5 hvxs and 9 hvxs for motion effects

[gilgamesh]

Over the past few months I've worked on 2 music videos that were intense projects here in Montreal. The first was a video for Dumas ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxz_PcQuqUE ) where we used 5 cameras in an arc for some rotating photograph stills (you'll understand when you see the video) where I was the head tech and along with 1 other person download about 2.5 hours of footage from each camera. We used 4 p2 stores and a computer, and it was very very crazy. The second was a video for Grimskunk ( http://www.grimskunk.com/ ) called "Vive Le Quebec Libre" which used 9 cameras in an arc to make a very fast matrix-esque effect. Again, there were two of us downloading p2s to p2 Stores and computers, although less footage from each camera (about 1.5 hours).

Both of these shoots rented my camera along with others, and both of them were quite intense (and in the end gave me an extra day of work to download each p2 store to hard drives and ensure a backup for everything). Take a look, I think they are both interesting uses of the HVX.

[electricpig]

Good work, especially the second of the 2. That was some major data-wrangling you did there. Did you set each cameras timecode out by an hour or something in order to distinguish the sequences from each cam with not even a P2 store per cam?

You must have had fun with the editing...

mike.c

[Cale Glendening]

"Vive Le Quebec Libre"

Was frekaing brilliant.

[Pierre Petit]

Good stuff, really amazing.
Chapeau!

[ddp]

Excellent


DDP

[kenn michael]

wow!

[CreamerDP]

I thought the second video was the best out of the two. I just wanted to know did you pan any of the camera angles? The transitions look so smooth that I can't tell when you jump/switch some of those angles.

[cinebuddy]

Good grief...that is slick.

[gilgamesh]

First off, I want to make it clear I didn't edit or direct these videos, just worked on them in the camera department. I can tell you about the set ups though, as they were really interesting. The Dumas video had the 5 cameras simply on tripods angled around the singer or girl or whatever thing they were filming. I believe they were all 10 degrees apart and equally distant. We shot at 720p 30p so they would have as many "photograph" choices as possible to meld from.

The Grimskunk video was different. The director team build a wooden frame arc that would hold the cameras in place, and could be operated by 1 person at the center and 2 on either side. They used after effects to create the quick pan effect, but again, I would not be the person to tell you how.

What we did for timecode is actually have them on free run, and synced them to a master camera. I know that the HVX loses some sync if it turned off / battery is taken out, but at least it would give the editors a rough idea of which shots were which. Second, we had each camera marked in the user bits "cam 1, 2, etc". Third, we used a separate p2 store or computer for each camera, so we would hopefully not have any mix ups. We did have a lot of problems though; the hard drives the production had gotten at first didn't work, several of the p2 stores also had problems (they would only show a few cards at a time as loaded). It was very strange, but after plugging and unplugging many many times I got them to slowly show different cards and I could copy them to our disks. I found it irritating, especially in this case, that there was no way to name cards using the P2 Store, even very generically, like card1 card2, and so on. I was using P2 Genie on my computer for downloading, which had no problems whatsoever.

[Noel Evans]

Thats a great effect. Would love to try an emulate that - though by the end I thought it was too much in one video. Still, it looks great.

I noticed Grimskunk are signed to Indica. Another Indica band you may know is Dobacaracol. I shot a live show of theirs here in Tokyo. Not far off two years ago now though.

Heres their clip for Etrange on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBfgMPw03Fk

[dogcat]

Ya pretty cool stuff. I'm a montrealer too, and friends with Grim Skunk. I like the cleaness of the video compared to their usual stuff. Also if your' p2 store is not shpwing up all the drives there is a trick to mount them all from your computer

[Justyn]

very nice visual pieces, but is it just me or do songs in French just lack any cahones.. or umph or anything remotely showcasing a level of cool. There's a reason most foreigner bands sing in English for sure.. Just seems too John Tesh and all that.


I know its not as much about the song.. so for that great work. NIce little gadget too, but I do think it's used a bit much in the 2nd song