Today I counted down the hours to my 1 week vacation…that’s right, I said vacation! Imagine coming from the world of a freelancer where the word vacation doesn’t really exist. Yeah, yeah, being my own “boss” lets me make my own hours and all of that good stuff, but if you don’t work you don’t get paid. I remember this time last year I had my quote-unquote vacation with the family and because of a gig that I took last minute for an account that I just couldn’t say “No” to, I ended up working on the first 2 days of my time off. It was worth doing since it basically funded the vacation, but I spent 2 days of that trip behind a computer (a very nice MBP I must say, but a computer none-the-less). Now that I am with “The Corp”, I have paid vacation time so when I go away, I still get a pay cheque! I’m loving it! (like McDonald’s).
So, like I started saying, I was counting down the hours of the work week while finishing the edit of the Gas+ video that I shot with Mark on Monday (See the posting called “Shooting at the Gas Station”), and got things ready for my last shoot of the week, the Jumpstart JumpBall Tournament. This is an early morning shoot that I am doing with Brad (The Media Technician and occasional cameraman/ editor). Because I’m gonna be on vacation next week, Brad’ll be editing this one with both of us on the cams. For this shoot we have a pretty detailed shooting strategy that includes a series of interview questions for kids and separate ones for the adults, timelapse sequences shot with the dslrs as well as the GoPro and lots of other dynamic shots of the day. We designed the questions to provide some powerful story driving soundbites; at least that’s how we hope designed them, and we have a cool audio recording strategy as well. We are going to use the Rode Video Mic Pro on my 7D for the 1st angle and on the 2nd 7D we are going to mount the Zoom h4n like a shotgun mic and use the 4Ch recording feature which will also let me put a wireless handheld into one of the inputs on the Zoom and the mic in the interviewees hand if need be. Now I have 3 audio sources (2x shotguns and the handheld), it’s quick (grab an executive team member for 2 minutes and start asking questions…no lav’ing anyone up), and I also have proper audio monitoring on the Zoom, which I’ve been finding is a major shortcoming of my Beachtek DSA-XLR.
I’m bringing my son’s skateboard with me to do some nice dolly shots (I’ll post some if I don’t kill myself) and Brad is bringing his 60D so we are probably gonna have a chance to do lots of timelapse stuff. I bought a remote on eBay for 20 bucks and Brad just bought one on Amazon yesterday for 30 bucks…and get this…hey got the delivery today! Superfast!
Anyways, same lenses as usual (see this link for lens run-down), 1 Flo-light (LED light that runs off of AC or D-Tap type battery which makes it very, very convenient. The only thing is that the construction of this light is kinda crappy. Not super bad, and the light that it throws is good (a bit blue with a slight magenta spike), but the double-priced Lite-Pannel is better and worth the money in my opinion.
Well, that’s it for tonight. I’ll put up the video from tomorrow as soon as I can.
thedslrguy 