Lights Camera Action - Episode 2
In this episode we explain how to mount your camera on Johnny Chung Lee's steady cam design. And we cover the poor man's reflector and full screen versus wide screen.
Step 1: Lights! Camera! Action!
Hi, I'm Ronnie Rokk. Welcome to Lights! Camera! Action! Episode 2. You know, if there is ever anything you would like to learn about on Lights! Camera! Action! feel free to send me an email at RokkProductions@cox.net, we'll be happy to get it on the show for you.
Step 2: Chung Lee's steady cam:
The first thing I'd like to talk about is Johnny Chung Lee's steady cam and how to mount it. In episode 1 we talked about Johnny Chung Lee's steady cam, so you can go back to that episode and check it out if you haven't seen it. So now lets go ahead and look at our steady cam. To mount it some people would like to try and mount it by turning the camera onto the bolt. I've noticed that this way is really hard especially when you have a heavy camera because the camera wants to tilt either down or up. I found the more quicker way to mount the steady cam by actually turning the steady cam itself instead of your cam corder. In other words, screw your steady cam while you hold your cam corder in place, like so.
Step 3: Poor man's reflectors:
I bet your wondering what's in the box, right? It's a “poor man's box”. Lets have a look, shall we? Well what do you know, it's a “poor man's reflector”. Using one of these poor man's reflectors will really help your production. The way that we use these reflectors is that we actually reflect the sunlight onto our reflector and we point that at our subject. So you have to be in this position as shown on the diagram. This will help light your subject and you wont have any bulky lights to tend to. All you have is one simple reflector, but keep in mind that the poor man's reflector won't emit light as good as a professional reflector that costs around $200 to $100 dollars. So now if you want to learn how to build a poor man's reflector I'm going to show you the materials you need and how to do it. So, lets go ahead and check it out.
Step 4: Full screen Vs wide screen.
You know, some people just don't know the difference between full screen and wide screen. They go out and buy a DVD and say “well, I like the full screen better because it covers the whole screen”. But what they really don't know is that wide screen format gives a lot more real estate and a lot more image to look at. As you can see I have two videos here. The one on the left which is the 4:3 ratio and that's full screen and the one on the right is a 16:9 ratio which is wide screen. Lets zoom in on that. So now you can see that the wide screen does produce a lot more real estate on each side as you can see from the difference between full screen and wide screen on the edges. Now, note that the wide screen does crop the top and the bottom but you get a lot better panorama in the wide screen format. So this is why most professional videographers choose the wide screen format when filming. So I hope this sheds a little bit of light on the difference between full screen and wide screen and we'll go over this more in future episodes in a little more detail.
Step 5: Practice, practice, practice.
Being a professional videographer is not all fun and games. It takes practice, practice, practice. You have to practice your camera angles and master that camera from top to bottom.
Step 6: See you soon:
Excuse me.Hello. Who's this?The Canadian stud muffin? No I wont teach you all my video techniques. Well, maybe just some of them.
So, remember if you want to learn more video tips and tricks stay tuned for episode 3 where we'll be learning a lot more. See you soon.
