Your Vision Goes Here
The Dodge Ram Outdoorsman, a very cool truck. Ready to tackle the elements, and that’s what this intro aimed to show.
The guys over at Orion Entertainment did some awesome work pulling together this Ram Outdoorsman intro together. Check out the 65 second piece below.
Inspired by the other large shootout of high end expensive cameras, my buddy Kyle Bush and I decided it was time to do some real world head-to-head with cameras from the streets.
We grabbed cameras we had access to and took them out. We attempted to be as scientific as possible, but there are quirks. Lots of quirks. For example:
Save Our Youth is a mentorship organization based out of Denver Colorado. They do amazing work.
This has been one of my favorite projects… EVER. Working with Jorge (the star) has been a real treat. He was brave and shared his story so that others may be interested in helping kids in similar situations.
From their website, saveouryouth.org
Save Our Youth transforms the lives of at-risk youth through mentor relationships providing the skills for success in educational, emotional, and spiritual development.
Music:
“Due Acque Part 01″
Live Archive Vol 2 © 7/3/2009
and
“Cowell Piano”
Cowell Theater CD 1 © 7/25/2009
by Robert Rich, BMI
Info at http://robertrich.com/
James Drake Films, Denver Video Production
http://www.jdfnet.com
HDV had its time and place. For documentary work, there’s really no media that gives you the sense of security like tape. You walk off set with real, touchable pieces of plastic knowing that your footage exists in a physical piece of plastic. Solid state cameras remove that reassurance and you instead marvel that your days, weeks, or months of shooting only exist on a hard drive…which could fail or be formatted at a moment’s notice.
However HDV has it’s well-documented flaws. The camera heads have to constantly be cleaned, tape cameras have a (relatively) large number of moving parts which means more potential problems (had tape transport jams twice on a shoot once), and HDV itself was… well, 4:2:0 DV bitrate in HD. Ouch. Still, videographers everywhere made good use of HDV. I remember reading that Planet Earth was utilizing HDV… if it’s good enough for those guys, what do I know??! (granted they were using it for slow moving shots)
I digress. The one piece of the HDV workflow that always bugged me was “capturing”. Several years ago, I worked as a technical assistant at a web/video company. Part of my job was to log and transfer countless hours of DV/HDV tape into the computer. I have no problem with log and transfer. Editors should know their footage well. What bugged me was the play>pause>reverse a few seconds>play>pause>reverse a few frames>play>capture sequence. Once footage was loaded into an NLE, in and out points were easy and instant… but setting 20 in/out points on tape in capture seemed to turn a 60 minute tape into a 90 minute capture. Though I was paid hourly for the work, I often thought to myself… “there has to be a better way”.
Funny enough, when starting my business, I started with an HDV camera. Recently, it came time for an upgrade (aside from the DSLR revolution). Weighing my options carefully, I choose the Sony EX1R as my solid state camera system, which uses the XDCAM codec.
From a workflow perspective the XDCAM codec is great for several reasons:
1) It’s a mere 35mbps in camera, with the option to record 10 bit to an external recording, allowing fairly long recording times on manageable media (16, 32 GB cards) as well as higher end codecs for professional applications.
2) The XDCAM codec is supported by Avid, Adobe, and FCP so it fits into many different types of workflows and can go from Mac to PC easily.
3) The cards are hot swappable in camera so you can constantly dump and shoot.
4) Timelapse work is a breeze with the single-frame interval recording feature
5) Pro audio in, no need to sync second system audio
6) Each time you start/stop recording, a new file is created. A new system of log and transfer.
I’ll often pair the EX1 with a Canon 5D/7D, maintaining the tapeless workflow (though the DSLRs do add complication in post).
My goal with the new tapeless workflow is to keep it simple with as little obstruction as possible.
Record -> Transfer -> Log -> Edit -> Export
Thoughts?
‘Good enough’ is never, and will never be acceptable at James Drake Films. In that line of thinking, I purchased the Sony PMW-EX1R, adding it to the collection of available cameras.
The EX1R is the first camcorder to be included in the famous CineAlta by Sony (cameras like the F35 and F900 are in that group!).
Additionally, the EX1R has an HD-SDI output meaning if you need to shoot content that must meet international broadcast requirements, I can get an external recorder and surpass the standards that BBC and Discovery currently have.
Let’s go shoot!
James Drake Films, Denver Video Production
Tim Tebow has taken the front and center spotlight not only in Denver, but around the US. I had the opportunity to work with Fox shooting an interview before the thanksgiving football games, 2011. I was hired as a camera operator, but also fulfilled many roles as the crew was small.
We shot on three Sony F3 cameras with Ultra prime lenses (love that glass) and about 15 lights spread around the Broncos indoor training facility in Denver.
Wow what a year! So much great stuff, so little time to see it all. Below is a collection of images, some with captions, some without, but all of it representing (from my POV) the best of NAB 2011! Also, be sure to check out the Final Cut Pro X sneak peak pictures. The times are a changing for us video folk.
Kevin Smith talking Red State at the Avid booth
5600 K Lighting, Lots of improvements on HMI and CFL (they run cool!!)
Sony F65. 8K. True 4k. 16 bit. Wow.
Sony really goes all out on their displays
Optimo 45-120 on 7D! sooooo great
Epic interface
New Canon Technicolor Cinestyle avail Apr 30!
That's some serious Canon telephoto glass
Gale Tattersol
The Ninja and the AF100... Still 1080i 29.97, no 24
GH2 and the Ninja
iPad Slate with physical
Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle. Records 10 bit uncompressed to SSD! And.... It's $345
Davinci Resolve tutorial
Autodesk showing off Smoke, amazingly powerful.
AJA's new (not yet on the market) Thunderbolt video recorder
Recording Prores 422 1080i out of a GH2 to the Kipro Mini
Different mounts for the Epic
One of my latest jobs was camera operator for Fish the Baja, premiering on Versus HD on December 28th. I didn’t have much of a chance to take many still pictures, but the few I got tell a little bit about the trip. (click on pictures for larger versions)
A few of my friends were quite jealous as I left 20 degree weather in Colorado for 80 degree weather in Mexico. I have my jacket on in the picture above because despite the temperature, the breeze (or sometimes heavy wind) on the Pacific side can make 80 feel like 50.
60 Feet Long, built from the ground up for fishing, The Success is the Ultimate Sportfisher
5 days we stayed on the “Success“, a boat built from the ground up by its captain to be the perfect sport fishing boat. I’d never stayed on a boat for that duration. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous of being incapable to shoot because of seasickness. There were some fairly rough swells in the ocean, rocking the boat quite a lot. Staring through the lens of a camera is probably one of the worst ways to prevent seasickness. In any case, I was fortunate to quickly get over the very minor symptoms I had and wasn’t inhibited from shooting at all.
The picture above shows the walkway around the whole boat, perfect for fighting big fish. Underneath the hull, the boat has two 12.5L John Deere engines, allowing this boat to easily reach over 22 knots! For our excursion, we cruised along pretty slow, a) for the fishing and b) the 1200 gallons of fuel the ship holds get costly real quick.
Speargun
Instead of going during a normal fishing trip, we were privileged to tag along on a “crew trip” on the boat. Two of the crew were adament spear-fishers. Imagine… jumping into the Pacific 25 miles from shore with hundreds of feet of water underneath you, diving to 60 feet, and shooting a 50 pound tuna out of a school of fish.
Baja Sunset from the Pacific
An excellent trip, would love to do it again in a heartbeat.
–James Drake Films, Denver Video Production
I was privileged to be hired as the cinematographer for a beautiful love story which the director describes as the “Mexican Notebook”. The shoot days were almost always in locations limited by time and therefore fairly short, but with a savvy crew and a ton of preproduction we were able to come away with some pretty good looking stuff.
**Update: December 9th, I won the “Best Cinematography” award at the school for this project. Our school produces hundreds of films every semester, so it’s a high honor that I’m very grateful I received!
Best Cinematography, added to other awards I've received
I can’t post the film online, but here are a few (uncolorcorrected!) frame grabs from our set.
Terralux is a company doing big things in the LED lighting space. This short piece looks at some key pieces to how they plan to revolutionize the lighting industry.
From SoxPlace.com,
“SOX PLACE is for you…
the gutter punk, the train rider, the homeless youth,
you who just need something to eat,
you who just need a safe place to crash
Whether you’ve been on the street for
one day or one decade,
SOX PLACE IS FOR YOU”
ATA Clothing, ata-clothing.com, is selling Sox Place tees to support this great organization. They have something called the “100% program”, meaning they give 100% of the profits to the organization. Awesome.
Music by Kevin MacLeod
James Drake Films, Denver Video Production