Monday, 13 January 2014

Equipment Evaluation by Emma Taylor


Final Cut Pro X
For the post production editing of our trailer we have used Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). FCPX is non-linear editing software developed by Mac for their Intel-bases OS Mac computers. FCPX provides effective and extensive use of editing techniques used within the film and television production industry. It supports a number of simultaneously composed video tracks, and user friendly interface, making it easy to edit complex edits such as multi-cam editing, Chroma-key and colour grading. It is a very effective and efficient editing system, which uploads straight to Vimeo which is particularly useful for time efficiency.
Canon 6D
We used my  Canon EOS 6D to film our production, with a 82mm full frame lens with polarizing filter. This high spec professional DSLR films at 1080p HD video, giving us the clearest, cinematic footage we could get to use for trailer. However the disadvantage of using this camera is that it is very expensive, especially with the range of lenses we used and could be easily broken. The camera is also complex to operate compared to other cameras, and an in depth knowledge of camera operations such as ISO and aperture must be understood in order to be camera operator.
Dolly
We used a dolly for many of our tracking shots in the school scenes, and we used the dolly for professional looking shots. Although Broken Coal Productions do not have a professional dolly, I had made a dolly from some plastic piping from B&Q. The home – made dolly worked well in creating smooth and cinematic shots. However one issue with using the dolly was that they were not collapsible and remained their full size, making them difficult to be ported to different locations.
SD Cards
My Canon camera takes SD cards, and whilst lower spec SD cards are known for running out of storage space when filming, we used four 62GB and 32GB cards which can hold a lot of data. We didn’t have to worry about storage space on our camera running out, and on the mac we were editing on, the SD card could just be imported into the computer and the files transferred quickly onto the desktop.
Tripod
We used a tripod to stabilise some of our shots as we didn’t want any camera shake which would make our work look messy and unprofessional, even though we did take it off the tripod to have some hand held shots to give some variation. The tripod proved useful for panning tracking shots, and we also used it to go onto the dolly for extra stabilisation. It was a very key and useful part of equipment to have.

Batteries
Whilst expensive, the Canon, rechargeable lithium camera batteries (Canon LP-E6) are very effective and let us have up to 5 hours filming time for each battery (we had two). These allowed us to film continuously for a long period of time without having to stop frequently to change the battery pack.
Sigma 24-105 F4 DG OS HSM Full Frame Camera Lens
 This sigma lens which cooperates with Canon full frame cameras. I bought this lens as it is the latest addition to the ‘art’ series on lenses which give good image quality and has a 19 element/ 14 group  design, with Sigma’s FLD glass, to minimize aberrations. The 45cm focusing range enables us to use a large depth of field in our work, giving sharp image quality and cinematic effect. However, this lens is very expensive and so we had to be careful when filming with it. To stop the lens glass getting damaged, I also bought a filter to protect the lens glass.
Polarising Filter
Another filter I bought is an 82mm polarising filter which we used on the last few shoots to deepen the contrast in the colours for better quality images. This also protects the lens glass, as it is much cheaper to replace the filter than the lens glass. Prices and availability have y

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