[Diego Barraza]

I can understand the premise that the more RAM the merrier, but then why FCP X spec sheet says “2GB RAM minimum and 4GB RAM recommended”?. I would say that is misleading advertisement on their behalf.
I can always buy more RAM, but in FCP 7 with 4GB of RAM you could easily crunch any HDV project with no problem.
The media is all sitting in a external Gtech Drive with FW800 connection.

Thanks for your concern and advise.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

Hello again creative bovines, sorry it has taken me a couple of weeks to get back on the subject but have been extremely busy.

Many thanks for all those of you that have been with me with their great advice and knowledge in this unorthodox approach to aerial cinematography. I have to say that all of your experiences and comments helped me greatly.

Here is the low down: The answer to all our concerns was one or many, depends on how you view it… COVERAGE.

The action was simple, a woman and companion walking a circle in the great grass expand near the cliffs of the coastline. We scheduled the shooting in two parts. In the morning we shot on location from the ground on a very cold day. Handheld, tripod, steadycam and long jib arm were used to follow the action and talent in different takes. We had all morning to get creative and the light was a flat English grey that gave us even exposure all day. I tried my best to shoot mostly tilting down on the talent to keep the horizon low and thus avoid the blown out white background.

The aerial shots were schedule for the afternoon; the airfield was very close to the location so that was ideal. From days before there were concerns on what we could get with the resources that I wrote in the back posts, ie: Cessna plane and 7D; stability and to be able to see the talent from more than 500 feet distance. There is a Spanish saying that “ he who has a friend has a treasure”, and in this occasion it certainly was. We got in contact with our friend Ben, great cameraman who had just bought and received a RED EPIC package the week before. He was more than eager to test his new baby and he said he would come along for the shoot. With the ability to shoot at 120 fps 4k footage, the RED EPIC is just a beauty of camera and he was more than happy to test it out with a flight above a dramatic location. Back in the airfield, again we set out to get as much coverage from the plane as we could. Ben rode in front window with the RED EPIC hadheld and sporting a 50mm Zeiss Ultra Prime pointing out a open window, shooting at 120Fps. I stuck a GOPro 2 to the corner of the backwindow for the wide sweeping look and handheld a Manfrotto Fig Rig with a stabilized canon 55 to 250mm Zoom glass pointing out through the plexiglass. It was gusty as hell and the little Cesnna was up and down most of the time. We were struggling with the handholding of the cameras as the plane buffeted. The pilot was a great professional and did some figure of eight turns on the marked flight path. We could see the talent in the ground no problem, the circle was marked with bird feed on the ground so you could see it from above clearly and without any environmental damage to the grassland. The ride was quite bumpy but there were lulls when the plane would glide smoothly. As we headed back to the airfield we could see the afternoon streaks of light piercing the clouds and reflecting on the sea as in the old bible films when God speaks. On landing the grassy airfield the pilots remarks were “…we have cheated death once more”. Certainly.

Upon review, I have to say that the shot does not work as long traveling aerial shot that sweeps the dramatic landscape and ends in the talent, but there are more than enough great shots within the footage to piece out a sequence with good editing. The EPIC at 120fps gets the action looking smooth as babies bum, and you can even zoom in the 4k frame and get some really good details. The 7D shooting at different zoom steps gave decent amount of detail as we got circling on top of the action in the ground, we can actually see the woman walking quite well with segments were the shot steadied out. The Gopro was brilliant at getting the wide angle of the cliffs and sea; the vibration is not that visible for 200 dollar camera stuck in the plexiglass, it delivered some very usable cutaway material. The sun rays piercing the clouds look beautiful on it.

The director was happy with all the coverage from the morning and afternoon, she is compiling the sequence and it is all working for her needs. We learned and keep on learning. Thank you again everybody for your support. For disclosure issues I will not be able to post any video.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

I´m sensing a lot of negativity here. Ok, maybe it won´t be the most stable shot for sure. But I am getting a lot of dramatic no-no-no input.

I am definitely not going to mount the camera on the wing strut.

I know there are a thousand better ways to do this, but my director works on the spontaneus side of things, and just said this is what we have and lets do it. This will happen this Thursday and I was informed only last Friday. I want to do it the best possible wy with what I have available, and that is what will be done. Imposible is not in my line of thought.

Positive input and personal exerience stories welcome. Evagelism of apocalispis please refrain.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

There seems to be some disagreement about shutter speed, Todd is saying low shutter speed i.e. 50th/sec and David from aerial academy is saying high shutter speed i.e. 1/1000Sec. Is there any consensus on the matter?

Just to clear on what I have available, I cannot change this, this is what I have been set up to use and I have to base my choices on this equipment:

Camera 7D Canon
Good range of lenses from 28mm to 200mm
Cessna 172 plane
Choices of camera mount. Fig rig, tripod or plain handheld (got a Stedycam Merlin, but is out of the question)

The shot: Sweeping shot, the plane comes from west to east following the coastline, Im on the left side of the plane and I am seeing big white cliffs and bits of coast (south coast of England), we go up above the cliff and start turning to the north, where there is a grassy plane on top of the cliff were a woman is walking in a circle. The plane circles above her anticlockwise.

My plan: Camera mounted on fig rig, rubber ball on my lap for support, Shoot with the small window open. Shoot with 70mm, 50th/sec shutter speed, at least 8f stop. Frame where I will not see any of the plane’s rigging and move the camera as little as possible and let the plane do the camera movement.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

Thanks for the input. The lens is a canon 70mm and it has image stabiliser, the pilot says that he has to be 500ft of the ground. My main concern is vibration and being able to pin point and follow the action on the ground: a woman and a child walking around a circle in a big grassland field. I have to shoot out of the rather small cessna plane window.

I plan to shoot at at least 8f stop and maybe 250th of a sec exposure. I have a Fig rig to fix the camera, hand hold it and have a base support with a inflatable rubber ball in my lap.

Its my first aerial shoot, Im a bit nervous and would really like to get it right.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

I have just found this the hard way. Right smack in the midle of work,no keyframes for color. Ahhhhh. FCP X is driving me nuts. Apple….please listen to the editors.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

After plural eyes sync, I would add slugs for the parts that have no recording in each track so you have 5 tracks with the same timecode length and in sync. I would then create a independent clip for each track appropriately named with the camera angle. Select these five clips in the viewer and make multiclip from the in point and edit on the fly the 5 clips via multiclip.

All clips have to be in the same file format and codec for multiclip to work. Best advice is to pre plan the shoot as much as possible. Mucha suerte!.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

You guys are absolutely right, my mistake on that fact. I was running FCP 6.something on that machine. I run FCP 7 at work and so the mistake.
It was really bizarre, Quartz was suddenly disabled. Do not know what caused it. Now I found a way around it, a long way for that matter. Had to reinstall operating system with all the updating nonsense that that implies. I still love this “old” Power PC, mostly works like a charm.

Thank you David and Jerry for your concern. I am big fan of your work here and I can say your answers are always clear and spot on. You are leading the way!.

I am seriously thinking of going X soon. Looks like it will be like starting from scratch but always up for new challenges (if I get the time).

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

Hi jessica, I am trying to come to terms with this marker tool app. I have found your instructions quite useful to move the markers from clip to sequence timeline. Is there a way where I could export markers to tab delimited text without including the master clip markers but only the ones that are in the edited clips below? I need to create a structured list of the markers name, comments, position and colour but the export markers as list function gives me info on markers that are not in my edited clips!…it aggregates the info of other markers that are on the master clip themselves.

Many thaxs.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad

[Diego Barraza]

I found someone had already answered my query in another thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1119887

I am still trying to use this marker tool app. I’ll post my results.

filmmaking-editing-dop-dad