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No Ordinary Hero

I am thrilled to announce that NO ORDINARY HERO starring John Maucere with Oscar winner Marlee Matlin is having its world première at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis! I am the cinematographer for this feature film which was directed by Troy Kotsur who is also deaf. We  made the film under an extremely challenging budget, in a very short timeframe, and with cast and crew working through language barriers, but it all came together very smoothly and we created a very beautiful film that will première in Indianapolis Oct 19.

NOH-posterNO ORDINARY HERO: THE SUPERDEAFY MOVIE is a family drama about a deaf actor who plays a superhero on a TV show but must look beyond his own struggles to inspire a deaf boy to believe in himself. Based on the real internationally known SuperDeafy character created by John Maucere, NO ORDINARY HERO is a story about being different and finding the one thing that makes the ordinary, Super.

Crossing Language Barriers to Produce a Film

No Ordinary Hero was conceived by the film’s star John Maucere and Director Troy Kotsur who are both deaf. Executive Producers Liz Tannenbaum and Paul Maucere are deaf, as are about half of the cast. The relationship between DP and Director is normally a close one with a lot of collaboration, and going into this project, I have to admit I was a bit concerned about communicating with Troy. But as it turned out, my concern was unfounded. Continue reading “No Ordinary Hero”

Shooting “No Ordinary Hero” on the Canon 5D MkIII and Atomos Ninja 2

by Jeff Gatesman
I have shot a feature film called No Ordinary Hero with the new Canon 5D Mk III using the clean video output to an Atomos Ninja 2 and recording to ProRes 422 Hq. This was a conscious choice for several reasons, the main one being that we have a dozen or so FX shots, mostly green screen composites and we needed the fattest “negative” our low-budget film could afford.

I will get to the meat of the subject with camera setup and recorder settings in a moment but first let me start by addressing the fat “negative” statement (and unless you are going straight from your camera output to a finished product you need to be thinking of the files as a camera negative, or at least a starting point for your final look) because when Canon came out with the firmware update on April 30 that allowed for clean video out via HDMI on the 5D Mk III, I read a few posts where people visually compared the h.264 video from the camera to the 422 video recorded by the Ninja. The conclusion that there was no discernible difference visually between the files is as expected–the codecs were doing their job, compressing and decompressing the file so that in the end they look like HD video. This is not the point of recording 422 Hq over h.264. The reason for recording the raw video to 422 Hq is to get as much information as possible for the post workflow in order to be able to cut keys easily, and color time the final film without the degradation that begins with a lossy codec like h.264.

If you compare the two codecs you can easily see the difference: h.264 is an 8-bit codec using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, and the Ninja 2 records Pro Res 422 Hq at 10 bits using 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. A simplified comparison is that the identical files as recorded from the 5D Mk III on cf card vs the Ninja 2 weigh in at 129 MB vs 863 MB respectively. That is almost 7 times as much information in the Pro Res files. In order to make the files so miniscule, the h.264 codec has to throw away valuable information during the compression process and rely on interpolation to recreate it during decompression. You can see the effects of a lossy codec by viewing the frame grabs below, taken from the actual footage from No Ordinary Hero and cropped at 100%.

h.264 frame grab from cf card
Frame from the h.264 file recorded onto cf card Canon 5D Mk III

 

Pro Res 422Hq frame grab from Ninja 2
Frame from the Pro Res 422Hq file recorded onto SSD drive Atomos Ninja 2

Notice how much sharper and higher contrast the image from Pro Res looks. Continue reading “Shooting “No Ordinary Hero” on the Canon 5D MkIII and Atomos Ninja 2″

Drops 2

A continuation of my previous post where I attempted to collide water droplets and freeze them in time by use of a very fast burst of light. This time I added a digital component to help get the timing more accurate and controllable. Click on the images to view them larger, or if you would like a print, or license, hit this button [button url=”http://gatesman.photoshelter.com/gallery/Water-Drop-Art/G0000Gqdm0BnPS48″ style=”black” size=”small”] Get a Print [/button]

One of the things I’ve come to like about these images is that they are kind of like cloud watching, in that I start to see different things in the shapes and patterns they make. But then, I’ve been looking at quite a lot of these recently and it may just be the creeping madness that comes from prolonged solitary work. I guess it’s time to hit the bar…

Water Drops

I’ve always been drawn to water. I’m a Pisces so I guess I should say “naturally”. But this is the first time I’ve attempted to photograph it so deliberately. (click on the images to see them larger)

Creating these images required a contraption, timing and patience. Only one of those things, the contraption, do I have 100 percent tolerance for. I love making a contraption: planning it out, finding material, building it. Getting my hands dirty has always been part of my DNA. As for patience, let’s just say as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better with it, though some might still say it is not my strongest virtue. Fair enough. And timing, well, I’ve always had an inconsistent relationship with timing.

Enough of the self-reflection: this project had me firing on all cylinders. I loved every bit of this because the outcome can be so incredibly soothing, satisfying and surprising. I can see why people get so hooked on the pursuit of creating water sculptures. I think I will try this again in the near future. I’ll keep you posted.

Shuttle Mission #26

The Space Shuttle Endeavour made it’s way from LAX toward the California Science Center this morning. I meant to go out and catch it as it left the airport this morning but 2:30 am was a little too early after spending most of yesterday shooting at the beach. So I caught up with it as it took a short break this afternoon in Westchester.

The skies were a perfect kind of overcast, and even though it was reported there would be no official public viewing of the Shuttle while it sat waiting for some traffic lights to come down, it drew a large crowd.

Gatesman DP For New Comedy Short

[vimeo 45661135 w=564 h=317]

Jewtholic Teaser from Jeff Gatesman on Vimeo.

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.

Mazel Tov!  Continue reading “Gatesman DP For New Comedy Short”