How to The make The Cut

Building several commercial spots on the fly was a blast, and a challenge.  I had gotten a call from Harry just a couple days prior to the shoot day which was May 1st.  The idea was to go out to San Jose on short notice, and Harry already had the idea complete in his head so there would be no actual script or storyboard or shot list.

On May 1st, I got up super early to pick up a make-up artist acquaintance I had met through a mutual friend that does photography.  I was all the way out in Escalon (the opposite direction I needed to go) picking up Ava Nightingale who was to be our makeup artist for the day, then zoomed out to San Jose to meet at the Moda Italia store by 10 AM.  When we arrived there was no one even there which gave me and the makeup artist time to go to the nearest store and pick up some makeup supplies she needed.

When we got back Harry and Daren had just arrived and Daren was already dressed in a ninja costume.  Harry wanted to get rolling on shooting and thus Daren and I shot all the establishing ninja scenes where they pop from all corners of the store and converge on Cary and Harry sitting in the back room.

As we wrapped up those shots The other two extras arrived to begin dressing up as Ninjas and prep for the group shot..

Harry's favorite production method to keep time down and crew size minimal is shooting MOS.  So after getting all the takes of the ninjas approaching before they were to strip down for the next group shot of them having their clothes cut off, I took some time to get foley sounds of the footsteps and weapons.

Cary Tagawa arrived as we were setting up for these shots and proceeded to get him dressed and makeup.

Ava Nightingale working with Cary Tagawa.

Once Cary was dressed, I started getting feedback from Harry about the next shot while Melissa Andarmani (who works for Moda Italia) helped the ninjas get suited up for the next shot.

Harry had all the ideas in place for his "story" which is the ninjas coming out from all corners of the store and converging on Cary and Harry who are sitting in the back enjoying some quiet time.  He would tell me roughly what he wanted to see and I would get the camera position and dialed in.  On such a quick time-table, these shots were all done with a single T2i on a tripod, with no assist.  I have multiple SD cards and with the down-time between shots long enough to allow the camera to rest I kept swapping out cards to transfer to a laptop I brought with me.

During some of the down time I used to review shots, and I quickly noted that we had prepped a box of "clothing confetti" but never used in the shot for both the Ninjas and for Cary's slicing and dicing shot.  We ended up having to re-shoot both of those while we had our actors and extras on-set and in their clothing still.  Had I not reviewed the footage I would never have gotten those shots to help sell the effect of their clothes getting chopped off.

The other thing I've been aware of for some time now is that Troy's camera always produces a faulty pixel in the video image.  I've been unable to track down whether or not this was an issue up until my most recent shoot doing the Zombie Apocalypse Trailer  when I had the same issue regardless of switching out lenses.  Thankfully Tomas had let me borrow his T2i for use with that production.  This commercial project however would have to suffer the issue.

While it's not a complete nuisance, there were other issues with his camera.  His lens even though completely clean and free of artifacts presented focus problems, as if the only area in focus on the lens is slightly to the right of center, and it wasn't an issue with aperture settings or depth of field.  So in some of the shots you can tell I'm trying to get a focus I just can't get.  Unfortunately this was the only wide angle lens I had with me (much less had access to period).

Because of the quick pace of production with me and Harry handling it all, we ended up not using any of our lighting gear which we brought, and during the slicing and dicing scene with Cary, you can see the reflection of Vincent who's already fully clothed ready for the next shot, throwing the "clothing confetti" from off-camera into view to sell the effect of Cary slicing the clothes up.

Left circle: Vincent throwing the confetti.  Red arrow: pointing out the faulty pixel in the video.

Sometime after this we got to shooting the tag-lines with audio Cary was to deliver the brand at the end of the commercial with, and noted several good "lines" that Harry wanted to use in post later.

At this point I was using both SD cards, one in the camera, and one in my Zoom H4n.  I followed Harry's signals to get audio rolling, and worried about sync later in post.

The Zoom has some wonderful features like being able to record at 96k/24 bit but for this I opted to record at 48k/24 bit wave to allow me to capture the performance with not just my Rode NTG-3 (pictured above on a tripod and wind-jammer) but also the built-in stereo mic setup on the Zoom itself.  I placed the zoom a decent distance away from Cary and completely off-axis to his projection angle toward the camera to capture more of the room tone and ambiance should I need the material for anything in post.

The bikers arrived some time while we were wrapping up the master shots of Cary standing with the ninjas.  They had to dress down and get into their formal outfits for the master shots with Cary as well.  Then we quickly moved on to them with their clothes cut off from Cary's attack.  However, on this shot I never caught the fact that we didn't use the confetti and was stuck with the slightly less cohesive footage.

I personally would have liked to pick up a take for this as continuity for me felt broken.  To make matters worse, when we wrapped at 2:30 pm we never got any of the shots of the bikers in their original outfit pulling up to the store to intro them into the scene.

I noticed this and some other "shots" were missing when I got back home and started doing my dailies.  In the case of the digital workflow we're using, Dailies refers to bringing in the video files to my NLE and beginning the labeling and sorting and building rough timelines to get an idea of what the "sequence" will look like.

Immediately I called up Harry and let him know we needed to schedule a pick-up shoot which ended up being a week from that day (Tuesday the 2nd, the production day was Monday, May 1st).  This gave me time to build as much of the commercial as I could.  The way I work is by roughing in the scene for continuity, before I start trimming down for time considerations.

While we were able to get cooperation on the re-shoot, only Vincent could make it out for his "fitting" with Harry to get a pick-up shot we missed, Joneil couldn't make it out on that day.  For the bikers arriving out front of the store only 2 of the bikers could show up that day, and one of them was not from the original group, but another friend of the Biker that did show up for both days.

I was pretty happy with the results we got from the pick-up shoot day especially getting some nice audio for the bikes pulling up.  On top of that we were able to get the shot of the guys getting off the bikes and then heading into the store for the 60 second version.

There's lots more to discuss, up next I discuss the Post production workflow.  For more information and to see the commercials, go visit our site:  Neologic Studios.

Zombie Apocalypse 2012

Check it out!  The trailer just went live on youtube for the remix project I'm working on! And no, at the moment Rob doesn't know about it, at least not that I know of.  Here's to hoping he'd like to check it out :)


Still to come: there are a few other commercial projects I worked on in may i'm awaiting on publishing approval for before I post.  Keep an eye out for more behind the scenes and in-depth looks coming soon!

We get some Soul..

This last weekend Troy & I went to Milpitas to film a live performance of Pacific Soul as a favor to a friend of a friend.  Wow!  This group is a nine-piece band that performs R&B classics and are a really well-rounded, amazing sounding group!  Pretty much everyone in the band sings and harmonizes together, Everyone's got a function in the band that plays well.

It was sort of last minute and a little under-communicated, but I think we've pulled it off with a decent look.  We shot with the Sony Z1u and the Canon T2i so the look between cameras is vastly different, and is a real pain to get a close match between them.  The area they were performing at was inside at a seafood marketplace, and was really dark (no lighting).

The Canon T2i fared well as we simply boosted the ISO to 3200 and the footage came out clean even at high ISO for video.  The Shutter speed pretty much sat at 60 and Troy walked around with the T2i getting various close-ups and shots with the shoulder rig we were lucky enough to have borrowed from a friend's production company!  Thanks Ian, we'll have it back to you ASAP.

I kept the Z1u stationary and just did simple panning and zooming as best I could while taking notes and monitoring audio.  I brought my XLR cables for just such an opportunity to get a direct feed from the Front-of-house (FOH) mixer. This was where I ran into a problem.  Once I started monitoring the audio coming into the camera with my headphones I noticed severe compression and limiting and I had already set the camera's gain settings for the XLR inputs to -18dB (the furthest down it would go).  I thought maybe it was the camera doing the limiting and maybe just maybe it would be decent.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

The next level to the audio problem was the mix itself.  The FOH mixer was only creating a mix for the PA system to pump out to the audience.  I know how live mixing goes and for a session of this size the PA really just needs to fill in the gaps for the lowest level performers: Keyboardist who has no amp on-stage but has a monitoring speaker by him, the vocalists who also have a couple of monitoring speakers in front of them on the ground.  The Bassist has a cab on stage but it's mic'd and instead he's also using a monitoring speaker on the floor.  There is a percussionist in the back, and to add to that an electric acoustic guitar being played by one of the singers as well who's got a direct out feeding the mixer.  The drummer has some mics on the kit but I couldn't see much as he was behind the stage. 

Pulled frame from T2i footage

The problem with getting a mix from the FOH is the mix is designed to fill in the mix around the drums which are naturally loud.  The keys had a prominent position at teh front of the mix, the vocals collectively sat just behind that, and the drums were barely audible in the mix at all feeding the PA system.  the Bass sat just under the Vocals as well and was primarily low-end.  However, the mix was either being heavily compressed in the mixer or as an artifact of the signal coming into the camera.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

We had no idea how it would turn out in post, but would have to make due with what we got.  Before the performance started we had time to set up and talk to the engineer at the FOH mixer.  I did notice he had a macbook with Pro Tools ready to rock and the idea was that he was to capture the multitrack performance from the mixer so that the whole session could be mixed properly in post later on.  After the performance was over we talked to the engineer again and that was when we were informed there was no capture into Pro Tools!  Sometimes these things happen and miscommunication can lead to issues that need troubleshooting later on.

Pulled frame from Z1u footage

So I'm at home dubbing the tape from the Z1u into Premier Pro and then importing all the captured video from the T2i.  Once we started dropping the video on the timeline I got really curious as to the sound of the audio from the T2i.  I was greatly surprised by how well it could fill in the mix once i started getting everything in line.  I knew I'd have to battle with sync issues as there was no way to lock the two cameras together so that frames and timing would be in sync.

Pulled frame from Z1u footage

You won't notice it by the video as the lip-sync between both cameras is not noticeably off, but where you will immediately hear it is in the audio tracks lining up.  It creates a slight delay affect that's a quick echo.  So, this can be simply remedied by bringing the audio into Sonar later on and aligning them so they are in-phase.  The natural top-end clarity due to the small diaphragm of the built-in mic in the T2i was able to lend clarity to the mix from the Z1u which was quite muddy, and the lost transients and the natural room tone (the live sound) came back making the drums present again.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

My final issue to tackle is creating a good blend between the two audio sources in mixing to get the sound to blend.  There is a couple spots where the main audio track (FOH mix) cuts out.  First in the very beginning something happens to the mix cutting out.

The timeline cursor (red bar) you can see the right channel cut out and then the left channel.

Then I had Troy run the T2i while I changed tapes because I was running off a previously used tape that still had 30 or so minutes unused.  Finally got the fresh tape in and it took a little bit to get to camera speed.

The timeline cursor is where you can see the gap in the main video and audio feed.

Other mix conditions have to do with Troy's camera position around the band and how it captured the sound of whichever instrument or vocalist is most present.  Some positions he took with the camera are directly out of phase with the direct mix as he's standing next to a speaker 180 degrees out of phase with it.

Just barely wrapping up final edit.  It's getting even more hectic as there are a couple jobs coming up, and i've been getting contacted about more job opportunities elsewhere..  The immediate agenda for now is to just finish this video and get back to my story-board and novel projects.