30 seconds to mars video...

R

richblend

Active member
Apologies if this has been discussed before - i did a search, nothing came up. Ive been taken aback by this video - havent seen a commercial music video that has impressed me so much in a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMX3qv1N37s

(high quality)

I'm specifically interested in the shots where the band is set against the night skyline of LA (I think). Theres great low light exposure of the skyline, and the band is lit perfectly at the same time. Any tips as to how you might go about this - would you need a super sensitive camera?

Rich
 
You'd need lights. And a generator. And a lens that displays nice bokeh. One key and the occassional kicker. I'm no fan of 30STM (but a huge Jared Leto fan, go figure), but there were some great moments in the film (car crash I didn't see coming) and some meh moments (how the whole piece wrapped), but yeah, gorgeously filmed. So very Los Angeles, and I mean that with no disrespect. :)

(whoa, the molotov cocktail thrower with flowers - quite the stolen image with quite a storied background...)
 
So do you reckon they just set exposure for the skyline perfectly, and then lit the band to match? I thought there might have been some post trickery in there (shoot the skyline, then shoot the band and merge the two shots), kinda like HDR photograpy where you get unrealisticly amazing exposure.
 
richblend said:
So do you reckon they just set exposure for the skyline perfectly, and then lit the band to match? I thought there might have been some post trickery in there (shoot the skyline, then shoot the band and merge the two shots), kinda like HDR photograpy where you get unrealisticly amazing exposure.
Click to expand...

Yes. That is exactly what they would do considering that is the one variable they cannot control... unless they captured it separate with longer exposure times and composited... which with the amount of racks and shots, would take much more time and money. I don't think that was the case, because it didn't look HDR to me. Kinda looked like Phillip Blooms "I'm gonna walk around a city at night" type exposures. Nothing I saw with the exception to the car accident, horse, and band, looked terribly lit or controlled. Not saying it wasn't but don't think they took hours stitching together motion control HDR images to make these shots.

The slow motions shots were done with a Phantom Highspeed camera which boasts a pretty impressive 640iso/asa. I am curious if they used this camera for all the 'normal' 24fps footage as well. The phantom makes beautiful 24fps footage, but since it's about a couple grand a day to rent, most people choose other cameras.

Since this was probably all shot within a day or two they might have shot the entire thing on it. If so, I figure they probably shot with some fast T/1.3 primes for that shallow DoF + city exposure. That should have been enough, but if not, I'm sure they can get away with maybe some slower shutter speeds or +6db gain. The signal of a Phantom is clean enough to do so.

To put it in perspective, without any gain, the Phantom's ASA/ISO is twice as fast as the RedOne or HVX200... and it's a half stop faster then the HVX200a/HPX170. Plus T/1.3 lenses like some Zeiss Super Speeds can really sweeten the deal.

The video looked very nice, but I think most of it was careful and skilled exposure with little tricks, although there obviously was post VFX done, given there are VFX credits at the end... but I'm guessing that's for stuff like the car accident or something.
 
Yep, according to this article ( http://fwdlabs.com/blog/making-the-30-seconds-to-mars-video/ ) the biking footage was shot on the 7D, the RED ONE was used for 48 FPS footage, and the Phantom was used for the true highspeed (over 100 FPS).

Pretty cool video though. I do wonder if those shots were spiced up a little in VFX though - at first, they looked so clean I thought they might be greenscreened.
 
watching the horse run in slowmo was awesome....it's skin looked like liquid.

i havent seen a music video with so much attention to finite detail and scope as this one...the song is growing on me too.

my band at the time opened up for them in 2006 in Bakersfield CA for a 1-day festival-type show and it was so hot, i think we all sucked. the crowd wasn't the greatest either. moral: do not play outside in Bakersfield in August. you might die. i'm glad i didn't.
 
Wow, great links here guys. Thanks a lot! Great to see they used a Red One - was thinking of hiring one for my next project...
 
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