For the last month I've been throwing stills at you from my new camera, but that's not why I bought the thing. At least not primarily. My goal is to be a working filmmaker, one way or another. Toward that end I bought the Canon Rebel T2i, which is a lovely DSLR for stills but more seductively to me, it also shoots 1080p HD video at that magical film-like rate of 24 frames per second. Now I've tinkered with it a bit, testing it in various conditions but apart from one little short that was closer to a camera test, I hadn't pushed myself with it yet.
I've read extensively on filmmaking and have a pretty good idea how things should work. But knowing it in theory and knowing it in practice are two very different things. A few years ago I started work on a short film and very quickly recognized that difference and just how far I was from the practical end of the scale. So I'm starting simple. Tell a simple story and make it as entertaining and good looking as possible. My subject: cooking breakfast. With the kids off to school, I set up my tripod in the kitchen and set about filming the process of cooking myself a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich.
The T2i has pretty amazing low light capabilities and that quickly suckered me into a mistake. I assumed since this thing could shoot in low light situations that I didn't need to light my shots. When you watch this video, the early shots at the stove make it clear how wrong I was. The shots were dark and grainy and none too eye pleasing. So part way into the process I went and grabbed a dome light and parked it over the stove. Instant improvement. I wish I'd had a few more of them.
Anyway, it's a start. I learned a lot and enjoyed the process, so it was well worth the time. And the sandwich was surprisingly edible, considering how much extra time went into the filming. Several shots of bacon cooking were tossed because I burned the bacon badly due to being more concerned with filming than cooking. A second batch was tossed into the pan, both to eat and shoot. The monster crunch when I bite into the sandwich at the end tells the whole story.
Incidentally, the inspiration for this was this video by DP Phillip Bloom. If you have any interest in making movies with DSLRs, his site is a must read.
