American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 14) Above: The filmmakers prepare a shot with a crane specially built by industrial designer Javier Romero. Below: Inspired by French photographer Denis Darzacq’s Hyper photo series, Beltrán staged a group of break-dancers against a checkerboard floor and had them perform a series of identical moves in front of the locked-off camera. formula in a program called MathMap that runs through Gimp. To make matters worse, it took up to 15-20 minutes for each image to process!” He did the math: If NTSC video runs at almost 30 fps, and each frame took at least 15 minutes to process, then he was looking at 450 minutes to process 1 second of footage. Beltrán’s research led him to Bill Horne, another member of the “Escher’s Droste Print Gallery” group on Flickr. Horne had written a Droste code in the Java programming language that takes 11 seconds to process an image instead of 15 minutes. “[Bill] became the main reason I decided we could do it,” says Beltrán. The director turned to a programmer friend, José Manuel Silva Vela, to rewrite the code for automation and on-the-fly effects, such as rotation and zoom increments. Once he knew he’d be able to achieve the effect he wanted, Beltrán had to figure out how to actually shoot the video. He decided to use Canon’s D1-EOS Mark III, which is capable of capturing 10 fps for up to 110 continuous shots. That way, he could capture a 10-megapixel image, use 35mm lenses, and have the ability to adjust the ISO from 50 to 6400. “Canon gave me an EF 28-200mm zoom lens as sponsorship and loaned us an EF 1635mm lens,” says Beltrán, adding that most of the video was shot with the latter. A Canon EF 35mm USM wideangle lens was used for some shots. Beltrán wasn’t comfortable taking on the photography himself, so he turned to a friend, cinematographer Khristian Olivares. The two had met on a commercial shoot in Mexico City, when Olivares was a camera assistant. By the time “Clap Your Brains Off” came along, Olivares had shot several commercials and music videos. “I needed a real cinematographer in order to get things right,” says Beltrán. Some of the Droste scenes were photographed on a soundstage at the Universidad Intercontinental, Beltrán’s alma mater. For this work, Olivares rigged the Mark III to the lighting grid and shot straight down at the floor as actors danced around the 14 March 2009
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