DOUBT – Canon 7D Dance Film from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.

Here’s the second of the two short ‘essay’ videos I shot last week with choreographer Sarah Linstra. Obviously a complete contrast to the previous one, we were looking to do a piece with real zip, energy and strong movement. I love the band Delphic and when I saw the video that had been made for their single ‘Doubt’ I really felt the director had missed a trick with the track. It’s really an editor’s song with the beats and sections clearly demanding more than I felt he’d allowed. I’d also seen this video for Bonobo featuring a dancer in the forest and was pretty disappointed with how the camera engaged with the dance. Sarah Linstra and I talk about dance film a lot and this was a chance to put our money where our mouths are. We only had forty five minutes to shoot in so we had to be quick, flipping through shots and setups really fast. What was interesting was shooting wide open in bright sunlight. The normal perceived wisdom is that you set the shutter to 50 and use an ND to get your aperture where you want it. I find you introduce a lot of smeg into the image if you’re too heavy on ND so I decided to throw caution to the wind and crank the shutter all the way up. That way I could shoot at f1.4, crucial for how I wanted the image to look. It also meant the movements would be ultra crisp and clean. I shot predominately on the 30mm with the whole thing handheld. Focussing was obviously a complete nightmare as I was moving around as much as the dancer (Sarah) so you’re really just relying on your instincts, trying to feel your way through the focus points. It’s absolutely vital that the camera be as fluid as the performer so that was the biggest challenge. I’d have been lost without the Marshall monitor rigged onto the Redrock. I tend to shoot everything these days using the Marvels Cine picture style, with the sharpness down another two notches and that gives me the best look I’ve found so far. Editing was all done in Final Cut Pro, and since I’m an editor as much as I’m a director I shot specific shots for specific hit points in the track. You’ll also notice halfway through that we have some super slow mo. This is something I experimented with in my Bahamas film and I’m basically getting 500fps instead of the 50fps you’d get shooting 50i. Any guesses as to how?

The more I shoot on the 7D now the more comfortable I feel putting myself in tough situations and trusting myself to make them work. This really is a camera that takes time and patience to learn to use properly, but I do feel very happy shooting on it in almost every situation where I would once have used an EX1. Yes, it’s a cumbersome faff, but when you fire up the monitor and see what you’re getting you just don’t care. It’s made my personal project filmmaking suddenly so enjoyable. I no longer have to be working on budgets where I can hire a RED, or 16mm or HD… this is in my hand and I’m learning so much so fast that I feel is making me a much better director. For directors as much as cameramen, you really need to get one.