My week with the RT Motion Lens Control System MK 3.1
I just spent a week shooting with the RT Motion Latitude system and I couldn’t be happier! The ability to control stills glass with the accuracy of a cinema lens is terrific. Certainly makes lower-budget productions feel grander when you can accurately rack focus while moving the camera.
For my setup, I chose to purchase the on-board Latitude Receiver attachment that mounts directly to my RED Epic-W as seen in this picture. It provides a number of ports for controlling add-ons like the Smart Knob, Thumb wheels, and/or physical motors if I were using different lenses. On this project, we were using Canon EF lenses with the handheld remote unit, so no additional cabling to the lens itself was necessary.
Note that the Smart Knob can be used as a standalone product with RED cameras. You don’t have to buy a Latitude receiver or handheld unit to have accurate focus control. You simply have to buy the Smart Knob if you want smooth, on-camera focus control. It’s a very inexpensive piece of gear and highly recommended. That’s how I tested the waters with the RT Motion system. I bought the Smart Knob first and was so impressed with the performance that I turned around and purchased the Latitude Receiver and handheld unit within a week of getting my Smart Knob.
The system is incredibly responsive and very smooth. This is what impresses me most about the system. My Red Epic-W, coupled with FoolControl & the RT Motion focus controller is capable of slow, delicate focus adjustments with no noticeable stepping of the EF lens.
With the handheld unit, I was also able to control the Iris, Record Start/Stop function, focus assist and magnification. So, it was great to have all that control while sitting at a remote monitor.
I’m definitely looking forward to diving deeper into the RT Motion system and trying out their Thumb Wheels on my next production.
If you’ve had a chance to work with the RT Motion system, let me know what you think!
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Wipster.io is the site that changes client review
Hi friends, I wanted to share a new online video review and collaboration tool that I’ve been using for the last 4-5 months. In a very short amount of time, this tool has become a vital part of my workflow when dealing with “Work In Progress” edits.
It’s called WIPster and it’s fantastic.
Wipster.io is a site built exactly for people who do not work together in the same room or building. And the people behind the site have put a ton of thought into how their tool should work and how to keep it simple.
Better yet, my clients love it!
For years, I have used different online platforms to try and collaborate with clients all over the country. And for years, I have run into roadblocks with certain individuals who just don’t feel that they are technically savvy enough to navigate those other systems.
Well with Wipster, I’ve had zero adoption issues from my clients and even had some of the more difficult-to-convert ones tell me that they love this new tool.
There’s a simple-to-follow tutorial video for new users that explains how to stop the video and make notes directly on the frame they’ve chosen. Again, super simple for my clients!
I will then get an email with my client’s notes and can see exactly the frame that they are talking about. My clients are not required to sign up for the service, they only have to enter a name so that I know who is commenting on a particular video.
Wipster is cost-efficient with per team member pricing. A team member does not include my client, so on some jobs, my cost is less than the cost of the pizza I ordered when working late to meet a deadline. And there’s no annual contract, so I can literally add and subtract team members as I need them and I only get charged while we’re working on that one job.
Wipster works the way online review tools were always meant to work and now you can actually get your clients to use them too!
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Top 5 pieces of advice for a creative professional
Hi folks,
During the last semester, I had an intern working with me and, to my surprise, found myself talking non-stop about the lessons I’ve learned over the last 25 years in the film business.
I thought I’d share with you 5 pieces of advice that I’ve gotten throughout my career that have helped shape how I view my own work, get new jobs and stay in this ever-changing business.
- “You are only as good as the weakest thing on your reel.” I was extremely lucky to receive this advice in the first few years of my career. Early on, when we were building a reel and reputation, I tried to include every new piece of work on our demo reel to show that we were current and working. The only problem is that each new piece wasn’t always better than other pieces that preceded it. As a consequence, if someone was really liking what they were seeing, when they got to that one piece that didn’t hold up, we were sunk.
- “You do not get to disclaim your work.” If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re trying to “sell” your work to a viewer (i.e. – we only had a budget of “X” dollars, isn’t this great?!), then you’ve already lost. The work on your reel, or website, or anywhere, MUST stand on its own without any qualifications. It’s either good or not. That’s it. This one is especially hard for the creators of a project. Oftentimes, a director or creative-type will get emotionally wrapped up in a piece of work and love it regardless of how good it really is. There may be a totally legitimate reason for loving a project, like you could fall in love with your subject’s story, tackle some huge production challenge and come out a hero on the shoot day, or any number of other things that cause us to loose our critical barometer. For this, I have a group of trusted peers that will give me brutally honest feedback (THIS IS CRITICAL FOR ANY CREATIVE TO HAVE). If a project doesn’t make the cut, I listen to my select critics. This is not to say that you should listen to what everyone has to say. But you need to have confidants whose opinions you trust above all others.
- “Know your craft” Technology is changing film production at an incredibly rapid rate. When I started back in the 1980s everything was still shot on film and creating an image was… hard. Now, people are shooting professional jobs with iPhones. From an image capture standpoint, it’s the Wild West out there. And post-production has changed dramatically in the last 2 decades. Tools that once cost hundreds of thousands of dollars are now within reach of many pro-sumers and even some consumers. But, even with all this change, there has remained a constant… STORYTELLING. Storytelling is the key that drives this business.
- “Have a voice and don’t be afraid to use it.” Ad agencies hire you based on your previous work and the way you choose to tell a story. They don’t want you to just repeat back to them. They want your input. They want the magic that makes your reel YOUR reel. Don’t be afraid to speak up and throw out ideas that are your own.
- “Treat your business like a job. Give yourself a salary.” It took me almost 20 years to discover this one and I cannot believe no one ever told me to do this before (perhaps I did hear this and I was too arrogant to listen). I have spent my entire working life as a freelance creative-type. I have always lived from project-to-project never knowing if the project I was currently working on would lead to more work. For most of my early career I lived with these peaks and valleys in my bank account because, when work was flowing, I would live higher on the hog than when I was going through a drought. I used to “reward” myself for making it through the previous drought. It was fun, but would leave me with a low bank account balance when I needed money the most.A few years ago, I stopped doing that. I created a budget for myself and paid myself a salary built around that budget instead of living off the money I made. As soon as I did that, the roller coaster stopped. I repeat, THE ROLLER COASTER STOPPED. My work continues to go up and down, but now I am able to live a much more stable existence. When work is flowing really well, the bank account goes up. When work tapers off, the bank account draws down at a regular rate and I am able to ride through the valleys with much less stress than I used to have.This has been the single most important thing I have done as a freelance creative.
That’s it. Those are the top 5 things I tell new guys coming up in the business. If you have something you do that you like to share, please post it in the comments below.
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http://www.biglookproductions.com
How Kessler Crane’s CineSlider helped me shoot for James Avery Craftsman
Recently, I got introduced to the world of Kessler Crane and I couldn’t be happier because of it. At the end of last year, my friend director Phil Paternite asked me to shoot a series of interviews for a jewelry company in the Texas Hill Country for a project that would eventually become 7 films that play on a continuous loop in their visitor’s center.
Phil and I had worked together on a number of projects before using one of our favorite tools, the EyeDirect, and one of the things we quickly agreed on was that we wanted these interviews to move. We wanted simple dolly moves back and forth while we interviewed our people on a number of subjects.
My client actually told me that he had put it in his budget for a CineSlider. I didn’t have any experience with a CineSlider but was curious.
What attracted me most to the system was the robotics capability of the CineSlider. Using the CineDrive system, I could have the camera move back and forth at a constant rate, forever, if needed. That was going to be great with the long interview times we had planned. Also, I would be assured that every interview would move at the same rate, which would help out greatly in post.
We also used it greatly in the shooting of the jewelry-making process. The CineDrive allowed for us to set up a simple dolly move across a worker’s station and let the shot develop over an extended period of time.
So, here was our setup:
- CineSlider with 100 Series Motor and Parallax Bar
- EyeDirect Box mounted onto CineSlider with the side mirror taken off so that Phil could sit in a stationary position the whole time
- Sony FS700 with 4K Record module attached by SDI cable
- Manfrotto 501 Head and Tripod
- Cowboy Studio dolly wheels
The system worked great! And I now use the CineDrive system on almost every interview job I shoot.
To see one of the finished pieces, click here.
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Closed Caption nirvana in Adobe Premiere
I am absolutely blown away by this new extension I found. It’s called zencaptions and it’s a captioning service integrated right into Adobe Premiere. Zencaptions is available as a standalone website, but I especially love the tight integration into Premiere.
This extension is amazing. With just a few clicks, you can export your sequence and pay for the transcriptions/captions all without ever leaving Premiere.
So here’s what I love:
- they’re inexpensive (VERY). At only a dollar a minute, I was able to get captions for my project for only $6.
- They’re FAST. Zencaptions quoted a turnaround time of 1-2 business days. They got my 6-minute sequence done in 81-minutes! That’s right MINUTES! Unbelievable. And, they were 100% accurate! I’m blown away.
I uploaded two more sequences, one 7- and one 8-minutes. A little later in the day, I got 2 separate emails saying that my captions were ready. They were done in 5 hours and 8 minutes and 8 hours and 46 minutes, respectively. Most impressive!
I am definitely adding zencaptions to my toolset and am very happy to have the “how am I going to get this captioned” question answered.
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My month with the MoVI M10
If you’re a fan of my company’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, then you probably already know that I was an early-adopter of the MoVI M10. And for those of you who aren’t in the film industry, the MoVI is the first-of-its-kind handheld stabilizer which allows the camera to move smoothly without the need for dolly track. It’s based on technology from the remote-controlled helicopter world, but re-imagined to be operated as a handheld device closer to Earth.
I was soooo excited when I got my email notice that my MoVI would be ready in the next two weeks and that Freefly was ready for me to make my final payment. Soon, my new toy, codenamed Volaré, would arrive. When the package arrived, I took the obligatory unboxing photos, and then set out to shoot my first MoVI shot. I had a little bravado (okay, a lot of bravado) and thought that I could pull this thing out of the box and start shooting with it right away. Boy, was I wrong.
The MoVI is a highly technical piece of gear that needs to be understood before you can really fly with this thing. The good news is the Freefly Systems has done an incredible job at keeping most of the technology under the hood, and giving us operators only a handful of things to focus on to make the MoVI really useful.
Here’s the thing. The MoVI is all about Center of Gravity (COG). And balancing the camera properly is absolutely ESSENTIAL. It’s the one thing with the MoVI that will drive you mad, if you don’t get it right. So, take the time to learn how to balance the camera package. The first time you do it, expect to take an hour or more. After you’re an “expert,” it will still take 15-20 minutes or more to get it right. But once you’ve got it, be prepared to fly!
The MoVI is an incredible tool. The freedom it gives you to move your camera is addicting. Your mind starts to race with possibilities the second you take your first step with the MoVI.
To prepare for working with the MoVI, you should walk around with your arms straight out in front of you, while carrying 5-pound weights in each hand. You’ll very quickly learn that you have sore muscles in places you don’t normally feel. But, after a few days, your body will start to adjust and carrying the MoVI will feel more and more natural.
One thing I was not clear about, but learned in the first week was the interplay between the Configurator App and the MoVI itself. The app lets you dial in your stiffness and responsiveness settings and you’ll find yourself going back to this app all the time, dialing in EACH shot to your taste.
Another misconception I had was that I was going to be able to use the MoVI entirely by myself. And the reason I can’t has to do more with my ability as an operator, than the MoVI itself. Moving the MoVI, framing the shot, and controlling focus is just too much for my own skill. I have a real difficult time keeping what I want in focus when I’m concentrating on framing the shot.
But, I have found the MoVI to be FANTASTIC with 2 people working the machine. Even better with 3 people, but just know that if it’s just 2 of you going out into the field, you will have a really great time with the MoVI.
I had the pleasure of attending a MoVI training event in Seattle with some other MoVI owners, hosted by Tabb and Freefly. This was a great one-day event where I got to talk with the world’s experts about specific issues I was having with the MoVI. It was a terrific forum to confirm some of the things I was doing as correct and learn a few tips and tricks that I had not seen anywhere online or in any documentation. For other MoVI owners, take advantage of this training event, if you can.
One of the best things I learned from the training weekend was that you want to “tune” your MoVI to the highest stiffness settings possible without oscillation. Before the event, I was running my Canon 5D III at the default 10 stiffness settings and having moderate success. After the training, my MoVI runs much better with the stiffness settings at 70, 30, and 17. And with a Red EPIC on there, we were set at around 120, 50, and 20. But take note, each camera package will have its own ideal settings. These numbers I’ve listed are shown only to illustrate and give you an idea of how these settings can be changed to match the camera package you’re putting on the MoVI.
Subtle moves are difficult. I thought I was going to be able to replace the slider in my kit with the MoVI. Not entirely the case. It is VERY hard to move the MoVI in a perfectly straight line. This has more to do with your own muscles than the mechanism of the MoVI itself. The MoVI is not designed to lock the camera into some imaginary plane at a particular height off the ground. It’s designed to minimize the movements your body places on the camera as you move it from point A to B. So, for ECU shots like typing on a keyboard, I would still stick with a slider.
On the flip side, what the MoVI has enabled me to do with relative ease is amazing! Walking shots, driving shots, crane shots – all smooth as silk and so much more dynamic than I could have gotten in the past.
Right now, there is only the M10 available. This is designed for camera packages weighing 10 pounds or under. Soon, Freefly will be releasing the M5, at a much lower price point, which will be geared towards smaller camera packages weighing 5 pounds. As an owner, I was initially concerned that this smaller model would make my M10 obsolete and not worth the money. After working with the MoVI M10 for the last month, I can tell you that I am no longer concerned. Once you start adding batteries and follow focus and other accessories, I can quickly see how you can get past 5 pounds without even taking the camera into consideration.
I also want to take a moment to talk about Freefly Systems as a company. I’ve gotten to know these guys over the last few months and I’d like to tell you that they are 100% committed to servicing their customers. Multiple people over there have been more than willing to jump on the phone with me for technical and non-technical questions. And on more than one occasion I’ve gotten an email or phone call from Tabb directly addressing whatever issue I was having. I feel very well taken care of as a customer and I know others who feel the same.
The MoVI was hailed as a game changer at NAB this year, and I couldn’t agree more. In my own work, this new tool has given me more interesting footage in a very short amount of time. I absolutely love the MoVI.
How to Convert a Premiere Pro Project to work with AVID Media Composer
Hi friends,
So, I had a particularly long week as I was faced with an editorial task that seemed insurmountable – convert a Premiere Pro CS6 project to work in AVID 6.5.
Now, you might be asking, why would you switch editing platforms in the middle of a project? Well, in this case, the project started with one editor, and is going to finish with a different editor from a different facility. The client didn’t mandate which platform the project was to used in the initial paperwork, so when personnel changed, we were faced with this daunting task.
After spending 2-3 days doing tests, and researching what other people had experienced on the web, we determined that while Premiere CS6’s documentation claims an easy AAF workflow, the fact is that Premiere’s AAF DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY (something I’ve been told is being addressed in Premiere CC). Even if you are to take the AAF into a program like Davinci Resolve, the AAF doesn’t seem to list where the files are actually located and Resolve get’s lost in translation, giving you clips that are offline and un-relinkable.
AVID CAN read the AAF out of Premiere and will show you your cut sequence, but AVD 6.5 won’t let you relink the resulting clips to media on your hard drive. I spent 3 hours on tech support with AVID about this and even they were stumped. It’s maddening, but something I’ve been told is going to be fixed in MC7.
Here is THE workaround we found THAT DOES ACTUALLY WORK. It’s incredibly time-consuming, but does work and a majority of the work can easily be done by an assistant or intern in your shop. The missing piece of the puzzle is a copy of FCP7 with Automatic Duck installed.
1) From Premiere CS6, Export an FCP7 XML. This, you can do 1 time and it will export your WHOLE project.
2) Import that XML into FCP7. Once you verify all the media is there and in place (should be able to do this quickly, i.e. less than 5 minutes), you will need to export EACH SEQUENCE ONE-AT-A-TIME through Automatic Duck as an AAF.
Follow the Automatic Duck instructions found here: http://www.automaticduck.com/products/pifcp/PIFCPwitMedia-480×300.html
This is where the big time-suck comes into play. But again, it’s not very brain intensive, so as long as you’ve got a detail-oriented person in your shop, you can just put them on it for a while to translate the project (in the case of this movie, it took 3 days to translate all the AAFs).
3) Import each resulting Automatic Duck AAF into Media Composer and you’re done.
This is a proven workflow. It’s a pain, but not as bad as re-building a project from scratch inside of AVID. Just budget in the appropriate time for the conversion out of FCP and you’ll be good.
Now, AVID and Premiere are getting updates in June of this year and I suspect that this particular problem will not be one for much longer. But, in this case, I didn’t have time to wait a month for updates.
I hope this helps some stuck editors out there! Good luck!
Greg
How to protect against data loss on a Mac video workstation
This weekend, I read a great article about media management and the importance of backing up from filmmaker Sridhar M. Reddy and it inspired me to tell my own story. See what he had to say here.
So this post is all about protecting your ass(ets).
Crashes happen. It’s inherit when working with computers. The best thing you can hope to do is has yourself protected when the inevitable occurs.
In the middle of a job about five years ago, I had a pretty big crash. My entire system went down. Couldn’t boot up, no access to any data, even in target disk mode. I lost everything and had to rebuild my computer overnight because I didn’t have time to wait on a disk recovery service. That’s when I started to take my data management more seriously.
NOTE: I am not am IT guy. Not an expert in any way. What I’m listing here is a result of my own trial and error. They’re decisions based on what I’ve read. Some of the stuff I don’t even fully understand. It just works and I don’t question it.
For me, disk protection starts with Apple’s disk utility. I don’t like Apple’s built in disk drivers. They’re unreliable, have failed me many times
and once catastrophically. After losing my machie several years ago, I found SoftRaid for a disk drivers replacement. These are the drivers that store your directory structure and is the base building block of your storage system. This will cost you a little money (about $130), but for me, it’s money we’ll spent, knowing that my disk structure is protected. One feature I truly love about SoftRaid is that it continually monitors the health of your system and gives you a warning message when a particular drive is about to fail. Armed with this early warning, you can most-likely contact your drive manufacturer and get a replacement drive at no cost if your drive is still under warranty.
WARNING, once you install SoftRaid, if you ever have to go back and rebuild your system (as I have chosen to do a couple of times), it becomes a little more arduous of a process. But again, for me, it’s well worth it.
The second tier of my protection comes in the form of mirrored RAID disks. Yes, this is not the optimal setup for performance, but you have to ask yourself what do you really want, the FASTEST your machine can run, or the best chance you’ve got a protecting your data. In my experience, keeping my data safe overrides the small performance boost I would get by configuring my RAID in parallel. By using SoftRaid, you can set up these mirrored RAID systems simply. Also, SoftRaid can rebuild your RAID fast when is falls out of sync (which happens fairly often, especially if your system ever locks up unexpectedly).
Third, I have changed the way I’ve set up my system and the way I work. My Mac Tower has 4 disk drive bays. I set up the first 2 to run the system. They’re mirrored together to protect from me having a situation where I cannot boot anymore because of a single failed disk. The other 2 bays are my working drives. In my case, it’s 2x3T Seagate drives (more on hard drives in a moment). I keep all my original work files and all my project files on these 2 drives. That way, if I ever do encounter a catastrophic failure on my primary drives, my projects and data for those projects are safe. Also, if something else terrible happens, like the logic board going out (something that happened to a friend on a recent project), I can pull just the working drives and place them into a comparable system and be back up and running in no time.
The fourth layer of protection for me comes in the form of a Drobo storage system. I’ve been a supporter of Drobo for almost 4 years. Drobo has built and patented its own file management system which allows you to use multiple drives in parallel to store files. Through Drobo, you can lose one drive entirely and still be safe. These drives are hot-swappable and continually check for errors. This is like and EXTERNAL version of what I have going on with my desktop. I use this as a catastrophic recovery system. All of my original footage is stored here right off the bat and once a week, I back up my working drives to this system using a file synchronization tool called File Synchronization ($7.99 at the App Store) by French developer Laurent Daudelin and Nemesys Software. I usually do this backup overnight as it can take quite a while to copy all the files over.
One final point I’d like to share is choice of hard drives. Find a drive manufacturer you trust and populate your machine with drives from that company. I know I’m going to get some flack for this, but for me it’s Seagate. I used to use Western Digital, but had 3 of them fail on me in a year and I couldn’t trust that company’s drives with my livelihood any longer. I chose Seagate because that’s who Apple was using in their computers at the time. I don’t know if Apple is still using them, but I have had far fewer problems with Seagate drives than I ever had with WD drives. But this is entirely your call. Find a company you are willing to trust with your data. Don’t mix and match drives.
So, that’s it. That’s the system I have in place to protect from data loss. While not the most seamless, it has served me pretty well. I have had no major malfunctions in over 3 years.
Really look into a protection solution that works for you and do it sooner rather than later, because drives do fail. Drivers get corrupted. Data gets lost. It will happen to you!
If you have invested time and energy into a backup system that works for you, I would love to hear about it. Leave a comment about what works for you.
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How YouTube can be used as a free client review tool
I am a big fan of technology and I am constantly trying out new tools to help me work in a more mobile way. I have been a big proponent of online collaboration tools developed specifically for the production industry. One of my favorites is Scenios, headed up by Mark Davis. But recently, I discovered a new way of sharing videos with my clients, all thanks to my friends over at Splash Media.
Prior to learning this little trick, I used to use my own website or Dropbox and have to wait for the video to fully upload before I could share it with my client. This tied me to the computer and wouldn’t let me fully turn my attention to the next task. Well, now I have a little more freedom in my workday.
YouTube is such an amazing video platform, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I never really looked beyond uploading a single video and sending out a few links and hoping it would catch on. Over the summer, my eyes were opened to some extra features that I now use on an almost daily basis.
Splash Media enlightened me to the “Unlisted” and “Private” privacy settings when uploading my video and how they could be used in a production environment. While working on several projects for them, we would upload edits and use one of these 2 settings to hide our content from the rest of the world. Then, from inside of YouTube, we’d email our clients direct links for their review.
It’s an incredibly efficient way to get video on the web and distribute it to a targeted audience. And the great thing about it is that you don’t have to wait for the videos to get fully uploaded. You can enter email addresses and send out emails while the video is being loaded onto the site. In addition, YouTube is cross-platform. Mac/PC and mobile. Gone are the days where my client or their co-workers can’t view the work in a timely fashion! This alone saves me minutes, if not hours, in a day.
And it’s all free. I mentioned Scenios earlier and I love their platform. But when I’m offered a free solution from a company owned by Google, who has some pretty amazing privacy technology built in, I definitely will take note.
Hope this helps some other editors out there save some time and increase their efficiency!
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Behind The Scenes – Ride The Texas Waterways 360-degree experience
A friend of mine emailed me this photo over the weekend. What’s great about this email was that this was a project I did back in 2008 and it’s still going strong.
At the time, “Ride The Texas Waterways” was one of the most ambitious 360-degree projects in the world. It was a project that would cover more than 2000 miles within the state of Texas and would call for our camera to be submerged numerous times throughout the production. The show promised to give the viewers a chance to see Texas in a whole new and unexpected way – from the cockpit of a kayak traveling through the state’s varied waterways.
The target audience for this project were people in the other 47 contiguous states – people that had never been to Texas. We hoped to give people an experience that they would never forget. The program was so successful, that the Texas Tourism board re-licensed the project year after year and it’s still playing to capacity crowds.
My involvement with the Ride The Texas Waterways (RTTW) project began actually in 2007, when Executive Producer and longtime collaborator, Lance Loesberg approached me about coming up with a 360 application for a rolling roadshow that the State of Texas was putting together. We talked about the size limitations of the venue space, the limitations of the 360-degree technology of the time, and most importantly, the overall impression we wanted to give the viewer.
Back in 2008, we were still heavily involved with using Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) as a key instrument for presenting our 360-degree footage to audiences. The technology to stream footage over the internet just wasn’t there, yet. Nowadays, we do stream spherical video over the internet and have had tremendous successes, including working with The Oscars!
For RTTW, we would build 4 kayak stations, each fitted with its own dedicated computer, an HMD that would track where in the scene each viewer was looking, and a “butt-kicker” speaker. 4 participants would enter the area and watch our program at the same time. Because of the nature of 360, each person would watch their own experience. Each person would see something different within the same scene. It was a great post-viewing experience to watch friends and families talk about what they missed and go get back in line to view it again.
I created a narrative that would take us from the far West Texas Big Bend area, through downtown Austin’s Town Lake, East Texas’ Caddo Lake and finally Corpus Christi’s coastal waters. The production team worked their butts off to help me pull together this 7-day shoot.
Our main shoot vehicle was a 12-foot kayak that we painted a solid yellow. It’s always important to me to get the camera in the approximate head position of the viewer, if they were actually in the location in real life (no hovering above that action like so many of the other experiences out there at the time).
One of the biggest challenges was how to move the kayak. With the camera placed where my head should be, there really wasn’t a way for me to effecitively paddle the kayak. Luckily, my key grip knew of a guy who had created a battery-powered motor system for kayaks. This would be the first professional application for the GoYak system.
The computer that ran the camera was built into a waterproof Pelican Case mounted to the rig directly below the lens and I had wires run to the cockpit so I could operate using an off-the-shelf gaming controller. We bought 6 of these controllers, as they would fry after getting wet one or two times.
On our first day of shooting, we ran into our first problem. In the stiff Corpus Christi waves, I was flipped over multiple times – something that landed me on the front page of the Corpus Christi Caller Times. Joy. The waves were just too rough to get the shot we wanted, so I ended up having to adjust my shot. The shots with the surfers is the only shot in the whole program where we aren’t actually moving. Luckily, with the waves rolling in and the surfers riding all around us, no one seemed to notice and I have never heard anyone complain.
In Big Bend, the shoot was presented with a problem we could not fix. At many places along the Rio Grande, the water level was too low for our kayak to pass and I ended up having to get out of the kayak and walk the boat through low water areas. What should have been a quick 2-hour ride became a grueling 8-hour ordeal. To make matters worse, because of the canyon we were in, the walkies wouldn’t work and we had no way to contact our base camp. I heard later that Lance was particularly concerned when one of the guides told him about some shootings that had taken place in the same canyon the year before. Apparently we were traveling a route right on the Texas/Mexico border where some cartel members had taken target practice on unsuspecting tourists!
The Austin leg of our shoot went very smoothly. The only complaint I had about my hometown was that we shot in the wrong time of year. We were coming out of winter and all the trees lining Town Lake were barren and not pretty. Usually, the leaves and foliage are so lush around Town Lake, but not in our production! Oh well, you do the best you can with the resources you’re given, right! No way could we have pushed this shoot back two months. C’est la vie!
Caddo Lake went, pretty much, without incident. Caddo is such an amazing place in Texas. If you ever get the chance, you should visit. You will have a hard time telling you’re in Texas at Caddo Lake. I had shot a Don Henley music video there in 2000 and Don is a huge conservationist in the area. Luckily, I still had the old production binder from that job and most of all my old contacts were still around and active in the area. Setting up that part of the shoot was a breeze. Always keep your old production books!
The edit was done using FCP and After Effects. Sound was handled by The Sound Lab in Austin.
All-in-all, this was one of my favorite projects in the last 10 years. Travel, new technology, danger! This job had it all. If the Tour of Texas roadshow comes to your town, please try and view this project the way it was intended. For everyone else, here’s a link to the program. And please, take a moment to like our facebook pages Big Look Productions and BigLook360!
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