ProVideo Coalition.com: Stunning Good Looks by Art Adams

Every single one of those plaques is a patent. Yikes. These people are smart AND prolific.

If you ever wanted to know what barrel distortion in a lens is, this is it. While a different set of lenses might have made the plaques appear more level, barrel distortion puts an interesting spin on shots like these. In a way it exaggerates the depth of the shot by making the center of the shot bulge a little.

We shot this on the same day as the cubicle farm setup, and we didn’t have a PeeWee dolly available to us. We did, though, have a doorway dolly and track, which worked fine for this wide shot. I used an 18mm Super Speed and we pulled slowly back through the doorway of the Rambus security office in order to get enough distance for a nice wide shot. The lighting consists of two 8’x8’ Ultrabounces, one on either side of the camera lit by 1200w HMI PAR’s. Ultrabounces have a clay coating which gives them a very matte finish. They’re great for shots where you want very even illumination without specular reflections. (You can get much the same effect by covering a gryfflon with silk or muslin, although Ultrabounces are faster to work with as they are only one layer of material and not two.)

The idea was to reflect light in as many of the plaques as possible, while lighting the talent in a flattering manner. The plaques aren’t lit perfectly—there’s a dark area in the center where the bounces are separated to make room for the camera, and the reflections taper off toward the sides of the frame—but the mix of shiny and dark plaques gives the shot some interesting contrasts.

This kind of shot can look a little flat during shooting, so you have to see the image in your head, with the blacks pulled down, in order to know that it’s really going to work. Not only did the colorist, Chris Martin at Spy Post, do exactly what I asked for, but he added to the shot by making the whites look a little cool to pop the talent’s flesh tones. (I love working with talented individuals who can take my work and make it better without compromising the look I sought to achieve in the first place.)

Here’s a clip in which you can (1) see the two Ultrabounces lighting the plaques, and (2) hear me question the veracity of my color meter. Also visible is the door we had to dolly through in order to get a nice wide end frame.

And that’s about it. Feel free to ask questions in comments, and I’ll answer them if I can. Enjoy!

Disclosure: the filters named in this article were originally given to me for testing, after which the companies allowed me to keep them.

Art Adams is a DP who shoots every project as if it was “Lawrence of Arabia” on a budget. His web site is at www.artadams.net.

The Best of Stunning Good Looks

Art Adams | 08/30

A directory of my best articles, sorted by topic.

This entry is a guide to my best articles, sorted by topic. Enjoy!

NAB 2012: Assorted Snapshots

Adam Wilt | 05/08

A few cool things I saw at the show that didn’t fit into any other articles.

NAB is too big a show in too short a time to see more than a fraction of it. I’ve covered a few things in some depth (as have other PVC folks), but there’s plenty more that slips by without proper coverage. Here, I have a few photos…

NAB 2012: RED

Adam Wilt | 05/07

RED’s Ted Schilowitz discusses 2012’s products, and a photo gallery.

RED’s “Leader of the Rebellion” Ted Schilowitz held a press conference at NAB on Monday, describing the projects and products RED is working on. Rather than paraphrase him, I’ve got him on card (well, it’s not “on…

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Thanks for this great article Art!

I have a question about the planning process for this project.
Did you do any previsualization (storyboard, etc.)? If so what was your process, did you do it together with the director?

best regards
lee

Posted by Lee Niederkofler on 02/11 at 07:47 AM

Jono did have a rough storyboard for me, and we also talked a lot during the location scouts. We’ve been working together for a couple of years now and I have a good idea of what he likes. He’s also very approachable, which makes it easy to bounce ideas off him both in advance and on the day of the shoot.

We mainly did what we thought would look nice given the time, crew and budget—and always with the word “epic” floating around in our heads. It’s not an epic on a feature film scale, certainly, but having that one word in mind was a help when choosing setups.

Posted by Art Adams on 02/11 at 10:08 AM

Great stuff, Art! Interesting choice to shoot a 16x9 Epic instead of 2.35:1 which is what I was partially expecting when reading the first paragraph of the article. Any reason you didn’t want to go with the wide aspect ratio (4.5K 2.33) as compared to 16x9?
Again, the visuals looked great!

Posted by mikeburton on 02/11 at 05:03 PM

The barrel distortion on that shot with all the Patents looked amazing in the theater.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/11 at 05:04 PM

I originally suggested that we shoot 2:1 but the footage is being re purposed in many different ways and anything other than 16:9 just didn’t make sense.

I do love ‘scope. And, honestly, as long as I’m not shooting 4:3 I’m pretty happy.

Posted by Art Adams on 02/11 at 05:07 PM

You saw it in the theater? I’m soooo jealous. I was working that day and couldn’t come by. :(

Posted by Art Adams on 02/11 at 05:08 PM

I was texting you while I was there. I was the camera op on the Rambus show. Everyone really liked the video, including myself. Seeing it on that gigantic screen was indeed Epic. Good work.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/11 at 05:20 PM

Oh, hi Jamie! Didn’t recognize your PVC handle. Thanks very much for your review, it made my day. I was invited to see it the day before but I was shooting two days on a doc and couldn’t make it.

Posted by Art Adams on 02/11 at 05:38 PM

Damn dude! Self aggrandize much?

;p

-mike

Posted by Mike Curtis on 02/13 at 11:16 PM

None of the embedded video works on my Win 7 systems in Firefox, IE or Chrome. My guess is the page works fine on Macs only.

Posted by stephen v2 on 02/14 at 12:14 PM

Is anyone else here having problems viewing the video clips in Windows?

As best I can tell there’s no reason in the world these videos shouldn’t work on Macs. They’re H.264(x264), which is the way I’ve encoded all the other videos that I’ve posted in the past.

Posted by Art Adams on 02/14 at 02:17 PM

works for me. Nice use of slomo. Also, liked your answer on how to “decline” shooting 7D VFX/greenscreen - worthy of a quick blog post, IMHO (nudge nudge)

-mike

Posted by Mike Curtis on 02/14 at 02:59 PM

Tested the video on a Windows XP system, no problem.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/15 at 11:58 AM

Kudos Art. You are probably aware that your Rambus spot made it to prime-time!
I caught it on the Comcast Sports Network channel last Wednesday night during the Sharks game!
Whoo hooo!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/06 at 09:52 AM

What? I had no idea. I know there were cut-downs of this piece… is that what you saw?

Posted by Art Adams on 04/06 at 09:58 AM

I didn’t catch it entirely but yes I believe it was.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/06 at 03:10 PM

When you overcranked at 30 fps, did you use a 180 degree shutter? So the shutter was at 1/60th or did you used a 1/48th shutter because you would play it at 24 fps at the end?
thanks!

Posted by Lee Niederkofler on 05/02 at 04:23 PM

I’ve gotten out of the habit of using a 180 degree shutter with some cameras, like the RED, because I want to know exactly what the exposure time is. The RED is somewhat sensitive to flicker when shooting lights with magnetic ballasts (or failing ballasts) and that flicker shows up on the RED as roll bars due to the rolling shutter.

1/60th sec., and shutter speeds that divide evenly into 120, are the safest shutter speeds in 60hz countries—and I’ve got the tests to prove it:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/rolling_shutter_and_flickering_hmis/

As I’ve had trouble with subtle flicker and REDs in the past, I tend to default to 1/60th sec. exposure for 24fps shooting. The motion blur difference between that exposure time and 1/48th is minimal, and not really noticeable, so I prefer to be safer than not. Also I’ve been shooting a lot of projects with VFX shots that require keys or mattes and 1/60th yields slightly sharper motion blur edges, which makes the compositors happy.

The bottom line is that when you shoot relative you don’t know EXACTLY what the shutter speed is. For example, at 23.98fps—which is what we really shoot when we talk about 24p—a 180 degree shutter gives you 1/47.96th sec. exposure. I’d rather just set it at something absolute and know exactly what the camera is doing, and absolute mode reads out in fractions.

I’m not a complete obsessive compulsive with this rule. I really only do this with the RED, as I’ve not run into any problems like this with any other camera. But with the RED, setting the shutter to “normal”/absolute and 1/60th makes me sleep slightly better at night.

There are SOOOO many things that can go wrong that it’s nice to take some of them off the table. Maybe I’m obsessive compulsive or overly paranoid, or maybe I learned one of my mentor’s lessons too well (“There are no small mistakes in the camera department”-Jack Anderson) but if I’m shooting 23.98 or 30 on the RED I set the shutter at 1/60th just to make sure.

Posted by Art Adams on 05/02 at 10:46 PM

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The Making of an Epic Media Project

RAMBUS, PALO ALTO