Zed A. Shaw, Painter

1. Always have an external lav mic with a wind screen. Cameras are terrible at reliably recording off external mics because they don’t have a setting for “audio is required”. I’ve recorded tons of videos with no audio just because I didn’t turn on 48v power.

2. On your audio announce where the hell you’re painting and what the subject and date are. I’ll do 5 videos on a trip and then have to use detective work to figure out where the hell the audio goes.

3. Use the “cine log” or similar logarithmic color setting. This makes it easier to fix problems like blown out lights or accidental back lighting. Davinci Resolve has most LUTs for it, or you can download them easily.

4. I got used to painting in direct sun wearing sunglasses because umbrellas are too mich bother and don’t work well. CAMERA LENSES CANNOT HANDLE THIS. Oil paint is shiny so cameras explode in a sea of specular highlights without shade. Either shade.

5. DJI devices do this bullshit where if the SD card is not properly formatted they *record anyway* with a vague warning of “format suggested”. I had to do disk forensics to get videos off once.

6. Do a quick rough edit after painting just to check everything came out. You can try again the next day if you messed something up. I did a whole trip thinking the videos had audio and none of them did. If I’d checked each night and during I’d have only lost one video.

7. People *will* come up and talk to you while you paint because painting outside is weird and fascinating, but most people are super nice and just curious about why the hell you’re outside. Cameras do work as a deterrent for some people. Wearing speedos does NOT deter anyone.

8. Assemble all your gear in a practice assembly in your hotel/aprtment before you go out. I’ve done an entire setup and forgot something stupid like an ARCA swiss plate that ruined a session. I also now take a high capacity USB charging battery to charge cameras and phones.

9. Heat is great for oil paint, watercolor, and pastels, but not cameras. If it’s really hot then shade can help but usually you have to knock the video quality down to keep the cameras cool. GoPros handle this better. DSLRs usually suck at heat during filming.

10. If it’s below freezing cold then pastels is all you can use without issue. Watercolor is out because it’s water. Duh. Oil paint won’t freeze but it get gummy and impossible to use. One trick is to put a little denatured alcohol into oil paint to make it flow again.

11. Wear nitrile gloves. Oil paint gets on everything so if you just use your hands you can’t wash it off then touch everything and then you’re coated in pthahlo. Gloves make cleanup easy and quick, and you can grab trash and invert the gloves to use as garbage bags.