Gravity - Color Grading & Visual Effects

I had a lot of people asking about the color grading and visual effects for my spot "Gravity". So here is a shot by shot comparison of the original raw footage and the finished shots with final color grading and visual effects.

"Gravity" was filmed on two hacked GH1's and was recorded as flat as possible and underexposed by one stop to preserve highlight detail and to provide a little more latitude during grading.

AVCHD FHD
1920x1080
23.976fps
1/50 Sec.
100 ISO
Nostalgic Mode
-2 -2 0 0

Edited in Final Cut Pro.

Composited in After Effects.

Color Graded in Color.

Life's a Beach - Margaritaville Cargo

We felt like kicking it old school, standard definition style with this commercial for Margaritaville Cargo Mixed Drink Makers. I haven't done anything at standard definition for years, and now I know why:) Once again, staring the usual suspects.

Not everyone can live by the beach, but anyone can have an instant party with the Margaritaville Cargo Mixed Drink Maker.

Starring: Thomas Meaney, Marty Vites and Sean Goodman
Written, Directed and Edited by: Michael Eggert
Original Song by: Marty Vites & Thomas Meaney

Special thanks to Michael Sattin of The Resonant Heads for letting us borrow your cool red guitar strap. You can get your own at Couch Guitar Straps.

Shot on location in Santa Monica, Ca.

MJPEG HD, 1280x720, Smooth Mode -2 -2 0 0, Conformed to 640x480 SD.

Shot on three hacked Panasonic GH1's at varying ISO's, 60 fps, 1/60th, with Canon FL 35mm f2.5, Canon FL 55mm f1.2, Canon FL 85mm f1.8 and Rainbow Imaging FL/FD Adapters.

Benro C-298M8 Carbon HVC Flexpod.

Sansdisk Extreme Class 10 SDHC Card.

Rode Video Mic Pro.

Edited in Final Cut Pro.

Composited in After Effects.

Blended - Amazon Wireless

If you are like me, sometimes you get so frustrated with your cell phone, that you want to cause it physical harm. For this Amazon Wireless spot, I decided to torture a poor old Blackberry with a kitchen blender. The results? One crazy cell phone concoction. Drink it in:)

Written, Directed and Edited by: Michael Eggert
Original Score by: Marty Vites
Voice Over by: Thomas Meaney

Special thanks to Laurie for letting me "borrow" her cell phone:)

Shot on a hacked Panasonic GH1 at ISO 100, 23.976 fps, with a Canon FL 55mm f1.2, Rainbow Imaging FL/FD Adapter and Fader ND.

Benro C-298M8 Carbon HVC Flexpod.

Sansdisk Extreme Class 10 SDHC Card.

Shot on location in Woodland Hills, Ca.

Edited in Final Cut Pro.

Composited in After Effects.

BIg Rock - Ambit Energy

Two guys discuss the benefits of independent energy whilst rock climbing.

I had so much fun shooting with Thomas and Sean on "Nice Shorts", I thought it would be great to reunite them for an epic rock climbing adventure. We did get hassled by a park ranger about something called a "permit". What is this mythical piece of paper that you speak of?

Starring: Thomas Meaney and Sean Goodman
Written, Directed and Edited by: Michael Eggert
Original Score by: Marty Vites
Voice Over by: Kevin Thomas

Shot on location at Stoney Point.

Shot on a hacked Panasonic GH1 at ISO 100, 23.976 fps, with a Canon FL 55mm f1.2, Canon FD 20mm f2.8, Rainbow Imaging FL/FD Adapter and Fader ND.

Carry Speed V Shoulder Support.

Sansdisk Extreme Class 10 SDHC Card.

Rode Video Mic Pro.

Edited in Final Cut Pro.

Color Graded in After Effects.

Nice Shorts Before & After

Here is a before and after comparison of the quick color grade I did for "Nice Shorts". I was going for a 70's style, cop show kinda look. A little bit like how the "Rockford Files" or "Charlie's Angels" appears in the back of my mind. They probably look nothing like this, but this is how I like to think of them.

I always try and shoot as flat as I can, by turning down the contrast and sharpen settings inside the camera. This helps increase the dynamic range, and provides a little more latitude while grading.

Aslan - King of My Living Room

I was messing around with a vintage Nikon SB-26 Speedlight that I bought about a year ago on eBay. I got it after falling in love with the tips and techniques of David Hobby and his blog, strobist. I thought it would be fun to shoot a couple of pix of my dog Aslan. With my good friend Marty acting as a light stand, we were able to capture a rather candid moment of Aslan in the living room.

I have had Aslan for almost a year, after my girlfriend, Laurie, wanted me to foster him. The plan was that he would eventually be put up for adoption. Well needless to say, that never happened. He was a shelter dog on the verge of being put down, but instead he ended up with me.

Please check out you local shelter for other great dogs like Aslan. You might just save a life.

For more information, check out the Shelter Animal Advocacy Fund Los Angeles.

Color Grading

Here are a couple of frame grabs from a little video shoot that I did with some of my students. We used a Canon XH-A1 shooting at 23.976 fps, 1/48th sec shutter, at 1440 x 1080. Lighting was a combination of the bathroom's fluorescents and two small Lowel Tota-lights. The XH-A1 is actually pretty decent in low light settings, so I was able to shoot without adding any gain.

Since we were limited to the confined space of the school's bathroom, we weren't able to pull the camera back very far which helped contribute to some serious lack of depth of field. Would have been nice to use a 35mm lens adapter, but not quite possible on a school budget.

Here are two images for a before and after comparison. Resized to 960 x 540. I did a little color grading, vignetting, and defocusing to help bring the viewers eye back towards the actor washing his hands.

Paloma & Mary

Over the Memorial Day weekend I did a photo shoot for a corporate client. I used a Nikon D80 and a Dynalite M1000DR strobe pack. The great thing about shooting in Los Angeles is that if you pick up your rental gear after 4:00 p.m. on Friday and return it by 11:00 a.m. the following Monday, you are only charged for a one day rental. Since it was a holiday weekend, I also got an extra bonus day, and was able to keep the gear until Tuesday. So what is a photographer to do with great gear and a couple of extra days? Doggie Photo Shoot! I wanted to volunteer to help out with a Playboy centerfold shoot, but for some reasons they wouldn't return my calls. Damn you Hugh Hefner!

Here is a photo from that session that features Paloma & Mary. Both of these dogs have been rescued from an animal shelter. They are two of the sweetest and most cuddly dogs I have ever known. If you would like to find out more about shelter dogs, please check out the Shelter Animal Advocacy Fund.

If you are shooting in Los Angeles be sure to stop on by Samy's Camera for all your photographic needs. Tell them the Pixelphile sent you.

Crank 2 - Shot With Canon Consumer Cameras

Crank 2 - High Voltage, the sequel to the 2006 film Crank, about an assassin played by Jason Statham who learns his rival has injected him with a poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops, is being shot entirely with consumer level Canon video cameras.

Primarily being shot hand held with a $3,500 XH-A1 that is mounted onto a Manfrotto Fig Rig (see photo above featuring Amy Smart and Corey Haim) , which was invented by director Mike Figgis while making his 2000 film Timecode. For point of view, car mounted, and crash cams, they are using the less expensive HF10's which records to removable SDHC memory cards. Reportedly they will be using up to 12 of these $1,000 cameras with plans of destroying most of them during the filming process.

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have said that the Canon XH-A1 and Canon HF10 will be used as “moving the camera in outrageous ways and being able to destroy cameras without blinking an eye is more important to us than, you know, sort of having this filmic image” says Taylor. Nevedine says “With the cameras we’re using we literally can point and shoot and we have the same image quality that we had on Crank 1“.

With camcorders though won’t it look pretty crappy? “It doesn’t look like Cloverfield. It’s not supposed to look like home video. It’s going to look like a movie, but it’s going to look like a movie you’ve never seen before.“

Crank 1, was previously shot with the Sony F950 that carries a price tag of well over $100,000. So it's refreshing to see that the directors have decided to take an entirely different approach.

Just goes to show you that you don't need a really expensive camera to make a Hollywood movie. All you need is a hot actress with a really short dress.

Blue Screen Hanging

Blue Screen Plate

Background Plate

Final Composite

Recently I did a little blue screen shoot with my visual effects students over at CSUN. We did 4 set-ups in 4 hours which I think is pretty amazing. We picked blue screen over green screen for this particular shot due to the fact that we were lighting the screen with Kino Flo K55 tubes which are rated at 5500 degrees Kelvin. This color temperature combined with the blue screen provided a well saturated blue screen.

This type of shot requires a heavy dose of keying, rotoscoping, motion tracking & color correction. These techniques are the bread and butter for all visual effects artists and this one shot will use them all.

The really fun part of the shoot was hand holding a fully extended monopod thirty feet in the air while connected to a new $4,000 camera. Priceless.

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Merry Christmas Y'all and to Y'all a good night! Here is a frame grab of Janet and Kelsey from one of the shots that I am currently working on. It was shot in HDV NTSC at 24 frames per second and must now be converted over to SD PAL at 25 frames per second. Good times. Nothing more fun than converting from one convoluted format to a slightly less convoluted format. Ho ho ho!

Clap On, Clap Off

I now have it in my contract that all of the clapper/loaders must wear only lingerie during filming. While most of the time this works out great, as it did on this shoot, it is rather scary on days when the clapper is a fat guy named "Bubba":)

Can You Hear Me Now?

Here I am helping my friend Janet , shot a couple of scenes for the upcoming film "Dead Country". If you dig horror flicks and hot chicks, you will probably like this movie.

Flip, Flop, Fly

Recently we were shooting a car interior night scene for one of my editing classes. It was a basic dialog scene, that we intended to shoot with three different camera positions.

First position was shot through the windshield of the vehicle.

Second position was through the driver's side window.

Third position was also shot through the driver's side window.

With time running out, we realized that it was going to take way too long to move the camera and reset the lights for the passenger's side window. So we did the next best thing. We had the actors switch places in the vehicle, and kept the camera and lights setup where they were and continued to shoot through the driver's side window. With a little luck, and a little "Flop" of the shot in post, the illusion came together.

Flop: This Perspective filter flip-flops the image horizontally, vertically, or in both directions at the same time. John Huston used this effect in his World War II documentary The Battle of San Pietro to keep the Allied forces heading right to left, and the Axis forces heading left to right, regardless of which direction they were actually moving during filming.