Live Portrait: Kristina

Live Portrait: Kristina from Shoot Luke on Vimeo.

Kristina had seen my prior two live portraits and said if I was interested, she'd be interested in doing one as well. For this one, I wanted to do something different; changing up the scenery from my usual magic-hour golden field was one thing, but I moreso wanted to experiment with pacing.

One could argue this latest video departs from the idea/definition of a "portrait" and transcends into just a montage/sizzle reel, maybe even a music video... but I will lobby that it is still a visual likeness study of a person. I don't want to get into semantics, nor really do I care, so in the end, call it what you will, but I'm sure you can't contest the spirit of my intention.

Anyway, in film school I was an editing "major", as did I work as an assistant editor directly out of college, so it was fun getting back to my cutting roots, as this obviously has a tone and pace to it different from my slower, more lingering videos of prior. I had about 25 minutes of raw footage; using Final Cut Pro HD Express, it took me about 2 days to form a rough cut, then another day to really tighten it up. I could've spent another whole week on this and made it uber-tight, maybe even tried some funky match-cutting to different motions, cut against certain beats of the song... but I've been stretched so thin with shooting and post-processing in normal photography.... and am also fastly developing a form of insomnia, to where I'm all but a zombie. Coffee helps.

I shot this entire video using only my Canon 24-70mm; when shooting 30fps, you should only ever be on 1/60 for your shutter-speed, but my DOF ranged between 5.6-8.0. I elected to use manual focus, so I could get a cool rack-focusing effect at certain points, and also purposely being out of focus for others-- an aesthetic choice.

On to Kristina... what a trooper. It was gloomy and overcast that day, which makes the beach a very cold place, despite it being summer, not to mention the Pacific is absolutely frigid, no matter what time of year it is. In other words: she was freezing her ass off.

...yet, she managed to look amazing and smiled all the way through it. Actually, that's a lie-- I have lots of B-roll footage of her writhing around, frantically screaming into the waves, "IT'S SO G-D COLD!!!". I actually put a quick shot of it within the video-- see if you can spot it!

I gotta say, I'm really liking doing these little experimental portrait-videos; having great lenses allows you make some very cinematic, professional looking shots, that not so long ago was really only an option for professional film shoots and/or would cost you $1000's to rent.

A DSLR body with video and a good piece of glass ain't no cheap buy, neither... but definitely more in the realm of affordability than a RED camera or likened.

Anyway, I had a blast shooting this and putting it together; you can expect more live portraits in the future... or whatever you wanna call them ;-)

And if you want to view in larger, prettier HD, click here!

Live Portrait: Kathy

Live Portrait: Kathy from Shoot Luke on Vimeo.

(click here to view in glorious HD)

Through various photography community forums and my own hack research I figured out a lot (not all) of what went wrong technically with my prior DSLR-video attempts.

First off, when shooting (HD) video with a DSLR, always shoot in manual mode. Shutter-speed is incredibly important and can't really vary from the following: If you are shooting 24p, set to 1/50 (closest to the 180-degree shutter of classic motion picture cameras - there is no 1/48) and for 30p, set to 1/60. If you set your shutter-speed too fast, you're going to get overly-crisp and choppy playback which will look very odd-- fight scenes in movies such as "Gladiator" and the opening sequence to "Saving Private Ryan" were shot (though on film) at a very high shutter speed, which gave the scenes an intended aesthetic quality/look. Of course, this is up to you, but if you want your playback to look, well, "normal", then 1/50 for 24p and 1/60 for 30p is what you need to be at. I naively shot my previous live-portrait at 1/125 and you can absolutely tell.

**A critical note about shooting 24p-- a lot of us use Final Cut HD Express for editing (as it's 1/5th the cost of the full FCP); however bear in mind that the current version of FCP Express does not support 24p. If you import 24p footage, it will convert to a 30p timeline, which will result in jittery footage and weird motion noise. This is also evident on my prior live-portrait attempt. Some people are concerned that 30p looks too much like video, therefor opt for 24p. However, if your principle screening-venue is going to be the internet, via YouTube, Vimeo, etc... you're not going to be able to distinguish 30p versus 24p to a point that matters. So, don't drop the grand-plus$$ on a full version of FCP unless you're a serious film-maker who will be screening their video/movie/short in/on a larger venue, such as projector screen or television. If you're the casual videographer like myself, just shoot 30p.

Next is your aperture setting. Working without a good outboard monitor, making sure you have sharp focus on your subject proves more than difficult on a 3-inch screen ('sharp' being the operative word here), so I recommend a thicker DOF overall to help combat this. But you don't want to lose too much nice bokeh, so I'd go no wider than an f/8 if your subject is about the same distance away as Kathy is in this video. Of course, if you bust out the tape-measure and crunch the numbers given your aperture and focal length, you're going to start getting more reliable and accurate sharpness even without an outboard monitor, and you can increase your DOF knowing your math is sound.

...however, I am terrible at math, and to be quite honest, when filming, the scene and subject is (and should be) fluid and alive... things happen on-the-fly, so sometimes you just have to "run and gun"; so having a base of a "safer" aperture can help you focus on your subject/scene and not worry as much about sharpness.

But you still need to grab your critical focus; and for at least the 5d mkII model, AF "Quick Mode" is really your only option without a larger monitor. Yeah, there's ways of getting around that, but I wouldn't; the contrast-based method of Auto Focus while in live-mode can take very long, especially in bright lighting circumstances and it renders the footage captured while trying to achieve focus unusable, not to mention the onboard mic pics up all the noise of you pressing the AF button and the motor noise of the lens trying to re-focus. If you want to go for that aesthetic "rack-focus" look, just pull focus manually. But again, without an outboard monitor, it'll be tough to see how sharp you are once you re-focus.

Finally, a helpful "no duh!" is while in Live-Mode, make sure you are in 'Movie Display" and not "Exposure Simulation"; the later is great when shooting stills, but you need to be in the former to A) make sure your subject falls within the 16:9 crop, and B) you will not be able to manually adjust your exposure-- which is ultra-critical.

Back to sharpness for a moment: you may notice that Kathy's face, especially during close-up's, is not ultra-sharp. This is due mainly to the extreme back-lighting and sun-flares going almost directly into the lens, as well as not having a fill light or reflector bouncing back into Kathy's face. This is a somewhat purposeful aesthetic choice, as I wanted to portray Kathy in (my typical) "romantic, hazy, memory of a girl long since gone" motif that I do... but honestly, she still could have used some fill light; however, I did not have an assistant or P.A., so I had to make-do.

I still feel the intended theme I wanted to evoke shone through. Just have to keep shooting more and more and never stop trying to improve!

Live Portrait: Amy

Live Portraits seem to be catching on quickly in the HD-DSLR community; they're a fun supplement to your traditional portrait and gives the viewer an intimate window into the subject that you may not get with a static photo. I actually think advertising is going to began leaning towards "living ads" only too-soon, so a traditional photographer may be required to be both a skilled photographer AND a DP!

Below is my first attempt at a 'living portrait'... though some may argue it's more of a 'tone-poem'. Whatever it is, I think I'll be doing more of it in the future.

If you wish to view in larger, glorious HD click here to jump to my Vimeo channel!

Living Portrait: Amy from Shoot Luke on Vimeo.