Hey everybody,
I’m currently on the road on a crazy YouTube Roadtrip project (appropriately titled: YouTube Roadtrip 2010).
Check out all the updates here: http://facerocker.com
See you in a month or so!
This one was basically Brandon thinking “what if we did red flower petals as blood hits?” because it would let us be ridiculously violent, yet not appear so because it’s, well, flower petals. We went from there – sunflowers for muzzle flares, flowers shooting up with the ground hits, general 70s look and vibe (although the G36 is most definitely not a gun from the 70s). Once we got the VW Bus, it was on.
For this shoot, we wanted to put the Canon 7D through its paces in a very fast, run-and-gun scenario. Due to skew issues we also shot with the Panasonic HVX200 for any effects shots where we knew we would need to do 3D tracking for. We’ve heard nothing but love for the 7D, and after trying it out here, I have to say it’s not a very good camera for action.
The biggest issue is that we need to be at f5.6 to f8 in order to catch all the action without having anything go soft. In my opinion, shallow depth of field is overrated. For people sitting around and basic dialogue, it’s great, but when there’s a lot of stuff going on, you can’t afford to have things soft. I think you lose a lot of the visceral feel if you’re forcing your audience to pay attention to various details by controlling planes of focus, especially given that depth is a big part of defining space.
The problem with shooting at 5.6 or 8 is that you’re forced to crank the ISO, which makes the footage noisy as hell. The low light of the 7D is great, but that’s assuming you’re shooting wide open, which allows the ISO to be at a more reasonable level. Additionally, the skew killed handheld shots, and also killed any shots where I move quickly in frame – there’s a shot where I jerk my head back and the camera is dead steady but my face is warped due to my speed
Final verdict on the 7D is it’s a great camera for shooting movies without a lot of action or a lot of movement. Everyone’s gone so far into the “I love shallow focus” side that you have totally unacceptable crap like one eye in focus but the farther eye out of focus. Pick up any American Cinematographer and you’ll find that movies aren’t all shot at f1.4. DPs will use f4 or f5.6 all the time because sometimes it’s nice to see things in focus.
As a side note, I will say that I don’t think we did the best job with being clear with space here. There are a lot of shots I think we should’ve got – after we shoot the ceiling, the camera should dolly from the kitchen back over to the main room to make sure people understand that we’re coming back to the room that we started in. As of now, it’s a little bit disconnected. Kevin’s house didn’t lend itself to good wides outside, so we compensated by playing this scene more as a “siege” sequence. Ideally, we would be able to see up to the road where Rico pulls up from the room we start in to lock in exactly where everyone is from the start.
New vid!
Wondering if this one’s any good? Check out this review of the video from my mom!
New video!
Behind the Scenes:
I’ll occasionally highlight videos that I think are super awesome here that you guys have sent in. Today, we’re going to look at a masterpiece of ingenuity:
This is the kind of “get out and shoot it” attitude I love – so what if you don’t have prop weapons? Make them out of cardboard and use those instead! Stay for the sweet cardboard tank, too!
PLEASE NOTE! Click HERE to go to the YouTube page – the player will only give you 3D options there!
Nintendo was not allowing people to take photos of the screen on because “it wouldn’t look good.” Drawing from our experience with working on 3D footage, I’ve created a mockup with the most anticipated launch title of the century. For everybody who was unable to make it to E3, this is essentially what the 3DS looked like in person!
Frozen Crossing Part 2 is out!
We had a good time making this one. We didn’t realize it, but it’s been exactly two months since the first one came out. I didn’t direct this one – Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski were the directors – my job was sound design, which I talk about here:
Sound is incredibly important because sound affects a film viewer on an instinctual, gut level. It’s not enough to see the flare of a gunshot, or the swipe of a punch – a good sound will make you wince and react emotionally to what’s happening on screen. Because it has this ability to worm its way in through the subconscious level, it’s an incredibly powerful tool, and unfortunately, one that’s constantly overlooked.
My favorite example of good sound was when I saw Apocalypto in theaters – when one of the guys jumps off the waterfall, it cuts to his POV as he smacks his head into a rock. THAT sound, my God – it was the perfect sound – it was the sound we all heard in our heads when we smacked our heads on the floor of the pool. But the reaction – EVERY single person in front of me threw their hands up to their head and reacted vocally as if they had hit their own heads.
When was the last time the visuals of a knife stab caused you to clutch your own chest? Or a gunshot caused you to and duck involuntarily? A single sound effect caused an entire theater of people to react, whereas if you had just had the visuals, the impact would have been non-existent.
I had the opportunity to work with my friend Kevin Klauber on his MPAA Golden Reel nominated short Bio.Rhythm as a DP. For this short, Kevin thought a lot about using sound as a storytelling element – and he went crazy with all kinds of cool abstract sounds that fit the picture. You rarely see this level of experimentation in movies nowadays, and it’s too bad because it’s such a treat to listen to.
The last movie I remember thinking pushed abstract sound design as an element was The Book of Eli. While it was a flawed movie, everybody should go “listen” to this movie – it’s a really awesome sounding movie, and also one of the few movies where sound ties strongly in with the story. Too many people get into the mindset of “OK I’ll put all the elements that should be there in – background noise, dialogue, some music, and they leave it at that. Think about how sound can work as an emotional storytelling tool – it doesn’t matter if the sound is what something should sound like, it matters if it’s what something should feel like.
So next time you fire up a movie, give sound design a chance. Start being experimental. Go crazy – try putting sounds in places where they wouldn’t be realistically. Follow your gut and remember – if it feels right, it is right.
Want to light paint like we did here?
It’s easy! Here’s what you need:
The idea behind light painting is that if you open the shutter, you can draw lines by moving the flashlight around in front of the lens. So hold the shutter open, get in front, and try drawing something in the air. If you have a camera flash, you can have someone stand in place, and flash them. Then have them hold still and draw around them. Experiment!
Some tips:
Finally resolved the myriad of technical issues with the site because I was swapping servers around behind the scenes like crazy. The old freddiew.com is no more – freddiew.com is where my blog resides from here on out.
So hey what up.
