photodiversions

© beverlyislike

A Uruguayan horror film that is scaring people around the world in 'real time' was purportedly shot in one, 78 minute take on a digital SLR Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

The outcome is the prodigiously scary film The Silent House that is only dented by one plot twist toward the end that dampens the thrill of the movie somewhat. The plot centers on teenage Laura and her father Wilson, who are staying in an ominous dilapidated house in order to fix it up for Wilson's friend Nestor so he can sell it. Nestor tells them not to go upstairs, so of course they do. After night falls, Laura hears some bangs and scratches from the deserted top floor and convinces her father to investigate, and from that point things get really interesting. While the plot may be text-book horror, the inventive execution makes it fresh.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

© Dominic's pics

Zaida Bergroth's new feature film, The Good son, premiered last Friday. Judging by the image quality, one might be surprised to learn that the Finnish movie was filmed entirely with digital SLR cameras costing around EUR 2,000 apiece, rather than with actual movie cameras.

Zaida said that she insisted on operating one of the cameras herself, and that these days it is possible to shoot high-quality video with digital SLRs. The visual narrative of the movie is sophisticated, with different scenes featuring background and foreground action simultaneously. The depth of composition appears well though out, and Zaida says that the they were at liberty to improvise and shoot alternate takes because the cost of the film was kept low. In all they shot around 40 hours' worth of material, which would have been way beyond the budget of the film had it been shot using a conventional film camera.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Digital Cameras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

© Oloremo

Philip Bloom is an expert on Digital SLR film-making, and he has shared some of his tricks of the trade to inspire others to try their hand at DSLR film-making. His first tip is that you must stabilize your camera. Even if you can't afford a hand-held rig to mount your camera, you can still achieve basic stabilization by placing the camera strap around your neck and using it as support while you are filming.

For Canon DSLRs in particular, Philip likes the 5D Mark II to apply different picture profiles in-camera to achieve certain effects. It is difficult to get quality audio from the built-in microphones in any DSLR, so Philip has been using the Rode Video Mic Pro, which is a small on-camera shotgun mic with a hotshoe mount.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 23rd, 2011 at 1:39 am and is filed under Digital Cameras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.