FS7: Global Teacher Prize

Liam Hall

Liam Hall

Veteran
Here's one of the films I shot for the Global Teacher Prize. Filmed entirely on location in the Canadian Arctic. It was a one-man production, with as much gear as I could carry. All shot on my FS7 except for the time-lapses at the end which were captured on a A6500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh3gPBmauZg&t=10s


*EDIT*

BTW Maggie won. And, here's my extended edit:

https://vimeo.com/209651992

PW: teacher

 
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Well done Liam. Lovely piece of work and a great story.

Was it all just you on your own? Sweet timelapse at the end by the way :)
 
Thanks Ben, yes just me on my own with as much gear as I could carry i.e. not much! It was a pretty hard core shoot, even for me! I did this on the back of another one I shot in New York (can't show that one yet) so it was quite a long time away with no drinking buddy!

I'm going to finish a longer version of this edit as I had to reshape it a little to fit in with the other stories. The opening on the long version is much stronger, so it'll be good to show that one when I get a chance.
 
TheDingo said:
Nice work Liam. What were the outside temps like while you were shooting ?
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It was around -45C when shooting the timelapse at the end, but most of the time it was around -25C. The following week it hit -56C so I feel I got off lightly!
 
Hey Liam,

Amazing job overall - considering the conditions and working alone, you've done a really stellar job. Some beautiful shots in there, particularly of the landscape and running.

As you mentioned you're still working on another version, I'll give all the comments I can, just in case some are of use. It's such a shame that fluorescent lights are everywhere in public buildings like schools/offices etc, as the make getting healthy-looking skintones a bit of a nightmare! I think that you could afford to bring in a small amount more magenta into many of the interior shots, which seem to suffer from bit of a green cast to my eye.

Do you know why a handful of the slow-motion shots are suffering with aliasing? I imagine it must be an artifact created by using higher-than-60fps S&Q modes. It's a shame because so many of the shots are so pretty, but I'm sure the vast majority of viewers wouldn't notice anyway! IF you decided you wanted to, I would've thought you could roto/replace those wires fairly quickly in AE if you're OCD like me!

One other TINY thing that I think could help 'glue' the whole thing together, would be using short handles in your audio edit, such that the atmos audio from the incoming clip fades in slightly over the tail of the outgoing one. Some shots with footsteps in snow, BG voices, or wind whine, would (I think) feel less abrupt with that technique applied in the edit.

Also, on the audio side of things, I would suggest seeing how it might work if the music continues for just a second or two after Maggie's final words. The ending felt a little sudden to me.

I hope you don't mind the (hopefully) constructive criticism. I only mention these things because the piece is really strong overall, and so it seems worth every ounce of elbow-polish you can bear!

Nice one,

jason
 
Hi Liam

that is a great piece of work.

Could you elaborate on "with as much gear as I could carry" what gear you used.

cheers
 
jasonbrooks said:
Hey Liam,

Amazing job overall - considering the conditions and working alone, you've done a really stellar job. Some beautiful shots in there, particularly of the landscape and running.

As you mentioned you're still working on another version, I'll give all the comments I can, just in case some are of use. It's such a shame that fluorescent lights are everywhere in public buildings like schools/offices etc, as the make getting healthy-looking skintones a bit of a nightmare! I think that you could afford to bring in a small amount more magenta into many of the interior shots, which seem to suffer from bit of a green cast to my eye.

Do you know why a handful of the slow-motion shots are suffering with aliasing? I imagine it must be an artifact created by using higher-than-60fps S&Q modes. It's a shame because so many of the shots are so pretty, but I'm sure the vast majority of viewers wouldn't notice anyway! IF you decided you wanted to, I would've thought you could roto/replace those wires fairly quickly in AE if you're OCD like me!

One other TINY thing that I think could help 'glue' the whole thing together, would be using short handles in your audio edit, such that the atmos audio from the incoming clip fades in slightly over the tail of the outgoing one. Some shots with footsteps in snow, BG voices, or wind whine, would (I think) feel less abrupt with that technique applied in the edit.

Also, on the audio side of things, I would suggest seeing how it might work if the music continues for just a second or two after Maggie's final words. The ending felt a little sudden to me.

I hope you don't mind the (hopefully) constructive criticism. I only mention these things because the piece is really strong overall, and so it seems worth every ounce of
Click to expand...



Feel free to comment Jason, good, bad or indifferent is cool with me:)

This film is definitely short of two things, a good grade a good sound mix. Both were done by me on a laptop, so are a bit rough around the edges. I hear you on the green, some of the walls in school were actually green, and in the day care too, the overheads were usually very yellow and the light coming in through the windows was quite challenging at times due to the low sun and intensity of blue bounced light due the snow. Looking at the shots again I can pick one or two that are clearly off the mark and a few others that need a little TLC even though I've already pumped quite a bit of magenta in there.

As for sound, yep I agree. It needs a little more layering and a few more spot SFX too, something I want to attend to when I get time to do the longer edit.

Finally, aliasing; I spotted that too. There's no aliasing on the master I supplied, so it's either something YouTube encoding has done, or the production company after I supplied them my master. Fastest I think I shot at was 96fps, so there should be no issue with aliasing there.
 
doubledark said:
Hi Liam

that is a great piece of work.

Could you elaborate on "with as much gear as I could carry" what gear you used.

cheers
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Sure, I was traveling on my own, and production didn't have much for excess baggage, so had to minimise gear as much as possible. I decided I could only take what I could fit on one airport trolley, so ended up with two carry on bags, one large one small, and three cases in the hold. I was away for two weeks, as I also had a shoot in New York, so one bag was nearly all clothing with a few cables and a couple small light stands. Carry-on was my FS7 body, batteries, DJI Mavic, a couple of lenses (in case my lens case went missing), laptop, hard drives, and carnet. I had a Peli 1620 which had all the other lenses, an A6500, chargers, microphones etc and I had another suitcase with FSB8 tripod head, manfrotto 536K legs, Aputure LS1, a 50w Came TV Boltzen and an Aputure M9. I was a bit overloaded on my carry on so wore the drone under my coat to smuggle it on! Lenses were Canon 16-35 2.8, 24-70 2.8, 70-200 2.8, 100mm Macro 2.8, Sigma 150-600, Samyang cine primes 24, 35 and 85, plus a toking 11-16mm on the A6500. Think that's about it.

BTW the drone decided to crash into the side of the mountain 11 minutes after I sent it up. It was -30C below it's operating temperature...

Typical set-up:


IMG_3113.jpg
 
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jasonbrooks said:
Do you know why a handful of the slow-motion shots are suffering with aliasing? I imagine it must be an artifact created by using higher-than-60fps S&Q modes. It's a shame because so many of the shots are so pretty, but I'm sure the vast majority of viewers wouldn't notice anyway! IF you decided you wanted to, I would've thought you could roto/replace those wires fairly quickly in AE if you're OCD like me!
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So, we figured out the aliasing... it was caused by going from Premiere to Avid with the wrong field order. Will sort this out tomorrow and hopefully the client can rey-load the film!!
 
Fantastic work Liam!

Out of curiosity, what other kit failed? I saw your mention of the Mavic.

Great to hear about the FS7 doing so well in those conditions.
 
My iPhone powered down after 5-10 mins. The focus ring on some of my lenses became very stiff. My Sony A6500 took on a mind of its own. The cable on my Sony MDR-7506 headphones went rigid.

BTW tomorrow I should be able to post the extended edit.
 
Congratulations to Maggie on winning the prize as well. I enjoyed the video and hopefully it helped to inspire the judges.
Great work!
Cheers
 
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