It was about a four hour drive to Tenterfield. The gorgeous Katie was a little trojan, driving all the way there, while I pointed the camera out the window under the pretense of making a video for ‘the blog’. Well, it wasn’t a complete waste of time and the video above, I’m actually really pleased with. Not because it’s my best work ever, but because it’s the little things that you forget and this will be nice to look back on. I hope you enjoy it! 
There’s full 1080P version on SmugMug, Check it out here! You’ll find the full story and a Vimeo embed after the jump too.
At last I managed to get around to hacking out the rest of this cut last night, it’s been sitting here on the computer, half finished, for quite some time now!
I didn’t get to spend as long in the edit as I would have liked due to time constraints still making themselves known even this close to Christmas! The trouble is, given that it is coming into Christmas, I’d like to go into it with a clean slate and all the home movies edited as I’m sure there’s going to be a bunch of stuff shot over the next couple of weeks. Hell, I still have to edit the video I shot of Christmas last year! Hahaha!
Anyway, it was great seeing the kids and the old man and woman again, they moved away from the Sunny Coast about 6 months ago and it’s been a bit lonely without them. Kendra, the eldest little girl, is a riot and you’ve probably seen her in other vids of mine about the place. She is so much fun to shoot with, loves the camera and loves watching it back even more. She seems capivated by the way she does things, as if thinking “Wow, do I really look like that when I get around?!” I’m sure it feels a lot more graceful to her!
I took the whole camera kit with all the lenses and the tripod. I was hoping to stop and get more footage on the way down, but considering it was close to 40ºC and the air conditioner in the car is broken, poor old Katie didn’t fare to well when we stopped to get the time lapse over the mountains. In the interest of a level status quo for the rest of the trip, I decided car footage would be best!
I made considerable use of the Sigma 30mm when I was down there, this is just a great lens for ‘home movie’ style footage. If the distance between you and the subject isn’t too great, you can usually achieve a really nice depth of field and that really helped with the Bubble blowing footage. That area was really busy, the background was a mess and with a really deep depth of field, taking it all in would have made that footage unwatchable. Sigma 30mm f1.4 for th win!!!
I used the Sigma a little more than the Canon 50mm f1.8 as I don’t have a 52mm Polariser for the 50mm. I am not going to get one either, as I want a Canon 50mm 1.2 or the Sigma 50mm 1.4 eventually and I don’t want to be buying interim crap if I don’t really need it. Regardless, I did use the little 50mm on some of the close up shots of little Olivia’s (the Baby!) face. You’ll notice the really horrible out of focus shot of her getting scared when I sneeze, I know it’s a bad shot, but I couldn’t help but include it, she got such a fright, cried and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Nice brother hey!
I have to say, and it’s pretty obvious I think, the best shot in there is the one of Kendra in the swing. My colleague Brett often questions a shot’s merit by asking me “If you died to tomorrow and this was what was left, this one shot was going to be shown to everbody as an example of your work, would you hang your hat on it?”. Rather melodramatic, I know, but it really does make you think! In most cases, I answer in the negative, thinking, as if I would ever hang my hat on a single shot! But I think I know what it’s all about now. This shot was just a case of right place, right time and I feel probably one of the best, if not the best, I have ever captured. I don’t know if I’m biased becuase I love the subject matter dearly, but there’s something about it that really makes me happy, and that’s what it’s all about I guess.
The music in this piece holds a special significance for me. It was written by my best mate, Marlon Platt, a couple of years back. He laid it down into an iMac, just him and a guitar, using the stock mic, very budget and completely fitting for the project at the time. I asked him for a track that was all about travelling and had that road trip feeling of discovery, fun and the realisation of something great. This is what he came up with and I think it’s pretty darn good! So when it came time to find a track for this video, this one immediately sprang to mind and I think it works here nicely. Marlon is based in Melbourne, still writing music in his spare time and occasionally puts some stuff up on his MySpace Music site, Marlonism. Check it out to see where he’s at these days.
Well, that’s about it for now. I’m not so sure what’ll be popping up on here over the break (All I know is I won’t be getting one!), but keep an eye on the Facebook page for some mobile picture uploads from the new iPhone and whatever else comes about!
Merry Christmas!
Oh and despite the fact that the Poll shows more people prefer Vimeo over SmugMug. I’ve loaded this onto SmugMug first. Sadly for all you pro-Vimeo people out there, the stats don’t agree with the polls! Video’s are getting around twice as many hits on SmugMug as they are on Vimeo. So either the people out there watching videos’ aren’t voting on the Poll’s or somebody else is driving the Traffic to SmugMug. I’ve posted both here for now and will continue to do so for a while yet! Enjoy!
More soon. . .
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Well done, this is fantastic work, and agree the swing shot is beautiful, and now I want this camera!
Thanks David! I’m pretty sure if you get yourself a 7D you’ll have a lovely time with it!
Thats a great little movie, can’t believe the servo staff did’nt tell you off for recording at the bowser! And that sign whizzing by, saddly, has bad jello. BUT the slo mo on the kids really helps the hand held wobble, they look fantastic. Cute kids too, very happy, the bubbles tho’ exhibit jello cam
To be honest, I don’t think the servo staff would have known I was ‘recording’. I love this camera, it’s like a secret little weapon, you can shoot pretty much anywhere incognito!
Yeah, jello isn’t pretty but at the same time, I wasn’t trying to minimise it at all. You should have seen some of the scenery whizzing by shots, that sign was nothing!
Personally, I’m hoping the read from the sensor in the 5D MKIII (when it comes out) is so blisteringly fast that rolling shutter will be almost non-existent! Wishful thinking!
But you still need to shoot 1/2 frame rate for 180deg shutter, will the readout from the chip not still exhibit this roll during frame exposure? What kind of grade did these shots get (apart from the rushed kind)? Did you see the nice slide rail shiots on the Skywalkers Ranch video? They reminded me of your pans. Really nice timelapse to, what size frames do you shoot, would you consider doing repo’s in them for pans tilts or zooms?
Happy holidays to ya.
I haven’t seen shutter speed make any difference to the rolling shutter artifacting. I remember testing a Sony EX1 for this as well. I thought like you at the time figuring surely a 1/2000 second shutter speed would exhibit far less rolling shutter than say 1/50. . .Sadly, it didn’t. I don’t really understand why this is.
Yeah I saw Phil’s Skywalker Ranch vid. I have wanted one of those sliders for so long and never been able to justify the expenditure. There are bunch around, the one I was looking at ages ago was the IndiSlider. I think I will get one soon, I’m just not sure which one to buy or whether I should make one. Linear slides are really quite cheap.
Those timelapses are just movies shot in camera and sped up. I usually do my time lapses like that unless it’s a night time one and I need the longer shutter duration, in which case I use the timer. It saves a bit of mucking around in post. I have seen the panned, zoomed Time Lapses doing the rounds, could emulate it, but haven’t. It’s a little too Ken Burns for my liking.
When I do use the Intervalometer I always shoot Small JPEG’s.
Happy Holidays to you too man!
Merry Christmas and all that! I hope you have a good one!
Hi Christian,
I am Enrico (Sunny coast paraglider). Sometime I check your blog and I am really impressed. This last video is really nice and I love how you use the focus! Music fits very well too.
Cheers, see you soon.
Enrico
ENRICO! How are you man!? Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting!
It is really good to hear from you and I’m glad you are digging the site!
You are almost famous now, no? The Paragliding Video went crazy on the internet! Do people stop you in the street?
Hahaha!
Anyway man, you still have my number, maybe you should give me a call someday when you are hitting up another spot and we can make a sequel?
Hope you have a great Christmas!
hey Christian, at work i had some freelancer footage that had big bokeh and progresive frame strobing (as opposed to interlace smoothness), and a LOT of wobble. I am guessing it was shot from a DSLR.
In your experience, what is the easiest way to stabilise the shot for handheld? Assuming no access to rails/grips.
I was going to run it thru FCP smoothcam, but didnt really want to make it better as the coverage really sucked.
Hey Dave,
I don’t know mate. . .I don’t use any kind of stabilisation for my handheld stuff and it shows.
Hahaha!
No matter how steady it feels I am being, there is pretty much always a miniscule amount of jello in everything I shoot handheld. Adding weight to the camera, rails, etc. can work as it just takes that tiny little shake out of it, that’s most perceptible and smacks of a tiny, underweight handy cam with no Image Stabilisation.
The trouble is, and I ran into this very problem this afternoon, you can smoothcam the footage, but because of the rolling shutter, even though the subject and scene may be static, there is still skew and wobble in the footage. Stabilising works to a degree, but it can’t remove the skew and wobble so results can be disappointing at times.
There is a plugin for AE by The Foundry imaginatively called ‘Rolling Shutter’ that does adress this issue and supposedly removes the rolling shutter artifacting from footage in post. Afterwards, smoothcam would have a great time with it and work really well I think. I’ve seen some great examples of the Rolling Shutter plugin’s results, but then again, I’ve seen some absolutely jaw dropping work with Twixtor too, but due to it’s complicated parameters, never realised anything like it in my own experiences. Likewise I don’t know whether this rolling shutter plugin is an art in itself or whether anybody can plug it in, wack the footage in there and be skew and wobble free in a couple of clicks. I’d love to find out though, so if you get, let me know!
Good luck with your efforts Dave, see you round!
I would imagine that there is a lot of tracking involved but I have only seen the demo on FXguide TV. Just saw the worst Jello cam on the news from Phones in Iran, people actually getting tall and short then skewed and everything in between! Amazingly bad but amazingly newsworthy, so it had to go to air. makes me feel a buit better about the wobble cam i had to deal with.
Have a happy new year, cant wait to see what you post in the future. Some more mellow surf at dawn/dusk would be sweet. How about some timelapse with long shutter action (how many NDs you got?).
Oh Christian,
Your Tenterfield Video made me almost cry. So beautiful.
Awww. . .Di’sy! Stop it!
Love ya!