Achieving the following 'look'

[James Malamatinas]

Hi,

 

I've been asked to do a company introduction video for the company I work with and this will be my first time doing a film-making project so I'm looking for some assistance. First of all I have the following camera:

 

Panasonic HDC-TM300

 

Part of the video I'm filming will have people talking to camera like in a documentary and I have found a video on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/8217311.

 

At about 30 sec there is a style I like very much and would like to replicate, I do not however know quite how to achieve this and need some help.

 

What sort of settings would I need to achieve this, or close to this, with the camera I have. The shot seems quite zoomed in and I presume I will have to set quite a low f-stop. The main manual features my camera has is adjustable f-stop (called iris), adjustable shutter speed (1/50 to 1/250) and a manual focus ring.

 

I'm also unsure how much of this effect is post-production, some of the lighting and colour appears slightly unnatural. Could this be the case?

 

Any help on this matter would be much appreciated, I have only just purchased this camera (the best I could afford in my budget) and as mentioned this is my first attempt filming.

[David Mullen ASC]

The lighting is nothing special, just a soft key and soft fill. The contrast and color saturation have been pushed / enhanced / increased. A soft vignette has been added too to darken the corners.

 

The main problem you are going to have is matching the depth of field - you have a 1/4" sensor camera and this looks like it was shot with a DSLR with a FF35 sensor, or perhaps a Red camera with an S35 sensor.

 

Backing up and zooming in as much as possible, and pulling the actor away from the wall, will help make the background go softer.

[Satsuki Murashige]

The shot seems quite zoomed in and I presume I will have to set quite a low f-stop.

Perspective-wise, the shot you're referring to actually looks slightly wide-angle to me. The talent is around 3 feet away from the lens, and you're seeing quite a bit of the background. Like David says, this was probably shot with a Canon 5D or something with a similar sized sensor. You could look into renting a 35mm lens adapter and some Nikon stills prime lenses to use with your camera, which would give you a similar effect. A 35mm stills lens focal length looks about right.

 

Lighting-wise, there's nothing special going on, just a lot of color correction. Sidey key from the right, 3/4 kicker from the left, and some frontal fill light. Looks like the lights are tungsten with 1/2 blue correction (the kicker is slightly warmer), and the background is cooler (daylight or cool-white fluorescent with minus green?).

Edited January 15, 2010 by Satsuki Murashige

[James Malamatinas]

Sorry for my very late response! Been having some trouble with my internet back home.

 

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice, in the end I had to completely change the way I shot the video due to time constraints and the locations we had access to, your feedback is much appreciated though.

 

As I'm just starting out and experimenting with exactly how different factors affect my footage I'm sure I'll be back here often to get more tips and advice!