C/D recently

The Worble project was a shoot we were really pumped to work on! The Mull brothers are amazing skaters, the weather was great, and we were renting gear that I was very excited to work with. 

     Namely that gear was the Fastec TS3 Cine. The TS3Cine's tagline is basically 720fps at 720p. What that means is you can get a super slow motion image in high def for a relatively low cost point. You can compare this to an Epic, which can shoot 300FPS at a cropped down image size that is still higher than 720, or the soon to be FS700, which shoots 240FPS at 1080. The epic rents for MUCH more a day than the TS3 and can't touch the frame rate, and the FS700 will probably cost less and can't do half as many FPS as the TS3. It's right on target for what it is--a lower cost solution to high speed photography. 

(FYI--We rented ours from our long time rental house friends at Rule in Boston. The staff there is super friendly and always very helpful.)

We also rented some Nikon primes from Rule as our lens set. There was an option for PL mount as well, but no option for EF mounts at the time we rented. I think we also picked up a follow focus, a matte box, and some 4x4 ND filters. I had considered some Black Pro Mist or HD Video filters but I knew the highlights on the TS3 clip early and very hard so I avoided them. I knew I would be shooting dark to keep things from clipping and raising blacks in post. Normally I like to have some sort of diffusion or contrast filter on hand to help with digital clipping of highlights, like a 1/8 black pro mist works perfectly with DSLRs. In this case however it was a no go--the TS3 is pretty demanding lighting wise, and highlights get pretty garish once they blow.

    I've worked on a few high speed shoots in the past, and know that it is a completely different beast than working on a normal shoot. In order to make the photos really pop and exploit the high speed nature typically you have to be very mindful of parallax and try and have a lot going on in the frame and having things move towards the camera. We made a decision to focus more on nice compositions and let the skating speak for itself. That was freeing in a way and over all it was a really fun shoot.

     Highspeed Cameras are generally sensitive and finicky. The TS3 was no different. While the interface with the camera is very nice and easy to use--there is a giant touch screen and also a d-pad button set up similar to most DSLR cameras, like a Phantom you have to be constantly checking your black balance and settings. Overall it was a pleasant experience to work with the camera although I did find some banding and artifacts introduced in some shots that took some trouble shooting to get around. 

     One of the biggest things we missed was at the time of our rental we had to use JPG stacks to capture our images. There will be an update in the future that will allow you to shoot to adobe DNG, or a raw workflow. That definitely intrigues me and I'll be back to check the camera out again when that feature is live. 

We were shooting on a very sunny day with no clouds. As a result I was mostly forced to shoot right down the axis of the sun to keep everything decently exposed evenly. Usually I like to backlight and bounce frontally but it wasn't working that day. So 100% of our lighting was with 2 bounces max. Usually I had our PA/Grip using the silver side of a bead board as an edge light, and had some sort of bounce on a stand for a little fill. 

Our footage was converted to Pro Res in After Effects from the JPG stacks that the TS3 created. Then it was brought into FCP7 for the edit, which was handled by Gabe. Brian was with us all along the way giving us advice and helping out with the edit. After the edit was locked I brought it back over to After Effects CS5.5 via Automatic Duck and used mostly Color Finesse, which is a native AE plug in, and Optical Flares for the color grade.

My workflow for color grading typically is to denoise the footage, and then work with adjustment layers on top of each clip. Mostly I had a layer of optical flares, followed by a vignette, then a layer of the main color grade from Color Finesse (really nice because it has scopes), then a layer of grain from Magic Bullet Looks, and finally a layer of sharpening. It's probably a little overly complicated but it's how I like it!

I am looking for other solutions to adding grain to my projects. I'm thinking about checking out RGrain, if anyone has any experience with it I'd love to hear about it.

I was recently on CNN, and clicked to watch a video report about the life of a woman who was coping with the death of her husband after he had been killed in Afghanistan. We're all used to seeing a :15 ad that plays before a digital piece we want to watch, but I'm still amazed that many of these are showing up in a place that advertising doesn't belong. In this case, it was a spot for the Honda Pilot, and showed a family enjoying a road trip together. Then a quick cut to the interview with the newly widowed woman, who obviously will not be looking forward to any family road trips anytime soon. It was a very awkward juxtaposition, and not an inexpensive one at that.

Even though there currently exists minimum control over where online ads are appearing, I see this changing... for the better. The agencies and media outlets will need to partner up to develop a system of categorizing and organizing news pieces in a way that is specifically geared towards smart placement. Will this happen right away? The sooner that the companies and brands spending their money on these spots voice their concern, the better. In the end, it will make for a more authentic online experience at every level.

New video for Northeast Lantern company coming soon! We had a great time working with their team in Exeter, NH.