[Mike Zmuda]

Hi, Steve, and everyone else that posted!

Thanks VERY much for the suggestions! It actually WASN’T too late, and the suggestions helped out A LOT!!! Our shoot was of a fireworks presentation that was to kick off a year of cellebrations comemmorating the 100th anniversary of a local village. The shoot took place 01/01/08, and it went off pretty well.

All told, the video we got was pretty impressive, though we did have 2 problems…

The first was that we were **WAY** too close. The fireworks were set to explode at about 300 feet altitude, and, even with a 750 foot (I think) radius of exclusion (required by the local bomb squad / fire agencies / laws / codes, etc…) we figured being JUST outside that circle would give us a decent view of the fworks. WAY WRONG!!! 🙂 Turns out, we could have been back another 1000 feet, and EVEN with the cameras set to Full Wide, we STILL would have clipped the display a bit! (OK, granted, that’s more a function of the fireworks – fountains and the like would not have filled the frame as much as these aereal explosions did [they were HUGE!!!])

The other issue (and I’m mentioning this in case anyone else ever has to shoot fireworks,) was a bit of an interesting one – Legal stuff! (YAY!!!)

We scoped out the site and, worked with village officials, a chart detailing the radius of exclusion (where no one [and no electronics – for fear of them setting the explosives off] can be,) as well as site management (the fireworks were being set up and set off from one of the baseball fields at the village’s Park & Recreation center. We found an area that was PERFECT! (or so we thought:)

– It was an area where the public was not allowed.
– There was nothing “tall” in front of us (except for a short pine tree… no fences, light poles, etc…
– It was just outside the circle of exclusion.

Despite that, and despite being able to film for the entire duration of the setup of the fireworks, when it came time for them to set off the fireworks, my crewmates were hustled out of the area where they were set up – told that they couldn’t be there because they were too close. This DESPITE them being outside of the exclusion area, and DESPITE them having been there all during setup.

The reason?

The wind was pretty intense, and they were down-wind.

Had anything bad happened, they likely would have gotten sparks, embers, if not whole explosive devices (let’s face it – that’s what fireworks are…) in their faces.

So, they moved to a different location, and being inexperienced volunteers, got lousy video that’s generally unusable.

Fortunately, we had 2 cameras on the roof of a 35 foot building some 1000 feet away from the launch area, trained on the fireworks. (Even with these cameras, fully zoomed-out, we couldn’t get the whole show in frame, though some individual aereal effects [fireworks] did fully fit in frame, and show up nicely!)

We also had two more cameras in the crowd that were repurposed after shooting a concert for shooting the fworks.

To recap, here’s what worked:
– Everything set to MANUAL
– White Balance set to PRESET (’cause you can always fix the colors in post! 🙂 )
– Iris set to F 5.6 (otherwise, all the colors end up looking whtie.)
– Zoom ALL THE WAY OUT
– DON’T touch the camera after the show has begun (meaning no panning and tilting. FIXING the camera on a region of sky is permissable.)
– DON’T worry about too many people being in front of you if the show is going to mainly take place in the sky. (But if there are ground effects, plan to shoot them.)
– Shutter set to off (unless you want some interesting FX…)
– Focus on INFINITY, then back it up a bit (Being EVER SO SLIGHTLY out of focus makes the “sparks” bigger.)
– Work with the officials BEFORE the event!!!

Here’s what DIDN’T work:
– We were too close. (You can always zoom in [though you should avoid it, since it amplifies camera shake,] though you can’t get wider than “already zoomed all the way out.”)
– We didn’t work with the officials DURING the event. (If we would have known they were going to move us RIGHT BEFORE the show started, we would have relocated earlier, allowing us to set up in a better location.)

Again, a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who posted suggestions, and I hope my experience can help someone shooting some fireworks in the future!

– Mike Z.