Sunday. February 23. 1200 hrs.
Disaster. Me and my cockiness. I thought I had the JVC under control but I clearly was not prepared. The footage is grainy as can be. I had no idea what went wrong. I had the white balance set, everything was in focus, but still the screen was full of noise. I thought it was just the tiny screen on the camera not relaying everything back correctly. Rookie mistake on my part, a really dumb one: the screen onboard every camera is exactly what the camera is recording. Clarity, graininess, color, everything is relayed to the screen in real time and accurate to the letter. My footage is effectively unusable.
I contacted my videography/editing instructor for advice. She ran me through everything that could have been switched off or modified, but to no avail…except for the final item on the checklist: LO/LUX. There’s a button near the back of the camera with those letters on it, a button I had no clue as to what it does. Turns out it basically overrides the camera’s sensitivity settings and puts them into overdrive, allowing the camera shoot in near darkness extremely well. I pushed it and all the noise went away during a low-light indoor trial. Astonishing! Live and learn, I suppose.
Fortunately, the audio was salvageable, in excellent condition and Paige can make great use of it (the live music is absolutely fantastic). Paige’s snapshots were great, as was some of her footage (also from the Canon). A fair amount of her clips are out of focus and overexposed, something I take responsibility for considering it is not her camera and she did not have a complete understanding of all the functions. I should’ve given her a greater crash course in using the crash cam.
Paige assures me some of my footage could be used in spite of the noise. I disagree, as I was shooting in HD and yet the shots came out looking like something captured with a flip phone. This is just the start of our project, and there will be further opportunities to recapture the footage.
This is a learning experience for me, as I am told that in the professional atmosphere I will be given many different cameras to work with and will be expected to learn how to operate them proficiently with haste. For future reference, I have a PDF of the JVC’s operating manual (something I should have found and printed the moment I checked out the camera), as well as some useful how-to videos from YouTube from several professional JVC users.
I will not screw this up a second time.
-IM
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