Did Juno…

Journal music writer Sandra Sperounes went to the Juno Awards this year and we were asked to make a preview video about all the Edmonton artists who were going to be there.
Sandra didn’t really want to be on camera and jokingly asked if she could just have puppets instead.
To her surprise, I loved the idea and so we made this little quirky puppet video.

We used all the music books on her desk to make a little stage and printed off pictures of the bands to make the stick puppets.

Did Juno with Sandra Sperounes from Ryan Jackson on Vimeo.

A quirky look at the Edmonton musical acts that will be at the 2014 Junos with Journal music critic Sandra Sperounes. Video by Ryan Jackson, edmontonjournal.com

Sandra Sperounes making the stick puppets

Filming the “Did Juno” video with Sandra Sperounes and stick puppets

Filming the “Did Juno” video with Sandra Sperounes and stick puppets

One technical challenge of this video was to have enough depth of field so that all the books and the puppets are in focus.

The Panasonic GH2, GH3 and GH4 have a “ETC 1:1 crop mode” which basically just uses the centre of the sensor. Normally micro4/3 sensors have a 2.0x crop compared to a full frame sensor like a Canon 5D.
ETC mode gives an additional 2.6x crop for a total crop factor of around 5.0x.
You can read more about this feature here.

This feature is usually used to get extra telephoto. For example, a 300mm lens becomes effectively a 1,500m lens. However this function can also be handy with wide angle lenses to get extra depth of field.

Remember that depth of field is controlled by three things. Focal length (shorter the mm lens = more DOF), distance to subject (closer to the subject = less DOF) and aperture (smaller the aperture. eg. f22 = more DOF)

I used a Canon 24mm f1.4L lens with the ETC 5.0x crop mode = 120mm lens field of view.

Now I could have a nice tight view and compress the scene with a “120mm” lens but have the larger depth of field of a 24mm lens.