Today I’m happy to launch the second in a four-part series of videos I’ve been commissioned to make by Eton School. This one features pre-school students at the Bellevue, WA Montessori school paired with the voices of their parents.

The first video in this series featured teachers speaking, cut with upper level students. There was almost no nat sound in the 3-minute piece, just a few effects, and a breathtaking music track from VNV Nation (which we used with permission thanks to band cofounder Ronan Harris).

I approached making this video slightly differently. First off, it’s just one minute long. Instead of teachers, parents’ voices provide the spine of the piece. Also I have incorporated a fair bit of natural sound. The kids do get one speaking part – the word “oops!” For the music, happily I didn’t need to license anything this time either – I found this great track among the hundreds that Apple includes with Soundtrack Pro, which really is worth the purchase price just for the royalty-free sound effects and music tracks. It was too long so I sliced it in two in SoundTrack Pro and beat-matched the two segments, resulting in a piece of the perfect length right down to the frame. Bet you can’t spot the cut point!

Most of the footage was shot with my T2i; a little was shot on my JVC HM100. It’s color corrected with Final Cut’s Color Corrector 3-Way and heavily graded in Magic Bullet Looks, where I wanted to create a warm, fuzzy vibe. The heavy grading also made it easier to combine footage from the two cameras.

All the footage and interviews for the remaining videos on this project is in the can. I’m currently editing the next video in this series, which showcases the school’s lower level students. It should be up in about a week.

I’m also currently in post on another outstanding school video (the school is outstanding, at least, and I hope the video will be) for the University of Washington’s Experimental Education Unit. Look for that one sometime in September.

Oh, want a video like this for YOUR school? Drop me an email to dan at danmccomb dot com. I love this stuff and it’s how I support my documentary film habit.

Popularity: 7% [?]

As Vincent Moon walks into the small theater at Northwest Film Forum, he looks nervous. About a dozen fans and local filmmakers have signed up for a 3-hour workshop with this frail-looking Frenchman, and I’m one of them. Between bagel bites and coffee sips, he begins rambling about his disdain for film school (even though he taught at one recently and even attended one for a few years himself). After he drops the third or fourth name of a director I’ve never heard of, I begin to wonder whether the class was worth my time.

Then he shows this film. It’s short, under 10 minutes. Much of it is blurry and out of focus, and the jittery handheld camera work screams “amateur.” But I begin to pay closer attention as I see that the film was made in a single take. Climbing into the back of a pickup truck with a group of musicians in Argentina, Moon had filmed handheld as they drove through the streets. That’s right, shooting handheld from a vehicle, zooming in for tight shots of faces, disdaining the most basic rules of photography (keep the camera steady; keep the subject in focus, etc). Crazy!

But his camera is definitely on an intelligent quest. It reacts to what it discovers spontaneously. When the camera catches a blur of a couple looking up as the truck passes, it follows them until they disappear, then lifts to peer up at the anonymous windows rushing by, before returning in an arc to the musicians. A parked police car slides by, sun glints off the singer’s dark glasses, and he zooms into them as they drive into a dark street. The scene fades naturally to black, and I realize I’m on the verge of tears. Huh? How did THAT happen? Who is this guy?

Apparently the coffee is working, because Moon is looking a lot more comfortable now, and smiling. “What you think of dat one?” he says, in his heavy French accent. “Zat OK?” A kid with a DSLR camera over his shoulder raises his hand and says, “I want to know everything: what kind of camera did you use, how exactly were you holding it, what your settings were on the camera, what software did you use for color correcting, everything.” Moon laughs politely and wiggles away from the question by pointing out that his work is really an effort to get away from the technical tyranny that pervades so much of filmmaking. In fact, it was the simplicity of still photography that at first lured him into making pictures.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to understand and resent about filmmaking, it’s that making almost anything worth making seems to require conceiving, funding, building, and commanding a small army. The biggest difference between making a film and making a photograph is that the the former is proactive, and the latter is reactive. Filmmakers are always planning and collaborating and organizing, while photographers dance with the moment. It’s a critical difference.

Moon set out to make films the way a photographer takes pictures: often in a single take, often with just himself, sans crew. “I never know what I’m going to do,” he says. “I can adapt myself because I don’t have a plan.” His method: travel to some exotic location for two weeks. Spend the first week hanging out in bars talking to locals and figuring out who the best local musicians are; spend the second week meeting them and filming them; and you’re done.

Well note quite done. The heaviest work for most indie filmmakers isn’t making the film – it’s finding an audience. But Moon shrugs that part off. “I don’t care about people watching. I care about people making [films].” The 20th Century, he explains, was characterized by a separation from artists and society that reached it’s peak in the massive success of bands like The Beatles. You were either in the band (cashing the checks), or in the audience (buying the records). But with the rise of Internet comes the rise of the amateur. Incredibly talented artists can increasingly be found everywhere, doing it for the love of doing it. And he sees his own work as part of that trend. “I make films for the small screen,” he says. But in a world with more than 40 million iPhones, does size matter in the same way it used to?

But most photographers and filmmakers I know apparently haven’t gotten the memo about the death of the audience. They still care passionately about building the largest audience possible on the biggest screen available. And they definitely want to get paid for their work. Moon, in stark contrast, posts most of his work to the internet under a Creative Commons license, which allows other artists to share, remix and reuse his work (provided they are not making money from it.)

So how does he make a living? Well, at least one major band, REM, has hired him to make a music video to the tune of $150,000. But Moon seems embarrassed to admit that, and says wasn’t his best work. In fact, Moon’s most steady form of income these days, he says, comes from speaking engagements like this one. Moon, it seems, is proceeding to make films from the sheer love of making films, following the same artistic impulse as his subjects, and believing the rest will work out somehow.

“I make films to remember,” he says.

Northwest Film Forum will be showing Vincent Moon’s films every evening at 8pm Saturday through Thursday.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Last week there were some spectacular sunsets around Puget Sound caused by smoke drifting south from forest fires in British Columbia. I seized the opportunity to try out some timelapse shots. I got out my Nikon 300mm f/4, put a 1.4 teleconverter, and with a fotodiox adapter, mounted it on my Canon T2i. Here’s the results from two subsequent days, following two different approaches:

The first shot was made at 1080p, 24p and speeded up 600 percent in Final Cut. The second was shot the following evening, when the smoke had mostly cleared (notice how much less red there is). For this one, I shot stills, at the rate of a frame every second, and later assembled them for editing with Quicktime following these instructions from Phillip Bloom, who is a real timelapse junkie.

The nice thing about the second approach is that the much higher resolution of the image allows you to crop in and increase the magnification without losing quality. Because there was a lot less filtration of the sun on the second day, the sun is much brighter, though, and that definitely detracts from the magic of the first day.

If you look very closely to the first shot, you can pick out two sunspots that are hardly larger than specks.

For doing timelapse with the Canon T2i, you need an electronic interval timer. The official Canon part for this is listed as “temporarily unavailable” at B&H, so I picked up a really inexpensive one on Ebay, the Aputure AP-TR1C, for about $40. It worked great, once I replaced the old hearing aid-type battery it ships with which died within 15 minutes of use.

Interesting to note: the photo was taken facing due west (of course), and if you look closely, you can see how far the sun is moving south in a single day. In the first photo, its trajectory takes it north of the big tree – in the second it’s path intersects the tree, setting enough further south that we lost we lost 3 minutes of daylight from the previous day.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This screamin’ deal I just learned about via Planet 5d: this weekend only you can purchase Lock and Load X for $79. That’s 47 percent off the $149 I paid for it. Next to Red Giant’s amazing suit of plugin’s, this one tops my list of most-useful plugins. I routinely apply this bad boy to get the jitters out of my handheld footage, and it works like magic most of the time. The controls are intuitive and it’s FAST. And speed is often the difference between using and not using a plugin.

Here’s an example of just how effective it can be:

Last weekend I was shooting a documentary about a band on tour, and they spent the night at an interstate hotel. We were returning to the hotel after eating fast food, so I wasn’t lugging my tripod – and I saw these great ambience shots. To film them, I just reached into my shoulder bag for my 35mm nikon 1.4 lens, and grabbed these available-light shots handheld on my Canon T2i (using Novoflex lens adapter to get the Nikon glass on the Canon). If I hadn’t known in advance just how well these shots would clean up because of Lock and Load X, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to shoot them handheld.

Notice the before and after difference. Especially note the lens flare on the hotel shot, which shows how jittery the shot really is. After Lock and Load X is applied, you still see the lens flare bouncing around – but the background is solid.

One limitation of Lock and Load X: it doesn’t work with footage in which you’ve changed the frame rate. So if you’ve shot something at 60p and used Cinema Tools to convert it into slow motion 24p, you’ll have to use Lock and Load (the non X version, which is included with your purchase) instead. It’s much slower than X, and has to be re-rendered whenever you make changes in the timeline, but it works great if you’re patient.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’m slightly red-green color blind. Yet at this stage of my career, I have to do all my own color correction. Impossible? Well, maybe if I were REALLY color blind it would be. I can eyeball most colors just fine, but the ones I have a hard time with are flesh tones. That’s why I’m so excited about the latest update to Red Giant’s amazing Colorista cool. Because hidden within the interface is a secret weapon that Colorista II inherits from Magic Bullet Mojo called “show skin overlay.” When enabled, it literally lays a grid over your clip’s flesh tones, telling you when you’ve got it right. Here’s how it works.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I made this video for Seattle chef Tiberio Simone, who needed a short web video to help find a publisher for his book, La Figa: Visions of Food and Form. He and photographer Matt Freedman have been working on this incredible project for nearly 5 years, and the results are amazing. But what’s most amazing about this video, of course, is Tiberio himself. Who else could walk into Pike Place Market and within a half an hour, literally have tourists eating out of his hand? I like filming Tiberio so much that I’m planning a documentary film that will give me an opportunity to put him in front of my camera a lot.

The technical stuff:

Audio: I taped a Sennheiser EW wireless lav onto Tiberio’s chest before we arrived at the Market, and as you can probably notice, I forgot to turn it on in the first scene, so I had to fall back to the reference audio recorded on my Canon T2i. But I remembered for all the other scenes, which have vastly better audio that was recorded onto my Zoom H4N and synced in post with the latest version of the indispensable Pluraleyes.

Camera: I put my Canon T2i with kit zoom lens on my Merlin Steadicam, and had to carefully pre-focus every scene before I started rolling, since it’s impossible to refocus with that rig when you’re rolling. I love the cheapo Canon kit lens when I use the Merlin, because it’s very lightweight, has a decent zoom range of 18-55mm, has some added built-in image stabilization that’s quiet. And the fact that it doesn’t open wider than f 3.5 is fine, because I never want to shoot wide open with the Steadicam because of the aforementioned focus issue.

For shooting in the Market, I set the ISO of the camera to 800, with the aperture around f 5.6. Because there was so much mixing of daylight with tungsten and fluorescent lights, I set the camera’s white balance to automatic and I was very happy with the results. I’ve found that getting the white balance right is very important for these cameras – the file simply won’t hold up to too much color correction, so you gotta get it close to begin with if you want to see the great results the camera is capable of.

For the last shot in the video, I carefully raised the Merlin up over my head as Tiberio walked away. Then the key part – I applied my favorite Lock and Load X filter to the footage in post, which drained the remaining wobblies away like magic. The results are pretty indistinguishable from a crane shot, don’t you think?

Popularity: 14% [?]

I made this video for a fantastic Seattle-based organization called Cultures Connecting. Their vision is to create a world based on principles of equity and justice for all. What’s not to love about that? Ilsa and Caprice, the two co-founders, were a lot of fun to work with, and I learned a lot during the project.

I shot the interviews with my JVC HM-100, using two tungsten lights: a single overhead softbox with baffles to focus the light, and a background light shaped to resemble a bridge, iconic of the work they do and part of the organization’s logo.

I shot the workshop on my Canon T2i dslr, and I was worried that the footage wouldn’t intercut with the JVC stuff. But I think it cuts fine, in part because the interviews are lit so well and is an altogether different looking situation from the workshop.

One thing I discovered in shooting this project is NOT to use the superflat Canon picture styles that are touted by some. The results, even after a significant amount of tweaking in post, are, well, super flat. Especially the skin tones, which I’m not happy with at all. I’ve since getting much better results following the advice of people like Shane Hurlbut, who advocates a simple recipe.

This is the first video I’ve cut in which I also produced the music myself. I recently finished reading Sound Editing in Final Cut Studio, by Jeff Sobel, which has an entire chapter devoted to teaching you how to compose custom music using the thousands of Apple loops included with the application. It’s actually quite miraculous how simple it is to compose simple music using Soundtrack Pro. The loops are designed to automatically match whatever tempo you’ve set, and it’s easy to line up the beats for seamless composing… even if you aren’t a musician.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I shot this 1-minute commercial video with my Canon T2i on a Redrockmicro EyeSpy with follow focus. I also used a Glidetrack, and mostly Nikon glass used with Fotodiox adapters. I also directed and edited the piece, which I made for a Seattle startup.

My favorite clip is the lengthy slow-motion clip of the girls twirling around on the twisty playground ride. For that, I shot at 60p, which I conformed to 24 in Cinema Tools, before importing into Final Cut. I mounted the camera to the ride using a Manfrotto Magic Arm, which was rock solid.

I’m starting another commercial project for University of Washington on Tuesday, in which I’ll putting my T2i to work to show how special-needs kids are finding friendship and community with “typically developing” kids in one of the school of education’s programs.

Popularity: 27% [?]

I recently completed a pair of 1-minute unscripted commercial videos for a Seattle startup. The company makes colorful friendship bracelets designed for pre-teen girls, with a unique twist: the jewelry is magnetized and snaps into place with a distinct “click.” Have a look:

While this video was shot documentary-style without a script, it was very much driven by a concept. In developing the concept for this piece, I was inspired by the positive feedback I got from my first commercial project, I Am Becoming, which promoted a school by focusing on teachers’ stories paired with visuals shot entirely from a student’s perspective. I knew the videos would be successful if I could get the teachers to say something true about teaching.

Similarly, my goal in this case was to say something true about friendship. In essence, my goal was to create a 1-minute celebration of friendship. Making people FEEL something is much more likely to make a positive impression than trying to TELL them anything about the product, no matter how interesting.

When I presented this video to the client, one of their employees was crying by the end of the video, so I knew I’d hit close to where I was aiming. I’ll post the second video later this week.

The music was composed by Nick Torretta, who was a real pleasure to work with.

Technical details: I worked with a sound recordist to help me with audio; he operated a boom pole during the interviews, freeing me to participate fully in the interviews, which were led by my client. For the shooting part, I used a single Canon T2i. It’s the first project I’ve shot using a DSLR, and I’m thrilled with the results. The shallow depth of field really is perfectly suited for this type of work.

Lenses: I used mainly Nikon glass, with Fotodiox adapters. Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, Nikon E series 75-150 f/3.5, Canon 17-55 f/2.8 EFS. Support: Redrock Micro EyeSpy with follow focus (rented from Glaziers Camera Rentals here in Seattle). Audio: Recorded with Audio-Technica AT875, and Octava MK-012, using Zoom H4N recorder on a Rode boom pole. I used a Rode VideoMic on the T2i during filmming, but did not end up using any of the sync audio. (The birds twittering is a sound effect that I purchased from istockphoto because I couldn’t get a clean recording of birds myself in Seattle due to all the background noise caused by cars and airplanes).

I used a two-step approach in producing these videos: the first step was recording audio of the girls talking during a single session that lasted just over an hour. Then, I scheduled a second session for the filmming. When reviewing the audio, I selected the bits that made me feel something, that sounded most authentic, and dropped it in to Final Cut (with regular round-tripping to Soundtrack Pro for cleaning up files), added music, and then added video as the final step.

The sessions were entirely unscripted. The interviews were conducted by the founder of the company and I, asking the girls questions about the things they liked to do together, with the goal of teasing out why they click.

The best visual moment in this first video came as a total surprise. When I showed up for the audio interview, I noticed the girls sitting together in a swing in the back yard. Because the T2i is so small, I carry it with me everywhere. So I had it with me, even though I wasn’t planning to do any shooting that day. I pulled out the camera, dropped to my knee, steadying the camera with my elbow on my knee, and started rolling as the girls blew on a dandelion together. Again, totally unscripted, totally unprompted – it just happened. And I got it. (The lens was Nikkor 50mm at 1.4 with Fader ND).

I asked them to do it again afterward, but they couldn’t find any more dandelions, so that was it! For it to be usable, I had to stabilize the footage in post, and for this I used the amazing Lock and Load X plugin, which I’ve come to rely on heavily. It’s very, very fast – about 10 times faster than the stabilizing plugin that ships with Final Cut. Because of this plug in, I’m able to get away with shooting handheld in more and more situations than I ever thought possible. Which makes me very happy.

Popularity: 14% [?]

VNV Nation is an internationally acclaimed band whose melding of goth industrial riffs with uplifting electronic anthems instantly made me a fan ever since I discovered them via Paul Aleinikoff’s On The Edge radio show 5 or 6 years ago.

One of the things I love about this band is their surprising ability to transcend genres and defy easy classification. So when I was looking for the perfect music to match with a video I created for Eton School, I skipped through every one of their songs in my iTunes collection, more because I wanted to hear them than because I expected to find a fit. But when I heard As It Fades (2nd Movement), I froze. The angelic, almost haunting harmony of the last track on their Reformation 1 CD conveyed exactly the feeling I was going for with this video. I dropped it into my timeline in Final Cut thinking, there’s no way you’re going to be able to use this – it’s a well-known band, and this project is for a local non-profit school. They probably won’t even return my calls. But I’ve always been a believer in aiming high, so I went ahead and cut the video with the music. It was perfect.

I looked up the band’s label, and called the contact person for licensing. No answer. I left a message. No reply after two days. That was kind of what I figured. I started thinking, OK, now I’m going to have to find some music more within reach. But I’ll call one more time… this time, a person answered, and he politely told me that his label didn’t represent the album I was asking about. Could he help me find the right person to talk to, I asked? “You should just talk to Ronan Harris,” he said, the band’s founder, main songwriter and lead vocalist. “Do you have his contact info?” I asked. “Sure, here you go.”

Armed with that info, I composed an email to Ronan explaining why I believed this particular track was perfect, and asking for permission to use it, including a password-protected link to the video which contained his music. I hit the send button figuring that the message would probably never actually be read by Ronan himself, and doubting I’d ever get a reply.

Exactly 19 minutes later, I get this personal reply from Ronan Harris:

I am utterly flattered that you wrote asking this. You have my full permission to use this track for this documentary. I watched it and was extremely moved. This is very much the spirit of what VNV Nation’s message is about – self betterment and finding a path and personal strength, no matter the adversities being faced. I applaud you for making this. I wish I’d had the benefit of this kind of school when I was a kid.

I’ve learned several things from this experience. The first is, always strive diligently to do extraordinary work (which incidentally is part of VNV Nation’s band motto “It is better to strive diligently than to sit in bitter regret”), and never fail to ask for what you want. Finally, no matter how famous you become, take time to answer your email. I was a fan of VNV Nation before – now I’m a raving fan for life.

Popularity: 8% [?]