Vegas, Baby. Vegas

In my never-ending quest to develop some killer slow motion video skills, I brought my brand new Canon 60D with me to Vegas and shot a bunch of material at 60 FPS, which I then assembled into the above video. The effect was achieved by slowing the video down to 24 FPS, a 60% reduction in speed that resulted in some pretty dramatic effects.

My strategy was simply to work on composition first and foremost. Would the shot look good as a photograph? If so, there’s a significant likelihood it would look good as a brief video clip as well. And I also had to hope that there was some sort of interesting movement happening to justify the video component of it.

One regret is that I only brought two lenses: the 50 mm f/1.4 and the Rokinon fisheye lens – because I was traveling, I didn’t want to carry too much weight in lenses. But I had forgotten how much of a crop factor the APS-C sensor introduces, and I constantly felt like my shots were either way too tight or way too wide. Maybe the 40mm f/2.8 pancake is the way to go?

Thanks to Vegas Tripping for featuring this video on their website!

New Year’s Eve 2012

I was blessed to have a bunch of friends over to my apartment on New Year’s Eve. Seeing a significant portion of my friends in Seattle, all together in one room — it really made this place start to feel like home.

My friend, upon seeing the video, said it looked like life was going pretty well. I agreed, but said I didn’t know how long all the excitement would last.

“Make sure to enjoy it while it continues. Don’t worry about making it last,” he replied.

I cut together this brief video to show you my view of the fireworks. This was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II using a 50mm f/1.4 lens.

My First Slow Motion Test

I recently watched the video above, shot by Diego Contreras, and it really lit a fire under my ass. Contreras shot this with a Canon 7D, a couple non-Canon lenses, and edited/colored it using Final Cut Pro X. In other words, the total cost of the software AND hardware for this video was probably under $2500. That is insane. There is no longer any real obstacle preventing someone from creating something beautiful. All you need is a little bit of cash, the will, and the skill.

I’ve had difficulties making slow motion look good in the past, but decided to give it another try. I borrowed my friend’s Nikon D600 (my Canon 5D Mark II can’t shoot in 60 fps) which had an 85mm f/1.8 lens. Then I went to Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market and shot a bunch of footage over the course of an hour. I shot the footage at 60fps (720p), then slowed it down to 24fps in post.

I’m pretty pleased with the results, but here are a few lessons I learned while shooting this, and how I plan on doing things differently the next time around:

For a video such as this, the music is critically important – I tried to find something I could use legitimately, but it’s a huge challenge to find something great and cheap. I have literally spent hours browsing the Vimeo Music Store in search of some hidden gems, and it is tough to find something that will work.

Instead, I opted to use a track off of an album by AnnaLivia, a music group I did some photography for back in Boston. They graciously gave me permission to do this. In the future, I’ll probably try and secure permission from other local groups to use their music in my videos – it’s free publicity for them and allows me the option to use some great-sounding stuff. I also may try Premiumbeat.com, whose music I tend to find pretty decent but pricey.

Faster cuts – While I liked a lot of the motion and faces I was able to capture, I do think this video moves a bit too slowly if you’re not as enamored with the composition as I was. Next time around I think the cuts will have to come a bit faster. More shots, more edits would probably give this video some better energy.

More time spent on color correction – This being a quick test. I threw together a couple of quick presets and applied to all my clips at an attempt at doing a “vintage-y” look. Next time, I will try to massage each clip until it pops just right, and make a better attempt at matching all the clips together.

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I’m also open to hearing your thoughts. Let me know what you think!

My First “Music Video”

A friend of mine in Seattle recently released a new EP and asked me to shoot a simple music video for one of his songs. I use quotation marks in the title of this blog post because while this is technically a “video,” and there is technically “music” played during it, I didn’t really do any editing and the video doesn’t tell a story, as conventional music videos do.

On that note: not to sound all sour grapes-like, but I do think that the new world of music we find ourselves in demands a different set of aesthetics when shooting music videos. Giant record companies can still spend millions making music videos for their big-name stars, but that’s a brand-building exercise and not necessarily something they hope to recoup their costs on. Nowadays, you have a a musical landscape that consist of thousands of DIY-ers, such as myself and yespser, the person in the video above. I think trying to play the same game as the big boys will only result in something that looks like a cheap also-ran. Instead, my goal is to figure out what looks good using the camera equipment I have and play to those strengths, rather than adhering to an outdated format.

All that being said, I was quite pleased with how this video (the first of four we already shot and that are already “in the can”). The video was shot using a handheld Canon 5D Mark II (50mm f/1.4 lens). Sound was recorded live separately using a digital recorder that is just off screen, then synced up later in post.

I’ve decided that 2013 is the year I’m going to learn some of the basics of videography and non-linear editing. Keep an eye on this space for more details as I undertake this journey.

Six Months In

It’s been awhile since my last update, and I definitely feel the impact of my absence from the blogging world. I love writing, but these days I’m just so exhausted from all that life demands that I can’t really muster the energy to write something intelligent on a regular basis. But I’m grateful that the recent break has allowed me to recharge and rethink what’s important to me.

One thing I have kept up is my 1 Second Everyday project, which recently passed the six month mark. I thought I’d update the video to celebrate the occasion. It was also cool to see this video mentioned in a Fast Company post about the 1 Second Everyday idea.

The one thing I’ll re-iterate about the continuation of this project is how simultaneously challenging and yet gratifying it continues to be. It is challenging because it has become quite difficult to continually try and find new and interesting things to shoot, especially if my routine has been pretty similar for many days in a row. Conversely, many of my friends now “get” what the project is, and so are much more forgiving these days when I whip out the camera and ask, “Can you be my second for today?”

At the same time, I actually have fond memories of browsing through all my previous seconds, remembering many of the key moments of this crazy year of my life. I wouldn’t trade that memory preservation for anything, even though this project is getting more and more difficult for me to muster the will for every day.

I should also note that I’m glad to witness the rise of Cesar Kuriyama, who’s helped me with my own project and who’s single-handedly pushed the 1 Second Everyday idea into popular culture. His Kickstarter for a 1 Second Everyday app recently succeeded with flying colors and I can’t wait to see the final product!

Experimenting with Music

The 1 Second Everyday project continues! This past month was marked by thousands of miles of travel, plus my dear brother’s wedding. The numerous shots of planes are meant to convey what an intense month it was, but by using them, I was unable to use any other seconds from those memorable days. Quite the conundrum, and one of the limits of the project (i.e. conveying two ideas from the same day). Another limit is trying to convey the momentousness of a wedding using only one second. I wish I could’ve “borrowed” seconds from other, more boring days to use instead, but I do ultimately feel that that ends up betraying the spirit of the project.

I also tried something new: adding music to the proceedings. Some observations on this:

I agree with an earlier observation I blogged about that music totally sets the mood for the entire video, regardless of what the mood for these seconds actually is. While each second differs dramatically in tone, the music sets a single tone for the entire thing.
The video with no music is able to convey a sense of momentum, just by the perpetual, continual change of the sound of each 1-second clip. It takes us inexorably into the future. The video with music is unable to do this quite as effectively, but it feels like it conveys an entirely different type of momentum altogether.
In general, I think the type of music you can use for this situation is either really pensive/somber, or really upbeat and happy. Anything in between (e.g. hip-hop, folk music, etc.) just feels “off” to me, but your mileage may vary.
The track I used was Dave Porter’s “Matches in the Pool,” off of his Breaking Bad soundtrack. I recorded a podcast about the Breaking Bad soundtrack that you can listen to here.

I’m undecided as to whether the final video will include music, so I’ll most likely still end up producing two versions of it. Your thoughts are welcome.

The First Three Months

I know updates have been sparse on here recently. Honestly, between my job, all my podcasts, and trying to do social things outside of those things to keep myself sane, I barely have any time to do anything else these days.

BUT! My 1 Second Every Day project soldiers onwards. Here’s a video that shows the first three months of my life in Seattle (approximately):

A couple of observations:

After three months of this, it’s difficult to fight some of the “sameness” that creeps into these images. By far, that’s the biggest challenge: trying to make sure what you shoot today isn’t similar to what came before it.
The biggest weakness of this project is that there is pretty much nothing here of my work at Microsoft. I don’t really do any shooting on campus because I don’t want to risk the possibility of revealing anything confidential, but it remains a huge part of my new life that remains undocumented.
When I’ve presented this project to my friends, the one thing they all overwhelmingly say is: “If I did a project like that, it would be incredibly boring.” As I mentioned in my initial post, maybe if that’s the case you should try and make some serious changes to your life. But I have a corollary now to add to that: you don’t need to have a super interesting life to make a decent video with this project. You just need to be able to find the beautiful, fascinating, amusing things worth highlighting in each day. I think it’s a challenge worth undertaking.

More Thoughts on 1 Second Everyday

First off, I’ve been continuing my 1 Second Everyday project. Here’s an updated video that depicts my first two months (approximately) in Seattle:

After I made my initial post, I had a lot more time to reflect on this project and specifically, its constraints. I also had a fantastic, lengthy conversation with Cesar Kuriyama, who has helped to popularize this type of project.

Before I delve into some of the things we discussed, I should emphasize that there is no right or wrong way to do this. We are just at the beginning of an era when regular consumers having the capability to record and edit these types videos, so we’re all just writing the rules as we go along.

Cesar and I discussed the following issues:

First, a reminder for those attempting to do the same project – It’s best to record multiple “seconds” each day, as you may not know which one will mean the most to you until later. See more on this topic below.

Can it ever be longer than a second? – Limits encourage creativity. They force us to innovate and to avoid excess. Nonetheless, I wondered about the one second limit. Cesar saw changing it as a slippery slope: if you make some segments longer than one second, then you’re “privileging” certain days, when each day should get its own “chance” to be a part of the project. Taken to the extreme, this could destroy the integrity of the project.

Personally, this doesn’t bother me too much. I agree with limits, but one second occasionally seems arbitrarily short. One of the people that has done a similar project didn’t impose a one second limit on her project and the resulting project was still great. If you watch the above video, you may notice that some of the segments are slightly longer than one second. Here’s what I can promise: the overwhelmingly vast majority of segments will be one second long. Some of them will be slightly longer than one second. None of them will be as long or longer than two seconds.

Should you add music to the final product? – The video I just mentioned is scored to LCD Soundsystem, and gained popularity partially as a result of that. Cesar is against scoring these types of projects. From his blog:

Being able to listen to any particular moment is crucial to remembering it. The sound of my dad laughing… Tina Fey’s Bossypants audio book while I’m driving through Tennessee… even the sound of slapping my cousin hello brings me back, haha :)Not to mention that music directs you towards a certain mood. And some of these seconds can switch from joy to sorrow, then back to joy in literally a heart beat.

A great discussion ensued about this topic on my Facebook wall. C. Robert Cargill defended the notion of using music thusly:

Those are interesting thoughts, though I would argue that it is hard for anyone to really glean real emotion from one second clips. I come from the Kerouac school of writing: “Be in love with yr life.” A piece like this *should* be a celebration. I should, for a few brief minutes, feel like you aren’t just living your life, but that you are living the hell out of it. The right piece of music married to that kind of footage could do just that.

I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to handle this yet, but it’s likely I’ll produce two separate videos: one with music and one without.

What about releasing the videos on a regular basis? – People who follow this blog know that I like to produce content. A lot of content. Photos, videos, audio: I get a thrill out of recording some slice of this world and presenting it for all to see on a regular basis. The idea of working my ass off for a year-long project and only being able to release a single video that might be seen by just a few hundred/thousand people seemed like a lot of work for not that much payoff.

Should I release monthly updates of the project? Maybe do a halfway point (6 months) video? There are disadvantages to this, of course: any sort of progress update would likely blunt the impact of a final video. Cesar chimed in on this topic with some of his thoughts:

Much like my thoughts on music, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer, just personal preference. Off the top of my head I could think of at least a couple of reason why I prefer yearly.

– when I first came up with this idea, I was adamant about doing something that wouldn’t feel like a chore. I think posting per month for the rest of my life would feel a bit more like perpetual homework. (although the App I’m currently developing will largely resolve this)

– Like you so eloquently explained in your blog post, I often keep several seconds to represent a particular day. I’ve found that I often need time to reflect on what ends up being the second that I want to remember forever. Example: In my video, you’ll see me playing Settler’s of Catan a bunch. The first time you see my play that board game is actually the first time I was taught how to play by a friend’s husband. He’s explaining the rules in it. I remember that was the day I biked all over the Ohio State campus. And I had recorded a second there. I’d always wanted to check out that campus since I was in High School. I thought it was pretty obvious that would be my second of the day. In the months that followed, Catan became a HUGE part of the life of my friends and I. We love getting together to play the crap out of it. Because I didn’t post my compilation online until the end of my first year, I was able to change my mind and switch the second for that day. Learning how to play that game became a pretty significant event in my life. Obviously unbeknownst to me at the time. This ended up being the case for a considerable amount of seconds. It wasn’t until months later that I realized certain events became truly significant.

– a short reason. Much like yourself, I tend to post a couple of things online every day. Sometimes its a cool online nugget, and sometimes it’s something personal. I think demanding the attention of my friends once a year to get a glimpse of my life is much more absorbable than requesting 30 seconds of their attention monthly.

– I guess one of the things I’m getting at is… there’s a lot you can get away with if you wait a long time before posting… another example is the 2 horrible months when my sister in law was in the hospital. I was always petrified recording those moments. I wasn’t even on facebook during that span of time. I can’t imagine posting something like that while it was still happening. I was so scared my family would hate me for putting all that in a video. The night before my flight to TED I shared the video with my Sister in Law, her mom, & my mom… I thought: “well… if they’re not comfortable with me sharing this on the stage at TED and online… I’ll try to explain my reasonings… but if that fails… then I’ll just have to cut the video short because there’s no way I would do this without my families approval”. Luckily they loved it. It worked exactly as I intended it… a reflection of how bad things were, and how grateful we should be that we’ve moved on to better days.

– There was something exceptionally magical about how friends in my “seconds” reacted when they saw themselves in the compilation of my first year… most didn’t know they would be in it. For some weird reason, they felt a lot closer to me. They were often happy that I decided that they were a meaningful part of my life. I don’t believe this would have the same effect if we had shared a particular moment together, & I was posting it just a month later.

As a point of fact, I still think it’s possible to post monthly compilations, then switch out a “second” or two when it comes time to create the year-end project. I haven’t decided how I’m going to proceed, but it’s likely that this will be the last time you see a cumulative progress update on this project (at least until maybe I’m six months into it).
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That’s all for now. Thanks again to Cesar for his guidance. Hope you enjoy the video.