Videography

Yesterday we got an interesting email from our friend Pye Jirsa over at SLRLounge.com. Pye recently helped film a video campaign for a friend's Kickstarter product launch called One and he decided to film a quick behind the scenes video on how he lit and filmed the different scenes. Pye is a big DIY guy and many of the lights he used on this production can be found for super cheap. We don't usually post a lot of Kickstarter proposals but the lighting tips from this one were simply too good to pass up. Watch the BTS video below and then click the full post to view the final video.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that we have all of the tools we need to create the projects that we envision. It's easy to just think "if I only had that new camera I could finally take the type of pictures I want to." or "If I could just afford the new Red Scarlet I could finally produce that video concept I've been thinking about." I can tell you from experience that you have access to everything you need right now. Stop thinking so much and take the cell phone out of your pocket and do it.

Red Bull no doubt has some of the best sports video work I've ever seen. In their latest sports commercial, the energy drink company takes to the skies as they film 2x Women's Motocross Association Champion Ashley Fiolek. Ashley, who has been deaf since birth, has been making a lot of noise on the women's circuit, and she has become an inspiration to fans of the sport world wide. The video features some interesting camera angles with much of the footage coming from cable suspended camera. Everything was filmed in 3D to give the POV shots a bit of kick as Ashley soars through the air. Check out the behind the scenes video below and then click on the full post to watch the final commercial.

A few months back I posted a video created by the team at The Underwater Realm showing how they created waterproof hotlights to be used on their feature film that is currently under production. Their entire movie is planned to take place underwater and the shots will be a combination of real underwater footage and studio work. Anyone who has ever shot anything underwater knows that the deeper you go, the bluer the image becomes. With a little bit of color work you can create a much more pleasing looking image. Fast forward to 4:00 for the goods.

I am shocked that I've never seen this amazing commercial before. I actually overlooked it a few times because I thought it was fake. It wasn't until I saw this BTSV that I found out that this really did happen. The camera had to endure temperatures down to 90 degrees below 0 and a massive fall once the balloon finally popped. Luckily the gear survived with the help of a parachute and they were able to create this amazing commercial. Check out the finished commercial in the full post.

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!

via the ProFoto Blog

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.

Now this isn't your normal behind the scenes video. The guys over at Jess3, a creative agency, were asked by ESPN to create a video that explains how the Nielsen television rating system works. I know it sounds a bit boring but it's actually pretty interesting to see how it works especially if you've ever wondered how in the hell Two and A Half Men is rated as the top tv sitcom on the air for the last several years. Check out the behind the scenes video below on how director Mark Kulakoff created this 70s concept and employed his "2.5D" vision into the final production. Click the full post to watch the final ESPN mini show.

As a photographer with a new DSLR, you might be trying your hand at video production. Most people completely overlook audio and they shouldn't. If a video sounds cheap then in most people's minds, it is cheap. If you don't have enough money to afford fancy lav mics, don't worry, you can record clean audio with a number of devices that you may already own. In the video below I will show you how we did it for the first year we filmed videos for Fstoppers with a simple (and free) iPhone app. If you don't have a smart phone then you can buy one of these for $16.

Using drone octocopters to take breathtaking aerial footage is nothing new. But what would the results look like if you could combine a stabilized drone with ultra high def 5K footage from the Red Epic? That's exactly what OMstudios did with their self proclaimed "OM-copter". By using the drone, directors can now produce stunning high def and slow mo aerial shots without the high cost of renting an actual helicopter. Of course you have to be able and willing to secure a $58,000 video camera to a remote controlled octocopter in the first place! Check out the OMstudio Vimeo Channel for some great commercials and other video projects.

The OM-Copter gives wings to the Red Epic from omstudios on Vimeo.

We've featured tons and tons of extreme videos shot on GoPro Cameras. Usually what makes them exciting is experiencing first hand views of activities you probably won't participate in yourself. This video has gone viral since it was released yesterday and for good reason. Mountain biker Evan Van Der Spuy probably didn't see this huge Red Hartebees (an Antelope from southern Africa) charging him as he raced the Albert Falls Dam. Luckily his friend Travis Walker had his GoPro camera rolling and captured this remarkable footage.

Everyone was a little let down when Apple announced an iPhone "4S" rather than a brand new "5". Aside from being a little faster, the iPhone 4S also has a big jump in the camera/video department. This new camera is 8mp and shoots at 1080p with built in vibration reduction. Check out the video below to see what this little cellphone is really capable of. Update: The video was pulled a few minutes after I posted it. To see the video you can head over to Apples site and scroll down to the video section: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/

Videographer Jeff Newton is most well known for his work shooting war zones. When he wasn't being shot at Jeff decided to take up climbing as a hobby and through that heard of free climber Alex Honnold. After meeting Alex, Jeff was hired to film one of his giant free climbs. In the quick video below Jeff takes us through his setup for his segment for 60 Minutes in which he filmed Honnold climbing without any sort of safety gear on a massive rock face. The setup alone took 2 days and a huge crew of people to pull off.

Ryan Enn Hughes just submited his entry for our BTSV contest and it is quite impressive. Ryan teamed up with The Big Freeze and set up 48 D700 cameras in a circle and then fired them all at once as dancers did their thing. The photographs are pretty cool on their own but the real magic happened in post during the editing phase when Ryan teamed up with sound designers at Zelig Sound to create two incredible 30 seconds videos. Obviously this is an extremely high budget project but our contest will not be judge on that so don't be discouraged if you don't have 48 $3000 cameras to play with. As always, you can check out all of the submissions to our contest as they come in here on our forum.

In Jay P. Morgan's newest video he shows us how he uses a crane to bump up production value by using a crane. Now I know you might be thinking there's no way you can afford a crane but you would be wrong. Last month we posted this video review of a $125 crane that anyone can afford. I purchased one and I am really excited to try it out in the near future.

A couple months back Patrick and I flew up to Chicago to film a BTS of a Gatorade commercial featuring Chaz Ortiz. We have still not completed our BTSV but someone just sent me ANOTHER Gatorade commercial shot at the very same school featuring Chaz Ortiz that has a killer BTSV. The video below was shot in one single take and it will blow your mind. Our video should be released soon but it will be hard (impossible) to top this one. Check out the full post to see the BTS.

This video was featured on the Fstoppers Forum and it had me laughing from the beginning. Luckily there is also a behind the scenes video that explains how in the world they created all of this "HD Porn". I would have never thought in a million years you could mix Iron Maiden, the most ridiculous looking poodle, the largest bubble machine I've ever seen, and flashing neon lights to produce an entertaining commercial for Sony high definition products. Then again I'm not paid the big bucks to think this outside the box either. Enjoy the final commercial below and then head over to full post to see how everything was put together.

Now this video may be over many of your heads (it is definitely over mine) because most of us are still photographers who may only dabble in video but this is still worth posting. In the video below Video Copilot shows us how they filmed a car chase scene in the studio with a green screen. I've never shot anything on a green screen before but after seeing how easy this is, I may have to give it a try.

What could be more fun than drifting a MINI Coupé around Rio, Brasil during Carnival? Director Paulo Martins takes you behind the scenes in the latest MINI commercial from the Another Day, Another Adventure campaign. Instead of filming the commercial during the annual Carnival in February, Paulo recreated the festival months later so he could drive the car directly into the parade. I have to admit I was a bit nervous watching the stunt drivers weave in an out of the city but it does make me envy one of these small cars.. Click the full post to watch the final commercial and head over to the MINI Youtube Channel to watch other commercials in the series from Honk Kong and Iceland.

Have you ever wondered how DSLR cameras match up when compared to film and high end HD video cameras? Last year, Zacuto brought together some of the biggest names in the movie industry to see how well the first round of video capable DSLRs compared to the industry’s standard film and HD video cameras in The Great Camera Shoot Out of 2010. This year they have started another series which compares some of the top cameras including 35mm Kodak 5213/5219, Arri Alexa, Red One M-X, Phantom Flex, Sony F3, Panasonic AF100, Canon 1D Mark IV, and Nikon D7000 (where is the D3s?), and a bunch of other professional video cameras. The Great Camera Shootout is a must watch if you are a gearhead or simply enjoy seeing how well the current crop of DSLR cameras are at video. In this video they goal was to compare the overall noise sensitivity and perceived sharpness of different cameras. You might easily got lost in the technical talk used in these discussions (unless you really study this sort of thing) but nevertheless it's pretty interesting to watch as a photographer or film maker. You can also watch other Zucato Shootout Episodes Here.

A few months back I posted another video by "Betty Wants In" that involved skydiving in ultra slow motion. The video was created with the GoPro video camera and software called Twixtor that can create frames for a very realistic slowmotion look. This time they have created a very different video using the same technique. Enjoy this amazing look at the sport from the safety of your office.

Telstra, an Australian wireless carrier, recently produced an ad for the Motorola Zoom tablet. Instead of creating everything with computers in post, the team created most of the moving sets by hand. The question then becomes; was their effort worth it? Can consumers even tell that much of this is real or does the average person consider everything to be fake these days? Although this was an amazing accomplishment, I'm not sure it was worth the extra effort.

I just stumbled upon another interesting video filmed with the GoPro HD video camera. It's not really an informative video but hopefully it will give you guys some inspiration. You can easily film things with these ultra small/light cameras that simply were not possible a few years ago. What could you film in a different way? Update: Sorry about the title. I've not heard of "squash" before.

When it comes to giving great tutorials on DSLR video, the guys at Stillmotion are full of helpful tips and tricks. This latest video discusses some of the advantages you have in setting your camera's white balance and color profiles. Since DSLR cameras still do not allow you to record in a RAW format, you must make many decisions in camera much like you would if you were shooting jpeg (which is great for events like weddings). Lee and I are big fans of getting it right in camera which is crucial when filming video because a compressed video has so much less room for error than a large 12+ megapixel photograph. Seeing real time comparisons of how white balance, sharpness, contrast, and color shifts can change the look of your final video is really helpful and should become a part of your workflow everytime you start filming video. Hopefully many of you can use this info when filming your BTS contest videos. We've featured Stillmotion a lot here on Fstoppers so be sure to check out their older videos as well.

A green screen, also known as a chromakey, can make life really easy if you are doing a lot of video work and want a simple solution for dropping in different backgrounds. David Dugdale created a great tutorial for green screen which shows how to effectively light a chromakey background and key it out in Premiere. ReflecMedia has created a different solution for chromakeying with their Chroma Background Kit. It uses a green LED ringlight that illuminates their special background made up of glass beads. Even with the lovely Olivia Tech explaining how it works, I'm still a bit shocked that such a small ringlight can illuminate the background without affecting the subject. This system isn't cheap but I can see the advantage of not having to carry extra lights just to evenly light a huge background especially out on location.

Footage like this scares the bejesus out of me but also makes me wish I knew how to surf. Tahiti is home of Teahupoo, the world's most dangerous naturally occurring wave. If you've watched the documentary Riding Giants then you've seen how monsterous these waves can become. I'm not sure that Teahupoo is actually larger than Peahi or Mavericks but it must be called the most dangerous wave for a reason. This video was shot with the Phantom in all it's slo-mo glory. Click the full post to see more footage in real time as 32 of the world's top surfers try to wrangle the beast.

TheUnderwaterRealm.com is a blog that is following the production of an independent film that will take place completely underwater. Each week the guys and gals are releasing a BTSV which shows exactly what they have been working on. If you are interested in movie production, I highly suggest checking out their website. In the video below the team is forced to build an underwater Kino Flo lighting system. This video is 1 of 29 so there is a lot more quality content to be seen.

Hurricane Irene down here in Charleston, SC was pretty unmemorable. However, up in NYC it seems most everyone pretty much followed the precautions and got the $@*# out of dodge. So what did the city that never sleeps look like when hit overnight by a historic storm? Check out this interesting black and white video shot by some daring videographers as they visit the subways and streets. Also be sure to head over to the Buffalo Picture House for some other great films and documentaries. Let's hope they still have working gear after all that rain!

If you've been shooting stills or video for any length of time, chances are you've often thought about making a product that could make your life a bit easier. Cinetics designer Justin Jensen's own idea was to make a simple dolly system for DSLR cameras that was also portable. He designed and launched his CineSkates on Kickstarter and the response has been huge. So far Justin has raised more than 6x his initial goal of $20,000 so it looks like this production version will soon be in photographers' bags world wide. The system basically adds skateboard wheels to the versatile Joby Gorilla Pods and creates a system that gives your video footage high production movement. You can also the CineSkates for timelapse photography. Check out the video below to see exactly how the system works.

Tom Guilmette is now a pretty regular name on Fstoppers because his BTSVs in the field of video are some of the best we have seen. In the video below Tom travels out west with Eric Kessler to film BTS footage of some of the top timelapse shooters of our time. My personal favorite is Tom Lowe and we haven't heard much from him in the last year because he is still working on his timelapse feature film. Check out the video below to learn from the best.

If you are a fan of iphone photo apps, huge CGI production movies, and sexy girls fighting with mystical powers then you will probably love this behind the scenes video. The Demon Cam is an iphone app that allows you to turn your face into a demon zombie. In order to promote the release of the Demon Cam, the guys over at Video Copilot created an unbelievably complex promo video that showcases how the application works. The behind the scenes video has a lot of CGI and chromakey trickery but it also has a bunch of clever ideas any photographer could use in their own productions. After reading the reviews of this app and seeing the amount of work that went into the opening video, I'm kind of curious to see what a Patrick Hall demon would look like. Click the full post to see how everything came together in the final video and head over to the app store to pick up the $.99 iphone cam.

If you are planning a behind the scenes video for our 2011 photo contest, you probably also need to setup an interesting interview segment to explain the details of your photoshoot. Most photographers spend a lot of money on their flash equipment but often don't have much in the way of constant lights. The guys over at SLRlounge have come up with a great BTS video on how you can create an interesting interview set on a budget. In this video, Pye Jirsa used basic work lights mixed with natural ambient light. In our contest video we either shot completely natural light or mixed in some of these inexpensive LED lights to make it a little more interesting. Taking a little bit of time to make your interview footage look good always goes a long way and is often just as fun designing as the actual photoshoot itself.

It's really exciting that every new DSLR now takes amazing, cinema quality HD video. One of the main reason it looks so different from video cameras of the past is the super shallow depth of field that large sensor sizes produce. It looks really cool BUT you will have to learn to manually focus the camera just like they have to do with movie cameras. If you are looking for a great tutorial on the basics check out the BTSV by Still Motion below.

Stop motion videos are becoming increasingly more popular as digital cameras and software make them easier to create. Dave Wallace decided to make things quite a bit harder when he shot 2335 images, had them printed out, and then shot them a second time in picture frames on the wall. It took hours of work but the finished product is well worth the time. Check it out in the full post.

One of the unfortunate problems with running a website is you are inevitably going to send traffic to a misdirected URL or even worse a page that flat out doesn't exist. You are probably used to seeing pages that look something like this. Well the guys over at Nosh.me came up with a funny little way to track down their own 404 pages and fix the issue or flat out take them down. Check out the final video below and hit the full post to see some BTS on how the guys conceptualized the scenes. If you really enjoy this sort of thing then you will find some really helpful tips about color grading, after effects, and detailed production notes over at the 404 process page. Who knew it was so violent behind each of our websites?

Nosh: 404 from Firespotter Labs on Vimeo.

Being a child of 80s and having lived through all of the video game consoles, I really got a kick out of this evolution of games video. Figuring out a clever way to film a scene can be daunting at the least but building an entire video around a single frame can be even tougher. Joe Penna aka MysteryGuitarMan and his friends came together to produce a collaborative video showcasing different video games through the years. It's creativity like this that we are looking for in your own BTS videos. Click the full post to see the final video.

Have you ever wondered how DSLR cameras match up when compared to film and high end HD video cameras? Last year, Zacuto brought together some of the biggest names in the movie industry to see how well the first round of video capable DSLRs compared to the industry's standard film and HD video cameras in The Great Camera Shoot Out of 2010. This year they have started another series which compares some of the top cameras including 35mm Kodak 5213/5219, Arri Alexa, Red One M-X, Phantom Flex, Sony F3, Panasonic AF100, Canon 1D Mark IV, and Nikon D7000 (where is the D3s?), and a bunch of other professional video cameras. The Great Camera Shootout is a must watch if you are a gearhead or simply enjoy seeing how well the current crop of DSLR cameras are at video. It's pretty amazing to see the consumer Nikon D7000 holds its own against such a competitive group; I can only imagine what the next crop of Nikon cameras is going to do! Check out the trailer below and hit the full post for the first episode that outlines exactly what sort of tests Zacuto is going to run.