Autumn - Heather Mac

I had the pleasure recently to shoot the Music Video for the first Single from Heather Mac's new Album. We filmed the video up thin the Mountains above Simon's Town close to Cape Town in South Africa.

Part of the inspiration of the music video for “Autumn” stems from Native American Indian tribal culture. An intrinsic part of many of these tribes is “The Contrary”, usually young men who spend most of their lives doing everything backwards, some of the contraries were considered to be clowns or fools.

The philosophy behind this is not merely to be different but rather a playful reminder to the rest of the tribe that the way things are done is not always necessarily the right way. The Contraries are an absolute mirror of the societies they live in, and their actions are a form of therapy for the people who are being contrary as well as for the people witnessing their action.

We found an amazing location high in the cape mountains for our film and thought that the stark but beautiful surroundings would prove an excellent stage to for our simple story.

The story in a nutshell is about someone trying to get back in touch with her spirit through meditation. This journey inwards reveals a playful persona , “The Contra’. One of the lines of the song: “… here in my heart, a drumbeat calling…” invoked this link to her inner calling and innate connection to tribalism.

Because we wanted to create an intimate atmosphere in a vast and not easily accessible location, we decided to keep the shooting process as simple as possible. With the help of some of the latest camera technology we were able to produce a high quality image with extremely lightweight gear and with some careful scheduling we were also able to shoot with virtually no lighting.

All in all the process of making this video was fun, quick and had zero environmental impact -We did not shoot on film, so no processing chemicals were used and there were only 4 people working on the location. The opportunity to shoot in unspoiled nature inspired us to leave only our footprints and take only the images we we created.

I hope you enjoy the film.

Beyond the Still

Much can be said about the rise of the DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) Camera as a viable film making tool. This project helmed by Vincent Laforet & Canon shows how powerful this tool really is. Vincent Laforet became somewhat of a underground star of the DSLR film making world with his video commissioned by Canon to show what their DSLR's could do.

The idea behind "Beyond the Still" was to start a story with a short film and then get to pass the story on to film makers to tell the next chapter. Once the winner of the chapter was announced the competition was opened again and film makers were invited to continue the story using the last chapter's film as a point of reference.

The result is a short film in 8 chapter which makes surprisingly compelling viewing. Not only is the story a fun ride, but the films really show the versatility and ability of the DSLR as a quality film making tool.

Here are all the eight chapters of "Beyond the Still"




For more information follow this link:
http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthestill

Make a Movie using a Scanner!

So you want to make a movie and you don't have a camera... Well how about a scanner. This animated short was shot on a Canon Flatbed Computer Scanner. The short apparently took about six hours to make. Its called "Memoirs of a Scanner" Enjoy:

Memoirs of a Scanner (Martinibomb Version) from Damon Stea on Vimeo.

The music is by Coconut Monkey Rocket & Martinibomb

The new campaign for Mars UK

Mars UK owns the branding for various sweets in the UK Market and this particular campaign focusses on Maltesers. In two days we shot various vignettes of 10 seconds and 5 seconds each that viewed together will make up a story about a Hand knocking on the door where all the Mars products live and then the hand chases a Maltesers packet through various situations until it finally catches Maltesers on a Golf Course. For the commercials one of our local FX companies (CFX) that specialises in prosthetics and devices built us a Hand that could be worn by a perfomer. because the hand was lightweight and totally pliable the perfomer was able to run, walk and even ride a skateboard while in the Hand suit.

Again the commercial was shot using the RED Camera in a documentary style to add realism to a totally unrealistic situation.

The Vision Research Phantom Photosonic Camera

Today we shoot CU photosonic work of milk being poured into tea for a Nigerian Milk Company called Peak. Not too long ago this would have been done with a 35mm photosonics camera but the cost of the film alone for these shots have made the HD Phantom camera the way to go. The chip size of this camera is comprable to Super 35mm so resolution and depth of field are really quite good. They also make an IMAX resolution camera, but I have not seen it yet.

So here's how it works: you roll a take and the you can immediately see playback at the desired frame rate. If the take is good you then need to record the take to hardrive which takes about 5 to 10mins depending on the length of the take. This Phantom is able to shoot 1500fps at a 720p resolution which is fine for TV. But if you need a 2K image then the fastest it will go is 1000fps.

Today shooting liquids we will be shooting between 250fps and 500fps so we will get the 2K resolution.

The Red Camera

My first time working with the RED CAMERA. A new cheap option for shooting HD - Far cheaper then the Arri D21 we used on "Crusoe" and also a lot cheaper than the Sony F35 we used on Natalee Holloway. The D21 and F35 have bigger chips which means a shallower depth of feild which seems to help make the digital images look less crisp and more film like, but this also means needing more light and a challenge for the focus pullers. So far I'm impresed with the RED Camera; it takes PL mounted 35mm lenses and they are planning a larger chip version of their cameras soon. Where the Red Camera really knocks their competitor's socks off though is the pricing the RED ONE body will cost you $17 500.00 where as the D-21 or F35 is in the region of $80 000.00 or more...

The D-21 has to be tethered to a DIT* system as an AD I hate this - it really slows things down, but it doea allow for more precise control from the DOP which is needed considering the lack of latitude that HD still has in comparason to Film. The F35 has the recorder attached or it can be configured to be tethered to a DIT. With the recorder attached (The way we did it on Holloway) it was a really heavy beast that made some of the steadicam shots have a slight shudder due to the weight and another issue was the amount of juice required to run the beast. Two batteries were required one for the camera, one for the recorder and everytime one of the batteries went down you would have to reboot the camera and review the recored to make sure you weren't recording over footage and tome make sure that the timecode was still set correctly (Us AD's don't have much patience for these kinds of delays - Film you load and then you can just shoot and the batteries last for hours...)

The RED CAMERA system that we used recorded onto 16GB flashdrives that held about the same amount of footage as a 400ft roll of film - not a bad concept because reloading is really quick and easy and I'm sure 32GB and 64GB drives will be available soon. The RED can also be tethered for full HD monitoring and even attached to a DIT if need be so it seemed to be the most versitile system.

The camera assistants were not too impressd with the quality of the RD though and they agreed that they all prefered working with the Arri D-21, but hey Arri also makes film cameras so I guess they are used to working on Arri film cameras that must be very similar to the D-21 in many ways.

All in all I'm impressed with the RED CAMERA and I will be keeping and eye on its progress, I think they have found a niche and if they can keep their priced low ARRI may be reduced to only supplying lenses, although I think Zeiss and Angenieux already have a head start in that department.

(*DIT: basically the recorders that record what the camera is seeing using a HD cable, The DOP will usually sit in the DIT tent along side the DIT technician and also have access to a degree of color processing and possible have iris contol on the cameras to set the premium stop for each shot and often will need to pull the stops due to the lack of stop latitude)