Reel World: Charles Son Talks Canon 7D and the City of Black & White Documentary

I caught up with Charles Son the co-director of an amazing short film, shot on the Canon 7D, about Mat Kearney’s last show of the City of Black & White tour. It’s really exciting to see what he and Ryan McNeil were able to do with this piece. The Reel World series is all about the practical application of DSLR’s as a filmmaking tool.

It’s one thing to go out and shoot cool beauty shots for fun,but this series is an attempt to highlight filmmakers in the field using these cameras in real world settings.

City of Black & White — Canon 7D documentary from Charles Son on Vimeo.

“Everything I've learned has come from watching movies and shooting them myself. Going to college for video production didn't help me much, other than meeting like-minded people with whom I still work today.  I think I had already learned the basics in high school, studying Scorsese and making movies with my parents' camcorder.  Since I graduated three years ago, I've been working in Hollywood at a great production / editorial company called Pictures in a Row.  So many great minds there, who have taught me a lot.I do a lot of editing as well as shooting, and it's great to do both.  If you think like an editor when you shoot, you're not going to be kicking yourself in the edit bay.

The job just kind of fell into my lap at the last minute. My co-director Ryan McNeill got a phone call from Mat's record label the night before the show to ask if we could fill in for another shooter.  We figured it'd be a quick little fluff piece, but we didn't realize how charismatic and insightful Mat would be on camera.

I had just bought the 7D a couple weeks before and I was dying to use it for more than just tests.  And since this was going to be at night with dimly lit rooms and exteriors, it was a no-brainer to use the 7D and test out its low-light capabilities in a real situation.

Simply put, the 7D kicked major ass.It more than exceeded my expectations.I couldn't believe the latitude it gave me and how well it worked in low light.I don't think we would've been able to do this shoot without it.  It's great to have so much control over the depth of field.  When I watched the raw footage, I was amazed at how "big" it made everything feel... there's a larger-than-life quality you get, where you can almost feel the size of the sensor in the images, as opposed to smaller chip cameras.And using interchangeable lenses, like a tilt-shift, is definitely a blast.

I love the Zacuto Rapid Fire.  It's so small you might not think it'll help that much, but it really does.  It's extremely easy to customize to your body.  And it's light enough that when I wasn't shooting I could leave it attached and carry it around by the 7D's neck strap.  I definitely want to try out a bigger rig at some point with a counterweight that goes over the shoulder to make it feel even more like a film camera.After the shoot, my back-ordered Z-Finder finally arrived and it too is glorious.

Ryan and I really need to thank Mat for being such a great subject to document! It was his idea to climb up on the roof for the main interview, and a lot of people have said that the roof shots are the most beautiful.He actually kept a lookout on the security guards there, and found the right time to sneak up the ladder.Maybe he should be a location scout...

Since most people don't know that DSLRs shoot video now, it's pretty entertaining to me when ordinary people start posing for you like it's a picture at events like these. If I tell them I'm actually shooting video, many will get self-conscious and don't want to be on video. And there have been a couple times when people looked so happy to be in a picture, that I pretend to snap one before walking away!("Oh that was a good one!Great smile!")I'm sure that's going to change quickly as these cameras get more popular.

Although the 7D is great in low light, the noise can be distracting in really high ISO shots.  Our colorist, Adam Sakellarides, used a great noise reduction program by Neat Video on a lot of shots.  It's a great program, extremely easy to use, and it helped immensely.  We did keep the noise in the black-and-white shots because it felt right.
And some noise can be very beautiful. However, you can definitely see the junk from the H.264 codec in a few shots... that blocky pattern that looks terrible and you can't do anything about.  If only Canon could give us uncompressed video...

These video DSLRs are such a huge step toward the democratization of filmmaking. I equate it to the release of the Panasonic DVX-100 with its 24p video. Anyone can now have professional tools and techniques at their disposal at an affordable price.  It's very exciting times. But we all need to watch out for the next generation, since there are 8-year-olds running around now with 7Ds and editing in Final Cut Pro on their new iMacs! ” – Charles Son
Check out Charles Son on Vimeo.

I couldn't agree more. I think we are living in exciting times as filmmakers.It's more about the person behind the camera
and having talent but this is a perfect example of someone gifted going out, and getting amazing results with the Canon 7D.