Random stuff

Time passes. I started creating a realtime portfolio which runs realtime. More about that later when I really get it to a even first draft stage. Technical side is rolling already thanks to the versatility and ease of Unity3D.

Another 48 hour film project completed just a week a go. Boy does working around the clock multitasking directing, lighting, filming and acting deplete the energy quite fast! Was close to health-meltdown in the end. Although we did run out of time in the end – it was a project full of learning-moments, thoughts of processes and fun. We didn’t of course go with too serious of a goal as we are not trying to get break in the industry but still it was interesting to try multi-cam full-HD filming with two 5D Mark II’s and audio recorded separately with a good mic. Also we had a bunch of not-too-pro lights and took some time using them too. Although we didn’t have too much time to play with them to achieve something extraordinary but managed to pinch some experience out of them anyway. short trailer

Edited a bunch of photos from January-March. Some of it in: Winter 2009-2010 album.

And here’s a selection again:

24 and 25fps coming next year! Linking to Dpreview instead of original because I like them too much:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0910/09102003eos5dfirmware.asp

25fps would be fine too but I wouldn’t mind getting this:

http://www.canonrumors.com/2009/05/the-future-of-eos-hd-cr2/

This is the third part of the BUGro making of. – Part I and Part II

The video in 720p can be found from here.

So after the first day we were able to shoot in physically smaller apertures and got the full manual control on things. That made it easier to get things right – even though it required constant adjusting of settings as the lighting conditions changed a lot. In any case this kind of material would not have been at least easier to shoot in full auto though. =) (Most making-of photos are taken by McLad)

Also one considerable problem was the shake that was there for second or two after the setup had been adjusted. You have to take you hands off completely and let it stabilize before the material is ok – example below.

Here’s also a shot of a setup where I’m shooting with my genitals and the metal-tripod (fence running between these elements) very close to an electric fence:

And some of the shots required the rig to be a bit more vulnerable. Notice the tripod ledge on the verge – luckily didn’t push it down.

When we were working in the edit on the third day in the making we took a break and went outside. Now that we were familiar with the shooting of the stuff we instantly found out loads of places and bugs to film and when we couldn’t stand it anymore we had to get the camera out. Although for example the ladybug didn’t really want to get shot on video at all covering herself under anything available.

So one of the tactics was just to find someone, setup, compose the shot and wait for something to happen. The last picture is from the closing shot with the small beetles in the sunset. It was hard to focus but when the composition was right I just stood there waiting. The clip was at least 5 minutes long to get the footage wanted. You can get some sense of the scale if you watch the closing shot and note that those beetles move on the small yellow flower closest to the lens.

So the learning period with the shooting of BUGro was over. As you may notice it was just a brief test – nothing like a planned production. That is what makes it interesting for us. We can now have a base knowledge on how and which kind of material can be done with the setup.

So why did we create the video out of it?
Because it helps us to understand the material and what works and what does not. After shooting the material we could not have said how well and what from the footage works so we had to use the footage to be familiar with it. After all we had probably 5 times more footage than we used in the end. Some footage was not good enough and some contained features that could not be shown in less than the 1080p resolution. A lot of surprises were seen when we went through the footage as we didn’t really notice everything that happened on the screen on the set.

So the first prototype is now done. I’m not sure if we still go with an another kind of prototype which might include something of a more non-traditional elements or should we go straight to the ideas we ultimately had and what for we got dozens of new ideas more from the prototype. But now is not the time for talking about that.

This was so far the last part of the BUGro making of. But it may be that we come up with some extra video material to show and most probably at some stage we release the 1080p version of the video. So stay tuned.

Having had enough of vacation time – I needed to get disconnected a bit and decided to film a short film with my friend Joona Poikonen. Lucky enough I got a possibility to work on it for couple of days and as most that we did was more of a learning based creative work I suppose I should write about it in here:

It all started from an idea to shoot some stuff with the 5D Mark 2 I currently use as it can shoot 1080p HD-video. Which is of course cool as there’s the magical two jargon-letters that can render everything better by just mentioning them. I had an idea of shooting some random macro-stuff and when we had an meeting with Joona we realized that the only macro objective we have is an EF-S objective. Which of course wouldn’t work with full-frame camera (and actually by searching from internet forums turns out to be one of those things that drags black holes towards them: “why would you even want to do that” – “There would be some much vignetting that there would be no point”). Yeah – if we would trust teh people of teh internets – the story would end here. With some searching we found out that there is a way to do it … by sawing off part attached to the connecting ring of the objective that I do not recommend for anyone and we didn’t do that either(!). We just bought some extension tubes that could connect both EF and EF-S objectives to it. As we were going to shoot macro footage the extension tubes were welcome anyway.

First impressions were that there was practically no added vignetting from the EF-S objective and that we needed a lot more light to get good takes with the macro lens. Also tripod is a must. One thing we never got that we should have had was a macro focusing rail. Focusing without it cumulated a lot of extra work in the shooting. Here is the first test with the setup:

(a Petanque ball rail)

The first shooting day we didn’t get the manual settings working in the 5D Mark 2 video mode despite the fact that I had the new firmware in it. The cure was simple and I will talk about it in the next part.

BUGro in Youtube (Watch it in HD if you can)
Making of Part II

Probably the most critizised feature of 5D Mark II is the video settings. Originally it was locked to automatic metering when capturing the video but the new firmware 1.1.0 changes this.

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/firm-e/eos5dmk2/firmware.html

I didn’t really test it yet. I also have a slight problem with my computer setup as it is not powerful enough to playback the full HD videos I shoot with the cam. I don’t even consider what would happen if I’d like to edit them too. O_o

Mclad uploaded a High Quality versions of the LeGors*-series (a series of Lego-animations I created with him almost a decade a go) to Youtube. Here are the links:

LeGorso
LegorSIKA trailer
LegorSIKA

Time-lapse video from Neo Kekkonen:

http://neokoo.net/28-hours-in-jyvaskyla/