The end shot of this piece has requires that our main character stops walking and at that moment, he see's himself walk into frame. The main character faces himself and then an action ensues. This would be a very easy thing to accomplish if the final shot was locked off on a tripod but because this piece is shot on a steadicam, the final shot actually is a slow drifting shot, that being because it is virtually impossible for the steadicam to stay completely motionless. so what this means is I have to do several things in order to compile this last shot. The first being that i would have to do an initial stabilization of the final approach. I then have to go in a rotoscope the second main character. Once that is done, I have to go back to the final shot and track a portion of the frame to get the spatial data. Once I have done this, I have to pin the rotoscoped figure to that data to give the illusion of both characters being shot at the same time. This in effect will match the camera moves with the second character thus creating the effect that both where shot simultaneously.

Tracking video can be touch and go especially depending on which software I use. For the initial track, I used the built in affter effects tracker to do a two point track tracking the position and the rotation. This would stabalize it enough to allow me to do a rotoscoping. Then I used mocha to go back and motion track a portion of the scene so that i could pin the second character to match the slight drifting of the camera. But below is some shots of roto heaven.

Below is a little timelapse of a portion of the roto. I don't know why I bother to document this process, I guess I do it just to remind myself what a pain in the ass it is and just how I can actually do something really difficult if I just put my mind to it.

FYI the project is done but I am going to wait a bit before I put it up for viewing, the project has to screen first and a few feathers have to be unruffled. Plus I have yet to post on the motion tracking of the background for inserting the morphing trippy graphic smorgasbord... or not. FUN STUFF!

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I know it has been quite some time since my last post. To be honest things have been very very VERY slow this past year. At times I found myself wondering if I would have to demote myself back to "starving artist" status and I have so been there and done that and to be honest..... IT SUCKS!!!!

But then as if someone flipped a switch, this past month and a half has turned out to be quite interesting. The work started trickling in, first with this projecta and then in the past few days, my phone has rung more than it has over the entire past 9 months combined and I am not exagerating. I am thanking my post production gods that is has as to be honest, I was starting to loose it. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!

The job I am currently working had an interesting set of guidlines and end goals. It is called called "Archrival" and is directed by Dan Pak and produced by Whitespace Studios. To start with, this particular piece involved 1 minute constant take incorporating 15 + characters to happen in procession over a space of 150 meters. The director wanted the playback to appear in slowmotion in regards to the Main character but for the background characters to appear in real time. This presented numerous challenges.

First off the theory behind accomplishing something like this we mean we would have to shoot at a high frame rate. By doing this, you capture more information, then when it is played back at normal speed you will be able to see a nice and smooth slow motion play back. For ppl have difficulty imagining this, think about recording your voice on a tape recorder while the tape recorder is is moving at a fast speed. Then play back the tape at normally speed, the result is a voice that is being played real l y sss looooooow.

The second request was that the content shot was shot smooth. Using tracks and a dolley was not an option as we could no close down the street at our location to lay down a track, which meant steady cam.

Third, we had set budget to operate in which pretty much dictated what equipment we would have to use.

Fourth, the one minute take using steady cam and being shot at a high framerate would have to occur while cueing 15+ actors who all had to perform in sync (the sync issues will be explained later) and we had 4 hours to do it.

To use quote from scotty in the new star trek movie, "it would be like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet wearing a blindfold while riding a horse", that is in terms doing everything right and getting the take. The odds wear not in our favor but with enough planning and rehearsal combined with best equipment we could find in our given budget (which turned out to be a nightmare in itself) and using the most experienced ppl I could find to work that equipment.

Because of the fact we where using a steadicam, we had to find a large format camera that could provide enough weight to counterbalance the steadicam rig. Although there are smaller rigs designed for lighter cameras, it decided on to go with the full sized steadicam rig because it offers the smoothest shot when operated properly. The smaller rigs like movecam and glidecam tend to put out more drifting when being used which in this case would mean the shot would not wor k. Because we had to go with a larger camera, plus the lack of availability of cameras (with in the budget) that shoot at a variable frame rate, in the end we had to go with the Panasonic AJ-HDC27F, which is a rather old camera which only shoots to tape. It uses those big monster DV format tapes.

There were a few comprimises we had to make in order to shoot variable frame rate, this camera doesn't shoot high speed in the traditional sense, not like a film camera or a RED camera, instead of shooting at a higher speed, it actually doubles up on frames or something fancy like that, but in fact plays back in realtime so it is impossible to see what the final footage will look like. Plus as a result of this format, it requires a specialized deck which, at least out here, was very hard to find a facility that provided the transfer service. Perhaps in a later post, I will touch on the difficulties I have faced as a result of using this camera's variable frame rate.

Here are some shots of Grant Douglas, the DP for the shoot setting up the steadicam rig. It really is a monster, and after all the necessary attachments, the rig weighed in excess of 70 pounds / 30 kilos . Now imagine carrying that and trying to do a 1 minute take while walking and operating the camera. Not so easy! Then in order to make sure everyone was moving at an appropriate speed during the recording we constructed a click track that we were comfortable with at both its record speed of 96bpms and its play back speed of 48 bpms. The trickiest thing about it was to make sure that at record speed, it wasn't too fast so that the DP could not keep up walking along side, but still keeping it fast enough so when played back in slow motion, things were not too slow. Not as easy as it sounds I tell you. This was played live during the takes to make sure everyone nailed their speeds.

The Post Production is currently in process, I actually do not have so much time to post blogs and make my deadline :P , so I am probably just going to do one wrap up blog at the end of this. I have a deadline for the 17th of Oct. so I really have to hit this hard. basically what I have on my plate is rotoscoping ( my personal favorite), motion stabalizing and color grading. I would have liked to document the shoot a lot more but I took on the role of impromptu Assistant Director for the shoot so I wasn't able to take too many pics (above), I did take some video and that's below. Stay tuned...

btw It's great to be back !!!! :)

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I knew there was going to be a solar eclipse today but I didn't expect it to be a clear day here, that and I didn't expect to really care. I woke up early this morning to an email telling me that a (really) well paid 6 month job that was supposed to happen was no longer happening. I had been banking on this job to get me through the rest of the year and was finally thinking to myself, "no more struggling! Fuck the global economic crisis!". But alas :(

So then...I realized the eclipse was happening and I stepped outside horribly equipped to capture the event. Sorry but my lumix fx-180, even though it is a great little digital camera, just wasn't cut out for it. None the less I hit the street with a cannibalized pair of sunglass lenses hoping they would work as an impromptu neutral density filter. I quickly realized it wasn't going to happen. I remembered back in my college days, myself and friends had been sitting outside eating lunch whilst a partial solar eclipse was occurring. One of my friends had poured his pepsi into a bowl and we were watching the eclipse from the reflection. I immediately began looking for dark puddles of water and dark tinted windows to capture reflections from. The resulting images are very interesting, a bit spooky even. To tell the truth, they look like shots of the moon at night.

Anyways I believe I started this post with some intent of painting a moral to things. At the end of this all, I felt a little better and realized in the scale of things, we are all small and sometimes our problems are just not as shitty as they might seem. If we stop to think about how much our lives suck, then we could really miss the spectacle s of the enormous universe around us ie. giant moon passing in front of even more giant sun all at the edge of a galaxy that is a mere spec of sand in a beach larger than anything describable.

Hope someone enjoys the pics... solar eclipses rock! Next one in T minus 100 years and counting!