Philip Bloom is a lighting cameraman who’s teamed up with Dennis Lennie to create F Stop Academy, specifically tailored to people who want to know how to achieve the film look from a video camera. Personally, I also think it could well be a very useful course for stills photographers like myself how are making the move into shooting video. It that’s you, here’s my thoughts on the Podcast you can download from them.
It’s kind of a two guys thinking aloud “What if we showed people how to…” It’s over 50 minutes long and can take a bit of getting through. If you’re a beginner, probably every single chunk is useful. If you’re an experienced stills photographer, sure there will be stuff you already know, like controlling depth of field explanations, but it’s worth the listen to get to the more interesting bits.
One of my main frustrations of video cameras has been the DOF thing. I love shooting stills on my 1DS with the 70-200 wide open to make the main subject really ‘pop’, but apart from the Canon 5D, I’ve struggled to get that in video and that;s one of the things these guys are talking about. Seeing as my self-publishing efforts are going to involve short productions, I also want to know more about lots of other stuff the guys chat about, including (deep breath) the best matte box, follow focus, grip gear, lighting, tape and tapeless workflow, post production grading, Magic Bullet looks, combining multiple cameras into an edit, plus I’m sure there’s more.
Sign up, download it and listen. You’ll probably break it up into chunks, I had to, as I was working. It’s slightly heavy going at times as the conversation wanders, but that’’s just part of the whole informality of the piece and let’s face it we’re all guilty, so don’t worry, you’re not wasting your time. It’s limited to 1,000 downloads, so head over and grab a copy. I’m not blogging this for money, I simply thing it’s going to be a good thing and I’ll certainly be looking forward to seeing more.