One the things from which I learnt the most, that sadly didn't go as planned, was the multi-cam shoot. Originally based on the preproduction work that was done, the idea of a multi-cam shoot was considered and it was meant to be quite helpful when it came down to filming at the football pitch. The idea originally was to get as much coverage and footage as possible form different angles without me having to keep moving constantly, which was going to become a but of a waste of time. At this point the idea was to use more than one camera, at least two of them, in order to do as much coverage as possible. For this setup, we booked out 2 Sony EXs and a Canon 7D, which was going to become the backup more than anything. The first problem that we encountered was that the batteries died quite quickly and we didn't have anywhere to charge them in all those hours we were filming on the pitch, forcing me to use the batteries from the other Sony. This was part of who the problem started, but I will explain it a bit more in detail with the research I made and what worked and what didn't from it.
While doing my research about multi-cam shoots, I came across with 3 main things by Noam Kroll, video producer and blogger, that needed to be evaluated and taken into account as part of the most important elements of this technique.
The first thing was:
Camera Placement
If you want to achieve professional level results with your shoot, you need to make sure that you are optimizing your coverage. In other words, if you are shooting a scene with two actors and you have 3 cameras on them – you probably want a close up on each actor, and then a wide/medium master shot. This may sound obvious, but you probably wouldn’t believe some of the poorly executed camera placements that I’ve seen over the years. For instance, in a situation like the example above, I have seen setups where the director wanted all three cameras roaming (as opposed to locked off on each of the different actors) and ultimately it defeated the purpose of shooting with a 3 camera setup. As you might imagine, when it got time to edit the scene it was extremely difficult for the filmmakers to cut together all three angles as they often were too similar looking to intercut. This doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with your multicam setups, but rather that you make sure you are never doubling up on coverage, regardless of the creative choices that are made.
In our case, we tried to cover different angles by having Sam Babington, the other cameraman, pointing to another angle in which he was going to get something that I wasn't getting. It was hard sometimes because if something important was happening, we were both trying to get it just from another angle, which worked in a way but sometimes not as much. The biggest issue that we had with this in particular was during the shooting of scene 19, where the main cast had an encounter with the Strood FC lads, I was filming the 4 main boys while Sam was filming the Strood ones. For some reason, after he shoot when we were reviewing his shots on the computer, they all came across very shaky, blurry, too many zooming in an out and the majority of that footage was unusable. It was quite bad because I only got with my camera the 4 main guys, meaning that I had a really hard time editing that bit due to having almost no footage usable for the other part. This is something I learned on, which is not to trust 100% anyone filming something when I am the cinematographer because it can screw thing ups for one reason or the other. Sadly the director and I reviewed the majority of his footage and it is all the same, which is one of the reason the multi-cam shoot didn't work that well.
The second element was:
Lighting
The easiest way to get the look that you’re after while maintaining visual consistency is by setting up your lights much in the same way that a stage play or a sitcom is set up. To clarify – I’m not suggesting that you make creative choices that will make your final product look like a play or sitcom, but rather that you make rigging and logistical choices in that same way. For example, lighting from above (by rigging lights to a ceiling or grid) would be hugely preferable over lighting using traditional stands. The reason of course being that when rigged to the ceiling, the lights are completely out of the way and you can shoot in nearly any direction that you want. Lighting your set this way will inevitably take more time up front – so be prepared for some extra time pre-lighting, but in the end it will completely balance out as you will save loads of time once you start rolling.
Although we didn't deal directly with proper lighting kit for this multi-cam shoot, we had to deal a lot with the sunlight which was actually very annoying. The problem with this was that as the light changes we were meant to be constantly changing the settings of the camera and such in order to make it look as similar as all the other shots. A lot of them sadly don't look any similar on the Sony and the Canon because it was way harder to keep up the same settings when the light kept changing. This wasn't easy and it has given me a lot of work in color correction, but I believe that it wasn't that bad and there is definitely some clips I can work with.
The third and last was:
Matching Cameras
Amongst the most common and problematic issue that arises on multicam setups (particularly on low budget indie films) are mismatched cameras. In many instances, small productions don’t want to rent two or three identical cameras, so they mix and match various cameras that they have access to in order to supplement their multicamera setup. While this can be done and in some circumstances you can get away with it, I would highly advise against mixing cameras whenever possible. In an ideal world, you want every camera to be the exact make and model, or at the very least the same brand. Even if you are shooting on identical cameras, you still need to be extremely diligent when it comes to your settings (camera profiles, shutter angle, white balance, etc.) as any slight difference in your camera settings can cause some big headaches in post
This was probably one of the biggest issues regarding the footage itself. Sadly the fact that the batteries on the Sony EX became an issue, we had to change the second Sony for the Canon which of course made things harder when it came down to matching the clips as much as possible. In the past I had managed to make it look very similar during my Digital News unit, but it was harder here when two different people were operating them for hours of constantly filming non stop and time limit. I wish that some things had worked out better and that this technique became more of an ally than an enemy, but I think this kind of experiences is where you learn from to avoid things in a future and although I have managed to fix some things, I have had a tough time during the edit with footage that is unusable from the Canon.
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| Canon Footage |
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| Sony EX Footage |
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