Bee Roll...

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic keeping us all locked down at home we've been on the lookout for projects we can achieve under the limitations being imposed on us. We are very lucky in that we have lots of different areas around the studio that we can use for photography and filming and so our first project was to capture some B-Roll footage. B-Roll is footage that we use to add more depth to our stories - the little details and background images that we use to fill between the main takes and to add interest to the footage.

We shoot our B-roll in 4K at 60fps using our Sony DSLRs which gives us the maximum flexibility, allowing us to crop the footage for standard 1080P delivery and to slow it down for final delivery at 30fps or 25fps. We can also capture the footage onto our Atomos Ninja recorder which allows us to capture 4:2:2 Apple ProRes footage that is most suitable for TV work.  For this footage though, because we were only using it in-house for output on YouTube, Vimeo and social media, we went with internal recording on the Sony's (in this case an A6500).

For our first subject we chose the local native bee population who have a real affinity with the Coral Vine that grows along our fence line. Although an invasive species from Mexico, this plant, which produces an enormous abundance of pretty pink flowers, is extremely popular with the local bee populace who we are more than happy to support as they go about their busy lives. Bees, in their role as pollinators, are critical to the ecosystem and there are literally hundreds visiting the flowers on our vines at any one time and it is wonderful to see so many. However, the fact that these native bees are relying on a non-native plant as a food source probably suggests there is insufficient native flora in the local area which has more serious implications for other fauna and the general health of the environment.

But back to the B-roll footage, which, in this case is actually Bee Roll or maybe our Bee Movie...

One of the benefits of shooting 4K 60fps is the ability to extract reasonable stills from the footage and whilst, as photographers, we would never usually advocate using stills from video footage, the nature of the subject matter meant we were able to capture some decent still frames...