An Intro on how to Record Sound
How often do you find yourself fumbling to mute the volume on your phone during a facebook or instagram video?

As incredible as these tools are, not everyone needs them for every project. Image Source: http://andysound.webs.com/IMG_0666.JPG
The biggest sin we see that ruins 90% of productions – professional work, home movies, podcast, travel logs, a new webseries, you name it – is terrible, insufferable audio. No one wants to strain to hear what people are saying and it guarantees your audience will close your video in seconds, no matter how little they know about audio production.
Here are a few tools and rules that will help you learn how to record sound for your needs. Believe it or not, there are incredibly affordable and effective sound solutions out there. Got a kickstarter you want to do? A hilarious youtube video in the works? This could push you over the top.
Mic placement. This is by far the most important rule bar none. Whether you are using the onboard camera mic, an iphone, or a $2000 sennheiser shotgun mic, placement is key. You always want to get the mic as close as possible to the subject (usually within 3 ft), aiming top-down and towards their solar plexus (basically towards the center of their chest). These three points will almost guarantee the most faithful, natural recording, regardless of what you are using. If you take nothing else from this article besides these three rules then you are way ahead of the game.

Making their boom ops earn their keep!
Image Source: nofilmschool.com
Protect your mic from wind. Whether you are using a dead cat, zeppelin, or a sock, you need something covering that microphone. This is generally to avoid spikes in sound from wind gusts or from swinging the mic to a new location mid recording. It is also just a good way to protect your microphone. Most covers are designed to block as little sound as possible, so do not worry too much about how much they will dampen your recording.
Garbage in, garbage out. If you are going to spring, spring for a good mic. A garbage mic will not improve if you plug it in to a $5000 recorder. Drop $200-$500 on a solid shotgun mic and you will generally be set. A personal favorite that performs very well for the price is the AT-897 by Audio Technica.
Record .wav. This is a lossless codec and allows the most editing power in post-production. .mp3 and others are simply too compressed for serious work and .wav eats up so much less memory compared to HD cameras anyway that that sacrifice in quality is generally not worth it.

One of the most useful tools we ever purchased: The Zoom H1*
Last piece of advice: Get the zoom h1. You can generally find for under $100, it records .wav, it’s tiny, it has two very well built onboard condenser microphones, and it has a small input you can plug certain mics in to if you want. We have a professional sound rig that does not see half as much usage as our Zoom h1. It is probably the most used piece of equipment we have!
These will generally cover most of your issues. Remember: You cannot cut corners with sound. People will forgive bad video quality before they forgive bad audio. It makes it impossible to enjoy, or worse, follow your film – no one wants to work in order to enjoy your film. Place it and aim it right regardless of what you are recording with. If you have any questions on what settings to record at (such as codec, frequency, etc.) hit us up @inDEPTHmedia!
Cheers,
inDEPTH
*We are not officially representing or in anyway associated with Zoom, their products, or any other products depicted/discussed in this post.
4 Lessons from Live Streaming for 24 hours
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by admin4 Lessons after 24hrs of Live Streaming
Hello and welcome,
So this week we are doing a post-game carnage report of our 24-hour live stream we did this previous weekend to benefit Extra Life. While we consider it a definite success (we raised nearly $1400 for Children’s Hospital New Orleans) and a great collaborative effort with the other participating companies (NOLAnerdcast and Implicted), we still learned a ton from successes and roadblocks a like.
Thanks for reading this wall of text! Hit us up @inDEPTHmedia on twitter and instagram and let us know your thoughts!
Cheers,
inDEPTH
Extra Life
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminExtra Life
OR
We’re going to be playing a LOT of Halo
NOLAnerdcast, inDEPTH Media, and Implicted Studios have joined forces to raise money for Children’s Hospital in our home of New Orleans!
We will be participating in a MASSIVE worldwide celebration of the social impact of gamers of all kinds from video games to board games and tabletop RPG’s! Since 2010, Extra Life has raised more than $14 million to help children’s hospitals across the country (and a few beyond!) provide critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment, research and charitible care. It is our sincere hope that you’ll not only enjoy our 24-hour live gaming stream (provided by inDEPTH and Implicted) with hilarious commentary (provided by Nola Nerdcast)!
Click here to donate now through November 8th at noon.
All proceeds go to Children’s Hospital New Orleans!
Want to play? Contact us!
Want to make your own group and join our team? Do it!
Want to just watch and donate? Go to our team page at any point up through our live stream to donate now
then get ready for November 7th @12pm when we start the live stream!
We will be playing the Halo franchise in the story’s chronological order, not order of release. It should be a grand and silly time for all! Thank you for your support and don’t hesitate to reach out to us for any reasons regarding the event! Please consider supporting Extra Life and New Orleans Children’s Hospital!
Magic Lantern and You
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminMagic Lantern and You
MAGIC LANTERN IS THE MOST AMAZING THING OF ALL TIME
…is how my colleagues expect me to open this post. And to be honest? That’s fair. I love magic lantern. It’s basically the reason my t3i is still in service. While I love my rebel, ML really opens it up and takes it to another level.
So, what is magic lantern? Before we continue, we have to mention: Installing Magic Lantern is done at your own risk! We cannot guarantee success, no issues, full functionality, etc. and Canon does not approve of using it.
Here are few of the tools we find to be the most useful/fun on ML, as to detail them all would be silly. If you are comfortable adding it to your camera, go for it and test it yourself! While we have never had any issues with it, there is always a risk when you use a non-verified 3rd party installation on your equipment. That being said, if the ML team has showed us anything, it’s that Canon’s cameras are capable of much more than they let us have out the box.
Woot! Digital zoom! (Sorry, it can’t solve moire)
Here’s the install guide from the ML Wiki. Basically:
1) Make sure camera firmware is up to date (UNLESS IT’S A 5DIII)
2) Download the files
3) Low Level Format your card
4) Drag and drop ML files onto the SD card
5) Go to “M” mode. Do the Update Firmware process on your camera and voila!
Used Magic Lantern before? Have any questions on it? Give us a shout!
Image from eoshd.com
An intro for all: How to Record Sound
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminAn Intro on how to Record Sound
How often do you find yourself fumbling to mute the volume on your phone during a facebook or instagram video?
As incredible as these tools are, not everyone needs them for every project. Image Source: http://andysound.webs.com/IMG_0666.JPG
The biggest sin we see that ruins 90% of productions – professional work, home movies, podcast, travel logs, a new webseries, you name it – is terrible, insufferable audio. No one wants to strain to hear what people are saying and it guarantees your audience will close your video in seconds, no matter how little they know about audio production.
Here are a few tools and rules that will help you learn how to record sound for your needs. Believe it or not, there are incredibly affordable and effective sound solutions out there. Got a kickstarter you want to do? A hilarious youtube video in the works? This could push you over the top.
Mic placement. This is by far the most important rule bar none. Whether you are using the onboard camera mic, an iphone, or a $2000 sennheiser shotgun mic, placement is key. You always want to get the mic as close as possible to the subject (usually within 3 ft), aiming top-down and towards their solar plexus (basically towards the center of their chest). These three points will almost guarantee the most faithful, natural recording, regardless of what you are using. If you take nothing else from this article besides these three rules then you are way ahead of the game.
Making their boom ops earn their keep!
Image Source: nofilmschool.com
Protect your mic from wind. Whether you are using a dead cat, zeppelin, or a sock, you need something covering that microphone. This is generally to avoid spikes in sound from wind gusts or from swinging the mic to a new location mid recording. It is also just a good way to protect your microphone. Most covers are designed to block as little sound as possible, so do not worry too much about how much they will dampen your recording.
Garbage in, garbage out. If you are going to spring, spring for a good mic. A garbage mic will not improve if you plug it in to a $5000 recorder. Drop $200-$500 on a solid shotgun mic and you will generally be set. A personal favorite that performs very well for the price is the AT-897 by Audio Technica.
Record .wav. This is a lossless codec and allows the most editing power in post-production. .mp3 and others are simply too compressed for serious work and .wav eats up so much less memory compared to HD cameras anyway that that sacrifice in quality is generally not worth it.
One of the most useful tools we ever purchased: The Zoom H1*
Last piece of advice: Get the zoom h1. You can generally find for under $100, it records .wav, it’s tiny, it has two very well built onboard condenser microphones, and it has a small input you can plug certain mics in to if you want. We have a professional sound rig that does not see half as much usage as our Zoom h1. It is probably the most used piece of equipment we have!
These will generally cover most of your issues. Remember: You cannot cut corners with sound. People will forgive bad video quality before they forgive bad audio. It makes it impossible to enjoy, or worse, follow your film – no one wants to work in order to enjoy your film. Place it and aim it right regardless of what you are recording with. If you have any questions on what settings to record at (such as codec, frequency, etc.) hit us up @inDEPTHmedia!
Cheers,
inDEPTH
*We are not officially representing or in anyway associated with Zoom, their products, or any other products depicted/discussed in this post.
“How much will my video cost?”
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminHow much will my video cost?
Need a green screen for your shoot?
This is arguably the most frequently asked/heard question from both sides of the table. As a potential partner, your first consideration is generally cost. You want to know what it takes to accomplish your vision – whether a commercial, a television pilot, or even a series of instagram videos. Unfortunately, many people end upon production websites and can rarely find a specific quote for their project. Here’s why (and how you can make your life much easier when talking to companies like us).
The answer is simple: Not all videos are created equal. Simplistic and over the top? Sure, but easy to remember. A three minute video is not just a three minute video.
As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Luckily, we don’t need to play what-if.
So what should you ask yourself and us? The more details you give us, the more accurate an estimate we can give you, and the more time both groups save – then we can get straight to work and make your video a reality.
A little prep goes a long way
From: “In the Bag” – Produced by Peter Zuppardo
There are many more details you can have prepared, but we frequently ask some version of the above questions whenever talking with a potential collaborator. Luckily, the work does not fall squarely on you. We know it’s our responsibility to be ready to answer these questions and, when we don’t have the answer immediately on hand, where to find it.
Let’s connect and make your project a reality
The Canon C100 and Preconceived Notions
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by adminThe C100
OR
How Atlanta Forced me to eat Crow
Greg here.
At the end of August we traveled to Atlanta to shoot a TV/Web pilot episode and sizzle reel. As per usual we had many debates over what camera(s) to use – the GH4 has great 4K, 1080p slo-mo, takes very good stills, and has a very efficient codec. The 5D2 is tried and true, full-frame, can handle relatively low-light, and takes top-notch stills. Rental options were discussed.
Many cameras, many options, but as we got closer to the shoot date and location details emerged, we ultimately decided to go with the Canon C100, and by “we,” I mean Mickey convinced me we needed it despite my woefully incorrect prediction that we could work with what we had. Spoiler alert: The C100 ultimately made our shoot possible and I had to reassess how I viewed Canon’s “budget” cinema camera.
I have to be honest: I was never very impressed with the Canon “C” line. They always seemed to cost 30% more than they should and I could generally come up with a similar camera at half or less of the price. But, as you are about to read, I had to rethink this mentality. While I still think they charge a little too much for these guys, there are some great built-in components that I previously saw as “handy perks” that I now respect more as “features” that really up the value of these cameras. This article is part reassessment and part reviewing an older camera, but we find it’s always good to update opinions on gear currently in rotation.
Nick Detrich of Cane & Table being a baller at Empire State South. This is an ungraded AVCHD converted h.264 still, for those of you who want an idea of what comes out the camera
Mickey thinking to himself, “Told you, fool.”
This camera is far from perfect, but if you are doing reality work, commercial, really anything where you need to be fast on your feet. I’m not crazy about the color palette and I think that at its original price point – over $7,000 – it’s pretty ridiculous that it couldn’t put out at much more than 30Mb/s in 2012. The Black Magic Pocket came out in 2013/2014 and cranks out raw at 1080p for, at that time, $1,000.00 (Confession: Probably my favorite camera ever). It is a seriously flawed camera, but we are talking over 50Mb/s for a camera that was a fraction of the cost released shortly after. Hey, I couldn’t just sing praises all day for this guy.
Overall: Great camera, great in low-light, XLR inputs are critical for speeding up your post-production (meaning faster turnaround AND saving money), ergonomics and layout make it easy to use. Even after three years – which in technology is an eternity – it holds up. At $3,000 and, consequentially, a lower rent-point, people should definitely consider using the C100. I was very much against it and, like most of us, had formed an opinion without enough firsthand experience with the camera. Many of our shoots center around live events and active spaces, as our style definitely tends to cater towards or a more “documentary feel.” This camera kept us moving quickly, allowed us to adapt to situations without constantly bringing the production to a halt (often requiring you to interrupt excellent, real moments with your talent), and allowed sound and camera to work together more harmoniously. In one word: it made things efficient, which for our style of shooting, is a must. Plus, it made Mickey happy, and a happy Mickey is a productive Mickey.
Cheers,
inDEPTH