The Indie Dispatch - Lessons from Zululand

Camcorderinfo.com is proud to introduce The Indie Dispatch, a new column from Assistant Managing Editor and independent filmmaker John Neely. Every other week, John will explore the world of indie filmmaking, from the people to the gear, focusing on real world experience with the equipment you read about. We’ll have stories, interviews, and tips from some of the best and brightest in the industry.

Lessons from Zululand

Our initiation into local hazards came when we hit and killed a bull while driving through Zululand in the far northwest South Africa. We were driving our cinematographer Thomas Burns back from the airport, a seven hour journey, through a quintessentially African landscape –– when we struck a bit of landscape ourselves. Within minutes, some Zulu locals asked if we were going to claim the meat. We answered no, and they immediately began butchering the bull with the only cutting implement they could find, a dull pocket knife.

Later, we endured brush fires, tick bite fever, and a tornado that trapped us in a tiny room with our entire Zulu basketball team (we rolled our cameras until debris started whipping around the building). All these experiences were in the service of ZuluHoops, a feature documentary I co-produced with Director/Producer Kristin Pichaske about a youth basketball team in Zululand. I recently spoke with Kristin about our production and some of the challenges we encountered, from exposure problems to lack of electricity.

For Kristin, the unpredictability of Zululand was the most difficult aspect of shooting there. She is a planner who likes to map out her films in great detail, sticking to her script and shooting schedule. This was nearly impossible in a place where we never knew what was going to happen next, and in a traditional culture that does not keep time. As Kristin noted, “The best advice I can give to filmmakers is to plan, plan, plan – but be prepared to deviate.”

In the Indie Dispatch, I’ll be covering indie filmmaking from the maker’s point of view, interviewing directors and industry pros about how they work, the equipment they use, and their advice for other filmmakers and aspirants. With this debut column, I’ll talk about my own experience co-producing ZuluHoops, explaining how we dealt with some of the issues that arose while shooting in Africa.

Choosing the Right Equipment

Based on discussions with colleagues and our own experience, we chose a Panasonic DVX100A as our primary camera, as it delivered more than other prosumer cameras in the same price range. It combined a vast array of manual features, an elegant user interface, on-board XLR audio inputs, and great image quality. While Sony’s PD-150 was a strong contender, we thought the Panasonic was a better value at the time (late 2004).

Our second camera was an older Canon XL-1S. Kristin recalled, “I loved my old Canon. It was a great camera ergonomically and the best prosumer camera I’ve ever used for handheld shooting - the extra size and weight made it much easier to stabilize. But at the end of the day, I had to concede that the Panasonic got nicer pictures. If I were shooting this today, my first choice would be [Canon’s] XL-H1 HD camera”

Because ZuluHoops was intended for broadcast, we knew we would need a dedicated sound person to ensure quality sound, a role filled by yours truly. The centerpiece of our sound package was a SoundDevices 302 Field Mixer, which gave us the ability to monitor three input sources – something that proved important when we needed to capture both conversations and ambient sound. We added two shotgun mics to the package – a Sanken CS-1 and an Audio Technica AT835B – and a graphite boom pole. Two wireless lavalier (lapel) mics served as interview backups (used in conjunction with the Sanken) and allowed us to pick up conversation as we taped our subjects going about their activities. 

What we didn’t know until after our first shoot is that Zululand is a very windy place. Every afternoon, between about 2 and 6 P.M., the winds would kick up to thirty miles per hour or more – right when the basketball team hit the court to practice. Not only did this make hitting the basket tough for the kids, it rendered our foam windscreens practically useless. We had no choice but to bite the bullet and invest in some serious – and expensive – wind protection. We went with an industry standard Rycote Windjammer System, a blimp-like contraption that encases a shotgun mic and drastically cuts down on wind noise. It worked wonders, enabling us to pick up conversations on the basketball court despite even when the winds approached gale force. Of all our purchases, the Windjammer was probably our most important single investment because with no sound, you have no film.

Our total equipment cost: $10,190. This may seem high when entry-level consumer camcorders are available for under $300, but some pro video cameras sell for many times the cost of our entire package. We selected the right equipment for our needs, and were able to do so because we had a clear idea in advance of what we wanted to achieve, what we could afford, and what we thought we’d encounter in the field. The big lesson here was that every penny was worth it. Investing in good equipment will give you the versatility you need to adapt to any shooting situation.

Exposure Extremes 

The winds we encountered were stronger and more regular than the breezes one typically finds on an outdoor shoot. Likewise, we ran into the typical exposure issues that plague video cameras in bright sunlight. Achieving proper exposure on a cloudy day is easy when the light is flat and even. Bright, sunny days combine squint-inducing glare with dark shadows, and even prosumer video cameras have trouble handling such a wide exposure range. 

These exposure problems are exaggerated when a camcorder is recording in Auto mode, because Auto Exposure assesses the overall light level in the frame regardless of what part of the image is most important. As a result, Auto Exposure mode may leave the most important parts of the frame – like people – underexposed on bright days. Many consumer camcorders do have mechanisms to assist with bright sunlight, like backlight compensation (BLC) or beach/snow mode, both of which overexpose the whole frame to reduce the chance that the subject is underexposed.

Professional videographers seldom, if ever, rely on auto mode, because they demand complete control over qualities like exposure, shutter speed, gain, focus and white balance. On the basketball court in Zululand, our cinematographer Thomas Burns had to deal with some of the most extreme exposure differences any of us had encountered. Because we were following the progress of a basketball team, we frequently shot under an intense African sun that, Kristin recalled, “rendered the LCD screen fairly useless – and LCD’s are misleading in the best of times. We couldn’t even count on zebras because our characters had such dark skin...” (zebras or zebra stripes are digital indicators of exposure level, and are commonly used to judge whether a subject’s skin is exposed properly). To help the situation, we made a makeshift hood to shield the LCD from direct sun and adjusted our technique through trial and error.

The combination of intense sunlight and dark-skinned subjects meant that we had to make a choice: expose the background correctly at the cost of detail in our subjects’ faces, expose correctly for our subjects and blow out their surroundings, or split the difference to squeeze as much detail as possible into the image. Kristin chose to split the difference, but erred on the side of keeping the kids looking good. After all, they were the most important part of the image – the subjects of our story. 

Kristin concluded, “The best lesson I learned from ZuluHoops is the importance of working with the limitations of your environment rather than fighting them.” For a seasoned producer like Kristin, who was accustomed to working in relatively controlled environments, adopting a new mindset was difficult – but so rewarding that she continues to live and work in South Africa, and currently teaches at the University of Cape Town. As for the film, Kristin will return to Zululand this summer to shoot an epilogue, and we’re in the process of seeking funding to complete post-production later this year.

In coming weeks, I’ll be writing about independent film productions, interviewing directors and video professionals, and providing more production tips from my own work experience. These topics cover a lot of ground, but I will always combine real-world stories with practical advice to help you to make better video – whether you shoot with a $300 entry-level camcorder or a $10,000 Canon XL-H1. I welcome feedback, questions, and ideas for future columns, so please use the comments section below. To view sample footage from ZuluHoops and meet the team, please visit our website at: zuluhoops.org

I’ll leave you with a few quick tips that were especially important in Zululand, but that every filmmaker should know: 

-       Always bring more blank tapes or DVDs than you think you’ll need so that you can document an unexpected event.

-       If you are on a multi-day shoot, create your own system to ensure your batteries are always charged by morning – something that was vital for our crew.

-       And invest in as many additional batteries as you can afford. Nothing is more disappointing than missing a great shot because your battery just ran out of juice.

-       Always make sure you’ve got a waterproof bag or location to stash your camcorder. A sudden downpour (or twister) can put an early end to your camcorder’s life.

Next Time...

We’ll talk with pros from a variety of video worlds – commercial, documentary, wedding, and more – and find out the five items they never leave home without.

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More information about ZuluHoops, including the trailer, can be seen at www.zuluhoops.org.