Ohio HD Breaks Out The RED Camera for Ohio Film Music Video Challenge!
Posted by Scott Handel in News on March 14, 2009
What a rewarding experience! This past month I had the chance to participate in The Ohio Film Music Video Challenge. Normally I don’t get a chance to participate in this type of contest because my schedule just won’t permit it. I recently purchased the RED ONE camera and packaged it for rental at Ohio HD Video. We had been shooting test footage and learning about the camera and the work flow when this contest came up. It was a perfect match. We decided the best way to learn all the little idiosyncrasies about the RED was to put into action on a practical project without the stress of having a client involved.
From the start we had a strong team. We partnered with Matt Munhall, a talented musician who was working on a new CD and had just recorded a new song he wanted to promote. Al Laus took the lead on concept. Once Al heard the song he developed a vision for the video crafted around a story of young love lost and then found again. The remainder of the crew included myself (Scott Handel), Jon Ebright, Steve Jones, Alberto Viglietta, Jay Alton and Jon Fintel.
The rules of the contest were released February 18, 2009. We had until March 11, 2009 to create the video, which gave us about 3 weeks. The requirements for the project were as follows:
- Each video must include one of the following criteria:
A location identified by an Ohio historical marker - A sign that displays the word Ohio in a positive manner
- Apparel containing team logos that are Ohio based
(Cleveland CAVS, Cincinnati Bengals, Columbus Crew, etc.) - Items featuring college and university logos. (Akron University, Bowling Green State University, Marietta College, Wright State University, Youngstown State University, etc.)
We chose to focus on the requirement that utilized a location with an Ohio historic marker. Having young kids of my own I have been to the Columbus Zoo many times and thought about the Historic Carousel there. It was a perfect tie in to our theme of young love and represented the innocenceof youth. Jon Ebright took the ball and worked to get the Zoo on board. They were very responsive and agreed to let us shoot there. Not only that, the folks Columbus Zoo were very generous and agreed to keep the carousel running after zoo hours to accommodate our young actors schedules.
We shot the video over two days. One day devoted to the zoo and one day at a Al’s amazing home. Al Laus worked as the DP with Alberto Viglietta as AC. We were fortunate on both days to have some great sun to work with, which is very rare during an Ohio winter. We augmented the natural light a bit with some small HMIs and Kinos. We paired the RED camera from Ohio HD with Zeiss primes provided by Steve Jones. The results were amazing! We had all seen RED footage before in various places. But seeing it first hand on an HD monitor, we were all thrilled by the latitude and color saturation. The 35mm Zeiss “super speeds” (18, 25, 35, 50 & 85mm T 1.3) provided us crisp sharp images. We were thrilled by the short depth of field and the image fall off we were able to achieve.
The footage in the house and most of the Columbus exteriors were shot in 4k in order to take advantage of the full 35mm sensor. The shots at the zoo were shot at 2K so that we were able to over crank the footage to 48 fps.
Jon Ebright, Alberto and I then worked on the work flow side to determine the best way to get the images into Final Cut Pro for the edit. The process was smooth and Jon got to work on the rough cut and establishing the initial look and feel of the video. Al, Matt and I sat down with Jon once the frame work was there to hone it down with a critical eye.
Through out the process I have said the crew we had was incredible. Everyone instinctively knew when to step up and when to step back. That’s probably because most of us have known each other for at least 10 years. This was a great collaboration and I think the results speak to Columbus’ ability to field great crews for challenging projects. Please check out the results for yourself and let me know your thoughts! (Don’t Forget to click the HD button on YouTube and then give us a rating for the competition.)