Here's a couple beats I made today.
I’ve had a couple questions about how I’ve been filming these little videos, so I’m going to give a quick run down on how I go about it.
For a long time (approximately 50 videos), I would run the audio out of my SP-404 into my camera’s microphone jack, and this worked really well… except when it didn’t. The preamp in my camera (OM-D E-M1 MKII) is very sensitive, so the audio off my sampler would often clip, and ruin the take, so I’d have to start all over again. Once I got some studio monitors, I came up with an easy fix.
Nowadays, using the SP, I resample the performance as I’m filming it, and that records everything to another pad on the sampler, then just using the audio off of the built in mic on the camera, I sync everything up when I pull the camera file and the audio file off the sampler into my video editor.
I was hesitant to do this at first, thinking that it would be difficult to sync the two up, but after trying it a few times (and with a few mistakes), it’s actually made things a lot easier.
As far as equipment goes, I always use the OMD E-M1 MKII camera to shoot, and depending on the angle, I use a few different lenses. If I’m shooting straight down (ex. here) from overhead, I often use the Canon EF-S 10-18mm on a Viltrox EF-M2 II to get that super wide field of view. If things look a little fisheye (ex. here), I’m using the Pixco 8mm Fish Eye f/3.8, and if I’m shooting from the side, like I am in both of the videos I posted today, I’m using the Panasonic Lumix G 25mm f/1.7 with a Neewer UWA 0.6x Wide Angle Adapter.
Lastly, for rigging the camera, I just have some old backdrop stands with a center pole. They aren’t branded or anything but they’ve been incredibly useful for getting any angle I want while also never having to set up a tripod. To attach the camera, I just use a Smallrig clamp with a ballhead. These two items allow me to do overheads, over the shoulder shots, left or right profile shots, pov shots, really anything I could want, and I don’t have to move anything around but the clamp.
If anyone has any other questions, you can always get at me here or here. It’s also been suggested that I do a studio tour, and though I’m a little hesitant to do that, if there’s some interest in it, I’d definitely consider it!
Thanks so much again for reading!
See you soon.—Forrest
