In this fun behind the scenes video, we get to see San Diego-based production company SaintWest staging video shots for the "Find Your Moment" campaign with Torrey Pines golf course. Get an inside look on how the crew captures the golf experience in a cinematic way, but also improvises to make a simulated golf hole for a unique POV shot. Inside are the final videos.
If you're trying to grow your business and connect with clients on a personal level, then learning how to promote yourself with video showreels is a great step in that direction (Lee is clearly ahead of most of us on this one - check out R.L. Morris Weddings to see what I mean). Today until January 26, Sue Bryce and Hailey Bartholomew will be teaching a step-by-step guide to marketing our businesses with video.
PHLEARN has just released part two of their interview with Erik Almas – which continues to be one of my favorite interviews with a photographer recently. It’s refreshing to see an interview that not just explains the technical aspect of shooting and storytelling, but the reasoning behind them. Erik is a great example of technique and creative vision working together.
A few months ago, I hit up my buddy Paul Miller, who is a movie director out of Southern California. Regular readers of my personal blog site may recognize Paul from my previous Mad Max Interceptor shoot. Paul told me that he is part of a group of folks that essentially constructs clothing, weapons, and even vehicles to re-enact the Mad Max post apocalypse in the Mojave desert, much like some re-enact the US Civil War. They are often referred to as "Wastelanders" after their annual gathering entitled "Wasteland Weekend".
There is no denying that super slow motion looks awesome. I would love to get my hands on a Phantom Flex for a day or two and just shoot video of what would normally seem like the most mundane things, just to watch them slowed down to a speed where the eye can discern all the little details and nuances of what is happening. The team at Variable shot 8 Hours In Brooklyn using a Phantom Flex, and it is meant to serve as a visual case study of various aspects of daily life in Brooklyn.
A few weeks ago Eric Pare released the 24x360 project which included 24 cameras taking a long exposure picture of a single subject. It's difficult to explain but once you see it you will understand. Eric was kind enough to write up an article just for us on how these incredible video clips were made.
Sherpas Cinema, who have been featured before on Fstoppers, produced a ski film called All.I.Can, and in that film was a segment directed by JP Auclair that shows a skier doing runs through a town in British Columbia. They threw it online and after getting millions of views, decided to post the making of video, which is posted here. It shows how they planned shots (and got lucky on some others) while running around Canada for two weeks with a RED camera.
Poland's video superminds, White Kanga, have come up with a way to project video onto a 3D object that can move and is capable of viewer interaction. Im not going to try explaining this and act like I know a dang thing about it, but this is VERY cool technology and will definitely change the game for lots of display, gaming and maybe even cinematic applications. Also, watch this video which shows the video software calibrating the projector with the target object, it gives you more of an idea how it works. Really incredible stuff! Enjoy
Photoshop, it's either a scary program or a fun one, depending on how much you understand it. There are times where it just becomes a nightmare. Specifically, extracting a model with flyaways from a backdrop. There are indeed many methods to do so. Here's one more that really gives us a good solution.
I have always been fascinated by space travel. Back in college a friend showed me a documentary that proposed that the moon landing is a hoax. The arguments were based on photography, videography, and lighting tricks and I remember thinking "wow could this really have been staged?" Mr. SG Collins makes a pretty compelling argument claiming that neither NASA nor Stanley Kubrick were actually technologically capable of producing a video that could stand up to modern scrutiny. Collin's photographic argument should put a final nail in the conspiracists' theory for good.
Von Wong, who you should all know by now -- if not from us, then from the million and one places he scurries around the world and online -- was given a challenge by a friend, Sebastien Roignant: "To shoot and edit an insane image involving two orcs, a witch king, warrior, villager and a cinema theatre...all in 4 hours without having any information ahead of time." Von Wong is also up for a [Framed] award for best conceptual photographer this year. Vote for him here.
Timelapses aren't just for moving clouds and the northern lights (but they sure are pretty) but in fact their use for studying earth sciences is becoming a key part in learning more about our landscape and using the images to educate and inform the masses. I interviewed Forrest Pound of San Francisco based Kontent Films, who was tasked with building custom timelapse rigs to document parts of the Colorado River. He has shared this DIY project step by step, so read on to learn more.
Although there are thousands Guinness Wold Records and some are broken every day, it's still inspiring to see large numbers of people come together with a common goal. Recently, both GoPro and Devin Graham filmed different world records.
When I bought my first DSLR 4 years ago, I offered a very enthusiastic "SAYONARA!" to the film era. This wasn't because I'm not grateful for the journey that photography has endured to end up where it is, but because my ADHD spark plug of a mind needed a process that was faster and more efficient than it's film and darkroom roots. Even with the mindset that I have towards the film era and the process of early photography, this video is pretty cool and goes through a brief history of photography via the paradigm of a chemist. Enjoy!
You've probably seen plenty of Heisler's work without knowing it, and it can be said that he is one of the contemporary greats when it comes to portraiture. His work has graced the cover and insides of many of today's largest publications, and he's responsible for creating countless iconic photos of celebrities. In these videos (part two is in the post), Greg gives some fantastic advice to photographers about getting new jobs,
Back in September I spent a few days in New River Gorge, West Virginia, rock climbing with a group of friends. For this trip I developed a plan to put together a short documentary that would involve shooting an interview in the climbing area and doing a multicamera shoot of a climber. Watch the final video, and then read on for a breakdown of how it was all done.
If you own a DSLR camera, the odds are that you've tried to create an HDR image using one of the many available HDR software programs available on the market, and you might have even created what people call 'disastrous' results. But fret not, because SLR Lounge recently released the end-all, be-all HDR tutorial to conquer all other HDR tutorials.
As I am writing this I am trying to fall asleep. I am supposed to be up in 4 hours to head off on a little snowboard adventure with some friends. Instead of sleeping though I am sitting around watching snowboard videos, smart move right? Anyway a buddy told me to check out this movie called The Art Of Flight on Netflix, and I can tell you this much, it doesn't disappoint. The cinematography is gorgeous, but they took it a step further, and really worked with the sound to make it a totally immersing experience. Check out this BTS on how they used Dolby 7.1 to enhance the sound of the film...
Earlier this week Mass. Attorney General, Martha Coakley, filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against a Millbury, Massachusetts videography studio for allegedly scamming several newlyweds out nearly $75,000 worth of wedding videography services and precious memories. The company, Sure Shot Videography is accused of taking newlyweds' deposits and either not showing up to the wedding or for never delivering the final product videos.
Nikon, who is responsible for making the film, Broken Night, to promote the Nikon D800, has now finally made it available online. The film shows off some of the low-light and shallow depth of field capabilities of the D800's full frame sensor. You can see the 10-minute short and behind-the-scenes clips online at BrokenNightMovie.com.
Kickstarter product "Lil-Mule" is small, motor-powered camera platform that has been developed to capture timelapse or real-time video for lengths much longer than most rail or slider based systems can provide. It's aim was also to give the user a simpler feature set, doing away with the complicated math and setup that other systems offer. This video gives you a glimpse of what the system is capable of, with more informative videos inside.
Samsung announced their new NX300 and 2D/3D lens last week in anticipation of CES 2013, so we had them take us through a quick rundown of the new NX300 mirrorless camera as well as their new 2D/3D lens, a first of it's kind.
This has got to be one of the most beautifully filmed behind the scenes videos I have ever seen. Sigma recently released this tour of their factory, set to an incredible ambient soundtrack by Voytak and cut with scenes of the Japanese countryside. The juxtaposition of the clinical interior scenes with the natural outside world were very effective and to be honest, I found the whole video somewhat powerful. Then again,
Have you ever wanted to film yourself while doing a photoshoot for some behind the scenes action, but not one of your videographer buddies wanted to get away from whatever indie marathon was running that weekend and help you film it? Well, now with SOLOSHOT you don't have to worry about picking up the phone and degrading yourself by begging to your cinephile friends, you can do it yourself.
I love it when teams can keep churning out interesting tutorials or behind the scenes videos regularly and still keep the quality high, and one team that continues to do just that is PHLEARN. We've featured them a few times in the past, and today they released this new video on shooting beauty, but with sparklers.
Adventurer Dean Potter is the subject of a Nat Geo project called "The Man Who Can Fly". For part of this project, filmmaker Bryan Smith with shooter Michael Schaefer worked on this stunning clip of Dean doing a highline walk in Yosemite with the moon filling the sky. Read on to find out how he got such an amazing perspective.
Since the increased availability of small, high quality video cameras, we've seen some truly amazing footage. But this video from Scott Ziegler gives us a first hand look at what firefighters deal with on a call! It's pretty intense! The music on the video might be NSFW in places so you might want to turn your sound down.
Well, the teaser ad from Canon France that we showed you last week was confirmed today. The PowerShot N is the compact camera that Canon is pushing of their four released cameras today. Here is a promo video they put on Youtube.
Last time I was writing about polar bears, some poor photographers at a public zoo had dropped some Canon gear into a tank. Word must have gotten around that lenses and camera bodies are a tasty treat, as this video shows wildlife shooter Gordon Buchanan from the BBC getting tossed about inside of his plexiglass enclosure by a large female polar bear!
For the past few years DigitalRev has done the "Cheap Camera Challenge" with a professional photographer and a crappy little toy camera. This year's challenge consisted of Strobist's David Hobby, a 2MP Buzz Lightyear toy camera and 3 of the best named speedlights of all time, the Family Jewels FUQ 690. Kai of DigitalRev gives Hobby 5 photo tasks in 5 different locations and Hobby handles it pretty dang well considering the slight limitations. Enjoy!
For years, videographers have been saying video will replace photography altogether. Last year we tested this controversial statement in our own Red Epic Video vs Hasselblad Photo Shootout. In this latest video, Abraham Joffe along with Philip Bloom and Sue Bryce test the idea of simply pulling out still shots from video and printing them at reasonable sizes. Just as we found with our own video, capturing the definitive "micro expression" with a video camera like the new Canon EOS-1DC can be both precise and incredibly clunky.
Den Lennie from F-Stop Academy shot this behind the scenes video that documents James Tonkin as he creates visuals for his short film "A Night at Nine Elms" with the EF-Mount version of the BlackMagic Cinema Camera. James talks about his experiences with the BMCC and discusses using Canon EF lenses. See the final short film in the full post.
If you've watched the TV series "Grimm," you may be curious how the mythological creatures from Grimm's fairy tales make it onto screen. Bent Image Lab, the production company behind the cg creations of the show, explains their process of transforming characters into creatures and adding a fantastical element to each episode.
Everyone who has ever taken any interest in photography has thought about attempting to take one picture a year in order to fuel creative growth or to create an interesting and varied body of work in a relatively short time span. Jonathon Britnell put his own spin on the 365 project (technically a 366) by shooting one second of video every day for a year and compiling into a very cool documentary look at his life over the last year.
Dr. Amir Amedi, brain researcher and Neurobiology professor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, developed a technology that lets blind people 'see' with their ears. In this TEDx talk (TEDxJerusalem) he shows how he managed to use a simple camera, and transform the video captured into sound waves that quickly become visual images in the brain. It's amazing to see how they can 'see' when someone smiles at them, just by listening to the video they capture with that small camera.
