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.