Panasonic G7 Video Help for Work!

Sorry for the long post, but accept my cry for help. So I may have told my job that I could do some video work for them not really expecting them to accept it. But now apparently this is my project and I need to start shooting next week. Whoops! This is where the "fake it until you make it" philosophy kind of bites you in the butt.

I'm a pretty experienced stills shooter, and I've done some amateur videos with gopros/iphones/Nikon DSLR for Youtube edited with iMovie. I have a basic grasp of DSLR video shooting (like manual mode, the shutter speed/frame rate connection, etc). I also understand the importance of audio.

These videos will be shot indoors, interviews with corporate types. The camera will be on a tripod, the interviews will most likely last 10-15 minutes. The product does not have to be amazing broadcast quality, but it has to look (and sound) better than pure amateur hour. I want to get things as good as possible in camera since I have no experience color grading or with pro level video work.

Any advice on settings (particularly focus, audio, video color), gear, accessories would be very appreciated. Also if anyone knows of any good tutorials, books, online courses, etc. This is an ongoing project so there's time to develop technique for the long term. But I need to make something happen next week!

I've got a Pany 25mm 1.7, Pany 14-42 kit lens, a Rode videomicro, a cheap corded lav mic, and a Zoom field recorder. I hope not to buy any more lenses or gear for this project (unless I can convince my job to buy it!).

Also... any gotchas with the settings or gear that I should know about? Pro tips? Many thanks.

Hi

I recently also had to go from zero to decent video result.  I learned a lot from YouTube and even went through a couple of books.

Here are some things to help accelerate you getting started quickly.  You can likely do YouTube searches on the topics to learn more and confirm things.

• I recommend that once you figure out your settings save it into one or two of your custom settings so you can just select it and be ready to go.  To more than one so you have a kind of backup in case you decide to tweak settings a bit and save them you can return your initial known settings
• Set your Photo style to Standard with the following settings
  • C = -2, S = -2, NR = -5
    • Got these from a short course I paid for and have seen it repeated in several videos
• Rec format = MP3
• Metering = Multi-mode
• Focus = Face detection
• Dial Mode M
• AFS/AFC = AFC
  • So the camera will continue to re-focus while recording to track for example leaning forward and back
• Shoot in 4K even though you will likely deliver HD
  • It allows you to zoom in or crop or stabilize if needed in Post Production
  • It presumably will be better HD image than shooting in HD 
• Very different opinions on if 24 P or 30 P is better.   24 is traditional film 30 is more Computer.  You can read a lot and get different opinions but I was not convinced one way or the other.    I use 30 P
• KEY INFO:  
  • Select your frame rate, 24 or 30
  • Your shutter speed needs to be 2 x the fps
    • for 24P choose 1/50th.
    • for 30P choose 1/60th
  • You pick your Aperture for DOF.   If you shoot wide with an F 1.7 then your DOF will likely be enough to not have the people partially out of focus.  If you are cropped in tight then you will likely need to stop down the lens.
  • Here's the tricky part:  
    • Your Shutter speed is selected and can't be changed
    • Your Aperture is selected based on need and can't be changed
    • If you don't have enough light all you can do is either up your ISO or add more light.
      • Lighting is lot like for a good photo so try to make skure they are lit like you would for a photo.  If your not bringing any light then select the right spot under the existing lights, etc.
      • Ideally you want to select the ISO and forget about it for the shoot.  if you leave it on auto if lighting changes at all for any reason you will get inconsistent results which will detract from the video
• At the time of the shoot once everything else is set up, do one of the following:
  • Set your custom White Balance where the subject will be
    • OR 
  • Take a photo of a color checker card or a few seconds of video of it where the subject will be

My first shoot was under difficult lighting because they wanted the "mood" of the place.  I did multi-camera because it was one person interviewing another.  It was difficult to get the colors and overall image to be looking the same.  For my second shoot I had read up and decided to learn about and create a LUT for the shooting conditions.

Given you are indoors and will likely have reasonable lighting and you did not mention multi-people and thus Multi-camera you can skip this LUT stuff for now.

Short course and easy path to use LUTs:

• Get 3D LUT creator.
  • I use it to simply create  LUT and can do none of the many other things it can do.
  • Get a color Checker card if you don't already have one
    • 3D LUT creatore support a range of cards but you can still have it work even if it is not one built in.
    • I use my photo color checker card, no need to get a Video one which can cost a lot more.
  • IT work GREAT !

If you are NOT doing multi-camera work you can use Premiere Elements for post processing

If  you are doing Multi-camera work Premiere Pro is a must, don't even think about using Premiere element unless time is no object.

You can learn both from YouTube

These are the key items I think you need to know to get started.

Practice at home.  I recommend you create a set-up check list for the shoot so that you don't forget one setting or thing to do else you may have big problems when the shoot is done.

Mark

Watch a few clips of this type on youtube and find which ones you like. Then copy their lighting setup. That's the only somewhat hard part.

For audio, better use the lav. The shotgun will pick up all sorts of ugly frequencies from wall reflections if the room isn't padded, even if it seems quiet.

As for camera settings, f/4 or thereabouts, 180deg shutter, ISO up to 800, manual focus and white balance. Make sure to nail the white balance with a grey card if possible.

Expose for the subject's lit part of the face. Don't blow any highlights. That's about it.

Shoot in Natural profile or Cine-V, whatever looks best to you. Maybe take contrast and saturation down a couple notches according to taste.

Mark, thank you for such a detailed post! You mentioned that you used some books. Would you mind letting me know which ones were helpful?

Hi

The books I read cover film making in general. I was looking for techniques and concepts. They were interesting but I don't feel they were essential for me getting going but helpful for getting into movie making and telling the story.

• Digital Filmmaking (Digital Filmmaker Series) Kindle Edition
• The Digital Filmmaking Handbook: The definitive guide to digital filmmaking Kindle Edition

From what I can still find...

Some of the Videos I found useful for my scenario were:

• 6 Tips to Transition from Photo to Video B&H Explora
• How to Shoot an Interview
• How to Shoot an INTERVIEW - 5 pro TIPS | Cinecom.net
• Tips on shooting an interview with one camera

Some article links

• The Best Camera Angles for a Video Interview

Mark

Biggest problem is getting the lighting right, what is the lighting setup going to be?

Thank you! As for the lighting, it's going to be indoors in people's offices. So overhead fluorescents. When possible, they'd sit next to a window. I also just purchased myself a cheap Neewer LED light for extra fill light and I have some diffusers from reflectors that I use for my still photography. At this stage don't think I'm going to for backlighting or anything like that. Though depending on how this works out, i may end up setting up some gray or white seamless paper and just doing the videos in front of those so they can all be standard. Does this seem reasonable?

I've done quite a few instructional, product and interview videos for work, I mostly use Oly OM-D cameras but I do use the GX85 as well.

It looks like you've gotten some good advice already so I'll try and keep mine brief and based on your listed equipment.

Audio if its just going to be one person speaking use a lav mic but if you have more than that put your Zoom in the center and ran it to your camera so its acting as the cameras mic and record the audio both on the Zoom and the camera so you have a back up. Trust me it kinda sucks to get home from a gig and discover that for whatever reason your audio dropped. Strange as it may seem audio can have a bigger perceived impact on your video than your video's picture quality.

As this well be indoors your frame rate maybe very important. Most of the places I shoot footage at have mixed lighting and depending on the angle I can get a lot of flickering at different frame rates. Since I keep my shutter speed fixed to 2X my fps I also sometimes change my fps to kinda cheat and get a slightly better exposure.

Youtube is a wonderful resource at learning video work. There are quite a few good G7 specific videos on most types of video work.

Once you have your setup sorted test it out in the room you will be doing the interview a few days earlier if possible and test it out. Make sure everything looks and sounds good so you'll have fewer things to worry about the day of your shoot.

Sorry I wasn't as brief as I thought I was gonna be. Good luck, hope it turns out well.

I know you said you wanted to keep costs down but I've heard it said and I'm now a believer in:

• If the sound is no good it doesn't matter how nice your video looks

Thoughts and recommendtions:

• A Lavalier mic on the speakers are going to give  you the best possibility of the best sound possible.
  • It is still going to be very sensitive to room noise so you still need a quiet "set" to shoot in
• A mic on the lapel recording into something is going to be, in my opinion, much better than any open-air mic you'll be able to come up with for price and logistics (are you really going to suspend a mic out of frame from above !?).
• I found recording into the camera perfectly fine.

After trying few things during home testing I bit the bullet and went with a wireless system and record into the camera.  I'm very happy with the results of the audio.  Once you have the units set up you plug them in, turn them on and  you are done.

I went with Sarmonic as they got decent reviews and the they have a dual Rx unit that is compact and fits on the camera hot shoe if you want.  They were also very reasonably priced compared to the "higher" quality units.

Mark

this is exactly my philosophy. did my first test run today and man glad I did because there's a lot I need to figure out.

Hey Mark,

Did my first test run today, using a lot of the advice you gave. I used the face detection focus and I have to say it seemed to hunt a bit every time the subject moved. She was just sitting in a chair not running all over the place. Is this just the nature of the beast. I suppose it wasn't the most distracting thing in the world, but I definitely noticed it.

If practical, fix the focus (should be feasible for interview situation). Don't worry about shutter angle for static subjects. More DOF will help relieve focus issues.

Hindesite... I did my first test run today. I did one take where I just manually focused using focus peaking and about f5 and just left it there. The interviewee was just sitting in a chair, but moving around a bit. It was OK but not the sharpest as the interviewee moved around. I also did another take where I used the face detection, and at its best it was very in focus, but it did hunt a bunch even with little movements from the interviewee.

Should I be dialing in more like f8 or using a different type of focus mode in the camera? Any thoughts?

I will also confess that shutter angle has not been something I've been thinking about... Not even sure what it is! Off to google.

Hi

I see from your last two posts you tried both the face focusing and manual focusing.

In my case, my subject tended to move around in their chair, often leaning in for a while then settling back.   Also they were very animated with their hands.  The only thing I noticed was the occasional slow to re-focus on bigger movements.   I'm not sure why it would seem to hunt for every little movement.   The question to me is, when you view the video, does he focus seem to distract or is it doing what it needs to do?

I've only done two shoots resulting in a total of 22 six or so minute videos so I'm sure there's more for me to learn and not all my questions are answered fully for myself yet.  I have only used Face detection, been happy with it and not tried manual focus.  I did do multi-camera and I've learned how to improve after both shoots.

I think there's a good and bad about manual focus in this interview scenario:

The Good:  If your depth of field is sufficient then for minor movement your subject should remain in focus.

The Bad:  You have to nail the focus and absolutely make sure that the tripod doesn't move and your subject does not shift their chair or position to move too far out of the plane of focus.  If they move too far you don't catch it the rest will be out of focus unless they move back into the plane of focus and DOF region.

Play around with this DOF Simulator site to get a feel for your lens and your distance from the subject to frame the shot to assure yourself that you will have enough DOF, especially if you are going to go with Manual focus.  If you have enough light you can stop down to get more DOF.

Here's what might be hard for you to balance which in turn brings you back to the DOF issue above

• The wider the focal length and the more distance you have
  • the greater the DOF   (good for what you want here)
  • the wider the shot which means more of the background (probably not good for what you want)

So the tighter the shot on your Subject the more you need to open up the Aperture to assure DOF.   If you are doing Manual focus then this is a critical set of choices.   If you are doing Face Detection then your DOF essentially travels with your subject (given this is a seated situation)

Mark