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Man, this was fun! Fun to shoot and fun to edit! After a month or so of chopping away at commercial gigs, this was just some good ‘ol fashion candy coloured, idealistic fun!

It’s nice to take a step back from everything sometimes and just shoot some stuff that feels good. It’s a good time of year for it too. Around the end of April the temperatures are starting to drop a little, the skies are starting to clear up and with the diminishing rainfall, there is little silt washing down the rivers into the ocean, leaving it crystal clear. It’s this fortuitous combination of meteorological phenomena that makes this time of year such a lovely time to shoot.

All of this footage has been shot over the last 2 or so weeks. A mixture of the Canon 5DMKII and the Canon 7D. Canon 5DMKII for the lower light sunset stuff so I can keep shooting a little later and Canon 7D for the blue sky daytime stuff, basically because I have polarising options on the Canon 7D that I don’t have on the Canon 5DMKII. . .yet.

Did I mention it was fun shooting this?. . .Yes. . .Where were we?

I shot this with a mixture of the usual suspects. . .that being, the increasingly insufficient bag of lenses that I lug around, detailed greatly elsewhere on this blog. Man, I’m hanging to get some new glass for the Canon 5DMKII.

The new Canon TS-E 17mm F/4L didn’t get too much of a run here, with this kind of footage, I really missed the ability to be able to whack a polariser on the front. Likewise being without ND grads really limit this lens as a landscape type of lens for me. If I could filter it, I would be absolutely stoked! I had been using the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 ATX on the Canon 5DMKII. By itself, it works passably from 15-16mm, but with the polariser on you get a bit of hard, unflattering vignetting at the edges. So whenever I needed a wide polarised shot, I turned to the Canon 7D. I could have fixed this with a dedicated Wide Angle lens for the Canon 5DMKII, but this solution will work well for now. I don’t mind running two camera’s and would rather keep doing this so I can invest into other glass first, instead of buying another wide angle.

There are a couple of Canon 5DMKII shots in there with the Sigma 30mm f1.4. I just scaled them up a little to remove the darkest of the vignette, I’m sure you’ll spot it/them in there, it’s quite noticeable. Funny that in that OOF background, there is a ring of slightly more in focus detail inherent in the fringe of the vignette. It’s weird and kind of takes away from the perception of depth. I’m not sure if you can see it here, but it’s there. . .trust me (I mean that in a totally un-facebook, not creepy way, honest!)

The Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6L was great for the yachts on the water at Mooloolaba, but I have since taken to leaving it at home more recently. The camera bag was growing in weight and considering I wasn’t using it every time I shot, decided to see how I would go without it, relying only on the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM. I can say, my back really appreciated not having it in there, but I did miss it a couple of times for sure. Especially when shooting from up high on the cliff in Coolum, it would have come in great handy there. The Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM’s bokeh at f2.8 was pleasant though, and it was nice to be limited on focal length for a while. It makes me walk more and in the process, see shots I might not have come across.

The music in this clip, Revtone – Love Movement (Ulrich Schnauss Remix) is off a compilation, Global Underground 030 – Paris – Mixed by Nick Warren, one of my favourite DJ’s. Ulrich Schnauss has a very typical sound, very atmospheric and it was playing in the car while I was cruising around shooting some of this footage up at Coolum. When I heard it, I immediately knew that this would be the soundtrack to this footage. Cruisy, beautiful and not in a hurry to get anywhere. It would allow the shots to just hang there for a couple of seconds extra, allowing the eye to really roam around the image.

Usually I burn shots, 1-2 seconds and out, and I did start doing that at the end because it was too monotonous, but this time I wanted to more reflect the feeling I had when I was shooting it. Which was a whimsical kind of relaxed concentration. . .Very Sunshine Coast!

My own criticisms. . .This clip is about two minutes too long. At 2:30 it would have been a corker. In, out and left me wanting to see more. Trouble is, this one is a bit of a dual purpose clip. I intend to utilise this for other applications and wanted it to be a bit longer than what I usually cut. There are some shots in there that hang a little too long and it loses momentum somewhere in the middle. A little editing of the song might not have gone astray here, but there is only so long I can spend on these things. At the end of the day, this is not a show reel (Which I am working on at the moment) or anything, just a collection of footage shot over the past two or so weeks.

Things to look out for. . .

• Some very nasty aliasing on the sunset shot across the bay from the Canon 5DMKII. One was so bad I couldn’t include it. perhaps I need to wind the sharpness down as detailed in various places around the net.
• Sigma 30mm f1.4 EX DC HSM Vignetting. What’s your thoughts on that? Fan or hater?
• Glidetrack love. . .and love it is. . .I really do love it. (In an entirely not creepy way. . .)
• The video’s stupid title. . .watch that. . .it was late and I was strapped for ideas. . .I think in German it means “Flying burger sausage”. Perhaps not.
• The second last shot, a little noisy (ok, alot!). . .That was Canon 5DMKII with the Tilt Shift on at 6400 ISO. With some noise removal it might have come good. For me, it’s better having a noisy shot than no shot at all. I’m not going to a 35mm print for theatrical distribution so it’s not going to cause me much trouble.
• The last shot. This was my first attempt at a proper night timelapse of the stars. It’s not an amazingly interesting shot, it was after all my first crack, taken from my front yard and a test more than anything. I just really wanted to use it here, since it was something different. I’ve become quite inspired, as I’m sure many other have, by Tom’s work, over at Timescapes. That guy is seriously one of the most talented out there, more so than any of the other DSLR ‘pioneers’ out there. Check him out, you’ll be glad you did.

Anyway, that’s enough crap from me, it’s late and I’ve proven myself unworthy of continuing to type at this keyboard.

I hope you enjoy the flick, if there’s anything I missed, just flick me a comment!

More soon. . .

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So at last I got around to chopping up the footage from last weekend’s semi-large storm swell and here it is! I must say it turned out better than I thought, mostly due to the surfing and acting talents of my good friend, Greg Weatherall.

Turns out he is a bit of gun surfer! In his brothers’ words “He’s a big unit! I’ve seen him smack the lip and just destroy waves! I mean look at him, he’s huge!” I’d have to agree, he is a big unit and yes he does tend to leave quite a wake in his passage. Despite not finding the 12 foot waves he was hoping for he still had a lovely time and turned it on for the camera!

Going into this shoot, I kind of had an idea what I wanted to capture. The usual spectator love that goes with these kinds of swells (Since every man and his dog wants a slice of the action), some good surfing and hopefully some nice footage for an intro, with Greg getting ready and all that kind of stuff.

I must admit the intro stuff wasn’t just off the cuff, I did wear my Directors hat for that, but hey, you got to set the scene right? Lucky for me, Greg is a good sport and was willing to indulge my shot-wankery, instead of just charging off into the surf with a devil may care attitude like every other pro surfer!

I started with the getting ready footage. The Sigma 30mm f1.4 and Canon 50mm f1.8 II really worked well here. I love these lenses, the bokeh is nice to play with and the quick glimpses gives you just enough to see what’s going on. We started off out at the furthest point break using Greg’s Canon 400mm f2.8. I must say, I was so excited to use this lens and my lord it is a lovely piece of kit, but man it is just so unwieldy it really didn’t lend itself to the way I like to shoot. Encumbered by my camera bag, my tripod, the glidetrack and the 400mm (in it’s own backpack, it’s that bloody big!) it was just such a pain in the butt moving around that I probably missed a tonne of great shots because I couldn’t spare the time to be moving around the rocks with all the gear. An assistant would have been invaluable, but as if that’s going to happen for this kind of shoot. So whilst the image is outstanding, and the extra stops really helped as the light fell, I don’t think I’ll be saving my pennies for this one.

I finished off the evening by pulling out the trusty Tokina 11-16 f2.8 and my Hyongnuo Intervalometer (Which has a dinky screen! Beware!) and grabbed 150 shots to whack together into a time lapse. 150 seems good to me and works out to be a 6 second shot. I’m not usually one for hanging on shots, but the music in this track really lent itself well to that.

At 6am the next morning. . .well you know the story from the previous post. . .very disappointing. . .nowhere near the predicted swell. . .sad faces all round.

I had learnt my lesson the day before though and left the Canon 400mm 2.8 in the car, waved goodbye to the Glidetrack and travelled light and swift with my camera bag with all my lenses in it and the tripod. Ahhhh! Much better! I did however borrow Greg’s 1.4X extender and found it worked quite well on my Canon 100-400 f4-5.6L. The 1.4X coupled with the 1.6X Crop factor was really quite nice. Sadly shooting wide open (at f8) was not really an option, as it was just too soft. I found to get anywhere near a sharp image I had to be shooting at around f11-f13, f13 seemed to be the sharpest.

You’ll notice that the footage looks radically different in places, there was bright sunshine, overcast skies, dim dusk shooting, sunset shooting, man I got it all. I was really hoping it was just going to be grey and overcast and look a little menacing, sadly that wasn’t the case. The colours in this clip are pretty much straight out of the camera. Just a couple of shots had to be corrected for contrast as the 400mm and the extender had left them a little washy at times. I think one day I might do a graded version of this clip just as a test, but today is definitely not that day!

What do I think makes this clip? Seriously, it’s got to be the song! It’s just great! I’ve been listening to it all week and funnily enough, it’s another track of that Gui Boratto Mix Collection on Renaissance. That compilation has been getting a hiding on lately! It’s just too good! The song itself is by Bomb the Bass and it’s called ‘The Infinites (Featuring Paul Conboy and Gui Boratto)”. Great album, you should definitely check it out!

So that was the weekend that was. . .Not what we’d hoped for, but now having cut it all up, not a total disaster either. Could it be better, of course! Will it be better next time? You bet! Let’s just hope we don’t have to wish too big of a tropical cyclone upon the Pacific islands to get the shots we want!

That’s it for now! It’s way past clock off time! Managed to get down to the Mooloolaba stop of the Triathlon World Cup today, hopefully will get some time to cut that this week.

Until then. . .stay classy!

Now let’s be realistic, this was a totally self-indulgent w#nk! Hahaha! In fact that’s what this video should be called!

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I was bored, ok? This was shot when I was stuck in the hotel room in Sao Paulo after we had been delayed and missed our flight out of Brazil to Texas, all those months ago during the Brazil and Mexico Shoot. I cut and uploaded the second travel video this day and after that, pretty much had nothing to do except shoot myself doing what I had been doing for ages, sitting in the window watching the rain fall down from the sky and cascade down the glass. Riveting stuff, why not shoot it?

Funnily enough, it did prove to be quite a challenge, and there was much trial and error, particularly with the shallow focus and having to get the shot right, before running over and getting in place. To be honest, my acting wasn’t as good as I thought it would be either, way too contrived. . .lucky I didn’t have a speaking part.

I used the Sigma 30mm f1.4, the Canon 50mm f1.8 II, Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS USM and the Tokina 11-16 f2.8. The 70-200 was probably my favourite of the four, positioned right up against the far wall of the hotel room, wide open and loving the dim light at a low ISO. I can’t help but start wondering what a 5D MKIII might have looked like and how soon it will be tempting me.

The music here is by a group called Way Out West. They are absolutely phenomenal artists, just two lads in fact, Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren. The song is called “The doors are where the windows should be” and it just sounded exactly like I felt at that time; Mellow with a dash of skitter.

It’s short and rightly so, the subject matter didn’t really lend itself to lengthy epic, rain, me and a window. . .even 30 seconds is too much. Sadly that’s all the Sunshine Coast has been offering up the last week also! Just rain, rain and more rain! There hasn’t been much shooting going on that’s for sure. When there has, I’ll be back on the case and pumping out content on here like there’s no tomorrow.

More to come soon! Oh and Happy New Year guys and gals!

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. . .

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. . .:)