Guerrilla shooters? (this thread is not about hunting..)

[IronFilm]

It was a "paid" shoot, the rate was waaaay low (was less than half what I'm getting on the feature I'm starting on today!). 

In fact, I half suspect I was either the highest paid or second highest paid crew member on set every day (with the possible likely exception being the gaffer who was bringing a full transit truck to set each day for lighting).

 

The "1st AD" was also the producer, as he'd struggled to find a 1st AD, so he did both!

[kaylee]

to me "Guerrilla" filmmaking means: shooting illegally or in a grey area where you must be clandestine

im doing that in multiple ways for my lil short im working on. guerrilla shooting is punk rock and awesome – and tons of big time productions have "stolen" shots here and there

5d3 raw is totally inconspicuous~! no one cares lol

[Anaconda_]

This is the perfect example of guerrilla filmmaking. 

 

[IronFilm]

That is exactly the film I was thinking of! When Mercer wrote this:

On 5/2/2018 at 2:30 AM, mercer said:

Man, if I had a family, I would make an epic John Hughes-esque family comedy/thriller at Great Adventure. Everybody would just think I was an overexuberant Dad shooting my kids for family videos. Now that would be guerrilla shooting... but NO I would not use an Amira, or an Alexa... maybe a Siri though.

Even better, I’d take the whole family on a cruise and make a found footage film. Give each member an iPhone and create some kind of silly found footage plot... and then I could write off the vacation as a business expense. 

 

[kye]

4 hours ago, kaylee said:

to me "Guerrilla" filmmaking means: shooting illegally or in a grey area where you must be clandestine

im doing that in multiple ways for my lil short im working on. guerrilla shooting is punk rock and awesome – and tons of big time productions have "stolen" shots here and there

5d3 raw is totally inconspicuous~! no one cares lol

For me it's actually slightly different - I'm shooting totally legally but I must still be clandestine.

I'm shooting in places where people can shoot video of their kid with their phone, but if I shot the same shot with a C300 then I would get kicked out or get hassled or attract unwanted attention from the surrounding public.  I'm not doing anything wrong, but I also want to use a better camera than my phone without getting hassled, thus the need to be clandestine.

With your 5d3, what lenses and sound equipment do you use?  and where do you shoot?  I find it to be a question of how big your camera setup looks that is the main factor unfortunately...

[Django]

Fuji XT2 is pretty inconspicuous. Especially with F2 WR primes. I've shot with it in parts of India & Morocco where a bigger or more digital looking camera might have got me in trouble. A lot people thought it was an old film camera. XPRo2 would probably be even better in that regard. 5D3 is definitely not the most discrete camera and with lack of EVF/tiltscreen it yells i'm shooting video. I found D750 way more discrete for street shooting. If you are going to use a DSLR mask logos etc with black tape. Use pancake/short lenses to make it look a little more point & shoot. How you dress & act in public is also key for this type of shooting imo. Gotta blend in / look amateur  

[kye]

27 minutes ago, Django said:

Fuji XT2 is pretty inconspicuous. Especially with F2 WR primes. I've shot with it in parts of India & Morocco where a bigger or more digital looking camera might have got me in trouble. A lot people thought it was an old film camera. XPRo2 would probably be even better in that regard. 5D3 is definitely not the most discrete camera and with lack of EVF/tiltscreen it yells i'm shooting video. I found D750 way more discrete for street shooting. If you are going to use a DSLR mask logos etc with black tape. Use pancake/short lenses to make it look a little more point & shoot. How you dress & act in public is also key for this type of shooting imo. Gotta blend in / look amateur  

Similar advice to when you don't want your camera to get stolen

I've been reluctant to go for a larger sized camera body, as before I got into photography that was how I judged if a person was a professional photographer (wrong I know, but it is what it is)!

In terms of looking the part, I think I've got that down...  I just got back from a 10 day trip to the Northern Territory of Australia and in addition to the shorts, t-shirt, backpack, and scowl from wrangling kids I also bought one of these so I didn't burnt to a crisp in the sun:

I'm pretty sure that no-one, after seeing my hat, had the inclination to take me seriously 

[kaylee]

2 hours ago, kye said:

For me it's actually slightly different - I'm shooting totally legally but I must still be clandestine.

for sure, that too

2 hours ago, kye said:

I'm shooting in places where people can shoot video of their kid with their phone, but if I shot the same shot with a C300 then I would get kicked out or get hassled or attract unwanted attention from the surrounding public

haha no kidding

2 hours ago, kye said:

With your 5d3, what lenses and sound equipment do you use?  and where do you shoot?  I find it to be a question of how big your camera setup looks that is the main factor unfortunately...

frankly, i wrote a short that fits my camera: no dialogue and no need to record location audio, very little camera movement, lowlight shooting, guerrilla shot stealing here and there, etc. if i wanted to record dialogue in a place where i have to lowkey hide whats going on id use lavs, but, in a scene with limited dialogue, well executed ADR can go a long way, if youre tryin to keep that footprint virtually invisible

39 minutes ago, Django said:

If you are going to use a DSLR mask logos etc with black tape. Use pancake/short lenses to make it look a little more point & shoot. How you dress & act in public is also key for this type of shooting imo. Gotta blend in / look amateur  

^ this too

edit: i like that hat

[mkabi]

 

2 minutes ago, kye said:

Similar advice to when you don't want your camera to get stolen

I've been reluctant to go for a larger sized camera body, as before I got into photography that was how I judged if a person was a professional photographer (wrong I know, but it is what it is)!

In terms of looking the part, I think I've got that down...  I just got back from a 10 day trip to the Northern Territory of Australia and in addition to the shorts, t-shirt, backpack, and scowl from wrangling kids I also bought one of these so I didn't burnt to a crisp in the sun:

I'm pretty sure that no-one, after seeing my hat, had the inclination to take me seriously 

Darnit you beat me to it.

I was going to say to get a Boater hat, Hawaiian shirt, tape your nose and sunglasses... and you have your disguise.... I mean you can blend in :D 

[Django]

10 minutes ago, kye said:

Similar advice to when you don't want your camera to get stolen

 

yeah well that's a sore subject.. irony is i did get my XT2 stolen.. at the airport where i least expected it and let my guard down. rimowa & pelican case surely didn't help. lesson learned.

[kaylee]

yeah we need a line of cases that say like HAZARDOUS MATERIALS or WARNING SUPER AIDS or something

[mercer]

Super aids... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

hahahahahahaha

[Don Kotlos]

Pimping out your camera can help as well. You will also get footage with interesting looks as a bonus.

[mercer]

Hah, I work with a burly carpenter and he uses a pink lighter... eventually someone will bust his chops and his reply is... nobody steals his lighter on the job site. 

[BTM_Pix]

In the accreditation queue outside the stadium on Tuesday we had the most audacious theft attempt when someone mingled into the queue and casually strolled off with a peli case (with 2 D5's, a 70-200 and a 400 f2.8 in it) and an attached laptop bag.

Fortunately, he only got about 20 yards away with it before he was spotted because he stuck out like a sore thumb.

And the reason he immediately aroused suspicion?

Ironically, far from it being because hr looked like a dodgy scruff, it was because he was WAY too smartly dressed to have ever passed for one of us !

[kye]

11 hours ago, Django said:

yeah well that's a sore subject.. irony is i did get my XT2 stolen.. at the airport where i least expected it and let my guard down. rimowa & pelican case surely didn't help. lesson learned.

Ouch.  That totally sucks.. sorry to hear it.  With the kind of budget I have for equipment that's a nightmare scenario

10 hours ago, kaylee said:

yeah we need a line of cases that say like HAZARDOUS MATERIALS or WARNING SUPER AIDS or something

Super Aids is just awesome!!

I'd go for MEDICAL WASTE

41 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

In the accreditation queue outside the stadium on Tuesday we had the most audacious theft attempt when someone mingled into the queue and casually strolled off with a peli case (with 2 D5's, a 70-200 and a 400 f2.8 in it) and an attached laptop bag.

Fortunately, he only got about 20 yards away with it before he was spotted because he stuck out like a sore thumb.

And the reason he immediately aroused suspicion?

Ironically, far from it being because hr looked like a dodgy scruff, it was because he was WAY too smartly dressed to have ever passed for one of us !

I saw regular reports of thieves taking equipment when I was reading the stills photography blogs daily.  Even at the Olympics where they used a two-person team to distract and then steal rolling pelican cases of stuff   Luckily in that example they had security footage and the photogs banded together to raise awareness and encourage the police to catch them, so the guy even got his gear back before the games started.

The setup I've used previously was to have a normal backpack and add one of these into it:

It's tall enough to have a Canon 700D with 55-250mm zoom mounted on it fit into the middle section so it's bigger than it looks.  I've used it for carrying equipment on my carry-on for flights and also transferred to a lighter day-pack for shooting excursions.  

On the most recent trip when I had the XC10 / Rode VideoMic Pro+ / Gorillapod 5K it wasn't quite so handy.  I used QR plates to separate the Gorillapod from camera, but with the Rode VMP+ on the hot shoe of the camera it had to be put in vertically which meant holding the mic to take it in and out which wasn't ideal.  I didn't want the hassle of having to take the mic on and off the camera each time as it prevents getting quick shots.  So I'm thinking I'll have to review this setup unfortunately, so I'm not sure what I'll do about it yet.
 

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, kye said:

Ouch.  That totally sucks.. sorry to hear it.  With the kind of budget I have for equipment that's a nightmare scenario

Super Aids is just awesome!!

I'd go for MEDICAL WASTE

I saw regular reports of thieves taking equipment when I was reading the stills photography blogs daily.  Even at the Olympics where they used a two-person team to distract and then steal rolling pelican cases of stuff   Luckily in that example they had security footage and the photogs banded together to raise awareness and encourage the police to catch them, so the guy even got his gear back before the games started.

The setup I've used previously was to have a normal backpack and add one of these into it:

 

 

Its unfortunately very common and is actually at its most prevalent on what you would think was the safe side of the fence which is in the accredited areas themselves.

Its only happened to me once (touch wood) at a final in Berlin a couple of years ago when one of the stewards stole my iPhone off the top of my peli case while I was shooting the trophy lift over the other side of the pitch.

Funnily enough, it caused me far more of a problem than if he'd took a camera because it had my boarding pass for my flight home on it, it was the GPS for me to drive back to Leipzig because that's where I'd flown in from etc etc

I have quite a few of those dividers and use them for turning an Ikea rucksack into a camera bag but also for quickly packing real camera bags as I swap between different capacity ones so its easier to keep certain lens combos in the dividers all the time and transfer them in one go.

 

 

[Raafi Rivero]

I pretty much use the terms "guerilla filmmaking" and "run and gun" shooting interchangeably. They're both war metaphors. The shooting style is applicable both for when you have permission, and when you don't, when you have actors, and when you're filming real people. There's also "one man band" which fits in a similar mould. To me run-and-gun is a relative term. A Hollywood person might use it to describe a crew of 10 people, LOL. If there is a difference between the terms it's that "guerilla" implies an ethos - get the film shot by any means. When I shot the piece below, for instance, I never had more than two crew members and was usually alone. All of the rooftop shots were a location that we sneaked onto (and setup a slider and handheld LEDs, ha). The terms guerilla, run-and-gun, and one man band apply to nearly every shot: 

 

[jonpais]

15 minutes ago, Raafi Rivero said:

I pretty much use the terms "guerilla filmmaking" and "run and gun" shooting interchangeably. They're both war metaphors. The shooting style is applicable both for when you have permission, and when you don't, when you have actors, and when you're filming real people. There's also "one man band" which fits in a similar mould. To me run-and-gun is a relative term. A Hollywood person might use it to describe a crew of 10 people, LOL. If there is a difference between the terms it's that "guerilla" implies an ethos - get the film shot by any means. When I shot the piece below, for instance, I never had more than two crew members and was usually alone. All of the rooftop shots were a location that we sneaked onto (and setup a slider and handheld LEDs, ha). The terms guerilla, run-and-gun, and one man band apply to nearly every shot: 

 

Excellent editing.

[kye]

@mercer I quoted this from your audio recorders thread as my reply would have been a bit OT there.

On 10/05/2018 at 12:51 AM, mercer said:

And just having the dead cat of the small Video Micro has gotten me looks from cops. And passers by will stop to ask what I’m shooting. Hell, using a monopod draws unwanted attention. A tripod would probably get me stopped by cops. Hell, I bet a gimbal would even get me stopped. I specifically went out and bought the Canon 28mm 1.8 lens so I could go handheld with a neck strap for those scenes.

I also own the Rode Video Micro and found that you can buy some cheap eBay foam covers that fit quite well and are a lot smaller.  I bought a number of them to get the right sizing (the diameter of the Rode VM is on the larger size for the foam covers) but if you buy one that's a bit too big a cable tie or even a twisty-tie would secure it.  The one I ended up using was for a long shotgun mic and I trimmed it down to length.

I haven't tested them for wind resistance, but it'll be better than nothing and the size difference is huge!  Another 'trick' is instead of using them on the hot-shoe (which makes it look tall) you can buy dual flash brackets (eg http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dual-Flash-Bracket-Holder-For-1-4-Screw-Studio-Tripod-Light-Stand-Camera-GA-/182389726343?hash=item2a77465c87) and get a tripod to cold-shoe adapter which allows you to mount the mic next to the camera instead of on top, which hides the size a little bit.  I found angling the bracket can make it quite ergonomic too.  

Happy to take some pics of the setup if this is useful.