I’ve been itch­ing to play around with some new footage lately cause I love edit­ing and it’s been a while since I had a good story to tell, so when Tiana invited me to Bobby’s sec­ond birth­day party, I couldn’t resist. I also recently pur­chased some new gear in prepa­ra­tion of a wed­ding I’ve been hired to film in the Fall (with a sec­ond one poten­tially lined up), and I’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to field-test a new bag, shoul­der strap, and monopod.

I tend to get really shy at Tiana’s par­ties cause I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know any­one else there, but she does a good job of mak­ing sure I’m never left alone for too long and included in most con­ver­sa­tions. She’s also the only other per­son I know to actu­ally design cus­tom invi­ta­tions. This time, how­ever, she was sport­ing a perky new hair­cut, and no longer a veg­e­tar­ian (for now). Such is the power of St. Hubert.

I had so much fun mak­ing this. It’s got the right depth-of-field (shot entirely wide open at f/2.8), but­tery smooth bokeh, and moves like cin­e­matic stock thanks to the lat­est Canon 5D Mk II update which gives it the abil­ity to shoot in 24p. The mono­pod also did a great job of sta­bi­liz­ing most cam­era shake while retain­ing enough of that indie hand­held feel that isn’t pos­si­ble with a tri­pod. This was a one-lens job; a tes­ta­ment to the ver­sa­til­ity of Canon’s 24–70mm. There were times when I wish I had just a bit more wide­ness or a bit more tele­photo, but I never had the chance to change lenses as things move quickly when there are kids involved.

To be hon­est, I don’t like being a cam­era­man. I never know how cam­era shy some­one is, I hate both­er­ing peo­ple, and I can never keep a low-profile with my gear. At the same time, I find it hard to trust any­one else to com­pose the shots the way I want to see them, so I do it myself. When I look at my footage though, I for­get how awk­ward it is to be film­ing some­one sur­rep­ti­tiously and know it was totally worth it.

There were so many great moments — Bobby pre­tend­ing he’s fly­ing, the guy doing bicep curls with his baby, a lit­tle girl play­ing with a dog through the win­dow, Tiana mug­ging to the cam­era at the end — but my favourite shot is of the man fid­dling with the toy plane. He sat there amid the hur­ri­cane of kids and new toys for about a minute, com­pletely lost in the pre­ci­sion of his adjust­ments and, finally being sat­is­fied, gives the pro­peller a blow.

(If you read Tiana’s LiveJournal, you’d know that she takes pic­tures of her son’s dookie. Hence, Bobby’s num­ber two.)