Frame Rates, Aperture, ISO and Post-Production for Video.

brando444

I'm new here, so, nice to meet all of you! I'm also relatively new to using a DLSR or any other camera in a more artistic, professional way, so bear with me. I'm primarily interested in using the video capabilities of my T3i. I'm highly into making little indie shorts/music videos, and visual storytelling. The thing is, I can't seem to get the effect I'm looking for, so I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction. I've started off by buying a Canon T3i, with the kit lens, being the EF-S 18-55mm IS II. After playing around with it, I've managed to set the camera to the 1920x1080 24fps setting, which seems to be my favorite setting so far, but it still isn't exactly what I'm looking for. It's still a little grainy, which I think I'd be able to fix with a better lens (I know nothing about lenses), but the look of the video isn't what I'm looking for. Below is a video sample of what I'm looking to create:

The colors are really great. To get that, is that just post production, or would I need to buy a polarizing filter and another lens? Also, the fps seem to be different than what I get. Is that 24fps, or is it 60 but just slowed down a bit? I'm so clueless! I'm also pretty clueless about ISO's and apertures in video. I have the drive and hunger to make beautiful pieces of video. I'm learning fast, but I've reached a blockage. I have a friend who wants me to make her a music video on par with that video, so I'm going to have to learn soon! I really look up to this one video storyteller named Matthew Brown. He's fantastic and films his stuff mostly with a DSLR I think.
Anyways, I know this was long, so thanks for reading and any advice will be immensely appreciated!

Hopelessly tinkering away,
Brandon

amigo

@brando444,

When filming, you will set the resolution to 1920x1080 24fps, with a 1/50 shutter speed. These typically don't change. You will then vary the aperture and ISO settings in order to set the correct exposure and desired depth of field. You will also properly light your scene in order to avoid grainy pictures. Grainy pictures are usually a result of bad exposure. The kit lens is not good for low light. You really want to keep your ISO setting at or below 1200. You can do that by adding more lighting and/or switching to a good low light lens. Lenses that have a lower number F/stop are better in low light, because they let more light in. I would recommend the excellent Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens, which you can purchase used for under $100:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2009/04/controlling-depth-of-field

Read the following documents to familiarize yourself with aperture, ISO and shutter speed. First of all, I would recommend you read this:
http://nofilmschool.com/dslr/. Chapters 8-11 discuss lens selection and chapter 28 talks about color grading. Check out the camera settings power point presentation, the video demonstration and especially the camera settings guide on this page: http://dslrvideo.weebly.com/settings.html

amigo

Also, seeing that you want to shoot a music video, the T3i's built-in microphone is not good enough for professional quality sound. You should at the very least get a Rode VideoMic. Personally, I record audio separately using a Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone and a Zoom H4N digital recorder. I then synch the sound and the video feed in post. I use Sony Vegas for that. Here's a short tutorial on how to synch audio and video:

brando444

Sweet! Thanks so much for your response amigo; it helped quite a bit. I'm starting to see that the more post production changes, the better the video.