7 Days, 7 Shoots – EOS 5D MKII

November 26th, 2008 in Articles
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CLICK on the embedded link above – OR CLICK HERE – to see the video in a higher AppleTV Resolution (still lower than the full resolution footage… no one wants to host footage that large – too much bandwidth…)  Special thanks to SmugMug for hosting this clip!  

I’ve had a chance to get a hold of the 5D MKII on several occasions – seven to be specific (2 of those nights were spent shooting the first film, Reverie.)   I’ve felt compelled to try to create something with it each time I’ve had the camera in my hands.    And I will admit this camera has brought me back the closest to the feeling I had at the age of 15 when I had my first camera and a few rolls of Tri-X to burn through.   Simply put – it’s so much fun and pure.

You’ll see some footage shot with Tilt-shift lenses from the air – my first time with video – as well as one of the last shots of the series that was shot with a full motion picture Steadicam rig.   All of the footage was shot with several different prototypes of the Canon EOS 5D MKII that I was allowed to borrow at different intervals – cut in Final Cut Studio, and graded in Color.  I’m still in the middle of post-productions with almost every one of these shoots – busier shooting than editing to be honest.  But I thought I’d share some of this footage as most of your are likely to receive your production 5DMKIIs sometime this week (those that put their names down first of course.)

Each one of the projects was a collaboration with quite a few talented people – included the group from Acroback, and Rodney Decker, a student of mine from the Eddie Adams Workshop (boxer series.)  Special thanks to Roland Wood, Steve, and Daniel DeLaRossa, Billy Grafton, John, and Terry Watson.  And special thanks to the awesome pilots Aaron Fitzgerald, Michael, and Adam Cerny.  Haven’t had a chance to do credits – but I need to credit the following music: “Roads” by Portishead, from the album “Dummy”&  “Chemtrails” by Beck from the album “Modern Guilt.”  The initial edit was done by Andre Costantini, and I then ruined his edit by adding recent work from the past 2 shoots.  Thanks also to Alex Bickel who graded “Reverie” – you can see a few of those clips in the above sequence –  I will put the graded (color corrected) version of the short up soon.

I’m going to try to find the time to write down some thoughts as well as some tips and tricks about this camera – so that you can all hit the ground running.   First tip: if you’re editing in Final Cut Studio – you can do it ok in the native H.264 – but it’s worth converting the footage to Apple’s ProRes (HQ) format for much smoother results (as a first step – i.e. BEFORE you start editing – but you can of course do it at any time)