A fan of director Naoko Yamada's works buys a SONY FX30 mirrorless camera and makes a pilgrimage video for "The Colors Within" #TheColorsWithin #FX30

The motivation for buying a mirrorless camera

When watching director Naoko Yamada's works, many shooting techniques involving lenses are used. In the past, when I did a pilgrimage VJ, I implemented various effects such as bokeh, vignetting, and soft focus using shaders (programs that run on the GPU) by trial and error for use in VJing. However, as for the actual footage, I was just shooting with my iPhone handheld on a whim.

Furthermore, I thought I needed to try handling a camera to better understand the intentions and thoughts behind the works... though that's just an excuse. The real reasons were that I wanted to try buying an SLR for pilgrimage shooting and because my child was born, so I wanted to film my family.

The camera selection process

I had no idea which manufacturer or model would be good, but I remembered that a SONY RX-1 was displayed at the official Kyoto Animation fan event "Watashitachi wa, Ima!" as a camera used by director Naoko Yamada for location scouting, and it left an impression on me that Yuzuru used a Nikon D3300 to take photos and plastered them all over her room to try and save her sister in the movie "A Silent Voice".

Rather than wanting the exact same thing, I wanted a latest model, and I thought either SONY or Nikon would be fine. In the end, I decided to buy SONY based on the arbitrary assumption that since several university friends and excellent colleagues of mine had changed jobs to work there, they were likely investing in semiconductors, digital signal processing, and AI.

I decided on a model called the SONY FX30, which is a cinema camera. It's part of the Cinema Line, which seems similar to yet different from SONY's α series of mirrorless cameras. Looking at the web, there are various things written about it, and while it's hard for a beginner to understand, I decided that if they are going out of their way to brand it as a Cinema Line, it must be appropriate for shooting video.

There was also the FX3 with a full-frame sensor as a higher-end model, but it costs 500,000 yen or more, so it's not something a beginner should buy right away. Besides, movies are apparently shot with APS-C sensor sizes (Super 35mm), so it should be more than enough for a beginner.

Lens selection

With a mirrorless camera, you need to purchase lenses separately, and after trying out various ones, I concluded that the Tamron 17-70mm F/2.8 Di III-A VC RXD was good.

The zoom range of 17mm to 70mm (25mm to 105mm in full-frame equivalent) is perfect for pilgrimages.

When using it for pilgrimages, you walk outside and also enter shops. The brightness of the surroundings changes dramatically. To go into a little detail, you adjust for brightness using ISO, shutter speed, aperture (F-number), etc., but when it comes to video, there are certain limitations on shutter speed (the standard is apparently 1/48 if shooting at 24fps). If you do Log shooting, which allows you to secure the film-like dynamic range that is a feature of Cinema Line cameras, the ISO is fixed. In addition, APS-C cameras are weak in low light. For these various reasons, you need to attach a relatively bright lens.

After testing it several times, I think F2.8 is acceptable for cloudy days, evenings, and places with streetlights at night, with only a level of noise that I can tolerate. For nighttime or indoors with little lighting, I can probably manage by using a separate F1.8 prime lens as an auxiliary.

Also, a low F-number means the depth of field is shallow, making it easy to create bokeh, which is another feature.

Reflections through the camera experience

It is said that director Naoko Yamada often shoots characters with medium-telephoto lenses, and I noticed various things when I actually tried using a zoom lens.

In reality, the more you zoom in, the more the background approaches parallel projection and the sense of depth diminishes. I can imagine that this is easier to draw when creating animation backgrounds compared to distorted wide-angle images, and is advantageous from a production perspective. Also, I thought that even in everyday pilgrimage landscapes or schools, the compression effect of a telephoto lens makes it easier to create bokeh, which reduces the sense of reality and adds a directorial meaning of creating a cinematic sense of unreality.

In addition, in an interview for "Liz and the Blue Bird," director Naoko Yamada said, "The image is like holding your breath and recording quietly. It's as if you are peeking at them through glass..." I felt that this "watchful" gaze might also be the reason for using medium-telephoto lenses, as it maintains an objective distance that prevents the director herself, the producers, and other creators from interfering too much with the characters.

From my personal perspective of "filming children," if I try to film a child and the background with a 70mm medium-telephoto lens, for example, I have to move quite far away. As a parent, I worry about leaving a toddler alone at a park playground while I stand 3-5 meters away to film. Even if my wife were standing next to the child watching over them, it's a distance that would likely get me scolded with, "Don't play around taking pictures! Come over here!" (laughs). For that reason, I feel that using a wide-angle 24mm to standard 40mm lens and shooting one-handed with autofocus is more appropriate if I want to film within arm's reach of the child at all times. By the way, the iPhone camera defaults to 24mm when you open it.

By comparison, I feel that while I want to interfere with my child, director Naoko Yamada likely does not want to leave any traces of interference with her characters. Even so, I realized once again that camera-derived effects like the camera shake seen in "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya," as well as focus pulls and bokeh, are directorial and cinematographic choices that make the presence of the cameraman strongly felt.

The Colors Within Nagasaki Pilgrimage

After "The Colors Within" was released, I went on a pilgrimage to the sacred sites in Nagasaki with Mitaka Takahashi-san. Here is an MV-style video I made by editing the footage I shot with the FX30 in Adobe Premiere. It's just over a minute long, so please take a look.

Now for the post-mortem! I made mistakes with the Base ISO settings when shooting in Log, and the white balance wasn't adjusted properly, making the settings a mess for each piece of footage. Color grading to match the colors in post-production was so difficult that I wanted to give up. Maybe my monitor's color reproduction is just bad.

As a solution, I tried applying a film effect to the whole thing to somehow create a sense of unity. In the end, if I applied the film effect that strongly, couldn't I have just shot it on an iPhone? (laughs)

Filming at the Former Gorin Church had no lighting, relying only on the light coming through the stained glass and windows, but it was an overcast day. Even at F2.8, the footage ended up grainy due to ISO noise. I realized this halfway through and switched to an F1.8 prime lens, which improved things a bit, but... it's difficult.

Summary

So, that was the story of how I bought a mirrorless camera and made a video. Through the experience of handling lenses and cameras, I might have found even more ways to enjoy the works. There were failures in the filming, but as director Yamada said at the stage greeting for "Tamako Love Story," it's about "the courage to take a step forward"... I always take the messages in director Naoko Yamada's works to heart.

I have more equipment than I know what to do with, so please feel free to reach out if you need help with MVs, documentary footage, VJing, etc. Shall we make something together? (Totsuko mode )

I'm thinking of planning something myself as well.