Marie sees Saints. Not Jesus in a slice of toast or a cloud formation of the Three Wise men; no,in Marie’s case Moses brings his stone tablet to her dinner party, St. John blows leaves in her back yard, she even has a full conversation with the Virgin Mary and her newly born, yet fully grown, baby Jesus. This may all seem odd for some people, but Marie has been on a path of devoted Christian Faith since childhood, until one catastrophic moment, one devastating turn in her life, reveals her to not be the person she had thought herself to be.
Joshua Tree National Park is a surreal landscape in the high desert called Mojave that is scattered with the foreboding, tree-like cacti from which it is named. It’s unique beauty is also reflected in the myriad of other hearty plants that dot the landscape and is oddly interspersed with other-worldly piles of gigantic rocks.
Toward the end of June the full moon came out and I shot some time lapse of it as it rose slowly over one such gathering of rocks appropriately named Jumbo Rocks.
I just cannot stop marveling over this camera. We recently shot this music video with 3- 5D’s and a variety of Canon L series lenses.
The video is for the title song of the documentary of the same name. See What I’m Saying, the Deaf Entertainers Documentary is just that: a film about 4 deaf entertainers and is the first of it’s kind as it is open captioned to be accessible to a hearing impaired audience. The music video is open captioned as well, and as far as I know, is also the first of it’s kind. The video was directed by Hilari Scarl and the music is written and performed by the Los Angeles based group Powder.
The video was shot using a total of 3-5D MkII cameras and a variety of support devices. Post production was done in Final Cut Pro and After Effects while the look was created in Color and using the Magic Bullet Looks Suite filters. The workflow included downloading CF cards to external hard drives on location and then transcoding the h.264 footage to Apple Pro Res 422 HQ for editing in Final Cut.
The Camera Crew
Jeff Gatesman – Director of Photography
Barry Berona – Additional Camera Operator
David Farkas – Addditional Camera Operator
Pedro Guimares – DIT and 1st camera assitant
Tiffany Aug – Additional 1st camera assitant
Alexander Brennan – 2nd Camera Assistant
Stories of what a film crew can do when left unsupervised, with several days off, on a distant location are legendary. This is not one of those stories. Recently I was working on a film in Shreveport, La., and with 4 days off due to circumstances beyond my control, got together with some of the other crew members and made a short film of our own.
I shot this film entirely with a canon 5D Mark II and grip and lighting equipment purchased from Home Depot. Our one prop was purchased at a swap meet for $7. Of course the film could not have been made without the great talents of our cast and crew, and a ready-made set.
The film was conceived and written by Nancy Breaux and myself, and we borrowed the strengths of our stunt coordinator, Gregory Brazzel, electric best boy, Ken Ballantine, key grip, Scott “Scooter” Hillman, set decorator, Mary Beth O’Connor, and location manager Kendrick Hudson. Our three actors were the stunt crew from the feature: Jennifer H. Cobb, Gregory Brazzel (stunt coordinator) and Tracy Thomas, who also wrote and recorded all the music for Full Contact Scrabble.
Sound for the film was recorded on the 5D using the built-in mic, which is less than desirable. Fortunately during post, 2-time Emmy-award winning sound designer Adam Johnston stepped in and trashed all of the location sound and replaced it with a mighty soundtrack complete with cicada’s, buzzing flies and the snapping gum that helps define Jennifer’s character.
If you liked the film, leave a comment for us. If you didn’t like it: what the heck is wrong with you?
I got my new 5D Mark II a few days ago and I haven’t been as thrilled by new machinery as I have been about this in quite awhile. Without getting into all the really cool things that make this camera great (see any one of a million articles already published on the internet or in magazines), I have my own needs for this device and one of them is the ability to shoot 1080i HD video with my own compliment of Canon glass and get luscious, shallow DOF shots. Mostly I will be using the camera to shoot episodes of the firehouse cooking show Feeding The Fire, and the biggest concern for me has been sound, so I found a solution that works best for me.
The problems with sound on the 5D mark II is the tiny internal mic that picks up everything in a large radius around the camera, which is not good for recording dialogue, or anything else you want to use as a soundtrack for that matter, and the camera’s lack of control over audio recording, leaving the user with the less than desirable auto-gain only. The latter seems to be solved by a firmware update being offered by Magic Lantern. I say that is seems to be solved because the firmware is not quite ready for general release (see their wiki for more info), but it looks very hopeful as the option to give us audio control until Canon comes around to the idea, but if the history of the L1 sound issues are any indication, they will be in no hurry.
5D Mark II with Sound rig
The solution for me seemed simple enough: I have a short shotgun mic that has been working great for me for years, and so I got a hot-shoe mounted shock mount to hold the mic above the lens, but needed a power supply for it. I wanted to stay away from the manufactured adapter boxes by Beachtek and Juiced because I think they are pretty pricey and relatively noisy. So I went with a clean sounding PSC 48V phantom power supply and a balanced to stereo mini plug adapter made by the good folks at Coffee Sound in Los Angeles. This gave me the ability to record clean audio, but the physical setup was to have the 48V PH on my belt with cables going from mic, to belt and back to the camera. I immediately thought of the high repair bills as I imagined all the ways this setup could cause the little mini plug to be ripped from the camera, not to mention the sheer inconvenience of it all, especially shooting documentary style when speed is all important.
So I opened the 48V PH box to get a look at where the electronics where and where I could punch some holes. A couple of minutes with some drill bits, a 2″ 1/4-20 screw and a locking ring to keep it from falling out, some flat cork, and I had a way to attach it nicely to the bottom of my camera. One more hole and a 1/2″ screw and I had the quickplate for my tripod attached to the bottom of the box and I was ready to go.
I just shot an episode of Feeding The Fire in River Grove, IL and this setup worked great. The images are incredible: the shallow depth of field give it a rich texture and the sound is just perfect.
