Beginner with $100,000 FILM Gear vs PRO with $1000 Camera

[Music] welcome back to another episode of beginner versus pro today you guys we have a good friend of ours the newest member of our full-time communicator course ivan ivan how you doing today man i'm doing i'm doing pretty good ivan how long have you been filming not too long maybe less than a month less than a month you guys so we gave ivan a 30 000 red raptor and an entire production grip van full of equipment there's probably 50 or 60 grand of just leica glass in there we gave him 20 000 of lighting equipment professional audio equipment tripods hazers sliders everything we think he could use to create a high quality production me on the other hand i am shooting on the sony zve10 which we deemed as the best beginner camera of 2022 so it should be fun we have a good friend of ours down who has created a 45 second commercial for a mock company he's created and our job is to produce a high quality interview commercial with cinematic b-roll to help tell the story so ivan and i will shoot the interview shoot the b-roll spend the weekend editing together our videos and then send off to parker who will judge them and declare one of us the winner how you feeling nervous i'll just leave you to it and uh good luck all right thank you let's do it you got this all right so first thoughts i like the i just want a little bit of natural light yeah but uh i want like maybe like depth okay yeah stepped in the shot i don't know if this really gives me much depth over here but because i'm thinking maybe something like this over here and kind of getting a shot you know just that way yeah one more look over this way yeah i'm feeling good about this over here i i think this one you get a lot more there's just a lot more stuff that's going on for like the interviewer you're looking at him but it's a better background i feel like going on the sticks is this where you want it yeah what's what's the big round looking one big round looking one so i got two of those so i have a five foot one that attaches to this this guy here i don't know maybe you might try that one okay let's do that let's take a look at that one wow that's a lot bigger than i uh five foot baby that's five foot so i like this frame of the the front then then i think i would bring this over here back that way okay but i think this is like where angle we want okay yeah um i want to key light so bad in my shot this thing's looking so good okay he's gonna he's gonna clap you man hey he hasn't put a bonsai in the shot yet and i'm hoping he doesn't i don't know how it will look but if there's a bonsai behind him in the background then i think uh okay let's see how it looks right back there see if it's in the frame perfect all right you liking that yeah i like this view then i think we can start rolling forgetting one important thing oh um yeah we need to be we need what could it be we need audio audio yep if you want if your flag is too quiet you want to watch your levels make sure they're healthy green is pretty healthy you don't want to be too quiet so how i'm hearing it right now is how it's going to come out yes we could move it closer you can go closer typically you'll go hit the record camera speeding that signals the audio ik i'll start rolling because he doesn't need to roll until you roll so then he'll stay rolling and then once he's rolling and you're speeding real action speeding speed action i've struggled with aggression my whole life until one day my therapist suggested that i look into bonsai you're able to channel your frustrations and rage through chopping these little trees so what are you looking to do so i just really want his like just kind of his face not like anything with his body maybe like i don't know chest and up i think that looks pretty much and that's probably the best i think this angle looks really good on you darling when are you feeling good you ready and we're going to sleep yeah yeah all right all right speed action i've struggled with aggression my whole life until one day my therapist suggested that i look into bonsai all right so my challenge is you guys one limited lighting with the sun that's about to go behind this house here in about five minutes so we'll be completely at the mercy of soft light i'm proud of ivan a lot of the shots he did are the angles that i would have chosen naturally this is the best angle for depth of this room he did a great second angle of the tight for dallin a couple things i'm looking at i want to shoot more like a documentary style kind of like a netflix wes anderson uh composed shot here and then my second angle i want to do a very tight now my tightest focal length on this is the 50 millimeter he got to use a 95 millimeter which i wish i could have but this is what i have to work with so this is what we're going to be using yeah so that's good so we're gonna keep it all the way up i also have this uh ftf gear reflector which i will be definitely using here is the shot without and here is the shot with reflector and that's the silver side which we definitely do not want we can also make it a lot moodier and give him some negative fill which we might just do i need you to move that big green chair maybe just out of frame like over here turn on the back ambient lights okay and then i want you to drag the entire blue couch backwards i'm so nervous grab shears and make a really small handheld bonsai and the whole time you're just kind of like snipping away like ivan didn't do a lot of directing dallin on like try this approach for this approach without my approach to be because dallin in the commercial says he has a lot of pent up anger and that his therapist told him to start cutting bonsai i am envisioned this down character to be a psychopath so that's kind of the look i'm going for darling is more of kind of like you're trying you're trying to stay sane and your bonsai plant in your lap is the only reason you're not flipping out during this interview so maybe throughout the interview you're kind of petting the bonsai i think you're trimming it i love the idea of exaggerating bonsai plants so i'm just going to put them everywhere this one kind of disappeared in the background so we're going to put this like literally right behind him for no rhyme or reason the only thing i'm not loving is i have this big empty wall here which i want to fill nate taylor could you grab this tree and put it under that picture frame where's your ipad all right we are finding the sunlight we are fighting my patients and we're firing the stupid camera's battery guys the hardest part is i'm trying to shoot a professional interview with a on-camera crappy road mic yeah great idea we're rolling this we're just going to go all right got your ipad speed and action my whole life i've struggled with aggression until one day my therapist suggested that i look into bonsai cut can we do one more take yeah i changed the words i like that no i loved it is there somewhere we can fit in like a really creepy giggle or like my therapist that would help like you're trying to like yeah like get really nervous about it i'm actually really happy with the shots like it looks pretty good until one day my therapist sorry i need that shade to match the length of that shade a little more a little more a little more good i'll show you what i'm seeing right here you guys this is the second camera angle and i'm loving what these uh kitchen lamps are doing as a rim light to dallain's back outline here and you'll notice in dallin's eye here on the frame there's a nice catch light of the window i'm gonna stop recording because it might overheat camera rolling three two one action [Music] this is so unsettling [Music] is your forehead you okay i actually nailed my nose [Music] that actually looked really good when you walked when you turned around when you turned around happy and it is now my turn to judge both of these videos and tell you which one i think is better now a couple things i'm gonna be looking for is overall composition lighting color correction color grading sound sound design music choice overall flow of the video which one sells me the most on the product at hand so this will be my criteria for deciding which is better let's go ahead and dive right in first up is ivan's video and three two one here we go [Music] wow suspenseful i've struggled with aggression my whole life until one day my therapist suggested that i should look into bonsai she said it might be a healthy outlet for my pent-up anger and she was right i was immediately hooked and that was the start of broken bonsai when you purchase one of my bonsai you're able to channel your frustrations and rage through chopping these little trees forcing them into impossibly tiny pots and wiring them up to manipulate how they look and grow it's my mission to share my path to true inner peace with others now when those dark feelings arise you can grab a pair of pruning shears and go to town on these little guys with broken bonsai you can turn bad days into living pieces of art well done ivan this doesn't look like a beginner to me this guy looks like he has had a little bit of practice now few things that were beginner level few things that weren't so first thing that stood out to me ivan was the color now red raptor footage is not easy to color especially if you've only used dslr footage it's a different workflow different color management different profiles and so you might not get the color right the first few times you use it the color in general is flat so it appears that the color space that was used wasn't transformed correctly in davinci or premiere i guess he edited this in final cut pro x so that'll be the first thing is understanding what profile this was shot in and then correctly converting it in your editing software to make sure that you're in a rec 709 which is what you usually export videos in now i did like the intro i thought his storytelling was good the editing was solid so those were the things that to me weren't very beginner-ish i thought he had a pretty good handle on how to make it all flow and some beginners just don't know how to tell a story and make things flow well so great job in that regard ivan i like how you captured our attention by having some kind of hook the hook was kind of suspenseful and he starts smashing his head so those were some of the highlights really thought you did well there ivan a lacking element of that was the sound design so if you play that back the music suspense is good the sound design you can kind of hear a little when he's hitting his head but it really didn't match the of the moment it was kind of a quiet sound design so again another thing that most beginners need a little bit of practice in before they start to get the hang of is understanding sound design levels of music and sound effects so that one isn't drowning out the other and in this case the music was a lot louder then we cut to black and we get to the interview portion composition wise i thought this was super solid there's nothing about this interview set up this composition that i would say oh that's really terrible creative difference is sure but nothing in that interview is standing out as ooh you should have done a lot better and again he's had some training and so he's using some of these rules like the rule of thirds he doesn't have too much head room not his head squishing up against the frame he's shooting on the dark side so these are all good things that ivan's done that show me that he has some experience he has the microphone positioned in a great position i can't see where it's at but again this shows me that he has had some experience some training probably watched a few full-time filmmaker tutorials to understand where you should be putting that microphone most beginners place it too far away and you hear a bunch of room echo and reverb but his mic placement sounds solid and he had access to really nice microphones so the audio quality we're getting of dallin's voice is actually really good throughout so most of the shots up until now are a little bit cool and then when we cut to the b-roll of the bonsais it's a little bit warm color temperature another beginner mistake that we see a lot the lighting would be the main thing here that stands out to me it doesn't look like there's a key light on here to better emphasize what we're supposed to be looking at just looks kind of like room light and most room light as naturally is isn't going to look very good i love this shot here from ivan we got a shot of down's face and then he kind of tilts down to his hand going to cut the bonsai but we don't rack focus to the hand awesome opportunity to rack focus we stay focused on dallin's shirt which at this point is irrelevant we want to be focused on what he's cutting but the idea was good i like the direction you were headed with that shot okay final shot i wasn't a huge fan of composition-wise at about 55 seconds the frame is mostly the wall dallin's head is in the bottom left corner you can't even see the bonsai plant understanding when your composition just isn't quite there and doing a retake when necessary eventually he catches up and gets down putting the plant on the shelf but the plant is out of focus which is the main subject even professionals will miss folk focus just a hard thing to get and then we cut to the logo against a black background overall awesome job ivan i see a bright future for you just a few small things that will come with time and experience and i can see you making a dent in the industry great job ivan let's move on now to jake's video and three two one here we go my whole life i've dealt with aggression until one day my therapist suggested that i should look into bonsai [Music] she said it might be a healthy outlet for my pent-up anger and she was right i was hooked immediately that was the start of broken bonsai when you purchase one of my bonsai you're able to channel your frustrations and rage through chopping these little trees and forcing them into tiny impossibly tiny pots and wiring them up to manipulate how they look and grow it's my mission to share my path to true inner peace with others so now when these dark feelings arise you can grab a pair of pruning shears and go to town on these little guys with broken bonsai you can turn your bad days into living pieces of art [Music] well done jacob that was strange and good all right so completely different vibe here jake went with a little bit of a creepier more funny approach which you know if this is a corporate commercial slash selling this product of bonsai both ways can work ivan's was the more traditional route jake's music choice puffed off the bat right away very themed very japanese-esque which bonsai trees are japanese and so the music fit a lot better the product you'll notice jake has some better depth instead of using the white wall in ivan's as a big part of the frame jake turned the camera a little bit more left and opened up to the kitchen where you see these awesome lights hanging down you have a second window in the back to contrast against his black hair to kind of give you some checkerboard lighting i believe jake's using a kit lens on this and it feels like his has more depth and more background blur than ivan's simply because of the framing and the composition that jake chose and then you see that jake put little bonsai plants all around him to better fill the frame with the subject of the video right and then i love the transition from the initial interview to now some b-roll of the water squirting and the music hit comes in a broken bonsai so that's another thing is editing two music you can tell ivan just found a piece of music plopped it on his timeline and cut random clips to it whereas jake was very intentional with which parts of the song were going to match to which clips now one thing i'm already noticing is the microphone that jake was using does not sound as good i'm guessing he positioned it well but it still sounds a lot thinner a lot cheaper than whatever ivan was using so that's an example where gear does matter a general beginner thing to do is to never buy a microphone or to never invest in a good microphone when you eventually start becoming more of a pro and if you're going to be doing commercial corporate type work like this you definitely need to have a better microphone than a rode go or whatever this was done with now the b-roll is super awesome pretty night and day from ivan's b-roll you can tell jake purposefully lit every shot so all these little things really show that jake has had a ton of experience and is a pro what he does now my favorite thing of jake's is just the overall vibe and mood it is very funny you have these pauses and these really creepy laughs and these you know looks from dallin that's all directing that's all jake saying hey do this again but this time do that and i could just picture jake getting the exact look he wanted to portray the vipe he wanted whereas ivan i think was more of just allowing dalan to do his thing so awesome job jake i thought you did a stellar job with what you had limitations aside turned out great a lot of small things that gear can help out with but as you can see you can get away with just having a beginner camera and a tripod so again gear does matter but what is more important is the skills behind the gear so that having been said the winner of this head-to-head would go to jake i thought that the pro with beginner gear made the overall better production but you be the judge and let me know what you liked from each of them in the comments below and huge thanks to ivan for participating being our guinea pig beginner and as a thank you we are going to actually be giving ivan a brand new camera because he is currently shooting on his iphone so we are going to let ivan pick a camera within a thousand dollar budget and give him his first real beginner camera to upgrade from his iphone so he can immediately start enhancing his films and developing as a filmmaker but that's it folks hopefully you enjoyed this head-to-head make sure to check out full-time filmmaker if you want to improve your skills no matter what camera gear you're using so you can start making money and be on the road yourself to becoming a full-time filmmaker link in the description to join our community of over 20 000 students and over 600 tutorials lastly guys don't forget to subscribe for more content just like this and if you have any further questions please let us know hey what's up good people thank you parker for this wonderful opportunity to work with your team this past january is when i actually started watching the videos i learned so much they're very entertaining educational i i enjoy it a lot if it wasn't for a couple videos this shoot i would have been completely lost one in particular was the interview where parker walked through of how to take an interview the rule of thirds the depth the angles that you want if it wasn't for that i would have been a lot pretty lost thank you thank you for everything and see you later

Channel: Full Time Filmmaker

Views: 4,428,962

Keywords: beginner vs pro, Beginner vs pro photographer, peter mckinnon, camera comparison 2021, peter mckinnon broll, peter mckinnon camera basics, beginner vs professional, cinematography, cinematography breakdown, cinematography techniques, cinematography tutorial, beginner vs pro filmmaker

Id: n1JkFZIEY_k

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 22 2022