Packin' Heat

Just back from filming at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.   The arena is home to the Miami Heat basketball team and serves a large array of touring musical performers, as well as the Ringling Brothers circus.

Sony just worked with them on upgrading all their systems to HD and also installed an amazing digital signage system that works in nearly every area of the complex, including a giant mesh video screen on the exterior of the building and a massive conglomeration of screens and signs that hangs over the center of the arena floor.  

I flew down there with Dara and Rob from Sony to film a few interviews and collect enough B-roll to create a short doc on the success of the project.

The production team at the area has an amazing setup.  The video team broadcasts "Heat" games live to the web, as well as creating highlight and pre-game videos for TV.  They also produce a ton of  internal programing.  

Integrated with all the video production is the digital signage team and I have to say that their work was stunning.  The system (developed by  Sony) was called Ziris and it took the concept of the "video wall" to a much higher level, using 12 or more 60" LED screens mounted in various shapes and configurations.  The programmer was able to have a single image run across all the screens or have each screen with an individual image.  The combinations were endless and the connections were all web based, so changes could be made at any time, from nearly anywhere.

Dara arranged our lighting and grip from a local Miami company.  I brought the camera and audio gear from home, along a small pile of "just in case" items.  All of which ended up getting used at some point during the day.

I stuffed my EX3 into the same large Kata VB-26 back pack, camera bag that I used in Hershey, gambling that the flight team would not make me gate-check it due to its slightly larger-than-legal stature.  Still, it was not the largest carry-on being carried on.  Now 
that most airlines are charging for any bags you might check, flyers are going to ridiculous extremes to avoid fees.  Seems like I've been talking about packing a lot, but it's often the most complicated part of the production.  Especially when I'm flying.  

Despite the travelin' blues, the shoot was fun as each location added a new set of opportunities.  (That's corporate for problems). 

Each situation involved unique lighting, white balancing and audio and it made the day go by very fast.  I've been including a handy battery operated Lite Panel LED light s part of my regular kit and it is extremely handy as a small fill or kick light.  It was especially helpful while I was using the light from a computer screen as my main light and using the panel as a fill.  I also used a small ND grad filter, sideways on the lens, to knock down the screen's intensity. 


Back home in New Jersey and very happy that our friends at Sony are extremely happy with the two hours of footage that we gathered and we're looking forward to the next gig.     


All in all, a fun trip. 


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www.duckem.com 

Why did Hershey call them Kisses?

Hersheypark: Part Two

 With our coaster POV shoot successfully behind us, it was now time to begin creating some additional HD B-Roll for the park's press reel.  

We spent spent the next few hours scouting locations with the public relations crew and Hersheypark's Rides Operation Manager.  Again, safety is paramount at Hersheypark so we had to seek out the best possible angles while maintaining a safe distance from each ride.  

The park is fairly large and some of the rides travel pretty far.  Our job at this point, was to determine where we needed to be to get the most exciting shots, in the least amount of time, keeping the sun at the proper angle.  We also needed to have a talent releases for each and every person on the ride we were filming.  Finally, to enhance the challenge, we had the threat of rain on the horizon.

As the park would have a few thousand guests while we were filming, we needed to travel light.  Time was limited and it was in our best interest to carry all of our gear to each and every location.  Running a quarter mile around a wood roller coaster to chase down an accessory was simply not an option.

After having great success traveling with a Kata backpack on a recent trip to Africa, it was a no-brainer to try out their slightly larger Kata VB-510.   

This backpack/camera bag was able to hold our primary camera, a Sony EX3 HD camera with a full Chroisziel matte box and rails mounted to the camera.  It also held a wide angle lens, four batteries, six SxS cards, two Lite Panels, six Panavision size Formatt grad filters, a Sony ECM-674 shotgun microphone,  an ECM-77B lav mic, headphones, cleaning cloths, sunblock and a small bottle of Tylenol.   

All of this, along with a Manfrotto 536 carbon fiber tripod with 526 fluid head was carried by our virile young assistant Arion Doerr and might I add, without much complaining.  Perhaps it was the Hershey bars we kept dangling in front of him.

The bottom line is that we had a production company in a bag and we were able to shoot for hours without any interruption.

We actually started gathering our B-Roll outside the park at the corner of E. Chocolate Ave and Cocoa Avenue.  On some days the air is so thick with the smell of chocolate that its probably fattening.

We were directly across from the famous Hershey chocolate factory and were informed that they still make Hershey Kisses right there in the plant, the same way they've made them for years.  Milton Hershey, the legendary founder of the company named them Kisses, because the machine produced a smacking sound  every time a Kiss was created.

On more than one occasion, the extreme height of the Manfrotto sticks was a life saver.  Several locations required higher vantage points and there would have been no way to keep a small camera like the EX3 steady, hand-held.  Especially, at extreme telephoto focal lengths, such as filming the cars at the peak of the Fahrenheit and Lightning Racer coasters.  

Although much of our shooting would be on tripods, filming Fahrenheit required that I hand-hold the camera.  The EX3 is a bit of a dog hand-held, without some type of additional shoulder mount hardware.

Sarah had hired a Vari-Zoom Steady Rig from a NYC rental house.  It was one of the klutzy-est devices I have ever attempted to use and in fact, we didn't bother bringing it with us to Hershey.  It might have worked fine if I was walking around trying to be a human tripod, but to follow a speeding car around a coaster, well, there was just know way it would work. I ended up mounting a small, $ 10.00 pistol grip on the end of rails that support my matte box and it worked fine.


You can easily twist into a pretzel or at the least, lose your balance trying to follow Fahrenheit with a camera.  Fortunately, the EX3 with its simple pistol grip worked brilliantly this time around.  It was certainly much easier than using a large shoulder mount camera.

Click here to see the edit combining the exterior B-Roll with the POV shots:

We had a very successful morning of filming, but sadly, as our lunch break approached so did the rain.  Rides look pretty bleak against a while sky, so we'll have to schedule another day.  

When we returned home, I embarrassingly empty my pockets of reams of silver foil. 

Ah yes.  The diet starts again on Monday.   

www.Hersheypark.com

www.duckyou.com

www.duckem.com

  

Filming "The Sweetest Place on Earth"

Last week, Sarah and I, along with our freelance assistant Arion Doerr, traveled out to Hershey Pennsylvania. Hershey, Pa is the home of Hershey chocolate and Hersheypark and we were there to create some HD POV B-Roll at on two of their roller coasters, Fahrenheit and Storm Runner.  

If you haven't already guessed, POV is the acronym for point of view and that means we needed to mount HD cameras on the first car of each ride to show what a park visitor will experience sitting in the front seat.

This in itself creates a challenge.  The cars on which the cameras are to be mounted were designed to carry riders safely around the track, but they were not necessarily designed to have cameras mounted on them.  And while my cameras are capable of creating beautiful HD images under some extreme conditions, I'm fairly confident that they were not designed to be subject to the physical stress these rides can demand.

Fortunately, we've had prior experience mounting our cameras on several high speed coasters, including Six Flags Great Adventure's  Kingda Ka, the tallest and fastest coaster in the world.

Our first concern is safety.  Not just the safety of our cameras, but the safety of everyone working on the crew, everyone around the coaster and of course, the coaster itself.  We did not make a move without the approval and oversight of the park's ride technicians.  This is a multi-million dollar investment that they were letting us work on and they wanted us to leave it, and everyone around it, just the way we found it.

We had brought two cameras with us to Hershey, a Sony EX3 and a Sony MC1.  The EX3 was our primary camera and we brought it along to create B-Roll of the exterior of the rides and surrounding park areas.

The MC1 is a unique HD camera in that its lens and body are separate from each other, connected by a six foot tether.  This makes the camera head extremely small, light-weight and easy to mount almost anywhere.  It also allowed the addition of filters and wide angle lens adaptors.   For better audio, I had Arion tape a small piece of windscreen foam over the built-in microphone to help minimize wind noise.

The recorder part of the system uses readily available AVCHD cards or Sony memory sticks.  It fits easily in your palm and includes a built in HD monitor with a touch screen that controls all camera and recorder functions.

Both the MC1 and EX3 are file based systems, which means no video tape.  This is important when filming rides.  The tape drum in the camera spins like a gyroscope and hard turns are very difficult for the camera's tape and mechanical system.  A spinning gyro doesn't like being forced off its current direction.

The built in screen was very important to us, as it allowed us to check the position of the camera as we were mounting it, as well as giving us a confidence check after each run of the ride.  The torque during launch and many of the ride's turns and corkscrews can easily alter the alignment of the camera.  Being able to rapidly check the previous shot, without having to remove a card and download the shot to a computer saved us considerable time and helped us travel lighter, as well.

I used a Manfrotto 405 geared head bolted to a 2x4 to hold our camera head.  We needed a mounting device that could be delicate enough to give us critical, reposition-able movements while aligning the camera head with enough strength to hold the camera in place.  I've been using the 405 to hold a Sinar 4x5 for years, so I knew it would hold our cameras securely.  The quick-release plate was an essential part of the process and made it possible to remove the camera without undoing everything else.

The 2x4 was clamped and bungeed to the ride with the tripod head positioned between the two front seats.  Once in place, nylon zip ties and sash cord were used as a backup on each and every element, ensuring that even if the mount should fail or come loose in transit, it would remain securely in place.

The wood 2x4 also acted as a bit of a shock absorber.  I wanted the image to be steady, but not to look like it was floating.  On the contrary, although I wanted some vibration to show through, I didn't want it to all be a blur.   So, the wood base was a perfect compromise.  It was also light and easy to install across two seats.

Regardless of our care and concerns for safety, my heart is always in my throat when the camera launches for the first time.  Seeing it come back into the station, in one piece.. still functioning,  always brings a sigh of relief.

Check out the Fahrenheit POV here

The end results were worth the effort and hearing "I love it!" from my client was simply icing on the cake.

Of course, that would be Hershey's chocolate icing.

www.hersheypark.com
www.duckyou.com
Chuck is a featured DP on Sony's Videon Site
www.duckem.com