hiya Wales

So this weekend I went back to Wales to get some much needed test footage filmed. Thanks to some helpful friends and some impressively good weather everything went well and I got everything I needed.



Let's break this footage down to why I filmed what I did and what can I learn from these shots.

First segment

So in this section I got Mikey and Mark to test out the fisheye on a hill which was something we've never done before. Also if I decide to do the flare shots (which will be at night and even more dangerous) on a hill it is definitely good to have some practice. I did not film these shots, I can't, I cannot skateboard well let alone well enough to hold the camera and get a good shot too. I trust these guys over myself when it comes to my own camera! Anyway they were using the setup I mentioned in a previous post; Canon Rebel T2i, Samyang 8mm fisheye lens, Opteka X-Grip and my Rode Videomic. That is why I left the sound on in this segment because the quality was decent and being recorded through magic lantern rather than Canon firmware therefore giving a better result. I made sure in both their turns that the person filming was always on the right therefore showing just the promenade and the beach, on the other side is the A55 which constantly has loads of cars on it (not very post-apocalyptic).

From this footage I realised just how smooth and exciting this type of footage can be at even such high speeds, it is a lot to risk in terms of equipment but it is a risk I am willing to take for such great footage. Since  most the footage will be at night when it comes to overall exposure for night shots I learnt nothing but I did learn that the skaters I am using are very competent when it comes to filming each other.

Second segment

In this part I was experimenting with light, I wanted to see how much of a figure and surrounding areas I could illuminate with a sparkler. Since the aperture was open all the way and the shutter speed was as low as it could be for filming all I had to play with was the ISO levels. In a way this was a relief because when using something that has a limited shelf life on camera it takes the pressure off somewhat. We only used three sparklers for this segment as well which wasn't too bad considering I bought twenty for the film.

I noticed a slight amount of grain in darker areas on 3200 and grain over most of the image at 6400 but even at this level it wasn't ghastly to look at just not completely clear, since I am considering making quite a "raw" looking film this might not be a huge issue but I still would like to shoot everything as flat as possible with no grain at all so more options are available to me in post production. Overall though I learnt that the ISO can be pushed quite high, sadly not as much experimentation can be done with the flares which will be more of a "play it by ear" scenario.

Third segment

Luckily I did get to swap my old tripod for a new one that is designed for filming rather than stills photography, I had to take it to Wales and test it out. There was a bit of wobble in the head but if you keep your hand on it after making a pan it doesn't shake. Overall I'm quite happy with it, it's sturdy yet still lightweight so great for some guerilla film making. In these shots I learnt that when panning you need to set in your mind how you are going to end the movement and at what speed. This is because if you don't you will end up with little jolts and different speeds in your movement which looks nasty. It also takes a bit of working out when and where to tell your subject to enter the frame so that you time your movement with them. It definitely made me realise that if I want this film to be good every shot is going to take a while.


Artwork

In a previous entry I mentioned Mount Kimbie's music video for their track "Before I Move Off" and also the opening titles for "How To Make It In America". I want a part of my film to be inspired by this footage, the part I have in mind is to get a friend from Wales called Matt Altman to produce some art for me and partially film it whilst also taking still shots. I will then edit this together to create effects similar to those mentioned. His artwork is as brilliant as it is eclectic, I decided to take some pictures of his work while I was home.

He is part of a two-man art collective called Six Foot Clan Tag. Check them out.
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So that is all my test footage so far, I also need to get down to testing my new steadicam. Also got some stick on LED lights from B & Q which will work well as hidden lighting. I will test these out too!

Thanks for reading.

Filming equipment / So much music

This post starts with a positive and a negative. The good news is I went to the local expensive camera shop today (they are always so expensive) and enquired into swapping my tripod for one of theirs, they seemed quite interested and said come back with it. My inexperienced and excited filming brain accidentally bought a    tripod with a ball and socket head which is great for stills photography but when it comes to filming is not very helpful. I actually need a three-way pan and tilt head which was available in the  shop. I will post pictures of it when I get it. The bad news is I went back to the shop which closes early, only on Wednesdays! Oh well there's plenty of time to get it before actual filming begins.

I also bought some sparklers (they'll be used in the film) today and have booked train tickets for the first journey home back to Wales to get some test footage. I also spoke with the two skaters I'll be using today who are very happy to help me and actually helped me with some locations ideas. Everywhere must be urban and post-apocalyptic. After this first trip back which is just for a weekend I will go home for five days and work day and night to get as much footage as humanly possible and then edit at night when I get back to University. I have drafted up a list of shots now and will draw up a storyboard next and finally will make a schedule of shooting; what will be done on what days. All my filming will be done from the 2nd November to the 7th this will give me plenty of time to edit and grade the footage together ready for the hand in date.

Now I'll go through the toys I've got to make this film with, I haven't got my new tripod yet but I will update the blog with that too. Firstly there's my camera which is a Canon Rebel T2i, it's basically exactly the same as a 550D but it's the American name for it, I bought it on ebay manufacturer refurbished late last year. The first thing I bought for it was an M42 adapter and two old pentacon lenses, a 50mm and a 28mm I barely ever use the 28mm as it never seems to get anything very sharp but I'm going to play with this more during my test shooting to see if this is merely human error. My favourite thing I have ever bought for my camera so far is my amazing Samyang 8mm fisheye lens:

Here are some snaps I have caught with it over the past year:

As you can see it is a lot of fun and to me makes the trivial look exciting, but I will not be using it for panning or still shots, I will only use it when doing roll by shots so I can get closer to the skaters. Admittedly it won't be me filming these shots though but other skaters since I have two left feet and would trust them with my camera when on wheels over myself. But I will be making sure they get the correct angles and distance with the shots. To do these shots I had to buy another gadget, when filming skate movies before the age of the DSLR most film makers would buy specific video cameras to film with like the Sony VX2100:

As you can see these type of cameras have a handle on the top, this is perfect to allow other skaters to skate alongside their subject whilst safely holding the camera at the angle you want to film them. When filming skating like this you always have the camera near the ground aiming slightly up, this gives an exciting effect because you can see the floor blur out and it gives an illusion of faster movement. You also always use a fisheye lens because it shows all of our subject and whatever they are approaching. But how did I make my DSLR capable of filming skaters like the old school cameras did? Well I had the fisheye but I needed to have a handle for the heavy Rebel T2i and I found one! A lot of people buy the "Cam Caddie Scorpion" which is good because it's made to last but I settled with a cheaper knock off of it called the X-grip:

The camera sits on the bottom and screws in snugly and now I can hold my heavy DSLR like a skate camera, it is a great invention. Also on the top I have a hotshoe which gives me room to fit my rode video mic which is another device I want to use in this film (even though sound will be a very small element). Here is a short video filmed with all the equipment previously mentioned:



That was ungraded raw footage shot early this year, I will get better test shots after the following weekend. As you can see the camera being low to ground going past objects creates an exciting feel, hopefully if everything goes well we will be able to achieve this at night in much weirder locations using strange lighting.

I also bought a flash gun because when I was taking pictures at parties with my fisheye lens attached I noticed a dark spot on all photos at the bottom, it was where the built in flash had caught the hood of the lens. Anyway the gun is a cheap Chinese one:

There's something interesting on the gun though that could be fun for the film, there's a button on it called "PILOT" which allows you to set the flash off by itself, you can also vary the power of the flash, it could be fun to film and then randomly set it off for certain sequences. Just another random idea.

I also have a steadicam I bought, this is it:

It claims to make footage as smooth as this:

So far I am having trouble getting the weights right to make it balance correctly for my camera, I think the weight of the old M42 lenses is causing the most difficulty, test shots showing the smoothness of this device will be shot this weekend. So far then the filming gear I have is as follows:

Canon Rebel T2i
M42 Pentacon Lenses: 1x28mm 1x50mm
8mm Samyang Fisheye Lens
Tripod (better one soon)
Easy Cam Steadicam
Opteka X-GRIP
A potential slider I can make out of a huge bench vice I found in Stermat (cheap version of B&Q) for fastening doors together while glue is setting

The Mission

So now after all this research and looking into what I can afford I can happily say I have a game plan, I just hope it runs as smoothly as it does in my head. This is what I consider to be my brief as weird as it may sound:

Make a post-apocalyptic skate film with the use of unconventional lighting, smooth tracking and stills photography.

It is definitely something I can achieve with the right amount of work; the most expensive things are the travel costs and the boat flares I wish to use. Since for most of the lighting of faces when doing close up shots will be done using white LED lights I may want to change the colour of these but I don't want to use gels as these are designed to withstand heat and are designed for bigger more conventional film lights. Therefore they cost more, there must be a cheaper alternative like coloured plastic paper and so on, this is something else I need to do some research into. For now though here are the light sources I will be using:

Fire
Wood and paper on fire
Making a circle out of petrol
Lighters
Sparklers (pack of twenty large ones)
Flares (They are very costly so will probably only buy two)

Battery Powered
Yongnuo SPEEDLITE YN 460-II
Cheap head torch from Aldi
LED workman's striplight (still in the process of finding best place to buy one/borrow)
Small stick-on LED lights (these will be great to attach to the bottom of boards and put in hidden places to light up subjects like inside flood drains etc)

Music

Lastly this is just a bit of fun I've been having deciding which music I will use for my film. The film will have music through most of it and perhaps a bit of recorded sound overlayed (mainly because I have never used my rode videomic for anything conventional yet). I want the music to give a post apocalyptic feeling, the answer came to me in a very obvious form, my favourite band of all time is "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" and this is basically their sound! I don't want the music to be too long so I chose one of their shorter tracks.

"Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya"

I'm also toying with the idea of changing from something quite mellow likefollowed by very uplifting music since about halfway through the film the theme changes from quite hopeless to a feeling of ecstasy for the two main characters. Maybe these two will work.

"Burial - Kindred"

"Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come"

The only reason I mention the music so early is because when I hear it I can see the film appear in front of me moving along to it, just helps ideas flow even at an early stage.

Sorry about the lack of test footage so far, I was going to do some tonight but my camera is with a friend, I will make up for it after the weekend. Thanks for reading.

Trudging through skate movies

So on my last entry I focused on a few themes of cinematography I like through films and some music videos, I think it is definitely  clear now that I cannot base  all my inspiration on this film from one feature film or even one cinematographer. There's just too much amazing stuff out there and I am lucky enough to have the money to have bought a decent camera and have a laptop for editing with so I should be pushing these to the limit. 

I want my film to be a mixed bag, I've got a basic plot together now and keep coming up with little sequences I want to film, all the filming will be done back home in Wales as after watching through the Röyksopp video again I have decided on an overall post-apocalyptic theme. Most sequences involve props and all of them rely on the reliability of my friends who will be acting in it and the money needed to travel back and forth. People have put their houses on the market to make the films they are passionate about though so this can and will be done! On to the skating feature films anyway. These are all normal films with a plot and so on  rather than  exclusively skate films because of my knowledge of them isn't too good. 

Paranoid Park

This is directed by the brilliant Gus Van Sant, Christopher Doyle was the cinematographer. The film is about a young boy who is dealing with a lot of guilt so the theme of the film is quite dark, like Sant's other film "Elephant" the dialogue and pacing of the film is very slow and focuses more on conveying feeling by image and sound than telling a story. A lot of the skating segments are filmed on Super 8mm film, I think this was a good idea and I can see why it was done. Filming skate footage is something done by a lot of young people, people without much money and therefore it was often done on Super 8mm (DSLR cameras are definitely a game changer). I believe this was put into the film to give us a feeling of nostalgia and to show that the film associates with the "rawness" of skating. It also showed one of the protagonists only positive thing left in his guilt-ridden life. 

 Still from "Paranoid Park"

Still from "Paranoid Park"

The second one in particular I find beautiful, it would be interesting myself to use an older piece of technology and see what effects I could achieve with it, it would mix the footage up more which is definitely what I want from the final cut. 

Lords of Dogtown

This film is a big step away from the previous, it is certainly not an arthouse film and has some more well known faces in it. This is an interesting film to look at for me actually because it is all about the birth of skateboarding and therefore there's a lot of flatland skateboarding being filmed in it which in my longboard sequences is essentially what I will be doing. I've never really enjoyed the grade much on this film, it's smart and I can see why they did it but I just don't like to look at it for too long I usually prefer flatter looking film, then again I am a big Wes Anderson fan so there's always an exception. 

Still from "Lords of Dogtown" 

Still from "Lords of Dogtown" 

Still from "Lords of Dogtown"

The first shot was a very quick track following the skater which stops at the perfect time to catch his legs as the subject, it's interesting because the skateboard is cut off but it's actually still a good shot because all the motion and skill is shown and more focus is on the skater than his tool. The second two are definitely giving me ideas and making me think of steep hill locations, the shot is a tracking shot where I would like to assume the camera man is another skater (if not the vehicle is definitely moving), the subject moves from left to write always in frames sometimes dangerously close. Fast moving shots like this definitely create excitement for the viewer.

Ken Park

This film was written by the great Harmony Korine and directed by Larry Clark and Ed Lachman. With these names there is no doubt that it is an extremely provocative and controversial film. The film on the whole has such a strange colour to it, to me has vibrant colours to it sort of like one of Gregg Araki's earlier films but it still looks flat and washed out. It makes you feel dissociated and uncomfortable (as if the film needed the help).  

Still from "Ken Park" 

Still from "Ken Park"

The first shot is from the opening of the film where a young boy arrives at the skatepark to film himself committing suicide, the shot shown is static probably on a raised platform slightly looking down at the scene. I like the shot because it's long and doesn't move and therefore doesn't distract you from the seriousness of the situation and shows all the skaters arriving to look at the boy. It's a good technique to have a still shot when you want to make sure the image is being taken in by the viewer. The second shot is the same boy on his way to the park, the shot is tracked and it just makes me realize the importance of getting a smooth tracking shot when filming fast skating because it is the difference to a professional feel that sucks you into the film more rather than shaky amateur footage.

Zdzisław Beksiński

Zdzisław Beksiński is not a skate film, he was in fact an amazing Polish painter, he was also a photographer and sculpter but here I am going to focus on his paintings. He is my favourite painter and I would love something in my film to even closely resemble his incredible work. He is very eclectic in his paintings, they range from strange portraits to huge desolate landscapes. But in most of the man's art certain themes remain; decomposition, and of course his definitive post-apocalpytic look. Many of his works are unsettling in a similar way to H. R. Giger's work.

I chose the work which conveys the theme I will be trying to achieve in my film. I don't want my film to feel as serious as these pieces but I do want a feeling of no hope and bleakness for the first segment. The painting of the car is the most inspirational for me out of these as I want a scene that includes an old rusted out car, hopefully using the magic of film making I can achieve something similar. I really love how a lot of these have a disturbing image as their subject with a huge desolate landscape behind that offers no hope of shelter, this is a look I would definitely like to be shown in my film and I will try my best to achieve it.

I hope you enjoyed this entry, next I will go through the equipment I have to film with and the music I am in the process of deciding to film to.

Deciding what I want to create / where the inspiration at?

The first thing that popped into my mind when approaching this project was that I don't just want to make nice images by being creative and technical. I also want to make sure these images are interesting, no matter how well you light and pan someone filling out tax returns the final result is still boring to look at. So firstly I started thinking about what I could film that is interesting; back home in Wales I have a group of friends that still skateboard on a regular basis. I started thinking this would be an interesting thing to film. They are also good friends and I am hoping they will be willing to let me film them doing all sort of weird and hopefully interesting things. So firstly my basic idea is a short skate film with less focus on the skill of the skaters but more on how shots are lit and filmed.

I had been toying for a while of the idea of filming my friends at night and doing roll-by shots (this is when another skater rolls along with the person he's shooting) with an LED light attached to the hot shoe on my Rebel T2i camera. But then in a lecture recently I was shown a clip from a film I already knew and loved called "Submarine" (Richard Ayoade's first feature film). This is the clip:

Segment from "Submarine"

The magic happens at 1.02. It made me think if I want to film at night using a light why don't I make my subject become the light and then when they skate around whatever area we choose they will light up areas around them and add elements of surprise drama to an otherwise simple film. So as you can see in this clip they are running with a flare, I will also have my performers doing this but they will be skating rather than running and they will be on long boards which allow for very smooth seamless motion. I have a few dark locations already in mind from where I live on the North Wales coast. Underground car parks, unlit roads and the promenade.

From this video I also came up with another idea of using cheap light to my advantage. I will buy an LED strip light and tape it to the bottom of a board and see what kinds of effects it creates. This clip also reminds me of something else I love and want to utilise for my film; the creative use of bokeh. Ever since I noticed bokeh in films and photography I picked up that it's one of my favourite things a lens can do. I haven't experimented much with bokeh but what I have found is that it works best at night with strong yet distant lights behind your subject who must be close and in focus. This was taken with my old 50mm lens which broke (I have replaced it):

As you can see on the top of every circle/pentagon there is a little speck, that was because the lens had a scratch on the inside which was annoyingly not mentioned on ebay! Anyway I have a new 50mm now as I said so my bokeh will be even better. In this example though those lights were just distant streetlamps, I want to achieve this beautiful bokeh effect with moving lights. Like in the film "Kids" by Larry Clark in this section when Telly finally gets his girl:

Screenshot from "Kids"

I couldn't find a clip of this on line so I took this screenshot, anyway if you cannot tell there are moving car lights there and the closer the camera gets to the couple the bigger the bokeh becomes, it creates a great effect needed for a climatic moment for the main character.

Larry Clark isn't just a film director, he is also a photographer who garnered quite a lot of fame with his critically acclaimed photography book "Tulsa". I bought the book a while ago and after just having looked through it again it is a very disturbing work but nevertheless the way he captures his figures is amazing. I want to go to a similar look for the segments in my film which won't be skating although probably not in black and white. He makes the subject he is photographing very prominent in his photos. He lights the parts of the subject he wants attention drawn to for example in this photo this woman has been beaten and her face with the black eye is lit brighter than the rest and just the top of her arm which is also bruised:

Scan from "Tulsa"

The same happens in this shot which is the aftermath of one of Clark's friends shooting amphetamine into his leg, the light is focused on the leg:

Scan from "Tulsa"

The way the man's face is lit only highlights certain parts of his face and makes him look almost demonic.

I was hoping in this film I could have a segment in which I would create a cinematic theme using still shots. The inspiration for this came from the music video for Mount Kimbie's "Before I move off". Here is the video:

"Mount Kimbie - Before I Move Off"

I just know that I have lots of photographs that could add some great juxtaposition to the film with the right editing techniques. It would also be interesting to perhaps not have a segment like this but just have occasions where still images pop up like in the brilliant HBO television series "How to Make it in America":

Opening titles from "How To Make It In America"

As you can see it gives the footage a "fresh" sort of feeling, it's an old technique but used correctly it seems very modern. As I mentioned earlier I am very keen on using strange light sources for my film rather than just electronic lights. I have always wanted to film people with a flickering light on their face, like that from a swimming pool or a fire, I'll choose a fire since it's cheaper and I don't need to get my camera near water! If I make an open fire I am hoping there is somewhere I can find to do this in an urban sort of area like in this Röyksopp video:

"Röyksopp - The Drug"

The section I want you to see is at 3:48, the rest of the video is brilliant however and really puts a weird spin on  post-apocalyptic fiction. I may take more inspiration from this video. This part of my film may involve some guerilla film making I think!

That is enough inspiration for today, next I will post feature films which include skating in them, I have a few in mind. I will also show you some ideas I have gained from my favourite artist Zdzisław Beksiński. I will then show you the equipment I will be filming with and upload some test shots. Thanks for reading!