Reel World: Why I Chose the Canon 7D to Shoot My First Feature.

by Filip Tegstedt

My name is Filip Tegstedt, I'm an indie filmmaker about to make my debut as a writer/director/producer. Next year, I'm shooting a little psychological horror film in Sweden called MARIANNE.

This here is my first blog about the project on www.canonfilmmakers.com and I'll try to keep the camera in focus.

First though, I do need to go into a little bit about this project if I may – what it is and who I am, so you'll see where I'm coming from.

My background is in screenwriting, or at least that's where I have my film school education. I started scribbling on this horror idea in 2003, but other projects and life has kept it dormant until February 2009 when I suddenly found a way to get the ball rolling. I've been working non stop full time on the project since then, and yes – being a writer, director AND producer on a feature film IS a lot of hats. I wish I didn't have to, but finding a producer willing to let an unknown make a feature debut in Sweden with a horror film is virtually impossible because of the way the industry here works.

Sometimes, you just gotta go out and shoot, man.

Now, because this film will be shot during summer in the northlands of Sweden, we won't need to use extra lighting on the exteriors, even outside the city. Even at night. This far north during summer, it doesn't really get dark – at least not for more than an hour or two, tops.

That saves us a lot of bother with hauling lamps and power supply. We can just bring the sound and camera equipment and that's it. Oh yeah, and the actors.
The budget on this film is low – actually, it's microbudget. I can maybe get 100,000-150,000 USD, if I take a loan with my summer house as collateral. Yeah I know, bad idea, right? Well it's an investment in my career as a film maker and we all need to make sacrifices.

So shooting on film is out of the question, obviously we're going digital. I've only ever shot on video anyway and this is not a good time to switch.
For a long time, the idea was to rent a RED ONE. I even looked into buying a used one and renting whatever equipment for it we needed. It might have worked, but in the end I decided to go with the Canon 7D instead. Here's why:

First of all, when we shot the pilot for this in May 2009, my good friend and technical advisor Soroush Shahrokni (find his stuff here: http://www.vimeo.com/user746382) had been raving about the Panasonic GH1 for several months already. I'm not a photographer, like I said my background is in writing, and so DSLR cameras are a completely new world to me. But after a couple of talks with him, and since Panasonic hadn't released the camera here yet and wouldn't until after we were finished shooting, I called them up and asked if we could borrow a GH1 to shoot the pilot, if we put their logo in the credits.

They agreed (Thanks again, Panasonic!) and I got my first taste of DSLR filming.
After that, we decided to start looking into alternatives to the RED. The RED is obviously a great camera, but sometimes you're better off owning your equiptment because the better you know it, the better images you will have. Just renting a great camera without knowing how to fully operate it might be a bad idea sometimes. You know?

I really did like the GH1, some of it's features I like better than the 7D. But the major problem with it was that you can't hook up an external HD monitor to it. A lot of the stuff we're shooting are with steadicam, and I also have a co-director who's way more experienced with photography than I am, so we need to be a few people who can see what's going on.

I also looked at the 5D, which I'm told would give me better picture, but I want to shoot this in 1080p 24fps. Also, because I bought the camera in the US to save money, but live in Europe, I needed to have one that could switch easily between PAL and NTSC. In case I need to shoot something in PAL, or in case I'd ever wish to upgrade and sell the camera, I can't be stuck with something that's only NTSC.

Then there was Nikon's new cameras that they were displaying at the Stockholm Film Festival in November, but since I need something that shoots full HD, they were out of the question unfortunately.

So the Canon 7D won.

I got it with three lenses: 16-35mm f/2.8L II, 50mm f/1.2L II and 85mm f/1.2L II.

It cost me a pretty penny, but was still cheaper than renting a RED for three weeks would have been. Plus, now I own a camera.

I've also ordered a Fader ND from Lightcraft, and I'm looking into some other equipment as well. Possibly a glide track or a Fig Rig, I'm not sure yet.
I'm still not the one actually holding the camera when we'll be on set – it's just not what I'm good at. I've got other people to do that for me who are much more experienced and knowing – but I did go out the other day and made a very, very quick test to see what it could do. You can check out the result here: http://www.vimeo.com/8326362 , but keep in mind that it's very raw. It's not run through After Effects, I didn't even white balance properly. Also, my current bandwidth prevented me from uploading a bigger file, and you'll see that on the compression.

Still, raw footage is a good measurement on what you can do with a great camera if you're a novice photographer. It can absolutely be better than this, but it can't get worse. That's saying something.

Oh and special thanks goes out to Kid Arctica of www.kidarctica.com for letting me use her music for the video. Check out her website, she does an amazing cover of Street Spirit by Radiohead.