Same Old Thing

I often dislike using photographs in my work.
I love photography, I just usually dislike the jarring effect that happens when you go from motion picture to stills in the same piece.
And at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I must say I am starting to get tired of the ever increasing WOW factor that is being used in AE to make photos 'pop.' And of which I am slightly guilty as well. Swooshes, keyframed everything, grungy overlays. (I thought we left that 10 years ago, it was called 'edgy.')

Now, the average viewer couldn't give two cents what method you use so long as the content, also known as the story arc, is supplemented not supplanted.

SO when I started a project that all B-roll would be stills I thought long and hard about what I could do to make this interesting (for me.) Thankfully the photographer knew her business, so I had a wonderful selection.

I decided to take a step back in time and do my own version of a Rostrum setup. Granted it's a tad cheese, and I'm moving the camera not the table, but the effect is similar.

Now, you may be thinking, "just use the 'Ken Burns' plugin," or, "Buy a template for AE that you can drop your digital photos in." I assure you that would work, and I have done that in the past.

I didn't want to. For one thing, I wanted to do it in camera for a change. Another reason, those templates in AE are just plain awful. NO you don't fool anyone that your photographs are actually on a light table, on a clothesline or in a dusty old leather book.



Granted I had to print out 180+ photos for this 2 minute piece, BUT not only am I more satisfied with the results as a cameraman, I'm more satisfied with the aid it gives to the story arc.

I'll be doing this for the rest of the series of shorts I am working on for this project, and I may even default to this as my preferred method of using stills. 

A bit old fashioned, but those early filmmakers kinda knew what they were doing.

At least I didn't try a multipane camera.

UPDATE: FINISHED FILM

Shine a light (or two)

I love my light meter. 

Most camera guys these days don't use them, and I understand why. Our cameras are fairly WYSIWYG. Often on a project I simply don't have time to use mine, but I always want to pull it out and check a few things. For one thing, they don't lie. LCD screens, even when calibrated are not always the best to judge exposure. Ambient light, glare, temperature can all effect what you see. The light meter is the most accurate tool you have to properly judge exposure.
I'll give a quick example.
Suppose you want to set up a reverse key interview:

Notice my 1k (key) is behind the subject and the 500 (fill) is in front. The bounce is to both flag the light from the huge office window and to bounce a little bit of the fill around the face to give an evenness to the lighting. If my shadows were not strong enough, I'd use black.

Here is my front (fill) meter reading

Here is my rear (key) meter reading

That's a good ratio for what I'm after, if you wanted a stronger ratio, you could dial back the fill, or dial up the key. Here is the result, featuring yours truly:

Now, what you can't see in this iphone pic is that the key side of my face is actually properly exposed (I set the aperture at f4) The iPhone boosted the exposure making it look like the key was too bright.

I set the lights with the meter, then turned on the camera and took this. No wasted time using a histogram to try to interpret what my key f stop should be. No guessing that the LCD is showing me accurate luminance.
Use a meter! (When you can.)
p