This is what we came for! The last day turned it on and we finally got what we needed! Smiles all around!

I think I can safely say that there is nothing quite like quiet reflection. As I sit here in the comfort of my office on the Sunshine Coast surrounded by normality, the last day of the shoot in Mexico seems so distant that the craziness of it all seems almost diminished.

However it doesn’t take too much pondering before the road train of memories slam into the forefront of my consciousness. I’m whisked back to the hot, intense, fateful, final day of the shoot where the planets aligned to give us some of the best results of the trip.

The day started at 5am. Bleary eyed and feeling like a piece of petrified excrement, I stumbled into the shower to try and wash away the pain. This was the last day, I was running on empty, overworked, tired and stressed. My body was having a tough time getting used to the different food too, so I wasn’t really able to give it what it needed to repair. I say it every time, but next time I’m going to have to schedule a proper rest day to give myself some time to recover. I know film crews often work 16 hour days, but that’s a film crew. . . .I was a one man band. Locked and loaded I went to meet Luis, who politely informed me that I did indeed look like I felt. I like to think that his empathy was lost in translation.

Sunrise shoot was on. Having scoped a nice arch the day before, we decided to shoot first light and sunrise there. After about ten minutes playing with the arch, using different lenses, filters and everything else I could dream up in my lucid state I got bored and headed to the waters edge. I had been taking the spreader off the tripod for all the shooting I had been doing in the sand. Mostly to keep the it free of sand and working smoothly, but this day, the lower heights achievable without the spreader really made the new 525MVB worth every penny! I shoved the sticks so wide and deep into the sand and got that thing as low as it could possibly go where the waves were washing up on the shore without saltwater splashing onto the camera. I have never been able to achieve this shot as successfully in the past, always having to shoot handheld and getting incosistent results at best. With a blue sky overhead and a sparkling white sand beach before me things started to work really nicely. . .I smiled as I watched back the clip on the LCD the tiredness seemed to lift from me. Done! It was pool time!

The pool was pretty nice to look at, the weather was perfect. No clouds, no wind, bright sunshine coming from just the right direction. Consequently, it wasn’t too hard pulling good shots out of there. With a circular polariser, some Cokin filters to get it looking just right and a bit of 60P love for the caustics, we had another win. It was amazing how well things went when the weather came to the party. In high spirits we left the pool by about 8am to get to the next location.

After smashing down a quick breakfast it was time to shoot the shoot the Chef, a lovely young girl named Maria, doing her thing. With the sun glaring over her left shoulder, her face in pitch black shadow, I longed for my wonderful purpose built reflector that was tucked safely inside my HVX Case about 7,000 kilometres away in Brazilian Customs. I was slightly concerned, but not to be deterred, I managed to procure some tablecloth’s which whilst not ideal were much better than nothing and Oscar, a friendly hotel employee, came to the rescue, holding them in nice and close just out of shot. His arms would have been caning by the end the poor bugger! Thanks Oscar, you saved us there brother!

Straight after the Chef it was off to the the waters edge to shoot some watersports, low on time and resources it was quick and dirty, handheld from a boat. It was a real shame because I had a really great setup planned which consisted of land based shots from across the shallow bay on the 100-400, but we just didn’t have enough time to get it done before we had to go into town to get the helicopter. I shot the Tokina 11-16, the Sigma 30mm and the Canon 70-200, which again, absolutley killed it with the stabiliser. I was very surprised to see it working it such challenging conditions, I mean I won’t pull a 7 second perfectly stable clip out of it, but I will definitely get a nice 3-4 second shot out of it, which is enough for my purposes.

Towards the end of the 30 minutes in the boat, I ran into a little trouble. Staring at the back of the camera, riding up and down the swell, going faster, slower, doing power turns, back and forth. . .My stomach started doing backflips. I don’t normally get motion sickness, but I went down hill fast and when the Jet Ski came to get me to take me back to the beach, I couldn’t get on the bloody thing fast enough. Back on land I headed straight for the room where I was sure I was going to lose breakfast. I was swaying and feeling like death, imagining the terrible ramifications of me not being able to finish the days shooting, wondering if I had food poisoning or something because I felt that ill.

I drank about 2 litres of water, took some Panadol, had a Berocca and readied the gear for the trip to the helicopter, trying very much not to think about being airborne.

The aerials went without a hitch. It appears in Mexico they do not share the same laws about minimum altitudes over built up areas. One shot we almost touched down on the 3rd green of the Golf Course before heading back up as fast as we could. I had the wrong lens on for it, but the look on the golfers’ faces that were playing their approach was possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen. To say they were freaking out would be a massive understatement.

The weather played nice, the water looked great and we got everything we needed.

Following the Aerial shots it was back to the car and then back to the Golf Course, all the while Luis was on the phone trying to pin somebody at Delta to the wall and get my HVX back to us before we left the next morning. He didn’t have much luck. The HVX looked like it was staying in Brazil for a bit longer. I began to wonder if I would ever see it again.

A nasty band of cloud obscured our sunset and the Golf Shots didn’t quite work out as we’d hoped. It was 5:30pm and time to head to the Restaurant for our final shoot, Dinner, Teppanyaki to be precise, for 6. Maybe it’s not so Mexican, but hey, it looks damn good in 60P . Unable to get power for the lights, (which were working very poorly anyway with the 240V globes on 110V power! Oversight on my part! Woops!) it was the fast primes that saved the day. The Sigma 30mm f1.4 was a dream, the Canon 50mm 1.8 II saved my butt and the 70-200, although pushing the ISO a little too far still pulled a couple of nice shots. It was so crazy in there and not lit so well that I shot mostly handheld at 60P just looking for nice moments. As a wide the composition didn’t work, it was just too functional, so close-ups were the order of the evening. We wrapped at about 7:30pm, not by choice either, but because people had complained. Not that we were shooting a video in the place, but because myself and Luis were wearing shorts. . .don’t ask, I don’t know, and I didn’t even care. . .I was just stoked to be finished. . . .

It was over. . .done. . .complete. . . .We headed back to our rooms and nearly died. . . .It was a great feeling!

After dumping the cards we readied for a couple of celebratory drinks and some dinner in Playa Del Carmen with a friend of mine from Australia, Rob. We didn’t feel like doing anything but passing out into oblivion. It turned out that we didn’t end up doing that until 6am the next morning! Wrap drinks were just a bit too much fun! I still now do not know how we did it, but we did. It was fantastic!

I set my alarm for 8am so I had time to get up, pack, shop for some presents, leave at 9:15 and and be at the airport by around 9:45 to catch my flight at 11:45. There were two slight problems with this scenario. Luis was confused. My flight left at 11am, not 11:45am. We didn’t find this out until we got to the airport. . .which we did with only 1 minute to spare because we both slept through our alarms and woke up at 10am. . .with only one hour to shower, pack, get to the airport, through immigration, security and onto the plane. . .I can’t believe I made it. . .With a chaperone through immigration, security and everything I took all my bags to the gate, and checked them there. It was unbelievable!

The rest is history. . .Sure I missed the next connecting flight, left a bag in customs, went back and got it and got put on a another flight, but I still made it home on time to the waiting arms of my lovely lady at Brisbane Airport. . .Let me tell you, after all of that, not much in the world felt good, but that sure did!

It’s now a week later and a very tired and slightly more worldly HVX arrived at my door this afternoon. She looks like she’s been through the ringer, that’s for sure! Man, if that wasn’t a mistake taking that away! Hahaha! Until this afternoon, I hadn’t seen it since I checked it in Sydney! Too funny! I’m just glad it made it home and didn’t become some Brazilian Customs Officials’ early Christmas present!

The footage is all set to go, I will be posting some of the final stuff up on here but I need to wait until Luis has done what he needs to with it. He needs to unveil it to his clients before I can go showing the world in HighDefEdition! Hopefully that won’t be too far away!

Anyway, I think I’ve well and truly crapped on enough about all of this. It does feel good to actually report on what went down properly for at least one day.

In closing, all I can say is that it sure was crazy, but I can’t wait to do it all again!

Until then. . .:)

[Show as slideshow]

It was painful in real life, it’s only fitting that it be painful to watch and the second half of this video really is. You wish it was finished, over done, complete. . .welcome to my world!

Planes, airports, people, swollen feet, sore knees, bad food. . .man, it all sucks! This part of the journey was a bit of a melodrama in that we couldn’t manage to get the HVX out of customs in time for our flight. We didn’t check the tripods, since we had taken them as carry on everywhere and then were stopped at security 5 minutes before boarding and told to go back and check them in. While waiting for the guys to try and check the tripods and get them to the plane on time, our man Leandro, typing furiously on his terminal, eyes pinpoints of concentration had almost wrapped it up when. . .Darkness! The entire airport plunges into inky blackness. . .a few sparse screams of shock and fear pierce the immediate silence that follows, as well as my laugh, loud and deep, ringing out across the terminal. . .almost flirting with that fine line between true belly laughter and maniacal cackling. I was close to losing it and it felt gooooood!

Leandro’s voice, quiet and seeming to originate from a point in space hanging somewhere in front of us, says “I haven’t seen this ever in the 10 years I have worked here!”. Of course you haven’t Leandro, because Luis and I, the two cursed amigos’ haven’t come floating through this airport before with no time to spare, camera’s stuck in customs, cancelled flights and tripods that weren’t checked! No doubt Leandro won’t see it again until we are next in town!

But I digress, I doubt you’re here to hear my incessant moaning about how bad the travel was. “You’re doing an international shoot through Brazil and Mexico, so you had a bit of trouble, quit ya whining! Do you realise how lucky you are?!” Trouble is, once I get on a roll, it’s hard to stop the literary diarrhoea!

So what else is there to do when faced with all of this, but to plug in the headphones, crack out the camera and disconnect.

Shooting handheld with the 7D is cool, it’s fun and really spontaneous. I’ve missed that kind of shooting, as because of the rolling shutter I’m locked off on the tripod most of the time. And the rolling shutter sure is apparent, it’s all through this clip, I hate it. Yes, I can remove it, but to be honest. . .for this application, it’s hardly worth it. I’ve used a 5D MKII with some redrock rods attached to it and it takes out that tiny little judder that you get from a rig that’s too light. That little bit of extra weight really helps. I think I will look at getting some of these soon as it will dramatically increase the amount of ‘keepers’ when shooting handheld.

Again the IS on the 70-200 kicks butt in video mode, I love it to death. When you’re shooting handheld it really is phenomenal how much difference it makes. If you jump the camera around a bit, the IS can exacerbate the movements and you can end up with something that could make a person sick, it’s all in how you nurse it through the movement, learning the IS and how to caress it into doing what you want. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no sicko (well I am, but not when it comes to camera’s) but you really do need to be gentle with it, show it some r-e-s-p-e-c-t and it will love you! I should do a post showing the comparison in Video mode. . .I will. . .one day!

A bit of this stuff was shot at around 400 ISO, it’s still pretty clean at that point, I don’t start seeing much noise until around 800-1000 ISO. I know people carry on about how you can shoot at up to 1600, sure you can shoot at up to 1600, but man it looks pretty ugly. The noise seems to be big and chunky in the shadows, not the kind of stuff that Noise Removal software really likes. So I try to keep it below 1000 and with faster glass, that’s usually pretty achievable.

The music in this video is something I randomly found on my computer, listened to, latched onto and absolutely caned. It’s the first track off a mix CD a good friend of mine, who is an excellent DJ, put together. I found it perfect for this journey since it starts all mellow and lovely and takes you on a journey into the darker sides of minimal tech house. A soundtrack to  infuse the soul with metallic invulnerability. I don’t know the artist or the name of the track, maybe if Daniel stops by he can assist me here.

This is not a great example of videography, in fact I almost hesitated in uploading it and posting it, thinking, “No, maybe I should only be putting my best work on the site. . .” emulating the other blogging heroes that you see around the traps. . .In the end I figured, bugger it, this is what went down, sure the shots aren’t the best in the world, but they aren’t meant to be. . .this is my journey, not my masterpiece. . .If you find it as uncomfortable as I did, my work is done!

Click here to watch it on SmugMug in 1080P.

More soon. . .

All it takes is a little sun and. . .POP!

Directors Log – Date Unknown – Day Unknown

A day of shooting around 16 hours in length may have affected my ability to function normally, think straight, post well. . .but Mexico is amazing!!! And when the sun is shining, the shots fall onto the high speed compact flash card like drops of honey from the hive!

I’m scattered, tired and stoked! It was a really hard day today but worth the effort 20 times over. We managed to get some shots we were really happy with that will be fantastic for the job.

Getting here to Cancun after our untimely stopover in Sao Paulo was just as painful a trip as every other piece of international travel I’ve been associated with since I departed Australia, but I won’t go into that to much. The pain is just too near!

Upon arriving and taking a drive around the place, I was blown away at the American flavoured commercialisation of this place. It’s literally like a little American city in Mexico and quite unbelievable really. Then again it should come as no surprise as the beaches and coastline are so beautiful! The colour of the water, I’m almost loathe to admit, is even more astounding than that of my beloved Sunshine Coast. It’s so blue and so green it looks like an over-photoshopped postcard to the naked eye. . .astounding!

However with inconsistent sunshine and occasionally a totally overcast sky, it’s proven to be rather troublesome.

Today was full on. . .Sunrise from the beach, pool shots, golf shots, massages, spa’s, more pools, shopping. . .We did it all! I’d write more about it, but my eyes are so heavy they are closing as I write this. Considering it’s another 5am start tomorrow. . .I think it’s time for bed. . .

[Show as slideshow]

Much love and more soon. . .

So finally, here’s a couple of shots I knocked off from Australia to Rio. This video is the first in what will hopefully be a series of short video blogs. It’s all handheld handycam type stuff, I had the tripod with me, but I didn’t want to risk a run-in with security or overbearing airline staff all hopped up on oversalted mini-pretzels.

Shooting sure is a soothing way to pass the time. The only reason there’s not more footage is because I was so dog tired most of the time, I just couldn’t be shagged getting the camera out, but there just wasn’t that much interesting stuff to shoot anyway. It isn’t meant to be an amazing display of cinematography (if you were expecting it to be, I’m sorry! hahaha!), more than anything it is a side-product of boredom and my desire to document what it is that I see. Think of it as a home movie shot with an decent rig!

The Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM owned it in the plane. I would never have even dreamed of putting the old 75-300 on there in that dim light, it would have been completely useless!

The Sigma 30mm f1.4 was great too, most of the stuff I shot with that in the plane was wide open at maybe ISO 200-400. . .

The shot at the start with old mate scratching his eyes and the dude playing with the phone were both on the Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6L. I really do like this lens and even though it taps out at 5.6 at 400mm, considering that’s the same as my old 75-300mm I don’t find it much of a hindrance. If anything it helps as I know what’s possible with a given amount of light. It’s boken is nowhere near as nice as the 70-200, but it’s still decent.

I’ve heard many people discount the usefulness of the IS in the canon lenses for video applications. Personally, I found it incredibly helpful and I am so glad that I got the IS model of the 70-200, as I almost didn’t. For handheld shooting I can get a much better shot with the IS on than without, and providing you nurse your pans and movements a little so as not to push it too much, you can get quite good results.

The music in this clip means a lot to me and there’s a very good reason I used it. . .It’s by a band called The Detroit Escalator Company and the Song is called ‘Gathering Light’. The whole album that this song is off (Black Buildings) is just amazing, I have loved it since the moment a great friend of mine Claudia, from the Dominican Republic, introduced me to it around 5 years ago.

It is my travelling music, it allows me to put my headphones in and completely disconnect. Moving through airports and fellow travellers as if I was a ghost, a vaporous entity, invisible, untouchable and completely at ease within the maelstrom of itineraries, people, planes, flights, service staff and screaming children. It’s just such a perfect juxtaposition that my entire perception of the journey is almost left in limbo. A complete obfuscation of the senses. . .

On journeys like this, the ability to be able to plug in and view everything with a vacantly detached curiosity is priceless beyond measure. I hope you find your travelling music. If you’ve got something to recommend, let me know. . .I need it!

More soon. . .

This is clearly the best weather one could hope for if one were on the last day of a shoot and needed to nail some aerials. . .

Sometimes things don’t go your way, and you just have to keep laughing. I’m becoming really good at that now. It’s lucky, because today really threw us a curve ball. . .

A sunrise shoot was out of the question. Waking to solid cloud cover at 5:30am was bittersweet. I decided to head out later on and get a couple more shots around the city while Luis looked after some work in the room. The weather was average though and nothing was really popping.

Scheduled on a 7pm flight out of Brazil to Cancun (Via Sao Paulo and Texas! Ouch!) we had only to shoot the aerials at around midday when the light would be best for our requirements and we were done.

Finding out that the Helicopter we needed wasn’t available and a last minute replacement would cost close to US$2000 for the hour was a bit unfortunate. What really put a damper on things, quite literally, was the torrential rain that started belting down. The clouds looked impenetrable and it was pretty obvious we wouldn’t be shooting anything from a chopper by the time we had to leave. The weather radar confirmed this. No good! They’ll have to be shot at another time.

So off the airport we went to catch our flight. Long story short, it got delayed, we missed the connection to Texas and are now stuck in Sao Paulo for the night. Since the next flight doesn’t leave until 11pm tomorrow night, we have had to rebook the flights home so we get the time we need in Playa Del Carmen.

Despite the bummer, we’re still laughing and just hanging to get to Mexico so we can start making headway again, all these setbacks have been very frustrating.

I have to say though, the new glass is kicking ass! I have got some shots that I just would never have been able to before, not only with the extra range of the 100-400, but also the better low light capability of the 70-200. Initially the push pull zoom of the 100-400 threw me a little, but I’m getting used to it now and it’s not so bad. The Bokeh of the 70-200 is just to die for. I’ll do a breakdown on the whole lot at a later date.

I have been shooting some random travel sort of video, but I just haven’t had a moment to cut a clip. Probably tomorrow I will though, I’ll do my best.

But now, it’s time for bed. . .

[Show as slideshow]

More soon.

This is what we've been waiting for. . .blue skies and sunshine!

In the filtered pre-dawn light, warning lights flashed brightly on the dash. Luis turned the key in the ingition, the starter motor chugged to life, but refused to start the car. Again and again he tried, but each time the engine just emitted a tortured whirring sound before lapsing into silence. It was 6am and having joked endlessly about worst case scenarios, funnily enough, this one never came up. It’s always the way. . .

After pushing the car down random streets for 15 minutes, unable to even start it by pushing, we gave up. Ready to throw in the towel and miss the Sunrise shoot, which was looking bleak anyway, we parked it in a random car park and were grabbing stuff out of the car ready to walk back to the hotel and call it quits when I thought I might take a look under the bonnet.

Often I wonder why the hell I do this. . .I know NOTHING about cars. . .I look under the hood and it makes about as much sense to me as Norwegian television. . .bugger all! But I opened it up none the less, maybe just to see if the engine had actually been removed, in which case I would have been able to successfully diagnose the fault. I wiggled the Spark plug leads, pulled the accelerator cable and tapped a couple of things with my fingers. Luis turned it over and, Hey Presto! It started first time! We had overcome the first hurdle of the day and felt pretty damn good about it!

A sunrise shoot on the lake yielded less than I would have liked. Cloud cover ruined all but a tiny portion of the sky and the shots were not as good as they could have been. I managed to get some OK ones, but nothing that you would call great, which was diasppointing, as the location really had the potential. It started raining while we were shooting, and the shots that were working stopped doing so because you could see rain drops on the water. . .I’m sure we’ll still get a little out of it though.

We stopped by the main bridge and golf course to see what we could get, but the overcast sky was killing us. The golf course yielded little and concerns over the outcome of the shoot were starting to weigh heavily upon us.

The weather looked terrible and we had pretty much written the day off. Packing things up we headed for the project site to see what it looked like so we could get an idea of what we would be shooting when we booked the helicopter. The site looked good but we ended up having to climb a couple of sizeable mountains to get the shots we needed. Not bringing water was a bad move, jetlag was kicking in and just as things were looking quite ominous, a break in the clouds starting dominating the sky back over Brasilia and we knew that we had to get back there fast.

The sun was shining when we got back into the city and we shot like madmen, running all over town getting everything we could while the sunshine and the blue skies lasted. At last we were getting shots we needed, that we were really happy with and that ticked all the boxes. It was stinking hot and without sunscreen, we didn’t realise how cooked we were until we actually stopped to look at each other. Bright red, haggard and scattered we kept going until we couldn’t go anymore. The 7D was singing though, absolutely loving the 70-200 and just raking it in.

Finally at about 6pm, a full 12 hours after kicking off we called it quits. With more than we’d hoped for in the can, we retired back to the hotel to have a rest wait for the sunset. Unfortunately the rain rolled in and put the kybosh on any hope of a sunset shoot, so we spent the time going through the rushes and dumping the cards.

It was a successful day, very hard work, but worth every second. I’m hoping for a clear sky tomorrow morning so we can really smash a sunrise and have nice weather for the aerial shots. Fingers crossed gang. . .

That’s it from me, it’s late, I’m buggered and with a 5:30am start on the cards again, it’s time for bed. . .

More soon. . .

[Show as slideshow]

"When my baby, when my baby smiles at me I go to Rio. . .De Janeiro!" Sadly, this song skittled around the inside of my sleep deprived head the whole time I was at Rio airport.

“Sorry sir, it says here that your bags have been sent to Sao Paulo instead of Rio.” A Delta employee explained in halting English. Can anybody say icing on the cake?

It took me back to watching a clip that my colleague Brett cut once. He used a quote from the Dalai Llama that said something along the lines of, “And when you realise how perfect everything is. . .you will throw your head back and laugh to the sky”. I did just that. . .what else could I do?

So after managing to wrangle my way through customs with the 7D and all the lenses, which they took great interest in, telling me to make sure I took it all with me when I left (I guess as a precaution, just in case I felt like leaving my beloved camera behind for no good reason) I jumped the next flight to Brasilia and feeling totally over it and completely exhausted found a whole row of empty seats and passed the hell out. I needed it.

Luis, my client, a cheerful Spaniard with a great sense of humour, picked me up from the airport and off we went for a quick tour of downtown Brasilia before checking in. After a quick shower to reboot, we met in the lobby and broke down what we needed to achieve whilst here in Brazil. It all looked good to me, but did I mention the weather was bad? Well it is. . .overcast and crummy. . .awesome!

We went out for a bit of a location reccie and ended up shooting a bit and found some spots that will yield some really nice shots. The architecture in this place is fantastic, the city was completely planned and there are these huge wide open park areas all through the city, it’s really nice.

Finishing up at dark, we went out to for a brilliant feed at a Brazilian steakhouse, sorted tomorrow’s schedule and went back to our rooms. I couldn’t help but smash out a time lapse off the balcony. . .4 second exposures. . .150 of them @ 25fps. It works out to 6 seconds of footage and should be ample.

Trouble is, I can’t dump this card, because all the powerboards, cables and adapters are in my bag. . .that’s still in customs. . .in Sao Paulo. . .Awesome!

Anyway, hopefully they arrive tomorrow. . .

Sunrise shoot at 6am. . .if there’s a sun to shoot that is. . .I’m praying for clear skies, if you’re a friend to me, please do so too!

More soon!

[Show as slideshow]