Monthly Archives: May 2020

New Passion – My Love

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After success of my first iPhone video (Heal the World by Joy of Music) and many encouraging words from all the audience, started exploring more on cinematic movies with handheld camera/mobile. Found Peter Lindgren B-Roll on “A Cinematic Poker”. I was fascinated with the possibilities of the techniques he has used in that video.

An urge/desire to do something in these lines grew much rapidly than I realised. Called Kiran Raj who recently got his hairstyle done similar to the one in Poker video. Sent him the video and asked him if he is interested if I shoot similar but not the same with him. He immediately agreed.

Now the creative part of the brain started functioning at high potential. Wanted to make some thing Indian, and should give a message of love and beautiful relationship. It should touch everyone’s heart and most importantly has to reflect my thought process. Discussed with Saritha, she gave brilliant suggestions & support.

Finalised the theme. A tired and tensed husband finds a solace & happiness with the love of his wife. Met Kiran and Shyla explained the script. Not sure at that moment if Kiran believed in what I was trying to tell him. However, our relationship and respect to each other has made us to work in synergy. Convinced Shyla, saying she is the key person in this video.

My actual purpose of meeting was to explain the script to both of them and start the shooting the next day. Surprisingly completed the whole shooting within 2 hours on the same day. The entire shooting was on iPhone 11 Pro Max utilising all three lenses.

Started editing the clips to make a smooth sequence. Sent the preview (without Sound) to Shyla, Kiran & Saritha. All of them are like “looks good, let’s see after sound mix”. It took another 2.30 hours to compile the whole video with sound. Sent the preview again to 3 of them. Took their feedback & fine tuned and made this.

The initial feed back from near and dear people is highly encouraging. Hope everyone who watches this would enjoy.

God bless All. Be blessed.

iPhone videography

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Recently our community decided to sing a song (Heal the World) dedicated to the situation across the Globe due to Covid 19. Somehow they decided to invite me to shoot the song.

Joy of Music group from Prestige Oasis

I didn’t have a clue on how I will do it as till then I was only doing casual videos with my smart phones. I was more on portrait photography than videography. I was really excited with this opportunity.

On little research on the Internet, found that if we have a gimbal, it will help us to make better videos. Then we decided, we will have them sing twice and record 2 sessions of the video so that we can edit them to make one beautiful video.

We could not find a gimbal in our community and due to lockdown none of the e-commerce sites were able to supply the gimbal. Found that Foto-Circle at Anandrao Circle is open and they have two gimbals from different brands. I found Zhiyun-Tech Smooth Q2 to be very good. Immediately bought it (INR 10,000). Practiced with my daughter on iPhone 11 Pro Max for an hour and I was ready for the shoot.

On the day of performance, we took all precautions with Social Distancing etc and started recording the video. By the time the song is over my hand started paining as I am not used to lift and hold 656 grams continuously for 5 minutes on my fingers. Did a bit of stretches and rotation of joints and started the 2nd session. Completed both the sessions, one with majority of wide angle and the other with bit of close-up pans and dollys.

After finishing both the sessions we found that because of social distancing and 8 mics, the sound wasn’t equally distributed among singers. We divided into group of few people per mic and recorded the audio only. Thanks to my wife for assisting in audio recording.

The total experience was amazing. Everybody felt so happy. The “Joy of Music” group of our community had a feel of accomplishment. Appreciate the patience and passion these people have towards this noble act, from a child to grown up adults. Everybody enjoyed every bit of it.

Now comes the editing part. Tried doing it with iMovies on mobile itself, but wasn’t comfortable. Then tried locating Windows Movie Maker on my windows laptop, found that they have discontinued it long back. Tried trial version of Filmora 9. It was easy learning curve. Could figure out what can be done in 1 hour and started editing.

It took little time to align 2 videos and an audio file to align for a proper lip sync. Then came the actual editing part. First thing to do is cut the video parts as per the beats so that it looks nice if the scene changes as per the beat. Then decide which clip looks good in that bit (small duration). Also see that it doesn’t look abrupt. Most important the lip sync has to be maintained. Made a slide for main Title and then end titles. It took almost 3 hours for editing. When I exported the video as mp4, was shocked to see a watermark by Filmora 9 across 1/3rd of the video at the bottom. Now there is a dilemma, shall I invest in Filmora or go for Adobe. Spent another 30min and decided to invest in Filmora 9 perpetual licence. Once the login is done after the payment (USD 63) the watermark banner disappeared.

Sent the video as a preview to few members of community. They were happy with the editing and gave few suggestions on titles. Implemented those suggestions and published the final version on YouTube. In the next one hour received an email from YouTube mentioning about copyright by SME Michael Jackson.

Here is the YouTube link https://youtu.be/OgEl744WUdU

After watching the video again and again. I found a lot of things that could have been done better while shooting, recording the audio and editing. However, I felt happy with my new passion and will continue shooting videos (in addition to my portraits). Will improve my skills. Who knows this may start paying to sustain my passion. 🙂

God bless all and be blessed.