behind the scenes

Sometimes when we’re in the rough cutting process, we need placeholder footage for material we either haven’t shot or haven’t purchased yet.  It allows our clients to envision what the final cut will be like once all the right pieces are there, and we collect these placeholder pieces from sources all over the internet.  

Over the past year, our favorite footage-finders, “the Ryans,” had been using a program called Snapz Pro X to capture footage from the web.  Based on their description, you simply set your little selector tool (kind of like a crop tool) around any video frame on the internet… Hit record and it would screen capture everything happening inside the little box you set.  Pretty cool, no?  

Actually… not as cool as we initially thought.  It’s possible we didn’t delve deep enough into the settings and options Snapz Pro X offers, or perhaps we weren’t using it how it’s intended to be used, but editing with those screen captures was a nightmare!   There was no good way to get a consistent size/ frame rate of the videos we would capture, making it incredibly hard to use those videos on a timeline in a Final Cut project.  We had all sorts of issues with crashes, render errors, “slipping” of clip selections, etc.  Again, we probably weren’t using the software for its intended purpose.  I’d just caution anyone else considering using this software for the same goal. 

And then, a new discovery… just this week, Jerry  (a big believer in always having the right tools for the job) set out to find a new and better solution for a project we’re working on at the moment.  The project is a fundraising video for a large dinner that will benefit Nevada student scholarships and the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.  The script calls for us to intercut shots of a local community leader with some funny b-roll.  Jerry decided that, before we started collecting placeholder footage for the funny b-roll, we needed a better system.  He found a program called  TubeSock.  The program costs only $15 for an individual license, or $50 for a “family pack” of 5, and it allows you to download videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, and other sites, and saves them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable.  All you do is enter in the URL, and it does the rest for you… And most importantly for us, it saves the files in an FCP-friendly format (like m4v, mp4, etc), with consistent sizing and frame rate (no more render errors!).

Not sure if it’s the perfect solution — we haven’t tried it yet on other sites like Vimeo — but it seems to be our silver bullet for the moment.

As some of you know, we just wrapped a Western short film “The Sierra” shot entirely in the snow.  We were at a beautiful location called White Wolf.  Amazing, amazing amazing.  It was fast, fun and furious with gunfights, stunts, horses, cowboys and indians.  We shot a 25-minute film in about 6 days.    

It brought me back to the old days of making snowboard films, minus the cowboys and indians, probably about as many guns.  I spent a lot of years trudging around the snow with an Arri SB and a tripod strapped to my back.  Times have changed and my back has gotten weaker, but I hopefully have become a bit wiser.  That said, I believe  many of the lessons I learned still hold true. So I thought I would throw out a couple of useful tips for shooting in the snow….

1.  Lots of manpower, the more the better.  It always takes twice as long to get around and set positions.  It just physically takes more energy to move, especially carrying equipment.

2.  Always have foul weather gear for your camera.  Even if it’s not snowing, you’ll get blowing crystals or falling snow debris off of  tree limbs that will scuttle even the best camera, or spot your lens at the least.

3.  Neutral density filters are your friend. You should have no lack of light or fill while out in the winter wonderland but you might have way too much DOF with all the exposure.  I like to run with an N9 and a Pola depending on time of day and direction.  On this shoot we were shooting a RED ONE camera with an N9, IR and Pola most of the time.  Occasionally we would go to the N1.2, which should take about 4 stops out of the equation.

4.  When we were making snowboard films, we would do our follow work hand-held on a snowboard or skis just “suitcasing” the camera.  For this shoot, we used a combo of hand-held and steadi-cam, jib arm and dolly.  For the steadi-cam, it was super important to pack down a trail for the operator to have the smoothest possible track. The same applies to hand-held.

For the dolly we brought 10ft long 2×12 planks to lay first and level the dolly track on.  Wood has a slower sink rate and this is important when trying to maintain a level dolly.  When you put the metal down on the snow, it just kinda sinks no matter how firm it is.

5.  When shooting film, I would always expose for the ambient fill.  Basically put the ball of the meter towards camera without angling towards the ground or sky.  I was looking for a very average reading, knowing that the snow would reflect way hotter than other more neutral shooting environments.  If a little sun snuck onto the ball from the backlight that was ok, or conversely if it were front lit, letting the ball of the meter take what light the sun was throwing.  Just once again not angling any other way than towards the camera.  This was a very simple and effective way to get a fat negative and compensate for the abundance of fill.

Now with the RED ONE camera, protecting highlights is key and especially important in the snow.  Usually in the morning I would set my meter to the native ISO of the RED (320) and check what that looked like on the monitor —  maybe even transfer a shot to RED Alert to see what was holding and what wasn’t.  I also had my camera set up in Redspace.  This allowed me to see a higher key image on the monitors.  This was important because of the snow blinding that happens after a full day in the snow.  Brights start to seem duller and your inclination is to open up a little more.  Having a hotter image on the screens helped to keep me honest and true to my original exposure ideals.

6. Bring lots of sunscreen and reapply as much as you drink water.  You’re gonna be at elevation and you can get dehydration and altitude sickness in a heart beat.  Just ask Erika about that.

Cheers

J

Strong winds are blowing in Reno today and I’m in our upstairs edit bay, color correcting a project for the Tahoe Forest Hospital’s cancer program.

It’s always interesting finding ‘the look’ for a project.  This one, in particular, needed to be soft yet real.  Not as soft as you’d make a leading lady or a pop diva, but approachable and warm.

In contrast, we had another recent project which required the exact opposite.  It was a large-scale original artwork commissioned by the Nevada Museum of Art.  The piece was based on legendary Texas poet Buck Ramsey’s Grass, and the coordinating artist Nik Hafermaas wanted the faces to look like road maps, so I increased the contrast to give them more weather.   Here are a few of the images from the cowboy poetry piece: 

Joel Nelson, cowboy featured in "Grass"

Joel Nelson Close Up

Here’s the final cowboy poetry piece by FLF Films in its entirety.

For comparison, here are some stills from the cancer piece.

Before Color Correcting

After Color Correcting

Notice the added warmth and contrast in the “After” still.  I also softened the edges and a bit of the underlying gamma channel.  

You probably won’t cry as much seeing the stills as I did while I was editing it.