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.

Update this!

If you haven't noticed (or if this is your first time visiting) I've redesigned the layout!  Let me know how you like it.  I do have quite a few things to share however: first being I've just uploaded the entire RPM Challenge Album for everyone to download - FREE!

Borderline Soundtrack (16 songs in 192kbps mp3, album art, and readme.txt) - 128 mb zip file

I've got some new fractals I'm working on to add to the Aural Ascendancy series gallery I have.  Those will be going up soon.  I've also been busy drawing up more of my short skit storyboard and working on building the 2nd episode to the RPM Challenge we did back in February.  If you missed the first one:





The last week has been kind of crazy prepping for a last minute shoot in LA that didn't go through but there's still a project to come of that (supposedly).  Harry wanted my help in putting together a plan of attack for doing a timelapse for a corporate video project or just plain to have for whatever the company wants it for.  I did some research just to make sure I was up-to-date on all the options and narrowed it down to 2 options: 1-2 DSLR's with kit lenses; or a few GoPro Hero HD cameras.  I had very little information on the project to go by other than it's for a 3 week construction project.

He asked me to come up with a solution to tackle the time-lapse, and to get ready to go down to LA with Michael Mok on Thursday (just three days later) stay the night a motel and be up early enough to head out to the campus grounds where they are to start construction Friday morning.  Mok and I would set up the time-lapse system and then proceed to get some interview and B-roll footage; wrap up and head back home that same day.

So, I roughly dove into the world of time-lapses and cameras.  My first solution was to keep a budget in mind (which I had no point of reference whatsoever).  My first thought was to check out GoPro as Mok and I had used them on our previous venture for the Reality Series pilot we were shooting for a previously discussed producer (see A Dashboard Confession).

We all know what a time-lapse is so I'll skip the descriptive analysis.  What it comes down to is that The GoPros offer a very affordable solution that's also easy to setup, but somewhat limited on time-lapse management.  The whole situation calls for us to set it up and leave it, and GoPros only run with an SD card.  I ran into these factors that I immediately emailed GoPro about as I was emailing the pitch to Harry:

• Can I charge and operate them at the same time?
• What's the longest amount of time I can leave them unattended?
• How can I manage the media?

The GoPro support team is amazing! Not only were they quick to respond but they took the time and went the extra mile crunching numbers and giving me some great reference points by telling me exactly how many frames at 5-megapixels I would be able to get on a 32gb SD card, and due to the fact that the cameras shoot at 60 second intervals max, a frame every minute if the camera were to shoot around the clock would last only 1 week.

So here was my pitch to Harry as I was contacting GoPro:

Option 1: 

• GoPro HD Hero

•   - Retails $200

  The interesting part is that it's a 5 megapixel camera which is more than double the resolution for HDTV 1080p which gives plenty of room for crop and pan movements to spice up the timelapse.  The downside is I'm not sure what the maximum length of time we'd be able to leave them up to capture until I get a response back from GoPro about several questions I asked them.  This solution however would be an affordable way to get multiple cameras up for multiple angles.

Some accessories to consider:

• Battery BacPac

•  - Retails $50

• 32gb SD Card
• Retails $80

• USB AC Charger

•  - Retails $20

  As i can't find any documentation and am currently contacting GoPro about seeing whether you can charge and use the camera at the same time; this may be a necessary item for each Camera.  The SD Card price is based on their website though i'm sure we can find cheaper elsewhere.   When i contacted GoPro I submitted a question involving whether or not the cameras can be tethered to a computer for storage and capture which would bypass the need for SD cards, I'll let you know the results as soon as I get a response from them.


Option 2:

• Canon Rebel T3
• - Retails $500 - $530

  12 megapixel camera, kit includes 18-55mm lens which for covering the viewing angle of the landscape we'd want to cover should be more than good enough, Canon lenses are also good quality optics too though we'd have to play a bit with settings before starting timelapse.  The cameras ARE definitely able to hook up to a computer to control the time interval and store the photos away from the camera.  This however does require quite a bit more setup, programming the camera for the best picture mode I can handle well enough but these cameras are quite a bit larger than the GoPro's and will stand out wherever these are put up on campus.  The advantage of having a camera like this is we can greatly control the capture interval for more effective file management.  If we know exactly how long we want the timelapse to be compressed (3 weeks to 2 minutes for example, we can set the interval accordingly with the accessories).

Some Accessories to consider:

• Camera Armor
• Retails anywhere from $15 - $50
• Absolutely necessary for outdoors and on top of this I'd suggest black trash bags to wrap around and cover the camera and only expose the lens (use lens hoods too).  Covering with trash bags should help hide the cameras but I wouldn't rely on it as a theft deterrent.
• Battery Grip
• Retails $50 - $80
• Extra Batteries for Grip
• Retails $49.99
• Lens Filters - UV, and possibly others.
• 32gb SD card or larger
• OR laptop or computer source to hook up and control remotely for storage and transfer.

  With the DSLR's we'd have to figure out a mounting option for getting the perspectives we might want, I would expect we'd want more bird's eye views or high vantage points as well as something eye level if necessary.  It really depends on the location.  If you have the address perhaps we can look it up on google maps and get an idea of the space we're working with.

  There's advantages to getting either option.  There are other camera systems like PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) setups where we can completely remotely control them but are VERY costly ($10,000+ when you consider the broadcast and controller equipment just for a single camera).  I think either of these options should be feasible, just depends on what you want to budget.  The GoPros are the most affordable so we COULD get a decent array going for several points of view to cut to and from.  The downside is if we can only capture onboard the maximum interval length is a picture every minute.  Therefore we have (speculatively) very little control over our time-lapse management.    Option 2 with the DSLR's is quite a bit more expensive which may limit our number of POV shots we can get, but may yield MUCH more control over timelapse management and greater quality image capture due to higher resolution.  Another option that the DSLR's give an advantage over is shooting in Canon RAW (much larger file size) to allow for even more vivid image control in post (better contrast and brightness control in case of severe weather and lighting conditions).  The DSLR's however are still considered entry level and are limited on other formats and features like recording HD video (720p max) compared to other higher end models that can better suit other productions later on.  Image quality-wise the picture would be even greater and higher fidelity than the Sony Z1u you currently use now, but due to the resolution restrictions this wouldn't be an ideal camera for productions so flexibility as a production asset would be minimal and very specific.  The GoPros come with all-weather housing and can even go underwater, which make them extremely versatile and affordable.  These can easily come in handy for productions later on if necessary.  Not to mention the accessories like the Wifi bacpac for remotely viewing and controlling the GoPro cameras (this will be available February next year) will make them even more controllable than they are now.
  Let me know if you need further information on anything or have questions about any of this.  This is just a rough outline.  I could also look up some consumer HD Video cameras as alternatives but usually sensor quality is poor compared to the DSLR's or GoPros and often don't have Timelapse mode support (only 1 or 2 canon and Sony models i can think of actually have specific Timelapse modes featured on their camcorders).

Timelapse Considerations:

Shooting with GoPros would yield a high frame-count which would require cutting out a lot of unnecessary footage (cannot start and stop them).  They also do not (yet) tether.  However, due to their size and even without the waterproof case they are extremely durable and make it very easy to set them up and let them shoot just about anywhere.

With DSLR's it's the opposite:  They are larger, heavier cameras that need good support or some type of fastening system to keep them in place to make sure they don't move.  They have the capability of shooting larger resolutions (you don't have to shoot at the maximum resolution), AND can even give an advantage by shooting in raw.  However, file sizes go up exponentially by shooting in Raw which is another constraint if you're operating off of memory cards.  The other advantage with them is that they can be tethered to a computer to manage file storage and time-lapse management.  This would allow us to be more efficient in controlling when the camera will shoot and what interval to capture frames in so that we get the time-lapse just right without excessive data to have to manage later on.  The issue with tethering is the software running on the computer only manages 1 camera (as far as I've seen).  If you want multiple DSLR setup you're going to need multiple computers to remotely manage them, which also needs to be in a secure location and protected from weather; not to mention having to acquire a computer to attach to the camera is an expense in and of itself.

These cameras are pretty easy to spot, and are also susceptible to cold temperatures or weather conditions so accessories like UV filters, anti-fog or moisture applications to put on said filters, and plastric trash bags to cover the camera and leave only the lens exposed are all good considerations not only for protecting the camera but also to help deter from possible theft or vandalism.

As with both solutions. they can run on AC power and operate simultaneously, but usually when you're doing timelapses its often in places that are a challenge to get AC power to.  The final factor one may have to bring into consideration is a battery backup / generator solution that can maintain the setup in the event there is no AC power available on-location.

What are your thoughts or experiences on shooting timelapses?  What was your solutions for complex scheduling or longer-length projects?  I'd love to hear your comments and feedback!