Russell Newquist
October 26th, 2004, 12:09 PM
I'm filming a stage play at one of the local high schools next week, and I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions that might help out. I think I have a good handle on it, but this is my first "real" project with my XL1 (non-s).
Unfortunately, nobody will be wearing mics (it's for a theater competition, so they won't have them), so I can't just jack into their sound board for audio. I'm thinking really hard of running a second microphone closer to the stage using my (rather inexpensive) shotgun mike, to get it closer to the stage and off the camera, but recording both mics and using the best channel on a line-by-line basis during editing. Any thoughts on what else I can do to get better audio?
Also, I will be recording the same play over three performances in two different auditoriums and editing them together into one video. I figured I'd shoot the first night as one long, wide shot and get a reference for what everybody's actually going to be doing and concentrate on closeups the third performance to hide the fact that it's at a different auditorium than the first two. What I haven't decided yet is what to do on the second night. I've considered filming wide again from another angle, trying for more "medium" shots, by which I mean not the whole stage anymore but zoomed in around whichever group of actors happens to be talking at the time, or trying for general closeups on that night too. I'm leaning more toward the "medium" shots, but wondering if anybody else has thoughts on this.
Finally, does anybody have any suggestions for white balance? Leave the camera on auto? White balance under house lights? I want to get footage that matches color as closely as possible. I realize I can do that in post, but I'm not making any money off of this, so I want to save myself as much effort as I can, and I'd like to get them as close as possible just from the shoot.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
Unfortunately, nobody will be wearing mics (it's for a theater competition, so they won't have them), so I can't just jack into their sound board for audio. I'm thinking really hard of running a second microphone closer to the stage using my (rather inexpensive) shotgun mike, to get it closer to the stage and off the camera, but recording both mics and using the best channel on a line-by-line basis during editing. Any thoughts on what else I can do to get better audio?
Also, I will be recording the same play over three performances in two different auditoriums and editing them together into one video. I figured I'd shoot the first night as one long, wide shot and get a reference for what everybody's actually going to be doing and concentrate on closeups the third performance to hide the fact that it's at a different auditorium than the first two. What I haven't decided yet is what to do on the second night. I've considered filming wide again from another angle, trying for more "medium" shots, by which I mean not the whole stage anymore but zoomed in around whichever group of actors happens to be talking at the time, or trying for general closeups on that night too. I'm leaning more toward the "medium" shots, but wondering if anybody else has thoughts on this.
Finally, does anybody have any suggestions for white balance? Leave the camera on auto? White balance under house lights? I want to get footage that matches color as closely as possible. I realize I can do that in post, but I'm not making any money off of this, so I want to save myself as much effort as I can, and I'd like to get them as close as possible just from the shoot.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!