Blog
Polaroid lighting reference
On shoots I used to shoot a box or so of Polaroid Type 667 and sometimes some Polacolor using converted Polaroid 110B cameras. Digital cameras made this reference gauge a little more flexible plus I was able to color correct the results and send that on to colorists for dailies transfer reference. I created a Blogger page to post them here (click the picture) 
Camera Fishing
Here's a new thing I tried, it's called camera fishing. I came up with this by combining my two latest obsessions of GoPro cameras and Stand-Up Paddleboarding and it's pretty silly. I take a GoPro camera in it's waterproof housing out with me on the water while I'm on my paddleboard and throw it in the water and then reel it back in. The camera is set to take 1 still image every second. The results are random and occasionally amazing.
Here's a couple examples:
Here's a link to my flickr stream to see the 97 or so pictures that I liked from this first attempt. There was a total of 4442 to go through. Made much easier with Adobe Lightroom 3. I launched at Point Dume and headed around to the little bay on the other side of the rocks where there's some kelp.
Technically there's not much to camera fishing. I've got 30' or so of nylon paracord attatched to the bottom mount of a special modified GoPro housing. The housing can be found on a website called Eye of Mine. It's got a flat front port. The normal housing that comes with the GoPro has a domed lens and isn't very sharp underwater. With the flat front port you get much sharper images. The only blurriness I notice is from motion blur when the camera resorts to slower shutter speeds in darker lighting conditions. Underwater gets dark pretty quick too.
You can see what I mean about the underwater blurriness in a shot in this new Vitamin Water commercial. Key Grip Tim Staubs was operating a GoPro attatched to a pool skimmer for an underwater shot which has a soft focus feel about it. I didn't know about the underwater problem yet when we shot and just added the camera in at the last second as an experiment. It's funny and made the cut. Luckily it matches in with the rest of the stuff in that spot just fine as it's a quick edit and we used a heavy white promist to get a weird dreamy sort of look on the rest of the dream sequence stuff. (clicking the picture takes you to the spot)
Well, that's my first camera fishing try. It's ridiculous and fun and way less messy than real fishing. Here is my favorite example ever of camera fishing:
Norfolk Southern dir. by Simon Stock
It’s been a while since I shot these spots for Norfolk Southern Railroad. We shot in August and September in Roanoke VA and the Virginia Beach/Norfolk Area. One of the coolest parts of this job was shooting the trains themselves. Simon Stock, a prestigious British still photographer, was directing for Moxie Pictures. Simon often shoots big automotive print and tv ads and wanted to bring that approach to filming the trains. Working with the railroad, we came up with one of the coolest rigs I’ve done in a while. In order to get movement traveling alongside the train we used the railroad’s hi-rail Suburban trucks which travel on the rails for maintenance crews. Where it got really interesting was we wanted to have both lateral and height adjustment as well as have dynamic shots with movement around the train. So we brought in a Russian Arm from Florida and strapped that to the top of the hi-rail. It was the safest option by far, keeping all the operators inside the vehicle. It used a stabilized head, had a huge range all around the hi-rail, including being able to extend across to be in front of the train traveling on the parallel track. We took full advantage of the Russian Arm, using it for static based, off the track crane shots, and car to car. It was great. We made many passes shooting car to train leading the brand new NS engine and cars through a beautiful area called Solitude. It was made famous by photographer O. Winston Link, now a favorite of mine. We visited his museum when we stayed in Roanoke, VA at the coolest hotel. It was right across the street! He was obsessed with photographing trains and the Norfolk and Western line was one of the last using steam locomotives and he wanted to document them. The railroad encouraged and helped him, even though he financed the project himself. One cool person I met while on the job was Casey, a Norfolk Southern photographer. He is a young guy who just had moved to Roanoke to start the job as a photographer. Prior to that he had been an engineer on the trains. He shot photos of the trains as a hobby and was really good. His photos always were in the NS calendar and I think he was basically living his dream, shooting photos for the railroad. Really cool guy. He introduced us to some great locations, including pointing out Solitude and a beautiful bridge where we did helicopter shots. His knowledge of both photography and how the railroad operated was indispensable. Another character we met there was Tim Shepard, or “Shep”. He was a local location scout in Roanoke and a true character. He’s an artist and here’s a little taste of him on the news.
Our shoot was dangerous. We were in full on safety gear wherever we went, which was fun. I like steel toes. Many of our locations were insanely dangerous for visitors, like the Steel Dynamics steel foundry. It was so beautiful to shoot in, but step in the wrong place at the wrong time and you get mowed down by a front end loader carrying glowing hot slag. We shot from a pickup truck at the Port of Norfolk which was terrifying. There's the hugest, craziest moving loader trucks called Peiner Cranes that are looking for a bunch of dudes with a camera going slow around the ships. At one point I hung out of a helicopter with a Tyler side mount. We also shot in the Stihl factory in Norfolk where if you weren’t careful you could get run over by autonomous robotic forklifts. It was a fun job. I so wish they had longer cuts with more of the dynamic train footage, but here they are followed by some photos of the rig and a BTS video that NS made while we shot.
http://www.scotthenriksen.com/reel/norfolk_southern_connects
http://www.scotthenriksen.com/reel/norfolk_southern_engine
India and Conan!
So recently I got to go to India with director Bryan Buckley to do this great American Express commercial starring Conan O'Brien. The spot is on the air and on YouTube and I wanted to share it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIZCtDJtFPw&hd=1
And there's a behind the scenes video too which is pretty cool and you get to see a couple of shots of me holding a camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzUdZWetK8
It was a cool trip and honestly I don't know if I've fully recovered from the jetlag yet. Also, here's a WSJ article about the spot.
It was a really cool job. We shot on film with Super 35mm 3perf Arricam LT's supplied by Prime Focus Mumbai. 2 cameras all the time on crane, dolly or handheld. It was all top notch on every level. The one funny/different thing was how the 2nd AC and Loader and any VTR guys or camera equipment tech were all employees of the camera house. The 1st AC pulled focus and sort of directed them but he didn't load the camera or check the gate or anything that involved manipulating the equipment. I think it's some sort of insurance thing.
Right when we got back we did a second spot which isn't on the air yet. I'm sure that will be out in a week or two. That's a nice one also.
And here's another cool spot we did with Conan O'Brien for TBS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFbf0f4Ch8
This one was shot with Red Mysterium X using Stedicam, Scorpio Crane and Helicopter. We also shot additional cameras including 5DmkII for additional coverage. I haven't seen it yet but there is a shorter version of the spot that has a cutaway to the inside of the car which we did with the GoPro Hero digital camera. We mounted it inside the car and sent it over the cliff. Unfortunately it got smushed. The files on the card from before the launch were fine but the file from the smushed take was unusable. We then hooked the GoPro up to a remote control helicopter and flew it around and that was what was used as the background.
I had a great couple of months. I was happy to get to work with Conan on such great spots. He's a really nice guy. Very gracious with his time. There's some other spots we did that haven't come out yet. I'll show those on here as soon as I can.
Downtime Headfuck
August 15, 2010
Downtime is a headfuck so I thought I’d write about it. As a freelance cameraman or for any freelance person, the greatest benefit of how hard we work is the free time between jobs. Or at least it should be. I love the work I do. It's the best job in the world. But sometimes when I’m on a set my mind wanders and I think about all the stuff I’m going to do when I get some time off. I dream up huge personal projects and schedule my time to the minute. I think of all the things I need to do to be productive and help me and my business when I get back to work. I think of friends I want to hang out with and places I want to go with my family. I think of crazy things I want to do, like get a sidehack. I make all these plans. Then reality hits. I get home from the trip or wake up the day after the job ended and I’m tired, sore and miserable. I don’t want to be around anybody, don’t want to do anything for anybody and would be happiest sitting in front of the PS3 playing SOCOM Online all day. I waste my time recovering poorly. Time grows short, another job comes along. I end up prioritizing and just doing the most important things and too many things get left behind. I end up feeling guilty that I didn’t use my time productively enough. Sometimes I can feel resentful that I had to do something I didn’t want to and that my time which I worked so hard for is being squandered. All these emotions plus, if there’s nothing booked out on the horizon, the feeling of fear that I’ll never work again or won’t be able to pay my L.A. Times subscription can make the downtime a real emotional rollercoaster.
I think people don’t like to admit they’re not working all the time. Most people want to be perceived as some sort of robot that just works their ass off and makes a billion dollars a year (or more). Sadly that’s much of what people value in L.A. and in this industry. I think if you were to ask an agent or manager their opinion they’d rather it seemed like you were always working really hard on some brilliant piece of cinematic genius instead of what you’re actually doing, which might be just getting your head back on straight. The commercial market is cyclical. You can’t really predict the cycle though. Lots of holds come in all at the same time and this year’s busy period might be next year’s slow period. Taking advantage of these slow times can be the best downtime-work you can do. Even if it’s not directly doing stuff that is related to your specific craft.
It took me a while to come up with a strategy to avoid the between job dumps that works for me. Any advice I’ve come across on the web or in books for what to do with your downtime always has a list of things that are solely work focused. Stuff like redo your portfolio, refine your skills or other bullet points that are obvious if you’re ambitious. I believe the most important thing is to reinvigorate yourself so that you don’t feel like you never had any time off. Something that gets you excited for that next job or creates a spark of creativity. For me there’s a few things that keep me from getting all spun out. One is the gym. It acts as a sort of soft reset. If I’m feeling like shit and don’t want to do anything but I go to a morning session anyway, I ALWAYS come back feeling sweet. I’m not super strong or buff or anything, but going to Legends MMA and learning Muay Thai and taking their MMA classes and others has gotten me through some really rough times. I’m not particularly good at what they teach yet but still it’s awesome to get my mind working. Focusing on the things I learn and burning off that extra energy can get me motivated and keeps that “I’m not working, OH NOES!!!” panic-y feeling at bay. Also it keeps me strong for the physical side of the job and mentally sharp for dealing with whatever difficult stuff my work throws at me. I always end up feeling creative with some crazy ideas on my way home from there -something I want to try at work or a color look to mess around with. It keeps my mind super engaged. I can’t think about anything else but what is going on in right in front of me. It’s not just going and grinding away on a treadmill. You’re not going to get punched in the head on a treadmill so you can let your mind really wander there and it gets boring. My other obsession right now is drums. I have been playing for a couple years, but I’m back into it heavily right now. Drums are so awesome. Again it’s another thing that trains the mind to be sharper and it’s completely different from the world of cinematography although somewhat more applicable. I find myself counting in to give cues for different things on set all the time. Then I get my gadget geek-out on with my 5D rigs and I’m filming with those a lot for fun. Making little films with friends like DDII keeps the filmmaking muscles strong too. Going and seeing new movies and reading a lot are also great ways get inspired.
Downtime is part of the freelance experience. My brain and my work ethic can tell me I’m not doing enough if I’m not on set getting paid. Of course there’s always the business stuff to do like updating the reel and website etc. But it’s the fun stuff that makes the downtime rewarding. Hanging out with my wife and kid, going places with them and friends and just being alive are all better when my mind isn’t obsessing about what’s next. There’s a couple lines from Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now: “When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.”
Basically, I don’t want to be like Capt. Willard, getting softer in the hotel room waiting for a mission, punching mirrors in a drunken stupor. I want to be like Charlie, always on a mission, squatting in the bush getting stronger. So fun should be part of the mission, right? If you’re always on the mission, and everything you’re doing is involved in that mission then whatever you’re doing right now is making you stronger.
Africa UNHCR Job
Africa Trip
I thought I’d take a few minutes or hours (or days) to write down what the Africa trip I just did was all about. Whenever I start talking about it people’s eyes seem to glaze over and they change the subject so writing something down might be the best way to get it off my chest and a way to say more than a tiny soundbite to sum it up. What I learned was so complex and there were so many things that were so different compared to this life I have here. There are tons of little stories and funny things that happened. But, my intention is mainly to write about the equipment and the way we did stuff physically because I definitely don’t want to give away any of the subject matter of our films. That’s proprietary and not mine to divulge. Plus it will be rad when I can put the films on here or link to the site they'll be on. I’ve been back 4 nights and have 3 malaria pills left to take and this world is starting to come back into focus. My sleep is becoming more regular. Food still tastes too sweet though. I guess eating mostly just rice and Clif Bars for 2 weeks straight will do that. Diet Coke tastes horrible now! I think coffee and water are the only things I want to drink anymore.
Bryan Buckley talked to me about shooting this job for the UNHCR a couple months ago while we were shooting in Prague for Yahoo. He gave me a few details like going to a refugee camp in Kenya and also going to Sudan. It sounded awesome and terrifying, especially the idea of getting that classic picture wearing the UN flak jacket and helmet (my perceptions of Sudan were way off at the time). I wasn’t sure I could do it at first because it timed out with a family trip to Florida for the 2010 US Open Martial Arts Tournament that Eli was competing in. Jobs like this don’t come around that often and being able to do what you do professionally for the sake of a good cause is rare. Basically the only opportunities are PSA’s and political campaign commercials. Both of which are usually not much fun. Anyway that was my rationale for missing Eli’s stellar performance. In the 3 events he completed in, he placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I am BUMMED I missed that but hopefully there will be many more.
What we did.
The job was to create several short films to raise awareness about the situation of refugees for the UNHCR. Also to show potential corporate sponsors a way they could help. We travelled first to Nairobi, Kenya and then on to Loki airport and drove about an hour to Kakuma refugee camp. Kakuma is in a dry, windy desert in the middle of nowhere, Northwest Kenya. The host community are the Turkana. Driving there was like driving through the pages of National Geographic. There’s camels and goat herders running around and the road gets washed out by rivers in the rainy season. Kakuma refugee camp is where many of the Sudanese Lost Boys ended up as a result of being displaced by the civil war in Sudan during the 80’s and 90’s. Many still remain, 15 and more years later, but many more have gone back home due to the Comprehensive Peace Plan of 2005. Now the balance of refugees has shifted greatly. Many more Somalian refugees have sought safety in Kenya ending up in Kakuma and Dadaab, sometimes up to 1000 per day. Kakuma has 4 different camps. Kakuma 1 is the oldest. The homes are more established. There are trees that are tall and shady. There are schools. It has many different communities and there is commerce amongst the different communities. Kakuma 2, 3 and 4 are much newer. They are stark and we just barely saw them from the outside. There aren’t the tall trees and the mud brick houses with shiny corrugated metal sheet roofs. It can seem like some sort of twisted new suburb. We spent 6 days shooting in Kakuma. We interviewed and filmed a lot of people in the Sudanese community as well as in the Somali and Ethiopian. There’s a lot of different people from different places but sadly there are TONS of kids. Because the educational systems in Sudan and Somalia have been decimated, many people send their kids alone to Kakuma to take advantage of the schools there. They stay with relatives or with somebody who helps take care of them. We drove in a big white UN Land Cruiser everywhere. We had to be out of the camp every day by 6pm for some reason and we didn’t always make it out on time. Our rooms were very Spartan. The first 4 or so days I was in a small room in the Lutheran World Federation compound with just a fan, a desk and a bed and a little bathroom where the cold shower poured straight onto the floor. Mino and Bryan’s rooms were way worse than mine with rodent problems and poorer ventilation. The guy whose room I was using came back mid way through so I had to vacate. The room they were going to move me to (next to Mino and Bryan’s) didn’t have electricity so I got moved to a room in the World Food Program compound staff area and it was like the Four Season in comparison. It was huge and there was a kitchenette and air conditioning!
Next we travelled to Juba in Southern Sudan via a World Food Program plane. The climate couldn’t have been more different. It was rainy, humid and cooler. Southern Sudan is one of the least developed places in the world. I guess the war has just held that country back but Juba has so much new development. There’s a ton of construction. New paved roads, and modern buildings are all over the place. There’s a huge Chinese influence there. We stayed in the Beijing Hotel which was on the grounds of the Chinese Embassy. Somebody said the hotel and embassy were built by Chinese prisoners brought in special to do the job and it had such poor construction. Also, the hotel wouldn’t accept any currency other than US bills from 2006 or newer. It was pretty funny when we counting all our small bills and of the $13 I had in my wallet $12 were 2006 or newer so I pitched in. We were brought to meet a Minister right when we got off the plane. The Minister of Youth, Sports and Recreation! He and his number 2 guy sat at a huge desk in a brand new office with crisp flourescent lights and carpeted floors and it was like we were meeting the emperor. He seemed like a pretty good guy actually. Juba seemed like a pretty exciting place. The future could be bright for Southern Sudan. Most of Juba was pretty traditional mud huts with thatched roofs. There was a lot of military stuff too. Dudes with AK47’s wearing camo and flip flops were all over the place. It was even narlier when we went on another plane to another Sudanese city called Wau. Near the airport there were tanks and dudes on bikes with rifles all over. There’s this referendum that Southern Sudan will be voting on in 2011 to decide about seceding from Sudan and forming a new country. Apparently there’s oil in Southern Sudan. I’m interested to see what happens when they have that vote. I hope it all goes well. Even if they split, the South needs the North to transport that oil out of the country with a pipeline. One story I have from Sudan was when we interviewed a guy who was pretty young. He was a refugee from Uganda living in Juba. He fled his home when he was 10. Now 21, he lived in a little room in a small mud brick building with no electricity and no running water. He paid $100US/month for that room and another just like it next door for his sister and brother in a neighborhood on a dirt road surrounded by other tiny places like it. His story is sad. He was in High School in another country, Kenya I think, and was sponsored by his uncle. His uncle died when he had just 2 months to go until final exams and with nobody to pay his tuition he was kicked out of school. This man was very fluent in english, incredibly articulate, serious but stuck. He would have to repeat his entire final year of school completely to get the degree, which he couldn’t afford. He had no chance of bettering himself in a country where nobody moves ahead without at least a high school or college education. There were so many stories like his. Some harsher by far.
Traveling back to Nairobi after Kakuma and Juba was like being in a time machine. The Crowne Plaza Nairobi was so nice. Warm water! I’m sure it was just because I was super tired but it didn’t seem real. The thing that really made me feel amused or happy or just like I was back in a different world was the coffee machine in the United Airlines business class lounge in London/Heathrow. That machine would prepare a nice cup of coffee with a push of a button. Even after four days since returning home still feel a little out of it.
How we did it (awesome tech details)
After looking at what few cameras were available locally in Nairobi, Kenya we decided that we’d be best off bringing our own equipment. I didn’t want to have to shoot with a boring normal camera like an EX-3 which, while reliable, has a pretty small chip and not a lot of inherent coolness to it’s image so my vote was for shooting with the 5DmkII. There are some trade-offs when going with the 5DmkII over a more traditional camera for this kind of work. For starters, the 4GB/12minute take. CF cards won’t allow files bigger than 4GB. I guess you could consider that if we were shooting with 16mm film we’d be reloading every 11 minutes on 400’ mags so that was easy to get over. There’s a sound issue which is a tough one. Most sound guys are going to want to record sound into a video camera so there’s a second copy of their work. That was the last thing I wanted to do as I’d have to haul around one of those Beachtek boxes and recharge more batteries plus be wired to the sound guy all the time. Wires! Instead I ran a Sennheiser MKE-400 shotgun mic on my camera and prayed that the editor had used PluralEyes before. We didn’t slate ever. We clapped in front of the camera a few times in case the software didn’t work but I was really relying on some magical solution like PluralEyes to take care of syncing in post. The Sennheiser mic is pretty good though, so there is two good sound options. Trying to maintain a stop of around f/4 or so was a little time consuming as I was often moving between exterior and interior. So I would have to pull the ND .9 out of the mattebox and change my ISO before rolling on an interior. It was a bit cumbersome and not so fluid but we got used to it. I definitely didn’t want to shoot at any stop above f/5.6 if I could avoid it. Since adjusting the focus would be part of the look, I wanted to use selective focus as much as possible and exaggerate the 5DmkII fantastic focus fall-off.
The main thing I was worried about going in to a remote location was redundancy. I brought four 5DmkII bodies. I brought a bunch of Redrock Micro stuff and a cage made by CPM filmtools so I could have a top handle. We wanted the camera to be small and light so we could move quickly. We also needed to have an external client monitor for director Bryan Buckley to see the frames. So I had a powered HDMI splitter added to my Marshall HDMI monitor by Intervideo. This is awesome. The splitter leaches power off the battery plate so you don’t need a second power source for it. It worked great. I operated using the monitor with a Hoodman HM-7 so I could judge exposure and focus. I wanted to keep the camera moving a lot, even in interviews with little focus adjustments and size changes to keep things interesting. I couldn’t hold the camera in my arms out in front of my body for 10 days straight so the second most important piece of equipment became the Turtle X. That’s the EZ-Rig for DV cameras. I bought this piece of gear a few years ago when I was shooting Miller High Life commercials with Bryan. We’d shoot for 3 or 4 days with HVX-200’s with LED lite panels and I’d usually have a wide angle adapter and wireless video transmitters all strapped to the camera so I knew how it would help. I could have a camera in front of me for hours and not get tired. I could move it around changing height and I even ended up taking the camera off and resting it on top of the arm for high angle shots. The basic rig I used every day was this:
5DmkII
EF 16-35 f/2.8L USM II
Arri MFF-1
Arri MMB-1
4x5.65 ND-9 for exteriors
CPM filmtools UniStrut Small
Redrock microLensGears
Redrock Micro DSLR baseplate
Redrock Micro Top handle
Carbon fiber rods 9” and 6”
Sennheiser MKE-400 on a Micromount and a hotshoe adapter
Redrock Micro shoe clamp (I took this apart and connected a Noga cine arm to it to support the monitor-which was too heavy for it. It killed the arm)
Marshall 7” HDMI monitor with splitter and Hoodman 7” Hood
Turtle X
A second Marshall 7” HDMI monitor was for director Bryan Buckley.
This became the A setup. It was fast and I could jump out of the UN truck and start shooting quickly. I just would put on the Turtle X and I could walk and shoot anything within a few minutes. We had a second camera rolling most of the time too in a much more stripped down mode. That was a 5DmkII with a Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS USM or a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM with an ND.9 on a monopod or handheld. Sometimes with a Hoodloupe, sometimes not. The second camera was operated by Mino Jarjoura, Bryan’s long time producer. A few times a third camera was operated by Bryan. All of this shooting meant a lot of cards to download and we had no Data Manager. The job fell to me. Daily at lunch I would download all of the morning’s cards to a LaCie Rugged 500GB 7200RPM drive. This field drive became the only copy of the day’s stuff until we got back to our compounds at night. It wasn’t a perfect system, but under the time and power constraints it was the best I had. I would download the afternoon’s cards to the field drive and then clone it to 2 G-Tech 1TB G Drives. I had surge protectors and voltage regulators on anything that had a hard drive when plugged into power in the compound. All the power there came from a diesel generator and I was a little paranoid about them. I think a battery back-up system would have been a wise addition to my little setup. Next time for sure. I also had an army of batteries to charge every night. Since the electrical system in Africa was 220v I brought dual voltage power strips and surge protectors and I made crazy chains of power strips and chargers. I wasn’t sleeping in long periods conveniently as I woke up every few hours- which was good because I always had to clone the next drive or change out batteries into chargers. I think my next project is to come up with some sort of new system for making 2 field copies at once for next time. I need to have redundancy but I just didn’t have enough time to make 2 copies at lunchtime every day. A little scary! I have recently been researching a little about workflow and I found this great little video that describes one photographer’s setup:
I didn’t have any problem with the Canon cameras or lenses at all. Never had a sensor overheat or a camera fail. Luckily I only had electricity cut out on me once while making clones of my field drives. We got rained on in Sudan immediately after being in a hot dusty desert in Kenya and the cameras behaved beautifully. Overall I felt the system I created for operating the camera worked great. I had tripods and monopods in a case that I never needed. Some small things got damaged. Some filters got scratched and the built in mount on a shotgun mic got destroyed, but generally everything went well.
Wrapup
I’ll probably be telling little stories about that trip for a while. I’ll try and keep the stories short. If I can’t, I apologize in advance. There was just so many little moments. The work was super hard and very rewarding but the experience of it all was monumental. When the job first came up, a lot of people suggested it would be a life changing event. It definitely was, but it may take some time to see how many different ways it has changed me.
With my rig on inside the UN compound:
Beautiful downtown Wau, Southern Sudan:
Showing some kids the image on the monitor with genius soundman Mark Kihara, Kakuma I refugee camp:
Dojo Drama 2, Commercials and the 5D mk2
April 18, 2010
Yes! I believe that I haven’t written a blog post since January. Instead, I have opted for my lazy man’s method of just Twittering (follow me! @scott_henriksen). I think it’s important to keep up this running commentary on my career and the stuff I’m interested in so I will write more often. There’s been a lot of great work that I’ve been doing lately. The commercials I’ve been working on have all been pretty cool and I’ve gotten to do some rad looks, work with interesting talent and shoot sweet locations. There was the Playboy Mansion and Hugh Hefner, babies, fashion stuff, rain effects -a ton of different cool things. There were some good night shoots but also a few mind numbing days on sets where for whatever reason it didn’t feel like anything was actually happening. I’m still not sure what I can and can’t say in this blog when it comes to the work and details and how clients would react to me writing stuff down for internet consumption. I guess when a job has been on the air I can write whatever I want, but while they’re still in production I should keep my mouth shut. Unless of course the New York Times writes about it and has a picture of my head in the shots accompanying the article. In this particular case I'm talking about: Fred: The Movie has been sold to Nickelodeon. That's pretty cool right? Kids will get to see it if they have basic cable. I happen to think it could have competed in theaters very well. I saw Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I think Fred would kick the Wimpy Kid’s butt. But I’m thrilled that the audience could potentially be as big as what Nickelodeon will bring. I think it will make kids laugh.
The project I have had the most fun on lately is a short called Dojo Drama 2 which is still fully in post production but there’s a teaser trailer out so I bet I can talk about it and not get in trouble. It helps that I’m at least partially responsible for directing it and editing! It follows in the footsteps of Dojo Drama, a short film starring Mike Moh, Medhi Merali, Salar Ghajar and Shane Warren Jones. These guys are all top martial artists and teachers at XMA World Headquarters where Eli takes classes. I was super impressed with Dojo Drama when I first saw it on Mr. Moh’s blog. It made me laugh and was really well done. Sort of inspired by it we made Eli’s New Stocking at Christmas and Mr. Moh liked that. I was really happy when Mr. Moh asked me to help him create Dojo Drama 2. We shot with what has easily become my favorite camera of all time, the Canon 5D Mark II. Having a piece of equipment that shoots such awesome video that I can edit myself on a laptop is insane. I’m looking to add some components to my kit to give me more options and allow me to use stuff like the 4x5.6” filter kit that I’ve got. First of all I think this is the best piece of gear: The Arri MFF-1. It’s really really well made and has cool functions like focus stops for lenses with never ending focus rings. Since it so directly influences the picture I thought spending some money here was a good idea. Also, I’ll be able to use it on other projects and with other cameras. I’m not super sure what Matte Box to get yet though! The Arri one looks good and I want something small so it might be right. I have a Marshall 7” HDMI monitor and I have been using it with the 5D on all my jobs lately. Setup right along side the Panavision cameras, I use it to evaluate lighting and shoot location scout setups and to shoot stills. I have been using stills to color correct in Photoshop and send in for reference for the dailies for a long time. The 5D mk2 replaced a Nikon D2x which I hated. It always looked out of focus. Since I got the 5D mk2 I have been messing around with the video function and using it for different projects including this music video for Eulogies. I shot the Eulogies video before Canon gave manual control options in a new firmware. Back then you had to point the camera at something that was roughly lit to the exposure you wanted and then lock it by pushing the star button!
Shooting for Dojo Drama 2 was just one day and it was about 5 or 6 pages of script with 2 decent sized fight sequences! I asked my good friend Patrick Simpson out to help me as a B camera operator. Having 2 cameras has made the edit so much better! Thanks Patrick! We had 2 5D mk2’s and a bunch of lenses. The Canon 16-35, 24-70 and the Nikon 70-200 seemed to be the most useful to keep the pace of shooting needed to get through all the material. I found a few things that I’d do differently next time. First, have screw on ND filters! The main thing that I didn’t want to have to deal with was focus so I shot at a pretty deep f/stop. It was just Patrick and I and no extra camera crew to keep it sharp but focus fall off is one of the best parts of what this camera does. The footage for DD2 still has a lot of focus fall off, but not nearly the amount it could have! I always want more. The other thing I learned was how important it is to check for dust on the sensor. The sensor is huge but a little tiny bit of dust on the chip and you’re stuck with some crappy squiggle on the image. That happened to me too. It’s ok if you’re going for the old film look I guess. The other product that I’m amazed at is the Zoom h4n. Having 2 system sound gave me a certain amount of confidence. It’s a tiny little recorder and it’s light and easy to use. I run this Sennheiser MKE400 mic on the 5D whenever I shoot motion picture stuff with it and so far the sound has been very good and usable. Even sound from the B camera with it’s tiny built in mic has made it into the cut so far. Dojo Drama 2 was shot on the weekend before the new 24p firmware update came out so I still was shooting in 30.0fps. So far I think it looks great. The story is awesome, the actors are all cool and the dialog has been great. Most importantly the martial arts and fight choreography has been fantastic. I would love for the Dojo Drama series to grow to become a showcase for the best martial arts talent in the world. Now, I’m busily editing in my spare time between work and training at Legends MMA.
I’m having fun perfecting the use of the 5D mk2. I really think this camera is great. It can be some sort of game changer and I think it already has. The evidence of this I saw at N.A.B. Wherever there was a company that was making stuff for the 5D there were crowds. At the Zacuto booth and Redrock Micro I could hardly get close to the gear. The camera isn’t perfect, I know. Everybody on a commercial HD shoot wants a camera that can magically do everything. They want video and sound going in and out which means a bunch of wires getting in the way. They want to avoid any tape transfer costs so using a camera that records to tape is usually out and if the editor isn't used to getting digital footage it's a nightmare. Almost always that equals the Red or maybe now the Alexa but they don’t even want that. The Red has been far too fussy on commercial jobs in many cases. The learning curve has been steep for some, mainly for production but also for us in the camera dept. I find that everybody has some complaint about HD no matter WHAT camera you’re using mainly because it's just new. I always find some way to make whatever I'm using work as best as I can. Although I do often want something small that I can hold in my hands and isn’t fussy or too techno. Most cameras are not even close when this parameter is put on it. To me, the Canon 5D mk2 is like a Bolex. It’s a well made, amateur camera that does professional quality stuff under certain conditions. There’s always so much that can be complained about but there’s so much that it can do. I’m just getting busy doing.
Old School Music Videos
Awesome, a new week. I put a few old school music vids up on the Music section of my site. There's a few good ones I shot from a while ago. There's some good ones, but the Ben Lee one is probably one of my all time favorites. It's so sweet. I got stung by a bee that day when we were shooting it at the park. I live right down the street from that park now. Also, this Melvins one on here is so sweet! I laugh every time I watch it because it's rad. Anyway, I hope people like them.
Red buys Ren-Mar!?
01-20-2010
Today I thought I would share some links that I was impressed by. First is the news of Red buying Ren-Mar studios. Here's a link to the story: Red Day
This one is just cool because it's so ridiculously futuristic. But you have to put futuristic in air quotes. It's sort of Wii plus Final Cut Pro divided by Hollywood movies like Minority Report. If you watch the video, you'll see they have done some things in advance, sort of like a cooking show. I would assume that those things they did in advance took WAY more effort than the demo but it makes the demo look pretty cool: Crazy Editing Software
There was one other thing that Timm Rourke sent me and it was so cool. He's a big remote control helicopter fan and this is the coolest toy I've ever seen: iPhone Chopper
What else can I link to? How about myself? I shot this silly video with my friends at the BUNKERS up in Palos Verdes and I've been editing it. I've got a long way to go, but it's getting there. Probably only funny if you grew up with me: BUNKERS III
Last thing I can link to on my own site is a Twix commercial I shot with Bryan Buckley down in Brazil at the end of summer last year. It was a pretty amazing bit of digital effects to get this guy's face to look like this: Twix
This week is a down week for me. Not really down because whenever I'm not working I'm training. Last week's job at Furlined was cool, a very nice group of people. We actually shot in a building that I lived in while I was at Art Center. It's downtown next to the first street bridge. They cut off part of the building so they could widen the bridge for a metro train line. I think my old loft was either cut in half or gone completely. Also on Sunday I saw an early test screening of Fred The Movie and got to bring Eli. It was so awesome! Eli loved it. I think the target demographic is going to really enjoy it, everybody else can stay home and watch TV.
First Work Week of 2010
01/08/10
This has been a great week. I got back to the gym, booked a job with a new production company, and started editing a new little film that I shot on my 5D MkII last week. I'm also finishing up my new reel edit and I'm going to change some stuff around on this site a little. It's like I finally got a little break of my own after the movie and the holidays. Oh and I got a 240v outlet installed in my garage so I can get a welder and finally teach myself to weld.
I love the Canon 5D MkII camera, you can do some really great stuff with it. Maybe it's just that it looks so nice that you put up with it's flaws. I see it as sort of like shooting on a Bolex. It's so portable and easy to use for simple things, but it gets really complicated if you want to do anything outside of "simple". Things like pulling focus, monitoring the image to more than one screen or even to one on-board monitor and getting good sound are all troublesome. You really have to nail the exposure too because there's not much info to change later. Oh, and transcoding the h.264 files to something Final Cut likes such as ProRes takes a long time and expands file sizes significantly. But if you use it like a very fluid, quickly moveable and sort of "unimportant" camera you get great results. If you treat it like a studio A Camera and try to do the things you'd want to do with a film camera, Red or even on an EX-3 you'll be disappointed and nervous. I end up answering a lot of questions about the camera for friends and I think I need to really point at a couple of resources that have set me on the right track in using it. Mainly the site cinema5D.com and the forums there have really helped me learn how to use it. Also the online training site lynda.com has countless movies about Final Cut Pro and even some pretty helpful tutorials about dealing with footage from the 5D MkII. There's another one too called blog.planet5D.com that has great links and is a nice place to pick up some knowledge. I like vimeo.com a lot now. It's pretty simple and I think the footage on there looks way better than YouTube. You upload it at a pretty large frame size and bit rate, they still down-res it, but it looks way better. Also I don't really want comments from anonymous internet trolls about my little home movies so I'm happy to avoid that on YouTube for now. Speaking of that, this new film is pretty funny to me, but I doubt anybody else will get it. I'll still put it up when I'm done.
There's a couple websites that I can't get enough of lately. I thought I'd share. The first is the blog at Advanced Armament Corp. They're an awesome company that makes silencers for rifles and pistols based in Georgia. I want my blog to be as cool as theirs. Of course I don't have a huge company to promote, and I often have to sign NDA forms so I can't talk about my work until it's out! How do you promote yourself if you can't talk about the work you're doing? I've been trying to keep it about the tech stuff and my own personal experience shooting, but I can't really say much about projects that are in production without getting some people mad at me. So I probably can't even talk about the next job and the new production company. Well, tangent over… The other website I'm totally addicted to is T.A.D. Gear. These guys make and stock so much cool tactical gear. I bought one of their jackets and I love it, but I have to admit I feel a little like I'm pretending I'm a mercenary when I wear it. I got the American flag patches that go on the fuzzy velcro which reinforces that image. Nonetheless, their gear is awesome! I totally want to wear that jacket all the time so I can have it on when the zombie apocalypse starts. I'd look cool fighting zombies with it on, or as a zombie wearing one. Whichever happens, I'm going to look all tactical and cool in my jacket.
