DigitaRev…they are bastards! Well, that’s not entirely fair. I knew what I was getting into when I accepted their “Pro Photographer/ Cheap Camera Challenge” spin-off “Pro Cinematographer/ Cheap Camera Challenge”. I didn’t realise just how bad the camera they would give me was…BLOODY BARBIE VIDEO GIRL!!

The idea of DigitalRev’s show has been to show “it’s not the camera…” they have done loads of eps with very talented people like Vincent LaForet and Chase Jarvis. They had it easy, though! 🙂 They only had to take a few stills. I had to make a film!

I could have just done a montage-type thing, but with an image this bad, there would be no beauty here, so content had to be king. I had to create something that would sustain the viewer and, for me, something that was actually fun and entertaining. Quite how I came up with the story I am not sure. Kai told me they had set up 3 things: a traditional lion dance, a place where you eat Ox penis and a Kung Fu girl. So, with 30 minutes to the first location, I furiously scribbled away to come up with something that could tie them together and create a narrative to carry them through…

Watch the making of first if you can!!

Bad Day Barbie from Philip Bloom extras on Vimeo.

Aural Method: The Moonlit Towers Reached Aboce in Blue the Hours Beseeched our Love
Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes: Shoe Fits

I must add that is a bit NSFW  in places!

As you can see, it was rather weird…but I simply had to embrace the madness of it all! I decided to make the most of the the fact I was using Barbie to film with. I wanted to capture the feel of a real Hong Kong 70’s b movie with this…that actually is really not easy either!

The low light of the camera was beyond terrible. You can’t really tell with the BTS as they were using 5DmkIIIs which could see about 6 stops more light than I could AT LEAST!

With an image size of 320p and 15fps, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good image…I didn’t realise it was going to be this bad!!

When I got to the edit I was so downhearted. How could I make this image look halfway decent? With a bit of experimentation, I put the .AVI file (yes .avi) onto a 720p 25p timeline and upscaled it by 300%..my god it looked AWFUL!! Premiere CC just sort of accepted the odd framerate no problem and with this Super 8mm like frame rate I had to see if my go to plugin FILMCONVERT with a Super 8mm film stock could reduce the awfulness…and guess what? It did as you can see below!

Thankfully the planning paid off, despite it being just 30 minutes made up on the spot, with a few tweaks made through the day. What made the piece work for me mostly though was the sound. Not the sound from the camera. That was AWFUL. Although I did use it on one sequence when the tequila shots are placed on the table. The rest was foley. All done in post. Mostly actually from the ever wonderful freesound.org

With the sound effects and the music from my usual source The Music Bed it just sort of came together, I think. I bought the track “Ninja” from Pond5 as I needed a track for the kung fu sequence on top of that…I feel I really struck gold with the two Music Bed tracks. Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes: Shoe Fits track just worked great for the upbeat first half of the film and felt quite South East Asian, plus the brilliant Aural Method’s “The Moonlit Towers Reached Aboce in Blue the Hours Beseeched our Love” was perfect for the dark second half, especially mixed in with the actually quite sinister Lion Dance music which I randomly found on the net (they were miming as you will remember in the BTS video!)

Well there you go…I hope you enjoyed the show and my mad little short, and if you want to watch the short on its own you can below….but if you haven’t watched the DigitalRev show first please do. It works so much better if you have!

Can I go back to my proper cameras now please?!

Thanks so much to Kai, Richard, Lok, Hilary and Fiona…plus of course Barbie. You are a star and any time you need me give someone else a call. 🙂