Keepin' It Ol' Skool
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Sunday, 23 August 09 - 01:58 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Musicmaking |
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So I'm working on a solo album to pass the time between projects n' stuff and I've been stuck with how I want to go about recording it - going all out on the computer and all the instruments I play or having it really stripped down.
Earlier I was working on one of the tracks where I made a beat using old Roland TR-808 samples (based on the classic hip-hop sounds you'd get from the machine pictured above) then mic'd all the other instruments - two acoustic guitars and an acoustic bass - and it sounded pretty cool, so I thought I'd search around on-line for some other old skool drum machine samples. Nothing wrong with the 808, it's just that it's a very specific sound and I was looking for a bit of variety. Can't have all the beats sound like Run DMC and early nineties Miami bass.
That's when I found this site: K86.de. This site has the most extensive list of vintage drum machine sample packs for free download - Akai, Alesis, Roland, Casio, Moog, they're all here.
And, for those iPhone addicts out there in the world, I also discovered something else whilst image Googling for a pic of the 808:-
If you click here or the pic above you'll be led to post by URB Magazine about how some plug-in developers have created an app for the iPhone to turn it into your very own 808 style drum machine.
I'm imagining a 21st century Run DMC except the DJ's rockin' two iPhones.
The Making of 'Lucky Shot'
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Tuesday, 18 August 09 - 04:33 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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So following on from three posts back about shooting HD on DSLR, I recently acquired a Canon 5D Mark II myself - a lovely little camera indeed. But before buying it, I wanted to make sure it was the right choice for me. Now, most of the time when I shoot a short film it's to test out a technique - be it in editing, writing or shooting - or to test out a piece of equipment (unless I'm being paid to do it in which case I just take the money and run).
For example, 'Nicotine' was both a test to see whether I could shoot a short film as well as to test out the narrative technique and an idea I had of turning the images from color to black and white in a fade. 'Some Like It White' was a test to see if I could control the complete flow and pace of the dialogue purely from editing.
For the Canon 5D Mark II, I wanted to test it out in a whole variety of situations so that I could see the pros and cons of the camera myself firsthand. I knew a friend of mine, photographer Vignes Balasingam, had sold a whole bunch of his Nikon equipment to get the camera and he said we could shoot something with it.
The result? 'Lucky Shot':-
The trailer of which can be viewed here:-
To watch it in HD click here to go to Vimeo.
Pre Production
First things first was the script. In order to make sure I tested every possible scenario I could imagine myself shooting in, I wrote a story about a photographer going through her portfolio with her mentor and as each photo of a past boyfriend/girlfriend pops up we flashback to those moments. This gave me a lot of scenarios to play with in terms of locations - indoors, outdoors, day, night, public places, driving shots, etc.
Once I got my friend Vig on board to shoot it I got the cast sorted out and set a day on the weekend where we could roam around the area shooting this.
Production
Vig, the owner of the 5D, only had a 35mm f2 lens and the manual focus was broken, so we used that for shots where we didn't need to pull focus. The 35mm is a great all rounder on a full frame camera and if the manual focus was working we would have probably used it throughout. However, for pull focus shots we used my 50mm f1.8. The only annoying thing with this was the focus ring is very thin and at the front but we managed ok. Because this was before the firmware update, we were shooting everything in auto.
Vig checking the shot.
For storage, Vig only had one 4 gigabyte CF card and one 1 gigabyte CF card. Thankfully, the lead actress Shirin uses a 400D which uses CF cards so she had another 4 gigabyte CF card. However, only Vig's 4 gig card was of the 'very fast' variety whereas the other two cards were quite slow so sometimes, if we were using the other cards, the camera would show a bar when it was about to slow down and maybe cause a dropped frame. However, before that ever happened we'd always already have the scene in the can and cut.
Another thing to say about the storage is this - if you're shooting on HD you need a lot of storage. We'd only get about 10 or 12 minutes with a 4 gig card so we ended up transferring footage three times in the whole day.
The transferring of footage brought up another issue - we had a very slow card reader. I hadn't taken the transferring into account when I scheduled the shoot and each transfer of all the cards would take anywhere between one to two hours. We also didn't have a laptop with us so we'd always end up going back to my studio to transfer. Thankfully, we shot everything nearby my studio so we didn't lose too much time.
Vig also had a Manfrotto tripod but no video head, so we used a regular photographer head instead. Because of this we mainly used it for static shots and one or two tilt/pan shots. However, a tripod is often essential. The camera is ergonomically shaped for photography but not videography, ergo the weight distribution of the camera for handheld is kinda weird. Having to focus manually also had our fingers directly on the body of the lens, making the act of keeping it steady even harder.
At the Curve, getting ready to shoot another scene. From left to right: Me, actor Michael, cinematographer Vig and actor Nick.
For handheld shots, I found that it was easier to get a smooth handheld shot with the 35mm lens and recently I've discovered the same with my 28mm lens and would assume so with other wide lenses. However, when going handheld I found the 50mm much harder but we needed to be able to control the focus on the fly for most of the handheld shots (plus, I like the whole handheld style anyway). I think this was mainly because a 50mm is much tighter than a wider lens and it shows the shake more, especially since the focus ring wasn't in a more ergonomic spot.
The shake is also not your typical handheld shake - it's incredibly jittery and annoying in some shots. With some scenes I even had a bit of CMOS jelly cam wobble, but nowhere near as bad as some of the shots I've seen with the the Nikon D90. What I've found from checking out other lenses since is that for tight, tele lenses (and to make shots with wider lenses look smoother) it's better to use lenses with internal stabilization (IS). Apparently it reduces the shake considerably.
Shooting in day light was not a problem at all with this camera, in any daylight scenario. Best of all, though, is shooting in public - no one gives a damn. We shot in a shopping mall (The Curve), two mamak stalls (Devi's in Taman Tun and D'Kayu opposite The Curve) and the streets in general and not once did anyone stop us or even gawk for that matter. When we shot at the mamak stalls we didn't even ask for permission, just set the tripod down and start shooting, and at the very most we had one or two glance over and probably assumed we were just taking photos.
Shooting at night was where the camera really shined. We shot everything in natural light, wherever the source came from. When it came to night scenes the shots were lit from street flourescents, car lights, whatever was around and the camera performed beautifully in each scene. To really test out the camera, we shot one scene in a bedroom lit only by two candles and one small desk lamp bouncing off the wall and there were no black shadows in the scene at all. Unfortunately, this was at its highest ISO and there was a lot of noise in the shot which took a bit of cunning to clean up in post.
Vig shooting a scene by candlelight. Literally.
There was only one shot where we tried to add some fill with an Ikea lamp but unfortunately the camera started exposing purely based on the lamp. In general, occasionally the auto mode was annoying - in the daytime, some of the white balance choices it made weren't ones that I would honestly go with and sometimes I wished I had more control of the aperture - but this camera in auto beats a dozen of the best video cameras in full manual mode.
Because I was doubtful of the camera's sound, I wrote the script so that most of it was based on imagery and voice overs. However, I did want to test out the sound regardless so there are two dialogue scenes. Unlike the Nikon D90, the only other HD capable DSLR at the time, the Canon 5D Mark II had a mini jack audio input and I had an Audio Technica stereo mic. Unfortunately, there is no headphone jack, so we just hoped for the best.
The camera with the mic set-up in all its glory.
After a whole day of shooting from noon to 3am, the short was done.
Post Production
My editing set up is a quad core PC with 3 gigs of RAM and a nVideaGeforce graphics card runnin Sony Vegas 8.0c and the first problem I encountered, and which many PC users encounter, was the format of the footage.
Whilst the footage comes in a very high resolution h264 compression, there were two problems that PC users have encountered with this camera - firstly, it's in quicktime, which is usable but not very friendly to us PC users; secondly, it shoots in progressive 30 frames-per-second.
The frame rate is the hugest problem. Film is usually at 24 frames, PAL video runs at 25 and whilst NTSC is 30 frames, it's 30 frames interlaced and actually works out to about 29.97 frames per second. On top of that, 30 frames looks too video-y. Even though it's shot in progressive it looks interlace-y smooth.
After many, many, many searches online trying to figure out the best way around this, I came up with this work flow which worked pretty well for me:-
The first, and most important thing, was to download a small freeware program called MPEG Streamclip by Squared5 (click here to go to the site and download). For a small software, it's great for converting between formats and most importantly, it will convert the frame rate relative well whereas when I tried to do so on Vegas I would get weird streaks and ghosting during motion. I've read online that some people have converted their 5D footage straight to XDCam MXF but the software uses your installed Quicktime to convert and since I didn't have Quicktime Pro I couldn't convert to any mpeg2 format.
Because of this, my work flow had two steps - the first was to convert it into 25 frames progressive but still keeping the same format and size, leading to a 25 frames progressive quicktime file. Then, in order to make the work flow smoother and ensure Vegas runs speedily I took all the files and put them into a timeline on Vegas and rendered them as 25 frames progressive XDCam MXF files. Since this MXF format is very easy on my hardware and software after doing all this editing was a breeze.
There are a few tiny drawbacks to this method - some motion looks incredibly jerky but still acceptable and one of the improvements of converting to 25 frames using this is that a lot of the wobbly jelly cam dissapears.
Whilst editing, I kept most of the footage untouched color wise. The only scenes that were color corrected were the flashback scenes to give each one a different feel. For the scene lit by candles with an insane amount of noise I treated the entire scene with some heavy diffusion which helped smoothen out and cover up the harsh noise.
The images, though beautiful, weren't as sharp as some of the higher end HD cameras such as the Sony PMW EX1 and EX3 which are insanely sharp. Though I realize this is because of the way the camera captures the video and the lenses used I wanted to try and get the images as crisp as I could so I added the Vegas sharpen filter set to 'light' which gave it just the right amount of sharpness without ruining the shots.
Though there were no problems with the format of the sound, which was uncompressed wav, I realized during post that I made a bit of a mistake with the sound - in the hope of getting the microphone closer we placed the mic on the table where the two characters were sat but I totally didn't take into account the fact that the two characters are constantly using the mouse and keyboard in the scene and the tinniest click or tap on the table was picked up at an incredibly high volume. The other problem was that the on-board audio pre-amps weren't the best by any means and very biased towards the higher frequencies so now I have to ADR the dialogue. Thankfully, the scene cuts to a lot of things they are referring to so there are very few lines that need to be synced perfectly to the lips.
Finally, I rendered everything to MXF and watched it.
And it looked beautiful.
Conclusion
The frame rate of 30fps progressive is annoying. Having to re-convert the footage is a bit of a pain in terms of work flow but not in comparison to the Panasonic P2 cameras which were such a pain they destroyed my last video card.
Sound is another issue. The on board camera is not bad for simply documenting something but nowhere near good enough for shooting something properly. Many people have been using digital recorders such as the Zoom H4N so that may be the next thing to invest in.
The handheld issues have been noted above, but if it really bugs you there are solutions - rigs by Zacuto and Redrock look dope, but pretty pricey (I've actually been experimenting with different DIY rigs and will write about the results in another post).
But visually, this camera is stunning. My only issue was the lack of manual control which some people got around by getting a Nikon ring adapter and using Nikon lenses because they have manual aperture control. However, now that the firmware has been updated to allow full manual control of aperture, shutter rate, ISO and white balance, camera dudes now have the whole shebang.
For a DIY filmmaker such as myself, this camera is a godsend, and thoroughly looking forward to having as much fun I did shooting this as I know I will shooting future projects.
It's a wrap! From left to right: me, lead actress Shirin, actress Anrie and actor Michael.
Hold the iPhone!
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Wednesday, 12 August 09 - 07:26 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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It's a night of technological discovery wonders, it seems. Here's a final post to cap off the evening about another advancement that'll tickle the tech bones of DIY filmmakers - the iPhone 3Gs.
Thing is, whilst some may not know about the technological wonders of the recent emergence of DSLR's that shoot HD, many know the iPhone, which shoots surprisingly decent quality footage for a phone:-
Click here if you can't view it above.
Personally, I'm not much of an Apple man, preferring the random instability and tweakiness of the PC, but even I admit that when it comes to design and visual clarity, Apple's got it made.
However, though the DIY possibilities are obvious, there's one thing I haven't seen people DIY yet, which is some form of rigging for stability. Numerous companies are already seeing the potential of the camera and creating rigs specifically for the purpose of shooting flicks on the iPhone, such as Zacuto, who also make rigs for DSLR's to make shooting video easier. But whilst many have made their own DIY versions of DSLR rigs, I haven't seen a DIY version of this:-
This is the ZGrip iPhone Pro, which retails at USD$295. There's also a more stripped down version, the ZGrip iPhone Junior, which retails at USD$59. Seriously - no one out there's come up with a DIY rig of this?
This one is closer to the idea of DIY-ing it, but not quite:-
Click here to see the article.
With this, the guy took bits from a Redrock system and fashioned it to fit an iPhone, but the Redrock system itself is pretty pricey as well.
Another company is taking it even further with this:-
It's called an OWLE (Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement) and not only makes your videos more stable, but includes a wide angle video lens and an audio adapter with a better mic for better audio recording.
It shouldn't be too long before the DIY rigs start popping up, but until then, take a good look at the pics above, iPhone 3Gs users. Take a good look, and figure out your own better, cheaper way of setting it up.
Seriously, USD$295 for a friggin' grip...
Digital 8mm?
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Wednesday, 12 August 09 - 03:06 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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Anyone remember the old 8mm film cameras? I had one, and not when I was a kid either. Bought one at a second hand shop in Angel. Unfortunately I lent the projector to someone, lent the camera to someone else and neither's given it back. On top of that, I've lost the footage I've shot.
But I remember how fun it was - the gritty, grainy, 12 frames-per-second visuals were unique and lo-fi cool, and sometimes I'd treat the video footage I've taken, even HD footage, in a similar way in post to get the same feel.
However, it doesn't look like that needs to be done anymore, thanks to this:-
Digital Harinezumi
Click here to check out the official site.
Brought to life by Superheadz in Japan who ordinarily make lomography cameras, this little wonder is their first digital lomo camera - lomo style lens and photography design combined with a CMOS sensor to capture not just pictures but also standard resolution avi video:-
Sure, the focus is everywhere, the colors aren't true-to-life and the frame rate looks jittery, but that's the point of it all, isn't it? Though it would never replace whatever trusted camera you may be using, for some video artists it can be a pretty cool and fun tool to play with.
And if you're in Malaysia, you can order it through the ClickShop by clicking here.
Viva La Revolucion!
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Wednesday, 12 August 09 - 12:32 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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But that's not what we're talking about today.
It's been a while since we've posted anything here, mainly due to quite a few projects that have been popping up, and the last post we put up was about the 'Kabij', a DIY depth-of-field adapter in order to be able to use film lenses on a video camera. As we wrote, the whole point of the thing was to create the more film-like image of shallow depth-of-field and many independent filmmakers and production companies have invested in more professional adapters for their works.
These same people are probably kicking themselves right now.
Over the past year and a half, a huge revolution in HD filmmaking has turned up - DSLR cameras that can record HD video.
What does this mean? Well, in a nutshell, imagine those professional digital pictures taken from digital SLR cameras moving.
By now this is old news, but like I said, we've been busy and it's high time we wrote about it, so we're gonna attempt to be as in-depth as possible about the whole thing for the benefit of those who have no idea about it, starting with the first one that got everyone's ears perked up:-
The Nikon D90
Click here to read DPReview's write-up on the D90.
When the Nikon D90 first popped up, for photographers it was a great product to add to the Nikon line with incredible low-light capabilities. But for filmmakers, this was some kind of new creature altogether, capable of shooting 720p HD video at 24 frames-per-second.
If you click here you can check out Nikon's pimpage of the video mode.
What was even more shocking for indie filmmakers was the price - on average about 20% the price of the most affordable HDV camera around.
An example of how good the Nikon D90 can be is this music video for Doug Burr's "Should've Known", one of the first music videos to be shot with a Nikon D90:-
If you can't see the video on this page, click here to see it at Vimeo or here to see it on MySpace.
Pretty, ain't it?
The thing was, even though it kick-started the revolution, if you went for pros and cons there were more of the latter than the former. For starters, trying to use the camera handheld, especially with a 50mm lens, would often cause the wobbly CMOS jelly effect, which isn't very desirable. There is also no audio input and most of all, the compression used by the camera isn't the best (some form of motion jpeg avi).
Of course, competitive as the industry is, Canon had to respond and respond they did with:-
The Canon 5D Mark II
Click here to read DPReview's write up of the Canon 5D Mark II.
In a way, Canon's response was a bit heavy handed with their response. For starters, the Canon 5D Mark II is a full frame camera, meaning it has a 35mm sensor. The only other HD camera I can think of off the top of my head that also has a 35mm sensor is the Panavision Genesis.
The low-light on this camera and the quality of the image is insanely good and at 1080 resolution in comparison to Nikon's 720. The price is also a lot bigger too at almost three times the price of the Nikon D90 but the quality more than makes up for it (and I should know, I now own one, but more on that on another post).
The thing is, I doubt both Nikon and Canon realized how revolutionary this technology was. But when professional photographer Vincent LaForet did a test shoot of the camera's video capability, everyone noticed:-
To view other great 5D clips on Vimeo click here.
There is however, a few annoyances with the 5D. Some have been rectified, some haven't. The biggest one was when it first came out you could only shoot in auto mode. Now, to be fair, this camera on auto is better than most cameras set to manual, but one would like control. Thankfully, Canon updated their firmware so that you now can.
Audio is another issue - though you can plug in an external mic you had no idea of what audio levels you were getting. Some people remedy this by using the Magic Lantern firmware, though there is the danger of messing up your camera in the process as it is not an official Canon firmware update. Others use external recorders such as the Zoom H4N so that they can record the audio better and use better mics.
The biggest issue with the Canon 5D Mark II is the frame rate. Whilst Nikon records at 24 frames-per-second, the same as traditional film, for some reason the Canon 5D Mark II shoots at 30 frames-per-second, which is simply downright annoying. It's not just a motion issue. It's 30 frames-per-second progressive, whilst video 30 fps is actually 29.97 fps or something. The format is a very hi-quality mp4 compression in mov format which is great for Apple users but hell for PC users.
There have been rumors that Canon have developed a firmware update to make it 24 frames-per-second and have apparently been testing it on the set of Iron Man 2, no less, but so far there's been no word of this update coming out, unfortunately.
The thing is, there's probably another reason why the 5D Mark II only shoots at 30fps - Canon still have HDV cameras to sell, the professional ones costing much more than the 5D Mark II. If the Canon 5D Mark II had either 24fps or 25fps that's it - no need for the XHA1, XHG1 or XL-H1, they'll be made completely redundant.
However, one camera company who also makes video cameras caught wind of the revolution and embraced it wholeheartedly, creating this little beauty:-
Panasonic GH-1
Whilst the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mark II were both designed as good DSLR's that also had HD video capabilities, the Panasonic Lumix GH-1 is designed specifically for both. Whilst the camera capabilities are the same as its earlier G-1 model, the HD mode on this camera is dedicated and designed for the filmmaker in mind, with options of 1080 or 720 and choices of frame rates which include both 24p and 25p.
A nice sample of the video capabilities of this camera can be seen here:-
Click here for another nice example.
Unfortunately, though I've had the chance to play around with both the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mark II, I still haven't seen this camera in the flesh yet, let alone touched it. Most of the clips on Vimeo are still new as it's a quite new camera and people are still testing it out.
However, one of the things I can think of as a bummer with this camera is the lenses, or more specifically, the lack of lenses.
The GH-1 is a four-third's camera, meaning it's designed with the sensor much closer to the lens and instead of using a mirror system to view your shots you use live-view technology. This allows the camera to be smaller, but the downside is that whilst there are many Canon and Nikon lenses as well as other brands that work on both and adapters so that one brand user can use another brand user's lenses, there aren't as many four-thirds lenses in the market. As far as Panasonic goes, on their website I can see only 8 other lenses that will fit this camera, and at a glance I can't see any lenses with an aperture lower than f2.8. The kit lens itself is a 14mm-140mm zoom lens designed to be super quiet so that the on-board mic doesn't pick it up, but this doesn't compare to the number of choices the other brands have. Price wise it's in-between the Nikon and Canon.
An in-depth review of the camera can be found by clicking here.
And The Others...
Apart from these three behemoths and revolutionaries, other cameras have also popped up. Since the D90, Nikon has also released the inexpensive D3000 to replace the entry-level D40 and for the higher models they've revamped the D300 with the D300s, both capable of recording HD video. Canon, on the other hand, released the more affordable 500D, which has probably the weirdest recording rate ever for any camera - whilst 720p is at 30fps, 1080 resolution is at 20fps, a frame rate completely unheard of and downright weird.
As more of the world is introduced to HD video and television in their homes, more and more of these features have been popping up on digital cameras. At present, most digital cameras can shoot video in HD resolution.
However, one curio that should be pointed out, which is neither snapshop digital camera nor DSLR, is this one:-
Casio Exilim EX-F1
Click here for Gizmodo's gushes of praise.
This camera is just... it's an anomaly. That's the best way I can describe it. Whilst the DSLR's that shoot HD are revolutionary, this one is just insane. Why? Well, for starters, as a camera by itself taking photos, it can take 60 photos in one second. Not impressed? Ok. Seven pictures a second with full flash. Still not impressed? Ok, how about this:-
As well as shooting 1080 resolution HD video, in smaller sizes it can shoot video in slow motion at 300, 600 and 1200 frames per second:-
Yes, the resolution gets smaller and crapper the slower you put the motion, but imagine how friggin' fun this camera can be? The thought that a consumer camera can shoot up to 1200fps slow-motion video is simply unheard of.
They also have a cheaper, smaller version of the camera - The Casio Exilim EX-FH20 - which shoots up to 1000fps slow-motion. Though these two cameras are not practical in terms of professional filmmaking, it's incredibly unique and an amazing advance in technology.
These revolutions in camera technology are going to continue evolving and it's a very exciting time, and as each new update unfolds I'll try my best to keep updating over here.
The Secret of the Kabij
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Monday, 13 April 09 - 06:40 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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Two years ago I was checking out a bunch of 35mm depth-of-field adapters for DV and HDV cameras. For those not in the know, a depth-of-field adapter allows you to attach lenses meant for 35mm film cameras onto your video camera to allow shallow depth-of-field, making shots look more filmic. One of the better ones come from Letus and I knew a bunch of guys in the local industry who had one and got some pretty stunning results.
However, I also knew that these adapters cost a bundle load, so started researching on how to build my own and, after many messages on YouTube on how I made it after I posted the test footage, I've finally gotten myself down in my chair to write about it.
For the sake of simplicity, instead of explaining the science these adapters are based on, below are links to people who have already explained it well enough on-line:
- Wikipedia
- Mediachance (best one in my opinion)
- WonderHowTo.com
- 35mm Adapter Resource Blog
In the end, Cash Converters graced me with a cheap and terrible Prakticar zoom lens to test my theory (1) and my lucky find - a bunch of lens extensions (5). I knew I needed a macro lens so that the camera could zoom in onto the projected image on the focus screen so I called up Albert to find out if he had any in the size I needed and, luck would have it, he actually did and sold it to me (2) together with a fisheye that came with it. As for the focus screen, after a bunch of tests with different materials I settled on this CD-R holder base (3) that worked and to encase it I went to a hardware store with the rear lens cap of the Prackticar and tried shoving it into a bunch of PVC pipes until I found one that fit snugly (4).
To get the macro lens to attach to the adapter I bought some 58mm filters (left picture above). I broke the glass of one so that it was just an empty ring and attached that onto the PVC pipe and then screwed on another with the glass on. By sheer luck (as I forgot to check this when I bought the pipe) the filter fit the pipe very snuggly but just to be safe I used some tape to keep it in place (right picture above). Now it can screw onto themacro lens, which can then screw on to the camera and it looks something like this:
The picture above is with a 50mm f1.4 Olympus lens. As you can see, it's all attached to my Canon XM2. Below is the first test footage of the lens before cleaning it completely, so you'll see a couple of black specks here and there.
Recording Drums
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Tuesday, 07 April 09 - 09:01 AM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Musicmaking |
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After all the filmmaking stuff, I figured it'd be best to switch around to the other creative endeavor this site is dedicated to - music making. At the moment I'm currently recording my band 'Rollin Sixers' at home, with these sessions hopefully leading to a full length album, and since it's all mostly a DIY endeavor, I thought I'd share the sessions with all you readers out there.
All three of you.
With the advances of digital technology it's now very feasible to record music without having to resort to an expensive studio. The main draw of an expensive studio is basically the acoustics of the place, the sound proofing and the equipment they use because with audio equipment, there's no doubt about it - the more expensive something is, odds are it's better. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but for the most part this adage remains true.
Nonetheless, recording guitars and bass and keyboards and vocals at home isn't too much of a problem. Drums, however, are a bit trickier. You can line in a guitar and use a very good amp simulator or simply record the guitar at a volume that won't piss off the neighbors but drums are loud, full stop. And not only are they loud, although it's considered one instrument it's actually a combination of a number of instruments - the snare, the kick, the toms, the hihat and cymbals.
1. Controlling the Volume
The first problem we had was of course, the loudness of the drums and the acoustics. Even though we were recording on weekends in the day time for the sake of neighbors, I still didn't want the sound to be too obtrusive, so we went about with some DIY dampening and proofing.
I was lucky in that the house I was in was my parent's old house and since they moved to the new one a lot of the old crap they didn't want was left over in here including old curtains, mattresses, duvets, pillows and carpets. Anything that could help dampen the sound, I'd use.
To get an idea of the best way to go about it, I searched on-line and found an excellent article on dampening sound and sorting out the acoustics of the room when recording drums at home (as well as the recording process in general) at Kimchee Records.
Now, before anyone asks, there's a big difference between sound proofing and sound dampening, and to properly sound proof a room in a house will cost you a fortune and make the room a helluva lot smaller. Now, even though we didn't want to piss off the neighbours, we wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had a house, which would have different acoustics to a soundproofed dead room. Most studios in Malaysia record in dead rooms and add the room sound in later digitally, which is fine, but since my band had a very old-school Zeppelin inspired feel to it we wanted to capture a more live sound. In fact, that was my aim, at least, as an engineer - to get the feel of the first Zeppelin album.
Other good places to research sound proofing, dampening and acoustics are listed below:
- How to Soundproof an Apartment - Wired
- No Noise is Good Noise - Sound on Sound
- DIY Bass Traps - Steven P. Helm
- Bass Traps - Audioholics
- How to Soundproof a Wall - Soundproofing 101
Like I said before, drums are a combination of instruments. The 'proper' (and by 'proper', I mean conventional) way of recording drums is to mike up every part - the snare, kick and toms - with two overheads to cover the overall drum sound, such as this:
That's when I discovered the Glyn Johns technique.
Glyn Johns was a master engineer in the sixties through to the eighties who recorded everyone from The Who and the Stones through to Clapton and the Eagles. His technique used four microphones, but in a very interesting way: one is placed 40 inches directly above the snare, the other on the right of the kit (to the drummer, where the floor tom would be) aimed at the high hat and also 40 inches away from the snare (The equal distance is crucial for phasing, though you can experiment with the distance itself).
Pan the top mic to the right of the mix and the side mic to the left and you'll get a very good overall mix of the drum sound. Then you place a mic on the kick and a mic on the snare and voila - you're done! The kick and snare mic may not even be needed, depending on your drummer or your sound, they're more there to catch the snap of the kick and snare because they carry the main beat. I've heard some great mixes of this technique without the kick or snare mic at all.
Now, some of you may notice the other mic on a stand pointing upwards for some reason. See, the house that we recorded in has a high staircase leading upwards and continues going up past the ceiling to a skylight. We wanted to take advantage of this to get a natural reverb as opposed to a processed reverb using software. However, this mic position didn't work too well so we experimented and placed the mic in the stairwell itself pointing upwards to the skylight and the sound came in very different which you can check out by clicking here.
There are many really good processed reverbs out there, but hearing a natural reverb sound mixed in makes a huge difference. Again, this all depends on the way the place your recording in is set up. The Kimchee Records article has them placing the mic in the room next door to capture the ambience. Try anything, see what works. That's the beauty of recording at home - time does not equal money, allowing you to experiment as much as you want.
Other samples of the Glyn Johns technique (with much better microphones) can be found here and here, courtesy of the Gearslutz forum. Other info on the Glyn Johns technique can be found at WikiAudio, About.com and Dan Alexander Audio. There's also another method, known as the 'Recorderman' method, which uses less mics and you can see a video of how to do it and how it sounds like here.
3. Gear Geekery
Since we were on a budget, we used very minimal and affordable gear, and when it comes to the best bang for your buck, Behringer have got it made. They just work, no ifs not buts about it. Sure, Mackie and other mixers have better pre-amps, but when you're on a budget, Behringer delivers better than any knock-off China made brand, hands down.
For the microphones, I used a pair of Behringer C-2 condenser microphones which come in a pair anyway. The pack even includes a simple attachment so that you can do an X-Y overhead miking setup with just one stand. The kick mic, on the other hand, was a Behringer C-1 large condenser microphone which I use all around for vocals, acoustic guitar and bass guitar through an amp.
However, I still didn't have a pre-amp for the snare microphone. Whilst there were many other inputs on the 802 mixer, there were only two outputs and I wanted the snare signal seperate. This is where a little DIY ingenuity came into play:
One day my vocalist was using the BD-2 for his blues harp and he was away during the session, so we used another technique for the snare mic - simply plugged it into my guitarist's Roland Cube practice amp which has a line out and used that as the pre-amp. Anything goes, as long as it can boost the signal.
My soundcard was a Creative E-MU 1212m which had two 1/4" inputs and an optical in and out for me to attach an ADAT system for more channels. Luckily, my friend Hassan Peter Brown had an old Alesis ADAT lying around that he wasn't using and let me use it.
As for the kit itself, it's a combination of a Yamaha Rydeen and a cheaper kit I bought from a friend called 'Precision Performance'. What do I mean by 'combination'? Well, apart from using the numerous stands from both kits, we also combined the two kick drums together to create a longer drum.
It not only made the kick sound different, but also helps isolate the kick drum mic as it's further from the rest of the kit.
One last thing - if you notice, there's only one 'proper' mic stand. That's because I only had one. So for the kick drum I turned a light stand for construction lights into a mic stand (the yellow one) and the rest of the 'mic stands' are actually cymbal stands from the other drum kit.
We're about six songs in with the drums with six more to go. Once that's done we'll be back with another post about guitar micing. Till then, don't piss your neighbours off. At least, not too much.
Unless you hate them.
Keep Rollin'
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Friday, 03 April 09 - 07:25 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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Since the earlier posts covered two different ways of getting smooth movement - steadicam n' tracks - I figured it was time to cover another way: the dolly.
Now, usually dolly's are placed onto tracks but there are a number of dolly's that are designed to roam around without tracks as long as you have a smooth surface. The pic on your right is one of many variations of the professional dolly and, as you can imagine, are hella expensive.
But what is a dolly, in essence, if not a tripod with wheels? The bigger ones with a seat for the camera operator and a handle for the grip to move the dolly are, in it's basic form, a push kart with a tripod attached.
Robert Rodriguez, in his $7,500 masterpiece debut that is 'El Mariachi', used a wheelchair for his tracking shots. On the set of season 2 of Ampang Medikal my crew took it a step further:
I love my crew.
As opposed to having the cameraman sat in the wheelchair and being brought around by a grip, the camera was attached to the wheelchair in some complex combination of pancakes (the strange term for those boxes) and elastic rope. Managed to get a couple of good shots with it but at the end of the day the wheelchair was pretty busted up to begin with so we discarded it after a while.
However, the crew weren't satisfied and spent any spare time they had taking random parts of equipment and discarded items from the props department to build other versions of this DIY dolly. Like this one:
It was only after they built it did they realize the set we were shooting on for that day was carpeted. But they were bored anyway due to a delay so any bit of DIY is an excuse to do something.
There were other versions of this built over the course of the shoot but these were the only two I photographed. Others involved bigger wheels and wheel bases which worked better because the center of gravity was shifted lower but at the end of the day, it's up to you.
Enjoi.
Keepin' It Smooth
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Wednesday, 01 April 09 - 07:18 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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Ahh... tracks.
I love tracks, me. The second I started doing television and saw the tracks stashed in the crew van I knew I had to use them. Perhaps now I'd be able to do those smooth Martin Scorcese style shots with the whip-pans...
...but unfortunately, I'm not Scorcese, and those attempts so far haven't worked out. Yet.
Regardless, tracks are great for camera motion. Sweet and smooth indeedy. The pic above is from when I was filming the second season of 'Ampang Medikal' (yes, for some reason I tend to get hired for second season stuff) and figured since the last post was about keeping things steady, might as well go on to the smooth.
What are 'tracks', anyway? In a nutshell, they're like train tracks for your camera, and the 'train' on top of it is called a 'dolly'. The ones pictured above are made of metal and strong and sturdy, with smooth wheels custom fit for them. How, then, does one make one's own?
How about some PVC and skateboard wheels?
The pic above is taken from gospeljohn.net and shows how he made his makeshift dolly using exactly that. Skateboard wheels are ideal for something like this (or rollerblade wheels for that matter) because you can experiment with the different types of wheels (from hard to smooth) and bearings to get what you want. Cartala also has great tutorials on the same concept based on Ron Dexter's designs, who also has a great tutorial.
Of course, as the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat. The pic below, from tekisui's Flickr page, is for a table dolly:
Another schematic for it can be found at this link.
As a final example, you remember how I said 'tracks' were basically train tracks for your camera? Well, some people take that literally:
Taken from Arman Bohn's website. Pretty interesting. As always, keep on googling, you'll keep on finding cool shit.
Keepin' It Steady
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Wednesday, 01 April 09 - 05:59 PM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in DIY Filmmaking |
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The walk through the Copacobana kitchen in 'Goodfellas'. The opening of 'Boogie Nights'. The opening murder from the POV of the killer in 'Halloween'.
(The original John Carpenter one. Not the new one that spent half the movie explaining why Michael Myers was so fucked up).
All these classic scenes are products of the Steadicam. The photo on the right is me using a Glidecam (a variation of the Steadicam) on the set of season 2 of Ghost. The producers had bought one which they hadn't used yet and I had 4 hours to shoot a scene I could've shot in 40 minutes if I'd gone handheld so I figured "why not". Once they got it out I had to try it.
(In the end the scene got cut out because I felt it was redundant).
If you're really interested in how a Steadicam works, you can check out this article at 'how stuff works' which explains all the nuts n' bolts, but in a nutshell, it does two things:
1. Isolate the camera from the cameraman - the average human being can't help but move, and when you're walking, there's so many bits bumping and jiggling (well, at least for my tubby bod) that you can't help but shake the camera no matter how steady your arm is. That's why there's that mechanical arm that runs from the body vest to the camera. There's no hands on the actual camera.
2. Act as a counter-balance - you'll also notice the weights at the bottom of the pole directly under the camera. Those act as a counterweight and counterbalance, making the camera more stable.
Now, Steadicams are usually hella-expensive but, as is the nature of the DIY enthusiast, many have come up with numerous ways to build their own DIY stabilizer system. Here are a couple I found on the web:
1. The Poor Man's Steadicam by Johnny Chung Lee
This dude claims that his steadicam costs about USD$14 and from looking at the diagrams he posts up he's probably right. For those that aren't so sure about all this DIY stuff he's even got videos on his site to prove it which look pretty impressive.
From the looks of things, though, it appears to be designed for smaller cameras. For a larger one you'd probably have to add heavier counterweights and I don't know how much strain that would add to your wrists when holding it, but you get the general idea.
Other versions of the same design can be found here on Flickr or here at Cartala, whilst homebuiltstablizers.com allows you to download the schematics for a Glidecam-a-like (and you can click here to download it quickly).
2. A DIY Steadicam with a Mic Attachment
This one from Instructables is kinda interesting. It looks pretty weird, true, but seems to work just fine. Whilst the one above is based on counterweighting, this one isolates the camera from the cameraman.
Plus, the mic attachment is a nice addition.
This is a very different variation from the steadicam, though it follows the same kind of theory - to isolate the camera from the cameraman. Below is what a Manfrotto Fig Rig looks like:
It was developed by Mike Figgis, maverick film director and huge fan of digital filmmaking. The beauty of the design is that, unlike the steadicam, it doesn't require a body vest and it gives you a lot more mobility with the camera. True, it's probably not as smooth as a steadicam but when used properly you can get very good results.
A lot of people have tried making something like this DIY stylee and Instructables (once again) has a nice tutorial on it using PVC piping which many others have tried to. One such example is this one from the Make:blog.
Very similar, yes?
So there you have it. Want more ideas? Keep on googling, but hopefully this'll kick you off.
Welcome to KRAFTWANK.
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Wednesday, 01 April 09 - 09:44 AM (GMT) By Khairil M Bahar in General |
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But if you are reading this, welcome. I hope you find what you're looking for here.
Unless you're looking for smut. We don't have smut.
...or do we...?
... More items are available in my News Archive
