Two Very Short Films I Shot For My UCLA Directing Class on a Canon HV20

I am finally completing my certificate in Entertainment Media at UCLA – a course that has changed radically since I began it several years ago. In the beginning, it was a hybrid of radio, television and film theory, production, development and business. Since the “new media” program was created, the “new” part of the moniker has been dropped and many digital-specific classes have simply been folded into the central workflow concept. That alone has been a revelation – that the distinction between traditional and digital media can no longer be separated.

I wanted to share the first two short films I was assigned to create for a class called The Fundamentals of Directing taught by Peter Shaner over the internet. This in itself is amazing – although I do take many classes at UCLA campus – that a class that required video to be shown and critiqued by peers can be done exclusively online.

This first short, titled “A Very Brief History of Entertainment Media” (in the spirit of the curriculum) was in response to the assignment wherein we had to shoot a single take without dialogue that had a beginning, middle and end while demonstrating a variety of shot sized and angles. It was shot on my trust Canon HV20.

A Lowell Tota light, and Chinese lantern were used to light the large area. I shot it in 24P using Cinemode and posted it in Vegas Pro 9.0 using Magic Bullet to color time and add Misfire for the opening effects. I used Sony’s ACID Pro 7.0 to create the score. Total turnaround time from creation to delivery – less than 20 hours.

The second short, titled “Bill” was in response to an assignment that required we shoot a video, three minutes or less, without dialogue, that had a beginning, middle and end that utilized as many types of shot as possible (master, medium, CU, dolly, pan, objective, subjective, POV etc).

I wanted to start playing with classic spookiness in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock (whose techniques could comprise a lifetime of learning and by no means am I even an apprentice to the technique). This meant voyeuristic shots, Dutch angles, shadows and deep contrasts (which are quite difficult to achieve using the narrow contrast range of a prosumer camcorder, or even most digital video cameras, excluding perhaps the Red or Arri digicams). For example note when the actress is walking by the swimming pool, how the sunlit area at the top of frame is way outside the contrast range for the sensor, because I am balancing to the shadier area through which she is walking; the HV20 (and this applies to almost any digicam’s sensor) simply can’t handle such extremes in contrast. I recommend looking up Ansel Adams concept The Zone System (no not the diet) to better understand how to look for the range of 12 zones within a frame. This is a concept that was introduced to me by Deland Nuse, my Cinematography instructor at UCLA.

I asked him how to better deal with this narrow range on a camera like the HV20 – given that it has a range of approximately four stops! He said to keep contrasts low within the frame, and yes that means the actor’s wardrobe, mise en scene etc. Otherwise you may be asking the camera to try and accommodate things at opposite sides of a range wider than it is capable of capturing; thus your blacks won’t be true blacks if you are adjusting for brighter, overexposed objects, and your highlight detail will suffer if you try to maintain detail in the darker elements by raising the gain.

I also wanted to play with better slow motion techniques and the various frame rates on the Canon and see how far I could push it. Suffice to say, without the time available to do full and proper de-interlacing and motion compensation via interpolated frames, my slow mo didn’t work out as nicely as I would have hoped. I shot it at 1/500 using TV mode. I fared better shooting 1/1000th (again in TVMode) to capture the droplets of water at the sink in the bathroom. But my favorite success story was using 1/12th to capture actress Aimee Lynn Chadwick walking down Hollywood Blvd to create a dreamy, over-the-shoulder shaky cam effect. I also used my Canon wide angle lens for some of these shots, and a Tiffen Neutral Density filter to capture the skies outdoors.

For some excellent slow motion workflow using the Canon HV20 and Vegas Pro, Lance Campeau wrote a step by step at hv20.com that demonstrates how he creates incredible slow motion sequences.

See the result of one of his videos here:

I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, feedback, suggestions – this is a learning process for me and I intent to get much better.

Thanks for checking it out.