Learn your equipment
It’s time to introduce your students to the equipment. Make sure the battery on the camera is charged, there is enough space to record on the SD card, and that the tripod is stable and secure. It’s a good idea to bring it all out and put it up against the wall, so nobody is stepping over it.
Teachers should explain that these are expensive pieces of equipment, and although the students are welcome to touch and practice using the equipment, they need to do so with respect and care.
Camera team
Show the students:
Where the On / Off button is
How to attach and detach the lens cap
Where the battery is, and how to take it off / put it on to charge
Where the SD card slot is, and how to take it out / put it in (Explain to students that this is where each video file is recorded to)
How to set up the tripod and lock the legs
How to securely attach the camera to the tripod (locking in place)
Where the record button is (Start / Stop record)
The importance of pressing record when the director says recording, and pressing stop record when the director says cut. (5 seconds either side for editing)
Where the AF / MF (Auto Focus / Manual Focus) switch is, and when to use it, and how to sharpen focus manually (It’s worth doing an exercise on this)
How to adjust the lens of the camera to get the right sized shot, without moving the tripod.
Where the camera microphone plugs in, and how to make sure it is capturing audio correctly in the settings.
In the settings, explain what 1080p means (1920 x 1080 pixels in the frame, and (p) ‘progressive’ frame blending) as well as 25fps (25 frames per second), and how to achieve slow motion by setting the frame per second rate higher.
Lighting & sound team
Show your students how the lighting equipment works including how:
Light can be bounced off a reflector board and onto an actor’s face
Strategic placing of coloured lights can achieve good effects
To create silhouettes and shadows with backlighting and creative positioning
To keep sound recording uncomplicated, we recommend mainly using a small microphone which plugs into the camera. To get the best out of this basic piece of equipment, make sure that the sound team know:
To remind the camera person to use headphones to hear everything that is being recorded. Recording without them is a bit like filming with your eyes shut.
To get the actors to try a few lines of dialogue while watching the sound level meter. It’s OK if the levels go into the orange bit but they should never go into the red.
·It’s a good idea to play back a test recording on a TV to check whether the sound is OK.
To remind the camera person to record 15 seconds of atmosphere sound at the beginning of each scene.
The camera should be positioned quite close to the actor saying their lines to catch good audio, and the actors should be encouraged to speak loudly, and not to turn their face away from the microphone in the middle of speaking their lines.
Actors should wait until the previous actor has finished their line before delivering their own. Actors shouldn’t talk over each other. Overlapping dialogue is much harder to edit.
To make sure we’ve recorded a good version of all of the dialogue, they should remind the camera department and director to record a final take of the actors doing their lines together close to the camera, not worrying about the actors’ movements or visual elements.
This all helps with the editing process after the movie has finished shooting.