Distracted Driving Commercial - 7D

D

David Mcdonald

Member
Here's a short commercial I shot on 7D for a local video contest in Vancouver about Distracted Driving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9AIH_yKrwc (fixed)

The whole thing was shot on 7D with Zeiss 50mm 1.4, Zeiss 21mm 2.8, and Canon 70-200mm 2.8.
I did all of the visual effects myself. The budget for the whole thing was probably around $400. Fun fact: there were only two surgeon costume and 1 fireman costume, so any shot that has multiples of those costumes involves some kind of camera trick or visual effect.

Let me know what you think! And I'd also appreciate it if you could give it the "thumbs up" on youtube to cast your vote for the contest. Thanks!
 
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Holy shitt!! that was amazing! well done haha
what was your lighting setups? do you have a rental connection or something because this is top notch!
what was the 400$ spent on?

a bts would be awesome haha

thanks for sharing
 
Ya I've been thinking about doing a BTS but I don't really have many set stills or BTS video.....I could do some visual effects breakdowns though. I'll see what I can dig up.

The lighting in the surgery scene was done with only a small kino flo diva rigged above the actors and a 300 fresnel as a backlight in the close-ups. The fire scenes were also only lit with the one Kino, a 2K and a 300, with CTO over them....many of the lights were flickered and waved in front of to get a fire effect. I also rented a red siren/beacon to put off-camera to hit the fireman guy when he's outside the building. The outdoor stuff was just sunlight through a 4x4 frame of diffusion.

The $400 was basically spent on renting the one kino (about 100 bucks), the one fireman costume and two surgeon costumes, the red beacon, some charcoal makeup and fake blood, rented a nailgun and bought some 2x4s from Home Depot, and I also bought some blue fabric, white towels and a few various props for the surgery scene like rubber gloves, tubing etc. I already own a 7D and my cinematographers (two brothers) own a 7D with a few lenses and they also own a 2K and 300 fresnel with diffusion and color gels. And I own an H4N Zoom recorder for audio.

You can do quite a bit with some creativity (instead of showing a firetruck, just have a red siren flashing off-camera....or instead of renting 6 firemen costumes, just rent one and multiply the same actor 6 times in post)


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I also noticed the audio was not stellar, some reverb when the other medic asks for guidance and an overall flimsy sounding audio... I'm not sure what lacked, if it was quality microphones or lack of proper editing and EQ. It's not bad, it's just OK.

However, this only pops out because the rest is just so good, and I mean it.
 
Yeah the audio definitely got less attention on this project....it was so low budget that I didn't even rent a shotgun mic or boom pole....the dialogue is mostly recorded with the H4N Zoom pointed as close as possible to the actors out of frame. I did a decent sound mix in Soundtrack Pro but didn't really do any EQing...a professional mix probably could have smoothed everything out but oh well...I don't think it sounds that bad.
 
Top notch David! You really show the strength is not in the equipment, but it's in the vision to work around things.
 
How did you do the fire scenes? Also how did you blow the top of the Building off. Visually this all is a great job. Story line was great too. How much special effects did you do? What did you use to edit this with and did you use AfterEffects or motion for anything?
Thanks,
Michael
 
The fire effects were mostly made with Video Copilot's Action Essentials 2 pack of stock footage (fire, explosions, smoke, debris etc.). It does require some creativity and skill to make the shot work though, it's not as easy as just dropping in the stock elements....I had to do stuff like add fire-like light flicker, heat waves, particles of debris and embers, and I usually add camera shake to sell the effect a bit more. Blowing the building up basically just involved shooting a clean plate of the building and actor, then in After effects I just started adding elements like the initial explosions, then thick black smoke behind them, then glass and debris to fly with it, as well as fire once the explosion is gone. And I had to keyframe the exposure of the shot to get really bright when the explosion happens then fade darker when the explosion finishes. I also added dark burn marks to the wall after the explosion....and then added camera shake to the shot to happen as the explosion happens as welll as throughout the shot.

It was all edited in Final Cut Pro and the effects were all done with After Effects (and maybe some photoshop).

I'll try putting together a breakdown of some of the effects....I think the most surprising shot would be the wide shot of the surgeons....there are a lot of things going on in that shot that you might not expect and you'd be interested to see broken down.
 
Very pro! Good lightning, and impressed by all those firescenes with that small budget. Doctor scenes looks better than most doctor scenes out there! :love4:

Editing could be tighter. When looking at it, one gets the point with the phone right away, so no need to drag that out. I would cut it twice as fast, and make is last 35 seconds.
 
David Mcdonald said:
The fire effects were mostly made with Video Copilot's Action Essentials 2 pack of stock footage (fire, explosions, smoke, debris etc.). It does require some creativity and skill to make the shot work though, it's not as easy as just dropping in the stock elements....I had to do stuff like add fire-like light flicker, heat waves, particles of debris and embers, and I usually add camera shake to sell the effect a bit more. Blowing the building up basically just involved shooting a clean plate of the building and actor, then in After effects I just started adding elements like the initial explosions, then thick black smoke behind them, then glass and debris to fly with it, as well as fire once the explosion is gone. And I had to keyframe the exposure of the shot to get really bright when the explosion happens then fade darker when the explosion finishes. I also added dark burn marks to the wall after the explosion....and then added camera shake to the shot to happen as the explosion happens as welll as throughout the shot.

It was all edited in Final Cut Pro and the effects were all done with After Effects (and maybe some photoshop).

I'll try putting together a breakdown of some of the effects....I think the most surprising shot would be the wide shot of the surgeons....there are a lot of things going on in that shot that you might not expect and you'd be interested to see broken down.
Click to expand...

I would love to see any VFX breakdowns you could throw our way :) the quality was stellar!
 
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