Constantly learning, constantly, working

We filmed another short promo for Nimbus Ensemble this past week:

I tried some things on this shoot that I ultimately regretted, but on other elements of the shoot I'm extremely happy. Running four-channel audio recording through the Zoom H4N is a breeze, and gave me lots of options for incredible audio. I'm finding that I like wireless mics less and less, so I used only studio-quality mics and shotgun mics for this shoot (all wired directly to the Zoom). The viola sounds superb, and the interview worked beautifully with a shotgun on a boom stand.The things I'm less happy about are in the video; specifically two things:

1. Halfway through the shoot I changed white balance settings. I should have just left it the same as when I started, because it would have been easier to match everything together in post (unless we were changing locations, which we did not for this shoot).
2. I wanted to minimize the effects of the "rolling shutter" issue (because his bow was moving so fast) by filming everything at 60 frames a second. Bad idea. First, it didn't eliminate the rolling shutter. Second, I was eating up card space like crazy. Third, I conformed to 24 frames, so it looks a little jerky. Fourth, the 7D won't record at full 1920x1080 HD when shooting at 60 fps, so I don't have as many pixels as when shooting at 24 frames. But hey, it was a good idea. And now I know.

We'll be filming the real concert coming up this weekend. I'll be excited to show you footage from that. Or, you could just come and listen to some great (and very unique) music: here's the information page at Nimbus' website (which Hearken Creative also designed).