Get to know your camera
Secret 1: Don’t be afraid of the camera
Secret 2: Learn to “see” with the camera
Secret 3: Learn to shoot intuitively
Secret 4: Learn to operate your camera by touch
Secret 5: Learn to shoot with both eyes open
Secret 6: Shoot a movie with a unifying theme
Secret 7: Shoot a movie a day for sixty days
Trying to shoot a street scene in the rain is a little like giving a piano recital in the shower.
It is December and I am in Portland, Oregon. Today’s weather is the same as yesterday’s: wet, cold and windy under a dark morning sky.
I am crouched behind a parked car on Mississippi Avenue. Leaning out a bit, I focus a VX2100 camera on the oncoming traffic. Seven street-cleaning trucks approach in line. Lumbering down the narrow street, throwing white sprays of water from their wheels, they are a perfect visual metaphor for a scene I want to shoot.
As the third truck passes, my viewfinder goes white and I am drenched in ice-cold water. The driver—bored or maybe not liking his picture taken—flipped on the truck’s street washing spray as he passed.
I have come to Portland for a week to work with filmmaker Jon Jost. Jost is a slender, charismatic man who has been making feature films for nearly thirty years. The credits on his film usually read: writer, director, producer, editor: Jon Jost. He is a genius at keeping things simple, and doing everything himself.
Although he shot in film for nearly twenty years—16mm and 35mm Panavision—he was an early convert to digital video and decided in 1996 to shoot only on DV.
Of his twenty-something features; All the Vermeers in New York is my favorite. Shot in 35mm, without lights, it is a beautifully made, subtle character study.
Jost is in Portland for a few months to prepare for his next feature film. While here, he has agreed to give me a crash course in digital video shooting. The day after I arrived, he learned that one of his recent films had been accepted for the Rotterdam film festival.
In his apartment he and his wife Marcella are working furiously. They are doing last-minute edits and preparing a new digital copy of his film for Rotterdam. Between work sessions, Jon gave me a “mini workshop” on shooting digital video. The exercises that follow are drawn from the formal Digital Video workshops he teaches every year.
SECRET 1: DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE CAMERA
One of the biggest secrets about shooting well is simply to be comfortable with your camera.
The best way to become comfortable with any camera is to take the camera out, turn it on and play with it.
Shoot some footage and see what happens. For now, don’t worry about what the image looks like. As filmmaker Jon Jost tells his students in his Digital Video workshops, “Just make a mess!”
What you need for this chapter:
• Camcorder with a fully charged battery
• Blank media. Depending on your camera, the media may be a tape, flash memory chip, DVD, or hard disk
• Camcorder operating manual
• Computer with video editing software
1. Find a comfortable spot where you won’t be disturbed. You can do this in your kitchen, your front yard, or a local park.
2. Start recording.
3. Push all the buttons. Try every control on the camera. Learn how to interpret every word and icon on the LCD.
4. Keep going until you have about fifteen minutes of footage.
5. Dump the footage into your computer and make a three-minute movie of the most visually interesting shots.
6. Give your three-minute movie a title and save it to a DVD or CD.
7. Post your movie online.
Posting your movies online
After each exercise, you might want to post your films online. There are several reasons why this is a good idea, one of which is that it is an excellent way to develop the habit of finishing every project that you shoot.
YouTube accounts are free at www.youtube.com .
You can see my own videos of each exercise (and find many free Digital Video Secrets extras) at www.tonylevelle.com.
SECRET 2: LEARN TO “SEE” WITH THE CAMERA
When you look at a scene, develop the habit looking at it through the camera. Use the camera as a lens, through which you observe the world. When you look at a scene with your eyes, you see all sorts of things on the periphery of your vision. The camera doesn’t see any of this. The camera only sees what is within the frame.
When you practice seeing the world through the camera, you soon develop a sense of framing, composition and balance. Learning to see with the camera is the first step toward shooting truly compelling images.
What you need for this exercise:
• Camcorder with a fully charged battery
• Blank media
• Tripod or camera support.
• Computer with video editing software
• Camcorder operating manual
8.
9. Find a visually interesting spot within a five-minute walk of your home. Look for a spot where you can see movement—traffic, people walking, waves crashing on a shore, clouds moving across the sky—anything.
10. Sit down, and turn on the camera. Look at the scene on the LCD. Move the camera, and play with the zoom until you find an interesting scene.
11. Record the scene. Hold the camera on the scene for at least one minute. The first thing you will notice is how hard it is to let the camera record for even a single minute. We’re all so conditioned to quick cuts and jumps on television and in the movies, that there’s a constant temptation to move the camera to something else. Watch the scene in the camcorder viewfinder or LCD as you record it. Don’t look up.
12. Repeat five times, with five different scenes.
13. Dump the resulting footage into your computer and carefully examine the footage.
14. Assemble a two- or three-minute movie from the most visually interesting elements of the footage.
15. Give your movie a title and save it to DVD or CD. Write the date, time, and the name of the movie on the DVD or CD.
16. Post your movie online.
SECRET 3: LEARN TO SHOOT INTUITIVELY
Closely connected to learning to “see” with the camera is the ability to shoot intuitively and spontaneously.
Some of the world’s greatest photographs were only captured because