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Whilst on holiday near the Great Lakes in June, I was able to borrow Eric Kessler’s RED Epic for a few days. I messed around with the slow motion 300 FPS first thing but I really wanted to shoot a little piece with it, so we found the Great Lakes Boat Building Company online. Phoned them up and asked if we could spend two hours with them making a little film…Mike, the owner said of course!

So armed with the RED Epic with the latest firmware giving it 300FPS, 3 Zeiss CP.2 lenses a 35mm, 50mm and 85mm along with my Duclos Tokina 11-16 and my generation 1 RED Zoom 17-55 T3 we set off. Joel from Kessler Crane came along to do BTS and brought a Cineslider and a pocket jib. Both excellent tools to lift the production and work a treat with the RED EPIC. My pocket dolly would not cope with the weight of the EPIC, but thankfully the Cineslider can handle just about anything! Click on the photos for more info and pricing on them. Honestly the Cineslider is the best slider on the market, better than mine simply because it can take any camera. Mine can’t. My slider is the best compact slider!!

3 foot Cineslider, works with everything from a GH2 to a fully laden Alexa!

The Kessler Crane Pocket Jib

The concept was simple. Make a nice little film of Mike Keifer who makes wooden boats, something he can have for his website and something for me to shoot to test out the camera, but actually in a real world example. Two hours to shoot a web commercial is a real world scenario. Especially with a camera you barely know.

Lighting wise, I used almost all available light. I turned all the overheads fluorescents off. Especially with the 300fps it would have been a disaster. I did have a little 150 watt kicker that I stole from the Kessler Studio, but i only used it sparingly when I needed to pick out something, like a reflection on varnished boat etc… All the interview is available light. When shooting 300fps (about 5 or 6 of the shots are that speed) you really need 2KHZ or higher lights due to the flicker, which I learnt the hard way when I did my first camera test, throwing water at Eric Kessler.

All sound was recorded on a Tascam DR100 using a Rode NTG-2. I use the NTG-2 over the 3 with the Tascam as it takes a AA battery rather than phantom power which drains the Tascam like crazy. The 3 has better sound, but life is always about compromise. The sound effects were real even on the slow motion stuff. I simply slowed the sound down then ramped the pitch right up so it sounded right, just a lot slower!

Now I don’t own an Epic. But I have been lucky enough to shoot with some great cameras recently. Arri loaned me an Alexa for a weekend and I had a blast, lovely camera. Heavy power hungry beast though! I had to give it back of course. Eric Kessler recently bought an Epic for his Kessler Shooters and I was lucky enough to use it first. We didn’t have all the bits as they were not available at time of shipping. I had the LCD screen but no bomb EVF, no batteries, no charger. So big props to Mike Sutton of Boston Rule Camera for getting me some spare batteries and charger with rig. We actually had some stuff from woodencamera.com to mount the battery, and that worked great.

Operating the EPIC was a breeze. Seriously, and I have never shot on a RED before. The menus are very simple to operate. I shot at 23.976 and did some overcrank at 120fps and 300fps. I shot 5K for the majority of the footage and of course 2k for the 300 FPS as that’s what it drops to. One thing to remember when wanting to overcrank more than 120fps is that when you go above that and drop to 2k, you are cropping the sensor. So you may have a beautifully framed shot and think….mmmm, I want to go slower. Problem is you need to totally reposition or even change lens to maintain that frame…so take that into consideration. To be honest 120 FPS is more than enough for most stuff. The 300fps on the dust of the sander and the water looked wonderful mind! Just be careful of any artificial light when shooting that fast. You won’t see the flicker in the LCD but you will in the edit!

I did all the shots first, I used the jib mostly but only so I could easily change position of the camera quickly… it’s on the K-pod which has wheels, and with Eric as my 1st it made it very easy! The tripod we had was bloody awful. Some terrible Manfrotto thing that was NOT rated for a camera this heavy. The tripod I had with me was my Miller DS20, again not able to take the EPIC. All my proper heavy duty tripods were at home. I used the Cineslider to add some life to some of the shots. None of them motorised. All done by hand.

With the interview I wanted Mike to look into the camera to address you, us, the audience. I find a better connection with them that way. It took a few minutes, but I got him relaxed enough to do it and to repeat the questions as I certainly did not want my voice in it! I interviewed him for about 15 minutes, got the SOT that I needed and moved on. I knew when I had enough grabs, and time was of the essence. Fortunately I have had a lot of experience interviewing people so I knew when I had enough!

I was surprised that the camera didn’t devour all my batteries. In fact I only used 1! I expected it to be as power hungry as the Alexa as Vincent LaForet had warned me, but I did the whole shoot on one V lock and 1 and a half 128gb SSD cards. Not much at all!

With the piece I simply wanted to convey Mike’s obvious love of what he does in a very simple way. He made it easy for me – his love for it was so obvious and that he was an easier interviewee.

What took me the longest to do in the edit once again was find the right music. I tried loads of stuff I had licensed and I even had Olly Knights of Turin Brakes send me some acoustic guitar tracks that were wonderful but didn’t quite fit. I have been struggling for days due to the music. Once you find the right music, the edit clicks. Fate intervened when famed Canadian Patrick Moreau wrote to me to let me know about www.withetiquette.com. The idea of it is that they have real artists that make real music, and you can license it for a reasonable amount of money. It gives these new artists a break and gives you some fantastic music. The license for this piece by Drew Barefoot was just $99 for 5 years. A pretty good deal. As soon as I heard it I knew. I actually gravitated to it as soon as I opened up the site! Music is so important!

The camera is pretty aptly named. Epic. A joy to use and of course makes me want one. It’s a lot of money though but you get a lot with it. So a lot of thought would need to go into that before taking the plunge. But from these results…yes I want one!

Now could I do this with any of my other cameras? My DSLRs, my F3 or my AF101. Well of course the content would have been exactly the same. Just different image. The 300fps of course would have been impossible. The 60p out of the Canons I hate due to the moire and aliasing. The 60p in the F3 and AF101 is pretty good but it’s still not 120fps, let alone 300fps. Twixtor would have helped a little but no comparison.

The image out of the EPIC is stellar. As you would expect. Is it THAT much better that the others? For the web it is obviously not really going to shine as much as if I projected it at the Leicester Square Empire cinema. Then we would see how incredible that image is. The F3 is still a really great camera though and this has not at all put me off it. I look at the image from my recent short on the F3, Insipiens and I still love it!  Even if I owned an EPIC I know I would still probably use the F3 half the time. Mainly because it’s a lot easier for most companies to cope with the workflow than from a RED for now! How about DSLRS? Yes, still capable of incredible images. Let’s not fool ourselves though. They won’t compete with an EPIC for video, nor should they. Different tools for different jobs. I shot with the GH2 just ten days ago with one single lens (I will post that soon) and the image out of it was amazing. There is no way I would have used an EPIC on that shoot for instance. Out on a boat…water…EPIC…scary.

So yes it was an absolute joy shooting with the camera and I can’t wait to again! Oh…and the RAW gave me so much room to play in the edit. I didn’t use HDRX. I wanted to learn to walk before I ran. This is also the first piece I cut with Premiere CS5.5. Am nowhere near as fast with it as FCP7 and no I didn’t edit using the native RAW files. I converted them first in RED CINE X as my MBP couldn’t cope as it doesn’t have the correct video card in it…I do have an HP Elite workstation with an Nvidia card so I could use that. I just am so used to the way the Mac works…if I end up getting an EPIC I will get a RED ROCKET. Real time conversion…yum!

I am lucky in that I love what I do. I love to shoot. Give me any camera and I am happy. But give me a EPIC to shoot with and I am over the moon! This was my first shooting with any RED, let alone an EPIC and it was inspiring. The camera really is gorgeous and it is capable of so much, I didn’t even come close to scratching the surface with it…

Shot on the RED EPIC
Music by Drew Barefoot “Enjoy the calm”

Courtesy of withetiquette.com

Great Wooden Boats – Philip Bloom BTS from Kessler Crane on Vimeo.

All the below images were graded with Magic Bullet Looks 2. Amazing how much detail I pulled out!

It was all shot with one lens, easily one of my favourites. The 100mm Canon F2.8L IS Marco and a 7D. So my equivalent 35mm focal length is about 160mm, so a nice long macro. The 60p was conformed to 24p to give perfect slow motion. I rarely use the 60p of the 7D due to the hideous aliasing, as long as you avoid fine detail and deep depth of field you are ok with it. The slow motion helped with the fast moving fish and added an graceful air to everything.

Music is by the great John Williams from the movie “Memoirs of a Geisha”. This film is just a personal film so the music is not licensed which I do for all paid work.

I have to say Eric’s tank is stunning, the coral is so beautiful and when seen close up with the macro it’s simply incredible. One thing though when shooting a fish tank, shoot straight on, if you shoot at an angle then the distortion of the glass is quite apparent…I also sharpened in post using the built in sharpen tool set to 9% and it is graded with Magic Bullet looks. 20% off at checkout for that with code bloom20.

I have made this piece available under the new Vimeo creative commons licence. You can download it and use it but only for non commercial purposes and with full credit.. Read below for more.

As the water… from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Very simple short film of a fish tank that I had to shoot when I saw it as it was so beautiful.

It’s not as sharp as it could be simply due to me shooting through the tank…but it still looks pretty good. That lens is sweet…

All shot at 60p conformed to 24p and using the Canon 100mm F2.8L IS macro using a 7D.

Music is by John Williams from “Memoirs of a Geisha”

Monument Valley is a place I have been desperate to visit for all my adult life. Ever since I fell in love with the John Ford movie “The Searchers”, simply the greatest western ever made and majestic to look at it, Cinematographer Winton C. Hoch captured Monument Valley in the most perfect way using the legendary Vistavision film format.

The film itself is epic and if you have never seen it then get on itunes now and download it! The locations used are 0ne thing, but the story and everyone in it will simply blow you away and they have the most perfect beginning and end shot ever put to film. I think they are responsible for my love of bookends. Below is the opening shot. I didn’t want to embed the closing shot too, if you have seen the film you know it, if you haven’t buy the movie…you will not regret it!

Anyway, that is a long winded way to get to the point of this film. As many of you know I have been in the US since early June doing lots of varied work, I have come to the end of my trip and before I went home I simply had to go to the place I had always dreamt of going to, so from Idaho ,where I was shooting a doc which i will do a blog on soon, I drove for two days, 1000 miles down to Monument Valley. I did not want to fly as I heard the drive was spectacular. I actually filmed the entire journey which I need to edit soon!

I have done an in depth commentary to play once you have seen the film. You need to hit pause when I say so as 5 minutes is not enough to tell you everything that I want to tell you.

Stuff that is not in the commentary. I used 2 Gitzo traveller tripods, a gorillapod, miller Solo DS20, and the manfrotto tripod with 503 head. I also used my new Kessler Crane Signature Edition Pocket Dolly which goes on sale for $995 in September. Pre-orders will be taken soonish I believe. If you can’t afford it check out the Pocket Dolly V2, is great too but doesn’t have the new gearing, drag control, feet or bag.

ALSO, lots of timer remotes, 3 power supplies and a brilliant battery brick for the 5d/ 7d by Switronix. it’s the Powerbase 70 and gives you about 6 times longer than a standard battery, it also has a d-tap out to power other things. ESSENTIAL for timelapse. I did have 3 power supplies for the cameras but one of them is 3rd party and this caused an issue. In the hotel there were LOTS of power cuts, every time this happened the Canon ones simply restarted, the 3rd party one said “cannot communicate with battery” which made it useless. It was $50 so it’s fine for normal use, just not here. That is when the fat battery of the Nikon D3s which goes on forever, the 1dmkiv and the Switronix battery pack saved the day.

Switronix power base

For the timelapses I shot AV mode mostly which causes lots of flicker, had the F stop around F5.6 or so, interval I believe was 7 seconds as I used 64gb UDMA cards so had the space to fill them up. Quality was medium or large. Yes lots of flickering so I used the FCP plug in called “long exposure” part of CHV ELECTRONICS Time Collection which costs $40. Bargain! I use it for almost all my timelapse.

The amount of time between shots comes down to two things, space on card and how long you have. You need 24 photos for a 24p video frame so keep that in mind. Too few photos and the computer needs to work them out, too many is fine as you can speed them up! Most of the nightime exposures were relatively high ISO of around 1600 with 30 second exposures as it was SO dark. When the cloud cleared and the moon came out the ISO could be dropped right down.

I stayed for one night out of three in “The View” Hotel. You have to stay there. It’s worth the $200 for this basic hotel as the view literally is breathtaking. Most of the shots in the second half of the film were taken from my hotel balcony.

To make sure the cameras were ok in the rain i covered them over with plastic. After my 7D died in Florida (still waiting to get it back from repair a month later!) I am very cautious about this weatherproofing now!

So, yes , I used 5 cameras at once. Not in the grasp of most, but this was simply as I needed to maximise my time, with two more days and just two cameras I could easily have done it. I wish I did have more time…I will certainly go back!!

Quick recap of gear used:

Cameras used:

1 5Dmk2 for video. Shot in 30p as was new and it didn’t have the new firmware on it incredibly so conformed to 24p in post. No big deal. It’s upgraded now!

Timelapse cameras:

Another 5dmk2, 2 x 7d, 1Dmkiv, Nikon D3s

Tripods used 2x Gitzo Travellers, Miller Solo 3 stage carbon fibre with DS20 head, Manfrotto with 503 HDV head (sticky!), heavy duty gorillapod.

Lenses used:

D3s: 21mm, 50mm, 85mm Zeiss ZF

Canon: 14mm F2.8, 17mm TS, 24mm TS V2, 24mm F1.4, 35mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2, 70-200mm F4 IS, 70-200mm F2.8 IS, 1.4 extender

5 intervalometers (timer remotes), 2 official canon ones, 1 official Nikon one and 2 third party ones.

Oh, all graded as usual with Magic Bullet looks, 20% of at checkout with code bloom20. Cropped to 2.35:1 in FCP using the built in plug in “widescreen”.

Anyway enjoy the film and do listen to the commentary. If there are any of my films you would like commentary of let me know!

Monument Valley from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

For a full description of shoot and gear please visit my website and also a 12 minute commentary.

http://philipbloom.net/2010/08/02/monumentvalley/

Monument Valley commentary by PhilipBloom

The photos below show you the number of cameras I had going at one time as well as “The View” hotel and my crappy Ford Edge rental that got stuck in the sand !!

It was shown for the first time at the LA HD-DSLR masterclass I took yesterday in Hollywood that was a great success. Two 4 hour classes one after the other. A lot of fun, killed my voice though!

Jeremy Thomas from Raw Works cut the short and colour graded it and did a great job on it. The crew was minimal about 4 of us in total.

It was shot using 3 lenses. Two Cooke S4s… 25mm and 100m and a PL modified Tokina 11-16mm for the big wide.

The filming was about 2 and a half hours very early morning at Hollywood Park then another couple of hours at Santa Anita race track. Sound was recorded separately using the Zoom H4n and a Rode shotgun boom. I also used a 6×6 Mattebox and some ND filters. .9 .6 and .2.

Music by Loscil

Song: Charlie

Album: Plume

Do check out the previous blog here for loads more info and behind the scenes photos!

As some of you know from the A&E Intervention: Timelapse that I was TRICKED into doing, I am loving my timelapse with my stills cameras. I am using all sorts. My Canon 5Dmk2, 7D, 500D, Lumix GF1, GH1, Ricoh GR3. Used loads.

I was in the US and Canada recently, in Chicago to do the Great Zacuto Shootout and then in Toronto to see Sara. Whilst there I had some great views, both from my hotel in Chicago. The Sutton Place Hotel who gave me a great view after I explained what I wanted to do, my hotel in Toronto, the CN Tower and the Hilton at Niagara Falls.

When I shot my short film “Sky”, much of it was from up high too…but not through glass. Glass causes many issues, some of which I hope to cover here.

The main problem with glass is of course reflections. There are number of things your need to do to avoid them. A circular polariser is a good bet to help reduce them, but be careful as they sometimes show up weird patterns in the glass. I also make sure the lens is as flush to the glass as is possible. A Suction mount like the Delkin one above is very useful for this and will take the weight of a 5DmkII no problem. Make sure you have thick curtains to pull around the camera and wrap clothes, stick gaffer tape to around the lens, anything to reduce the chance of any reflections. These are often more visible at night and are often reflections from inside the room on the glass itself, that’s why it’s worth getting that lens as close the the window as possible. Sometimes you get double glazing. If this is the case you are often screwed. This happened at the Niagara Falls hotel and you can clearly see some of the outside lights reflecting on the internal part of the window. There is no real solution for that apart from shoot outside. But the joy of shooting these through windows is you can leave them going for long periods of time within being with them. Just make sure you stick “DO NOT DISTURB” on the door. There is one shot of Chicago in the below film that is 4 days long!

You also often find windows are dirty outside. If this is case best I can suggest is shoot the stills wide open in aperture priority as this reduces the visible dirt a fair bit.

I also use a Magic Arm and clamp to get up close and/ or a tripod leaning against the window, secured down with tape again.

For the 4 day shot I took 1 photo every 20 seconds or so in medium jpeg mode on the 7D using the tokina 11-16 f2.8 with a vari ND filter on with additional polariser.

I had some pretty bad interior reflections on one of the CN Tower timelpases with the GRIII of people walking past. This was bound to happen, the camera was not flush to the window as I needed to point down. I used the CHV FCP plug in long exposure to make these barely visible and it worked well. I also had them on the 5DmkII, I used two hats to shield the lens from them!

Lens wise i used the Canon 90mm Tilt Shift for the opening shot, the Tokina 11-16 a lot and the Canon 16-35 f2.8. The GF1 had the 20mm F1.7mm pancake lens on it. The Ricoh has the wide angle adaptor on it.

I go back to Skywalker Ranch at the weekend and waiting for me is the Kessler Crane motorized Cine Slider for moving timelapse. Can’t wait to try it out! It’s a BETA modified version of the below crank slider. Am also getting a couple of new rigs from Cinevate to try out too. Gonna be a lot of fun!

Below is my short film “Toronto Falls”, filmed in Chicago, Toronto and Niagara Falls.

I have been in the US for about 2 and a half weeks doing all sorts of stuff. Re:Frame, Critics and then I went to LA to hang out for a few days. I went on location with “24″ to meet DP Rodney Charters who was a smashing bloke. I also had a great meet up with over 30 people I knew mostly from just the net/ twitter etc and of course I did some filming.

7D with 35mm f1.4 and Rode Video Mic

My “people series” never set out to be series. I did one in Sofia, then did a sort of homage to that in Dublin with a pre-production 7D. Whilst in San Francisco I did ANOTHER one which I was very pleased with. Now I wanted to do one in Venice Beach in LA but wanted to mix it up a bit. So instead of the usual posing I took a more documentary approach to the subject. Still mostly focusing on interesting characters rather than the glamour…I used a lot of sync and all of it was capture using the simple RODE Video Mic. You can hear the AGC but the sound is surprisingly good. Downside of RODE is you cannot take stills using viewfinder as it gets in the way. Check out the lifeguard section, that sound was all recorded at the distance shown in the big wide shot. Not bad for a camera mic…

Copyright SaraCollaton.com

Copyright www.saracollaton.com

Copyright www.saracollaton.com

Copyright www.saracollaton.com

Copyright www.saracollaton.com

I used 3 lenses on the 7D. A 35mm f1.4, 70-200mm IS f2.8 and the 24mm f3.5 tilt shift. I also used a Z-Finder and a Tactical Shooter from Zacuto

Essential piece of kit was the Vari ND/ Fader ND. I used these a lot in Delhi for the Greenpeace shoot and anytime I shoot during the daytime. They let me adjust the amount of light coming in between 2 and 8 stops so I was able to get nice shallow depth of field but stay at 1/50 to keep my shutter as close 180 degrees as possible with 7D in 24p mode. This shutter speed gives you the most accurate film motion.

I also used a baby Cinesaddle for the static shots. Very useful piece of gear. Have one for my massive broadcast cameras and this one for the small cam stuff.

Big thanks go out to Sara Collaton for inspiring me and her great BTS photos and to “New York”, the featured homeless man.

Graded with Magic Bullet Looks. 20% off with code Bloom 20 at checkout.

Click on the image below to see the film and I REALLY recommend download the FULL HD version from Vimeo by going to the Vimeo page, signing in and click on download original. I watched it on my 47″ LCD screen via my XBOX 360 and it looked beautiful.

Shot on the Canon 5DmkII at 30p and conformed to 24p in Cinema Tools. This is the third in my “People” series. After “Sofia’s People” and “Dublin’s People”.

Shot on 5DmkII with 50mm F1.2 and Zacuto Z-Finder. No other support used.

My guy singing at the end was also conformed with the pitch changed to match the speed change.

Music is Taxi Driver by the great. Bernard Herrmann.

Graded with Magic Bullet Looks. Get 20% off at checkout with BLOOM20

Opening shot is done using the 7D in stills mode using an intervalometer as mentioned in previous blog.

Click here to go to the video.

Here I am in San Francisco at the latest Re:Frame event. I have the new Panasonic Lumix GF1 to play with but I have been mostly shooting with my 7d and 5dmkII…BUT mostly in stills mode. I have done a 36 hour timelapse on my 7D and I have also documented the event, again mostly in stills.

Now the shutter life of the 7D is around 150,000 shots. In the past 4 days I have shot around 16,000 photos. So do be careful and don’t make lots of films the same way as I have done as it will you camera eventually. Those shots will add up! Although if you do this you can get if fixed, it’s not throw away camera time!

There are some very talented people in this film. Scott Bourne, Joe Simon, Karen Abad, Kevin Shahinian, Bruce Patterson, Jason Magbanua, Kristen* and LOADS MORE!! Do mention in comments who else you spot!!

Jon Connor

Scott Bourne

7D and 5dmkII photo movie: Re:Frame SF 09 from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Shot entirely in JPEG stills and edited in Final Cut Pro.

Contains around 5600 still shots.

Shot on various lenses including Tokina 11-16 f2.8 and Canon 50mm F1.2

Shot at the RE:Frame Conference in San Francisco in October 2009

We have done seminars on the 5dmkII and on Film Look. I took these portraits of people there on the 7d shooting at 720p 60p and slowing down to 24p in Cinema tools to get great slow motion. Thanks to everyone in the film!

Click the link here to be taken to it

Here a few photo from the past couple of days with some familiar faces!

Steve Weiss and Jason Magbanua

The Dawsons

Kevin Shahinian and Steve Weiss

Ron, Kevin, Steve and me

Jason Magbanua and Philip Bloom

Steve Weiss

Just some random bits and pieces so you can see some daylight footage that I shot before I shot “Dublin’s People”

None of this is graded.

Random Dublin shots from workshop: Canom 7d from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.
Get Elliott Smith’s Let’s Get Lost here

Bloom's USA Video Blog: The British Invasion

Also check out my very silly new Video Blog from Zacuto HQ, shot on the Canon 7d and lots of fish eye!

Please also check this out below. Andrea is seen in the above footage and this is the film she made on the workshop.

Weiblich from F-Stop Academy on Vimeo.

Filmed by Andrea Baczynski on a dirt cheap Nikon D5000 DSLR as part of the Dublin F-Stop Academy Cinematography workshop on the 6th September 2009. She came all the way from Austria to be part of our first workshop (in fact we had people from France, Germany, Dubai, Sweden and many other places too!)

Andrea has never shot video before, she has only ever worked in stills. This was her first time filming and I cut it together for her in the class in 20 minutes to demonstrate how you can do something very strong, very simply. Andrea’s idea of integrating herself with the statues was a terrific one and now she has a new excitement about the moving image.

Graded using Magic Bullet Looks. You can get Magic Bullet Looks from RedGiantSoftware.com and get 20% off with the code bloom20.

I also used Nattress Film Effects to get the 2:35 to 1 Matte plug in to give it that wonderful aspect ratio.

Want to learn how to create the film look and much much more? Click below.