About

This is a short video of me making a delicious whiskey-based cocktail called the Paper Plane. You can watch it here.

This is the first video I made with the Canon C70. It’s also the first video I made using a camera that shoots a log profile (C-Log3, but I’ll call it “log”). This resulted in a bit of a learning curve since I had to figure out how to color my footage. Once I got the hang of using Davinci Resolve, I was stunned by the colors that could be pulled from the default, greyish log footage. I also love the narrow depth of field that was possible with the C70 and the lens I used, the RF 35mm F1.8 Macro. Close-ups of equipment such as the glass I poured the drink into and the liquor bottles had an isolated, crisp look, which I am a fan of.

All in all, I’m happy with this video, but there are things I would do differently.

Lessons Learned

Remember to check your profile before shooting

Since I was so new to shooting in log, I would switch back and forth from it to Rec. 709 to see how my colors look. Several times I would forget to switch back to log and record a whole section of the video in the wrong profile. Sometimes only realizing it when I got to editing, which sucked.

One solution to this is to not be an idiot and switch back to log, Blake. Another is to get a field monitor that you can program a LUT into so that the camera still records in log, but you see nice colors in the monitor. This costs money though, which I didn’t feel like spending.

In the end, I reshot stuff, which was a hassle, but necessary.

Plan Plan Plan your shots

I can’t overstate how crucial it is to plan out your shot schedule before the day that shooting takes place. I can’t. It saves so many resources. It saves everyone’s time and energy, and it also saves your credibility as a director.

For this video, in particular, I scheduled about half of the shots beforehand, the ones I predicted to be more difficult, and left the others to be improvised. When the time came to shoot the unplanned ones, I had to pivot from my more technical “lights go here,” “this lens on,” “pull focus here” mode, to a more relaxed, creative mode in order to see what shot would fit well both logically and artistically (eye-roll) around the others that were already set in stone.

Unfortunately for me, I was the only one working on this video, so I didn’t have to pleasure of wasting other people’s time, only my own. But moving forward, and planning on working with others, I can’t afford to stop and plan a shot with this level of heads-down focus after everything was just go, go, go. It interrupts the inertia of everyone working on the set, and it takes away from your focus as a director to execute what was already planned and fix unexpected problems that pop up. And they will pop up.

Plan every shot, at least at a minimum, before the day of shooting.

Conclusion

This was a fun video to plan, shoot, and edit. While my primary passion lies in narrative filmmaking, drinking is my secondary passion, which made this production enjoyable, along with exploring a new camera, lens, and editing software. Although I made some mistakes, I’ve learned from them and will take that knowledge to my next project.

Equipment Used

• Canon C70
• RF 35mm F1.8 Macro

Software Used

• Editing: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Coloring: DaVinci Resolve