I’m still getting emails about the two Portland Center Stage spots, which is  cool.  Emails are fun.  In addition, the volume of emails and the questions regarding such have led me to believe a full post is in order.  So here that is; the full post.  I’m by no means a stop-mo expert, but these spots were pretty interesting to shoot. I’ll roughly translate the info into a general Q&A.

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What Camera Did You Use to Shoot 1080 24?
Nikon D-80. It’s a prosumer still camera body, 10+ megapixels, very ergonomic. In this lineup Canon has the 30d and Sony has a new one called the Alpha. I had experience with the Nikon D-70 and stayed with the D-80 b/c I like how it fits my hands - makes me want to pick it up (which is important, if you’re a camera). The Canon 30d is also a very fine camera, a bit more expensive, but very very sweet.

Lenses?
Both spots shot with Nikon’s 18-135mm zoom. It’s a very slow lens (f4+), but zoom was important for a couple of reasons (more in a bit). I’m still working on my lens collection, continually trolling ebay (this is where things can get expensive).

Did You Shoot RAW, or What?
I hardly ever shoot RAW format. Little, if any, of my stuff goes to large format printing, and I personally don’t find the increased detail editing controls with RAW all that much better than shooting hi-rez JPEG. RAW is definitely better, but not that much better, IMHO. If I’m editing photos, I usually have 40+ open at a time and with RAW, that’s just silly. This is personal preference and that’s just how I work.

Using RAW stills for a motion/broadcast/film spot is cool too, but it depends on your final output. For me, I knew MY final output would be HD, and the CLIENT’S final output was web, so shooting RAW here was a bit overkill.

For the sake of speed and efficiency, I actually shot the spots at about 1K resolution. 700+ stills uncompressed at 10MP apiece is A LOT to ask of even of best desktop ‘puter and knowing final output resolution was negligible, I just thought this was the way to go. Saved a bunch of drive space, too.

For a BIG shoot with a BIG budget or even somone besides my alias editor Stump Blanketship driving FCP, I may have thought about shooting RAW, but for Stump’s sake I made it real simple (well, relatively simple. Stump is a damn fine editor - I’m lucky to have him).

How’d You Do It?
The stop-motion?

Yes.
Stop-motion is easier than you may think; it’s really a patience game.

For the “Bad Dates” spot, I had some really nice visuals to work with and a nicely lit set piece, so I just set up shop there. I had already written out the VO and had a rough storyboard in my head so the goal was just to match the shoe action with the pace of the script.

Moving the shoes around is simply that, move a bit at a time, snap, move, snap, move. For this process, I HIGHLY recommend a loyal assistant, or at the very least, a SHUTTER REMOTE.

For the “Fences” spot, there were no specified props or characters to work with, so my goal was to make a baseball field come alive.

The hardest part of the spot was finding a nice looking field that would let me shoot there, and I landed the 2nd nicest field in Portland, at the U. of Portland (PGE Park - the minor league team’s field - was cordial, but this didn’t fit into their opening week festivities. I can’t imagine why; perhaps a “location fee” would have helped. Mmm, next spot’s budget….).

Yeah but, How Did You Move the Field Around?
That was the trick, instead of moving the field, I moved the camera - position of, and tripod head axis (pan/tilt), and ZOOM - sometimes all at once (in little increments). That was really fun; I had a good time in the sun shooting the baseball field pix.

Again, I showed up to the field, alone, with only an idea of what I wanted. The fun part was figuring that out on the fly, as I had an hour to myself.

You Don’t Storyboard?
Not for my own devices. I storyboard when a client needs to see ‘em, or when I can’t already see it in my head, or I make lil’ stick figure ones if only to show the rest of a crew. It’s hard to effectively storyboard when the location variables are not already on-lock (urban term), and plus, for me, I like the organic challenge of directing on the fly. It’s like a live, moving painting that you’re in charge of - at least that’s how directing feels to me. Non-storyboarding doesn’t mean ill-prepared, just that I like making decisions after I see things come together visually, in real life, in real time, in the moment.

DP Rodger Deakins has a great line, with a very sly smirk on his face, in the extra features of House of Sand and Fog where he pokes fun at director Vadim Perelman for showing up to the set with an intricate book of storyboards. Deakins basically says something to the effect of “I made him throw them out”, which is funny because in the moment of having the actors and crew and everything on set you just know you’ll see something better than you did with a pen and paper (special effects laden, SCI-FI epics excluded from that statement).

Enough With The Storyboarding, What are You the Storyboarding Master Or Something?
No, I’m not, sorry to run on that tangent.

It’s Okay. I Left The Subject of This Email Querry Somwhat Vague and You Went With It.
Wanna see the spot?

Yes.

That’s Pretty Cool. You Do The Color Pass in After Effects?
Thanks and no. I…er…Stump shies away from AE as much as possibly b/c he’s much better with the color tool in FCP, and it’s much faster than importing and exporting files a bunch of times. AE is sweet but - HE - did a bunch of AE work some years ago and prefers to let the motion graphics artists stick to AE while he works inside FCP. No doubt Apple’s COLOR has him very stoked.

Wow! Thanks For The Reponse! I Think I’mma Try Shooting Stop-mo Too!
You’re welcome, thanks for writing. You should go shoot some stop-mo - it’s fun; bring your patience.

Any Other Tips?
Can’t say it enough - camera remote.

Awesome. If I think of anything else, I’ll post something in the comments.
R A D , Y O .

I don’t watch a lick of teevee so I had no idea this was going on, but Mr. Chuck Roy is having himself a grand ole’ time on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Currently, the entire 4th episode is all online, for free. I’ve provided a link to the episode right here; go have yourself a laugh.

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If you’ll remember, the very funny Chuck Roy spent some time in Hollywood making the comedy rounds for a number of years telling jokes as the house warmup act for The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (where I saw him perform as a member of the studio audience when I lived in LA) as well as making several guest appearances on Third Rock From the Sun and Will and Grace.

A few years later, we met on the streets of Denver, CO where I was filming a spot for a local ad firm and he simply walked up to me and said “Hey, wadda’ ya shooting?” That friendship birthed many ideas on the subject of art, and storytelling, and commerce, one of which came to mini-fruition as the beginnings of what was/(is?) Fuck Highlands Ranch.

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Chuck and I just got off the phone after a long chat, two older and wiser gentlemen still making our way doing whatever it is each one of us do, albeit now in different area codes, hoping our creative paths meet again.

Good to hear from you, Chuck.

The West Side IS THE NEW MODEL. Model for what? The model for DIY content creation, creativity, and distribution. The West Side is a banging new “serialized internet novel”, presented for free on the internet as 12 episodes. The brain children behind The West Side are hella-made NoFilmSchool scribe Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and co-writer/director/producer Zachary Lieberman. And I haven’t even got to the best part yet; The West Side is an urban western and it’s off-the-chain S T Y L I E.

No doubt, this concept would have made a great low budget feature, but without any budget to speak of, RBK and ZL took matters into their own hands. It’s a film, it’s a “podcast”, it’s an episodic, it’s a series. It’s feature length, in portions.

It’s B O S S (fuck the Boss).

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The great thing about The West Side (besides looking fantastic) is that it’s professional; no one’s going to be crying about being $100K in credit card debt at the end of the series.

In other words, there’s no Film Festival trying-so-hard-to-be-hip mentality behind it. RELEASE IT. NOW. AS FAST AS WE CAN.

Susan Buice and Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters, for all the press and “accolades” they received, are just now - two years post-date - releasing their film for free, to the internet.

And if I can Dennis Miller this for a second, why - why - why - why did Buice and Crumley not make FEM available on DVD the second their podcasts were featured all over the net? Really? Everyone into indie film/the net was watching the FEM brand explode, and yet the creators sat - SAT - on their greatest potential revenue source FOR TWO YEARS, only now to show up in my email inbox looking very sad at having spent one-hundred thousand dollars navel gazing, buying ironic t-shirts (size small), traveling to 20 film festivals, and begging for traditional distribution.

Think I’m wrong? Bullshit. FEM has been HAILED by the just as wanna-be-hip InterWebPress/Traditional Press as the “new model of Indie distribution”. To that I say, really? The model for DIY, self reliant, harnessing the web, blazing new trails, no/low budget “indie” filmaking/distribution is….

1.) Seek traditional distribution deals (and their collective cash) first…..
2.) Complain when said distribution deals for your self-made reality-TV (OOOPs I mean) reality-FILM driven movie don’t come in
3.) Spend WAAAAYYY TOO MUCH MONEY while continuing to seek traditional distribution
4.) Move back in with your parents
5.) Release your film on the internet for free anyway

…?

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The West Side says FUCK ALL THAT. Let’s skip to the release part, then see where it leads us. These guys making The West Side work real jobs, they’ve saved their money, they’re shooting nights and weekends, and they’re scheming as fast as they can.

And nowhere on their site do you see them pleading for a revenue stream to bail them out of poor financial decisions.

Na. The West Side is just about, art, and story, and having a badass time being creative. I hope these guys BLOW UP. They deserve it. This is a ballsy move on their part, creating a wonderful piece of art and entertainment, with no money, no backing, and giving it away for free. No doubt, getting 12 of these episodes out is going to be a chore with limited resources. This is exactly the kind of project that if I was a rich man, or even a semi-rich man with a bent for unique storytelling and possibly artistic development, I’d throw RBK and ZL $20K just too help them get through this production a little easier. Even with an in-kind grant such as that, they’d still halfta’ count on dedication and a whole lotta patience to pull this episodic feature off, but maybe the morning’s cereal would taste a bit better, knowing the milk isn’t bad and all.

Spielberg - Where you at on this, breh? Robert Rodriguez - Throw a bone these cat’s way.

RBK and ZL: either one of you guys Jewish?