TV BLOG

Daniel Graham 10/18/21 Daniel Graham 10/18/21

The filming of Nani Wells music video "Dark"

The production for Nani’s music video “Dark” was a blast to make. We shot it over the course of two days, with a relatively loose concept.

The production for Nani’s music video “Dark” was a blast to make. We shot it over the course of two days, with a relatively loose concept. We filmed it all on the Sony fs5, while recording Raw Cinema DNG to our Atomos Shogun Inferno. For most of the video we used our Movi m15, with an Easyrig Mini Max to save our arms. We also used the Proaim Camera Jib to get the some overhead shots in the bathtub.

While we originally planned for 3 locations, the Vernon Boardwalk footage didn’t end up making it into the final edit. But with how cold it was that day, Nani was obviously freezing and who could blame her. It was 7am on a brisk, mid January morning.

Joey shooting a scene with Nani on our Movi M15.

For the edit, I colored all of the raw clips in Davinci Resolve and then exported them separately. Then I had Joey cut it together in Premiere Pro, using proxies so that we could exchange project files, and after I would do the final export on my computer. Cinema DNG can be huge in file size, so we recommend WD Black Drives for their mix of large storage capacity and performance. A raid DAS or enclosure might be necessary to mount them externally. We recommend using QNAP TR-004, Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS920+, or for enclosures without raid a Mediasonic HF7-SU31C.

This page contains Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to purchase one of these products, we will be compensated and at no cost to you. This helps us to continue writing quality content for readers like you. Thank you for reading!

Things we think we did great

We worked well on the fly without a defined plan
We were able to keep the production relatively minimal
Shooting raw on the Fs5 was really great, despite the extra storage requirements

Things we think we could improve

We needed more B-roll, we started running out of shots during the edit

Our schedules and budget were limited, but both would have benefited from a thorough plan
We probably could have traded some of the gimble shots for tripod shots, to minimize strain on our two-man crew
We would have benefited from having more crew members. Some lighting sacrifices were made, due to limited mental bandwidth

Visit Our Productions

What is Aperture?

Photo By: Danny Graham (Wantage , New Jersey , 07461)

Image credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture

In photography and video, a lens’s aperture is a set of blades that open and close to control the amount of light passing through the lens. It is part of the Three Elements of Exposure.

The way that the number is represented is called an F-stop, and it’s labeled as “f/” followed by a number like 1, 1.4 ,2, 2.8 , 4 , 5.6 , 8 , 11 ,16 , 22. These are all full stops, but you may also see numbers like 1.2, 1.8, 3.2, 4.5 , ect. These examples instead follow a 1/3 stop.

This article has a great chart of the different measured stops

Similarly you may find T stops on cinema lenses, which are measured more extensively for motion picture. More on T stops here.

Summary

Aperture has a large play in the DOF (Depth of Field). Depending on your subject, you may want to open or close your aperture in order to create a greater depth of field. For example, if you are shooting landscape photography, then you may want a greater depth. And with portraits, you might want isolate your subject from other details in the frame. If you are just starting out, a great option to learn DOF is a 50 1.8 (Nifty-50). These are typically inexpensive, and you’ll be able to see the specific changes in DOF (more specifically on the shallow end).

The following image was taken several years ago with my old Canon 60D and Canon 50mm F/1.8. this camera and lens can likely be found together used for sub $200

Image by Danny Graham: Taken with Canon 50mm F/1.8 and Canon 60D