It seems every week someone is producing a piece of art that pushes the limits of both technology and also creativity. One trend has been to create commercials and videos completely in camera with minimal post processing. The new music video for Kina Grannis completely blows my mind! Director Greg Jardin worked with Kina to produce a music video that features “jellybean art” in a stop motion sort of way. The video is not only incredibly entertaining but by creating such an interesting video, Kina has found a way to spread her talent to a much larger audience (almost 2 million people at the moment). Even if you may never create something that requires this much work, as a creative professional you should always be thinking of a clever way to share your work to a larger audience. Check out the video below and then click the full post to watch the making of video.
I think this video has now been submitted to us about 5 times and we have simply been slow to post it. Rip Curl and TimeSlice, partners in the overall development, used 30 GoPro HD video cameras to freeze an infinite number of moments that could be viewed. The major benefit being a better way of catching all the performance surfing the Rip Curl team riders were doing, rather than just a fraction of it.
Here is your heart thumping GoPro video of the week. During a routine paragliding expedition in the Indian Himalayans an eagle collides and is caught in the chute lines of the glider. Acting quickly he deploys the reserve chute and lands safely and frees the bird from the lines. This video would be scary from a 3rd person’s perspective but it is even more horrifying watching it first person, from a helmet cam.
I’m not sure I believe that 3D is the way of the future but the current technology behind it does fascinate me. Check out the video below in which Peter Jackson takes us behind the scenes of his much anticipated film The Hobbit. In this video Peter and his team explain how they use 2 Red Epics to produce the most realistic type of 3D footage available today. How many of you guys actually own a 3D TV? Maybe we all will one day but at this point, I don’t know a single person with one.
Out of the blue Canon just jumped into the movie business. Hours ago Canon just announced the new C300 video camera and minutes ago Vincent Laforet released “Movius” his newest short, shot on this unreleased camera. Patrick and I have been trying to get in contact with Vincent over the last few weeks (for a reason you will soon know) and I now understand why he was so “busy”. Check out the short below and the BTSV in the full post.
So I am going through some of the slow-mo HD camera options that are on the market right now for an adventure I will be taking soon, and I stumbled upon the new GoPro HD Hero2. On their site they have one of the illest trailers I have ever seen for a camera, and I had to watch it several times. This isn’t an ad for the camera and I am not saying that this is the one I will buy, but man what else compares? With that said, watch this trailer, it really is rad to see what kind of punch that tiny package can deliver! (that’s what she said)
As we have said many times before, we are huge fans of the crew at StillMotion for their wedding work. In this video, the team steps outside of their standard job to shoot for Shedd Aquarium. They decided to film most of the project on the new Red Epic so that they could shoot at variable frame rates up to 300fps. In the video below, they take us behind the scenes of the creation of this project. Check out the full post to see the reel from the shoot.
If you were approached by a big client and asked to only shoot with one light, would you freak out or would you make the most of the situation? In Nike’s latest basketball commercial Basketball Never Stops, they only used one single hard light to tell the story how the game and fans go on even after the court lights turn off. I think videos like this are a great reminder that sometimes less is more. Sometimes a simple setup can still produce dramatic results (even if you have you substitute a helicopter for a lightstand). Check out the video below and click the full post to see a short Behind The Scenes video on the making of this latest Nike Ad.
A few months back we posted about the cheapest crane on the market and it was a huge hit with our readers. If you happen to have a little extra money (about $300) you may want to invest in the newest and smallest crane on the market. Check out the video review below. If this looks like something you can’t live without, head over to eBay to buy one of these new jibs.
This striking image (pun intended) was shot by Blair Bunting for a Deadliest Catch ad for Discovery Channel. Curious to know how he did it? Well, luckily for us, his assistant Paul Morton filmed the whole thing, and Mike Maez was kind enough to edit it down into a digestible and inspiring video. Do not worry, it did not take any knocked out teeth or injured sailors to get the job done, but rather a couple of Pro-7a units and 3 high powered leaf blowers. Have a look and see for yourself!
In May 2012, Marvel will release the comic superhero movie The Avengers. Some apple fans are suggesting that footage actually in the movie was shot on an Apple Iphone. The Avengers cinematographer Seamus McGarvey was quoted saying,
“The beauty of photography or cinema is that you make every choice based on the content at hand. On The Avengers, I did a couple of shots on the iPhone and they are in the movie. In fact, they are in the trailer! I understand that sometimes there is no choice and you have to go for the cheapest option, but if you are limited for choice, you can still make poignant decisions that will effect the look of the film.”
It’s pretty crazy to think footage from the older iPhone 4 (which only shoots 720) could ever be good enough to mix in with real footage taken on pro cinema cameras. With the amount of preplanning and the huge budgets allowed on these films, would they not just reproduce the scene again and capture it from all angles? I just can’t imagine something happened spontaneously where the cinematographer’s footage from his phone was the best possible footage. What do you guys think? Can anyone identify the footage in the trailer below?
Lee’s wedding video A Moving Moment created a lot of discussion about how to get high production shots with minimal gear. The truth of the matter is Lee handheld 90% of the footage and used our favorite slider, The Atlas 10 Slider, for the remaining 10% of the shots. Olivia Tech has recently demoed a knock off slider called the Konova Slider and explains some simple techniques that can really up your video production easily and on a budget. Olivia is also using the main lens Lee used in his video, the Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC, which has the best vibration compensation of any 2.8 lens in this range. If you want the quality of a true Cinevate Slider for a little less money, we have had awesome results using the Cinevate Atlas Pulley System as a fully functioning slider. Just make sure you put a solid ball head on it first!
As many of you know I (Lee Morris) am a professional wedding photographer. I was never a big fan of wedding videos until I saw the work that StillMotion was putting out. Even if you hate weddings you can appreciate what they do simply from an artistic standpoint. Even though I loved their work, I actually found it discouraging because I knew I could never do their style of video as well as they could so I never tried to film a wedding.
I had the idea for over a year of shooting a wedding video similar to how I shoot stills. If I could slow down the video enough I could deal with basically a moving image, something that I felt a lot more comfortable with. It finally worked out that Patrick Hall had a wedding on a day that I was free and 3 days before the wedding I ran the idea by the bride and then called my buddy Mike to see if he wanted to help me film it. Check out the finished product below and the walk-through in the full post.
It seems like every week someone uploads a new GoPro video which gives me shivers. Well this video has topped them all. 3 guys with helmet cams climb on to the OUTSIDE of a elevator and ride it to the top of the building before jumping off. The first person view makes you really feel like you are there.
The amount of effort that went into Sony’s 3D commercial Two Worlds is pretty unbelievable. I’ve watched this video twice now and still don’t know if I know what I’m seeing. The creative team filmed the actors at 2500 FPS which required more than half a million watts of lighting and some of the largest fabric grids I’ve ever seen. Then using green screen, they filmed tons of slow motion projectiles to help their CGI team in the rendering of the background and moving elements. Because super slow motion video often looks fake even if it’s real, making sense of what is real and what isn’t real in this video is what makes it so interesting to me. Check out the video below and click the full post to see how they created this commercial inspired by the legendary Leonard Cohen.
This striking image (pun intended) was shot by 
