Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

Play.

Huh... Camcorder. Camera Recorder. I literally just got that. Why is it that all the cool sounding words have such lack-luster etymologies


This article is dedicated to Joshua The Anarchist for his comments on articles previous. He's got a pretty good blog of his own. Comments are what keep me writing this blog. If you like what you read, consider posting something simply to say so. It really does make my day.

Hey! Let's make this fun!

Post a comment saying what you'd like to be drawn as and the next article I will draw up to three commenters as they so desire to be drawn!