Motionographer

I believe I first found motionographer.com through Salomon Ligthelm’s blog in his “blogs I visit daily” section. I’ve got to admit, I rarely go a day without checking out Motionographer as well.

And here’s why…

~ Videos: The videos posted ARE the most intriguing and modern motion graphics work you’ll see anywhere. If you are curious about current trends in design, animation, and motion graphics, look no further.

“A Year of Sun with Mr. Persol”

~ Behind the Scenes: The interviews that the many staff and guest writers conduct are with the top motionographers today. In the past couple months I’ve read interviews and viewed BTS videos with industry visionaries Big Lazy Robot, Prologue, and BLUR to name a few.

Blur: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

~ Justin Cone: Justin is the Editor-in-Cheif and founder of Motionographer. Check out his site for examples of his work and an amazing resume including co-founding the F5 “cutting-edge creativity festival.” This guy has done more in 10 years than most of us will do in our lifetime.

~ Jobs: Motionographer Jobs is a daily updated list of motion design and video related jobs that range from one-off freelance gigs to national and international full-time positions. The job posters are required to pay $/listing so you know there’s a good chance you’re not sending your reel to a high-school grad trying to get into VFS. Now, if you’re a freelancer like myself, go check out the job listings and get yourself some real work!

So, for a daily dose of inspiration, study, or procrastination visit motionographer.com, you’ll be happy you did.

The Making of “It’s Taste o Hope”

Every year at Lutheran Church of Hope we have a huge Jesus party in our parking lot. Several thousand people show up to enjoy free food, games, and worship along with some friendly competitions including a 5k run, a 3 on 3 basketball tournament, and a golf outing. The event follows our 2 week stretch of vacation bible school.

This year our studio production team thought it would be fun to put together a sort of advertisement video and the below is what came out of it.

One of our part-timers, David, came up with the idea to parody the Lonely Island track “On a Boat,” which turned out to be the perfect vibe we were going for.

Before we started shooting we had to find the track (thanks iTunes for the karaoke instrumental) and rewrite the lyrics. Joe Kroeger, our resident director/editor (who also plays “The Biz”) took on this daunting task. He turned it around so fast that within 24 hours of having the idea to do an “On a Boat” parady, we had a scratch audio track recorded for our actors, Hope student ministry’s Mark Brandt and Mike Lindsay.

We shot the video a couple days a week for about three weeks and were editing as we shot. The video was shot on both the Canon 7D and T2i with various lenses including the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, Canon 28mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4, and 24-70mm f2.8 L. We used a jib for a lot of the shots that we borrowed from part-timer Dave, otherwise it was completely handheld. We found that if you kept the camera moving in a fluid motion either on the jib or handheld it didn’t wiggle as much and looked more like a rap video than using a should mount or sticks.

Half way through the shoot we found that an external monitor was crucial for framing up the jib shots, so we found a small(ish) TV that nobody else was using with an HDMI input and lugged it around with us. A small Marshall LCD70XP monitor is high on our gear wish-list, but the 24″ Sharp that we found did the trick.

In the edit we used final cut pro 7 to cut the footage together and color correct it mainly to get the skin tones and the actors tee-shirts to look close to the same color in each shot (this is particularly hard with the colors and constant change from outdoor to indoor shots with different lighting).

We then transferred the sequence to After Effects where we add vignettes to “relight” each scene, and we used Video Copilot’s Optical Flares plugin to add some stylization. I see a lot of this plugin as well as the Red Giant version being used all over from LMFAO’s Party Rock Album video to J.J. Abram’s Super 8. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Super 8 flares were real, I know Andrew Kramer from VCP was contracted to do some VFX for that film. From what I understand those flares are characteristic of a certain type of anamorphic lens, but I doubt they’re all real. It seems to be the “look” right now, and I wonder how long it will last. Lens flares have been used in movies and commercial for decades, but they seem to be a stylistic fad right now.

The audio was recorded in ProTools in the church’s recording room, the one you see in the video. The T-Pain auto tune effect was a lot of fun to figure out. There are various ways to achieve this effect, including purchasing the T-Pain iPhone app. Our process was to first track the vocals sung without the effect. We then used Melodyne to manually correct the pitch to a pentatonic scale, and then brought it into AutoTune for the T-pain vocoder sound. The trick is set the attack as fast as it will go in AutoTune so that it acts like an oscillator. Be sure to leave some imperfections in the pre-AutoTuned track so that you get some passing and lead tone flourishes ala T-Pain.

Thanks for checking out the video and the “making of” on this blog. Let me know if you have any more questions. I’d be happy to answer any you might have!

Adobe puts it’s money where it’s mouth is!

Adobe is selling Production Premium, including Premier, After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator for 50% off through September 30th!

This has to be in response to the recent release of Final Cut Pro X.

After Effects alone sells for more than this.

Use Promo Code: SWITCH

P.S. Sorry for the lack of posts lately… I’ve got a few updates in the works, but am also expecting my first child any day now.. I know… Excuses, Excuses…

2011 Interrobang Film Festival DSLR Filmmaking Seminar

10:45 AM Saturday June 25th @ Des Moines Public Library: As a part of the 2011 Interrobang Film Festival, Modlab.tv will be putting on a DSLR Filmmaking Seminar. The event is free to all who attend and will be facilitated by yours-truely.

The event will be held in conjunction with the Filmmaker’s Meet-up. No registration is necessary.

The agenda for the event will be as follows:

~ DSLR Basics
– Sensor
– ISO
– Iris
– Shutter Speed
– Frames Per Second

~ Lenses
– Primes/Zooms
– Wide/Long
– Depth of Field

~ Support Gear
– Tripods/Heads
– Shoulder Rigs
– Dollies/Sliders
– Misc.

~ Audio
– Wired/Wireless Microphones
– In camera/Out of Camera Recording
– Plural Eyes

~ Accessories
– ND Filters
– Remote Timers

~ Q&A

Post comments if you plan on attending or if you have other topics you’d like to see on the agenda.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

_Aaron

indiSLIDERpro review

Here’s my review of the indiSYSTEM indiSLIDERpro 36″ slider dolly.

I think the video explains itself.

I did shoot this in one take so sorry for the misspoken “Philip Bloom CineSlider,” which corrected is “Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly,” and the “Modlab Media,” which as you can see is “Modlab Multimedia” as the text reads.

If you’d like any more reviews done on indiSYSTEM gear, please send requests as I live close to the manufacturer. Also indiSYSTEM will be at the Interrobang Film Festival on June 25th at the Des Moines Public Library as a part of the Des Moines Arts Festival. Please join us there to check out more indiSYSTEM gear.

Thank you for visiting Modlab.tv!

Rock the Block

Camera: 7D and T2i
Lenses: 28mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4 85mm f1.8, 24-70mm 2.8 L
Edit and Color: Motion, FCP and AE
DSLR Accessories: indiSystem indiSLIDERpro

This project was something I really wanted to do to bring awareness to what the church can do outside of its walls. Going out and being the church is much more inviting than trying to get someone to go to “your” church.

I want to thank Ryan Buck for his help with this, he was gracious enough to show up on his busy Saturday afternoon and film the three interviews while I was managing the time-lapse footage.

Speaking of, this is the first time I’ve attempted time-lapse video. It really is all about the math. Some of the footage is real time footage sped up to match the feel of the piece and tell a more in-depth story in a short amount of time. I borrowed Ryan’s interval timer to expose still photos for 1 second every 10 seconds for several hours. I literally shot over 1000 photos in a 6 hour period. The photo were strung together in Apple Motion at 24 frames per second, then slowed down to half speed in Final Cut. If I were to do this again, I think I would have tried a 4-5 second interval rather than 10 seconds so that I don’t have to slow it down by half, but I think it turned out alright.

I did spend 2 of those hours on a time-lapse bit that unfortunately didn’t make it into the final piece. I even had it rigged on my new indiSLIDERpro and was moving the camera along the slider with each exposure for a very gradual dolly move, but it ultimately didn’t help tell the story as it was unrelated to the retaining wall that was the focus of most of the footage.

Lens Factors Part 1:

The following is a very unscientific look at a range of lenses that I have access to at the moment.  Basically, this is the post I would have like to have seen before starting my lens collection, hopefully, as I’ve been the guinea pig here, someone will benefit from this.

By the way, as the title of this post suggests this is the first of a two part (perhaps more) series based on standard focal length lenses on 1.6x crop sensor canons (rebels and 7D).

Instead of trying to explain further, let me just show you the pictures:

Exhibit A: Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 11mm

This Lens is crazy wide. I’m pretty sure its the widest lens you can get for the 1.6x crop Canons that’s under $1k, which makes it one of the most popular wide lenses, and comes highly recommended from the usual suspects.

The following is the same lens @ 16mm

Next up is the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L @ 24

This lens is one of Canon’s most popular, and for good reason. Sure it’s a bit expensive for most of us (this one was purchased by the church, not yours truly) coming in at around $1400. However if you consider it covers just about every standard focal length from 24-70mm with a consistent 2.8 aperture, its a bargain. Consider it five standard primes in one (24, 28, 35 and 50) body. Add the fact that its L glass and its no wonder most serious Canon DSLR shooters swear by this beast.

The next photo is my 28mm f1.8, which I absolutely love.

Its not as wide as the Tokina or the 24-70, but its f1.8. Seriously, at just over $500 this lens is a must for those who want shallow depth of field in a wide lens. If I had to choose between the nifty 50mm and this lens (knowing what I know now of course) I may have picked this up first.

Next we’re back to the 24-70mm 2.8 L @ 35

This is the focal length I dream in. Seriously, if only you could get it for less than $1400, and still get a metal build. See, this is where I don’t understand Canon’s lens selection. There’s an inexpensive alternative to either the 35 1.4 or the 24-70 2.8, however the darn thing is made out of plastic (ok, except for the mount), but come on… its not even that much cheaper than our next lens:

Canon 50mm f1.4 (aka the nifty-fifty)

This is THE go-to lens for some super shallow depth of field (which will likely be the subject of part 2 of this lens series), and seems to work its way into just about every video I shoot, but frankly, its really hard to keep this thing in focus wide open and therefore I don’t recommend it to beginners. Priced at around $450 it is tempting to get this one over the 28mm, but trust me. The hunting-for-focus “style” died in early 2010. Get the 28mm 1.8 and thank me later.

Next I snuck in the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L for one last appearance to show how close it comes to the second most popular of canon’s non-L primes.

The Canon 85mm f1.8

At just over $400 this lens is the most inexpensive USM prime that still has the metal build. This lens is perfect for getting those hard to reach subjects whether they be across the street or on the other side of the basketball court, you’ll be able to reach them and @ 1.8 you won’t have to worry about getting noise from higher ISO.

To wrap up, I hope this comparison helps those of you who can’t decide on which lenses to start with. Whatever you do, do yourself a favor and skip the kit lens. With how easy it is to create decent video on the current generation of DSLR, you’ll quickly outgrow any of the kit lenses and wish you had saved in stead for one of the above reviewed.

Thanks again for stopping by and remember to check back soon for a depth of field comparison of the same lenses.

P.S. If you’re one of those guys that wants to calculate angle of view, this is why I threw down a tape measure and marked off each 10th foot. The center of the sensor was placed at the zero horizontal mark and was roughly 5’2″ vertical on the tripod. With this info one could geek out with the right equation and figure out the math behind what you see in the above pictures, but we’re in the business of creating great pictures (right?) so perhaps you should put down the calculator and just go out and experiment.

Client Case Study #1: Danny Klass

Danny contacted me after reading the Get to Know article about me in the Des Moines Register. He wanting a video of him playing an original guitar composition for a scholarship contest.

We recorded audio using my Protools rig and a pair of AKG 414b’s through my Trident s20. We also used Hope’s 7D and 24-70mm f2.8 L and my T2i with my 28mm f1.8, 50mm f1.4, and 85mm f1.8. I borrowed 3 Lowel Rifa softboxes from Christlife as Hope hadn’t received their Kino’s yet.

We shot each track several times resulting in the above video. The audio is from the take of the wide shot, and the rest of the shots were synced to it. Danny played the track so consistently that I had a lot of shots to choose from. The video edit and color was started in Final Cut, but I try to pass all my videos through After Effects to help guide the eye using vignettes. Vignettes also make things more dramatic and suspend disbelief. For more comments on vignettes and suspension-of-disbelief check out one of my top 5 video blogs: ProLost.

 

The video was shot backstage at Hope. I used a couple of road cases and a set piece from a previous sermon series as a backdrop.

 

My favorite part of the process was using all the different lenses. My next blog post will be about said lenses especially my Canon USM primes. I’ll take some stills to try and show you the difference in angle of view and DOF on the 1.6 x crop of the 7D/T2i.

Until then, thank you for checking out the new site. Please let me know what questions you might have and what you’d like to see reviewed here.

_Aaron

 

Chop

Chop

Welcome to Modlab.tv!

This is the place where Modlab Multimedia will showcase its projects, review products, post tutorials, and communicate with you. Modlab is currently my (Aaron Ward’s) freelance multimedia business, but is also the name under which I create video, music, photography and art. I hope you’ll enjoy the content, and please leave comments about what you see and hear.

Above is a recent project shot at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, IA where I currently spend most of my time. Will, my coworker, was chopping up a large prop from a past sermon series that was too big to fit in storage. I shot this in about 5 minutes and was amazed by the footage. I had a blast editing this together and enhancing with After Effects.

Camera: Canon T2i
Lens: Canon 50mm 1.4
Edit and Color: Final Cut Pro
VFX: After Effects

Thank you!

_Aaron

Aaron Ward
Modlab Multimedia