Week 7: Concept and Production Skills Development (Cinematography)

In our last cinematography workshop in university we learnt some more about the FS5 camera but paid particular focus to constructing a camera rig ideal for handheld shooting. Overall, we learnt some more fundamentals and useful tips when handheld shooting on the FS5.

We were tasked in pairs to build a camera rig for the FS5 which would be suitable for shooting handheld on the move. I learnt how to build this type of camera rig which consisted of the following: The camera itself, equipped with a zoom lens, camera rods ( for attaching equipment to the camera), a shoulder mount, two hand grips (to stabilize the camera) and a camera shade box ( to block out some lighting directly going into the camera). All of these components made the camera stable and ideal for the environments we were filming around campus in a handheld shooting set up.

After gathering an adequate amount of footage, I took the opportunity to figure out some more camera functionality and I did this by going through the camera menu and testing out different settings and buttons on the camera itself. Furthermore, I also got more use to how lens work, how to equip them safely to the camera and how to look after them during the process of attaching/detaching from the camera.

To wrap up the session, towards the end we all met up again in the soundstage and had a debrief going over some useful tips as well as reflecting on our handheld camerawork. Some useful tips I gathered was how to mobilize yourself as a camera operator in a certain fashion so that the footage would stay steady. I was told this can be done by slightly bending your knees when tracking or walking around and making them act as 'shock absorbers' to mitigate the shakiness of the footage if that's what you wanted to do. In addition, I learnt that you should also not lean with the rig on your shoulder, use a wider lens to make the footage look less shaky and that after experimenting I noted that the camera is also pretty steady when handholding it from the top grip, which I will now consider as another option/ form of handheld shooting to use in the future. One other tip that was highlighted by our tutor was to think in the mindset of the edit as a camera operator. What he meant by this he meant that even if you have a simple scene/ shot to shoot, that you offer more shots by varying different angles for example, as its all about variety for the editor and he mentioned that this will make you a better camera operator too.

To give you an idea of the camera rig from a side angle, it is essentially pretty similar to the image here above, apart from the equipment attached on the back and top of the camera rig.