I was out and about filming with a crew of five cameramen for Defected Records 10th Birthday bash at Ministry of Sound in London last week, I can honestly say, that had to be one of the best events in town that night. They had Bob Sinclar graced the decks around 1am. When he dropped “World hold on” the roof blow of!!! Then Defected gave us another true star of the night with a live PA of Julie McKnight, who sang her anthem “Finally”. She was accompanied by a beautiful band and Shovell as the Drum warrior….My brother Nick has put a clip up on the site, for us all to re-live the experience!!!!
Thanks Defected, may you live on for another 10 years š
Last year MK ProductionsĀ Ā produced around 100 fashion videos, mainly catwalk stuff, some hair & makeup, interviews with designers, models,nightlife videos and wannabees.. I wanted to share with you the modus operandi we, as cameramen have to face when we are standing at the end of the catwalk pointing a camera at the runway. Firstly the lights used to light up the catwalk are very bright, it’s so hard to find the right balance and to make sure the models faces don’t look over exposed. If you have a Cannon XHA1 or a Sony Z1 you should be able to get a firm control over your aperture and exposure. If you play around with these elements a little bit, you can get a great picture.
My advice is don’t have the exposure too high or you will get a trail effect and the result will give you a stop motion effect or blurred effect on your footage and itsĀ impossibleĀ to correct in post production if your footage is burnt out with white faces. I sometimes feel its also best filmed slightly under exposed so that you can play with the brightness levels and color correction in post production. Something else to consider areĀ the people controlling the lights. They will change the lights for different clothes or models to create a differentĀ atmosphereĀ and this can completely throw your camera and exposure off and ruin your footage. If you do film over exposed there is no way to correct the footage in post production. Trust me, it’s happened many times and it’s something I will never do again!
OK so now we have the exposure out the way, make sure you have the correct white balance in place, this can easily be achieved by putting a white piece of paper in front of the lenses and pressing the >b< balance button on the camera. This way you will get a perfect white balance for the room! (try not to use “auto function” as you will need to tell the camera what white is. Since this is such an important topic, I have included a video for you to see on a cannon XH A1.
Happy filming!
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