Research: before we shoot

Some further thoughts concerning the equipment and general approach to producing the promo.

Time remapping.  I realized that the best way to 'mesmerize' a viewer was to play something even slower. This is a good answer to the popular 'oh you just did this quickly, that's all". If even in slow-motion the audience can't tell what is going on is even better.

Color corrections: In order to raise the quality level of the project and add some dramatic/professional look I decided to use some color correction software (mainly Red Giant suite).

Lens choice: This was a bit tricky. Normally I shoot just about everything using my standard 50mm lens which gives pretty neutral output. I did have an opportunity to test Canon's 70-200mm (2.8 aperture) which is a considerably more expensive piece of equipment.

Although the quality of the picture was spectacular it was close to impossible to maintain the stability of the image. This was due to two reasons:

1. Shakes. While zoomed in on 200mm (which is *not that much* compared to 500m for instance) every even slight camera shake is multiplied on the image. So for instance if the camera experiences a rapid movement to the right by one inch, the footage will experience approx movement by 3 inches.

2. It's heavy! The weight of my 50mm lens is approximately somewhere around 100g. This giant pipe is somewhere between 2 and 3 kg. If you add the camera body to this (another kilo) it comes down to quite something (especially if one intends to shoot for several hours continuously). The funny thing for me to notice was  that the lens had an actual tripod screw, so unlike the other lenses I have seen while using tripod/shoulder rig or any other stabilizng gear one should screw it on using the lens instead of the camera body. This is due to the height and size of it. 

3. Zoom + Focus. As I am accustomed to using prime lenses, havin a zoom lens is quite a challenge. First off there are two rings to control. In theory, the zoom ring if shooting default footage is to help with a better frame and should be left in this position for the entire sequence. It did happen to me several times that while trying to adjust the focus I would often use the zoom ring instead!

4. Minimal focal distance This was a tricky again. Even though this is a zoom lens it requires somewhere around 2metres distance for the subject to come into focus. This is quite difficult especially that even on the full zoom-in 2 metres is pretty far away if one needs for instance a take with character's eye filling half of the frame.

After giving 70-200 some trials I figured I would still be better off with the prime lens (at least for the dynamic footage). On the other hand, the tripod footage is superb.

To sum up: combine 70-200 tripod footage with 50mm handheld footage