So in the past I've generally worked on shorts or interviews or other types of film with limited scope and easy access to power sockets and lighting boxes and fancy gear. Recently though I've won a film competition for Fair Trade and the price is a paid film job in Thailand? The job? To create a travelogue/documentary video on their businesses in Thailand. It should be great, rice fields, natives, all of that, but I'm a bit I'm trying to wrap my head around how I'm going to do all this. We'll probably be walking a lot and even when traveling by car the amount of storage space will be limited. So taking huge amounts of gear is out of the question.
Now I was wondering if anyone has some advice on must haves and could maybe give me some advice on these very specific concerns:
Battery life - I'm shooting on a 5D MII, and the battery life isn't great. Obviously I'll need extra battery packs. Now I was wondering if there's maybe a more elegant solution I'm not thinking of than just stockpiling on standard batteries and switching them out as needed? If someone has some advice to share on how to get good battery life out of the 5D I'd love to hear it.
Sound - I have a Zoom H4N that I generally use in conjunction with a Rode NTG-3 shotgun mic on a pole or stand to record audio. Now the advantage obviously is that the audio quality is a lot better than straight out of the H4N and using the blimp system with the wind cover does dramatically decrease wind noise, which may be a life saver. However, I'll be traveling with one other person; I'll be doing camera - he'll be doing audio/assisting... I was wondering if maybe it would be wiser to use the audio straight from the H4N to improve mobility and keep his hands free (the H4N can just hang around his neck) for if he needs to do anything. Or maybe even consider a VideoMic Pro Stereo - connected directly to the camera - for ultimate in battery life and ease-of-use - while sacrificing sound quality? Thoughts?
Archiving/Syncing - So I figured taking a very large external drive is going to be a necessity, since we're going to be a shooting a lot. However, I'm not sure how to manage archiving and syncing. When I'm doing shorts or interviews I generally record the audio and video separately and record audio cues "Scene 1, take 1!" to then later rename, archive and sync. I'm worried that this'll be very impractical and easy to lose track of when doing a travelogue though, since you might want to shoot impressions at a whim and not have time for any of that, let alone maybe even have time to set up the mic. Thing could easily get pretty messy that way. Besides that, we're two people - 1 camera, 1 sound, and we won't have someone else to keep track of the shots and archiving on the go.
One possible solution I thought of was simply "going nuts", editing as I please, and then just point PluralEyes 3 to my audio folder and let it figure everything out. It's not ideal in an archiving-future-proofing sense, but it seems like it'd be a quick workflow and should hopefully work alright. Perhaps paired with some rudimentary filenaming/archiving setup like "Day 1", "Day 2", etc. Of course recording with a mic plugged directly into the camera would bypass many of these issues.
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Anyway, those were my specific concerns up to this point, and I'd love advice and thought and benefit from your experiences. If there's other advice or tips you'd like to share I would of course also welcome it.
Now I was wondering if anyone has some advice on must haves and could maybe give me some advice on these very specific concerns:
Battery life - I'm shooting on a 5D MII, and the battery life isn't great. Obviously I'll need extra battery packs. Now I was wondering if there's maybe a more elegant solution I'm not thinking of than just stockpiling on standard batteries and switching them out as needed? If someone has some advice to share on how to get good battery life out of the 5D I'd love to hear it.
Sound - I have a Zoom H4N that I generally use in conjunction with a Rode NTG-3 shotgun mic on a pole or stand to record audio. Now the advantage obviously is that the audio quality is a lot better than straight out of the H4N and using the blimp system with the wind cover does dramatically decrease wind noise, which may be a life saver. However, I'll be traveling with one other person; I'll be doing camera - he'll be doing audio/assisting... I was wondering if maybe it would be wiser to use the audio straight from the H4N to improve mobility and keep his hands free (the H4N can just hang around his neck) for if he needs to do anything. Or maybe even consider a VideoMic Pro Stereo - connected directly to the camera - for ultimate in battery life and ease-of-use - while sacrificing sound quality? Thoughts?
Archiving/Syncing - So I figured taking a very large external drive is going to be a necessity, since we're going to be a shooting a lot. However, I'm not sure how to manage archiving and syncing. When I'm doing shorts or interviews I generally record the audio and video separately and record audio cues "Scene 1, take 1!" to then later rename, archive and sync. I'm worried that this'll be very impractical and easy to lose track of when doing a travelogue though, since you might want to shoot impressions at a whim and not have time for any of that, let alone maybe even have time to set up the mic. Thing could easily get pretty messy that way. Besides that, we're two people - 1 camera, 1 sound, and we won't have someone else to keep track of the shots and archiving on the go.
One possible solution I thought of was simply "going nuts", editing as I please, and then just point PluralEyes 3 to my audio folder and let it figure everything out. It's not ideal in an archiving-future-proofing sense, but it seems like it'd be a quick workflow and should hopefully work alright. Perhaps paired with some rudimentary filenaming/archiving setup like "Day 1", "Day 2", etc. Of course recording with a mic plugged directly into the camera would bypass many of these issues.
--
Anyway, those were my specific concerns up to this point, and I'd love advice and thought and benefit from your experiences. If there's other advice or tips you'd like to share I would of course also welcome it.
