Yes, Yes, Yes to the Canon EOS Moving Image Workshop last weekend in Chicago!
I am excessively anal when it comes to finding an answer or solving a problem, especially if it’s technical and it’s the only thing standing in my way of making a really good edit, doc, or visual idea come to fruition. I was lucky enough after 20K Films’ Canon 7D purchase to meet via email Andrew Gleason, another Canon 7D owner and enthusiast, through an old college friend, and it was thanks to Andrew that I was able to nail down and find a great workable workflow for the post production process for the American Library Association video which we shot entirely on the Canon 7D right out of the box. Andrew was great, answered all of my questions, and had a lot of great first hand experience with the camera from working on his own projects. I am now firmly entrenched in my belief that experience is the best teacher, especially since I myself am a teacher, and I often find that it is my work experience that really helps me provide my students with all of the tools, ideas, and know-how they need to go become media makers themselves.
Back to the class I took this past weekend through Createasphere called EOS Moving Image Workshop: Beyond the Still which was described as for: Cinematographers, Directors, and Producers, Independent Filmmakers, photographers, Exploring HD Video.
I wasn’t sure what the experience or knowledge level was for this workshop, but I have always been a big fan of workshops that are taught by working professionals who actually work in the field and heavily use the hardware/software that the workshop is teaching. The workshop was taught by 3 instructors: Nancy Schreiber, ASC, who has DPed many independent features such as Neil LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors, November (for which she won a best cinematography award from Sundance), and most recently Every Day with Helen Hunt and Liev Schreiber, as well as numerous tv episodes and documentaries (her experience is long and vast which really made this workshop worth it for me); Jared Abrams, who has worked extensively with HDSLRs in his own commercial work and also runs a great HDSLR resource blog called Cinema 5D; and Mike Sippel who is the Director of Engineering at Fletcher Camera in Chicago who was extremely well versed regarding manufacturer’s specs and the technical know how which led to interesting tidbits as how CF cards have a life of 10,000 cycles or 3-4 years and will wear out after that, for example. He also delved in deeper to the technical aspects behind the spatial resolution and color sampling limitations of Canon HDSLRs, but honestly that kind of information did not pertain to anything I needed to know from a documentary filmmaker and commercial videographer aspect, so I took notes just in case I ever hear those terms again, but I’m not sitting here studying that information in order to use the Canon 7D.
Day 1 and Day 2 were pretty intense in terms of topics covered and thanks to some very hands-on, extensive learning labs with the HDSLRs menus, shooting interior and exterior scenes, testing out different support/rigs setups for the cameras and just getting used to shooting video manually which involves simultaneously arranging the camera’s ISO, f-stop and shutter speed, which is a completely new and bizarre world of video shooting to me, someone who has primarily shot only on video cameras such as consumer levels camcorders and Panasonic’s prosumer level dvx100b, which I still own and LOVE and am actually shooting SICK CELLS, our current 20K Films’ doc on. (Incidentally, Nancy Schreiber shot November, for which she won Sundance’s Best Cinematography award on this camera so it really is an amazing incredible camera that just is unfortunately in SD. But Panasonic has the HVX which is more or less their HD upgrade to the dvx.)
Nancy actually suggested the HVX or the Sony Ex-3 for shooting cinema verite doc work, especially if I have to “run and gun it” as she calls it. Which made me a little depressed on day one of the workshop when she told me this, because one of the major cons of the HDSLR cameras is that you have to tape in manual focus which means if you’re trying to tape “in the moment” or “cinema verite” you’re going to have some really messy work if you’re constantly trying to find your focus. But on day 2, I mentioned this to Jared, one of the other instructors, and he suggested I try getting a different lens that will allow for me to have a more natural unfocused/focused look when I move towards and away from my subject that looks more natural to the human eye. He also said not to worry too much about constantly focusing, and that if I get too caught up in that, the doc work will look unnatural. They both had great advice like this throughout the workshop which I really appreciated. It’s not like you can just type in search words for this kind of knowledge and experience in google and get advice and answers, at least not the kind that I’m looking for. Nancy and Jared also vibed together really well as instructors and their different avenues of experience intercut really well together throughout the course of the workshop.
Day 3 was a lot more relaxing which I appreciated after all of the information intake of the previous two days. Day 3 was focused more on post-production workflow and introduced different software that was helpful in editing. However, I still don’t see much point in using the software program, Shotput Pro, if it won’t log and transfer into FCP from the replica it makes of your CF card. (someone please enlighten me as to why I should use this program in my post-production workflow because I just don’t get it other than the fact that it finds and notifies you to footage if there is an error with it, but I don’t think we learned what to do if the program does find an error or if anything can be done at all.) I do think Plural Eyes, which is an audio/video sync program is definitely worthwhile, but I wish that we’d gone over that more and that a trial copy had been available to try out at the workshop. (Actually, I can’t remember if there was a trial or if we went over it more, I got distracted by trying to import the footage into FCP using Log and Transfer for Shotput Pro and I was also looking up HDSLR support equipment and accessories we’d learned about at the workshop.)
Now that I’m looking back at the workshop, I think it was a great investment especially since I plan to be a very avid Canon 7D shooter. I also am not a skilled nor knowledgeable camera person, and I have never worked with professional photography or DSLRs before so working with ISO, F-Stops and shutter speed is still a new and bizarre world to me, and thanks to the workshop, I feel like I actually have a working knowledge of these concepts now. It also helped that there was a Tribeca Flashpoint Academy Cinematography instructor at the workshop who was incredibly kind and generous with his time, and didn’t mind me asking him questions about basic cinematography. Did I mention that my background is more on the post-production end of things? So for someone like me, this workshop was a real eye opener, and Nancy was right when she called the HDSLRs “game changers.”
There were two things that I wish I had learned more about at the workshop and that’s Digital Asset Management in terms of working with HDSLRs from production to post-production, but it looks like Createasphere has its own workshop for that in New York this September, so I can understand why they didn’t want to delve into that in this workshop, but still a little bit more info about this would have been great. And even though I thought that Mike did a great job with teaching the post-production end of things on Day 3 and he did a phenomenal job on Day 1 with talking about the specs of the HDSLRs and the engineering behind them, I wish there had been an editor handy on day 3 to teach the post-production end of things. I really wanted to see full and complete workflows for post-production on Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. Jared and Nancy were both excellent, experienced, and well versed on the camera and DP end of things, but neither of them are editors or work much with post-production from what it seemed like. Mike was upfront that he was not an editor, but still an editor would have been nice.
The reason I even bother shelling out the money to take expensive and costly workshops like this is because I not only want to learn more and become more expert with certain software or hardware, but I want access to people who have been using this hardware and software and have been working with it. I feel that there are things you learn only by doing, and so far I have only found the information I have been looking for with my Canon 7D workflow (production and post) by talking to someone. I have not found many answers on the internet, in forums and certainly not in books yet, about HDSLR workflow.
Overall, this workshop was excellent and I would highly recommend it. The instructors and format of the workshop worked well with all different levels of experience and knowledge of the students in the workshop, the free swag and food were great, and I met some really great people who are serious about video and working with Canon HDSLRs at the workshop that I plan to keep in touch with. I really got what I was looking for out of the workshop and much more. Thank you Nancy, Jared, and Mike, as well as Marty and Josh from Createasphere for a truly amazing workshop and experience. I am definitely wielding my 7D with more ease and confidence now after taking this workshop.
Check out Createasphere’s website here for more info on their workshops.
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No, the canon Rebel Digital (generically) is considered a entry level digital camera. Amateur or semi-Pro. Canon does make pro cameras like the EOS-1Ds, the 1D, the 5d and they even have a Digital Rebel XT in there line up. I have not seen to many Rebels’ in the field except for maybe a small town newspaper photographer totting one around. Though I believe that a good photographer can take excellent photo’s with any camera, as an amateur camera, the Rebel is no slouch. It is a good entry level/semi-pro camera. You have to start somewhere. Unless you have rich parents that will buy you a Hasselblad, look at your budget and decide how much you can spend on a camera and it’s lens. Most of the Pro cameras do not come with a lens. Look at Canon 1Ds, the 1D and the 5D, then look at the Nikon D2x, Dh2 and DX200 for good Pro cameras. You might want to even look at Pentax, their *ist DS2 and *ist DL look good. though I know nothing about Pentax digital cameras, only there old film cameras. I have heard that the Fuju camera has good spec’s but fail to life up to anything in the field. What ever you decide, good luck and happy shooting.
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