LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: THE FINAL DAY
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – WEEK 7 DAILIES from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.
We’ve wrapped, and I’m sad. Ladies and Gentlemen has become a big part of my life over the last couple of months, frustrating at times, infuriating at others, but what a thrilling journey. The unique challenges thrown up by shooting drama on a budget, coupled with the camera’s ability to deliver time and time again, have made this easily the most rewarding production experience of my career.
. . . . plenty of lessons have been learned which I’ll share in a future post, but if an opportunity like this falls in your lap, just say yes [and] get hold of a 5D . . . . We’ve shot a one hour drama pilot for $6,000.
Our final day was a night shoot, starting in a toilet and moving outside for the big climax to the show, a fight and a car crash that brings many of the cast together for the first time. As always, having no money means we have no control and of course way too little time. Shooting a car smashing into one of our leads simply wasn’t an option and I knew that I’d have to be creative with how I shot the moment. Fortunately the whole film is quite stylised so I decided to play the whole thing in the reactions of the characters, using sound design and some judicious lighting. We also made the conscious decision to shoot everything on the 85mm lens, even the wide shots, to compress the action and bring the car closer to the actors than it might have otherwise appeared. A good call I think. I knew I wanted slow mo but we shot everything on the 5D for quality purposes, simply trusting that Twixtor would sort us out. The trade off when you jump down 720p 50, coupled with the 7D’s inferior (relative) performance, just wasn’t going to cut it for the climax of the show so I felt that was a risk worth taking. Fortunately it appears to have worked.
Shooting a car smashing into one of our leads simply wasn’t an option and I knew that I’d have to be creative with how I shot the moment
Lighting wise we had just a single HMI 2.5k and everything else is just natural light. Watching the rushes back I’m stunned. It’s commonly held that the 5D is fantastic in low light. Well, it’s no miracle worker, but wow it delivers when you’re not expecting it to. We had barely any lights at all, but what we did have on the day was enough for the camera to do a stunning job and I know it would have looked far inferior on a RED or an EX3. It actually looks gorgeous. I was really worried we’d be hammering the ISO and degrading the image horribly but we never strayed above 1000 and kept the f stop at 2.0. Watch the dailies cut to see how it turned out (it’s ungraded)… astonishing.
Marc’s solution was to use a piece of camera tape, attach one end to the frame of the handheld rig and tape the other end to the focus barrel so that the tape would snap taut at infinity
When planning what to do creatively with the episode I made a conscious decision to shoot the first fifty minutes on sticks, smooth, fluid and controlled, but from ten minutes out we were going to go handheld to reflect the chaos in the scenes and the mental state of the characters. Most of the challenges so far have been pretty straightforward but this evening’s shooting was really going to test us. It goes without saying that focus was going to be tricky and of course it was. Fortunately the scenes were meant to be chaotic so if you drift in and out a little bit that’s okay. Our focus puller was a total ninja South African called Marc and even he was struggling. We used the Redrock 12″ whip which allows you plenty of room to move with the camera, but we were so all over the place it was always going to be a challenge for him.
There’s something about putting a matte box on a DSLR that suddenly makes it look a lot less stupid. I know that shouldn’t make a difference but somehow it really does!
Shooting on L primes you do have one major problem which is that the lenses have no hard stops for the focus ring. Marc’s solution was to use a piece of camera tape, attach one end to the frame of the handheld rig and tape the other end to the focus barrel so that the tape would snap taut at infinity. That way he would never overcook the focus and ruin his marks. If you overrotate the barrel then all your marks are worthless. Tricky stuff. We’d received our Redrock kit this week and put it straight into action. First up was the Redrock Matte Box which is a crucial bit of kit. We’ve been taping the Fader ND on the front of any old lens because it’s a 77mm thread and most of the lenses we have aren’t, so to be able to drop an ND in the filter tray was a nice luxury. There’s something about putting a matte box on a DSLR that suddenly makes it look a lot less stupid. I know that shouldn’t make a difference but somehow it really does!
I’ve worked really hard on tailoring the handheld rig to be as ergonomic and user friendly as possible. With the [Redrock] micro balance the weights sit vertically reducing the profile of the rig, and giving you a really solid fourth point of contact against your shoulder blades
Our other crucial bit of kit was the Redrock micro balance kit. I’ve worked really hard on tailoring the handheld rig to be as ergonomic and user friendly as possible. On the old rig the counter weight sat horizontally on the back of the rig which is fine but they extend out six inches increasing your profile but it also means when you tilt down the camera becomes very nose heavy and difficult to operate. With the micro balance the weights sit vertically reducing the profile of the rig, and giving you a really solid fourth point of contact against your shoulder blades. It gives you so much more confidence when operating and helps take the strain off the arms. Our poor DOP Yuri earned his money (oh wait he wasn’t getting paid) running around like a nutter covering the action. Which leads me onto our final challenge, rolling shutter. Rodney Charters reckons it’s best to keep DSLRs on sticks but I’ve seen Shane (hoo ha) Hurlbut running around like a nutter for his Navy Seals movie and it seemed to work for him.
if you don’t already read Shane’s blog and you plan on shooting drama then you should make it your business to do so as soon as possible
A while back I shot a video in bright sunlight wide open with the shutter at 1/4000 and it virtually eliminated the rolling shutter effect. Now that’s a little severe for drama so we set the shutter to 1/100, firstly because it would help the rolling shutter effect, it would make the action more punchy and it would also give Twixtor cleaner frames to interpolate between when doing the slow mo in post. And it worked great. On another quick note, if you don’t already read Shane’s blog and you plan on shooting drama then you should make it your business to do so as soon as possible. I learned so much from his experience when prepping for this shoot, and it’s stuff that you really need to know.
me doing sound and Yuri shooting handheld with nothing but the DSLR, no gimmicks, no toys, no monitor, just the camera
Our final sequence was a conversation in a moving car, and of course a low-loader was out of the question. So there we were, sat in the back of the car, me doing sound and Yuri shooting handheld with nothing but the DSLR, no gimmicks, no toys, no monitor, just the camera. We lit the interiors with mini-flos which are basically really small single kino tubes and once again the 5D bailed us out. Again we shot exclusively on the 85mm L and of course we ended up with Bloomtastic Bokeh which is just lovely. I’ve done a lot of car work in the past and interiors are always such a massive pain in the jacksie but with a DSLR you transform the cabin into a stunning space age capsule, throwing the road and the world outside out of focus, making it special. That’s completely unique. Cars are cramped, difficult spaces to work in, but the compact size of a DSLR gives you a shot. Driving along the river at 2am with those kind of images you forget how tired you are and just thank the Lord that you can shoot on such a versatile camera.
. . . . plenty of lessons have been learned which I’ll share in a future post, but if an opportunity like this falls in your lap, just say yes [and] get hold of a 5D . . . . We’ve shot a one hour drama pilot for $6,000.
Of course moving vehicles are absolutely hideous for affecting the rolling shutter so we had to keep going over and over the lines till we had steady versions of each one but at least we got it done. We could have really used a monopod. And at half three we wrapped the entire shoot, a massive anti-climax, with four tired people desperate to get home to grab a few hours sleep before going to work the next day. I was pretty downbeat about the day’s shooting, I just felt we’d been so rushed to get the actors onto the last trains home that we’d spent nowhere near enough time on the climax to the show and yet, cutting the rushes for the weekly dailies cut I’ve been blown away. Once again, a combination of a great camera, a great dop and committed cast and crew has pulled it out of the bag. I’ll miss our weekend missions, plenty of lessons have been learned which I’ll share in a future post, but if an opportunity like this falls in your lap, just say yes, get hold of a 5D and you’re in with a shot. We’ve shot a one hour drama pilot for $6,000. Astonishing.
Note from Michael Britt:
It’s really hard just shooting a micro budget production but being able to blog about it while it’s happening is nearly impossible. I’d like to thank Robin for the wonderful contributions he’s made to this blog and to our readers by sharing his personal experiences HDSLR filmmaking. You can read the whole archive of the Ladies and Gentleman saga here.
