A lovely C300 Shoot

Wow! I had an absolute blast shooting some interviews for Johnson & Johnson today with two Canon C300s. We set up shop in the lovely Lambertville Station Hotel after moving every piece of furniture around in our suite (the bed weighed as much as a juvenile elephant) and then rolled right into shooting. The interviewees were experts in the rapidly-evolving field of neuroscience. Translation: very, very smart people! Here are some video stills from the uncorrected Canon Log & then a quick & dirty Color pass.

As this was shot on a white cyc, the C300's wave form monitor was such a blessing to have. I could tell precisely how even the background lighting was at any time. I exposed the cyc at right about 85%, wanting to reserve the option to control its precise brightness in post without clipping. We used two 4x4 Kinos to light the cyc, a 400 watt Joker through a chimera for key, a 4x2 Kino for fill, and a 1x1 LitePanel for the kicker.

The interviewees needed to be entirely in focus, and I also wanted to make the most of the camera's dynamic range, so I set my exposure for 800 ISO at f/5.6 at 1/48 sec for the majority of the shoot. For lenses, we had a Canon 70-200 2.8 L series ("A" Cam) and a set of Zeiss ZF primes ("B" Cam). "A" Cam stayed right around 70mm most of the time, while I used the 35mm for "B" Cam.

It was fantastic being able to put this exciting camera to the test. Since we've just begun post, I can't make any definitive statements yet about the footage but I will say that the camera was a joy to operate. It just makes sense!

Thanks to John Draus of Draus Productions for his lighting expertise and the BTS photos, and to Steve Gifford of Pretty Damn Sweet for allowing me to DP!

The two beasties

Hamming it up with Steve

Sometimes editing looks like this...

Beginning an edit for an infomercial. Yep, that's almost 8 hours of footage...

Fun with Frames

I recently shot/edited these pieces for a fantastic local company called NatureScripts. Lisa Ochwat, the founder, is a one-woman band. She shoots letters she finds in nature, designs words with them, and then frames them using handcrafted wooden frames made by an Amish artisan out in Lancaster county. 

For the videos, we wanted a light table look, but couldn't find an actual light table large enough for her longest frames. Solution: we made our own. The table was constructed with a metal Ikea frame and a translucent sheet of polymer. I placed an Omni with a white umbrella underneath the table and used a 1K chimera for key. The camera was mounted on a c-stand overhead and we used a small monitor for framing. The exterior footage was shot at a farm in Exton, PA. 

Enjoy and be sure to check out her website here.

Signature Video:

Holiday Video:

My Bolex Ate My 7D

Today was the day I reconnected with my roots. One hundred feet at a time...

When I took 16mm Filmmaking in college, everything changed. I fell in love with cinematography, and it was a Bolex H16 that pointed the way forward. It was a dream of mine to own one someday, and a few weeks ago it happened. I purchased a Bolex SBM, complete with 400' mag and motor. Made in 1971, it lived through everything from Apollo 14's moon landing to Jim Morrison's tragic death. Forty years later, it still looks and runs like new. Honestly, I think it will outlive me. In fact, in the event of a worldwide nuclear catastrophe, I wager it will be the cockroaches and the Bolexes that emerge from the rubble unscathed. 

Now, electronics have their place, but personally I don't think I can ever fully appreciate a camera that 1) I can't take apart, 2) I know will become obsolete in a few years, and 3) can't function without batteries. Enter the Bolex. It can run at 7 different frame rates with Zero electronic circuitry. Completely tangible, mechanical operation. You know another great thing about it? It also doesn't try to tell me how to shoot. Completely and beautifully manual.

Today I put a 100' spool of Kodak 7222 through it for testing. I performed a few low-light tests and also tried out the different frame rates. Everything ran great and I'm stoked to get the film back from the lab.

After the test shoot, I decided to hook up the motor and 400' mag and see how that ran. Now before you call me on it, this does run on a battery. The MST motor is powered by a 12 volt battery, made up of 10 cadmium-nickel alkaline cells. However, it's not a battery that has disappeared into the archives of planned obsolescence. You can still buy them from Bolex. Plus, if you really wanted to, you could hook a car battery up to the motor instead. Crazy, right?

So I hooked up the motor and all the connectors (you have to unscrew the hand crank and rex-o-fader), and held my breath. Thankfully, the motor purred immediately. So the next step in the testing will be to buy a 400' core and run that through the camera. The pictures below are of the beast on its roost. That's a Cinevate Atlas 10 on top of a Manfrotto 503HDV head, attached to a 536 tripod.

So there it is. Would anyone like to shoot something? I'm dying to break this out! :)

An Experiment in 3D

3D. It's a pretty polarizing topic in the film biz these days. I myself am not sure what to make of it. Yet when I was recently invited to help shoot a 3D short, I was eager to jump in.

As of today, we have completed the 3rd day of production. And let me tell you, it's been quite an adventure so far. Calibrating cameras, aligning mirrors, using remote flash triggers to genlock DSLRs...it's craziness. We're fortunate to be shooting with the awe-inspiring Zeiss CP.2s - 28, 50, & 85mm. Image quality aside, their large size has presented some challenges. Our 3D Film Factory rig has a difficult time accommodating them so we've had to ghetto rig some things. In particular, we replaced the normal 1/2" 1/4-20 bolts in the camera plates with much longer ones (plus 6 or 7 washers), in order to raise up the cameras so the CP.2s don't bump into the darned plates.

Then there's keeping the mirror clean. In uncontrolled situations (ie, outside), extreme diligence and vigilance are required to ensure a spotless mirror- which is critical for every shot. Using black wrap to cover the openings in the top of the rig is not ideal. I've been praying constantly to the Duvetyne gods for intervention, but they remain silent.

Now granted, our rig is not the most advanced 3D machine money can buy, so it would be unfair for me to draw any final conclusions about 3D production from this experience. But I do miss the warm 2D production world with its simpler calibrations and mirror-less matte boxes. However, despite all the added steps and difficulties, it's exciting to walk on a new frontier. I'm interested to see if the end product justifies the means...

the beginning...

Thanks for checking out the blog! New posts will be coming soon.