Hounds, music video shoot

I've just recently finished work on a music video for Hounds, a band I've worked with previously on a few occasions under their former incarnation of Little Joe Zero. The video was to be a very low budget, fast shoot, all taking place in a woodland area, which was ours for the day thanks to a good friend of the band. 

Olly, Chas & Chris had a pretty good idea of what they wanted to do and a sort of surreal horror vibe with a nod to the b -movie genre was the brief. Over coffee and a few rollies, we went over what props and costumes they had picked up from the fancy dress shop and worked out a rough plan for shooting. Ideally I would have shot this video on a combination of black & white 16mm and super 8, but budget and time being what they were this just wasn't an option. I'd recently started to shoot with a Panasonic GH1 DSLR and felt fairly confident that the camera would work well for this shoot, with my only doubt being, how well the footage stood up to heavy grading ( or in this case, heavy degrading ).

For the most part shooting the video using a DSLR was a positive experience, the form factor and speed of setting up a small camera in multiple locations with lens changes was a breeze. Most of my lenses and filters were all in one back pack, which allowed me to move a lot faster, only occasionally having to return to the cars to restock and eat. Moving the props, generator and ghetto blaster playback were probably far more time consuming. I shot on a combo of Olympus ZD lenses, for most of the handheld running around stuff and OM manual lenses for the set performance pieces. For the most part, I was shooting at around f4.

For the edit, I knew we were going for a mixed format look. I think the footage held up well to being pushed so far in post, with the main takes around the couch fairing best of all. The afternoons filming was pretty hilarious as you can imagine from watching the video.

Hounds have got this up on their youtube channel. Go here if you want take a look

www.youtube.com/houndstelevision

Ade

View on ExposureRoom

Blender Editing

I've been messing around with Blender for a few years now, occasionally using it for titles/motion graphics etc. on projects and when I have time, trying my hand at a little modelling. Over the last few months though, I've been drawn more and more to it's post production capabilities, with the upgrade to the sequence editor and the addition of compositing nodes for colour correction and keying. I've posted about this a while ago, but have since begun to use this side of the software on a more regular basis. Surprisingly, I now find myself turning to Blender sometimes, as an alternative to "other" post production software, to get some jobs done. 

Maybe it's because I've become used to it's way of working, but I find basic cutting in the sequence editor very fast and just plain logical. While it is still a long way from being an out of the box NLE, that will work in high pressure environments, I feel for film projects of my own, it's more than enough to sketch out and even polish off some short form material. I recently edited a short piece in Blender, which I shot on one night in January. The footage was of the sun setting over the mountains. When working with it in the timeline, I decided to flip the direction of the shots, reversing some of them, to make it appear like sunrise. This took a matter of seconds to achieve, but it's the kind of thing that can sometimes be much more time consuming. Anyway, here is the clip, filmed from the Pont D'Andey, overlooking the clouds above the valleys.

Sunset to sunrise By Adrian Frearson
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Avalanche Alley PT II

Over the last couple of winters I've been slowly working away at a long form documentary film, documenting the effect that snowfall and the subsequent avalanches have on the mountain eco system. I've never worked on or been involved in any kind of nature production, except my own personal films, but ever since I first picked up a film camera and started shooting skiing and snowboarding, my fascination with this subject has grown more each year.

This winter was a big snow year and ideally I would have liked have filmed more sequences than I did. But anyway I still managed to shoot some material for the film and hopefully, given good conditions next winter, might be able to complete the film in 2010. I've made a short teaser from some of this winters shots, which I've posted on Exposureroom.

Avalanche Alley ptII By Adrian Frearson
View in HD  Download 720p HD Version  Visit Adrian Frearson's ExposureRoom Videos Page

Shooting naturally triggered avalanches is not the easiest thing in the world to do, you need to be in the right place at the right time obviously, but having quick reactions and gear that will react as fast is probably equally important. The last couple of winters shooting for this project have really been a testing ground for me and I'm now realizing that I may need to go back to my 16mm shooting days. I've shot most of the material so far with my FX1, which is a notoriously slow starting camera, even by other tape based systems. I think any digital based system isn't ideal in a situation where the camera has to stay in standby, in the cold for hours on end and then suddenly drop into instant record. So I'm considering the switch back to Super 16, purely for shooting these sequences next year, conditions allowing. Most film cameras that I've used don't suffer from poor start up times, they either run or they don't! I had been thinking of using the upcoming Scarlet, to complete the project, but as start up on the current Red One is a bit of an issue, I will just have to wait and see how this develops. In the meantime I'm keeping my eye on S16 prices, quite a few people seem to be offloading film gear at the moment, so it could be time to scoop a bargain.

Ade

Stock Downloads

With the switch to this new site I am taking down the Scratchtapes pages, as I simply don't have the time to update what is effectively 2 blog installs or run an e-commerce site. The Scratchtapes clips will still be available to order via a dedicated page on this site, along with downloads of the free low resolution versions. 

Some of the Scratchtapes clips as well as some newer HD versions are now on Revostock and Pond5. This means the clips are available individually, rather than as a disc collection. 

Micro Four Thirds Cinema

So, to continue with my ongoing search for the perfect back packable camera solution, I've been following closely the release of the Panasonic DMC GH1 hybrid VDSLR.. an SLR that also happens to be a Hi-Def video camera. I was expecting to like this camera, as it would allow me to use my existing still lenses and therefore be a very light weight and compact set up. I wasn't expecting though, the image quality to be as sharp and detailed is it looks.

The compression was a real concern, and still is, but it does like this is going to be a very versatile little camera, especially when weight or difficulty in using larger cameras is concerned. British freelancer Phil Bloom has been one of the first people to really demo the camera for use in video production. He has written a nice piece on it's use in this context as well as created a couple of edited clips, to show the cameras potential. The slow mo shots from Kauai are particularly nice. http://philipbloom.co.uk/2009/05/02/kauai-sunset-lumix-gh1-slow-motion/

The camera has created quite a buzz already, though it remains to be seen how it will be adopted by the indie film community and low budget shooters. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this camera and testing it out in the near future. Cheers Ade