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Posted by nobody special on 03/30/06 23:14
Regarding lights: if you buy cheap lights, you will buy lights twice.
If you never plan to do another project after this one, by all means
try the cheap home depot work lights. If however you plan to do more
and better projects after this one, start out right, buy at least one
GOOD *real* light, if that's all you can afford, and add to it over
time. Rent extra lights to fill out your needs on the first gig, then
add one purchased light on each new project until you have a complete
kit. For your first light I would suggest a Lowel Rifa, without the
expensive eggcrate front, because this light is idiot-proof , is fast
and easy to transport, set-up, and tear down, and makes everyone look
attractive with it's Vermeer-like wrap-around quality and flattering
lack of shadowcasting. To shoot one person on a couch talking, this and
a bounce board made of foam core or cardboard on the opposite side of
them may be all you need. Start with One Rifa, then next time buy a
Lowel Omni and some accessories for it, like black foil, diffusion,
a gel frame and umbrella. You will thank me later.
Quality lights are the CHEAPEST thing in video next to tape stock: I
have a Lowel kit pushing 20 years old, it goes out to work almost
daily, and still good as new; divide it's original cost into the years
of service I got, it's essentially FREE. The good stuff also brings you
a high level of control, consistency, and precision in your setups that
work shop macgyver lights cannot match. I do this for a living and so
time wasted fiddling with jury-rig gear is profit lost.
Regarding the audio for your voice-over questions: what your ears tell
you is they detect a change in the "room tone" behind the voice; the
reverberation characteristics of the space have obviously changed. One
way we deal with this is to record a good long couple minutes of the
room with no one speaking; this then is mixed with the new voiceover
later and it seems to be original to the ear. Such room tone samples
can sometime also be used to electronically remove buzzing noises from
your soundtrack using software.
It takes a little practice, but you can hide wired lav mics pretty well
as long as the folks are wearing clothes. Sometimes you can plant the
mic next to them on a couch and hide it under a duvet or afghan or
something. One can also hide a lav inside the point of a shirt collar,
behind the button flap of a shirt, or behind someone's ear, or even in
their hair. Gaffer and millipore medical adhesive tapes are useful
tools for hiding the mics.
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