American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 16) Along for the ride, Beltrán aims the Canon Mark III dSLR at two band members seated on a carousel. The camera recorded 3456x2304 JPEG images at 10 fps. surface of a large record album. Another scene was shot at a swimming pool, where Olivares placed a homemade camera crane on the edge of the diving board to get an overhead shot of some synchronized swimmers. In both cases, he was able to operate the camera and monitor the picture by running long remote-control and video cables from the camera to a video village. Another source of inspiration was the photo series by Denis Darzacq called Hyper, wherein break-dancers were photographed mid-break at high shutter speeds. Without the telling motion blur, the resultant image 16 March 2009 depicts the dancers magically frozen in air. Beltrán was amazed by the photos and wanted to add the element of motion, and also stop-motion, to them. A group of break-dancers was asked to perform a series of identical moves in front of the locked-down camera. In a riff on the Muybridge experiments, Olivares photographed each dancer’s performance three times, and then the frames from the best takes were essentially shuffled in postproduction. After one dancer begins a move, every few frames, the footage from another dancer performing the same move is cut in. It was a difficult effect to achieve, given the complex nature of the dance moves. To assist the dancers, Beltrán staged the action on a checkerboard floor. “They knew which square they had to put their hands on,” recalls Olivares. “They had a lot of problems getting the moves just right with all the spinning around.” One of the album-cover scenes takes place on a carousel with the members of NSM PSM. For this scene, Beltrán and Olivares used a special lens adapter normally used to create virtual-reality Quicktimes for realestate presentations. The adapter, manufactured by 0-360.com, requires that the taking camera be placed on its back, shooting up into a cone-shaped mirror mounted in the center of the lens’ field of view. A special plug-in is needed to unwrap the image, which in the video can be seen as the ultrawidescreen shots of the band on the carousel. It’s a true panoramic image — if the left and right side of the screens were connected in a loop, one would have a complete 360-degree view of the playground. “Clap Your Brains Off” was photographed in JPEG format to allow for the highest resolution and an extended continuous shooting capability. Fix Comunicación in Mexico City turned Beltrán’s 3456x2304 and 3888x2592 processed stills into 720x480 QuickTime image sequences at 29.97 fps (played back at 10 fps). The video was edited on Final Cut Studio, and Red Rentals Mexico did a 2K online for the HD master. The final product is decidedly lo-fi, just as the filmmakers intended. “I didn’t want the video to look stylish or have the usual color-correction,” says Beltrán. “I wanted a video that would look like we’d just grabbed a camera and started shooting.” Olivares agrees, adding, “These kinds of projects should look different than anything you’ve seen before. I loved working with the still camera, and I’m really happy with the results.” I http://www.0-360.com
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