Facets - an iPhone video experiment

Above video is the result of playing around with my iPhone to see how I could use the built in video camera in new and unusual ways. I combined several videos recorded on the iPhone to form a larger composition, the same way you would stitch a number of photos together to make a panoramic image. It's kind of interesting to explore the limits of what you can do with the little iPhone camera.

I used some filters and subtle 3D movement in Final Cut Pro to make it a little more interesting. The soundtrack was created using Ableton Live and Native Instruments Kore 2 Player.

The making of

The “making of” is gradually becoming a more powerful way to communicate than the shiny, polished end product. Chase Jarvis did a great job producing the latest music video for Seattle-based band The Blakes, but even more interesting is the above “making of” video.

This beautifully styled mini documentary introduces the band, Chase and his staff, and a whole bunch of other people who made this project come together. You get to hear the stories behind the concept for the video and see a glimpse of what it takes to pull off a production like this. Everything is told from an engaging first person perspective.

There will always be a place for for the high-gloss end product, but it’s this behind-the-scenes stuff that really pulls you in. It just makes you want to invite Chase and The Blakes over to chat about their new album over a cup of coffee. And it certainly makes you want to watch the video again. In fact, that’s probably what I’m going to do right now.

One frame at a time

If you haven't already, you must check out Tom Lowe's timelapse videos. One frame at a time, he creates awesome shots of the night sky and mountain landscapes by stringing together hundreds or even thousands of individual long exposure photos. To create some extra depth, Tom puts the camera on a computer controlled dolly that moves along a track at precise increments. The resultng effect is that you see not only the movement of the stars, but also the changing perspective of objects in the foreground. Watch a little behind-the-scenes video after the break.

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Landscape videography and avoiding supreme disappointment

According to über landscape photographer Ansel Adams, "Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer and often the supreme disappointment". That probably goes even more for landscape videography (not sure that's the proper terminology).

If you've ever tried to capture an otherwise interesting looking landscape on video, you very quickly notice that your shots have a tendency to turn out rather static. String a couple of those together into a video, and you have to squint really hard to convince yourself you're not actually looking at a photo slideshow - wait, did that blade of grass over there just move? And while some people are attracted to this type of minimalist aesthetic, most of your viewers might quickly zone out. When we watch a video after all we expect there to be stuff going on.

So how do we keep it interesting? Here's a couple of suggestions:

Panning and zooming - tiltling the camera up and down, or left and right can add interest to a scene where not much is happening otherwise. If you film at a higher resolution than your final output, you can do this also to a certain degree in post production, by showing only part of your frame.

Moving the camera itself - taking it a step further (literally), you can move the camera itself by walking around with it, or mounting it on a mobile platform such as a dolly, car, boat or helicopter. The movement is going to change the viewers perspective of the landscape, especially for elements that are in the foreground.

Motion - the human eye is very good at detecting subtle motion, so as long as there's water, trees, grass, or other moving objects in your frame, it's going to look less like a static photo. Of course you can also use less subtle motion by having things like people or cars moving across your field of view.

Changing light - things like the shadows of clouds moving across a landscape can make it seem much more alive and 3-dimensional. The changing of light between the different parts of the day can also do that, but unfortunately that takes a very long time, which is why we might have to resort to our next option...

Timelapse - by capturing only one frame every couple of seconds instead of dozens of frames per second we can speed things up a little, which makes motion that would be otherwise to subtle to perceive come alive.

These are just a few quick suggestions, so if you know of more and better ways, please feel free to post them in the comments.

Liquid Time

After finishing the most recent IceScapes.tv episode I felt like doing a quick experimental project that wouldn't take weeks of work to complete. For a while I've been wanting to play with the combination of very short shutter speeds and slow-motion. The result is this ultra-short experimental film called Liquid Time.

The Canon 5d mkII allows you to film at 1/4000th of a second, at 30 frames per second. That means you can "freeze" very fast moving subjects in time. To enhance that effect I played around with the time remapping feature in Final Cut Pro, slowing down the footage to between 10% and 20% of it's normal speed, smoothly ramping up and down the speed.

In addition I wanted to try out the in-camera picture styles of the 5d to achieve a contrasty black and white effect. Normally you would do something like that in post production, so you can tweak it untill it's exactly the way you want it, but I wanted to see if I can shorten the workflow a little bit by achieving this effect inside the camera and having it already baked into the footage. In a way it's limiting oneself, but that can also be a good thing. It enables you to purely focus on the creative process without getting lost in endless post production. Also, because the camera display gives me immediate feedback of what the end result is going to look like, I might shoot the same thing differently than I would have done otherwise. With the high contrast black and white for example, you can sometimes achieve a cool effect by over- or underexposing a little, creating bright whites and deep blacks.

Ilulissat icebergs

I already hinted at the imminent release of the latest IceScapes.tv episode yesterday... well, here it is. This one takes you on a short trip from the Ilulissat ice fjord to Red Bay in Greenland. The Ilulissat glacier is the most productive glacier in the northern hemisphere, creating an approximate 20 billion tons worth of icebergs per year, a few of which you will be able to spot in this episode. Enjoy!

Preview IceScapes.tv episode 15

Above is a sneak peek at the latest IceScapes.tv episode that I've just finished. I've been working on this 2 minute long video for a very long time now, as it involved a lot of smoothcam analysis, time remapping and color grading, and hopefully the end result is worth it. After this I really feel like doing a quick and easy project that involves little to no post-production.

Timelapse experiments

Here's a little timelapse photography experiment I did for my wife Brit. It was created from around 6,000 photos taken while she was working on an artwork called "Under Pressure".

A short hike in Gansbaai

Some time ago I was in South Africa, testing out (among other things) the Canon 5d MkII. From the test footage I created the video below, titled "A short hike in Gansbaai". It was filmed in and around the beautiful Seastar Lodge guesthouse and the Duiwelsgat Trail, a coastal hiking trail that passes by the guesthouse. Some of the shots might not be perfect, as I couldn't always see the LCD screen on the back of the camera clearly because of the sun, or because I was trying to get some impossible angle of a passing turtle while messing with the focus and exposure at the same time. But I decided to just leave those imperfections for what they were and use the footage anyway.

The timelapse shot of the sunset at the end is actually created from 999 still images shot with a Nikon D200 with 10.5mm fish eye lens.

A different angle

It's amazing sometimes how the way something is filmed changes your perception of it, and I don't just mean visually. Recently, I was working with Philip de Roo on creating a short promo clip. The idea was to shoot Philip from two different angles (and don't worry, this is not going to be a technical story about camera angles). One camera, a Canon XH-A1 was positioned straight in front of Philip, and another one, a Canon 5d MkII, was off to the side.

So far so good, but somehow after about half an hour we both felt we weren't really getting anywhere and decided to call it a day. Nonetheless we had a quick look at what we had captured, just in case there were any useful bits after all. The footage from the XH-A1 looked pretty boring, it just lacked something. The images captured by the 5d MkII told a completely different story however. Below you can see some screen captures of the two side by side. Unfortunately I can't show you the actual footage - Philip will kill me - so images will have to do.

Many wonderful qualities have been attributed to the 5d MkII and you have to admit that this camera, in combination with the angle, make Philip look a lot more interesting here. However, the most remarkable thing about this exercise was that, when watching this footage, what Philip said was making a lot more sense. Before, it looked like he was struggling with his words, not very convincing. Now it sounded like there were actually some very usable segments. Yet, it was the exact same thing, just filmed differently. I was surprised to see how much the visual aspect influenced how one perceives what is being said.