Bad Music” documentary filmed with Pocket Camera & DSLRs

Workflows, movies and pretty much everything is getting faster. The creative landscape seems to change as quickly as never before.

Back in september we had the idea of producing a documentary about music in today’s society. We often talk with people about talent and casting shows but especially if there is still good music out there that is worth listening. The best way to find out about how people feel about music, talent, passion and success is to ask musicians themselves. So that’s what we did.

Important questions to us where: “Can you make a living just by making good music?” or “Is money even important?” We wanted an honest talk with the musicians and put together an interesting mixture of people. In the end we interviewed members of a heavy metal band, a singer and rock musician as well as two rappers and a piano teacher.

Below is the 14-minute documentary BAD MUSIC.

When we shot our first interview with Ali (the rock musician with the headscarf) we used the Canon 7D for all the shots. After that shoot we received the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera so that was the main camera for the rest of the film. The music videos where shot with DSLRs.

All in all the setup was pretty simple for most shoots. The sound was captured with an external recorder (Tascam DR-40). We plugged in the RODE lav and NTG3 and where really satisfied with the sound overall.

The edit took quite some time because there were just so many interesting topics the people were talking about but we wanted to keep it short. Everything except the graphics and titles was done in Premiere Pro CS6. To match the DSLR footage with the much more detailed BMPCC shots I sharpened it a little bit. Color correction and grading was done in After Effects CS6 with DynamicLink (to keep it fast and easy).

Is there a tutorial or behind the scenes video?

We will be releasing an extensive online course / tutorial and how to make a documentary soon. Behind the scenes footage and insight from this documentary as well as from other films we produced will be shown and explained in this tutorial. It is going to be divided into several chapters: From planning a shoot to the final edit and distribution.

I listed my recommended DSLR’s for you here!

Written by Moritz Janisch

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