Making of the video

Equipment:

• Camera: Canon 600D (Kiss x5)
• Software: PowerDirector 10

On this occassion, I needed effects that my handy little Olympus simply isn't designed to do. I had to use different lenses as well as to be able to control depth of field.

Although I recorded many minutes (and Gb's of video), I am basically a stills photographer and you can easily tell by the fact that I ended up using no more than 10 seconds of video footage. The videos, however, have not gone to waste. They will be used for other works and the performers and speakers will certainly not mind having copies.

The full length of the music is captured in full in one long video take by the Canon's in-built microphone. Amazingly good isn't it? Although I used the full length of the audio track (3mins 18 secs), only 6 seconds of its video track was used.

Of the many shots used only one was taken with flash. I used a telephoto zoom lens and stood a fairly long way off for the shot. The reason for doing so is to soften the shadow thrown by the flash. I simple hate the harsh shadows created by flash. See if you can spot the frame.

Low angle shots produce more atmospheric images. It will be very boring to have a video of simply shots of the subjects in isolation. We need to show the subjects in their surrounds. The viewer should be made to feel more involved in the shot. Hence you see the shots with off-focus heads of members of the audience. It is the angle and the scene as your viewer would have seen if he or she had been there.

Use available light!. It works wonders most of the time, simply because it is how you actually seeing things - by available light. Increase your ISO rating if necessary. I used a very wide range of ISO settings for this video, and you can hardly tell between the sots taken with the highest and the lowest ISO, but it makes a great deal of difference if you use these settings in conjunction with apeture settings to control depth of field. Of course, a good quality camera sensor helps.

Hope you enjoy the video, but don't forget Sylvia's fund raising effort.

Thank you.