My first "large" multi-session videography project: hurdles, pitfalls, and jimmy rig

I work in audio visual media, mainly recording video for my church's 411 announcement clips. I work with Adobe Creative Cloud, mainly Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop. I was hired for this position approximately one year ago, previously having had a few years experience working with Pro Tools in a recording studio environment. Not having worked in visual media before, I had a lot to learn in a very short amount of time.

My largest hurdle was wrapping my head around using dSLRs, understanding strategic lighting, and of course, the full depth of video editing software. I've never considered myself a visually sensible person, as anyone could tell you from my wardrobe and general mode of dress, which has defaulted to roadie blacks, jeans, greys, and lots of dark coloured t-shirts. So my first few months involved watching a lot of video with a critical eye, and deciding what was supposed to look good or bad. Also, I discovered quickly that dialing in a camera is far and away more complicated than positioning a microphone.

Regarding the software, having experience with digital audio workstations was a great help. Navigating between mixer and timeline workspaces, applying plugins and their parameters, all were more or less analogous between audio and video programs, so I had an advantage there. Most of my camera work would be green screen, which was an advantage, as I only had to worry about proper lighting and keying in one subject in a stationary position.

Which was one major difference between my early work and the project that I just finished. This series of six 20-minute sessions would all be 2-camera projects, set in a cafe with lots of windows, traffic noise, and mirrors, which would ultimately prove to be the bane of my existence.

I was working with two Canon Rebel T3is, which added their own chaos element. Audio was handled by a single CAD CM217 small condenser, direct into the XLR input of my trusty Presonus Firebox. Pro Tools 10 in my late 2011 Macbook Pro, which also handled all post-production processing. Lighting was covered with two 5500K CFLs in softbox reflectors, mounted 7 feet up.

I had learned early on that, due to the unpredictable power around our campus, that EMI and other power-related noise would always be a potential problem. I made my first audio plugin purchase in many years, Izotope RX6, which went a long way to filtering out electrical and other background noise. Equalization was handled by my trusty Oxford EQ plugin, and McDSP's 6030 compressor handled dynamic processing. Gating, de-essing, and all other processing was done with Avid's baked-in plugs.

My first major issue arose in the first session, when I discovered that my cameras would not record a continuous 25 minutes of footage, requiring periodic pauses halfway through the session to resume recording. This is a known shortcoming of the T3i, which has a maximum recording time of 12 minutes at 1080 resolution. I'm still considering reflashing the camera firmware, but I'm waiting until backup equipment is available, as these cameras are used every week. Bear in mind, I'm still quite a newbie when it comes to dSLRs.

My second major hurdle came in the editing process. My producer and I decided, for various reasons, on a few shots that placed the subject near large mirrors. If you do any on-location videography, you know what's coming next. Our subject is a very animated speaker, frequently waving his hands around to illustrate points, which posed a few challenges in post-production. I ended up snapping still shots with no subject in the frame, to get a baseline image for later use in editing. I had not realized that the movements of myself and my producer during the filming process would end up being reflected into the camera by these mirrors. Having realized my error halfway through, I ended up shooting baseline images later without the subject, which I would use in editing to paste ourselves out of the finished product. Hours and hours of post work. Which I will never again put myself through. On the plus side, I now have an intimate knowledge of Premiere's time-based cropping capabilities, and a new respect for reflective surfaces in my shots.

It also quickly became apparent that my Macbook Pro, now six years old, was really gasping for breath while rendering video. But that's one problem that will have to be solved at a later date.

Biggest takeaways from this project:

Know your camera. I discovered the time limit of the Rebel during the first session, after a great deal of frustration, wondering why my cameras kept stopping. I also ran into issues with automatic ISO parameters, and a few other settings that I had not thought to properly change before filming began.

Lighting will make or break a shoot. The plethora of windows in our filming area proved to be problematic, even with the lighting we had. Changing light levels from cloud cover changed overall levels in the room, even though no windows were in frame.

Always shoot with the editing process in mind. If I had taken a bit more time in the first session and considered the impact mirrors would play in editing, I would have reframed, or removed the mirrors entirely.

I think that, having this project in the can and finished, I am much more confident preparing for next year's sessions. Equipment was definitely a factor, but as always, knowledge and experience can trump gear, or lack thereof. Hopefully, with a more powerful editing machine and newer camera, future sessions will be much easier, both in filming and post production stages.