videos

There are 168 posts filed in videos (this is page 16 of 21).

Panasonic GH4 Slow Motion Test Footage


After reading many glowing reviews of the new Panasonic GH4, I just had to get my hands on one of these things for myself. In addition being curious about the weight and ergonomics of Micro 4/3rds systems, I was particularly intrigued by the GH4’s ability to shoot in 96fps, something that no other prosumer DSLRs are currently capable of. This allows you to slow down footage to 25% its original speed at 24fps. While the bitrate isn’t great, I love me my slow motion.

I am not at all familiar with Panasonic’s line of cameras, so taking this out into the world for an hour at Pike Place Market was really a crash course. All of the buttons are in different places than on my Canon 5D Mark III. Most annoyingly, the position of the shutter/aperture dials on the GH4 is switched. That’ll take some time getting used to.

I hope to write more about my experiences with the GH4 in the future, and how it compares with my work on full frame cameras. In the meantime, here’s a brief video I shot today.

The View from Smith Tower


This weekend, we went to the top of Smith Tower’s to get a view of Seattle and its surroundings from its observation deck. I brought my Blackmagic Pocket Camera with me, and was able to capture this short video. Since the observation deck is surrounded by bars, I had to reach around the bars with the camera to get the views, then stabilize the footage slightly in post. This is one of the advantages of having a camera this small – you can capture high-quality images in situations you would never otherwise be able to.

One of my beefs with this footage is that the focus peaking on the camera often led me astray. When you’re in harsh sunlight, the small screen on the Blackmagic is all you can rely on for getting correct focus/exposure because the image on the screen is basically impossible to see clearly. Several times the focus peaking led me to believe my shots were in focus, especially since I was already closed down to f/8 to even f/22 on occasion. But when I look at the footage above, several of the shots are clearly soft and out of focus.

Aside from that, I hope the video captures the beauty of Seattle on a rare, bright sunny day.

A Video Portrait of Fremont Market

Recently, I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to sell my Blackmagic Pocket Camera. While I’m still in love with the image it produces, there are other cameras that I’ve been lusting after which fulfill different purposes that I’m now more interested in (including the Canon C100, the Fuji X100S, and the Canon XA25), and which don’t require the trade-offs that the Blackmagic demands.

Nonetheless, no one has taken me up on my offer yet, so this weekend, I decided to take the Blackmagic camera to Fremont Market and give it another spin. While I was initially just planning to shoot a bunch of b-roll and make a video montage, I ended up shooting several documentary-style videos.

As usual, these were shot using my Blackmagic, my cheap-o Polaroid rig, and a Tascam DR-05 (on-board microphones). Some of the audio is pretty rough, but my objective here was to maintain as low of a profile as humanly possible. All audio was recorded in impromptu interviews, and I think mic’ing people using a lavalier would have taken away from the spontaneity and made people less open on camera. It’s a trade-off for sure, but I think the audio is adequate.

Here’s a video of local artist Brittney Lyons, and her incredible gum wrapper art:

Here’s a brief profile I shot of Beanfish, a local company which creates delicious fish-shaped foodstuffs:

Here’s a local band, Elephant Gazebo, performing “Wrecking Ball.” Fun times:

My takeaway from these videos is that, while I think the footage still looks amazing, I really feel like I need at least a couple more lenses to get the most out of this camera. The Super 16mm sensor gives MFT lenses a crop factor of nearly 3x. Wide angle shots are challenging with my current, limited lens selection, as are shots with shallow depth of field (my favorite).

I remain conflicted about this camera, but I’ll keep trying to find logical uses for it before putting it on sale on Amazon.

Interpreting Synecdoche, New York: A Video Essay

I was grateful to be able to chat with LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson about Synecdoche, New York. Synecdoche has always been one of those films that has mystified me. Every single scene seem feels loaded with metaphor, always on the verge of didacticism. But I have seen few people come up with a satisfying interpretation of much of the movie (with a few exceptions).

This was my first attempt at a long long-form video essay, and while I’m pleased with the results, I don’t know that it’s something that resonated with a particularly large group of people. Nonetheless, what was important to me was hopefully being able to shed light on what is one of the most moving yet enigmatic films I’ve ever seen.

The Making of That Close-Ups Video Essay

This week I published a new video essay at /Film on the art of close-ups. I was grateful and honored to have Edgar Wright’s participation on this essay. But how did it come to be?

This essay started as a much simpler supercut of all the close-ups in Wright’s Cornetto trilogy. I cut together what this would look like for Shaun of the Dead as a proof of concept:

I showed this video to a few people and…it didn’t really do anything for them. They didn’t react with “Wow, this is so cool!” or “This mashup is illuminating!” so I kind of put it on the back burner for awhile. Separately, I’d been wanting to do a feature with Wright for /Film for quite some time – we’d always meant to get him on as a guest of the podcast around the time that The World’s End was released but the timing just never worked out.

The thing with filmmaker interviews is: they are legion. Filmmakers go through a press gang bang every time they promote a movie in a big way and over time, all the questions/answers have to take on the feeling of sameness. It is virtually impossible to ask questions in a way that feels novel or revealing. I felt bad subjecting Wright to yet another press interview, so I wanted to try an alternate tactic. I reached out with the proof of concept video above and asked if he’d like to record an interview with me on the art of close-ups to be released in video essay form. Fortunately, he agreed.

We chatted for about 20 minutes or so on Skype. I edited that interview down into a 8.5 minute monologue, then proceeded with the painstaking process of finding all the footage that matched what Wright was talking about and putting the essay together. The entire video essay took about 4-5 weeks of work, on and off, on nights after my day job and during weekends.

This video hit the web on Wednesday morning, and gained some traction via Youtube thanks to a few prominent tweets:

The art of close-ups with @edgarwright via @slashfilm http://t.co/6ImSPsjCTn
— Wes Craven (@wescraven) January 29, 2014

Check out this interview I did with @slashfilm about close ups. http://t.co/b17ABEjkQg Don’t count the number of times I say ‘like’ though.
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) January 29, 2014

On Saturday morning (2/1/2014), Vimeo made the video a Staff Pick, giving the video a whole new life.

 

It’s been a long-time goal of mine to make the Staff Picks page, so I was incredibly grateful and honored to be chosen.

As a video-maker just starting out, it is quite challenging to monetize these types of videos. There are a few possible pathways for it. You could build a massive following on Youtube/Vimeo, then sell ads or get a bunch of cash via Tip Jar. Or you could run your videos on a site that has a high-tech custom video player and a seasoned ad sales team, and is thus able to pay you handsomely for your efforts. I didn’t really have access to any of the above, so the only substantive reward for this project was the feeling that I contributed to our collective knowledge on a specific topic of interest – a challenging bar that I generally try hard to reach with all my work.

I joked a few times that if I had known how long this whole process would take, I never would have attempted it in the first place. Having seen how many people have enjoyed the video, all of that work now feels worth it. Simultaneously, there are thousands and thousands of people who are way more talented than me at this, who toil endlessly to produce videos of far greater craft and import, and who never get their work noticed on a significant scale. As much as possible, I try to rectify this by highlighting their work whenever possible using the platforms I am blessed to have. But the feeling I’m left with after the exhausting process of creating and promoting this video essay is this: I can always do more.