Canon 7D Suzuki Spot by Seth Epstein – Pt 2

In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at Seth Epstein’s Suzuki spot that he shot using Canon 7D’s. For part 2, we are looking at how he handled post for this shoot. Don’t miss part 3 where we will be showcasing Seth’s pitch boards as well as the story boards for this shoot.

I asked Seth how he handled post and his response was so detailed, I will let him tell it here.

“Once we wrapped, I chose to cut myself because I knew the client would make a lot of changes and tweaks. I did not have the budget to ride an editor for that level of micro changes. I figured I could handle it….  I immediately converted the footage to Apple Pro-Res high using MPEG StreamClip and also backed up the original footage in case of a drive crash. Took all night to convert and I had a few footage mis fires that required making another pass at converting.  I cut the entire spot on MacBook Pro 2.2ghz with 4gigs of RAM. I have a 24” external monitor and a few G Drives connected via firewire 800. I cut the spot in final cut pro. Graphics were done by Ehren Addis, a friend and someone I used to work with at FUEL. We used live action footage blended with created elements in after effects. Getting the right feel can only be done ‘organcially’ with live footage. I shot some light effects and b-roll shots of just lights, blurs, etc….

I cut 2 spots. The client spot is only a :15 second spot exclusively for the European Market. It’s running on CNN and Eurosport. The :30 is the directors cut and I cut in the music from the opening sequence of a bond film.

suzuki “spy” for europe from Seth Epstein on Vimeo.

I am not really tuned into conforming footage from 60fps to 24p – and I can’t say i have that figured out, even though it wouldn’t take me long to figure out. The cost is frame blending. There is one shot where I notice frame blending because of the translation. 

Color I did in final cut using the 3 way color corrector. I also used 2 layers and used the “overlay” pull down. I turned my top layer to black and white by yanking saturation out. I then used the “overlay” pull down or transfer control or whatever it is called. I then went into my color footage and used the 3 way color corrector. Sometimes I need to set different transparencies to the black and white “overlay”— say to 60% so the it didnt get too muddy on low light shots.  Each shot had to be tweaked individually though i would cut and paste settings (color) from a clip that had similar lighting as a starting point.

Even though our reference spot was a Jaguar spot, which is very blue/green and dark….the client changed their minds and wanted a warmer more accessible feeling spot, so i color corrected off the raw footage a warmer toned spot yet with some crushed blacks. The client spot also did not have as much SPY influence- and they wanted the girl to take off her helmet at the end… though I think if you’re selling to men, you would want to show the man being a bad ass getting the girl. Regardless, we tweaked a TON on the edit.

My edit, i colored it in the direction I would have wanted the client to go and cut it with footage that I felt represented the original intention….

Some other post details. I put the footage in a 24p timeline. I had to also render a PAL version. For on air we rendered a 4:3 window with letterboxed video creating the 16:9 look within standard def ratios. I did shoot at 1280 x 720 both 60 and 29.97 frames. When we shot at 60fps you give up some light sensitivity apparently. 

Final renders I did for the layoff was from Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion with NO compression (NONE), highest quality at 24 frames and 25 frames/ PAL aspect ratio. We took those files to a post house and had them lay it back to digibeta. Sound levels I tweaked a bit to make sure nothing was too hot and had them double check it as well.  

In the end, the spirit or energy or intention of the spot was to be transported into an action scene from a film… somewhat cinematic and driven and from the feedback overall, I think I accomplished exactly that.”

Watch for part 3 of this article next week where Seth shares his concept boards and client story boards