It’s been everywhere. You can read about how it came about and what ALS is and why it’s great that awareness has been raised for this disease.

I had been nominated quite a few times, the first I believe by Lok from Digital Rev. I would have done it in the 24 hours that the rules say, had I not been wiped out by man flu. I would say I am just about fully recovered, so I decided now was the time to get it done!

Using the F55 and my Sigma 50mm F1.4,  I shot everything at 180fps. This is recorded super slow motion in-camera so it’s 180fps in 23.98p and plays back slow motion instantly. When on my premiere timeline, this is 100% speed, to get it to play back at “normal speed” I then sped it up by 750%. 180 divided by 24 is 7.5 hence 750%. I simply razor bladed the clip at the moment I wanted to go back to what was recorded, the super slow motion, and changed the speed back to 100%. To go back again to “normal speed” for the post ice reaction, I just did the same thing razor blade on the 100% shot then the cut section becomes 750%

We did two takes, as the first one I didn’t want to use as I wanted this to be a one shot, and dad had the bucket in frame before pouring it on me and after. I wasn’t manning the F55, where I would have seen that, as I was a bit busy. Being the perfectionist that I am I had to redo it! I could have fixed it in post, but I am a purist, “fix in on set” kind of guy, hence the hair dryer and take two! Mum bought some more ice which I think adds to take two anyway.

Audio was taken from my RX100 III that was doing a shot of my dad which you can see near the end. There isn’t any audio when shooting high frame rates on the F55, so do remember that, especially if you want to run the shot at normal speed like I did.

I did put a RODE Smart Lav II on me and my iPod touch in my pocket, but I must have accidentally click pause in the RODE Rec app, stupid me, as I didn’t record all my audio. So for the edit I used a mixture of RX100 III audio, foley, and some ADR for my dialogue. I know it sounds a teeny bit fake, but given the nature of what this is, I felt it actually added a slightly surreal touch to it.

I lit this with my Cineo Lighting TruColor LS remote phosphor light. This is a stunning light. I bought it to use on the documentary in Detroit for all my interviews, and since then it has become a key part of my kit. The bigger version, the HS which kicks out the equivalent of 4K  (this is around 1K) I have used many times. I love it, but for practical reasons I bought the smaller version.

I will be talking about these lights more soon. I also have the exceptional AREA 48 Soft. Another lovely remote phosphor light

This was graded with FilmConvert (10% off wide code bloom at gopb.co/filmconvert) and a bit of custom curves. You can see the comparison below. Left is original S-Log 2 with S-Gamut colour. Right is the graded version

Anyway if you fancy doing one, go for it!! I have challenged Eric Kessler, Vincent LaForet, and James Miller. If you do go for it, try and do something more than having it filmed on your iPhone! After all….we are filmmakers aren’t we? 🙂

That’s it for charity silliness from me for now, that is until Movember…I hope to do it again this year. Fingers crossed!