Inertia flatland BMX promo film

I got into film making and video production though extreme sports, it’s a subject I wish I could shoot and edit every day however living in the uk its not something I get to do every day. Id been trying to make a bmx video for years apart form to Russia with love and park sessions 2004 this is the first proper bmx related oriented video I’ve produced, when I say proper I mean with the skills and equipment I’ve got now and the standard of the rider.

The rider is keelan Phillips who is one of the best flatlanders in the world. Check his web site out www.inertiashows.com

The video was shot in different locations’ across Leicester over 3 days.

. The video was shot on a sony z1 which is a 1080i HDV camera. Sadly I don’t have a fish eye for this camera so it meant I was shooting conventionally from a tripod.

Day1

Very lucky with the weather manages to go filming for 2 hours and clock 23 mins of footage. On this day we shot in a school using a z1 set to “cinine look” it was decided that we wanted a contemporary look.  The cine function on a z1 give a really jittery look kind of like the film 28days later.

At the end of filming it was arranged that we go shooting the following day. I suggested going early and 9am is deemed early, not quite what Id consider early but there you go.

Day 2

I get a text at 1.34am keelan has had nearly 3 sandy’s and wants to put back filming by an hour. Mistake as I no the tennis courts at kington park in Leicester will be being used. We get there and get 18mins before the second court is taken over by tennis players.

For this shoot Iain Jaques the second cameraman is using a canon 5dmk2.

Day 3 scheduled for kigton park again on the tennis courts. We tried doing moving footage but it was unsuccessful. Only one clip made it in to the video.

In the end the footage from the 5d was binned. There were some exposure issues. The 5d sees white as being white with zero detail, where as the z1 sees white at 108%. This means its possible to recover highlights detail on the z1.

Editing took about 1 and half days.

keelan phillips flatland bmx from stewart charles on Vimeo.

shooting the woods a film by Dan Craddock

Day 1

Totally gutted about this, its something Id been looking forward to for weeks but the muscle injury was still too bad for me to do the filming. In fact it was so bad I couldn’t even use a boom. The reason I was looking forward to it so much is because it’s being shot on a canon 5dmk2. Now being shot by Iain Jacques and I’m doing the location sound.

The film is being filmed using to cameras the main camera is a canon 5dmk2 the second camera is a sony z1. This is going to be a nightmare in postproduction due to the 5dmk2 being full Rasta and having square pixels and the z1 being 1080i HDV which is an anamorphic format. The second camera is being used by lura Wilkinson. The second camera is there to provide 2 angels but to also give us a back up to the 5d. Andy whitehead had raised the issue of artifact and moray patterns so we decided to play it safe and shoot it on 2 cameras.

The sound is being recorded using a shennhiser me66 mic and sound devices 302 filed mixer. The sound is being recorded on to a zoom 4Hn recorder. The sound recorded by the z1 and the 5d is just for reference.

the zoom 4 recorder

We didn’t get hold of the zoom recorder till late in the day prior to the first day of shooting, to start of with we did have problems with it being over loaded by the 302 mixer, we solved this by using xlr to jack leads. At the moment tit seems to be going well as in we have recorded sound. 

the cables

sound devices 302 mixer and zoom 4 recorder

iain jaques witht eh 5dmk2 70-200mm lens and 2x converter

Shooting the woods day 2

We had a small crew due to people’s schedules. Every one had to do a bit of every thing, Andy whitehead did boom and brought and set up track. Iain carried on the 5dmk2 and lura and fred shard the z1. Fred also did a bit of boom and making of doc, as well as his designated role of clapper boarding. After checking the levels from day one I made some minor adjustments to the zoom 4 recorder. After the second day of filming we have now clocked 24Gbs of 5d footage and almost 1Gb of sound, and about 1.5hours of HDV.

We are now waiting for a 1Tb Gtech drive to arrive so we can start transferring the data.