Emma’s Garden

Emma’s Garden from Composite on Vimeo.

I mentioned last week that I my new camera arrived but unfortunately the weather was awful all week so getting outside to have a pop at it was quite difficult. Thankfully last Saturday we got some dry sunny weather so I got out into the garden to film my first little project entitled “Emma’s Garden”. My girlfriend puts a lot of hard work into our garden at home so I thought it would be nice to do a short of her at work.

It was all shot on the 600D using a Canon 18-55mm kit lens and a Canon 50mm Prime 1.8f. Being the first time I have used a DSLR, or even a video camera that isn’t my GoPro I’m generally fairly happy with what I made. Below is a list of the things I learnt and my own critic of the video.

• I really need to practice and get better at follow focus. There are a few of the shots where I go a little too far on the focus ring and end up with a slightly soft image.
• I mostly used a tripod during this shoot but didn’t for a few shots and actually I thought that a little bit of “shaky cam” worked very well for the subject matter in this video. I was very conscious of not wanting any hand held stuff as often it can look really amateur but I think I need to consider the style of the piece more and worry about “not wanting hand held” less.
• I think this video is a bit long and I should have cut it down a bit more.
• I think the main reason why I think this is that although I got a lot of shots of different things, I got the “same” shot of those different things. Meaning that I need to experiment with more types of shot to make it visually a bit more interesting.
• A lot of my shots are very photographic rather than cinematic. many of the shots could be photographs rather than video. I don’t think this is a problem per se but photography is a medium I’m much more familiar with and I don’t want to just slip into making gloried slide shows, I want to learn to make moving image.
• I need to watch my exposure settings more. The sun was in and out all day and I failed to changed the exposure enough to compensate. Thankfully nothing was hugely over exposed and I was able to fix it in post but I need to be more aware of this in future.
• One or 2 of the shots in the shed came out slightly noisy, so I need to experiment more with lower light situations.
• I borrowed a 4x close up filter and used it a couple of times and really liked what I got, so I might get one of my own. This filter in conjunction with the 600D’s 3x digital zoom allowed me to get some pretty impressive detail. I was shocked to be honest that the detail came out so crisp and clean and actually so impressed that I might look into “super macro filming” (kinda) as a whole project some time soon.
• Colour grading rocks! During my enforced break from work I spent time attempting to get to grips with colour grading and I think this time was very well spent. I really like the effect it has on the feel and style of a piece and I struggle to see a way forwards now without spending time doing the colour.