New Eye-popping Veterans Memorial Music Video

Remember “We Are The World” — the big multi-star charity number to benefit victims of famine years ago? Well, this month a similar collaboration to benefit veterans in Britain resulted in this powerful, visual and audio showstopper:  Click the photo to go to the video on ExposureRoom.com…

The  single of “We Will Remember Them” was just released on November 29th.  It was recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios as the “big charity number” for the Royal British Legion (counterpart to the American Legion) and Help for Heroes.  The whole thing was shot with two Canon still photography cameras that now shoot HD video: the 5D and 7D, as well as some footage shot on the Sony EX3 HD camcorder, which I’m guessing are the clips of military in-country.

This is another good example of how the new Canon cameras are changing the landscape for cinematography: both the 5D and the 7D retail for less than $2,700 without lenses, and you can use any of the 60 EF lenses on the market with either camera. These cameras are turning photographers into videographers and videographers into cinematographers, sometimes overnight.

What you will notice are the super clear images, the very shallow depth-of-field (how the subject is in focus with the background blurry), and just a really powerful image quality that you used to have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get with movie cameras. A couple of things that struck me in this video were the great lighting, the tight shots of the individual performers, the great pacing, and the high aerial shots which were done with a small specialty HD camera mounted to the end of a pole, captured without tape to a digital recorder. I’ve seen pictures of the camera and it’s about the size of a tube of LifeSavers candy, but gets full HD video and is great for unusual angles like this.

I have heard that shows like Saturday Night Live are already starting to use the Canon 5D Mk II  for broadcast production. It’s really amazing that you can get video like this from a 35mm still photo camera!