FMP - Equipment

The equipment for my final major project was a massive element I had to consider. As I filming a trailer for the audience to believe what they are seeing in front of them is potentially real they will expect a certain quality, and there is only so much someone can do in post production. It is better to as much when filming so the quality doesn't get reduced when in editing. 

For the main camera used to film the trailer I used a Canon EOS C100, one of the entry level broadcasting cameras. It films no where near the quality of some of the broadcasting cameras, still filming at 1080p at only 30fps, however has a full frame sensor and a handful of other features that make it notably better than my SLR (Canon 60D). For example it also films in a cinema mode which flaten the image to allow for cleaner, more versatile, grading in post production. It also has an in built Natural density filter allowing me to always use the lowest possible F-stops when filming, reducing grain in my image which was something I was so keen to remove.

I then had a handful of lenses to use to film, however found myself only using a few. I wanted to use a lense with an incredible wide aperture to reduce grain so the majority of the trailer was filmed on a 50mm F/1.4 or a 20mm F/2.8. This allowed me to always keep the grain to as little as possible something that watching a film, you would not expect to see. I also had access to more wide angle lenses and some telephoto lenses, however both of these lenses are full frame lenses. This means I would be able to film on the full frame sensor of the C100, something that not all lenses are able to do. 

















For sound I used a few things. Firstly I used a Rode Shotgun Mic directly attached the to the top of the C100 which recorded audio directly in the audio channels of the footage, so all the footage had a good level of sound. 

I then had a separate Sennheiser 416 Rife Mic, mounted on a boom and though an XLR cable recorded sound into a H4N Zoom recorder. On the shoot days Ryan helped me with holding the boom. The boom allowed me to get the Mic as close the actors as possible to record a crisp clean dialogue while still being out of shot. This meant I didn't have to worry about being close to the actors when filming. 


When filming the camera was usually mounted to a Glide-cam, for stability. I used a Flycam 5000 which is a lightweight glide-cam for SLR's and any camera/combinations weighing under 12KG. This was perfect for the equipment we were using as it was easy to detach and shoot without quickly and when set up correctly completely stabilised the footage. 

The scenes that involved me having to sprint after characters or lean out of a moving car would usually be unusable but due the steadicam it removed all shake and when held stably produced extremely similar shots to dolly or fully automated steadicams.  I added a quick release plate to the top to allow me quickly detach the camera and film completely hand held or mount to a tripod in a matter of seconds. 

I also had a few other things to help me on the shoots such as a paglite C6 kit which are portable flights. I also had my SLR flood light. But these were rarely used unless we were indoors and needed a little more foreground light. I tried to film all the scenes as light as possible because it is easy to darken an image in post and keep the quality constant but lighting an image successfully is hard in post. I then also had a fluid tripod with a fluid head and head phones etc to hear the channels correctly preventing peaking. The majority of the kit was borrowed the CLR.